Crazy Times

Literally. Being away for a couple of days gave me a break from the news but then immediately I had a lot to catch up on. So this is a brief review of some of the insanity or is that inanity that defines the American way.

First up: The Kentucky Millionaire who built a bunker and it failed to do what he built to do – keep his family safe. One dead and the family now lives in an expensive RV for reasons unclear, but it is clear that being crazy is not defined to the unhoused. Oh wait…..

Next: Sex Ed is Grooming. Okay this is now Q’Anon on steroids. I was sure that the original basis of much of this Q person was in fact a woman as she worked for the group behind the “chan” sites and then as the male personas picked up on the bizarre messaging and in turn grew their business from it, the Q thing sort of blossomed into this monolith that fueled much of the Trumptards. The fear of sex and information is a commonality in the South thanks to the Church. And that is the real reason behind the push to end abortion, there has never been a predominant interest in the life of children or these same whack jobs would be advocates for child care, maternity leave, health care and other post natal programs that promote life. It is about sex and the idea if you are fucking you will confine it to marriage and keep your sinning filth in the home. These are people who hate sex, and yes even I am bored with it but hey don’t let me stop you fucking! And with that fear that sex and intimacy is an effort, which they want no part of. Note that they are either breeding maniacs or have two kids which means they fucked themselves out. And I have never met a religious crackpot group that were not one or the other. Birth Control is sex control and sex is the predominant reason behind marriage. Trust me this is the real issue, fucking.

I have always found it interesting that many States take the forefront with regards to these issues, but Tennessee was always just ahead of the curve; however, they don’t get the news coverage on these culture firebrands as does Texas or Florida and I suspect it is because of Nashville. The state is very tied to that city for its income and with that the powers inside that city, while they may share their values fear the loss of money more, so with that much of the oppressive crazy shit is buried. When I lived there the issues surrounding sex abuse, largely in the schools was a major issue and with that the City Prosecutor rarely prosecuted said cases, blaming the Police for their poor investigation skills. But Nashville Schools were dumps and many times focus of investigation after investigation and little was ever done. Look at the timeline of the great reporter, Phil Williams, and his endless investigations in the school district and realize the problems there are serious and they do little more than cover it up. That is the South, hide, obscure and lie if you have to. Do as little as possible take as much credit as possible, that is their mantra. Mine is – What.ever.

Rounding to Third: Guns and more guns. After seeing Damon Wayans at Carolines a week ago where he brought a baseball bat to the stage with him a day later a comedy club in North Carolina found themselves closing early when a patron showed up with a shotgun; then a shooting at a mall in Indiana food court where the mythical good guy with a gun shot and killed the bad guy with a gun. (Some of this needs further investigation and I suspect as in all of these mass shootings, the truth is buried there) A shooting in Houston at an Apartment Complex left four dead; a shooting in a campground left three dead, one being only six; a woman dead after an altercation in a parking lot in Oklahoma; and more heinous facts regarding Uvalde continue to be released that again demonstrate how all of these shootings do not have the full information until investigations are completed. There is nothing in that particular story that has any good element in what.so.ever. And with that one of the few survivors of the Parkland shooting, meaning the shooter himself, is undergoing a sentencing trial which led one of the victims parents to scream out STOP and leave the courtroom. What is Justice in this case? That is not a decision anyone can make easily.

And lastly: I am exhausted with America right now. The endless one upmanship, the belittling and condescension that passes as an arrogant way of telling someone you are smarter and better than they are. I sat in Saratoga listening to the most boring people and I said little other than to remind them as I am on my own I have only myself to be responsible for and be concerned with. I am out to enjoy as a much of life as I can and with that do it as safely and as easily as I can. My conversations that once were as interesting as they were random have been relegated to largely message posts and those who serve me… the coffee person, the Front Desk Clerk, the Concierge at my building. These are not conversations they are more monologues and lectures where I either inform and attempt to have a teachable moment or be funny and witty without much of challenge or intellect. Even podcasts I am finding deeply redundant. Listen to Marc Maron WTF and it is him discussing his anxiety and frustrations about food and his family. In the beginning of the pandemic he lost his partner and his grief and pain coupled with the fear of the future were fascinating studies in how one copes and evolves when you are alone and working through it. I connected to that and much of his pain resonated, his humor not lost on one who feels much the same way, being over 55, being alone, having no kids and facing this odd future did make me laugh and cry. Today I get through maybe the first 5 minutes and unless he is speaking to someone I know and care about I wipe it out. The show with Nikki Glaser was both sad and funny as it was two neurotic comics who are successful and have good lives wax on about their eating disorders, their sexual confusion and fear of relationships. It should be a must listen for anyone going into the therapy business.

I had not known Ms. Glaser until FB Island where that thankfully is a delight of idiocy and moron supremacy that I need right now. So to listen to her comedy and in turn her own personal struggles I got much of what she said about sex and connection and how women view their sexuality and their intimacy tied to sex itself and men do not, they in fact disconnect from the two and immediately disengage once the act is complete. She insisted and I agree that women should not have sex until they are friends and familiar with the man and then have sex as they will find it by far more satisfying. She even feels girls should resort strictly to giving blow jobs or hand jobs if they feel compelled to offer sex to a boy as a means of building attraction. There is a big no from me on the sucking dick and fine with the hand job as it is utterly disease free and safe sex in every way. I am sorry but not getting oral cancer to suck a dick and the same goes for men, just finger bang or hand jobs or mutually masturbate. The era of sex is over and clearly we are going to have to start at square one to educate and inform and if you cannot love yourself you cannot love anyone else.

And with that Marc shared that he was in a friendship with a woman, and I recall this discussion at Red Bank when I saw him there, about wanting a “girl” friend who fucked him, had dinner with him (maybe not in that order) and then left and did not stay over, see him every day and remain monogamous in that type of arrangement. He is now in that that type of arrangement and he acknowledged that she is younger, he did not say how young but if she stays over she sleeps in another room. She has to be 30 as no woman over 35 would put up with that bullshit. Again it is challenging when you have no kids, no real baggage to find partners on the same page but even that would be stretch for me. I might do the dinner part, maybe even the fucking and would leave but I doubt that. I did that and hated it so I am over it. The reality is that while I was hit on by a man that night at the restaurant I and oddly Marc ate at after the show (although given his food issues that must have been interesting) I felt nothing, kissing this man, nothing. I wanted to go to my hotel room and sleep. I am not sure I will ever feel anything for a man again. So there you go folks note that again most of the Pro Life/Anti sex crew are all well into their 60s and cling to the past as a part of the problem. They still blame the Hippies! The observations I made at Saratoga with these couples in their 50s only made me feel relieved that I was not a part of this. I recall my ex husband and his theory that the Moon landing was a Conspiracy, the fame obsession aka the asspirational (intentional misspelling) that he carried with him. He is like many I meet, toting their fake or real Vuitton bags or wearing their Gucci shoes and the insatiable need to be “famous” be that on social media or just someone who matters. I have all of those things but rarely use them and feel compelled to let everyone know I have them, I get it. I really do. With that I seek respect and dignity and to speak and be spoken to in a manner that reflects that. And with that I am so grateful to not be married as I suspect I would be like one of the couples, parroting my Husband’s idiotic viewpoints and beliefs. I recall when I realized I had married a jerk I began to spend less time at home, and when he was there I wasn’t and so forth. My dog was the one thing that I truly loved during that time.

In my conversation with my Concierge yesterday he was shocked how few people actually speak to people professionally and they have college degrees! He is from Africa and migrated here years ago and was educated in his country but like many many Immigrants his degrees could not be substantiated as he was designated a refugee and this led him to working here. His story is not different than many despite the shortages of medical professionals, they are forced to return to school to get an American degree. Or what I call the most expensive piece of paper you will ever buy. I am sure that most if not many who possess a degree, myself included, have found it utterly useless and utterly a waste of time and money. Others and those are largely the graduates of “elite” Universities who are not any smarter but are better connected and in turn have better opportunities in which to work. The endless studies that profess that those with a degree earn more in a lifetime needs a little more detail there as it is based on Social Security data. And again women are fucked right there as many take time away from the workforce and may end up in work that will often pay less. This does not paint the full picture as it is frankly all theory as we know that flows in economics and trends dictate the pursuit of a degree but that degree may not be what the field you end up in and with that make even more so does degree and type matter? What school? What was the base salary? What profession? What was the network connection that enabled the gig, and so forth. The reality is that connections matter more and the doors are open via an alumni association or through a friend and family. So say Bob goes to University of Illinois and gets a Business Degree, with that where does he go to work out of school? What was his base salary? (Cause it ain’t what you think) If Bob was named Jane was that the same salary? How did he find said job? Recruited or applied? But that fact is shoved down our throats to the detriment of many who have expensive degrees and are Barista’s at Starbucks. Hence the union drive. We often equate worth with one’s financial stability. They are not the same.

We have no way of knowing details about anything unless we ask and we dig and we do neither. We talk at each other and not to or with each other. We are busy drawing our dividing lines and that seems to be with regards to how one votes. Funny I don’t have a problem with whom you vote for, I do if you do not read, listen to music, watch a movie, go on a trip and have a thought that isn’t your own.

So it appears that my story may be like this one. A tragic tale of someone at the brink of his life found dead and alone. At least I will have lived one.

Ivy League Bullshit

No fan of the Ivy League, particularly Harvard, Yale and Princeton as they are the Boy’s Club of Hate and Loathing towards anyone that threatens their existence. Today I found this missive from the Harvard Crimson, by Senator Tom Cotton, who is the Republican Senator from Arkansas is a war monger among many things but also a Class A (for Asshole) Misogynist. Read and weep as this asshole is doing his best to ensure women are sucking dick and taking it right up the ass. This was written in 1997 and yet it smacks of 1957 right down the mention of Radcliffe women. How provincial!

Promises and Covenants

By Thomas B. Cotton

October 3, 1997

Men are simple creatures. It doesn’t take much to please us. The problem is women. How does an utterly simple creature understand an infinitely complex one? Since this creature realizes he is even simpler than most men, I knew only women could help me understand, well, women.

I have been asking women two questions. My first question was “What is your greatest fear in life?” Uniformity characterized the responses. (Yes, these are actual responses from Cliffies; I did not fabricate them.) “Watching my husband walk out on me.” “Losing my lover.” “Getting a divorce.”

My second question was very similar: “What is your deepest hope in life?” Again, the responses were uniform. “Finding and holding onto the love of my life.” “Being a good wife and mother.” “Marrying a man who worships me and whom I worship.”

Really?

My sample is admittedly small and perhaps unrepresentative. If it is representative-I tend to think it is-then maybe men can unlock the secret to a woman’s heart and soul. Maybe the key is nothing more than a lifetime of love and devotion, of selflessness and sacrifice.

Yet that is a lot to ask of a man: Talk to a psychologist, a sociobiologist or a mother and you learn that men are naturally restless and rowdy, maybe even a little incorrigible. Throughout time, though, women and social institutions have conspired to break man’s unruliness. In the past few decades, however, they have largely abandoned that noble and necessary project.

Perhaps to compensate, some admirable men are striking out on their own. First, we have the Promise Keepers (PK). PK is a mass, Christian-based movement of men known for filling football stadiums with men who repent their sins and shortcomings, and then promise to be stronger husbands, fathers and spiritual leaders. Tomorrow, in its largest event ever, PK will attract hundreds of thousands of men to the Washington Mall. Those (improved) men will then return to their homes and churches, joining the small, PK-influenced men’s groups that now populate one-third of churches nationwide. Second, we have state politicians, most of whom are men, taking on no fault divorce. Louisiana recently became the first state to attack this 1970’s innovation. Louisiana’s new law creates something called “covenant marriage.” Couples who choose a covenant marriage undergo counseling before they marry and can divorce only with fault, defined as abandonment, physical abuse, adultery or conviction of a capital crime. State legislator Tony Perkins, the author of the law (and an active member in PK), expects covenant marriages will soon account for half of all new marriages in Louisiana. Many states are expected to follow Louisiana’s lead.

Presumably, women should encourage such developments since divorce leads to their “greatest fear in life.” And most women probably do support them, but not the putative potentates of feminism.

The National Organization of Women (NOW) has dedicated itself, nationally and in its state chapters, to “exposing” both PK and covenant marriage as a thinly veiled attack by the Religious Right on women’s rights, or as an attempt to re-establish patriarchy. An example of the fanaticism with which NOW follows this course is its powest subdivision, the “Promise Keepers Mobilization Project.”

Feminists understandably view movements like PK and covenant marriage with anxiety. They undermine what feminists consider a crowning achievement, no fault divorce. Feminists say no fault divorce was a large hurdle on the path to female liberation. They apparently don’t consult the deepest hopes or greatest fears of young women.

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Nor do they consult the data on no fault divorce. This data says that 62 percent of divorced women used to receive permanent alimony, whereas now only 13 percent receive any alimony. It says that only 25 percent of divorced women with child custody receive child support, and only one-half of that is ever paid. It says that after divorce, men see their standard of living increase by 42 percent, while women see their’s fall by 73 percent. It says, in short, that divorce is a leading cause of poverty among American women.

Feminists might say that these figures show a need to crack down on “deadbeat dads.” That blithely misses the point. As revolutionary patriot, jurist and marriage counselor James Wilson said, “When divorces can be summoned to the aid of levity, of vanity or of avarice, a state of marriage becomes frequently a state of war or stratagem; still more frequently, a state of premeditated and active preparation for successful stratagems and war.”

Feminists who allegedly speak for women should attack divorce, not its effects. If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly. They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women. If restrained, however, men can fulfill women’s deepest hopes. They can learn that personal happiness comes from the desire to devote and sacrifice oneself to one’s beloved.

A few men can see this by themselves, and women are quite lucky to hook them. Ordinary women must not only defend these men against feminism, but also demand that all other men accept the lifelong nature of marriage. If not, one-half of all women who marry see their “greatest fear” come true. If so, they can have their “deepest hopes” fulfilled.

Pee on my leg, tell me its raining

The wind blows long in Kansas or is that Oklahoma? Well Toto the three wise men, Scarecrow, Lion and Woodsman have arrived and are clicking their heels together to rescue Dorothy.

Kansas ground zero in the long con – trickle down economics – has finally been debunked and dutifully questioned. Of course this means nothing to the rank and file in the White House who once again have hauled out that bullshit policy as the go to in this current Administration.   But as we are finding out many states swimming in the deep red sea and may if they don’t actually improve infrastructure, talking to you Louisiana,  have finally realized that Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore, Grover Norquist and other members of the Cabal called “Citizens for Growth” also known locally as the Chamber of Commerce, are coming to terms with austerity.   This is some of the same bullshit that led to BREXIT in England and in turn the realization that Theresa May was no Margaret Thatcher.

It took a decade but the curtain of Oz has been pulled back and the resistance is not just a bunch of hipsters but actual white people living in the heartland. When have you ever heard of a GOP led state house overriding a GOP Governor’s veto? Never? Me either.  But don’t worry kids you still have Iowa. 

But the rise of the moderate aka “Mitt Romney” Republican not “Newt Gingrich” Republican has returned. We shall not see this breed type at Westminster whoops I mean Washington for a few more years as the current crop are still trying to convince Americans that we can have Children, specifically Ben Sasse’s children, work the fields instead of those horrific illegals.  And that they don’t have the medical care needs so that whole Obamacare thing is not important and we need to remove any inheritance taxes as if the children live they will Inherit the Wind or whatever.

Brownback like the other religious kook in the mode of Mike Pence, whose own insanity as Governor led his Republican led statehouse override and change some of his more ludicrous ideas upon departing for the White House, is also facing blowback. He should change his name to that as it is more realistic. I am assuming that upon departing the Governor’s mansion, probably a trailer as it would be wrong to live large when the residents of your state are living low, will enter the Priesthood and he and Mike Pence when he too leaves the Presidency can tour the country in a trailer baptizing and foot washing and recruiting new Missionaries for the love of Jesus. I visualize Elmer Gantry meeting Elmer Fudd style revival.

Kansas Rises Up Against the Trickle-Down Con Job

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD THE NEW YORK TIMES JUNE 9, 2017

The Republican Legislature and much of Kansas has finally turned on Gov. Sam Brownback in his disastrous five-year experiment to prove the Republicans’ “trickle down” fantasy can work in real life — that huge tax cuts magically result in economic growth and more, not less, revenue. Kansas has painfully found otherwise: State revenues dwindled along with job growth. Budget deficits ballooned. Education funding plummeted, and the state suffered multiple credit downgrades as Mr. Brownback played the mad doctor of supply-side economics.

It took too long, but state lawmakers who once abetted the Brownback budgeting folly passed a two-year, $1.2 billion tax increase this week to begin repairing the damage. To make it stick, they overrode a veto by Mr. Brownback, who remains a blithe champion of the supply-side shell game, as do many other Republicans, despite the failure of what the governor called his “real-life experiment” and its calamitous impact on vital services.

President Trump’s federal tax proposals are rooted in the same supply-side nonsense. And Speaker Paul Ryan, the House’s supposed guru in the continuing budget fights, embraces the trickle-down mantra he practiced as an aide to Mr. Brownback when the governor was in the Senate.

Mr. Brownback rode the Tea Party wave to the governor’s office in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014. His tax cuts reduced rates and the number of brackets, and created special privileges for small businesses, much like President Trump’s dodgy proposals. The governor’s plan was so phantasmagorical that it envisioned a “march to zero” goal of eventually eliminating income taxes.

Voters were the first to call the governor’s bluff, ousting more than a dozen of his legislative supporters in last year’s elections as punishment for damaged school services, potholed highways and near recession. The state’s gross domestic product grew just 0.2 percent last year, compared with 1.6 percent nationally. State school aid slipped from $4,400 per pupil to $3,800 in the Brownback years, with the poorest districts suffering the worst, according to court findings that the State Constitution was being violated.

Supply-side economics have been shopped by Republican politicians since the Ronald Reagan administration. “My focus,” Mr. Brownback foolishly promised, “is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.’” Instead, the model imploded. Voters should beware of any political huckster, including President Trump, who tries to sell it. It will take years for Kansas to recover, but Mr. Brownback, far from apologetic, remains trickle-down’s Candide, noting how “heartened” he is by the Trump tax cut plan.

Luck Matters

Yesterday I met another Student Teacher here in Nashville. She wants to move abroad and teach internationally as she is certified to teach Spanish and has already secured a job in a nearby town at their International Baccalaureate school. A program of which she was utterly unfamiliar despite actually having a high school degree from her own attendance at the same. Yes, I have said repeatedly the ignorance here transcends new heights.

Her advisor was against her accepting the job, seemed to push his connections on her to work in Nashville where he taught for over 20 years. I am not sure that is something of which I would be proud nor brag about. I did share with him my current experience for which he thanked me for my honesty. And I gave him the cliff note version. After he left I told her take the job and have nothing to do with this district as she is too young to be frankly teaching high school and should do so in a smaller area where ironically she and her family actually live. Nice girl utterly dumb and has zero classroom management skills which once again age matters in a high school situation and I applaud her wanting to move overseas as frankly she could use the experience outside of this horrific State educational system.

Kansas is back in the news once again cited by their own Supreme Court for failing to fund education properly to enable poor students – predominantly Black and Hispanic students – to successfully pass tests to perform at grade level and in turn graduate. Gee sounds familiar.

And the rise of vouchers and other “school choice” is of course the topic of education reformers with the anointment of Betsey DeVos, as chief cheerleader of this concept. A woman born into wealth. How lucky for her.

Trump, the liar in chief, (born into wealth, how lucky) paraded a supposed success story of said voucher system in Arizona at his Congressional speech this past week. Well like the rest of his administration it was short on details and the truth behind this supposed success story. At this point it will become easier to determine who in this Administration is not a liar and in it for personal gain. Just did it and so far I have found none. I’ll keep you posted if that changes.

But below is the story behind the Arizona voucher program. It is very similar to the one DeVos pushed in Michigan. She is a busy force from whom to reckoned with. But if the budget for Trump is passed the Education department should be one of the many cut as it has a negative connotation and history associated with Democrats (Carter founded the position) so I assume Ms. DeVos reign of horror will be largely PR. While states like Kansas try to figure out how to fund education. And Kansas is not alone in this issue. It includes Washington which was claimed to be number 5 in Education in the United States. I suggest U.S. News contacts those in Seattle wrestling with what they call the levy cliff.

And the reality is that schools are divided and segregated by wealth. Know of the story of the Silicon Valley high school that invested in Snapchat? Yes again it is who you know and you know that white rich people will look out for white rich people and that is also the same for anyone of color. It also is a private and yes non-secular school. Do the kids that go there go via vouchers? They don’t in California.

The ladder is slippery and when you get your place on the rung you will do whatever it takes to hold on. Tell that to the kids in Kansas, Louisiana, Tennessee. Not so lucky.

Vos and Tax Credit Vouchers: Arizona Shows What Can Go Wrong

Kevin Carey
The New York Times
March 2, 2017

Steve Yarbrough is one of the most powerful men in Arizona. As president of the State Senate, he has promoted a range of conservative policies, including a tuition tax credit system that provides over $100 million per year to finance vouchers for private schools.

In his speech to Congress this week, President Trump singled out a young woman who attended private school using a tax credit-financed voucher. The president urged Congress to pass legislation that would provide similar benefits to millions of students.

But Mr. Yarbrough is not just a champion of tax credit vouchers. He also profits from them personally. The story of how that happened raises questions about President Trump’s campaign promise to spend $20 billion to increase school choice. There’s a strong chance that he’ll do that through tax credit vouchers — a mechanism that Betsy DeVos actively campaigned for before she became Mr. Trump’s education secretary.

State tax credit voucher programs have grown rapidly in recent years. The number of students receiving them increased to 256,000 this year, from about 50,000 in 2005. Arizona has one of the oldest and largest programs. It allows taxpayers who donate money to nonprofit voucher-granting organizations to claim a 100 percent, dollar-for-dollar credit against their state taxes (up to a certain limit). In other words, if a married couple donates $1,000 to a voucher-granting nonprofit, their tax bill is reduced by $1,000. The nonprofit then gives the money to families who use it to pay tuition at private schools.

The Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization (Acsto) is one of the state’s largest voucher-granting groups. From 2010 to 2014 (the latest year recorded in federal tax filings), the group received $72.9 million in donations, all of which were ultimately financed by the state.

Arizona law allows the group to keep 10 percent of those donations to pay for overhead. In 2014, the group used that money to pay its executive director $125,000. His name? Steve Yarbrough. Forms filed by the organization with the I.R.S. declare that he worked an average of 40 hours per week on the job — in addition, presumably, to the hours he worked as president of the State Senate.

Yet the group doesn’t do all the work involved with accepting donations and handing out vouchers. It outsources data entry, computer hardware, customer service, information processing, award notifications and related personnel expenses to a private for-profit company called HY Processing. The group paid HY Processing $636,000 in 2014, and millions of dollars in total over the last decade.

The owner of HY Processing? Steve Yarbrough, along with his wife, Linda, and another couple. (The “Y” in “HY” stands for “Yarbrough.”) According to The Arizona Republic, Acsto also pays $52,000 per year in rent. Its landlord? Steve Yarbrough. In June 2012, Mr. Yarbrough bought a car for $16,000. In July 2012, Acsto reimbursed him the full amount.

Most voucher-granting nonprofits are not run by powerful legislators who pay themselves rent. While Arizona has over 50 loosely regulated voucher organizations, Florida disburses nearly 100,000 tax credit vouchers with just two. In Pennsylvania, private schools can accept tax credit donations and provide vouchers to themselves.

But the fact that an influential politician can both promote and profit from tax credit vouchers shows what can happen when public funding for education is largely removed from public hands.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers like tax credits, for several reasons. For some, spending $1,000 directly on a school voucher is government spending, while forgoing $1,000 in revenue to finance a $1,000 nonprofit voucher is a tax cut. Spending is often subject to strict budget limitations, while certain forms of tax credits can face less scrutiny.

Tax credits for vouchers also allow states to circumvent so-called Blaine amendments, legal prohibitions against the direct disbursement of public funds to parochial schools that were added to many state constitutions in the 19th century during a wave of anti-Catholicism.

But the shell-game process of moving money from the public treasury to a donor to a nonprofit to a family to a private school makes it very difficult to account for how well those public dollars are ultimately spent.

Tax credit voucher policies vary among states, but most impose few requirements on the private schools that receive them. By contrast, many of the largest new direct voucher programs, where funds go straight from the government to the school, require private schools to administer the same tests given to students in public schools. That’s how researchers were able to determine that vouchers in some states are driving down student test scores to an unprecedented degree.

Managing the transfers of all that money is also expensive. Arizona’s 10 percent overhead provision is typical, which means that millions of dollars meant for education are being diverted to pay for, at best, pure bureaucracy. If President Trump makes good on his campaign promise of $20 billion for school vouchers by creating a national tax credit scheme, it could vastly increase the amount of bureaucratic waste.

And it’s not clear that states can be relied upon to prevent self-dealing. Mr. Yarbrough’s personal financial interest in tax credit vouchers first received wide attention in 2009, when The East Valley Tribune published an in-depth investigation of Arizona’s tax credit program. Tribune reporters found widespread evidence of abuse. In some schools, parents would “recommend” that their fully refundable donations be used to finance vouchers for neighboring families, who would then reciprocate in kind, a practice Arizona has since banned. Many private schools sharply increased their tuition in response to newly available voucher funds.

Yet in the years since, Mr. Yarbrough has continued to be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars from overhead funds. He also supported the expansion of the tax-credit system. “The impact has been substantial on the number of kids who are getting to go to the school of their parents’ choice,” Mr. Yarbrough told The Republic in 2015. “It’s been better and more successful than even those of us who were enthusiastic from the get-go imagined.”

Some states, like Alabama and Indiana, limit tax credit vouchers to low- and middle-income families, or to students who were previously enrolled in public school. But others, including Arizona, do not, subsidizing private education for the well-off.

Tax credit vouchers also finance approaches to education that diverge from generally accepted academic standards. Northwest Christian School, a 1,300-student private academy in Phoenix, helps parents apply to Acsto for vouchers. Northwest Christian’s elementary science and social studies curriculums were developed by Bob Jones Publishers, a leading provider of educational materials based on creationism.

If the Trump administration moves ahead with a $20 billion tax credit voucher plan, it will have to decide how — or whether — to address issues that have arisen with state tax credits.

What’s the Matter With Kansas

If you have not read Thomas Franks’ definitive book on the subject I urge you to do so.  Then get the follow up Listen Liberal as he uses the same brush to paint a dire picture that truly explains in a classic “book end” (pun intended) to the crisis we face as a nation thanks to the idea of partisan political gamesmanship and divides that govern the United States to the detriment of all.

In Indiana the current Republican Governor is discreetly working to remove with the legislature many of now VP Pence’s laws that served few interests.

In Alabama, in Kentucky and the Carolina’s you have serious issues that former Governor’s or current ones have left their states in shambles.  Louisana has a long road ahead to repair Jindal’s mess.  And irony that states run by their more liberal counterparts are thriving.  Why?  People want to live and do business there.  Despite all the promises and/or threats who in the hell would move to Kansas willingly? Is there a business or industry or way of life that would enable one to overlook people using God and Guns to run over the right and this thing we call the independence of America?

Much of this has to do with what I call the Bruce Jenner effect.  For many people they don’t actually care about immigration, transgender rights and other liberal movement issues that dominate the news.  When you don’t know anyone or have customers who are members of a minority you are less inclined to concern yourself with their issues.  That is until a bus arrives in your town and demand you listen to them and change your ways and businesses to meet their needs.  Their needs are however temporary and slight in comparison to the larger picture you feel angry that they are shoving their life choices, beliefs, etc, down your throat.  Where in normal circumstances over time and with a dialog you would be happy to bake cupcakes, do flours, provide a private restroom to accommodate these people in whatever they need as it is business, not personal and that is all that matters.  At the end of the day the customer is happy and you have rung cash into your register and everyone goes home to start another day tomorrow.  Sadly that is not the case anymore.

We have 24/7 cycle of news, babble and constant drum beats.  You used to go home watch the latest show and talk about it around the water cooler the next day.   You did not care that Sam went home to his husband, wore a dress on the weekends as it was none of your business unless Sam decided to confide in you and you in turn chose to accept it or inform him that it made you uncomfortable and that was that, other than awkward moments for a while until the conversation wandered back to sports.  On that we can agree or not but with less confusion or ire.

When religion gets into the mix it lends or adds to the frustration and confusion. The same churches that advocate equality and love are the same churches that disdain the homosexual or the “other” and that those are individuals who are sinners and failures in the eyes of God.  Well they need new glasses as reading their dogma of their faith is a matter of interpretation and in turn beauty is in the eye of the beholder.   So we are all different and we have different beliefs, different attitudes and yes politics but in some way we all want the best for our families and lives in however we define them.  And again that too is a broad spectrum of choice.  Build a fence or not but we all must live in this community together.

I have and will continue to write about my experience in Nashville.  I am very convinced that what I need will be found here.  I need full dental restoration, I need to write and I need to move on when I am done.  I have to tuck my smarts in my purse, my pride at times in order to do so.  I feel alone and will ostensibly remain alone.  But this is not a state of which I am unfamiliar regardless of the state I live in.  I can pick my battles and choose to fight those that matter.  A good example is the train issue, the bus issue and the sidewalk issue.  The schools I want no part of and today I cancelled my job as I thought I am sick and for 35 bucks I could cut a week’s worth of lattes to make that up.  So instead I am staying home, packing for New York and going to see theater for the weekend.  We make choices and we choose what is best for us with some realities that those decisions have larger effects and in turn we have to live with that and try to do so in the least obnoxious and intrusive way.

Kansas and Brownback is an example of how not to.  Brownback is a religious crackpot who washed the feet of a Senator on the floor of the Senate.  Mike Pence is a homophobic asshole who can hate gays all he wants but he needs to keep that faith in his church, a church that must have a congregation of assholes frankly as who else would go there.

We have an abject moron in the Governor’s role here but he actually wants to improve  Tennessee and he wants to tax gas to improve roads and again the Legislature blocks this. Mayors want local control to add initiatives to ballots to add tax bills and choice for their residents to choose what they want done in their cities and how to pay for it.   Wow how modern!  Many many of the actual towns here in Tennessee have elected moderate to liberal individuals locally and hell did not come down so why they also elect idiots like Mae Beaver (let’s face it that name is fantastic) to office and spend her days worrying about how to define “man and wife” and where people are peeing tells you that if they didn’t feel forced to do it by the federal government, a government run by a black man no less, that may explain Trump.

But fear is not the only explanation nor is racism, homophobia, etc.  It is education of lack thereof.  These same states, Louisiana, Kansas and others have been sued for failing to fund education. Even liberal Washington has been sued and yet to resolve that issue despite numerous protests and fines from the State Supreme Court at 100K a day to do so.   Education has systemically been under-funded and neglected across the board, K-12, Post secondary and across party lines as well.  Democrats are equally culpable in this as Washington has had a Democrat in office for decades.

And there are numerous lawsuits and other issues surrounding segregation in schools that still exists despite Brown vs Board of Ed and in turn that opened the door to this issue of choice and vouchers and of course now Betsey DeVos.   The idea that Bush created No Child Left Behind in some odd way to resolve this difference only in fact opened the Pandora’s box that showed how racially divided schools are and now this in turn has exposed it as income inequality as well.  So this is where “choice” came to be as if poor families can send their snowflake to a school in a rich district and in turn all societal problems are resolved.  I can assure you here at ground zero for that experiment it is also a failure.  Children being bused for an hour or more a day does nothing to fix the community in which they live and which their school is a large portion of said community.  What that message is that you live in  shitty hood, your school is shitty and therefore you too are shitty.  The most illustrative of that here in Nashville is West End Middle and Margaret Allen Middle.  West End is in a glorious neighborhood adjacent to a park and a wealthy community.  Margaret Allen is across from a cementary and industrial buildings.  Kids are bused to both schools and they have true behavioral and academic problems. but West End has a marginal saving grace as it is a designated “IB” school, one of the many baits and switches they use here to draw kids who are academically inclined and in turn less a management problem.   I have been to both and I will only go half days if at all, they are that bad.

This blog entry shares a Teacher in Boston and her school being “labelled” and in turn what that means to the staff and the students.  I can assure you this is coming.  Local districts here are now rejecting this and Nashville has sued just for ELL funding, they lost round one but found the State Supreme Court to look upon ELL funding as a difference that is not equal.  We are no longer at that stage that set Brown in 1954 and we need to understand the distinction between equal and equality.

So rather than fix them it is more choice and more options.  Yes this will work out well and this appears that the current President, whoever that is, will be dumping that one on DeVos who has her own agenda and none of it good.  Well that is one consistent in that Administration.

Read the below article about Kansas and ask yourself is this what we want for our Country or do we deserve and want something even better than what our greatest was.  As if you recall that great was well not that great when it came to social issues.   Again life choices are those and those are personal and we cannot and should not govern those decisions but let them evolve with assurances that we will not do harm regardless of our own beliefs.  And Education is the way to enable that critical thinking process. 

Republicans’ ‘real-live experiment’ with Kansas’s economy survives a revolt from their own party

By Max Ehrenfreund
The Washington Post
February 22 2017

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s ambitious tax overhaul — which slashed taxes for businesses and affluent households, leading to years of budget shortfalls — narrowly survived a mutiny Wednesday afternoon when about half of Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in an effort to overturn it.

Brownback, a Republican who once called his tax policy a “real-live experiment” with conservative principles, had vetoed a bill that would have repealed the most important provisions of his overhaul. While the state House voted to override the veto earlier in the day, proponents of the bill came up three votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate. Fifteen Republican senators voted to override the veto, while 16 voted to sustain it.

In the House, 45 GOP legislators voted in favor of the increase, while 40 voted to uphold the governor’s veto.

The state is facing a $350 million budget shortfall. Brownback’s critics say the state’s persistent deficits are evidence that the economic benefits from reduced taxes are not always adequate to make up for reductions in revenue, as advocates of supply-side changes have sometimes claimed.

“I’m disappointed in the actions of our Senate today,” said state Rep. Melissa Rooker, a Republican from Fairway, Kansas, who supported the bill. “This was a balanced compromise that provided the revenue necessary to fund the basic needs of our budget and restore some semblance of solvency and sustainability.”

For both Brownback and his critics, the changes are a model for the policies that Republicans in Washington, D.C., might pursue on a national level now that they are in control of the federal government. One of President Trump’s advisers on economic policy during the campaign, Stephen Moore, also helped Brownback develop the changes he enacted beginning in 2012. Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the speaker of the House, served as Brownback’s legislative director when Brownback was in Congress.

Ryan’s and Trump’s proposals for tax reform have important features in common with Brownback’s policies. Both reduce the number of income-tax brackets. Brownback’s policies and Ryan’s proposal treat income from legal entities typically used by small businesses more favorably than ordinary income. Likewise, the plan Trump advanced as a candidate appeared to reduce the tax rate on such earnings, known as “pass-through income,” but his proposal was ambiguous on this point.

In the case of Brownback’s overhaul, pass-through income has been completely exempt from taxation. In 2012, the state had projected that about 200,000 pass-through entities would take advantage of the exemption. In fact, about 330,000 ostensible small businesses profited from the rule. That data suggests the reform encouraged tens of thousands of Kansans to claim their wages and salaries as income from a business rather than from employment.

That avoidance has contributed to repeated budget deficits, forcing state policymakers to take emergency measures, exhausting the state’s reserves and diverting money dedicated to maintaining highways to keep the state’s government operating.

The bill in Kansas would have eliminated the exemption for pass-through income and increased income taxes (although not to the rates that prevailed before Brownback took office), while eliminating tax reductions planned for the future. The state projected that the legislation would have increased revenue by $590 million in 2018.

Moore, the former adviser to Brownback and Trump, acknowledged that avoidance by residents claiming business income was an issue, one that he said the Trump campaign also debated.

“That has been a problem, I agree,” he said. “One of the things we’re really struggling with is how to avoid that problem.”

Experts on taxation said that Kansas’s experience with the exemption for pass-through income should be a source of caution for GOP lawmakers in Washington considering a similar approach.

“It’s very expensive,” said Scott Drenkard, the director of state projects at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation. “What we’ve seen in Kansas as a result of this is that the state has had a hard time making budget.”

Yet Moore and other proponents of the policies say that reduced taxes, especially for small businesses, will help encourage economic growth. Kansas’s economic performance has been only middling over the past several years, but Moore argued that the state’s problems are a result of tepid growth nationally.

“It’s certainly not a very Republican idea to be raising income taxes,” he said.

Identifying the precise effect of the tax overhaul on the economy is difficult. Overall, Kansas’s economy expanded by about 2.9 percent between 2011, when Brownback took office, and 2015, the latest year for which data are available. Over the same period, the gross domestic product increased 9.2 percent nationally, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Rooker noted that the coalition voting to override Brownback’s veto in her GOP-dominated chamber included more Republicans than Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are also divided on how to approach the problem of tax reform, confronting similar disagreements on how drastically to reduce federal revenue.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the U.S. Senate majority leader, said in December that he would prefer tax reform that did not reduce federal revenue. Ryan’s proposal would cost the government by about $2.5 trillion over a decade, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

“What we may be seeing here is the return of the fiscally moderate Republican,” said Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden.