For the week of February 12-18, 2003

To a loser, $poil$

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U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Idaho Republican Tom Luna share something other than Republican Party memberships.

Both were rejected by home state voters—Ashcroft for U.S. senator from Missouri and Luna as candidate to become Idaho superintendent of public instruction.

But both these losers are winners. Big time.

President Bush plucked Ashcroft from possible political Siberia and made him the most powerful law enforcement officer in the land (some say the most heavy-handed, too).

Now the Bush White House is handing Tom Luna a plum—"special assistant" to Education Secretary Rod Paige at a salary of between $95,000 and $123,000, far more than the Idaho superintendent’s $82,500.

What’s more, Luna works from home in Nampa, traveling the country checking schools as part of the "No Child Left Behind" program.

This deal is more than GOP "compassion" in caring for one of their own with a make-work "special assistant" job. Something more cunning is involved.

Keep Luna in education and visible in Idaho. Then by 2006 he’ll run again for Idaho schools chief with the aura of a presidential appointee and, the GOP hopes, achieve long-range goals of elevating private charter schools and religious schools at the expense of public education.

Luna may face a dilemma.

By then, Idaho’s disastrous Republican-managed budget and President Bush’s starvation of education may leave schools in their worst condition in years.

So how will Republican Luna explain Republican under-funding of education that could leave children behind?

Maybe blame it on "liberal" Democratic teachers?

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.