Following up on Charlie Trentelman's 8/21/10 column, the Standard-Examiner carries a fine editorial this morning, lambasting the handful of Utah legislative ideologues who've been engaging in legal maneuverings to turn down $101 million in federal aid for the Utah public school system:
• OUR VIEW: Education vs. states' rightsOn August 17, 2010, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the State of Utah has already lapped up $3 billion in federal stimulus money; so we confess we're scratching our heads wondering why there are at least a few in the legislature who would suddenly draw the line at accepting federal money intended to aid Utah schoolchildren. In view of the massive stimulus infusion that's already been accepted by the Utah legislature, it seems to us it's a little late in the game to be compaining of the taint of another $101 million in federal earmark money, which in the big picture amounts to a relatively insignificant drop in the bucket.
We sometimes have difficulty figuring out the Utah legislative wingnut mind. Perhaps a few of our WCF readers can provide us some insight into the politically correct wingnut perspective on this.
Feel free to chime in on this topic, or treat this as an open topic thread.
Update 8/27/10 9:47 a.m.: Thanks to the following comment from Gentle Reader James, we now have some insight into our legislators' seemingly odd behavior:
• Federal education funds grant will lead to tax increases
9 comments:
An interesting piece on the CNN site today by the Author Will Bunch.
It is about how Glenn Beck, one of the Apostles of the Tin Hat and Tea Party Movement, is busy rewriting history to match his idiotic view of the world.
It is pretty alarming that a lot of people, especially those over 50 who never paid much attention to real history as they lived it, are now learning it for the first time from the likes of demagogues of this ilk.
See it here:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/08/26/bunch.beck.history/index.html?hpt=C2
Without that money High School sports would be history.
Where oh where will those unemployed sports coaches find reasonably similar employment?
The Vatican? A jock youth camp? The Marines?
I guess a different state that puts more emphasis on secondary education would be the answer.
A few months back "City Council needs to leave dog owners alone", was the newspaper commentary in this rural Illinois community.
Here is this weeks news, same newspaper.
"A 7-year-old boy was mauled to death by four dogs at the home of a neighbor in Illinois....his mother and brother would regularly visit the nearby home where the incident took place...the second grader was attacked by a mixed-breed Shepherd and three pit-bulls...the boy died before a helicopter arrived to take him to a hospital...the mixed-breed dog and the three pit-bulls were owned by a person staying in a trailer on the property....still under investigation...her family had "never had any trouble with the dogs"...described the owner as a "nice guy."
I wonder when the loaded gun of thuggish people owning killer dogs will finally be addressed by our development-obsessed local government.
Probably right after the next "tweaker with a pit" child mauling.
The reasoning for declining federal education money is simple. We are already last.With the influx of funds we will still be last.How could it get worse? After all we can't be ranked 50th minus one. Why should we risk our favorite position in the ranking of education dollars. I wonder if the legislature will ever turn away federal money spent on Utah water projects?
Is this the same issue we discussed before, where you pointed out that the money...
...may only be used in the 2010-11 school year for compensation, benefits and other expenses to retain existing employees...
This is money that must be used to keep educrats and teachers employed and for no other purpose. It's a jobs bill... A make work program to keep a bunch of predominantly democrat votes off the unemployment line come the fall elections.
That's fine for them, but let's cut all the sweet talk about "money for our schoolchildren".
I haven't read the Trentleman column or the SE editorial because they are each very rarely worth the time.
But if they think it's a good idea, I guess I can say, that says it all.
Our fabulous biz wiz Godfrey let another high tech company with a high payroll slip away to Layton while he was busy patting himself on the back over bringing another 5 man ski company headquarters to his high adventure fantasy town of Ogden. In the same article is another high tech outfit with 50 high paying jobs going to Layton. Apparently our globe trotting mayor was too busy unsuccessfully trying to entice some Mexican chichas outfit to Ogden to make a play for this serious high tech outfit that Layton scored.
Once again Layton's Administration kicks Godfrey and his "A" teams ass in the real world of economic development!
Story here:
http://www.standard.net/topics/business/2010/08/26/applied-industrial-technologies-moving-layton-closer-hafb
Ogden gets a few "high adventure" crumbs falling off other cities tables while Layton, Orem, Draper, etc get the big companies with big payrolls.
I failed to see what most of these comments had to do with the story they are attached to. However for those who think that the legislature is crazy here is the deal. The feds created a rule in accepting the 101 million in funds that the state would not allow education funding to fall below 2006 levels for the next 3 years, well we increased the budget for education in 06 and with the small cuts from this last year we are already below that level. Utah spends 50% on secondary and 15-16% of its' state budget on higher education. Being forced to increase funding in the next session and potentially 2 more means those funds have to come from roads, medicaid and other social services that only make up the remaining 35%. The only way to make this work past next year will be large tax increases which suck for the economy. Rarely does anyone seem to get the facts before these articles come out.
"I failed to see what most of these comments had to do with the story they are attached to."
The main article was set up as an open topic thread; so readers were invited to bring up off topic subjects.
"Rarely does anyone seem to get the facts before these articles come out."
Thanks for the new info James. Finally we learn from you the nature of the "strings" our legislators are complaining about.
I'll add that its interesting that after a half dozen articles published in the Norther Utah print media over the past week or so, this is the first time we've learned about the opposing legislators' specific objections. This demonstrates the beauty of the blog medium by the way. Thanks to you we're now apprised of the true operative facts.
Well, James, I think you can see the reason for the three-year-funding rule. If there weren't such a rule, states could just play a shell game with the federal education money, transferring their other ed. money over to roads or medicaid or higher ed. or whatever else they want. Is that what you'd prefer?
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