A Legislator for Every Corp.

Republicans have lots of solutions. What they were short on for the longest time – until the Reagan presidency – was problems that those solutions could answer. One of their favorite solutions was privatized schools. But until Republicans were able to take over legislatures around the country and cut funding that solution didn’t make much sense. Now after years and years of cutting taxes for the wealthy and comparably cutting funding for schools, the idea of turning schools over to private groups is gaining some grudging interest. To make it more palatable, legislatures will continue to choke the public school system until it is all but non-functional.

In Iowa we are one vote shy of a Republican majority in the senate. If they had that majority, they would be going after schools in a major way. Thus they could greatly lower the quality of learning and up the desire of folks to consider privatizing schools. This is really at odds with a state where pride in the local PUBLIC schools are part of the fabric of society. Even without a majority, Republican legislators did try to cut school funding.

Schools is only one of many fronts that ALEC owned legislatures are attacking. Fortunately, Iowa has bucked the trend in most of their efforts. Therefore we can watch as the ALEC sponsored legislation blows up in disastrous ways around the country. Privatized prisons that must be filled even if it is with kids pulling harmless pranks; cities in bankruptcy; streets falling apart; closing libraries, cemeteries and pools.

More next week.

Watch Detroit Get Sold Off.
What happens in Detroit will be watched across the country. What happens there will be repeated to some extent in most states in the next decades. Remember before Ronald Reagan when the federal government had a concept called “revenue sharing.” Money that returned to cities to help with projects or whatever the cities needed. That ended under Reagan and many cities started charging for services that once were free, such as garbage pickup.

During its heyday, Detroit built buildings, and created parks that it can no longer maintain. Look for these to be auctioned off at pennies on the dollar. Then expect private industry to do even less maintenance, then abandoning said buildings.

By the way, as Detroit sinks into bankruptcy it did agree to pay $400,000,000 for a new hockey stadium for the Red Wings. This is money that will not go for promised pensions and retirements.

Drug Companies Exempted From Being Sued
With all the hoopla around marriage equality and the gutting of the voting rights act, few people paid attention to a SCOTUS decision that would all but exempt drug companies from being sued for side effects of drugs. Surprise! The ruling is that if the FDA said a drug was good, then it is still good no matter what happened. Read this nearly unbelievable story here:

Walmart Workers Go On Strike
These folks are gutsy. They have no union, they have low pay and probably no savings. But in the tradition of standing up for what is right, workers at several low wage employers have gone on one or two day strikes in recent weeks to bring problems out in the public after finding that going through channels at the company does little good.

The most recent example are workers at a Walmart warehouse in Mira Loma, California who went on strike to protest working conditions. Good luck folks. Let us hope that most people will vote with their feet and let Walmart know we will take our business to good employers.

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
Big news on one of the most baffling problems we have – bee colony collapse disorder. This is a problem with life threatening consequences for mankind. Simply stated, bees are needed to pollinate crops. Without bees much of the pollination doesn’t happen. Without pollination, no food without which we die.

Well, it looks like scientists (people thought useless by Republicans) have narrowed down the cause. The problem is that it looks like fungicides in particular and fungicides mixed with pesticides may be what is in the lethal cocktail for bees. Here is hoping that scientists can pinpoint the problem soon before we try to exist without bees.