BFT3K

Republicans are also targeting school breakfasts and lunches, specifically the funding that assists children in need. By slashing this funding many children would either be forced to learn while hungry, or their families would have to come up with cash they are already short on. This is just another attempt by the GOP to further destroy the middle class and punish kids that go to public schools, and its despicable.

But that?s not all, Republicans are also attacking public colleges. On the chopping block is Pell Grants, perhaps the main source of funding that gets millions of students into colleges around the country. The student-aid reductions would trim the maximum Pell Grant by 15 percent, or $845, from the $5,550 available to the neediest students now, and make 1.7 million students ineligible for Pell Grants.

I myself received a college education because of Pell Grants. Republicans probably wish I hadn?t. Because I am educated, I?m able to see through the lies the Republicans constantly spew. And that just pisses them off. That?s one reason why Republicans hate education. The more educated a person is, the less likely they are to support the Republican agenda. Their solution therefore is to destroy education which would also weaken our infrastructure and economy. According to the LA Times, ?University of California students would take a nearly $55-million hit from reductions in Pell grants. A $20-million check promised for bringing a rail line closer to the L.A. airport would be taken back. Head Start cuts would eliminate about 14,000 slots for low-income children in California. Democrats said the massive cuts would set back the nation?s economic recovery and weaken the safety net for the needy and unemployed. The UC system, for which federal funding is the single largest source of support for research, would receive nearly $100 million less ? just in biomedical research. ?Cuts of this magnitude are unsustainable if California?s biomedical research industry is to remain a global leader in research innovation and an economic engine helping to stabilize California?s economy,? J. Gary Falle, UC associate vice president for government relations, wrote to lawmakers.? This is just the tip of the iceberg and couldn?t come at a worse time considering that China is opening major research universities, seven announced in the last five years. A 2005 National Research Council report warned that U.S. predominance in science appears to be eroding in the face of competition.?

So why do Republicans want to target education? It?s quite simple really. They want to create an army of cheap labor. College graduates are paid more than high school graduates so it makes sense that the less educated you are, the less an employer can pay you. Another reason why Republicans are out to destroy education is so that children will be available to work, that is, once child labor laws are struck down. In Missouri, Republicans are trying to repeal the states child labor laws in an effort to provide cheap labor and easily manipulated workers to companies and corporations. Allow me to go over some of the potential repeals.

From Senate Bill 222 as proposed in the Missouri Senate, the bill would repeal certain sections of law related to child labor, specifically: sections 294.021, 294.022, 294.024, 294.027, 294.030, 294.040, 294.045, 294.051, 294.054, 294.060, 294.070, 294.080, 294.090, and 294.100.

So what do these sections contain? How about 294.021: No child under fourteen years of age shall be employed or permitted to work at any occupation at any time; except as provided in this chapter.].

The brackets around the section means this is a section of law whose repeal is proposed, and thus a child under 14 would no longer be limited in being able to be employed. And it gets worse. 294.024: [A child may not be employed during the regular school term unless the child has been issued a work certificate or a work permit pursuant to the provisions of this chapter.] Thus a child could now be employed during the school term without a work permit. A child under 16 can work in motels/hotels without restrictions on hours. Now that should raise some eyebrows, particularly since many Republican politicians and businessmen have a sick infatuation with children. Let?s continue examining the repeals.

No work permits would be required for those 15 or 16 and the authority of the Director of the Division of Labor Standards to oversee employers of children is eliminated. All of this is not for our children as proponents of repeal say it is. Republicans want to put children to work instead of using taxpayer money to educate them. They want children to work at low wages, with no union protection, no proper government supervision as a means of providing cheap and compliant labor for some of their constituents, or even themselves. Its plain immoral and evil.

We need to fix our schools. We do not need to be putting our children to work. Every child should have the right to a quality education. It makes them better people, and better equipped to take this country to a greater future.

And as a final blow to public education, Republicans are on a mission to destroy public unions, which means teachers are being targeted. Collective bargaining rights have recently been struck down by Republican fascist Governor Scott Walker, also owned by the Koch Brothers, which will likely mean that teacher salaries and benefits will drop off a cliff, causing many teachers to abandon their field to find jobs that keep their families financially afloat. Scores will drop in Wisconsin schools in the future because collective bargaining rights for teachers are connected to school performance. In a recent Rolling Stone article, it states that ?The five states where collective bargaining is currently outlawed (S. Carolina, N. Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia) are the five states with the lowest SAT/ACT scores in the country. Where does Wisconsin rank with it?s strong teachers? union? Second in the nation.?

That, ladies and gentlemen, should say it all. Republicans want us to be stupid. They need to thrust us into a fire of ignorance. It makes us easier to scare and manipulate and it makes us more agreeable to lower wages and less benefits such as health care and pensions. If we are not educated, Republicans can force feed us anything they want and we would be forced to believe it because we would not know otherwise. It would be easy for them to sell us on trickle down economics and war. Easy for them to sell us on privatizing Social Security and eliminating Medicare. Easy for them to take away rights without us knowing because how do we know what rights we have without being educated? It would also make it easy for them to gain permanent control of this nation and easier for them to persecute people. This all makes perfect sense, right? There is a reason why the rest of the world is surpassing us. Its because the rest of the world is being better educated. We are falling behind the rest of the world in science, infrastructure, energy, math, and so on. And the reason why we are falling behind is because Republicans refuse to move forward into the future. They want America to fail. Because if America fails, they win. And if we let them win, we are truly stupid.