The DPS, fingers crossed, might very well receive a huge infusion of that federal cash as an ill-deserved reward for its long, well documented, and unprecedented history of abject failure. A shelter wouldn't dare turn away the most destitute of callers in the bleak of night, and with Detroit's tattered appearance these days, it would be shocking if bureaucrats in Washington and Lansing aren't able to direct a hundred mill or so toward Motown for even the appearance of reforms.

Really, nothing gets the attention of Lansing bureaucrats any quicker than the feds flashing a little free cash.

While I find the whole process repugnant for many reasons, I have been particularly lathered over the response of legislators who are, once again, proving that it is money and special interests that they think are most important, and not the children who should be the focus of education.

From M-Live:

The Michigan House is softening a plan that would have allowed schools to start classes before Labor Day.

The state's lowest-performing schools still would have the option of starting classes before Labor Day under revised legislation that soon could come up for a vote on the House floor. But most schools would remain under a 2005 state law that prevents classes from beginning until early September.

House leaders made the switch in their legislation after the state's tourism industry lobbied to keep the post-Labor Day schedule. The later start gives families a chance to extend summer vacations and boost the tourism industry.

The House Education Committee will continue work Wednesday on legislation aimed at winning more federal cash for schools.

What other possible explanation is there for the poorest performing schools to be allowed to begin earlier in the year (satisfying reformer's wishes,) while forcing more successful districts to begin later in the year, the latter ostensibly to help tourism?

Am I to gather by this that children from more successful school districts can afford to have their education weakened so that campsites stay full an extra long weekend in the summer?

Legislators are trying to butter both sides of their bread with this one. More money from Washington, and more money from tourists. They are willing to reform the bare minimum to keep those Detroit kids in school, but those urchins from Bloomfield Hills might actually rent some Jet Skis!

This is what our enlightened government has done. It has helped to create a disastrous business climate so negative that to help remedy the situation business interests are allowed to negatively impact education. Meanwhile, the educational environment is so choked by ineffective and intrusive governmental policies that to remedy that situation they are allowed to choke business interests though unprecedented debt and taxation.

Education is not forced (some would say allowed) to clean out its own dirty cage without resources being taken from innocent third parties, while businesses are not able (some would say allowed) to thrive on their own without the shackles of grubbing money-leches being attached to their enterprises.

It is a mutated form of modern special interest symbiosis where each party becomes both the weakened host and undernourished parasite of the other. Meanwhile, benevolent bureaucrats can expect to be rewarded at the ballot box for their heart-felt concern.

Me, I'm sickened by the whole process. Until what is best for students actually becomes the focus of the whole education apparatus, it is destined for failure, and until business is allowed to thrive for the profitable purposes for which it is intended, it is destined for continued struggles. Government's nurturing of this impossible intertangling between the two will beget nothing more than increased entanglement.