Why Public Schools are on the GOP's Hit List..

[whathehell]

https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-public-schools-are-on-the-gops?utm_medium=email

[CrispyQ]

1. Educated people are harder to fool.

"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing." ~Karl Rove

The GOP has been filling positions on boards of education across the land since the 80s.

[whathehell]

5. Definitely..

and in context, the Karl Rove quote is chilling.

[calimary]

2. I hope this warning is heeded.

And taken SERIOUSLY.

VERY seriously.

[whathehell]

6. Yes indeed.

We need to hear more about this.

[Hortensis]

11. Well, a lot of Hartmann's readers probably know a fair amount from

journalistic sources by this time, but for every one who hadn't been taking it seriously, absolutely.

[LakeArenal]

3. The Republicans filled the courts with their judges.

I remember being warned about that years ago. Voters are just not into issues. They decide by sound bites and personality.

[whathehell]

4. As I believe the midterms indicated, many

voters are motivated by issues, but too many are as you've described...Add the misinformation to that, and you've got a difficult situation.

[Nittersing]

7. "Government Schools"

I've seen that phrase a few times now...

Bet we're gonna hear it a lot more...

[whathehell]

8. In a democracy, "government" equals the people..

"The people, it seems, need to be reminded of that more often.

[Orrex]

9. As long as I've been online, Reichwingers have been declaring public schools a failure

And I'm certain that they were singing the same tune for decades before that.

One of the GOP's favorite strategies is to defund and weaken and attack and undermine a government program or institution, all the while claiming that the institution is a failure and should be privatized. Then, when their destructive efforts eventually pay off, they say "See? We told you it couldn't work."

No one on the Right should be allowed anywhere near any government institution for at least the next 50 centuries.

[appalachiablue]

12. +++

[maxrandb]

16. Let me add, that in every case, their public school was great'!

Seriously, the next time you hear some fucked-up, wingnut dipshit talking about how terrible public schools are, simply ask them; "what private school did you attend?"

I have done this, and since about 90% of us were educated in public schools, it leaves them stammering about, "well, my school was actually pretty good, but..."

It's like if someone were to say Michigan University was a piece of shit out of one side of their mouth, while out of the other side saying how smart they are because they went to Michigan.

Almost all of us were educated in public schools. If what they say about the schools is correct, they'll all be morons...

Oh, NEVERMIND...they may have a point.

[Victor_c3]

10. That's part of it, but I think it even boils down a bit further

Corporate profits and turning us into a nation of easily controlled cheap labor is the root of it all.

Why do they want to cut social security? Why do they want to keep health insurance out of reach for the poor? Why do they want to eliminate minimum wage? Why do they want to perpetuate a failing educational system? It’s all to keep us uneducated and desperate enough to work for starvation wages so the wealthy can extract more wealth from the masses.

The majority of their supporters are too stupid or unwilling to open their eyes and realize the truth of the situation.

[Timeflyer]

13. GOP wants all those tasty public school tax dollars to come to them through privatization.

There's a huge effort in FL right now to take over school boards and run out good teachers, so billionaire corporate charter schools can move in and cash in. Meanwhile Gov. DeSatan is letting Hillsdale College dictate the civics curriculum to promote right-wing propaganda. As Hartmann states below:

"... the United States spends almost a trillion dollars a year on primary school education, an expense category just below healthcare and even more than the Pentagon budget: there are massive profits to be made if privatized entities can skim even a few percent off the top.

Those profits, in turn, can be used — with the Supreme Court’s blessing — to legally bribe elected officials to further gut public schools and transfer even more of our tax dollars to private schools and their stockholders.

This pursuit of America’s education dollars is nothing new. The first American president to put an anti-public-schools crusader in charge of the Education Department was Ronald Reagan."

[dembotoz]

14. teacher unions are very dem and used to be stronger

weaken the union
weaken the dems

[Hortensis]

15. He's pushing the fascism aspect heavily, but that's only part of the danger.

A NON-fascist RW takeover of authoritarian nature is a lot more likely than full-out fascism, which is all the way over the RW edge and ultimately requires the wealthy and business to serve the state along with everyone else. Fascist states also invest a lot of state power and wealth in controlling how people think and what they do, whereas your typical plutocrats really don't care and would prefer that wealth come to them.

It's hard to imagine any NON-fascist far-right ideology that would see virtue in investing in 12 (or more) years of public education for everyone. All are strongly hierarchical, and people in the lower levels of hierarchical societies certainly don't need (or deserve) the knowledge people who run things from the upper do. However, unlike fascism, many conservative ideologies wouldn't support actually taking steps to limit who can have privately paid education.

And some hard-cores conservatives merely strongly oppose mandatory public funding, but expect people to continue to be free to think and do what they want with their lives. Very different from fascism.

So while fascism is extremist even among extremist Republicans, making public education system no longer mandatory, and dismantling the institutions that provide it to all, could be sold to MAGA voters, and of course any RW government that had power long enough would take at least major steps to elimination. We KNOW that last because ours has been moving our nation toward it for decades now.

[Hotler]

17. Christian dominionist trying to control us. They feel it's their devine right to rule this country.

They are our Taliban.

[TheBlackAdder]

18. Like with Medicare & Social Security -- There's a fuck ton of cash that accounts for large tax bills

.

They want to plug into it as much as possible by setting up sham internet and faith-based schools.

.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

19. It is rather ironic that a guy who amplifies every conspiracy under the sun

is writing about "dumbing down the populace."

Last month Hartman had a "plan" that would break the anti-Putin allience by urging the US to cut off our oil exports and imposing an embargo.

Putin would have loved that move.

But some here claim that 7 years working for the Russian State propaganda network means nothing?

[Bettie]

21. So, you don't think they are trying to

destroy our public schools?

[Just A Box Of Rain]

22. And who did Hartmann blame in the end? Democrats.

Being occasionally correct on some matters doesn't excuse the pervasive conspiracy theorism.

Sorry.

[Genki Hikari]

20. To all the many good points made thus far...

Let's not forget another reason that the r thugs hate public education:

They can't stand it when one penny of "their" tax dollars is spent on brown people. Or liberals. Or women. or LGBTQs.

But they especially hate tax dollars spent on brown people.

It's not a coincidence that they have been ever more determined to destroy public schools since the Brown decision.