Pennsylvania blogger Yinzercation reviews the state budget and notes that the legislators are fine with cutting the arts, kindergarten, libraries, books, supplies, and teachers, but they won’t touch the numerous tax breaks available to corporate interests.
This is a good post because it not only bemoans the loss of essential services in schools but lays out specific budget items favoring corporate interests that could be used to provide good education.
Clearly the legislators are doing exactly what they want to do: Cutting schools to the bone, wrecking public education, while assuring that those who fatten their campaign coffers make money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Some school districts in NC give teacher $50 for supplies for the entire year!
BOTTOM LINE
They spend all of the money on tests and tests and more tests…
One day, I hope all the residents (those who remain in Pennsylvania) will be able to afford what will then have become a privatized water system as a result of all the failed fracking . . . .
What, you don’t like lighting a good cigar off your tap water???
It is a good thing that I don’t depend on a private firm for electrical service or the gas I use to heat my home in winter.
I rely on a good ol electric cooperative and my costs per kilowatt hour are less than those that have to use a for profit company-Ameren. And we have less outages that last far less time than Ameren’s. Let’s see, back in the 30’s the government jump started rural electricity when the predecessors to Ameren refused because it wasn’t profitable. Without federal government help rural America wouldn’t have been “electrified” for many years after it did. Made a huge difference in the lives of all country folk.
Yes, federal government spending can have a huge effect on the lives of individuals. But there is no will to do anything of the sort now. Big bad gubmint ya know!
The coop concept is that the users are the owners and is run by a democratically board made up of members. Any extra operating expenses are refunded at the end of the fiscal year in proportion to all’s usage. How socialistic is that. Whatcha think about them facts TE & HU?
No, one doesn’t have to buy in, it’s part of getting the service. The feds helped finance the original installations back in the thirties but then turned it all over to each electrical coop to run after it was up and running (I don’t know the particulars like if the coop had to pay back the feds or if it was just one of those projects that the federal government decided would be a good investment like the interstate highway system in the 50s and 60s). I guarantee that the service is way better and cheaper than any for profit electrical company.
Now that seems to me a useful way government can help people to run their own lives. I wish it could be done for schools too that way.
HU,
Glad to see your still here. I thought you had gotten tossed on another thread. I never did figure that one out as posts had been deleted just about the time I got on the thread.
Duane
I’m still here, and still learning. The on line newspaper of my city just reported that the school district is “struggling” but didn’t say with what. A comment on the story said he thought it was with legacy pension costs, and that that was what was squeezing the budget. It will be interesting to see what happens. A new superintendent (just starting her second year) abruptly resigned. She must have discovered something. As Artie something used to say on Laugh In, “Verrrrry Interesting.”
NY’s Gov. Cuomo has led the charge to bleed public schools and the once great SUNY system, yet now wants to establish tax-free business enterprise zones at the state’s college campuses. “Take that,” you debt-ridden seekers of education!
Cuomo is a frog faced reptilian who could care less about the average working person here in NY State. He should be hounding the Feds to get more of our federal tax dollars back to NY State rather than pit taxpayers against civil servants.
Mario Cuomo has nothing to celebrate on Father’s Day with regard to his defective son Andrew.
It’s the same story in Louisiana: The corporate tax breaks are phenomenal. Millions upon millions of dollars of revenue squandered on political favors.
The money can be wherever the privatizers want it to be.
In response to the recent charter school audit, one of the reasosn John White gave for not conducting regular site visit to the charter schools was “budget constraints.” Yet this is the same overpaid man who padded LDOE with a surplus from consistently overbidding on contracts.
Obviously John White is a lying sack of caca!
this is not a coincedence folks. the illusions created to crash all our systems with our money while we are asleep. PA, NY, republican, democrat…. all on the same page.
wake up people. we can say no more. throw all the bums out.
Great article which shows how misguided and corrupt the whole situation is there. You must blame the citizens for this as they voted in the idiots who are ripping them off. Amerika is Excellent. Excellent in self delusion and self destruction.