Word Find: Locate the 'Profanity'

Sentinel commenting software's not allowing this pretty damn generic comment, on the basis of 'profanity'. Whu?

I'm enthusiastically in support of the OWS movement's presence in Orlando. Good on those making that happen.The discussions being had in these circles are important ones, underserved by mainstream political media.

http://tinyurl.com/OWS-Eugene

http://tinyurl.com/OWS-jobs-for-all

For my money, these are the right conversations to be having.

Mike Thomas, on Grayson's "peeling Crotty's thin skin off ever so slowly, and then enjoying his liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti"

Just read Mike Thomas' July 7 Sentinel column,

"A Crotty congressional run would unleash pit bull Grayson"

After enduring 'Ric" for so long, it's delightful to think of pompous old-boy Crotty--and by extension his cancerous party--getting publicly eviscerated by the only Dem in Congress with a hint of Huey Long-style pugnacity (need much more of that, sez I).

Reminds me: yesterday at a doctor's office I came across Orlando Magazine's annual feature, 'speaking fellatio to power' (sure, they prefer to call it Orlando's '50 Most Powerful', but judge for yrself if I'm far off the mark).

In discussing Mr #1, (and before getting down to the squick-inducing monotony of craven power-elite arse-kissing) OM mentions the toll hike:

"...Crotty, as the chairman of the ("culturally corrupt") agency’s board, supported a 25-cent increase at various collection drive-thrus on area toll roads. Crotty justified the increase as necessary to secure high bond ratings, ensuring lower interest rates. But the public was in no mood...

'Sometimes you have to make tough decisions in this business, and that [vote to increase tolls] was one of the toughest I have had to make,' Crotty told us in late May."

Setting aside the personality-talk of Thomas and others--not wholly irrelevant, but still more worthy of a middle-high cafeteria--consider the (hindsight-benefitted) cost-reducing counter-approach Grayson's office has suggested (obnoxious emph added).

1 "Repealing the recent toll increase
2 Eliminating tolls on the roads that are already paid for, or reducing the tolls to cover only thecost of maintenance
3 Ending the practice of using one toll road to pay for the construction of another
4 Implementing the Grand Jury instructions in OOCEA’s contracts and OOCEA’s charter
5 Returning all contributions obtained by, in the Grand Jury’s word, “extortion”
6 Adjusting salaries so that no OOCEA employee makes more than the highest-paid elected official in Orange County

7 Making the OOCEA Board an elected body, not an appointed one, to ensure accountabilityto the motoring public..."

http://grayson.house.gov/2009/06/grayson-condemns-culture-of-corruption.shtml

Yeah...which of these reform approaches--Grayson's above or Crotty's 'stick it to the taxpayers' same old same old--looks more like principled 'tough decisionmaking' to you?

To be more clear, by my lights it's not that Crotty lacks principles...it's that he's a guy looking out for a class of OC citizen (anted-up 'stakeholders', if you prefer) wholly removed from the working class Grayson clearly includes in his political calculus.

So long as he's motivated to look after the interests of a beat-down, working lower-middle class, it really doesn't matter the least bit to me if Grayson is also motivated by what Thomas figures as ruthlessness, self-absorption, and a deep love of being Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando.

Mike Thomas' piece in today's Orlando Sentinel does a good job of laying out the severe problem of low income schools' performance gap versus a more affluent median. But the lousiness of the perscription he offers is unbearable because it amounts to suggesting to a battered wife that her husband is just the guy to go to for getting that broken jaw wired up.

The problem he's talking about is a giant problem. No bigger problem out there, in fact. Jonathon Kozol has long since called it the "shame of the nation" . . . Thomas' absurd suggestion is that real answers belong with the conservatives and their charter schools' 'education 2.0'. Bullshit. . Conservatives are, in short, all about money: having it, getting it, keeping it, judging the worth of individuals on their having or not having it, you-bastards-stay-the-hell-away-from-it. One need only look at the recent session of the conservative-dominated FL legislature for evidence that when push ever comes to shove, public education cuts come waaaay ahead of progressive (or even just non-regressive) revenue-raising approaches, like the repeal of Jebbite intangibles tax breaks, say, or similar strategies drawing Rush Limbaughs to our state. And this has everything to do with the kind of education reform Thomas is talking about.

To paraphrase Kanye West, "conservatives--of both parties--don't care about black people". Oversimplification? Not by much. The key component conservatives have over other outside-the-box educators are these: 

deeper pockets and the political pull that comes with it. 

But bringing that up musses up the tidiness of the particular line being put over by Thomas. And it reminds the reader that the same folks who Thomas points to as having the 'answers' are generally the same status quo loving supporters of the problem itself. He talks about uneven starting lines, and the description of the effective fix--beefed up pedagogies, highly trained teachers, intense focus on young children, and loose purse strings--points to precisely what the Reagan-zombies of the GOP base exist to rail against: 'throwing money at the problem' is a critical part of the fix here. We cannot fire our way to effective low income area school systems. Moreover, this is a problem that goes way beyond the school per se, so real fixes, sufficient fixes must also be community based, and involve economic development of the areas these kids' parents live in, and, some of us would argue, a wider re-evaluation of the 'let them eat cake' phony-free market approach to labor markets in this country. 

Shitty school systems and the human tragedies that live beneath the economics-speak of "low human capital", are the products of the free market: this is what the system intends. Conservatism carries a built in pride at not coddling society's 'losers' and in so doing removes any dog it might have in the fight for what becomes of said 'losers'. Except insofar as getting elected is important, and when significant numbers of voters both resemble these 'losers' and are affected by the outcomes of epidemic 'loserdom,' the 'tough titties' routine lacks a certain breadth of appeal that even gerrymandering is ill equipped to contain. At which point enters in the demagogies of religious and racial bigotry that clogs the am radio dial and cable teevee.

How conservatives could be the ones to deliver an answer to this problem--one affecting people who as a rule do not support their flagship party--is a mystery up there with water turning to wine.

And another thing: The parent-child quality time disparity cited at the start of the piece is clearly an area that'd be directly improved by Alan Grayson's paid-time-off legislation, and also by the passage of the http://efcablog.blogspot.com/...both things I'd be willing to bet the farm Thomas would wag a damning finger at. Neither law is flawless, but life is about trade offs, and so long as all the negative trade offs in this society get dumped on working people and the working poor, the last thing we'll ever see solved is the education crisis of low-income areas.