Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Thursday, February 6, 2020

Defend public education.

Trump has a complete disdain for public education.


In his State of the Union speech he said:


“For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.”


Public education is by far the most important universal social program ever enacted and it is just as universally supported by people all over the world.


No social programs works so well.


To the extent public education anyplace is failing it is because it is being sabotaged and underfunded and funded through regressive taxes like the property tax with teachers being pressured by the right wing business community not to teach science and the truth about history.


To the extent public education is failing is the result of politicians like Trump appointing right wing nut jobs like Betsy DeVos to oversee public education finding underhanded ways of spending tax-dollars supporting private religious schools.


These right wing politicians like Trump berate public education on the one hand as they push prayers and Bible studies in place of reading, writing, math, science, history and the arts.


For over two-hundred years society has known how to educate people to be competent in reading, writing, arithmetic while nurturing an understanding of history and creating the kind of thinking skills required to advance science and technology.


For over one-hundred fifty years public education in this country has made education available to everyone- not just the wealthy few... and the obscenely wealthy few like Trump and Betsy DeVos have been opposed to the children of the working class receiving any education beyond what is required to do the jobs required in the process of exploiting us from which they have derived such tremendous wealth.


Who is responsible for failing public schools? Ironically, it is Trump and these right wing bigots and all the millionaires and billionaires who are so adamant that they not be taxed to pay for the public education of working class children so these bigots sabotage the public schools in any way they can.
It is public education that we should be able to point to as a world class system of education because it is properly funded, properly administered and properly delivered.


The viability of any universal social program depends on three key components:

How well it is funded.


How well it is administered.


Adequate delivery carried out by properly trained and dedicated staff to accomplish its goals and objectives.

Public education in this country is not adequately funded- when it is, the wealthy few opposed to public education rush in to profit from the public trough they claim to despise.


Reactionary politicians appoint over-paid administrators who have no commitment to public education in the first place other than their own selfish interests to receive high salaries for undermining the very system they are hired to oversee.


And dedicated teachers are forced to buckle under to the most reactionary and bigoted local school boards made up of people who often don’t even send their own children to public schools... the John Bircher Betsy DeVos appointed by Trump to oversee the Department of Education is the classic example of this.


How can a person who is opposed to public education be appointed to oversee public education?


Trump publicly stated his disdain for public education when he appointed Betsy De Vos to oversee its destruction and then again he stated his disdain for public education in this comment that was
disgracefully applauded with Betsy DeVos leading the cheers:


“For too long, countless American children have been trapped in failing government schools.”


Disgusting. Shameful. But very typical coming from a president who chooses to cut funding for public education as he transfers these funds for militarism and wars.


This one sentence from Trump tells us just what kind of arrogant rich fascist bastard he really is.


Anyone with such a thoroughly reactionary outlook shouldn’t be holding any elected or appointed government position, let alone being the president of the United States.