Posted on 08/30/2006 7:06:57 AM PDT by Jack Wilson
A modest plan for saving the country. Thanks in advance for the applause
It's the best part of summer, the long lovely passage into fall. A procession of lazy golden days that my sandy-haired, gap-toothed little girl has been painting, small abstract masterpieces in tempera and crayon and glitter, reminiscent of Franz Kline or Willem de Kooning (his early glitter period). She put a sign out front, "Art for Sale," and charged 25 cents per painting. Cheap at the price. A teacher gave her this freedom to sit unselfconsciously and put paint on paper. A gentle 6-foot-8 guy named Matt who taught art at her preschool. Her swimming teachers gave her freedom from fear of water. So much that has made this summer a pleasure for her I trace to specific teachers, and so it's painful to hear about public education sinking all around us.
A high school math class of 42! Everybody knows you can't teach math to 42 kids at once, kids doped up on sugar and soda, sleepy kids, Hmong kids, African-American kids who think scholarship is white bread. The classroom smells bad because the custodial staff has been cut back. The teacher is shelling out $900 a month for health insurance, one-third of his take-home. Meanwhile, he must whip his pupils into shape to pass the federal No Child Left Untested program. This is insanity, the legacy of Republicans and their tax-cutting and their hostility to secular institutions. p>
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
(Registration may be required, but worth reading to get an idea of just how sick mainstream liberalism has become)
Why is it that libs always cry for the government to do more? Maybe Garrison, who although not Bill Gates rich but certainly not a pauper, should do something himself. Start raising money and build your own school and limit class sizes and pay your own teachers. We spend billions on edcuation in this country. The problems with public education are not attributable to a lack of funding.
Could you please post the sentence or paragraph in which murder is called for? I don't want to register.
The teachers I know have the best healthcare plans around.
I should have excerpted it differently. The meat of this story comes later. Keillor suggests cutting off health care for Republicans. This is one nasty hatemonger.
Many people shell out a lot more than one-third of their take-home on taxes - more like three-quarters when all hidden taxes are taken into account.
Annual interest on the national debt now exceeds all government welfare programs combined. We'll be in Iraq for years to come. Hard choices need to be made, and given the situation we're in, I think we must bite the bullet and say no more health care for card-carrying Republicans. It just doesn't make sense to invest in longevity for people who don't believe in the future. Let them try faith-based medicine, let them pray for their arteries to be reamed and their hips to be restored, and leave science to the rest of us.
Cutting out health care to one-third of the population--the folks with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers, who still believe the man is doing a heckuva job--will save enough money to pay off the national debt, not a bad legacy for Republicans. As Scrooge said, let them die and reduce the surplus population. In return, we can offer them a reduction in the estate tax.
What the hell? Has no one heard of working through college? If Garrison Keillor is even middle class, he probably could have helped them avoid that if he wanted to. I'm working on a third college degree and I have no debt because of my education and never have.
Too much Mournful Oatmeal.
What the hell is the constant whining about health care? I've been paying for my own health insurance for several years now. I barely use it. Is everyone sick? Does everyone have an incurable disease? Why the hell is there the constant whining about health care? I have not been to a doctor in years.
Where are the books going? Maybe someone who cares about reading them could buy the ones they get rid of? Libraries also just discard books after a while. Some enterprising kids could take them home with them. If they like the books that are being discarded, they could just gather them from the refuse pile and take them home and have a private library for themselves and friends. Nah, can't have that. We need to whine. How many books does Keillor have? He could open up his private library for the kids if he cared so damn much.
Send Ann Coulter after this comentator.
As goofy as it sounds, I recently heard or read that the wonderful junior Senator from Taxachusetts, yes, none other than one John F'n sKerry, was to give a speech earlier this month in which he proposed that the Congress pass legislation that would allow ordinary folk to buy into the federal health care insurance plan. I would buy into it if I could get the same rates as the congresscritters do. I can think of no reason that wouldn't be a good idea were it to come to pass.
AND TO THINK MANY PEOPLE AND BUSINESSES SUPPORT THE PAPER THAT PRINTS SUCH HATE. EVEN THIS SITE SHOULDN'T
POST IT.
Actually this is not a bad idea, of course there's no way to tell if someone is or isn't a Republican if they're not registered, so we should just end all government funded healthcare.
I am an avid and long time reader of the Chicago Tribune and in balance, its commentary is pretty good. I believe they will get a lot of mail on this one.
Absolutely. If I could be sure that I would not have a catastrophic accident or something similar, I'd be one of those "43 million" uninsured by choice.
Here in Arizona, a typical elementary class is funded by a QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS. Now the teacher makes maybe thirty or forty, and I tried to estimate the cost borne by that classroom for principal, staff, electricity, water, etc., (they get the buildings for free), and I can't come up with any more than about $75K per class. So money isn't the problem. They need to spend the money we already gave them on teaching (and give back about 40-50% of that besides).
Charter schools are really getting the shaft. They get less funding per student than regular schools, even though in their case, it has to pay for the buildings.
A retired teacher her in Las Vegas (and I know she has not hit 60 yet!) was carrying on about NCLB and Bush and how they have to teach to the test now and she couldn't teach what she used to teach anymore - you see, that was one of the reasons for her retiring!
I asked her what was the teaching she used to do.
Life skills - how to use a check book.
I was dumbfounded. I am 58 years old and I can't remember someone teaching me how to use a checkbook. Maybe my parents? Maybe someone at a bank? Maybe I figured it out myself?
I can definitely tell you it was not a teacher at a school that I attended!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.