Watch out Mississippi here we come…

I always say that when you race to the bottom, you have to make sure your not the first one to get there. On election day 2010, we started our race. Now the Mississippi’s and Alabama’s better watch out. The war on public education has begun!

Soon to be Senate Leader Scott Fitzgerald, while throwing the platform of local control out the window, is saying that Wisconsin teachers will have to take mandatory furlough(pay cut) days.

The republicans are nothing if not ambitious. They are not stopping at destroying public education on the high school level, they have the

The UW system in their sites also!

Among other things, that means education committee chairs will go to Republicans — opening the door for Rep. Steve Nass of Whitewater to again be chairman of the Assembly Colleges and Universities Committee. And Nass, who rarely misses an opportunity to bash the UW System, is interested in regaining that title.

It will be interesting to see if Republican leaders go with a chair they know will be contentious or appoint leadership that is more supportive of the UW System.

If Nass regains that seat, his spokesman, Mike Mikalsen, told the Cap Times on Election Day that his boss would push for capping tuition hikes while also reducing wages for those who work in the UW System.

“A lot of people get paid big bucks, and they are never in the classrooms,” Mikalsen said. “Unfortunately, fee increases go to paying for these people. That’s why middle-class families are being squeezed out of the university system.”

Such statements are ill-informed, says Giroux.

“I’d say, ‘Look at the facts,’” says Giroux. “Our administrative expenses in this public university system are extraordinarily low when compared to any comparable system. So when people say they want to help us look for ways to cut, we’re willing to look but let’s start with a fair and objective examination of the facts.”

Where is the “tea party” now? Thomas Jefferson made a point to put on his tombstone that he was the Founder of the University of Virginia. No where on there does it say he was the third president of the United States.

“I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:393

A bill for the more general diffusion of learning… proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square;… to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive at the public expense a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an University where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition of wealth and birth for public trusts.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:399

We will see if the “tea partiers” loyalties lie with the founders of Koch Industries or the Founders of our country! I think we all know the answer.

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