Letters to the Editor
Rambling Rose 22
Published Letters: 757 Editor's Choice: 6
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And There Ya Have It...
[Read the article: What's the Obama campaign's position on superdelegates?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]because the Obama folks say it, it just is.
Obama is not necessarily the best choice for the party this November. After the asks McCain, as he has done for the 1000th time during the Democratic primary, how he voted on Iraq and why, then what? "is that all there is? Then let's keep dancing..."
Obama thinks his "wasn't for it before anybody else in the world wasn't for it" position is the big contrast for November, and that Hillary Clinton can't contrast herself with McCain on Iraq. YES WE CAN. Clinton is clear on a responsible timeline for withdrawal, and McCain is clear he could stay for a hundred years!
The backfire for Obama this November is that he is so strident about this "I was against it before you became against it," is that he'll come off like the anti-war liberal leftists that the center has rejected time and again.
Hillary Clinton is best suited for governing the party; Obama should run as DNC Chairman since recruiting young people and new voters to the party seems to be their mantra.
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Ohio Is A Good Example
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I, too, mourn the notion that our country is just rushing into ignorance at an alarming rate. What do you expect when Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country have declared war on public education for the last 20 years?
In Ohio alone, the GOP-controlled state, incuding when now U.S. Senator George Voinovich was Governor for two terms, thumbed their noses at the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling (twice!) that the state's Constitution required the state legislature to fund and provide a fair and equitable education for all of Ohio's children - not just those in economically advantaged, property tax wealthy districts - and to get the funding off the backs of the local property taxes. The state had to be sued by Ohio's school districts to get those rulings. Instead of complying, the GOP-controlled state appealed and dragged it's feet for as long as it took to graduate an entire class of kids from kindergarten through 12th grade! Ohio is but one example around the state.
Our leaders send very strong signals that education is not important, opting instead to make it a roulette wheel; i.e., where your parents end up living determines your ability to get a good education.
Another GOP disaster, charter schools and vouchers and choice, is one of the cruelist jokes of the last 20 years. Designed to keep poor minority kids in the urban areas, and stop flight to the burbs, charter schools are performing badly and the promised pay-offs are non-existent. Vouchers in Ohio's experimental program under Voinovich spent millions on taxi rides for Cleveland school kids. Choice is a straw dog argument. Everyone cannot go to the school they want to go too. Lotteries to give away vouchers is hardly a choice and hardly a "fair and equitable education" solution.
In Ohio, parents and others bitch (rightly so) about having to keep passing property tax levies to keep their schools afloat, and all the while they keep voting for the same GOP jerks that have been on a mission to destroy their kids' educational opportunities. Isn't this the definition of insanity? Yet, every major election cycle for the last 20 years, these voters will tell you that education was their number one priority issue! Oh yeah, we could see that.
Schools in Ohio were deplorable. We've all heard or read about the schools in the Applachian part of the state where books touted "...some day we hope to put a man on the moon." And children had to walk downtown to a restaurant each day, rain, snow, sleet, or shine, to eat lunch. And kids that sat in classrooms with coats on and umbrellas up. And during all this, the GOP-controlled state found $11 million to give as a grant to the Jacobs family (under Voinovich again) so they could satisfy the cost overruns on their new baseball field in Cleveland, along with other millions in interest-free loans. Jacobs doesn't own the Indians anymore, having sold out, made his money, and moved on. Too bad our kids haven't moved as far along as he probably has!
For the record, Ohio made a major change in it's statewide offices in 2006 (Governor, Treasurer, Attorney General, and Secretary of State, and U.S. Senator), and some Ohio House seats. But it will be difficult to undo decades of damage, neglect, and genuine procrastination of providing for the schools. Yes, some school districts are building new schools now. But little remains changed with respect to funding the schools so they can provide state-of-the-art educations.
We are a dumber state now, and a dumber country. Those who want more and expect more are a minority. And at the heart of Ohio's problems have been the right-wing ideologues with their Christian chatter and holier-than-thou gun rights laws and defense of marriage acts. God, guns, and gays - that just about sums up the big problems for the last 20 years in Ohio, folks.
I think the ship can be righted, but at what cost? And is the motivation there from the American people to demand a better culture, and thereby a better country? I detest the crass, commercial, corporate greed culture that is America today. Gone is the pride in actually making anything. Gone is the pride in building a middle class that gives the next generation something to look forward to or beyond. Gone is the real value of education for it's own sake.
We shall not be destroyed from without by any terrorist group with hate-filled hearts. We shall be destroyed by our own hands - empty hands and empty heads.