Inevitable
At some point in the very near future, people of good conscience are going to have to make the commitment to fill up all the jails.
Kids Filled Birmingham Jails In 1963
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Oh, and here’s The Nation‘s guide to the many resistance movements springing up across this holy land.
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A New School!
So, here’s my take on education in this holy land in the wake of the Betsy DeVos slapstick. More and more in the last few decades, those in the know, the power elite, people with scads o’dough, have been chomping at the bit to establish two separate school systems herein. They are:
- A private, exclusive, excellent system for those who can afford it — and even those who almost can’t afford can be assisted through vouchers, etc.
- The traditional public system, to be funded with whatever coins can be found underneath the cushions, for all the losers.
President Gag and his utterly unqualified, unknowledgeable Sec’y of Educ. may be today’s poster children for this state of affairs, but don’t kid yourself, the Dems have been almost as gung-ho for this classist bushwa. Bill and Hillary Clinton both loved the idea of charter schools. Barack Obama, too, through his Sec’y of Educ., Arne Duncan, championed the two-tier system.
Congratulations On Your New Purchase Of The Nation’s Schools
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Why do they want this? Simple. The big cities need middle- and upper-middle-class residents paying healthy property tax rates. The poor are flocking to the suburbs these days and mayors like Rahm Emanuel, Bill DeBlasio, Eric Garcetti, and Joe Hogsett are thrilled about it. Let the mayors of Calumet City, Bayonne, Palmdale, and Speedway – who carry far less clout in Washington — worry about the poor. Big city bosses want “desirable” residents (read: moneyed). Perhaps the top draw for people of comfortable means is good schools. And good schools largely means those not populated by all those troublesome kids with holes in their pants.
It always comes down to dough, doesn’t it?
Separate but equal — while never, ever being equal but always, always separate — now entails a little bit more than it did in, say, 1954.
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Pete
Hey, I’m in: I signed up to support South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg for Democratic National Committee chair.
Getting past the fact that anyone would be better than the execrable Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Buttigieg is the openly gay, young, Midwesterner the party needs at its helm. He covers all the party’s necessary bases right now: he’s a minority, he’s not a Clintonista, he represents Rust Belt victims of the new economy, etc.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Keith Ellison as well. The Minnesota congressguy was one of Bernie Sander’s earliest backers and I wouldn’t in the least be unhappy to see him run the show. But Buttigieg is the slightly more perfect sharp stick to cram up the noses of the Republicans who’ve been kow-towing to (and buffaloing) the disaffected white lower-middle classes for too long.
Ellison (L) & Buttigieg
BTW: As far as I can tell, the pronunciation of Buttigieg’s name is BUTT-ih-jidge.
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Just Art
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An artist I was interviewing for a story once told me, “Art is the useless object.”
If you don’t read that line too literally, you’ll get it.
Anyway, this is one of Georgie O’Keeffe’s many useless objects. It’s called “Red Hills with the Pedernal,” (1936, oil on linen).
Art. That’s all.
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