Civics Class

 Like a lot of people in this great land of ours, I spent a chunk of last week wallowing in the schadenfreude that was the election of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Watching Republicans scatter about, arguing and fussing with one another about the particulars of what should have been a done deal was the kind of reality TV that many of us felt compelled to take in. For days, the halls of Congress rang with the cries of frustration and confusion that might normally have been kept under wraps. This was the dirty laundry of entire political party being flung about in ways not seen since the Civil War. The first one. 

While Kevin McCarthy flopped about like a trout on a landing, trying to cajole just five more votes out of his own party and those smug members of the loony caucus who held the key to the office of the Speaker's door, Democrats sat on their hands as a solid block. And waited them out. Painting a very vivid picture of just how functional the one hundred eighteenth Congress will be.

"Not" is the word I would use to describe it. 

All the while this was taking place in Washington, D.C., trouble of a different sort was brewing here in Oakland. An administrative error connected to the city's rank-choice voting caused a little hiccup in the school board election. Not fraud in this case but a mix-up that put one of the sitting members of the board into a position of winning another district's seat and leaving the previously announced winner officially out of luck. And out of an office. 

Which, in another time, might not be such a big deal. However this year the clock is ticking on a resolution that is pending for the first board meeting of the year. A resolution designed to rescind the list of school closures pushed through by the previous board before most of them either resigned or chose not to run for reelection. 

If you've been hanging around in this corner of Al Gore's Internet for the past year or so, you know that one of the schools on that list of closures is the one where yours truly has been employed since 1997. Besides the obvious impact on yours truly, the hundreds of families of students and staff are waiting on pins and needles to see how this will all turn out. All this new age avant garde liberally intended fix of ranked choice voting does not seem to have delivered us a solution so very different from the arcane circus that took place in the House of Representatives this past week. 

So here we are, waiting for our government and its elected officials to lurch into action. Or inaction as the case may be. Business as usual.