No Child Left Behind

A Shrinking Company (Empire)


“A Hollywood walkout” -- That saying is likely to gain currency after the United States reached a tentative agreement Wednesday to withdraw from Iraq only too many years since the invasion. According to the New York Times, the Marine Corps doesn’t want to stay there anyway --


The new agreement appears to have emerged as a way for both US leaders and company managers, at a time of deep troubles in their industry (empire), to prove to their constituents that they got the best deal they could under the circumstances, without the damage of an all-out (nuclear) war.


Given the industry’s (country’s) financial woes, neither side can afford a drawn-out battle. “It isn’t the time to have a life-or-death struggle,” said John Paul MacDuffie, a professor of management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.


Meanwhile:


Last week, the Senate approved a $459 billion Pentagon spending bill, an increase of $43 billion, or more than 10 percent over the last budget. That bill did not include, as part of a separate bill, President Bush’s request for almost $190 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Democratic Senators supported the measure as another aspect of No Child Left Behind. “What better way to test our students?”