Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but I had to paraphrase her famous line after reading this Bill McGurn column in the Wall Street Journal about how Republican political hacks in the Illinois state legislature voted to kill a voucher bill that would have rescued inner-city children trapped in terrible government monopoly schools. If you don’t hate government and despise politicians after reading this excerpt, there is something deeply wrong with your soul:
Illinois has given us a new breed of Republican: Roger Eddy. Mr. Eddy is what they call a downstater, an assemblyman who serves an east-central Illinois district hugging the Indiana border. His day job turns out to be in government as well, as a public schools superintendent. Last week Mr. Eddy became the face of the Republican failure to get a voucher bill through the Illinois assembly. The bill had passed the Senate. Yet despite being pushed by a remarkable coalition involving fellow Republicans, a free-market state think tank, and a prominent African-American leader, only 25 Republicans in the House voted yes. That was 12 votes short. Mr. Eddy was one of 23 Republicans who killed it by voting no. …the GOP failure is striking. Republicans typically complain about not getting black support for reforms that would benefit primarily black families. In this case, however, they had that support, in the form of the Rev. James Meeks, a African-American state senator leader whom Barack Obama has called a spiritual adviser. …According to the Illinois State Board of Elections, since 2002 Mr. Eddy has accepted more than $76,000 in campaign contributions from the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and the Chicago Teachers Union. … Less than a month ago, the same teachers unions that have given so generously to Mr. Eddy made up a large chunk of the 15,000 protestors who converged on the state capital shouting “Raise Our Taxes” as the solution to the state’s $13 billion budget gap. ..The pity is there were 25 Republicans who did come through. The Republican house leader did what he could. One Republican legislator, a former public school teacher, was in tears on the House floor, begging for this bill. All these people went out on a limb with Mr. Meeks—and Republicans like Mr. Eddy sawed that limb off.
[…] Some Republicans are hypocrites on the issue as […]
[…] have denounced Illinois Republican legislators for killing school choice. I think it is downright nauseating that they condemn inner-city children to terrible schools in […]
[…] first chore is to explain why I hate Republicans, and as you can see here and here, there’s certainly ample reason to think I hold GOPers in low esteem. The actual […]
I have no idea what reality you hail from JFL but you seem to only select facts which fit your worldview.
Look at the poorest and most bankrupt states/cities and you see Democrat bastions like Illinois and California. Wisconsin now has a budget surplus, or didn’t you hear?
Glass Steagal wouldn’t be needed if the Feds would just let Banks GO UNDER, instead the Banks know they will be bailed out so they act recklessly ( not to mention the Consumer Reinvestment Act forces them to do so).
Govt agencies Fannie and Freddie were there to back and buy up loans so why not recklessly give out mortgages.
Regarding spending you are just plain delusional. The last GOP budget was FY07 with a deficit of only 170 billion. The Democrats took control of the purse strings and started ramping up spending ( with RINO Bush’s signature ).
The first Obama + Pelosi/Reid budget deficit was 1.7 TRILLION dollars. Thats 10 times as much.
You get to make up opinions, not facts.
[…] to fight for small government even when it means causing friction with establishment-oriented, go-along-to-get-along […]
[…] first chore is to explain why I hate Republicans, and as you can see here and here, there’s certainly ample reason to think I hold GOPers in low esteem. The actual […]
[…] first chore is to explain why I hate Republicans, and as you can see here and here, there’s certainly ample reason to think I hold GOPers in low esteem. The actual […]
[…] have denounced Illinois Republican legislators for killing school choice. I think it is downright nauseating that they condemn inner-city children to terrible schools in […]
[…] have denounced Illinois Republican legislators for killing school choice. I think it is downright nauseating that they condemn inner-city children to terrible schools in […]
[…] have denounced Illinois Republican legislators for killing school choice. I think it is downright nauseating that they condemn inner-city children to terrible schools in […]
Isn’t it amazing? Here in Florida, Republicans have had control for 10+ years… The proof? Our overall state unemployment rate is THE highest in the nation, as well as foreclosure rates (who knew that we’d be competing with California?).
Want more proof? In the 60s, the Republicans fought hard against integration while Democrats wanted to do away with segregation. When the Democrats won against segregation, the country swung into Republican control due to the votes of all the religious nut cases who were opposed to integration—What happened within 10 years of this transition of power?– Well… There was massive unemployment, foreclosures, falsified fuel shortages where gas prices skyrocketed, the stock markets were falsely expanding and shrinking, etc… Look familiar people? Voting Republican is BAD. Just pay attention to your history (very RECENT history) to know this for yourselves.
Republicans gained majority control in 1996, destroyed the Glass/Steagall Act of 1933 which allowed banks to begin (Citigroup had been doing it all along) dabbling in areas of the markets that they had absolutely NO business dabbling, creating worthless paper markets. These pieces of Republican legislation led to a serious bust in what became known as the .com industry, and led to a batch of insanely large market bubbles in the housing markets by allowing banks to value homes for literally 6x the REAL market value (and SO many people were SO stupid as to pay $250k for a POS $65k house that needed another $100k of work simply to make it LIVABLE), and now people are pissing and moaning about Obama’s spending habits? PLEASE! Obama’s spending is nothing more than a drop in the bucket at this point… The US Dollar was a cursed currency from the very beginning because it goes against the Constitution, which forbids private entities from controlling our currencies (the very thing that the Federal Reserve Act allows).
UGH!….