Retirement Party

OT: No child left behind?

Question:

- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > Why do Republicans hate education, unless it’s for the rich? > In February, Republicans voted through nearly $12 billion in cuts to > student assistance programs. President Bush’s most recent budget, for the > sixth straight year, leaves the maximum Pell Grant-the nation’s primary > grant assistance program – well below the $5,100 he promised while > campaigning for a second term. >     These broken promises and cuts come at a time when the typical student > borrower graduates with $17,500 in loan debt. Interest rates on federal > student loans are being hiked this July by order of Bush’s "deficit > reduction" bill. Tuition at four year public colleges rose 40 percent since > 2001, and 200,000 students are unable to attend college at all this year > because of the costs. > You think education’s expensive?  Try ignorance.

Hi, It is easier to control/manipulate dumb than smartee.

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– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> Why do Republicans hate education, unless it’s for the rich? In February, > Republicans voted through nearly $12 billion in cuts to > student assistance programs. President Bush’s most recent budget, for the > sixth straight year, leaves the maximum Pell Grant-the nation’s primary > grant assistance program – well below the $5,100 he promised while > campaigning for a second term. >     These broken promises and cuts come at a time when the typical > student > borrower graduates with $17,500 in loan debt. Interest rates on federal > student loans are being hiked this July by order of Bush’s "deficit > reduction" bill. Tuition at four year public colleges rose 40 percent > since > 2001, and 200,000 students are unable to attend college at all this year > because of the costs. > You think education’s expensive?  Try ignorance. > Hi, > It is easier to control/manipulate dumb than smartee.

That’s right.  Plus we need poor ignorant people to take those low paying jobs at MacDonalds, Home Depots, Walmarts, etc.  The system depends on most people being ignorant and powerless.  Can’t have too many rich people – there wouldn’t be enough to go around then.

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> It is easier to control/manipulate dumb than smartee.

Cheney proves that every day.

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"> > Why do Republicans hate education, unless it’s for the rich? quite simply education gives rise to an affluent middle class, and REALLY screws with the whole "have/have not" thing.  It also keeps the dilitantes out of the old boys club

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Ever meet or hear of a poor politician from either or any camp? Term limits are the key, no more career politicians….and they must live by the rules they make for the rest of us. Serve and get the "F" out!

– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -> "> > Why do Republicans hate education, unless it’s for the rich? > quite simply education gives rise to an affluent middle class, and REALLY > screws with the whole "have/have not" thing.  It also keeps the dilitantes > out of the old boys club

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courageously avow: >Ever meet or hear of a poor politician from either or any camp? Term limits >are the key, no more career politicians….and they must live by the rules >they make for the rest of us. Serve and get the "F" out! > "> > Why do Republicans hate education, unless it’s for the rich? > quite simply education gives rise to an affluent middle class, and REALLY > screws with the whole "have/have not" thing.  It also keeps the dilitantes > out of the old boys club

Term limits aren’t the answer.  You could tie the hands of someone who might actually be doing the job.  What you need is a mechanism for the voters to launch a recall initiative when the dufus/dufette isn’t carrying out the people’s will and it has to be one that can be effectively used in a timely and straightforward way.  On the other hand, a good old revolution is a good way to remind them who the fuck they’re supposed to be working for. Sidebar:  Make treason a capital offense and easier to prove, hehehe… Ken Wilson

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I see what yer sayin about the people tossing recalls and such, that mechanism would be a monumental work, human nature would dictate no one ever stays in office more than 2 weeks…if that. Maybe if party’s were disbanded as well. Interesting human and political engineering program that would be. – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > courageously avow: >Ever meet or hear of a poor politician from either or any camp? Term limits >are the key, no more career politicians….and they must live by the rules >they make for the rest of us. Serve and get the "F" out! >> "> > Why do Republicans hate education, unless it’s for the rich? >> quite simply education gives rise to an affluent middle class, and REALLY >> screws with the whole "have/have not" thing.  It also keeps the dilitantes >> out of the old boys club > Term limits aren’t the answer.  You could tie the hands of someone who > might actually be doing the job.  What you need is a mechanism for the > voters to launch a recall initiative when the dufus/dufette isn’t > carrying out the people’s will and it has to be one that can be > effectively used in a timely and straightforward way.  On the other > hand, a good old revolution is a good way to remind them who the fuck > they’re supposed to be working for. > Sidebar:  Make treason a capital offense and easier to prove, > hehehe… > Ken Wilson

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> > Term limits aren’t the answer.  You could tie the hands of someone who > might actually be doing the job.  What you need is a mechanism for the > voters to launch a recall initiative when the dufus/dufette isn’t > carrying out the people’s will and it has to be one that can be > effectively used in a timely and straightforward way.  On the other > hand, a good old revolution is a good way to remind them who the fuck > they’re supposed to be working for. > Sidebar:  Make treason a capital offense and easier to prove, > hehehe… > Ken Wilson

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042306X.shtml Bill Moyers | A Time for Heresy . This is a time for heresy. American democracy is threatened by perversions of money, power, and religion. Money has bought our elections right out from under us. Power has turned government "of, by, and for the people" into the patron of privilege. And Christianity and Islam have been hijacked by fundamentalists who have made religion the language of power, the excuse for violence, and the alibi for empire. We must answer the principalities and powers that would force on America a stifling conformity. Either we make the heretical choices that will inspire us to renew our commitment to America’s deepest values and ideals, or the day will come when we will no longer recognize the country we love.     Here’s what I mean.     Two years ago, the American Political Science Association produced a study entitled Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality . The report said people with wealth – privileged Americans – are "roaring with a clarity and consistency that public officials readily hear and routinely follow" while citizens "with lower or moderate incomes are speaking with a whisper." The study concluded that "progress toward realizing American ideals of democracy may have stalled, and even, in some places, reversed."     The following year – 2005 – the editors of The Economist, one of the world’s most pro-capitalist publications, produced their own sobering analysis of what is happening in America. They found great and growing income disparities. Thirty years ago the average annual compensation of the top 100 chief executives was 30 times the pay of the average worker; today it is 1000 times the pay of the average worker.     They found an education system "increasingly stratified by social class" in which poor children "attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries." They found our celebrated universities increasingly "reinforcing rather that reducing" these educational inequalities.     They found American corporations no longer successful agents of upward mobility. It is now harder for people to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvement.     The editors of The Economist studied all this evidence and concluded – and I am quoting a pro-business magazine, remember – that the United States "risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society."     Let that sink in: The United States "risks calcifying into a European-style, class-based society."     In 1960 I heard John F. Kennedy promise that "a rising tide lifts all boats." He was right then. He would be wrong today. Just this past weekend The Washington Post, in a lead editorial, called for a second look at the old belief "that anyone who works hard and plays by the rules can attain the American dream by sharing in the fruits of economic progress." As great wealth accumulated at the top, the rest of the country is not benefiting proportionally. Across the country working men and women are strained to cope with the rising cost of health care, pharmaceutical drugs, housing, higher education, and public transportation – all of which have risen faster than typical family income. The economist Robert J. Gordon, quoted in The Financial Times (another pro-business publication), says there has been "little long-term change in workers share of U.S. income over the past half century." The top ten percent of earners have captured almost half the total income gains and the top one percent has gained the most of all – more in fact, than all the bottom 50 percent.     We are witnessing a marked turn of events for a nation whose DNA contains the inherent promise of an equal opportunity at "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." We were not supposed to be a country where the winners take all. The great progressive struggles in our history were waged to make sure ordinary citizens, and not just the rich, share in the benefits of a free society. Today, however, the majority of Americans may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a good education for every child, and clean air and water, but there’s no government "of, by, and for the people" to deliver on those aspirations. America is no longer working for all Americans.     How did this happen? By design. For a quarter of a century now a ferocious campaign has been conducted to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual, cultural, and religious frameworks that sustained America’s social contract. The corporate, political, and religious right converged in a movement that for a long time only they understood because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries.     Their economic strategy was to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe for even cheaper labor, and relieve investors of any responsibility for the cost of society. On the weekend before President Bush’s second inauguration, The New York Times described how his first round of tax cuts had already brought our tax code closer to a system under which income on wealth would not be taxed at all and public expenditures would be raised exclusively from salaries and wages.     Their political strategy was to neutralize the independent media, create their own propaganda machine with a partisan press, and flood their coffers with rivers of money from those who stand to benefit from the transfer of public resources to elite control. Along the way they would burden the nation with structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready to retire, systematically stripping government of its capacity, over time, to do little more than wage war and reward privilege.     Their religious strategy was to fuse ideology and theology into a worldview freed of the impurities of compromise, claim for America the status of God’s favored among nations (and therefore beyond political critique or challenge), and demonize their opponents as ungodly and immoral.     At the intersection of these three strategies was money: Big Money.     They found a deep flaw in our political system and zeroed in on it.     Our elected officials need huge sums of money to finance their campaigns, especially to buy television. The average cost of running and winning a seat in the House of Representatives – the so-called "People’s House" – now tops one million dollars. The chairman of the Federal Election Commission said just this weekend that anyone who expects to run for the nomination for president – the nomination – in 2008 will need to have raised one hundred million dollars by the end of 2007. That money isn’t going to come from regular folks – less than one half of one percent of all Americans made a contribution of $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2004. No, the men and women who have mastered the money game have taken advantage of this fundamental weakness in our system – the high cost of campaigns – to sell democracy to the highest bidder.     Some simple facts:     The number of lobbyists registered to do business in Washington has more than doubled in the last five years. That’s 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 to 34,785 last year. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of Congress.     The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.     But it’s a small investment on the return. Just look at the most important legislation passed by Congress in the last decade.     There was the energy bill that gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobil just posted $36 billion in profits in 2005, while our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high.     There was the bankruptcy "reform" bill written by credit card companies to make it harder for poor debtors to escape the burdens of divorce or medical catastrophe.     There was the deregulation of the banking, securities, and insurance sectors, which led to rampant corporate malfeasance and greed and the destruction of the retirement plans of millions of small investors.     There was the deregulation of the telecommunications sector which led to cable industry price-gouging and the abandonment of news coverage by the big media companies.     There was the blocking of even the mildest attempt to prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in annual taxes by opening a P.O. box in an off-shore tax haven like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.     In every case these results were driven by the demands of Big Money in the form of campaign contributions and the cost of lobbying.     And in every case, the religious right was cheering for the winners.     You’ve heard about Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, I’m sure. Let me tell you a little more than what you might have heard.     Tom DeLay was a small businessman from Sugar Land, Texas, who ran a pest extermination business before he entered politics. He hated the government regulators who dared to tell him that some of the pesticides he used were dangerous – as, unfortunately, they were. DeLay got himself elected to the Texas legislature at a time the Republicans were becoming the majority in the once-solid Democratic south, and his … read more »

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> Ever meet or hear of a poor politician from either or any camp? Term limits > are the key

Wrong. Public financing of elections and limits on campaign spending are the key. That’d even the playing field.

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