Xylem Asylum
Quartered:
First off, right off the fat of the bat
this January 01, 2014…the healthiest and merriest of New Years to ya…
Now, for some straight from the horse’s mouth sure enough veritable content…
According to the latest ‘U.S. Department
of Labor’ statistics for 2012, one can dig out from the data certain gender
discrepancies. Today, basing a woman’s averaged wages of approximately 77% earnings
when compared to a man’s wages; it is still a far cry better than when they
first started documenting gender wage gaps in 1967 where it showed that the
averaged woman’s wage was only 58 cents to every averaged man’s dollar. But,
with current income inequities between classes, the working female’s median
earnings of $36,931.00 per year and the male’s $47,715.00 has exponentially dropped
in median value since the Bush/Cheney era due to Republican policies favoring monetary
distribution to the top 2% of the wealthiest population, who now hold 84% of
the nation’s wealth. This disparity in wage assimilation needs to be addressed
if female earnings are to be improved and for that matter, if social mobility
in general is still to remain a viable entity. For a more widespread
distribution in wealth holdings is what makes a true democracy kick…the vast
majority of wealth collected in only the hands of the few caters to plutocracy.
In every age category, women receive
less pay. In a forty year working career, the averaged loss in female income
due to the wage gap is $431,000.00. Single women are the most adversely
affected receiving only 57 cents to every dollar a married male earns.
With 41% of the wage gap as
unexplainable by measureable factors, such as still occurring even if the
individual female and male has the same experienced working background, more in
depth analyses in social norms are needed.
So, here we are…in a twenty-first
century new year and still women are paid less. Why is that? Sixty-two percent
of the hourly workforce today in the U.S. is women. And of course, two-thirds
of the workforce receiving the $7.25 minimum wage is women. Is there truly a
war against women? Well, as much as the culprits will sidetrack the issue,
there surely is. That miscreant conducting the combat against women is the
Republican Party.
American women, as far as the main
family income earner is at 63.9% with 22.5% as a co-breadwinner and 41.4% as
the sole breadwinner. Worldwide, when 10%
more of a country’s girls go to school that nation’s GDP increases 3%. 43% of
the world’s food crops are produced by women and women realize a 10% more crop
yield over men. But of course…women are responsible for 100% of childbirths
while still maintaining their other highly productive roles.
Regardless of the above data, women
comprise only 18.9% of the world’s governance. In the U.S., there are only 13
out of 100 senate seats filled by women, but in countries where women make up
30% or more of the legislature, the governing body is more inclusive, equitable
and more publicly democratic.
All this is for good reason, for while
women are taking up employment, they are still more comprehensive, nurturing, the
family caretaker so therefore caring more for healthcare access, proper
childcare, food supplement, education and the minimum wage. The very things
Republicans have chosen to consistently be against.
Perhaps known less by the majority than
more by the few, Tanya Melich was once a devout Utah ultraconservative. In
addition to working for prominent Republicans as the likes of Nelson
Rockefeller and as a 1992 Republican New York delegate, she had been a devout
Republican for as long as she could remember growing up under the tutelage of
her Republican state senator father. But in becoming disillusioned with her
lifelong party over women’s rights and the domination of the religious right in
her party, she resigned her delegacy and actually went to work for Clinton. Although
she never joined the Democrat Party, she from then on worked hard for its
principles. With immense insider experience, in 1996, Melich came out with a
book titled ‘The Republican War Against Women.’ In it, starting under the
Reagan years after first digging a foothold under Nixon, she detailed how the
GOP began systematically going against women’s reproductive rights and
silencing women voices to attract fundamentalists and the moral majority.
Assuredly, women overall have become
disillusioned with the GOP and for good reason…it’s agendas and mandates are in
full contradiction of what a woman feels a just society should be and
represent. Back in the seventies when women were joining the workforce in
droves to maintain family living standards, encouraged by the Republican
portion of congress, Nixon nixed a childcare bill based on GOP derived
frugality grounds and insistence from his statement that affordable childcare
threatens American families by encouraging women to work.
During Reagan’s 1980 convention, the
very first thing dropped by Republicans was federal assistance for daycare
services. Ronald Reagan opposed and adamantly fought the ratifications to the
‘Equal Rights Amendment’ in 1982 so it was not adopted into law. In winning his
Georgia representative seat, a Newt Gingrich campaign official stated, “We went
after every rural prejudice we could think of. We were appealing to the
prejudice against working women, against their not being home.”
During the W. Bush/Cheney years,
although it was broadcast with sweet talk, women rights, instead of being
bolstered were being eroded and distanced from economic empowerment so much so
that the term “the W. Effect” was coined.
This sweet talk and misguided labelling
of issues, policies and acts has been mastered by Republicans. The ‘Blue Skies
Initiative’ culminated from the 2001 secret Cheney/energy industries meetings
actually was legislation to deregulate allowing more pollution and smog
emissions to foul blue skies. The same goes for Republican Iowans’ proposed 2012
‘Women’s Right to Know Act’ that actually forced women seeking abortions to
undergo an ultrasound taking away privacy and individual rights.
Recently, every legislative bill that
promotes women’s issues and concerns Republicans have adamantly voted against. Republicans
immediately opposed the ‘Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009’ insisting that
corporate executives would be held liable for actions taken by managers that
were no longer leading company decisions.
Not one senate Republican voted for the ‘Paycheck Fairness Act.’
At 138, more than half of the Republican
House voted against the renewal of the ‘Violence Against Women Act’ (VAWA), but
then many turned around and were blatantly deceptive to the public in how they
voted, such as Steve King (R-IA), Keith Rothfus (R-PA), Tim Walberg (R-MI),
Bill Johnson (R-OH), Tim Griffin, (R-AR), Robert Pittenger (R-NC) and Vicky
Hartler (R-MO). Johnson flat out lied to his constituents on his Facebook Town
Hall stating he had voted for the bill when in fact he did not. The rest
fabricated stories alluding to have voted yay for VAWA but in fact voted nay. Don’t
these politicians know that their voting records are always up for public view
and transparent to scrutiny? Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who voted
against the act, was at least a bit more upfront when he stressed VAWA is
merely a nuisance in that it “was a distraction from a small business bill.”
Today’s mainstream Republican
politicians for sure have voted against women’s reproductive rights like
abortion and contraception, but they have also in majority voted against any
education bill, minimum wage increases and planned parenthood. The ‘Employment
Non-Discrimination Act’ (ENDA) has languished under House Speaker John
Boehner’s tenure while he’s been quoted as saying he “hasn’t thought much about
it.”
In direct contrast from voting no to all
things female productive, Republicans are stampeding to vote yes for
traditional or transvaginal mandatory ultrasounds on women seeking abortions,
defunding all social programs such as SNAP, WIC, Social Security, healthcare,
Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment extensions. Republicans in the House of
Representatives are not tenuous in striving to defund international family
planning assistance.
In January 2011, the Republican House’s
‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act’ “redefined rape” and was a move to extrapolate
how rape is to be addressed and treated.
In June of 2013, Representative Trent
Franks (R-AZ) introduced and as a member of the House Judiciary Committee
passed a national bill banning abortion that had no exceptions regardless of whether
it was forced, due to incest or the mother’s life was at stake.
In July of 2013 House Republicans
federally passed HR 5, an education bill, or rather uneducated bill that would
cut funding an additional $1 billion as added to already in place educational budgetary
cuts. It also will reduce accountability and misappropriate Title One grants.
If this bill ever makes it to his desk, Obama has promised to veto it. It has
not yet been brought up to the senate floor. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
has voiced opposition to the bill.
Wisconsin’s ‘Equal Pay Enforcement Act’
passed in 2009 due to the wide gap in gender pay scales, was repealed by
Republican Governor Scott Walker with the excuse that the law was “nothing but
a boon to trial lawyers.”
Under HB 954, Georgia Republican
legislatures criminalized abortions. The bill became known as the “women as
livestock bill,” due to Republican Representative Terry England defending it by
referring women seeking abortions while carrying stillborn fetuses to delivering
calves from cows and piglets from sows on farms.
In February of 2011, South Dakotan
Republican state legislators were considering a bill that would make it a
“justifiable homicide” if someone murders a doctor that performs abortions. A
Kansas bill passed in 2012 made it mandatory that doctors administering
abortions dictate to the woman that abortions are linked to breast cancer which
is absolutely false.
The Republican majority city council of Topeka, Kansas in
October 2011 repealed a physical abuse law decriminalizing domestic abuse. Just
the month before, eighteen men had been arrested and charged for spousal abuse
but were set free as no government office would prosecute.
An unexpected pregnancy can be a
blissful surprise but with over half of the labor force being women, the U.S.
is one of the handfuls of countries that do not provide paid maternity leave,
while in many cases, women will lose their jobs in taking maternity leave. Even
Afghanistan (the country the U.S. is militarily engaged in to supposedly aid in
women’s rights) provides working women paid maternity leave entitling them up
to 12 weeks off with 100 percent pay.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and
Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) just introduced a bill this past December
2013 that will ensure women 12 weeks of paid leave for one year after giving
birth, to take care of ill family members or to attend to private and home
matters that need addressing. Even though research after research verifies
that paid leaves are good for the economy in that it keeps folks in the
workforce and even expands it, Republicans are already lining up to oppose the
legislation with the same old lame excuse it will hurt business.
This Republican war on women is not only
witnessed in deed but in word as well. Lest we not forget Republicans Todd
Akin’s and Richard Murdoch’s expressed opinions during the 2012 elections that
rape does not lead to pregnancy as the woman’s body naturally shuts off during
a rape. This mindset in the Republican fold goes back a bit as Republican
congressman Henry Hyde spoke on the 1992 GOP Houston platform convention
concerning rape that, if per say a woman does get pregnant from rape, “There is
honor in having to carry to term, not exterminating the child. From a great
tragedy, goodness can come.”
From his book, ‘It Takes a Family:
Conservatism and the Common Good’ Rick Santorum stated, “The notion that
college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried
mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just
wrong.” He also apparently feels true justice should not be gender based as he wrote, “Radical
feminists have been making the pitch that justice demands that men and women be
given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace,” while insisting that’s wrong.
The Republican Pennsylvanian senate
candidate, Tom Smith running against incumbent, Bob Casey Jr. in the 2012 elections
compared forced rape to pregnancy out of wedlock.
On a December 09, 2013 Des Moines WHO TV
interview, Iowan senate hopeful, Mark Jacobs, after being asked in what is the
difference between male and female voters, professed, “I think you have to connect
with women on an emotional level and with a wife of 25 years and an 18-year-old
daughter, I’ve had a lot of coaching on that.” A bit patronizing don’t ya
think…
Of course we can’t forget
ultraconservative Rush Limbaugh, the patriarch of demeaning chauvinism when he
referred to Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and “prostitute” not once, but a myriad of
times for three days straight. Out of all the other Rust Limpball referrals, he
also voiced this past summer, “You find yourself staring, looking at, casually glancing
at a woman, but you know that it’s now socially taboo. You shouldn’t be doing
it. And you think everybody is noticing you doing it and condemning you in
their minds. You shouldn’t — so you walk up to the woman and say, ‘Will you
please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?’ Try that. Might help! And
you don’t know ‘til you try it.”
What’s worse is Reince Priebus’
reaction. Priebus no less is chairman of the Republican National Committee
(RNC) and tweeted a response to Rush’s statement essentially corroborating with
Limbaugh that women aren’t capable of holding adult level conversations.
With this entire obvious Republican
affront directed at women rights, any reasonable person could see that there is
an issue with the GOP when it comes to women being treated wholly as equal
instead of simply being viewed as a reproductive sexual object.
Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi said that Republicans disrespect women when they vote against equal pay,
minimum wage increases and paid sick leave, and when they don’t respect a
woman’s agency over her own life. In complete denial though, Republicans argue
otherwise that all this is made up.
Reince Priebus of the RNC described this
‘war on women’ as an “over-simplified fiction advanced by Democrats and the
media.” Yeah, that’s right, let’s lay blame elsewhere outside the box instead
of in. Representative Paul Ryan mockingly shrugs it off by stating, “Now it’s a
war on women; tomorrow it’s going to be a war on left-handed Irishmen or
something like that.”
Fox
News’ Tucker Carlson admits there is an assault, but tries to limit it simply
to abortion when he counters Nancy Pelosi in quipping, “So why doesn’t she just
say abortion? That’s what she’s talking about. Why doesn’t anybody ever use
that word out loud if it’s such a great thing?” Well Carlson ya see, you just quite don’t get it…it
has nothing to do in being a “great thing” for it is a very private thing.
Forget simply the war on women for there
is even a Republican ladies war on women in having the right to advance through
personal choice. Conservative talk show
host Ann Coulter, in an October 2007 ‘New York Observer’ interview espoused,
“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another
Democrat president.”
On the 06/02/2013 NBC ‘Meet the Press’
program, when asked if she would support a law promoting workplace gender
equality, Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) after hem-hawing replied, “I
think that more important than that is making certain that women are recognized
by those companies.” Meanwhile she has voted against every fair pay bill.
During her 2006 House race, after going
through a litany of religious reference of biblical proportion, Michelle
Bachmann connotes, “The Lord says be submissive. Wives, you are to be
submissive to your husbands,” while Marilyn Quayle at the RNC national
convention in Houston proclaimed, “Most women do not wish to be liberated from
their essential natures as women.”
I would suppose that one wanting to be
more specific could call this war on women thing more appropriately as a war on
mommies, for that is who suffers the most through these Republican mandates. But
that would have a dourer connotation to it wouldn’t it? But in looking at what
Republicans are attempting with zeal to defund in aiding mothers, then call the
duck a duck for it does waddle.
Republicans complain all the time about
women studies this, women studies that insisting there isn’t one study to
promote men. But oh contraire, there most certainly is and a big one at
that…it’s called world history.
To end this, women are our mommas,
wives, daughters and sisters…and with the spot that cannot be replaced…let’s not
forget their overdue in utmost respect.
US Gender Gap by State |
Nescient:
If truly serious about combating poverty,
no country can ill-afford not to invest in education. Yet that is exactly what
Republicans in the U.S. are pushing. Every bill to benefit education has been
opposed by the GOP and every educational bill Republicans have come up with is
to defund education.
When Congress had a Republican sweep and
thirty-one states were red in 2010, the GOP felt they now finally had the
political clout to implement their wares into local, state and federal
levels. Education funding was one of the first to be on the chopping block.
But America has had an overall love
affair with education. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was settled in 1628. Just
seven years later, long before America ever became a country, Harvard College
was founded. In constructing America’s first university over a hundred years
before forming the USA, these early day settlers understood the need for
educating the common man. With all the constraints in founding a wilderness
community, the idea of education held priority.
Once the country formed, immigrants were
amazed to find abundant public literacy and free speech that was forbidden in
their homelands. Labor saw that education and its access to knowledge was the
key to upward mobility, thus with education as the cornerstone, the ‘American
Dream’ procured. Now, as more than ever needed in this technological world,
Republicans appear hell-bent on dispelling that dream.
Once upon a time in 2004 just before the
presidential election, I was invited to a local Republican meeting with state
senator Robert Robbins attending. Addressing four of us, myself included,
Robbins began talking about Senator Arlen Specter on how he is not a true
Republican and should be brushed off. Guess that segment of Robbins’ oratory
was correct, for Specter indeed later left the elephant for the donkey party.
But then after admonishing Specter,
Robbins, in thinking I was part of the elephant fold began elaborating that the
federal government should totally defund education giving various obnoxious
reasons as to why from taxpayer dollars saved could help business to government
has no business in educational affairs of our children. Needless to say, I lit
into him with my redneck liberal branding iron. But after my oratory had
stunned Robbins dropping his jaws, though politely, I was asked to leave before
the official adjournment.
This really is no secret. Republicans
since Reagan have been privately and publicly pushing for the government to
defund education totally from kindergarten to the university. Reagan himself called
for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. Ever since then, Republicans
have been attempting to replace the term ‘public schools’ with ‘government-run
schools’ in attempts to vilify the role government performs in education.
At their Tampa, Florida convention in
August of 2012, the Republican Party Platform approved an end to the federal
student loan program. Justifying this, the platform read, “The federal
government should not be in the business of originating student loans; however,
it should serve as an insurance guarantor for the private sector as they offer
loans to students.” In other words government should not aid struggling
students in their quest for a college degree, but for sure should ensure that
banks and the financial institutions receive guaranteed profits through
taxpayer dollars.
North Carolina’s new Republican governor,
Pat McCrory has joined the Republicans’ singing choir in denouncing education.
Last January 13 he announced, “I’m looking at legislation right now – in fact,
I just instructed my staff yesterday to go ahead and develop legislation –
which would change the basic formula in how education money is given out to our
universities and our community colleges.” McCrory had broadcast this over Bill
Bennett’s radio show, who himself was education secretary under Reagan.
However, Bennett feels that government should no longer support schooling as
well. A bit strange on Bennett’s stance as he was once employed by the
government as an educator and received his PhD from the state supported
University of Texas, which also was via compliments of the taxpayer dollar.
McCrory further went on to explain in
the broadcast, “It’s not based on butts in seats but on how many of those butts
can get jobs.” Ya see, it’s not political posturing, conservative policy and
corporate decisions that are ailing the economy…no…blame all that on the
education system.
Feeling public pressure, in July 2013,
House Republicans came out with a student loan bill to parade against senate
Democrats that were balking from enlisting the legislation. Republicans
gathered some students all dressed up in suits and paraded them upon the steps
of the capitol. Then they came out criticizing Democrats and the president.
House Speaker John Boehner declared, “The
White House and senate Democrats have let these students down. Frankly, I think
that they deserve better. It’s time for the president to lead. It’s time for
him to bring the senate Democrat leaders together and develop a solution. The
House has done its job. It’s time for the White House and the Senate to do its
job.”
Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)
called on senate leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to take swift action on the bill and
stop punishing students, while Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) proclaimed
that thanks to senate Democrats, students might not be able to finish their
degrees due to rate increases.
No Boehner, the GOP House has not done its job. It was simply a dog ‘n’ pony show. The
Republican House knew from the start that the senate Democrat majority would
not accept the House bill, for Republicans had installed a variable rate that
would increase without a cap. In just a few years the 3.4% rate could bloom up
to 8.5%. Democrats are sticking by their proposal of a permanent and subsidized
3.4% rate that is more affordable and manageable by struggling students.
Originally, this plan was blocked by the Republican senate filibuster allowing
student loan rates to double.
Boehner knows he cannot get his House to
vote for a substantive bill that would truly aid the college student
financially, so thus the ruse on the capitol steps in pretending to the public
Republicans are working hard for America’s students.
This however does shed light on
America’s business model for student loans and for-profit educational
institutions. Institutes like Devry University and the University of Phoenix
appeal to lower income folks who need to seek some further education as they
have lost their job or their background working experience is no longer sought
after here in the states.
These for-profit universities cater to
low income students and push them into accepting federal loans and boy-howdy what
a deal it is for the institutions, for all the profit they receive comes
primarily from loans they will never have to repay…their customers are
responsible for that (the student).
The thing is…Devry and the U of P offer
nothing extra in curriculum that the local lower tuition fee community college doesn’t. It’s just that the
prevailing austerity measurements have cut back on government funding education
causing the local and state funded colleges to shrink class sizes and the number of
professors.
Charter schools were first imagined and devised
by the educator, Albert Shanker who was president of the American Federation of
Teachers from 1974 to 1997. He formed and molded the charter concept with a
collection of teachers to pay more attention to the learning skills of
dropouts, but once that his original idea was being used as a profit making
opportunity by businesses, rather than as an asset to troubled students, he
quickly became disillusioned and decided that privatization of America’s school
systems was not for the betterment of our children.
This extra surge in condemning the USAs
educational system instead of refurbishing it came about by conservative organizations
to entice in particularly red states to move more towards the privatization of
our schools. This is a huge no-no. Strictly for-profit corporations’ bottom
line is the bottom dollar and when this becomes a choice between our children’s
schooling and money…children will lose. Private corporations will not hire more
teachers or enlarge class rooms if needed if it doesn’t meet their profit
margin quotas. Certain for-profit charter schools today are ran as an affiliate
where the main business is real estate. Charter schools have actually scored
lower on student and teacher testing than the nearby public schools did in
numerous districts. Also, it can be found in private schools where the
executive CEO is making eight figure salaries (from $300,000.00-$400,000.00)
for simply overseeing a couple of schools. That is one huge overhead to be
maintained.
The push for educational for-profit
privatization was a directive from ‘American Legislative Exchange Council’
otherwise known by their initials as, ALEC. The organization is composed of
conservative legislators and corporate CEOs. They actually write congressional
bills for Republican politicians such as the Voter ID and Stand Your Ground laws
in red states. Their main objective is to connect corporate executives with
stealth lobbyists and conservative congressmen while also writing legislative
policy to be pushed by chosen congressmen.
Funded by corporations and businesses
vying for educational business opportunities, ALEC set out to convert the
school system into private hands. Under no transparency, they came out with a
fabricated and very misleading report that insisted public schools were failing
our children. With little research and grounded more on ideologue it was
virtually bogus. In fact, the twenty-five states with the actual top performing
schools, ALECs report had them ranked lower than the actual 25 states with the
lowest performance results, which by the way the majority of lowest results were
in the red states. On the ALEC report, the ‘National Education Policy Center’
rebuked the report in a well-researched scathing report of their own stating, “The
[ALEC] report’s purpose appears to be more about shifting control of education
to private interests than in improving education.
Nonetheless, exposing ALECs questionable
data and need we say ethics, with Texas leading the pack, red state governors
and legislatures took off with the faulty ALEC report as gospel. Wisconsin
immediately began dismantling public schools and attacking teachers’ bargaining
rights. While corporations were blessed with keeping healthy portions of sales
taxes ($1 billion worth), South Carolina laid off 4,000 teachers with the
smokescreen in saying it isn’t fair to the taxpayer after the camouflaged fact
that they had already cut 100s of millions of dollars from the state’s
education budget. Somehow they had enough to pay Boeing $900 million to
relocate to the state from Washington and hire under nonunion low wage scales.
In Texas, with its ongoing assault on
public schools, at $8,400.00 per pupil, the Lonestar ranks 49th
among states in spending per pupil. It will likely beat out the last two states
of Arizona and Nevada within a couple of years as Governor Rick Perry is
vigorously continuing public education’s defunding. Just in 2011 alone, $5.3
billion was axed from the education budget, set aside to fund charter schools
where in the same year the Republican majority state senate voted to expand the
cap for charter schools.
In Texas, virtually anyone can set up a
charter school, for the state has made it so simple. Directions on how to start
up a charter school can be anonymously obtained online and as long as one
placates themselves on tax exempt status, voila…that one has a permit to run a
school. As a result, six hundred districts are suing the state of Texas while
on 2011 SAT scores, Texas student grades showed the lowest results in over a
decade.
To show some ominous results in a
government’s attack on public education, let’s look at Pennsylvania, my adopted
state. Statistics put out by the Pennsylvania Association of School Business
Officials (PASBO) conducted by the Pennsylvania Association of School
Administrators (PASA), since Governor Tom Corbett and the majority Republican
state legislature have been in control, 75% of instructional programs have been
reduced. 10% of school districts closed their school doors in 2011-2012, 7% in
2012-2013 and an additional 8% will close schools for the school year
2013-2014. With all these program cuts and school closings in place, still 47%
of the school districts will be in worse financial position than they were just
prior to these Republicans being elected.
But of course this educational turmoil
is not the fault of Republicans if you listen to them, it’s all to blame on
anyone else but Republicans. As but one example of Republican blame dodging,
Representative John Kline (R-MN) pretends to be so alarmed on how Obamacare
will undermine and defund our educational system, never minding how his party
has made it an art form in exactly doing that.
Kline, who is head of the House
Education Committee, came up with a speech ironically titled, ‘The Effects of
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Schools, Colleges, and
Universities.’ Since Republicans can only dismiss Obamacare so therefore cannot
politically survive its success, some of Kline’s speech goes like this:
“Americans continue to express their
concerns about Obamacare and the troubling impact it is having on their lives,
and our nation’s schools are not immune to the consequences of this law.” And
in referring to a little town known as Hastings in Minnesota that is hiring
classroom aides, cafeteria help and bus drivers at part time 5.75 daily hours
to avoid paying insurance, Kline rubs that, “You’re looking at dollars and cents,
and you’re going to have to make choices.” His ruse in that the healthcare law
is forcing schools to cut back on personnel and educational programs solely due
to Obamacare is obnoxious.
So, what about Kline’s history? Did it
do anything to aid the little town of Hastings, or is his background the reason
the town, along with all the other hamlets and villages across the country find themselves in this wrenching choice?
In 2006 Kline voted against funding the
education bill of $10.2 billion for the ‘American Competitive Scholarship Act’
and against funding $84 billion for Black and Hispanic colleges in 2007. He
voted for the Ryan budget plan that would lop off between the ears $115 billion
of educational funding. John Kline’s own HR 5 ‘Student Success Act’ bill passed
in the House this past July 2013 has nothing to do with student successes, but
all to do with pumping taxpayer money into the hands of private corporate
coffers and would hurt minority students the most.
What’s so annoying about this Republican
push to privatize public schooling is their main emphasis in doing so by insisting
it will save taxpayer dollars. But where do they think the basic funds for
private schools are going to come from, that’s right from the taxpayer and when
dealing with a private entity that seeks profit quotas, the short run is
quickly beginning to bear out that the long run is going to be even more costly
to the taxpayer. For all grade levels averaged, public schools cost ~$11, 455.00
per pupil per year while for-profit schools will cost ~$17,316.00. Also, the
public school is free where the for-profit private school entails out-of-pocket
costs.
With the big fat Republican elephant
foot stomping down on our children’s education, attention should be drifting
more and more towards our students educational needs. I don’t think that most
parents want their kids’ school records collecting dust in some corporation’s
file, while viewed by unwanted eyes. I sincerely think that they would want it
filed locally under their community’s watch.
Republicans have demeaned the honorable
profession of teaching. Ann Coulter goes so far as to call teachers “parasites”
because their salary originates from government thus the taxpayer dollar. With
that mindset, I would s’pose then that policemen, firemen and emergency medics
are all parasites. Even the ones who safeguard the country and liberties
bestowed…our military men and women…our soldiers, mariners and pilots are all
parasitic.
Instead of assaulting teachers with a
barrage of performance tests, perhaps we should insist that a few testing
procedures be conducted on congress.
Once education has been cut, the wound
it creates will never heal.
Below is a video concerning education. Data is from ‘Organization for Economic Cooperation
& Development’s (OECD) ‘Program for International Student Assessment’
(PISA). When ya get some time view it; it’ll enlighten you.
Opted
& Edited:
From time to time, I like to refer to an
old Texas phrase that comes in handy when there is a haughty one going around
bragging on what he is and on what he believes is the gospel according to
Delbert…it goes kind of like this, “Don’t tell me what you believe in as the
solid truth, show me action, then I can decide for myself what is factual.”
Well, in reverse fashion as illustrated in this article, not only are
Republican beliefs ill conceived, but so too are their actions.
Saying one thing and doing another only
to turn around in doing something then say something else even disrupts another
old Texas adage in that “If ya ain’t gonna do it, don’t say it,” for
Republicans will just about as easily do it while quietly hiding its repercussion.
As exampled in Kline’s quest,
Republicans are the master in doing destructive action to the common good only
to turn around and blame it on others. Kline did it with his masterful skill in
conveniently forgetting his education voting record blaming all educational
woes on the ACA. Republicans in unison blamed Democrats for the government
shutdown when it was implanted by their design, then literally ran out to the
veterans’ memorial to take opportunist photo shots as if they weren’t the ones who
caused the vets’ memorial closing, but were the heroes fighting for the vets.
The same scenario was displayed with the sequester, fiscal cliff, debt ceiling
hostage taking and even the Great Recession. All these spurious events were created
by the GOP, but laid blame onto Democrats.
Stuck and grounded in this murky minutia,
Republicans have to muster up a vestibule of misinformation, deceit and hatred.
In looking for naïve subjects, Republican politicians seek out anger and
bigotry to promote their vendettas. What’s worse than a blind Republican
politician is his/her blinder follower.
Sarah Palin couldn’t recall not one
newspaper she’d recently read, but yet the Tea Party calls her their “darling
genius” and Fox News immediately hires her. Republicans are ignorant and the
more the general public overlooks that and bites into their social bias myths,
the further this country of ours will erode into wrath and decay for the common
folk.
This is a primary reason they’re
attacking education, they do not want true science to inform and enlighten
through obtained knowledge. They do not want critical thinkers to question
their made-up facts and distorted figures. They strive to enlist private
for-profit schools for they’ll teach anything Republicans want them to teach to
our kids as long as it’s at a profit. That’s why established science is being
booted out for creationism, intelligent design and Global Warming denial.
Concerning Republican governors Tommy
Corbett (PA), Johnny Kasich (OH), Mike Pence (IN), Paul Lepage (ME), Ricky
Perry (TX), Ricky Scott (FL), Ricky Snyder (MI), and Scotty Walker (WI)…if one
had to choose from the red states sour pickle barrel these seven are perhaps
the worst governors for dismantling education. In these governors’ states,
right-to-work laws have been instituted resulting in spending $3,392.00 less
per pupil in elementary and secondary education.
Violence against women and the devaluing
of the female gender is a direct obstacle that thwarts equality, economic
development and national/family unified peace. Yet, in being the main stumbling
block to achieving a national identity in gender fairness, Republicans are disingenuous
in being in complete denial to female disrespect.
In strategies to have a more diverse
public and economy, China and India currently are investing heavily in
childhood education. These two countries are ramping up educational investment
into the 100s of billions with China expecting to have 200 million college
graduates by 2030 while India has decreased its 80% illiterate population in
1947 down to 25% today.
For the poorest of kids, public schools are much more than learning numbers and letters. It’s a warm building, secure adult supervision and a chance to have lunch. Public education is much more involved in what we perceive it. In its replacement, a for-profit corporation as offered is not the answer when concerning our children.
U.S. Democracy is supposedly ruled by, for and of the people. Republicanism is the rule of the few elite. So for all you lazy and uninformed Republican voters out there, while your right-wing party extols the beatitudes and argues in eliminating the role of government in this nation’s education, while increasing its role into the private lives of womanhood, other nations see the asset and the wrong and will pass us by-bye.
For the poorest of kids, public schools are much more than learning numbers and letters. It’s a warm building, secure adult supervision and a chance to have lunch. Public education is much more involved in what we perceive it. In its replacement, a for-profit corporation as offered is not the answer when concerning our children.
U.S. Democracy is supposedly ruled by, for and of the people. Republicanism is the rule of the few elite. So for all you lazy and uninformed Republican voters out there, while your right-wing party extols the beatitudes and argues in eliminating the role of government in this nation’s education, while increasing its role into the private lives of womanhood, other nations see the asset and the wrong and will pass us by-bye.
BJA
In Eclectic
Collaboration,
01/03/2014
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