Underfunding Of Schools & Public Services In General Meant To Cause Failure/Breakdown.

[TheMastersNemesis]

The GOP cannot succeed unless government breaks down and institutions fail. In many ways the GOP is succeeding at scuttling the country. The tax cut is all about bankrupting the country completely. The trouble is even GOP supporters lose as we all do.

The GOP is doing Putin's and the terrorists' work. The GOP is on a suicide mission like the vest bombers and we are the target. What bothers me is the media is helping in its own subtle ways to give them legitimacy. They are beginning to succeed in too many ways and damage is being done day by day. The only question left is what will be left functioning before we can stop the profuse bleeding.

We do ourselves no favor in holding back our rhetoric or our attacks. Unless we learn to brutalize them politically and rhetorically we will go down. It is the 11th hour because they show no signs of turning back from this nationally murderous course.

When it comes to pay back I am more on the side of Tonto than the Lone Ranger in that movie. The country is dying and the GOP is bleeding it to death. And we are letting them get away with it by being nice or even compromising.

[notdarkyet]

1. I dont get why people dont care , either. I am a crippled old lady now, but protested from an

Early age about any issues. I am hopeful seeing the young people active and evolved. Do we have ten or twenty years to wait for the right conditions? I’ve wanted to see more passion from our side for a long time. We, are all, we’ve got.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Too many people buy into the meme of:

"I don't have kids in the public schools so why should I pay for them?"

That's been out there for a really long time, at least three or four decades now, and is an extremely dangerous notion. As I've been saying for at least as long, just because you don't have kids in the public schools right now doesn't mean you don't benefit from good public education. At the very least, think about when you're in a nursing home. Don't you want the caretakers to be well trained for how they'll take care of you?

But most people don't get it. They look at the short term. They don't currently have kids in public schools. No one has ever told them how they benefit from good public education, helping to educate other people's kids.

And this notion is all too pervasive these days. If I don't personally benefit, why should I pay for something? It's the ultimate Libertarian philosophy. It's what happens when there is no sense at all of the common good.

[BigmanPigman]

3. I heard this all the time when I was teaching.

Usually I would respond with the same come back that some of the older teachers I knew had used...a lot of teachers actually have only one or two kids and a lot more have none. So why would we chose a profession where we get little respect, even less pay, and have to deal with non stop political/bureaucratic BS? The answer is that education is valued and needed when you finally get down to the bare bones about it. When you ask any person if they ever went to school the answer is always "Yes". When you ask people who paid for it they realize that tax payers did. That is when you have them caught in their own hypocrisy. They realize that education is necessary (and not just for the free babysitting service that many people think it is for).

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. Some of the best teachers I had

were not parents themselves.

[MyOwnPeace]

5. It IS the Republican plan........

And Betsy Devos is working it like a master. Continue to cut $$$ to public schools, then complain how schools are not doing their job - we need to allow people the "choice" to send their children wherever they want - and send MORE money with them!
The public schools get less and less, MORE regulations that the private schools do not need to follow, the public schools continue to keep the students needing more attention and services - and continue to "fail" because of the vicious cycle!

[lindysalsagal]

6. Yup. Systematic destruction of the non-profit government education: Profits Profits Profits!

They can't buy shares in public education, so, it's got to go.

[patty_bateman]

7. Break Unions, Lower Wages, Lower Taxes Then Defund Schools

This has been a big part of the Republican Offensive in my lifetime. I'm originally from a small town in Western PA, where unions were quite strong. Reagan was elected when I was 10 years old, so the demonization and subsequent decline of the unions were in full swing when I entered high school. However, the years of organized labor had provided a broad tax base for several decades and allowed my small town to have exceptional public schools, a public library, arts programs, adequately maintained infrastructure, multiple public parks, etc. Though my immediate family members were not union members, it was clear and clearly taught at home and at school that the unions were largely responsible for the rights and wages that provided me with the scholastic and cultural advantages I had. Our tax base from our community allowed our community to self-determine our local priorities, then fund them.

Over my lifetime the Republican cabal has deliberately bastardized organized labor to the extent that even union members believe they would be better off without a union; that unions just take money in dues, protect the most deplorable workers and cause business owners to move work to non-union states or offshore. In short, they think that unions mean less money for them and that their relationship with their employer is less fair because of unions. I suspect that the anti-union union members and other oxymoronic citizens (like compassionate conservatives and religious right) don't know that we had the utopia of NO UNIONS for about 7,000 years of recorded history which included lots of kings, czars, emperors, khans, popes, various aristocrats, admirals and generals, but NO MIDDLE CLASS.

I'm not sure how to break the cycle of folks failing to predict the obvious future based on the evidence provided by the past, because they are willfully ignorant of the past. I mean, we're just a little over 100 years past children in this country working in coal mines and we've already forgotten that that's a bad thing.

[calikid]

10. Great post patty, and welcome to du

[Achilleaze]

8. "Starve the Beast" - KGOP Fungelical Kristo EndTimes Invocation

[Achilleaze]

9. repubes are diverting our tax dollars to their Billionaire Support Program

to keep Dirty Donny* and his KGOP comrades pampered on the golden, gourmet, glorious golf links at the rate of $3 million a goof off. While Pruitt sacks the treasury of our tax dollars to compensate for the sniveling fearful state of his soul. Sad. Very sad.

* aka republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief