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Categories: Education Vouchers and Charter Schools, Religion, Humor & Sarcasm, Ranting and Venting
(X posted from Plunderbund) Let's cut to the point and get something straight here right out of the gate. The Buckeye Institute is not our friend - if you don't consider yourself a conservative. Put a nice little period after that one and you can go about your day unless you want to hear me pound Jill Zimon for the next couple minutes.
Jill posted a nice little note on her blog making us all aware that The Buckeye Institute has a new blog designed to alert us of any "wasteful spending" at The Statehouse. It's fun! It's exciting! We can make our government better and the flowers will smell rosier and the sun will shine brighter. Jill, dear, what the FUCK don't you get about the Buckeye Institute? First clue:
Right there above the link to your blog...see it? "...promoting free market ideas and limited government". That's code for "Right-wing intelligent design loving miscreants". Is this new to you? Thankfully Jerid hopped on this and outed Carlo and friends. You really want to point people there and have us all hop on this illusion of a bi-partisan trainwreck? You really hat tipped Matt Naugle? Did i really just see that? There is a reason Russell and I used to give you shit about being a closet conservative. Then you let Matt get away with slamming Policy Matters and pretending that Buckeye Institute is "completely unlike Policy Matters, which is a group of liberal smucks and union cronies". Pardon me, but What? The? Fuck?
Do some damned research. You normally do. Find out that while Matt is understandably trying to paint Policy Matters as partisan and Buckeye Institute as "representing the general interest", nothing could be further from the truth. Second clue? They hired his ass to put the blog together! Ding ding ding! I think there is a knob behind your left ear labeled "conservative misinformation bullshit meter". Turn that up to 11.
Business First got it right when they called BI "a conservative think tank in Columbus". Duh. You might also find out that in January Deborah Owens (aka DeborahLOwens or Deborah Owens Fink) was named to the board. Wanna guess who she gave money to? Yup. Wanna guess what else she is involved in? You know, right? You quoted her once and I think even pounded on her a bit. She's also the mouthpiece in Ohio for Seattle's Discovery Institute - a so-called "public policy think tank", but more aptly described as a "belief tank" (like a think tank without the doubt).
Blackwell, Loparo, Fink, Naugle. Yes! Let's get behind that! Make no mistake here: The Buckeye Institute is the enemy. If No one is more concerned about Ohio's future than you, then call bullshit on this instead of empower it. For the love of all that is good and right fight the good fight!
But hey, it's a rough and tumble world out there in this political landscape. Charlatans everywhere. Be careful, kid. You need something just come see me at the pub. I'll be in the back talking strategy with Vinnie.
I went onto their site and took a look around. Free-market this and free-market that. I think it's safe to say that progressives cherish democracy like their own lungs. And libertarian or quasi-libertarian/ neoconservative groups like BI spit on and ridicule democracy by pooh-poohing the very notion that government is a force for good when people get involved.
Look at the feature article, "Getting It Wrong for Ohio’s Future," for example:
"Though billed as a guarantee that every student will receive a 'high quality education' the proposal (to put school funding decisions in the hands of the state BOard OF Education) is in fact a guaranteed blank check for Ohio’s public schools."
God for-freakin-bid we actually put school funding in the hands of an elected (or mostly elected) body that's accountable to the public! LEt the "free market" save it, the way it's come to the rescue of all those black people in NEw Orleans, many of whom are now off their rooftops and in the comfort of big communities of other poor black people in basements and woodsheds everywhere. That didn't happen because the government had too much of a hand in it, it happened because these neocons abandoned those people the way they want to abandon schools, leaving the "invisible hand" of the free market to work its magic again.
The BUckeye Institute is entitled to its own views, but, whatever Jill was thinking, no self-respecting progressive or liberal would touch that libertarian tortured logic with a 30-foot pole.
Link
My younger brother, a real humorist (used to write for TV), was interviewing my friends at my wedding. He got to my friend, Brian, and asked him, What do you like most about Jill? And Brian scratches his chin, looks at the ceiling and then says, Her sense of humor. My brother stops breathing, stares into the camera and drops his jaw before looking to the crowd then back at my friend. "You think Jill has a sense of humor??"
There you have it.