Osborne who is thought by some to have tabled the "fiscal charter" only to create division in the Labour party, made no attempt to hide his pleasure as his plan unfolded before his eyes with near-precision choreography.
After weekend consultations in Najaf with Ayatollah Sistani, the Shiite leaders agreed to sign the charter, only to issue new calls for the document to be revised as soon as the ceremony ended.
But Justice McKeon ruled that the commission, which the Mayor had packed with friends and allies, had improperly rushed through its mandate to review the entire City Charter, only to come up with one proposal, to change a piece of the city's campaign finance law.
When merely a road or a canal is to be constructed, it is for the legislature to fix the tolls to be paid by those who use it; when a company is chartered, not only to build a road, but to carry on public transportation upon it, it is for the legislature to fix the charges for such transportation.
If the CBC is to survive the transition, it could do worse to look to the BBC's own now-shelved plans for the "Creative Archive," announced during the runup to the last Charter Renewal, only to disappear with Greg Dyke after the Hutton Inquiry.
Some voucher supporters tolerate charters only as a stepping stone to get to full-on vouchers, because only vouchers will let tax dollars flow freely into religious schools (Betsy DeVos may well fit into this category).
White's refusal to properly oversee charters only confounds the issue.
The ban, imposed in response to corruption scandals in that decade, prompted one critic, Assemblyman Anthony J. Genovesi, a Brooklyn Democrat, to complain: "What's left if elected officials can't be involved in politics?" The answer: not much, although the charter rule applied only to city officials.
The challenge is to figure out how to make the charter sing not only to the choir, but to those who don't think about the world -- or their lives -- in such terms.
Among those surveyed in the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll, 52% had a favorable opinion about charters; only 12% had an unfavorable impression.
