Diff'rent Strokes

Bama gave another stump speech in Austin yesterday and again spent the majority of his time on education. This is the sort of topic Dems love to trot out for election cycles – it’s a bread and butter issue for them because the volume of their good intentions is rivaled only by their track record of spectacular failure. Concurrent with the campaigning from Bama is the big House vote to approve $26 Billion in emergency dollars to save “Hundreds of thousands” of teacher’s jobs. Bama is very specific about this: this money will prevent hundreds of thousands of teachers from being fired before the new school year. He couldn’t be any more clear. And yet it’s a bunch of BS. Some portion of $10 Billion will go to the general funds of the states with the soft mandate that it should be used to plug holes in education spending. The obvious problem is that states make state budgets, not the US Congress, so if there are budget holes then the states have irresponsibly appropriated their own funding. The more likely scenario is that this money will get used for any number of pet projects within states that invariably have nothing to do with education.

Oh wait, what about the other $16 Billion? No surprise, the majority of this spending will go to plug other holes in state budgets. We actually have 2 RINO’s to blame – those “Republican” senators from Maine are always messing things up. This time they sold their votes for $70 million to plug a hole in Medicaid spending, so naturally if they got it every other state wanted it, too. Where the hell is the leadership in that body?

Real Republicans have opposed all these spending blitzes on the grounds that enough is enough – pay for it like you said you would! What happened to “Pay-Go?” Did anyone believe a Democrat could really stick to paying for anything? Democrats are saying they have paid for this by “Curbing corporate tax loopholes” and also with the expected reduction in foodstamp usage, starting in 2014, because the economy will be so great by then. Wait a minute – 2014?? Tax loopholes??? How can you pay for something today with money from the future? And why didn’t you close those loopholes 18 months ago, the first chance you got after Bama took the throne? This reminds me of that Popeye character who’d say, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” (Just searched online – Wimpy’s famous line is a well-established tool for illustrating just this sort of fiscal dishonesty.)

Because they’re bullshitting America, that’s why. They haven’t paid one dime for this, and they never intend to. They don’t feel the need to pay for anything as long as they control the press and the people who run it are unionized.

The bottom line is that there’s absolutely no justification for Bama’s outrageous claims to save jobs and there’s no actual money to pay for this scam. It’s a political stunt and a small bailout for states who follow the federal paradigm and spend what they don’t have because they figure – correctly – that Democrats will always come around to hand out cash as long as they can make a campaign stop out of it. This teachers-jobs crisis is a total election stunt to try to save what should obviously be a lost cause.

Now on to the speech itself. Remember just 10 days ago when Bama was talking to the Urban League and he told them that he doesn’t only talk about parenting to “black folks?” Well, he talked about education for 20 minutes and never said a single word about parents to these “white folks.” What’s more, his message to the Urban League seemed to place College as this lofty aspiration, an almost unreachable thing, and his primary focus was just getting “black folks” kids though high school or even just grade school. Well, no such problems in Austin – he never mentions high school. This speech was all about college. I think his message is pretty clear – he expects a lot less of “black folks” kids, and that’s too bad, but that’s the Democrat Party today – quietly as racist as they ever were, regardless of who the President is.

And it occurs to me that "Race to the Top" can never work – with its rigorous application process and merit requirements – as long as Democrats are all too eager to undercut the program by throwing cash at every school where a teacher’s job may be on the line. Shouldn’t this be obvious? Does anyone in Washington ever think before they act? It’s all a scam!