The angry crowds are back, but this time they aren’t wearing silly hats:
Battered by angry crowds at suburban school district meetings in recent days, House Republican lawmakers will offer up changes Thursday limiting the budgetary pain inflicted on schools by Gov. John Kasich’s budget proposal.
House Finance Chair Ron Amstutz said many changes to the $120 billion, all-funds budget proposed by Kasich are coming, including tweaks to a controversial blueprint for funding schools over the next two years authored by the Republican governor. “We are looking to take the edge off of this problem across the spectrum of school districts — not just for the upper” property wealth districts, said Amstutz, a Wooster Republican shepherding the budget through the GOP-controlled House.
Many changes. Many. That austerity budget was really less a budget and more a road map, turns out. I also love how he issues a preemptive denial that he’s planning to restore funding only to these well-off suburban districts. NOT just for the upper property wealth districts. Did anyone suggest that’s what he was going to do? Well, he’s not. In case anyone was thinking that.
Taxpayers from those districts, many in traditional Republican territory, are also concerned — and downright angry. Hundreds of them have been giving GOP lawmakers an earful at recent community meetings.
How fast can Republicans in the legislature run from former FOX News personality Governor Kasich? Should be fun to watch the stampede.
Linda Featheringill
Do you suppose they will restore the education funds in districts that are Republican? And not in the districts that are Democrat? And not in the districts where the tax base is meager?
This is Ohio we’re talking about.
Uloborus
Smells like… Republican overreach.
Felonious Wench
Texas is not pretty right now. My very conservative Republican district is up in arms over the hit we’ve taken to the budget. Letters have gone out, crowds have formed, meetings have been interrupted. Meanwhile, Governor Perry has called for a week of prayer for rain, and is just fine accepting federal disaster relief for wild fires, no issues there.
Bulworth
Yeah but the proposal was so Bold.
Emma
Oh my. They really, really thought it would only apply to “those people.” *giggle….snort….bwahahahahahah!*
Maude
For Kasich, it was fun while it lasted.
He didn’t understand that crossing certain lines would get him in trouble.
amk
karma is such a sweet beeyotch kicking both the rethugs enabling voters and their overlords in their collective nutz. kenyan, muslin hatred could take you only so far and no further, OHians.
danimal
Kay, I’m not an Ohioan, but as I read the story, it seems like the angry mob is forming because too much money is going from the suburbs to the poorer school districts. The GOP caucus will find an easy solution: cut off the state spigot to the poor and keep the cash flowing to the suburbs.
Once things are settled, the angry mob will dissipate and Kasich will be beloved once more. What am I missing?
Southern Beale
It’s not just Ohio. It’s happening in Michigan, too. And I love this from a town hall meeting WI GOP Rep. Sean Duffy held. He was actually called on his Heritage Foundation crap and lies about the Affordable Care Act. It’s awesome.
Even better, Duffy got snippy over being challenged on his facts and told his own constituents to “have your own town hall meeting.” I think someone is not clear on the concept ….
AliceBlue
@Bulworth:
And so Serious too! Not to mention Courageous.
singfoom
@Emma: This this this. They were assured only young bucks and evil poor parasites would be affected by the cuts.
Not ‘normal’ people. And now they find out that their representatives will sacrifice them ALL to show their obedience to the whims of their corporate Galtian overlords.
Hoocoodanode?
Karen S.
@Emma:
So true. They always believe that and they really have never understood that the havoc wreaked on “those people” for the last few decades by the proto-fascists was just the warm-up act.
opie jeanne
I read the comments at the linked article, and most of the respondents do not get it. Most of them are busy blaming Obama and soshulism for redistribution of wealth.
New Yorker
Yeah, there’s more and more evidence that the GOP went too far. Well, that’s what happens when you hand the keys to the nutcase true believers. This is not the party of Eisenhower or even Bob Dole anymore. It’s Michelle Bachmann’s party now.
Anyway, an anecdote on how much the GOP screwed the pooch here: My girlfriend has a friend who comes from a nutty arch-Catholic family who would vote exclusively GOP over the abortion question. Well, now they plan on voting Democrat in 2012 because they’re furious at how the GOP has demonized teachers in these budget and union wars.
Crashman
Reap what you sow, assholes. You voted for these jerks, now suffer the consequences.
kay
@danimal:
They won’t be able to do that. Ohio is under a state supreme court order to distribute funding equally between districts. They’ve never fully complied with it, but they can’t simply shift funds to wealthier districts.
In addition, lots and lots of rural districts are poor. You never hear about them, because conservatives find it politically convenient to bitch and moan urban districts, but it’s true.
House Speaker Batchelder said the anger at recent community meetings is being fueled by school superintendents who are “misrepresenting the legislative process and getting away with it.”
El Tiburon
Back before the mid-term elections that gave the Republicans the House, there was a rather contentious debate here about what it would mean if the Repugs took back one or both chambers.
I took a stance that maybe it would be good if the Republicans took over again because it would allow the people to see their craziness again. In fact, I believe I argued that I hope it happens.
I see my argument maybe having some legs now. The American people are becoming a bit more engaged and not just sitting idly by and allowing the Republicans to walk all over them. Of course, you have the ’27 percenters’ who will never change. But I am becoming a bit more encouraged by the electorate and see the worm turning.
kay
@opie jeanne:
It’s Kasich’s blueprint, not Obama’s. I just think it’s reality setting in. He can only move money around for so long. At some point, he needs more money.
He may not “get” this simple truth because one of his former careers was in finance.
The Moar You Know
That is so delicious it just has to be fattening. What a great article.
Yutsano
@kay:
soonergrunt
@Emma:
That’s the crux of it, right there.
kay
@Yutsano:
Perfect, and I agree. But we (non-finance) have to be careful. I now tell people their relationship with finance and lending is adversarial. They should start with the presumption that finance wants to take a lot of their money in transaction fees and churning paper charges, and may well leave them ruined and bankrupt by the side of the road, when it’s all said and done.
I’ll change that advice when they change their predatory practices.
jacy
@El Tiburon:
I feel awful thinking that way too. It’s like kids not understanding consequences and thinking Mom and Dad are going to make sure nothing bad happens. Since there’s often no arguing facts with those who vote Republican “just because,” they’re never going to wake up until the cold hand of “austerity” touches them in the bad places.
Zifnab
@kay:
Well, you can. And then you can fight it out in the courts for the next 2 years. Maybe even run on an anti-Robin Hood platform and complain about all those poor districts stealing from the rich districts thanks to activists justices and argle blargle.
We’ll see what road the GOP chooses to travel.
Jon O.
I expect to hear about this regular folks’ uprising on cable news any… minute… now…
Mako
I stopped reading at this sentence. What is that? Comeon Aaron, get it together, you are a newspaperman not Dan Brown.
heh. Low wealth/high wealth. Back in the day we used to call them Capital and Labor.
Bulworth
It would be so Bold and Courageous if Kasich just disbanded the state supreme court so he could redistribute the money however he wants. Some people might say that disbanding a state supreme court would be controversial, maybe even illegal and unconstitutional. But haters are gonna hate. It would be Bold and Bracing and move the conversation.
Jay C
And those dastardly superintendents are -gasp- public employees! And probably in a union! So probably Soshulists! And thus Un-American radical hippie atheists, too!
One wonders exactly how these evil supers are “misrepresenting the legislative process”? By telling people in their districts soshulist propagandistic lies about how local school districts depend on the State Legislature for State money? And how the Lege wants to reduce those amounts? Which means less money for their districts?
Oh wait… that’s how the appropriations process does work!
Yutsano
@Jon O.: I hope you have all day. It’s gonna be quite the long slog.
@Bulworth: Please don’t give them ideas. It’s bad enough they’re acting on every evil little impulse they have right now.
Ash Can
@Southern Beale: LOL @ the town hall meeting bit. This, of course, is the same putz who was whining to his constituents not too long ago about having to make ends meet on his Congressional salary. I wonder if the folks in his district are feeling any buyers’ remorse, over him and over Republicans in general.
aimai
@opie jeanne:
This is what worries me. The best of all possible terrible worlds would be for all those angry republican voters to have some kind of epiphany and swing to vote Blue next time around. But what is the liklihood of that as long as there is no one to educate them on the issues and to stand up and be counted as running against these slash and burn tactics. Sometimes I’m hopeful that the Republican voters will actually wake up and smell the coffee. But when I see what they are still saying about why things are going wrong they don’t seem to see the straight line between the people they voted into power, the policies they themselves advocated, and the royal screwing they are getting.
As far as schools are concerned, as well, people in a lot of states have been dying the death of a thousand cuts for a long time. Some states went down to a four day school week without any consultation with parents and without any grasp on the reality which is that families in which both parents are working simply can’t afford (and can’t find) one extra day of childcare every week.
aimai
loretta
Meanwhile, in Buyers Remorse, Ohio (I have to laugh), my humble city (mentioned in the cited article) was notified that we are going to experience $6MM (million) in cuts to our school system, a school system of only 4 schools with approximately 3,000 children.
Imagine how much $6 million over 5 or 6 years (can’t remember exactly) would do to us. The only reason I live here is because of the school system.
The superintendent held a special public meeting for the parents and citizens of this town to rally for change. HA! These are the same folks who voted that asshole Kasich in as governor. I live in a really RED city.
I could not attend that meeting, since the combination of schadenfreud, righteous indignation, hippie smugness and over-informed combativeness would probably have imploded me and ultimately embarrassed my kids.
kdaug
@Felonious Wench:
Wha?
I’m in Austin, and I hadn’t heard that one.
Heard about his hat-in-hand to the feds last week (whereupon I hope he was told “Secede, bitch.”)
But where the hell are we going to get the Indians for a rain dance? Or are the evangelicals going to start handing out feather headdresses?
A week of prayer for rain? Srsly?
Hey, Goodhair – God just spoke to me. He said the drought’s following you. Why don’t you just mosey on over to Bangladesh or somewhere. That way, they can skip the typhoons, and we get their rain.
Two can play the superstitious nonsense game.
Jackass.
kerFuFFler
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
danimal
@kay: Well, then, it appears that Governor Kasich is going to have to square that circle. I wish him all the luck he deserves.
I always wondered why someone didn’t walk up to him during the impeachment ‘crisis’ and punch his smarmy smirk off of his face. Plus ca change….
Chris
@jacy:
And even that doesn’t guarantee a wakeup, because as we’ve seen for the last three years, they’re as likely as not to simply blame it all on the minorities and immigrants sucking up all the money that should really be going to deserving, hardworking Real American citizens like themselves…
Frankly, I have trouble seeing how the hell a country with this little social solidarity can keep functioning (one answer being that it really hasn’t been functioning for at least a couple decades).
Chris
@aimai:
This, also too.
kay
@Mako:
I think Kasich used that formula because then he could claim it was a net gain for “schools”.
This is what they get for hiring a former Lehman Bros. manager. Accounting tricks and bullshit.
He’s telling parents not to vote for the local school levies that his budget is going to make necessary. I don’t think I remember a governor directing parents to vote down a local school levy. It’s a very innovative approach, I’ll give him that.
Phyllis
@aimai: Also, one less day of school breakfast and school lunch, and possibly an afterschool snack.
PeakVT
Backlash is good, but of course the question is: will the rebound reach the old normal, or stop around halfway between the old normal and the overreach?
ETA: Somewhat related: an interesting graph of lobbying dollars from Ritholtz.
JCT
@aimai:
This is the essential crux of the matter. This new wave of “belt-tightening” or more accurately, machete-swinging is running into school districts and local services that have already been starved for years. There’s no more chaff left, so these cuts have a disproportionally large effect on everyone. The Republicans went to the well one too many times and FINALLY pissed everyone off.
A classic miscalculation — hopefully these angry people will keep these deceitful legislators’ feet to the fire. The fun will come once folks realize that they CAN fight back as these assholes hide behind their parsing and explanations.
danimal
@PeakVT: Backlashes tend to overshoot the mark. The GOP may rue the day they decided to double down on teh crazy.
Linda Featheringill
@Yutsano:
By the way, Y, I love your employer this week.
BIG earned income credit, ALL my bills are paid, I purchased stuff for a container garden [but forgot to by gravel], and my little bitty savings account is fatter.
I am a happy camper.
[happy dance, not really proper for a lady of my age.]
amk
@jacy: LOL @ this
PurpleGirl
@kdaug: Via Brilliant at Breakfast:
http://governor.state.tx.us/news/proclamation/16038/
Yes, an official proclamation for 3 days of prayer (coincident to Easter) for rain.
I want to know is it raining yet?
Omnes Omnibus
@kdaug: Pray for rain?
Admiral_Komack
“Battered by angry crowds at suburban school district meetings in recent days, House Republican lawmakers will offer up changes Thursday limiting the budgetary pain inflicted on schools by Gov. John Kasich’s budget proposal.”
-Uh-uh, motherfuckers!
Be all tough and shit!
Don’t be weaseling out now!
jibeaux
It sounds like the proposed “fix” to Kasich’s budget is to say the state can’t cut what it sends to the districts by more than 20%.
Ouch.
I don’t know if any of you have ever looked at a pie chart of K-12 school expenditures, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: a huge, huge, piece of the pie is labelled “teachers”.
stuckinred
@Omnes Omnibus: Idiot preacher in Dublin, GA held a prayer meeting at a gas station hoping to bring down prices.
PeakVT
@danimal: I hope you’re right.
Mako
@kay:
Kay,
I enjoy your posts, they are very business-like, without hyperbole. Please keep at it.
dr. luba
(Repost–I used the s-word and am in moderation hell!)
In my hometown (where I no longer reside), the public library is closing. This is not some town down on its luck: Troy, MI is a wealthy suburb known for the quality of its schools and other amenities, including an award-winning library.
But property values have fallen dramatically in MIchigan, and city revenues are down. A lot. The city has had to make a lot of cuts in services.
Mind you, property taxes have gone down in real dollars for most people. The city proposed a dedicated tax increase to keep the library open—it would have come out to about $100 per household per year. The teahdists wouldn’t have it: All tax increases are bad, There is a lot of waste to be cut. They won’t close the library—it’s an idle threat.
And besides, there are a lot of other local libraries that you can use.
Twice the measure went on the ballot. And twice to voters defeated it.
So the library is closing May 1st. And once it closes, all reciprocal agreements with local libraries are gone. No more free access to Birmingham or Sterling Heights or other libraries. Using a neighboring library will cost $150 a year for a membership if you’re a non-resident.
Of course, the teahadists don’t care. Literacy is not a concern of theirs, all they need is their Fox news and they’re happy. They feel that, if you want a book, buy it on Amazon. The folks they suckered—those who believed them when they said it was just an idle threat—are now aghast that the city has done what it said it would do. They really believed that you can cut taxes without cutting services.
Luckily, I now live across town in a burb that values education and literacy. Our libraries are fully funded, and probably the best in the state. Of course, we’re just a bunch of dumb soc1alists who vote to fund our local government, and vote consistently blue.
eemom
The words “Republican lawmakers” and “battered” render sweet music unto the ear and beautiful images unto the eye.
Chris
@danimal:
In the last century, conservative elites have often encouraged the formation of batshit-insane right wing groups to protect them from reformist movements. And those batshit-insane right wing groups have a way of slipping off the leash and shooting up everyone indiscriminately, often hitting their original supporters along with the rest.
E.G. Colombian landowners and big businesses encouraging the creation of the AUC, which is now its own entity and is as likely to extort the big guys as protect them. E.G. the West supporting right-wing dictatorships in Latin America during the Cold War, then getting hit with the Falklands invasion. E.G. conservative elites both in Germany and in the democracies not-so-secretly hoping that fascism would protect them from socialism, only to see it become an even bigger monster.
You’d think they’d learn, at some point, that Frankenstein’s monster eventually goes after Frankenstein.
kay
@PeakVT:
I honestly think conservatives believe people hate public schools much more than people actually do.
I just don’t think this irrational hatred of “government schools” is widely shared by ordinary less-politically engaged parents.
A lot of people are happy with their kid’s public school, and the vast majority of kids go to public schools. They’re assuming the fringe is the majority, again.
Yutsano
@Linda Featheringill: Heh. I kinda like em too. And EIC is one of the most popular programs we have.
kdaug
@PurpleGirl:
Not even close.
Rommie
Kasich’s buddy in the trench Snyder is going to drop a bomb on the K-20 school infrastructure in Michigan on Wednesday. It’ll finally be out in the open what he really wants to do.
I only know bits and pieces, but one of them is the idea to reduce the summer school break. In Michigan, a high summer tourism state. I’d say fire up the popcorn, if the consequences weren’t so serious if he gets his way.
Martin
@jibeaux:
dr. luba
@Southern Beale: WRT the Michigan link: that’s the UP in the article (Michigan’s Upper Peninsula), which is generally about as red as it gets. If they’re pissed off……
PurpleGirl
@kdaug:
I do feel sorry for the regular people who are losing so much to the weather crisis.
I think Perry has forgotten that the locusts and blood water and such in The Ten Commandments were developed by the special effects staff at the Walt Disney Company (on loan to Cecile B. DeMille). And The Rainmaker was a scam artist.
jibeaux
@Martin:
Oh, I know. But I’m with Kay that I think they really overestimate their support for cutting public education. Our latest proposed budget involves eliminating teacher assistants for all grades except K & 1. We used to have full-time assistants through third grade and half-time in fourth and fifth. I would like to make every one of those bastards spend a week substitute teaching 27 second-graders with no assistant. Tying shoes, remembering to use the bathroom, opening their milk, finding their homework, settling disputes, locating a willing adult to help out should you at any point need to take a pee, and oh yes, don’t forget to teach the little darlings something.
Martin
@dr. luba: Maybe these guys will wake up and see the bottom line. The city I live in has held property values pretty well. While down about 30% from the 2008 peak, we’re still about 30% above where were in 2005. That’s not the case in neighboring cities. The difference is that my city still funds education. We still have art and music classes. We still have PE. We still have science in K-6. They’re all right on the edge, but they’re still there. The libraries are still open. The summer programs are still there. People move to this city for the schools. People move within the city for specific schools. So long as that keeps going, property values will stay up. There will always be enough people in this county of 3M people willing to pay extra for a house in a city of 100K in order to go to a top public school. As neighboring cities cut their education budgets, the demand for homes here nudges up. We vote pretty regularly Dem in the city, though it’s close, but I think the point is clear to most here that an extra $100 or so in taxes will translate to probably $10K in home value. Only a fool would fight against those numbers.
kay
@jibeaux:
Kasich’s predecessor, Strickland, was actually good with the budget. He’s a dirty commie liberal, so he’ll never get any credit, but it’s true. He was smart and (really, overly) frugal with taxpayer funds on schools. Education was one of his lifetime issues whether in the US House or as governor. He worked at it.
There isn’t much to cut from Ohio school funding. They’re down to the bone now, and new “formulas” or “efficiency” isn’t going to change that reality.
Linnaeus
@Emma:
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It reminds me of how outsourcing & offshoring has become a bigger deal in the news over the last ten years or so because the process is affecting more workers in the professional & technical classes. When it began happening to blue-collar industrial workers 30-40 years ago (even earlier in some cases), we were told that it was just part of the evolution of capitalism and those schlubs who lost jobs just needed to get with the program and become computer programmers & X-ray technicians and such. Oops…
That said, I welcome pushback against the GOP wherever I can get it.
aimai
@dr. luba:
Reminds me of a conversation I once had with a Baine and Co vice president (no, not MItt Romney!). He was abslutely opposed to public libraries (he was English, btw, and we were discussing the UK) because it just took taxpayer dollars and the shelves were filled with adventure stories and John Grisham novels and he, personally, thought we’d all be better off just buying the hardcover copies when those books came out and then throwing them out on vacation so as not to be burdened with the weight on our flights back from the Bahamas. The notion that people couldn’t actually afford to buy any books, new or not, and that the library served as a clearinghouse for all kinds of public information and as a form of socialized public space was totally invisible to him. I mean, he’s an awful person as well but he simply had no idea of the function of the modern library in a modern society.
aimai
kdaug
@kay:
The 27% always believe that they’re in the majority, and that everyone else thinks like them.
I’m beginning to believe it’s a genetic defect that stripped them of the capacity for empathy. Or maybe they’re just assholes.
But either way, they seriously have a problem identifying with anything outside their narrow self-interest.
kdaug
@PurpleGirl:
Yeah, me too. And it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.
Wait ’till August.
Dan
He was so busy protesting too much that he wasn’t targeting the poor, he let another tell slip. If you are going to “take the edge off,” why not tell us why the fucking edge was there in the first place.
Reminds me of a Doonesbury during the 2000 presidential campaign. The reporter asks Bush if the phrase “compassionate conservatism” acknowledges conservatism is inherently ungenerous since it needs the modifier.
It may be dawning on Ohio’s GOP legislators that they aren’t high enough on the wingnut totem pole to be able to seek refuge in a think tank sinecure or Fox News show once their overwhelmingly unpopular asses get bounced from office. Any future aspirations involving winning elections are on the verge of getting snuffed out. Couldn’t happen to a nicer crew either.
Martin
@jibeaux: Well, I think a lot depends on the dynamics in your region. If you have a lot of retirees, yeah, they care fuck-all if their grandkids get decent educations, from what I’ve seen. If everyones school sucks, that’s okay too. The right assumes that everyone else is a stupid slacker and so even if their own kids education gets fucked, they’ll somehow overcome – bootstraps are cheap, you know. What we have going on in my little corner of the world is one city holding the line on education and then drawing a stark contrast to neighboring cities. The people that live here really, really care about education and while there are cuts due to the state, locally most of that money is being made up. At some point probably soon neighboring cities are going to notice that their kids have no science and our kids do and even the folks that don’t give a shit will decide they don’t want to live in some backwater city with low property values and demand more, and the cycle will reverse.
Zifnab
@aimai:
Honestly, I don’t care if they vote Republican or Democrat. I’d just like to see them vote for politicians that don’t sell out their own interests. If you can find Republicans that are more interested in running the government than selling out to corporate interests and ideological wackos – whatever. Sounds good to me.
But said Republican would have to eventually vote with a Democrat, and that would be tantamount to heresy in the Church of Reagen. Republicans can’t side with anyone that doesn’t march lockstep with the GOP without getting called an evil liberal communist turn-coat and getting booted from the party.
Linnaeus
@dr. luba:
I grew up in the “city of tomorrow…today” (which apparently is no longer the case) and my dad still lives there in the house in which I grew up (on the more lower-middle class east side of town). Fancy meeting another Troy person here.
Here in Washington, many rural counties have had to reduce their library services or even close libraries, and not surprisingly (if you know rural Washington’s politics), you saw similar arguments along the line of, “if you want books, then you should be able to hold a job and buy them yourself just like we sturdy conservatives do.” Of course, most people using the libraries were holding down jobs (or using the libraries’ resources to look for one), but never mind…
Uloborus
@kay:
Remember, the farther ends of conservatism (currently their primary controlling base) hate public education. It interferes with their ability to enforce their local culture. Christianists, conspiracy theorists, particularly insulated country folk, that sort of thing. They don’t want schools, period.
…and you’re right. It’s an article of faith that they’re in the majority.
artem1s
the crazification of Ohio has proceeded so far down the road its hard to imagine. I have neighbors who simultaneously argue that we are being taxed at the 60/70% level AND that the average American doesn’t pay his fair share of the $4K of annual flat tax that would save everything. You can’t get a rational idea in edgewise you are so busy trying to point out how batshit crazy their basic premises are.
I predict Kasich’s next move will be to try and institute a state wide voucher system. he will argue that it will allow the state to close down all the public schools. viola! no more dirty teachers or socialists superintendents to pay. Privatization will save everything!
meanwhile all of King John’s buddies will be busy destroying all of our water with drilling and fracking. Our one last valuable resource will be treated like a toilet. Once Erie is fouled the state is done. Cleveland and the lake will be the US equivalent of Pripyat.
how naive was I to believe that it couldn’t get worse than Taft.
danimal
@Martin: Are you neighbors with MoJo’s Mr. Drum? I’m an OC exile, and I can only think of one town in the area that fits your description.
ruemara
@dr. luba:
When I was super poor, on crutches, recovering from a deep vein thrombosis, the library was my only way to indulge in books. It was my movie palace and my hang out spot. No family visited, it was rare to see friends, but a steady supply of wonderful books were boo companions. I used to stay for hours in the library after school as youngster and worked in them for service period and as one of my first real jobs. The concept of a town rejecting a library is amazing to me. In the archaic form of the word. I hate to say this, but no one else is. The attacks against education, particularly in poorer, minority areas lead me to believe that they are using economics to create the sort of uneducated underclass that slavery and bigotry used to do in the early years of our country. What will those who love to read and have children need to do? Go back to the origins of the library and create lending circles? This is a disgusting step back for your hometown.
Chris
@Linnaeus:
But a ton of that, again, just takes the form of “Yeah? Well Clinton signed NAFTA, so liberals are the real traitors and we need to vote Republicans.” Which is quite a popular line, actually.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a little pushback against the “Third Way” type of Democrats we’ve had since the 1990s, but it’s not going to help if such a movement doesn’t go beyond that and attack the entire Reaganomic bullshit ideology of our era (which, ultimately, means attacking Republicans). It’s like blaming the entire Gilded Age era on Bourbon Democrats.
bemused
@Southern Beale:
I love Duffy attempting to erase the word “voucher” from Ryan’s budget plan. Where did you people get the idea that it’s a voucher, it’s “premium support”.
Linnaeus
@Chris:
I’ll second that.
Linnaeus
@bemused:
Don’t be surprised if we start hearing this a lot more, much like the GOP used the term “personal accounts” for their Social Security privatization plan.
NonyNony
@Zifnab:
And it’s heresy to say this in a democracy, and I hate the fact that I’ve come to believe it, but frankly if they won’t fucking stop voting against their own interests I wish they’d just stop voting. Just stop altogether.
I don’t need them to come around and start voting for Democrats, but if they’re going to vote for people who want to destroy government and then turn around and get angry that the fuckers they voted in are destroying the bits of government they actually like they need to stop voting. It’s like with guns – I don’t want to take anyone’s guns away but if you show that you’re an idiot by accidentally shooting your neighbor in the foot with your gun I really hope you lock the damn thing up and quit using it until you can go get some gun safety training.
(I swear to Grod we need “voter safety” training – too many people are shooting me in my goddamn foot these days.)
Mako
Just wait. It all plays out. Libraries will be back.
negative 1
@aimai: it takes a while, but eventually people stop just throwing on the team jersey and cheerleading. It usually takes a cut to one of the things a person holds dear, but the nice thing about the rethugs is that they can be counted on to do it eventually. This summer our spineless party hack mayor will reopen our municipal pool after the townspeople got wise to him cutting services to preserve his ‘fiscal savior’ image when it wasn’t warranted. What can give you hope is this — Fux news doesn’t brainwash anyone who won’t willing submit to being brainwashed. Have their local winger cross them on something and they won’t be in the mood to hear Fux tell them “only the rethugs are telling you the truth!”. It happens slowly, but it happens.
Linnaeus
@ruemara:
It really is. I remember spending many hours at that very library, especially after it expanded in the mid-1980s. There was a lot of information that I had access to that I wouldn’t have had otherwise, because even though we weren’t poor, we couldn’t just go out and buy all of the books I wanted to read. Not only would we not have had the money for that, many of the books were no longer available for purchase anyway. Plus there’s the loss of the sharing agreements that dr. luba mentioned; with a TPL card, I could go a number of other libraries and borrow from their holdings as well for no additional charge, which was really useful if TPL didn’t have the book I was looking for. Now even that will be gone. Ridiculous.
@Mako:
I’m hoping so, once people realize what they’ve lost when they’re gone.
kay
@Uloborus:
I say this a lot, but the original Ohio constitution has a huge emphasis on public education. The place was founded by religious liberals. It’s one of the reasons Ohio is currently operating under a court order to equalize school district funding. It’s in the state constitution.
Conservatives are just wrong, historically. Public education goes back a long way as an ideal in US history. That they’ve managed to convince the public and media that the idea of universal accessible education was introduced by teacher’s unions on or about 1972 or something is one of the great cons of all time. It’s simply not true. “Public” is an old idea. They’re the radicals, not liberals.
Mnemosyne
@Linnaeus:
Given that they’re trying to destroy child labor laws at the same time, they’re not even going to allow the out of pointing out the children who need libraries. If the kids want books that much, let ’em go to work and pay for ’em!
Martin
@danimal: Indeed I am a neighbor of Mr Drum. I’ve never actually run into him, though, which has always struck me as odd. It’s a big place, but not that big…
The contrast between here and the now full-metal wingnut Costa Mesa is jarring. There didn’t used to be that much of a difference, but it’s now like night and day.
opie jeanne
@aimai: Someone mentioned this short school week at a party on Saturday, but didn’t know if they managed to cut out that one day of school by lengthening the hours the kids are in school for the other four days. Do you know?
Fifteen years ago school administrators were talking about adding a couple of days to the school year because kids weren’t spending enough time in the classrooms. This was in California.
aimai
@kay:
Great, great, point, Kay. They are the radicals. Worse, they are the nihilists and we liberals are the conservative conservationists.
I know I posted this somewhere else but since no one will remember I’ll repost it here. I recently returned from a 20 year belated trip to Nepal. Public space is dead and gone there, even in the form that it previously held. With no public space and no new tradition of democratic civil action and civil government there is simply no way for people to get together locally and make their wishes known absent strikes and violence. Worse, there’s very little sense of shared community and shared responsibility. Those things aren’t a given. We have to work, all the time, to make our cities and towns places where active citizenship is encouraged. Where there are safe spaces for the young, the old, the ill, the active and the inactive to come together and share space/ideas/education/politics. The idea of the totally isolated suburban or rural family, each monad cut off from every other, totally self sufficient as to economy, swimming pool, library, etc… is really dangerous to a functioning polity. Not because I’m some kind of marxist but because we have to be used to coming together and sharing little spaces before we can understand how to come together and share a big space like the entire country, or the budget.
aimai
rikryah
elections have consequences. they just thought Black and Brown children were going to be shyt upon by KKKasich.
Martin
@Linnaeus:
Of course, those of us who aren’t wallowing in poverty got here in part because we were able to improve ourselves without wasting 20% of our income buying books that we only needed for 2 fucking days. It’s very telling that they reprimand the poor for not learning a new skill to improve their fate, and then take away the mechanism to do that. There used to be a branch of conservatism that was respectable in that sense. They saw access to education and public services available to all as a proper alternative to welfare, which was only available to some. Those opportunities were part of the social safety net. That’s gone. To the current lot, if you weren’t born into opportunity, it’s your own fucking fault.
aimai
@opie jeanne:
I don’t know. It didn’t happen in my state but I heard about it on a women’s group that I hang out at on the internet. I believe one of the states was Oklahoma and I don’t think they lengthened the school day. Just arbitrarily cut out Fridays.
aimai
kay
@aimai:
I was shocked when I read the original Ohio constitution.
“Goddamn. Bernie Sanders drafted this thing!”
For rural public schools, your point about public space is even more valid. Here, the big public events ALL revolve around the public schools. They ARE the “town square”. There’s nothing else that’s shared like that.
HyperIon
@loretta:
If you would state what the yearly school budget is, I could imagine it a lot better.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne: @Martin: Yep, and yep. It’s maddening.
dr. luba
@Linnaeus: I remember the TPL of my youth, in a shop in the strip mall at Troy Corners. I remember being excited when the “new” library opened in the Civic Center, and spent a lot of time there in my school years, doing research for school and just reading eclectically.
I grew up in the poor part of town, attended Morse Elementary. My parents moved us when I was in high school, but we stayed in Troy, because they valued the schools and amenities, and I graduated from Athens in 76.
My friend’s mom was one of the librarians, and got me a summer job there when I was in college. I loved the place.
And I hate to see what is becoming of my old library and my home town. Troy used to have one of the highest property tax rates in the area because people valued education and city services. Now the teahdists have taken over, and it’s all cut, cut, cut. They are learning the hard way that TNSTAAFL.
Martin
@aimai: Actually, quite a few school districts have gone to 4 day school weeks. No entire states, as far as I know, though.
The districts where it makes the most sense are the ones with high busing budgets. 20% less driver pay, 20% lower fuel bills, 20% lower maintenance costs. Add in a northern climate where winter heating costs are non-trivial, and even if you’re still paying teachers the same salary by going 4/10 instead of 5/8, the district can save a lot of overhead costs.
Here in CA we often go the opposite. We’ve got a fair number of year-round schools that take the summer break and divide it up around the year. That allows us to take teachers that normally rotate around schools – like music, science, etc. and spread them out even more widely since they’re still teaching through the summer, and when the year-round schools are on break, they can do more intensive work at the traditional schedule schools – so that’s when the performances tend to happen, science fairs, that kind of stuff.
We can do it because the cost to operate the school is basically the same year round – there’s little to no heating or AC bill here, and our population density is high enough that there is almost no busing. Everyone can walk/bike to school. Lots of dual-income households love the year-round schedule. They can take their big family vacations off-peak when rates are lower and theme parks and national parks are less crowded. I expect we’ll move more schools into year-round as the budget gets tighter because we can more efficiency distribute resources that way (teachers, equipment, facilities).
Linnaeus
@dr. luba:
Yeah, I get reports from my dad; he never cared a whole lot about municipal Troy politics, but he does know that what’s going on is ridiculous. He says he can see a real difference than when he and my mom moved there in the early 1970s.
HyperIon
@Linnaeus:
I am quite pleased that Seattle Public Library decided to take the “system closed for the week” and trim some operating hours from various branches.
Only a moron could think closing a library makes fiscal sense. Basically you’re paying to heat/cool the building and fund the pitiful salaries that most librarians earn. Cut the book budget but don’t close the library.
opie jeanne
@loretta: I’m not above embarassing my kids in a good cause.
We had similar all-district meetings in the 80s and 90s when the realtors in a large California town had convinced too many people that certain schools were really inferior to certain other schools, and there were people shouting that their developer had assured them that they could just petition to be in X elementary/jrhi/HS after their houses were built. They were frantic that their kids not go to “those schools”. We (PTA Presidents) told them the truth about those schools, that they were in fact every bit as good, if not better than the ones they desired. We also told them that they needed to be involved in their schools, volunteer if at all possible, come to school meetings, meet the teachers, etc.
One PTA pres got up and gave the best rendition of the “give me your tired and poor” speech and got a standing ovation for it. She reminded the rest of us about how that school was turned around by parent and neighborhood involvement and how it compared with the more desirable schools.
The following year the district divvied up one of the poorest Hispanic neighborhoods into 5 chunks and bussed those kids into the whitest schools in the district, the ones these parents had been desperate to get their kids into. Most of those kids had been assigned to two downtown schools and I felt bad that they were being sent outside of their neighborhood, but at least they had transportation to school for the first time. The elementary schools in their neighborhood had been closed down years ago, leased out or used by the district for Adult Ed because they no longer met safety criteria for anything else. There was no money after Prop 13 to invest in a new school in that neighborhood without a massive injection of outside money, which didn’t happen.
We deliberately moved into that “other” neighborhood. It was a better school experience for them than the all-white option would have been.
gex
@New Yorker: What? What about the poor babies? If you are single issue voter, single issue vote. I’d be so tempted to chastise them for worrying about minor earthly concerns such as employment when the souls of those babies have been abandoned by them. For shame.
I guess it is time to take care of their own concerns rather than cause problems for others.
I know a Catholic schoolteacher who pretty much did the same thing. God, I hate that.
Mako
@Linnaeus:
Bill Gates is all about immunization or something. Just wait until another Carnegie comes along.
Seriously, people should start using the proper terms again: Capital and Labor.
PurpleGirl
@Mako: The Gates Foundation was supporting the school libraries in their area. (And they are big for charter schools and school reform.) Also think macrolevel projects except for the local libraries in their area.
A point about Carnegie: he helped cities and counties build libraries but they had to take over the annual support of them. He only helped with construction of the building.
Tookish
@dr. luba:
On Calitics, they call this:
the “Two Santa Claus theory”
In short, it’s the erroneous belief (that was mindfully crafted by a Reaganite) that govt can simultaneously provide services and cut revenue. People really do think this, totally uncritically. They think it due to a well-planned, deliberate and decades long campaign designed to cause people to think this. I know a lot of liberal minded people who think this here in CA, where I live.
Mako
@PurpleGirl:
Well there you go. Problem solved.
Seriously? Im not at all sure what we are talking about here. Linnieus went all anectodal about a state. I know this state and kinda disagree, but then Lineiess might be in some other part of the state (Spokane?).
But it is pointless to have these rural vs urban or poor vs not so poor arguments. It really is Capital vs Labor just like the old commie wrote.
PurpleGirl
@Mako:
You had written
Bill Gates is all about immunization or something. Just wait until another Carnegie comes along.
So I just thought to add a comment on what Gates has funded and where. Ditto about Carnegie.
Mako
Thanks.
JCT
@Tookish: Yup, those of us who were in high school during the whole Prop 13 disaster remember this theory oh so well.
Why, just a few months ago my mother was complaining about how my sister had to pay big bucks to send her kids to private school when we had all done so well in the LA unified school district. I had to count to 10 several times before I reminded her that her MINIMAL yearly property taxes (in the 90210 zip no less) were won at the expense of those schools. I wasn’t in the mood to argue about whether maybe she should send some of her huge tax savings on to my sister to help pay those tuition bills….
HOPELESS.
opie jeanne
@JCT: Prop 13 had so many extra special goodies buried in it that most people still don’t know about, until they get really involved in their local schools.
If you’ve visited a relatively new school in California you will notice that there are no roofs over the hallways, no covered eating area outdoor, no library, no nurse’s room, etc. That’s because Dear Mr Jarvis wrote into that bill that those areas including the janitors’ closets and the principal’s office should be considered as classroom space. It’s the reason there are “temporaries” on so many school campuses, because permanent new classrooms require too many hoops to be jumped through that it becomes nearly impossible to fund them on an existing campus.
It was a real eye-opener for most of us who have had to deal with it.
MikeJ
The best part about all this is that it’s the suburban districts that supported Kasich that are getting the biggest shaft. Cleveland public schools are only facing 5% cuts.
loretta
@HyperIon: Maybe too late a response to matter, but that represents a 60% cut.
They are hoping for a 20% cap on school cuts.
FWIW, funding to the state/local libraries is being massively cut as well. I’m with many above, lived in the li-barry (as we call it for fun) and raised li-barry appreciating kids.
loretta
@MikeJ: Some of them are only experiencing a 16%, like Bay Village, for example, a very tony suburb on the lake. The cuts are based on property values, and while Bay Village has nice property, it’s a small suburb and the majority of the non-lakeside property is not as valuable as some of its neighbors (Westlake, Rocky River).
Logan
Get ready to watch something similar happen in North Carolina as the wingnuts in the state legislature continue to release their horrific budget. I still content that it’s the greatest thing in the world to happen to our *unpopular* governor who is a DINO. All she has to do is read the budget in the debate and remind the Latinos (fastest growing population in NC at the moment) that she doesn’t support the mass deportation of anyone who doesn’t look like a former Master or Slave and she’s got re-election in the bag (though I wish she’d lose in a primary)
Mako
@aimai:
Where did you go in Nepal? Did you try the hospital in Kathmandu? Nasty business last time i was there, cuz, you know, socialiscm.
Mako
interesting .
Cant use the word without being moderated.
Something really seriously wrong with that.
Something Cole could have fixed years ago.
HyperIon
@loretta:
never too late!
thanks for the update.
yes, i agree wholeheartedly now.
60% is very like taking a cleaver to the budget.
strange times….
Mako
We are gonna have to discuss alternative economic models eventually. Machine got a problem with boner pills or not. Socialism.
Monala
All the talk about closing libraries reminds me of a letter to the editor from, I believe it was a Chicago librarian, that went viral about a year ago. She defended libraries as not just a place to borrow books, but as a place where unemployed people carry out their job searches, people without a computer in the home can access the Internet, kids receive tutoring, classes and workshops are held, and so on. And I personally remember the heat wave that hit Western Washington two years ago, and the libraries were one of the major “cooling centers” that stayed open as a place for people without air conditioning to go.
Lending circles could never replace all that libraries represent for our communities.
debbie
@kay:
Less a road map than a giant Chutes and Ladders game board: take all these budget problems and send them down the chute to the cities and let them deal with them. When did that become “governing”?
Senate President Niehaus still loves Kasich. He’s another one I’d like to see get his comeuppance.
Linnaeus
@Mako:
I’m in that den of iniquity, Seattle.
I actually tend to agree that it’s more about “capital vs. labor”. I brought up the rural aspect because that’s where it seems that the political forces here in WA that side with plutocracy seem to be the strongest, relatively speaking. I wasn’t trying to make any kind of essentialist arguments about rural vs. urban Washingtonians.
Mako
@Linnaeus: “I’m in that den of iniquity, Seattle.”
heh. so when you wrote-
-do you have any citations to back that up? Just kinda curious.
BruceFromOhio
And fuck every single Gaia-damned one of you to filthiest depths of the lowest hell. You fucking morons VOTED for these soulless ratfuck criminals, and now you’re worried because Suzy might not have band next year, or Johnny might not make the football team that isn’t there anymore as the state cuts in funding (following the drop in Federal funding in the wake of unfunded mandates wrought by No Child Left Unpunished, another lasting gift from our fucked up conservatives criminal organizations) eat holes into local school budgets to the tune of millions.
Think education is expensive? Looks like we’re giving simpering, emptyheaded IGNORANCE a good old test drive these days, so how’s that working out for ya?
Fucking douchebag Republicans will truly screw up a fire drill, much less anything else, and these whiny-ass suburban dwelling SUV-loving crackers put these criminal bastards IN CHARGE. Surprise, surprise, surprise!
Reap what you fucking sow, you stupid cocksuckers.
maus
@Mako: http://www.kuow.washington.edu/program.php?id=21180
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013129334_apwafurloughday.html
I don’t know about permanent closings, though.
Obama 2012
It’s too bad these people didn’t pay attention before voting for them in the first place…
What will it take for these people to realize GOP policies only benefit the filthy rich?