Veteran teacher Arthur Goldstein fears that Republican Senator Mitch McConnell will use his power to destroy public services in New York and other states whose revenues have been devastated by the pandemic.
He writes:
If we want to continue to get care when we’re sick, give our children education, and have police and firefighters to protect us, we’re going to need a federal bailout that devotes real money to real people, as opposed to corporations. It seems like common sense, but common sense seems to be the least common of all the senses.
In NYC, where I work, it took decades to recover from the teacher shortage that followed 1975 layoffs. Students sat in classes of 50 or more. We now know that class size is not merely an educational priority, but also a health priority. Can you imagine trying to social distance 50 students in a classroom?
Not everyone considers that worth worrying about. According to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, we may or may not get federal aid for actual working people in states and communities. Evidently, before we consider such frivolities, we need to protect businesses that compel people to work in an epidemic. Perish forbid, says McConnell, they should be held responsible when their employees get sick or die. This notwithstanding, Americans who worked their whole lives in expectation of a pension are not a priority for McConnell. This is a curious value.
I’m not at all sure why business takes priority over people. We’ve bailed out big airlines and big hotels. Evidently McConnell and his BFFs need to travel and stay somewhere, and roadside inns just won’t do. Even as tens of millions of Americans find themselves newly without jobs or health insurance, we’ve made sure Wall St. didn’t feel too much pain.
McConnell himself need not worry. Aside from whatever money he’s accrued during his Senate career, he’ll be getting a fixed pension of $139,200 a year, courtesy of US taxpayers. .I’ve yet to hear him say that Congressional pensions ought to be cut or rescinded, despite massive red ink in the federal budget. So why, then, is he so hard on states having trouble meeting their obligations?
The answer, of course, is that these states are blue states. The GOP Senate appears to believe states that didn’t vote for them don’t deserve to be helped. Therefore it’s okay for them to go bankrupt. Then they won’t have to bother with unimportant things like paying pensions or providing health service for unimportant people who don’t add value to Wall St. We’re talking about, teachers, cops, firefighters, nurses, among others who seem to matter not at all to McConnell.
But if Congress refuses to help states, it will harm ALL states, not just blue states. It will even hurt Kentucky, McConnell’s home state. Teachers, police, fire fighters, all public sector workers will be harmed.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
People need to wake up to the fact that corporate capitalism was in the beginning, is now, and always will be the enemy of democratic nations wherever they arise. This is the root of the evil we faced at the founding of the United States and is the enemy we face today.
McConnell is just one of the host of paid assassins hired to do exactly what he is doing to destroy the public sphere, the social safety net, and the entire government by and for the people.
Republicans are politicizing aid to blue states. Has any blue administration ever refused to help Florida after it has been hit by a hurricane or any red state hit by a tornado? By law state governments are not allowed to declare bankruptcy. If the current administration wants to declare war on blue states, maybe the residents should withhold paying federal income tax until their state gets coronavirus relief money.https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/apr/24/can-states-file-bankruptcy-should-they-what-you-ne/
an interesting time when every day we see more clearly how the red and blue are philosophically divided — not so much the people inside the states, but the leaders they vote into office
This is so discouraging that we have one political party (and there are only 2 major parties in this country) that is totally devoted to the destruction and decimation of the social safety net, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, food stamps, CHIPS, unemployment insurance, family leave, a minimum wage, etc. The GOP stands in the way of any progressive legislation, even the modest proposals of the Democratic establishment, never mind the ideas of the more progressive wing of the Democratic party. In an ideal world, the GOP thugs would be voted out of office for a very long time. Instead we are faced with the possibility, that Trump could be re-eleceted and Mitch McConnell could maintain control of the senate. Ugh!
Sadly, the Democrats often go along with horrible regressive legislation. Compromise is different from acquiescence.
I think Trump is trying to retaliate against New York particularly. It had the nerve to bring him to court to gain access to Trump’s tax returns.
Trump wants to harm all states led by Democrats
Joe J,
If you figure out why people vote for the politicians who want to privatize social security, eliminate public health insurance and shred the social safety net, let me know. Many of those who vote for people like McConnell and Trump depend on that safety net.
The Right will use the enormous deficits created by their tax cuts for the wealthy and by the pandemic to argue for extreme cuts in social welfare benefits. It disturbs the Turtle that money that could be going to pay for heliports and hunting lodges for fat cats is being spent on lunches for poor kids and retirement income for seniors. He’s going to do everything in his power to reverse that.
Moscow Mitch and other servants of the rapacious oligarchs will keep pushing their toy (pretend Democracy) until it breaks into outright rebellion and revolution. This is what history teaches. All I can say is, Viva la revolución.
I fail to understand why the people of Kentucky vote for #MoscowMitch when he demands cuts to healthcare, education and all the services on which they rely
Many of us in KY are dumb. Combined with ignorance, and Trump’s love of the “uneducated” and playing to our fears and bigotry (we were a slave state) and, voila, you have McConnell’s reelection time and time again. Too few of us see through the scam of the Republican party in KY.
Randy,
I just don’t understand how people who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs vote repeatedly for people like McConnell, who want to take it all away. I know that Trump “loves the uneducated.” They elected him.
“Can you imagine trying to social distance 50 students in a classroom?”
When building public schools and classrooms, average class sizes are taken into account.
“In the United States, the typical public primary school classroom has 23.6 students, more than four more students than the average private primary school classroom (19.4 students.” – this was published in 2009 and most public schools are much older than that and are way overdue to be replaced like most of the public infrastructure in this country.
Imagine 50 students crammed in a room designed for 20 to 25 students.
For instance, I taught in classrooms designed for less than 25 students but they had 34 or more. The walking space between rows of desks was so narrow, you couldn’t walk normally but had to walk sideways and sometimes still had to squeeze between two desks. The HVAC systems were also designed for 20 to 25 students in a room so the rooms were always warm or too cold, and the was air stale because the system could not refresh the air like it was supposed to. That stale air sometimes made me and my students drowsy.
I frequently get stuck teaching in substandard classrooms. My least favorite are the ones in which students end up virtually sitting on one another’s laps. Still, the worst classroom I’ve ever had is my dining room, from where I teach now. Cuomo and Gates would love to take this crisis and make it permanent. “Remote learning” is better than nothing, but it’s a pale echo of the real thing.
We can’t allow that. WE have to figure out how to take advantage of this crisis to lower class sizes.
We have to figure out how to stop the autocratic billionaires that want to turn the United States into a virtual kleptocracy where everyone is trapped at home and interacts only on-line while Amazon and other sites deliver all of our orders until we can’t pay any more and then we are left to die isolated, inside the prisons that were once our homes, or become homeless if the billionaires and banks can’t wait to get rid of us and take the property back sooner.
Even people that own their homes and no longer have a mortgage will lose their homes once they cannot pay the property tax any longer.
The problem with those “averages” is that it takes into account every certified teacher in the building, including administration, librarians, counselors, etc., even if they don’t teach classes.
Utah says our “average” classes sizes are about 24. My classes are 36-40. Averages make NO sense.
It’s also a pension raid. They will predict and overstate future budget deficits based on the current economic downturn to force austerity measures on frightened states, cities, and school districts. Remember when Bloomberg and the Billionaire Boys wanted to fire a full half of the teachers? They tried to convince everyone they needed to do it to get rid of the bad apples — with a cattle birthing algorithm and Michelle Rhee’s broom. Now, they will try to get rid of half the teachers and replace them with online education. Because there is never ever ever going to be any revenue ever ever again, and philanthropists can’t afford to pay taxes! The younger teachers they lay off will stop adding to the pension funds that support the retirements of older teachers. Retirement fund privatization to the rescue! The investment bankers get the gold mine, and we get the shaft.