GOP STRATEGY:Eliminate American Dream So "they" won't want to come here & ruin it for Real Americans

[kpete]

So long, American Dream, it's been good to know yuh

by Tom Sullivan

Hmmm, maybe killing off the American Dream will keep out them foreigners?

Nicholas Kristof recalls how in 1951 his French-speaking father from Eastern Europe felt France was too stratified for a penniless refugee to get ahead. So he bypassed France for a opportunity in the United States. Better to learn English. He did. And earned a Ph.D. and became a university professor.

Now the escalator to opportunity is broken, writes Kristof.

A new Pew survey finds that Americans consider the greatest threat to our country to be the growing gap between the rich and poor. Yet we have constructed an education system, dependent on local property taxes, that provides great schools for the rich kids in the suburbs who need the least help, and broken, dangerous schools for inner-city children who desperately need a helping hand. Too often, America’s education system amplifies not opportunity but inequality.

Once the United States led the world — even Great Britain — in educating its people:

Then the United States was the first major country, in the 1930s, in which a majority of children attended high school. By contrast, as late as 1957, only 9 percent of 17-year-olds in Britain were in school.

Until the 1970s, we were pre-eminent in mass education, and Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz of Harvard University argue powerfully that this was the secret to America’s economic rise. Then we blew it, and the latest O.E.C.D. report underscores how the rest of the world is eclipsing us.

In effect, the United States has become 19th-century Britain: We provide superb education for elites, but we falter at mass education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-the-american-dream-is-leaving-america.html?_r=0

But it's not just the educational system that's broken. Or the financing. It's the social contract that undergirds the whole culture. People wave around pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution as though it is holy writ, yet break faith with it after the first three words of the preamble. We the People? Sounds like socialism. In spite of the fact that support for public education predates ratification of the constitution, is written into statehood enabling acts including the 50th (Hawaii, 1959), and is reflected in state constitutions from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Yet, conservatives such as Rick Santorum preach that “... the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic.”

Because it's "Every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost," you takers. Conservatives for conservatives. Undermining the public schools by cutting budgets and diverting public funds to private-school vouchers and charters isn't an accident. It's a strategy. Eliminate the American Dream and maybe "they" won't want to come here and ruin it for Real Americans™.


http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/10/so-long-american-dream-its-been-good-to.html

[Andy823]

1. I don't think so.

The GOP "wants" to bring in people from other countries to work because they will work for less money. I think the GOP plan is to let anyone in who will work for minimum wage, or less, thus helping to drive down wages for everyone in the country. It has been going on since Reagan's so called immigration plan back in the 80's. There was no enforcement to of the immigration laws, there were more visa's issued to bring in computer techs who worked for far less money, and now we see the results. We need real immigration laws, no just the ones who help corporations get richer by bringing in cheaper labor.

What the GOP wants is a two class country, the rich, and the poor, no middle class at all. The want complete control of the work force and they want to keep wages as low as they can. They don't care about anything else.

[randome]

2. It's a mistake to ascribe 'strategy' to meanness and fear.

It makes them think they are stronger.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]The night is always young. It's never too late.[/center][/font][hr]

[Wounded Bear]

3. I've been saying this for years...

The Repub "immigration plan" is to make the US a 3rd world country so nobody will want to come here.