Cheney to Take Over DOE In Secret Deal With Mayor

June 28, 2007 (GBN News): Concerned that Mayoral control of the NY City school system may not be renewed, Mayor Bloomberg has, according to GBN News sources, made a secret deal with Vice President Dick Cheney to put the Department of Education under the authority of the Vice President’s office. The Mayor reportedly offered the deal after learning that the Vice President is apparently able to operate without any accountability whatsoever. Mr. Cheney has claimed that as President of the Senate he is not part of the Executive branch and thus not answerable to its agencies, but yet he has also asserted “executive privilege” to avoid oversight by Congress. While Mayor Bloomberg has claimed a similar sort of freedom of action regarding the schools - he says he is not accountable to the City Council because it is the State that gave him control over the DOE, yet he is not accountable to the State because the DOE is a City agency - he fears that he could lose this legal loophole if Mayoral control sunsets automatically as the law provides.

While the deal would cede titular authority for the DOE to Mr. Cheney, the Vice President would refer operational control back to the Mayor and Chancellor. In return, Mr. Bloomberg would agree that, should he be elected President, he would protect the secrecy of all of Mr. Cheney’s Vice Presidential documents. The sources also told GBN News that the Mayor’s plan is to name current Schools Chancellor Joel Klein as his running mate. This way, if Mr. Bloomberg is elected, Mr. Klein, as Vice President, would continue to run the NY City school system whether or not Mayoral control is renewed. In fact, with the power that he would have, Mr. Klein as Vice President could potentially take over every school system in the country, “reform” them all, and be accountable to no one.

Some analysts think that this purported “plan” is just a ploy to scare critics into renewing Mayoral control, and that the Mayor has no intention of running for President. Others say that Mr. Bloomberg’s real motive is to have Mr. Cheney declare cell phones to be a “tool of terrorists” and use the Patriot Act to enforce the DOE ban on them in schools. Still, should the plan, if true, come to pass, it would consolidate Mr. Bloomberg’s control of the City schools for years to come.