The new Tea Party lie I saw for the first time yesterday is: divert tax money for public schools to private schools - like Jeb Bush's Charter school via vouchers. Nothing new for the Tea Party to support Corporate Welfare - I always knew the "Taxed Enough Already" chant was BS.
Here's I stumbled on it:
I was surfing twitter yesterday when I came across, what I thought at the time was, a strange twitter exchange. The Tea Party tweeter who doubles as a Birther (more about that below) was trying to convince his peeps that Public Schools are 'socialism' ... so ... to end the socialistic public schools, we need to divert our tax dollars to private schools who are owned by people like Jeb Bush because it would be "single-payer" paid via vouchers.
I should note here, this guy, Markham Robinson is Chair of American Independent Party (AIP) who wants to criminalize abortion, allow states to secede and whose lawsuit saying Obama was not born in America was rejected by the US Supreme Court. Alan Keyes and Wiley Drake ran for President & Vice President under the AIP banner
From MSNBC
The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to even comment on, yet alone hear, an appeal challenging President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship and his eligibility to serve as commander in chief.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had already ruled the challengers (Alan Keyes, Wiley Drake and Markham Robinson) did not have legal standing to file the lawsuit. Keyes and Drake ran against Obama on the American Independent Party ticket and Robinson serves as the party’s chairman.
Okay, so there's a lot more to "single-payer" than just having one single body pay the fee but who needs facts when you're trying to gin-up propaganda words.
After Twitter I went to Talking Points Memo and saw:
Ohio State Rep: 'Public Education In America Is Socialism, What Is The Solution?'
I thought WTF! They must be all working from the same rightwinged nutjob email.
TPM reported that Ohio State Rep. Andrew Brenner(R) who is vice-chair of the Ohio House Education Committee - took to his blog and told his peeps that Public Education is social so we need to divert tax money to corporations/businesses who own Charter Schools.
So I checked out his blog and found this:
OMG! They used the 'scare em with the hammer & cycle' pic which I doubt they even know what it means. But what is more disturbing is the article on this State Rep's blog that I circled in red titled:
"Was Sandy Hook a hoax designed to advance gun control laws?"
Yes, my skin crawled and I felt I was in the den of vile, uneducated, crazy-ass freaks.
Rep Brenner showed he is not as smart as a 5th grader when he wrote:
... they rarely (if ever) bring up the fact that our public education system is already a socialist system. and has been a socialist system since the founding of our country. While one room school houses (which were also used in many cases as houses of worship) worked well 100 years ago when most students graduated by the 7th grade, the same system does not work well today.
(Emphasis added by me)
...ummm the public education system was not part of the "founding" of our country.
Rep. Brenner goes on to show his ignorance and inability to comprehend what he's trying to talk about.
So how do we improve our education system so students learn the basics, and learn how to think? The only long-run solution is to move to a more privatized system. We must move to a system where the tax dollars follow the student to whichever school they choose. We do this through scholarships and Pell Grants for college students, why not primary education? A system where the parents and students have the ultimate say, not state and federal legislators, not unions, not government bureaucrats. In a free market system parents and students are free to go where the product and results are better .... Successful schools will thrive. The free-market system works for cars, furniture, housing, restaurants, and to a lesser degree higher education, so why can’t it work for our primary education system?
(Emphasis added by me)
What if no corporation wants to build or run a school in poor neighborhoods or in rural areas? What would happen to those kids? Teachers and educators get in the business of teaching because they care about the kids -- not because they're trying to turn a profit.
Rep. Brenner's educational took is wikipedia from which he copy/pasted:
"Socialism, defined on Wikipedia, 'is a social and economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy. That seems to summarize our primary education system. Public education in America is socialism."
Rep. Brenner wants to mimic the USSR & ignored the fact that letting corporations own and operate schools will allow Corporations to get a monopoly on our education system:
We need to do something that was done about 25 years ago in the former Soviet Union and eastern bloc: sell off the existing buildings, equipment and real estate to those in the private sector. The private sector includes our existing teachers, superintendents, management and everyday taxpayers. It will not be an easy transition and it will take open-minded people who want successful students, not those who want to fight turf wars and a hanging on of a failed system. Society should at least start with some of the worst school systems. Bust up the education monopolies and do not settle for the lowest common denominator. Privatize everything and the results will speak for themselves.
(emphasis added by me)
Yeah, result from privatizing everything sure as hell would speak for themselves and it would totally go against everything the real Founders fought for. Someone needs to teach these droolers that our Founders were not pissed off at tax increases as much as they were pissed off at a Corporate tax breaks and Corporations like East India Company were gobbling up & monopolizing the Tea industry.
And think about the 'choice' parents would get to make with the new "single-payer voucher" system. Do they want to go to Jeb Bush's Charter School, or maybe the Koch's .... ahhhhhh .... so many cool choices to envision.
There is so much wrong with this guy Rep. Andrew Brenner that it is hard to know where to begin.
Shorter, these Tea Party nutjobs are saying:
Taxes to pay for public schools = Socialism = bad.
Taxes to give to private school owners = good (never mind that is corporate welfare)
7:04 AM PT: Just got notified that dailykos diarist "cc" linked my blog in his/her Diary titled
Diary by cc here : "Published On Rep. Brenner(R) Blog "Was Sandy Hook a Hoax Designed to Advance Gun Control Laws?"