Sept. 29, 2002 - 21:44 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

In It

Crunch on education started long before the current - what the heck is the euphemism now ? - recession - that it ? I have known a professor at a university who most every year tells me what has been cut away from his institution. I am acquainted with several school teachers who say the same. Every year less and less will the taxpayers allow to go to education. What ? They didn't learn anything in school and now they are making sure that those who come later won't have much of an opportunity to learn more or even as much as they did ?

An article in the Rocky Mountain News, Sunday, September 29 by Abby Goodnough of The New York Times - Titled, "Teachers learn economics lesson." Seems to bring to light that bean counter types have been scrinching on school supplies up to and including books.

My golly I hit Junior High School in 1933 four years after the big stock market crash, people were looking for work, some going hungry, yet we were given appropriate supplies to do what was needed. Frivolous waste was of course discouraged.

Back then teachers were underpaid and overworked, but the taxpayers allowed enough money to furnish supplies to the kids.

Mentioned in the article is a school teacher in the Bronx who is spending roughly five per cent of her total earnings on school supplies for her classes. According to this article that is a widespread practise in our country.

Previously teachers could only deduct work-related expenses that exceeded two percent of their adjusted gross income and then only if they filed itemized tax returns.

In March of this year it says that President Bush signed into law a measure that allows teachers in both public and private schools a federal tax deduction of up to $250 annually for classroom expenses, the article says then, "- perhaps the bluntest acknowledgment yet that such spending has become a job requirement.

The teacher mentioned in the article has been teaching for two years and has spent about $4,000 of her own money on books and supplies for her classroom.

Can I make a guess about something that might have a bearing on this skinflint attitude toward teachers (and schools) ? We keep seeing articles about the Graying Of America. Could it be that the per cent of people whose kids are already out of schools is greater now than ever before. Do they have the attitude, "My kids are through school and darn if I will vote to support more taxes for schools ?" And then more bean counting, each captain at the helm of a school board is bound and determined that his school system will do more for less money.

Shooting fish in a rain barrel, kids can't vote and teachers can't out vote the public, besides the teachers see the great need to teach, to teach effectively and so sacrifice some their money to do the needed things.

In other news from Mike Allen of The Washington Post remarks, "Speaking in the marble grandeur of the United Nations earlier this month, President Bush reminded the hushed diplomats that Saddam Hussein tried to assassinate "a former American president"in 1993. On Thursday night Mr. Bush at a Republican fund raising reception in Houston, Bush dropped the formality and called Hussein "a guy that tried to kill my dad." "The raw comment about his father, however, was seen on Capitol hill as evidence that the administration's march toward war with Iraq is motivated at least partly by a family grudge."

Then Mike Allen further on says, "Bush's bluntness produced a major headache for the White House last week, and soured congressional relations. Democrats castigated Bush for his unscripted -- but according to aides heartfelt -- addition to his speech in Trenton, N.J., when he accused the Democratic-controlled Senate of being "not interested in the security of the American people."

"Every indication is that Bush meant what he said. Senior aides said he has no plans to apologize, and the Republican National Committee e-mailed the controversial quotation to more than 2 million party supporters two hours after Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle complained."

Mike Allen says that, "Bush had used the identical phrase earlier this month in Louisville, Kentucky, also while urging the Senate to support his version of a homeland security bill."

Great Balls of fire, is this going to be a High Noon Shoot out between the Prez and the Senate ? Now is that the way to persuade the Senate to go his way ? I would say not, seems to me that he is trying the Senate without legal standing to do so on his part.

Why is it that I think of two words now ? Snide and snotty they seem to me to apply. A personal war against any Democratic group seems to me to be counter productive to say the least.

And Homeland Security appears to me to be an attempt to bring all governmental departments under that aegis and work them how many hours the biggies think they need them to, pay them what they want to and leave continued employment of them at the discretion of Homeland Security Poobahs.

Damn if I could be persuaded to work under those conditions. Looks like to me that between the Republicans and the corporations the working man will be gleaning the corners of the corporate-governmental fields. And maybe that consortium is trying to build fields without corners, in the round that is.

I wonder just how far back the working persons security will be taken away. The corporation I worked for had been governmentally split and then sold part of itself to another corporation from the one I began to work for. Thank God I retired. Since then bits and pieces of that entity have been sold off here and there. Wages and working conditions are slowly being slashed away. The splitting apart and piecemeal selling of these outfits decreases the effectiveness of unions trying to get a square deal for working folk.

Of course it seems to me that the great bulk of money devoted to politics are coming from corporations and going to Republican Politicians. Whether revealed or not, is my guess.

My opinions, only my opinions so help me God. But it seems to me that we have a president with a mouth so big he can simultaneously put both feet In It . . . . . . . . . .

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