"No-Holds-Barred Envisceration"

The Post sure has a way with words: "COMPTROLLER RUINS KLEIN'S APPETITE
By DAVID ANDREATTA March 13, 2007 -- City Comptroller William Thompson Jr. devoured Schools Chancellor Joel Klein at breakfast yesterday. With the chancellor sitting just a few feet away, the fiscal watchdog ripped the Department of Education as "a high-risk investment" before dozens of public-school principals at a breakfast forum on fiscal accountability in education.
In a no-holds-barred evisceration of the department's business practices, Thompson portrayed the agency as one in the midst of a corporate back-room, free-for-all spending spree with none of the accountability to the public that it demands of its schools. He accused the department of exploiting "a gray area" in state procurement law that allows it to strike no-bid contracts with impunity, and suggested the latest effort to restructure the school system will not yield significant gains.
"The people of New York City have a right to expect better fiscal management from those who run our educational system," Thompson, considered a 2009 mayoral candidate, said at Fordham University's Graduate School of Education.
Klein shrugged off the verbal assault as "all old news." He also defended the restructuring, which is meant to give principals more authority over their budgets and curriculum, as a means toward pumping more money into classrooms."