Will President Obama be the last Democratic President: The Destruction of K-12 Education and the dumbing of America

Will President Obama be the last Democratic President: The Destruction of K-12 Education and the dumbing of America

The Tea Party movement is much in the news lately. Seems that the “liberal media” is not interested in any “liberal” news. I’ve been struck by not only the tone, but the simple mindedness of the Tea Party members. Speaking of voting (or yelling) in opposition to your own best interests... I was fortunate to talk to a group of Tea Partiers in Walnut Creek the other day, and wow, I envy them. Life is just so black and white, but silly. One of the women was yelling that we must eliminate Social Security and Medicare “it’s not part of the Constitution”. Well I guess they’re “strict Constitutionalists”, but when I asked her if she was: “Well, I guess so...” Neat. She looked about my age (over 60) and I asked if she was currently getting Social Security, and she answered yes, but that the elimination of Social Security didn’t apply to her! Wow again.

My next area I wanted to cover was health care. For a few minutes after I brought it up, the chaos was so loud I couldn’t really hear any individuals. By this time they were pretty sure I was a pinko, which is good, they would really let me have it, and there was a pretty good crowd by now. Health care is also not part of the Constitution I was told, and it was not right that the Government should force “Obamacare” on all of us. Right I said. Does anyone think health care should be a right of American citizens? Answer was a resounding yes. Hmmm. What if we had a health care system that was 1/3 the cost that it is now, would cover everyone and no one would be refused care for any reason. That sounded good to them. That’s single payer health care just like Medicare now I said. “No it isn’t, that’s a liberal health care system”. Well, it’s liberal in a social sense in that it covers everyone. “But the Government is too incompetent to provide something like that”. Well, I said, Medicare is the same thing, also VA health care is government run and both are considered well managed despite Congress tweaking it when the Republicans controlled Congress last time. An older guy who was silent through this piped up and said, “I have VA health care and they’re good doctors”. The guy got a dirty look from another woman, but I don’t think he was drinking the right tea.

It seems like the Tea Partiers are legitimately angry, but at what? I guess the Government in general, and it probably doesn’t help that there is an African-American President (he’s also ½ white). I expect that the Tea Party’s and the Republican’s opposition to Obamacare is partly due to his skin color and it doesn’t help that he’s a Democrat (maybe in reverse order).

This brings me to my worry about America. Are we becoming so conservative that rational thought has gone the way of landline phones? Have we generated people in their 20s through 40s who have been so poorly educated that they cannot really understand a concept beyond a simplistic knee jerk reaction? If so, we’re in for decades of conservative rule, because poor intellect generally equals a poor ability to think critically (re: my envy of the simple minded). I’ve seen it in my CAL students over the past 20 years. They are just as intelligent, but poorly trained to think critically.

And it seems the Republicans in Congress are just as poorly educated. They certainly can’t add and subtract. Take their “Pledge to America” revealed yesterday. I call it Pledge ON America, kinda like their previous “Contract ON America”. My reading of this tome is that they (wait for it) think that if we eliminate taxes we can eliminate the deficit. Where have I heard that before? Paul Krugman does a great job on this new “contract” in the NY Times today: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/opinion/24krugman.html?src=me&ref=general

I’ll just paraphrase some of it here. They infer that Social Security, Medicare and of course the Defense budget are off the table, so what’s left – National Park Service, National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, etc. From Krugman: “Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math. As he points out, the only way to balance the budget by 2020 [as in the Pledge], while simultaneously (a) making the Bush tax cuts permanent and (b) protecting all the programs Republicans say they won’t cut, is to completely abolish the rest of the federal government”. What a relief, I thought they might actually have a real idea this time. So, not only do the Tea Partiers not have a clue, can’t add, can’t subtract, can’t think, but their elected representatives can’t either!

But, the country, and my state of California seems to think these guys can do a much better job than the other side, even many of the so-called Democrats in California. Yesterday, 50% of the California electorate was supporting Republican Meg Whitman for our next Governator rather than Jerry Brown. Geez, (math is coming) since only about 30% of the California electorate is Republican and about 20% non-partisan like me, that means that there are some of those pesky California Democrats that are gonna vote for Meg. She has some of the same “Pledge ON America” ideas too – I guess it’ll be “Pledge ON California”. Her major talking point seems to be to fire 40,000 state workers immediately and cut the shit out of taxes right away. Holding aside for a moment that there are not that many state workers under Executive Branch control and the Democrats still control the Legislature, how can she balance the California budget that way. Oops, I forgot, eliminate government, but who will give her corporate and wealthy buddies all those tax cuts (don’t forget California is about 16 in tax rates among the states despite Republican whining). The Government gives tax cuts – can’t cut Government then.

A Republican talking head on NPR the other day (sorry don’t remember his name) stated that they think California is turning Red, at least Purple. Seems like he’s right. California is following the Tea Party lemmings off the cliff! And if our dumbed down electorate in America continually think this new conservatism is gonna save them even though it caused the economic problems by and large in the first place, then what is the hope of ever electing a Democratic President again, let alone a black man? We are reaping what we’ve sown by destroying education. And Democrats are to blame too. It was two prominent Democrats behind No Child Left Behind (or in the behind) Ted Kennedy and George Miller. If you award teachers for high test scores by their students, the students will be smarter! Right. I’ll take a student who performed mediocre on a structured test like the SAT, ACT, GRE but can think critically any day. Don’t think we’ll see many of those in the next generation, just like no Democratic Presidents.