Governor Scott of Florida
Nothing new…the Republicans have been attacking public education for decades
Back in the late 80’s I was a college professor teaching languages; I had no tenure and of course no benefits. The job didn’t pay much but I managed to feed my family. Then came Governor Bob Martinez from Tampa and he set out to alter and destroy all public education in Florida. The most significant thing he did and one that affected me was to increase class sizes. My beginner courses were always full but when you got to intermediary, advanced or Portuguese Literature the numbers thinned out. What the college had been doing was averaging out the number of students divided into all my classes.
Governor Martinez new class size rule meant that I only had two classes and that was not enough earnings to feed sparrows. That is why I left teaching.
Curiously, back at the time that the Florida Lottery was being proposed; it was sold to Floridians as a means of revenues that would ENHANCE the public education budget….not replace it…ENHANCE it. Since then, revenues from the lottery have contributed billions of dollars to public education but at the same time something curious has happened…the original budget the state had was replaced entirely by the lottery and it was not kept as part of the expenditures. Now the state of Florida had more funds to spend on other things.
Enter Governor Rick Scott and observe carefully what he is doing: He is cutting 1.7 billion dollars in the education budget. What the fuck? Isn’t that money proceeds from the Florida Lottery? The most egregious part is that Governor Scott is then turning around and giving business and the super rich 1.7 billion dollars; coincidence? So he is taking money from the Florida Lottery proceeds and giving it to the rich; that is what it amounts to.
Stop right there….analyze why Republicans want to destroy public education. Jeb Bush before Scott tried and tried to get this education voucher crap through. He didn’t succeed…but we all saw where he was going with it. It is simply this: Republicans think that education is a privilege and not a right and that public education is a form of SOCIALISM that has to be eliminated. In the process of decimating public education they are also killing two birds with one stone…the end result is an ignorant, illiterate population that is gullible and can be easily misled and governed.
THIS ATTACK ON EDUCATION IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A WELFARE STATE FOR THE VERY RICH AND THE CORPORATIONS…THE WORST KIND OF SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL RE-ENGINEERING THERE IS.
PHOTO SOURCE: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/Rick_Scott_official_portrait.jpg
