There has been a lot of noise lately about public education in this country and who should control it. I know parents are vitally involved in everything about their kids, and they should be, but parents also have other elements in their lives that make it almost impossible for them to be the best judges of what their kids need to give them a well- rounded education that will help them move forward through life.
Full disclosure; I am a parent and a grandparent who has never looked kindly on the teacher’s union. I never went to public school, except for kindergarten and first grade. After that I went to Catholic school, all the way through graduate school. It’s probably what made me an agnostic. It’s definitely what made me abhor organized religion.
Sure we had a parents association at my school but they didn’t do much more than have teas to raise money for various needs. The nuns didn’t take kindly to being told what to teach. Still we were quite a ways ahead of the public schools in my town. If a kid transferred from the public school to mine, he was automatically left back a grade and if one went from my school to the public school, he skipped a grade so those nuns, naïve and inexperienced in the real world as they were, must have been doing something right.
I realize that this is an anecdotal approach, but the number of anecdotes was quite significant and the result was always the same. The fact is and pretty much always has been, educators have their full energies available to concentrate on what’s the best education for the most children while parents are pretty much primarily interested in what’s best for their own kid. For teachers it’s an occupation while for parents it’s a very significant hobby. So let’s let the pros run the campaign, and it will work out better for the objects of the campaign, your kids. That is not to say that parents should ignore their child’s education, only that they should temper their interest with a dose of reality.
*****
Adam Kinzinger’s announcement that he will not run in the next election has been seen as a victory for Trump, and that may very well be true. Does that mean that Trump will run again in 2024? Well, let’s just say there is a very good possibility, especially if all the potential candidates that would stand a real chance of beating Trump in a primary are so busy kissing his ass that they don’t take any time to run against him.
Is the party of Lincoln really telling us that a cheap crook and con man is the best they can do? Are Republicans blatantly admitting that an unmitigated liar and a man who repeatedly disgraced the office of the President is the man they really want to represent them – again? Can it be possible that this crude, gross, disgusting imitation of a man, who paints himself orange and worships only himself isn’t an embarrassment to at least a significant percentage of his base? So why keep him? Why not chuck him out with the dirty dishwater?
Lord knows there are any number of avaricious, second string liars that want to be president. Are they all so cowardly that they are terrified to go against Trump? If they are, they are only declaring their unfitness for the office.
It is pretty clear that Trump knows he can’t win another election without having first doing serous damage to the electoral system. That’s what all these new laws that the GOP is trying to establish in various states across the nation are all about. The Republicans know that they will never again win a democratically run national election. The Democrats are simply outbreeding them, while immigrants, for the most part understand that they will make out better under a Democratic administration then they will under one that hates them simply because they are not white.
So it’s time the Democrats get their act together, wire Manchin and Sinema’s jaws shut and pass the damn Infrastructure and Reconciliation bills, which they can do. It’s time to get them out of the way so they can concentrate on what’s important, cementing Democratic control of both houses of congress. The 2022 election is supposed to be a big win for the GOP, partly because of the tradition in off year elections and partly because the polls are showing big time slippage in the Biden ratings. Pass these two bills and the current slippage will become a ladder to the top of the ratings and that, coupled with the seats they will be able to pick up in both houses, will enable them to solve the governing problems based in the structure of democracy this country has faced for the last half century.
The bases of democracy are one man, one vote, majority rule and the peaceful transfer of power. This country has been ignoring the first concept since its founding by keeping various types of citizens from the polls. It has ignored the second concept by establishing a makeup of the Senate that belies it and exchanges it for one acre, one vote. The single concept that has held this democracy together has been its protection of the sanctity of the peaceful exchange of power and in the last election Donald Trump showed us how easy it is to attack that most sacred concept. Preserving our democracy is the most serious and most threatened task we have before us. Giveaways to create economic balance are important but they are only the icing. The cake is the actual preservation of our democratic structure.
*****
The GOP loves to talk about inflation and how it is the Democrats fault. The flag they love to wave the most is gas prices, which have risen well over a dollar a gallon in the last year and natural gas, which has doubled in price. Really! Well, for once let’s assume that they’re not lying about everything they are talking about and accept their claim. Yes, oil and gas could well be the major causes of inflation so let’s solve that problem by stopping all usage of any kind of fossil fuel and replace them all with renewables.
It’s simple enough. All we have to do is stop all fossil fuel subsidies, forbid the use of fossil fuel in all means of transportation or the production of energy and throw all that money into renewables. It will save the planet and cut down all that annoying noise about inflation. It would also cripple the economies of Russia, Saudi Arabia and a couple of other places we need to slow down.
And before you start with that “It will kill millions of jobs here,” nonsense, understand that the fossil fuel giants are more than ready to jump into renewables, they are just greedily trying to squeeze the last couple of bucks out of their poisonous product before getting religion and announcing that they have seen the light and are opening sun and wind farms on all their drilling locations. The need to build renewables will employ huge multiples of those currently employed in fossil. It will create the economic boom this country has needed since Bush/Cheney crashed the economy in 2007. Hell it’s already started. A new electric pickup truck factory has recently opened in a small town in Illinois where a Toyota factory once stood. It will be followed by thousands of others, making electric cars and trucks that are cheaper to build, cheaper to drive, don’t pollute and don’t make noise. And more than anything else, that will move to kill inflation.