Kimberley Strassel
What's responsible for Baltimore's problems? Republicans need answers other than "massive economic inequality, racism, and police violence," and when Republicans need answers but can't admit what the real problems are, they turn to a familiar set of scapegoats. Take
Wall Street Journal editorial board member and columnist Kimberley Strassel's answer to Chuck Todd's question "how should the business community be responding to Baltimore?"
Strassel quickly pivoted: "They want to be able to help in this situation, but ..."
The reality, there has been a kind of common plan in a lot of these cities, which is what John Boehner was referring to. There have been a lot of policies out there that you see replicated across these cities, of sort of central planning, lots of money being poured in from both the state and the federal level, but you still have a failing education system dominated by public sector unions, teachers unions, you've still got high crime and high unemployment.
And if you could fix all that, then maybe the business sector would care to invest. Voila!
The truth is that central planning has been a factor in creating the problems of cities like Baltimore. Specifically, decades of government-sponsored segregation created a hell of a lot of problems and prevented black families from building and passing through generations the kind of wealth that white families have.
As for Baltimore's failing education system dominated by teachers unions—a point that, precisely because it comes out of nowhere in Strassel's response, we know is an important one, something she worked to get in there—we need to talk about two things here. One is that, nationally, states where the teachers are unionized have better educational outcomes than states where they are not. This is not mostly because of teachers unions, it's because states that have unions also tend to have other characteristics that are good for education, but it's certainly a reason to be suspicious anytime someone tries to tell you that teachers unions hurt education.
Second, the big thing that affects educational outcomes—The. Big. Thing.—is family income. If you want to make a solid guess about how "effective" an area's schools and teachers are, find out its average income. Does Kimberley Strassel really think that if you took the teachers from the highest-performing schools in non-union states and put them in Baltimore, working under the rules they work under in their home states, suddenly Baltimore schools would have the outcomes of the best schools in the wealthiest towns in Georgia or Texas? Like hell she does, if she's being honest. But the right's crusade against teachers unions trumps honesty about what's going on in Baltimore's schools.