It was reported in several California news sources and an Arizona paper that over 26,000 teachers will be or have received pink slips due to the budget crisis now facing Arnie’s California. Some things are so predicable that the lunacy in what is going on in this country has become more and more comical by the moment.
While Arnie puffs on his hand wrapped Cubans, more threats are being issued which involve cuts in needed public service sector jobs in order to balance the out of control California budget. That’s where Arnie’s red pen apparently stopped in his quest to eliminate governmental waste during this “crisis.”
Of course, Arnie assumed office in the wake of that other California governor known for excess in favor of his corporate backers, Gray Davis. It seems Arnie’s “corporate” connections run even deeper and wider than Mr. Davis’s.
As a multi-millionaire several times over, married also to an heiress it would stand to reason that the first act Mr. Schwarzenegger could undertake during this touted budget crisis was to reduce the salaries and benefits packages of all high level governmental officials as a demonstration of solidarity with the citizens who are hurting, losing their homes and yet still paying taxes toward their massive salaries and benefits packages?
Mr. Schwarzenegger temporarily could at least forego his own governmental salary and still have adequate enough resources in order to continue to provide for the homes in Los Angeles and also Sacramento, and his children’s private educations on the interest from his investments alone no doubt. (Although I’m sure some of them have taken a beating during this manipulated Wall Street crisis).
In the neocon mindset, all education in this country should be privatized.
This, however, was not the founder’s beliefs, especially not Mr. Jefferson, the president which the neocons love to quote when it is convenient, but ignore in many respects in their positions.
In fact, Mr. Jefferson believed that every child in this country should have access to at least an education of four years minimum and hopefully to the sixth grade level with the fundamentals of reading and math.
He did not believe in public funding of further education beyond that point with the exception of those who proved intellectually gifted, but did believe it was the duty of this country to provide those basic tools to America’s children no matter what the income level of the parent and at the state, not federal level.
The neocons it appears wish to remove this funding not simply at the federal level (which is NOT one of the federal government’s proscribed duties and powers), but also privatize education on the state level thus placing out of reach this basic education for America’s underprivileged.
In the past the church’s also had a part in providing those educations, but since the misconstruction of Jefferson’s letter on the separation of church and state, the ACLU has actually done more harm than helped the cause for both the quality and availability of education for many in this country. So agendas have robbed America’s children on both sides of the aisle.
Does Mr. Schwarzenegger realize that those state welfare recipients are also paying taxes on their purchases, rent and transportation while his neocon business partners are outsourcing many California’s jobs, not simply landscapers and babysitters, to the illegal population sending who instead send a great deal of their monies “back home?”
Maybe he should send out a plea to his friends in the entertainment field and hold a benefit for those teachers who he has sacrificed first before taking any other cost reducing measures in order to balance the out of control budgets he has colluded with and prepared by the state’s assembly these last few years while the real estate boom was so hot in California which also benefited the state coffers in added property tax revenue considerably but apparently was spent as fast as it was coming in.
That’s the least this out of work actor and multi-millionaire could do in order to address the state’s shortfalls. Or donate the sums from the sales of “The Terminator,” CDs and product licenses to the Teacher’s Benevolent Fund.
Before the California citizens say, “Hasta la Vista, Baby.”
Here’s a link to the bare bones report in the local Arizona papers:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/14/20090314teachers-ON.html
