Same old, same old

With each Cabinet appointment, President-elect Barack Obama's pledges of "change" become more hollow.

To run the Department of Education, Mr. Obama selected Arne Duncan, an old buddy of his who has run the Chicago public schools for seven years. While Mr. Duncan embraces charter schools, his promotion was well received by the nation's two large teacher unions.

"Arne Duncan actually reaches out and tries to do things in a collaborative way," Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, told The Associated Press earlier this month.

There's nothing wrong with collaboration, of course. But fixing all that's wrong with America's public schools will require occasionally upsetting established educational interests. Mr. Duncan has no such track record in that regard.

In other words, don't hold your breath waiting for any major shakeup in national education policy.

Ditto for our Byzantine, Depression-era agriculture policies, given that Mr. Obama has tabbed former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack to run the Department of Agriculture. Mr. Vilsack, an attorney by trade who learned to love farm handouts as a matter of political survival in his home state, has been an ardent backer of ethanol subsidies.

He said his priorities, in order, will be "improving profitability for farmers," the need for "sustainable practices" and fighting "global climate change."

Noticeably absent from that list is any expressed concern about the plethora of subsidies that the department doles out courtesy of taxpayer to rich farmers -- or even dead farmers. Nowhere did Mr. Vilsack express any concern about the higher commodity prices U.S. consumers must pay in order for the Department of Agriculture to prop up inefficient producers and block cheaper imports.

Change? Not in these parts, anyway.