A Reminder
by Mike Kimel
A Reminder
My wife was talking to a friend of hers who gets paid by the school district her son attends to bring the boy to school because, given where they live, it would be inconvenient to provide bus service to where they live. We worked out the numbers, and my best guess is that she’s paid about the average cost of of transporting a pupil to school. The family isn’t poor and the child isn’t disabled. I’m all in favor of giving everyone a fair chance in life, but let this be a reminder – sometimes when the far right is railing against something, they have a point.
After all, the few dollars paid to some random mother proves that there is massive wasted spending, so let’s slash federal spending and end Social Security and Medicare.
foosion,
Its not a few dollars. And I’d be surprised if its one random mother. And if you can find something I wrote that supports slashing SS or Medicare, feel free to point it out.
Folks on the far right have made a caricature of themselves in the past decade and a half or so. To cut off your next objection at the pass, one doesn’t have to be a Reagan supporter to note a qualitative shift with Newt Gingrich, and to note that said shift seems to be increasing in speed and severity.
But I look at the left of center, and there are some places I see a similar caricature. Not as many, mind you, but if your only claim is “we’re not as bad as those other guys” it is a weak claim. A cleaner house would attract more votes.
It may be the district has a state mandated responsibility to transport every child past X miles of the building. This could be cost effective.
Of all the craziness in government this is a very minor matter.
I am right but not “far right” but there are lots of things needing fixed bigger than this.
I think what makes this look “strange” is that so many parents these days do transport kids to school and back as a routine thing. In the 1950’s, let’s say, the school district might well have had a legal requirement to provide bus service to all children more than say one mile away from their school. In this context, paying a parent to transport a child from an awkward-to-reach location would have made peerfect sense.
I.e., this doesn’t sound like Liberalism Gone Mad. It’s just “tradition” — something of which conservatives once claimed to be very fond.
To Rusty’s point, this is a slice of a story, not necessarily the whole picture, and it’s possible that it actually makes perfect sense.
But let’s suppose it’s absolute nonsense, and radical liberal nonsense to boot.
The fact that a right wing PoV might actually be correct in this instance is of close to zero significance because of 1) blind pigs and acorns, and 2) the right wing is generally wrong because their fundamental world view and the malosophy that results from it are wrong – practically and ethically.
Getting some little thing at the margin apparently right by accident or coincidence in no way vindicates right-wingery.
Cheers!
JzB
Jazz
nevertheless Kimel has a point. I get to talk to “conservative” people a lot. And even I can understand that some of what they don’t like about “government” is probably on the mark.
sad fact is that government is people, and people are not always either smart or honest.
this does not mean that every “left” cause needs to be abandoned, but it does mean that a knee jerk “if it’s left it’s right” is not going to win you any votes from these people… and these are the people we say we are “for.”
try to say it another way… “right wingery” thrives because of “left wingery.”
coberly,
You made my point better than I did. Thanks.
actually i am not sure i understand the situation that Mike describes. sometimes these things are not what they appear.
i’d suggest the concerned people get together and carefully define the problem and then offer proposed solutions until they can come to agreement.
in general i would get rid of “representative” government at the city council and school board level and rely on town meetings.. so the people can be heard if they want, and so “all concerned” can vote on the solution.
what to do if the “town” is the size of Chicago presents problems.
but I have been wondering what “goverment” would be like if instead of having a House of Representatives where he Rep “represents” about half a million people..
we had “neighborhoods” of about 300 voters elect (in town meetings) 2 or 3 representatives (first and second in a single, one-vote election so that the minority would have a chance to be represented at the next level) to a next level “congress” of about 300 representatives, would would elect about two or three to go on to the next level. four levels should allow about 1 to 300 million people to be ultimately represented by a “congress” of about 300. this would preserve “face to face” representation at each level, and a manageable size for a “congress” at each level. and should increase “responsibility” and take the effect of “money” out of the process.
I don’t get the point.
Transporting students to school is one of the districts normal costs. If they can get a student that would normally cost more than average to school for only average cost, why should people “rail” against that?
On reading this I got to thinking about deserving and undeserving. Seems the distinction is made based on income most of the time. Our income is a bit above the median but our wealth is much much above the median. Based on our income and if we had 4 kids in school we might be deserving of some help. Based on our wealth, NO.
Then I got to thinking about the Pain In The Ass factor of determining who is deserving based on income when for many folks like us the income can be gamed in many many ways.
My wife was a CPA who had stories about her wealthy clients who gamed their income to get scholarship money for their children.
YMMV
One caricature of the right is that everyone should be allowed to do anything they want, with no government interference, no matter how much it negatively affects other people. One caricature of the left is that the government should take care of everyone, no matter how poor their decisions.
I for one am very uncomfortable with the idea that the government should pay middle class people to bring their kids to school. There are plenty of families I know whose kids also don’t use the school bus and who seem get to school perfectly well without the government covering what is essentially taxi service.
Dale –
I am seldom in such deep disagreement with you as I am now.
“right wingery” thrives because of “left wingery.”
I don’t get this at all. Right wingery is not [valid] conservatism, it is a reactionary mindset rooted in suspicion and negativism. It doesn’t need left wingery. In a pinch no-quite-as-right wingery would do just fine.
in general i would get rid of “representative” government at the city council and school board level and rely on town meetings.
Maybe this did or would have worked historically. Now, the only time you can get people to town meetings is if their own ox is getting gored or they have some other NIMBY-style ax to grind.
For a long list of good and bad reasons, they are simply not going to participate.
For one, it’s so much easier to stay home and watch Honey BooBoo.
Which is kinda why we’re so screwed.
JzB
This strikes me as a real tempest in a teapot, and certainly not an illustration of liberal government excess, since it almost certainly is the result of a policy supported by conservatives in the school district as well as by liberals there: a policy, created by ordinance, of using the property tax base to provide transportation to and from school for every kid in the district whose family wants it.
How exactly is this an example of liberal excess? That it was a poor decision for a family with school-age kids to move to a location within the school district where it is not cost-effective for the district to provide bus service, and so the liberals think the school district should take care of them, but the conservatives don’t? Really? The school district might be well advised to change this policy, but I don’t see why anyone would think this is a liberal vs. conservative, big-government vs. small-government thing. It’s a decision by a middle-class town to use some if its property tax money to pay for transportation to and from school for every kid in the district. Period.
Right wingery thrives because of left wingery? Oh? Not because right-wingery is a self-contained ideology that’s attractive to certain people?
The ideology opposes anything that isn’t far right–anything that isn’t contained within the ideology itself. It doesn’t limit itself to opposing left-wingery, although of course it does call everything that is not right=wingery left-wingery.
Spot-on, JazzB.
Jazz and bev
you have too high an opinion of voters ability to distinguish between traditional conservatism and right-wingery.
which isn’t surprising, because neither, apparently, can you.
to try again: kimel was trying to make a point, with maybe not the best example, of the way “gummint spending” gets an evil reputation among working class tax payers.
i seconded that point… again with some reservations about the example..
then jazz comes in and jumps over my conclusion with an observation that right wingery is right wingery, completely losing the point that what drives working class people.. the old heart of the democratic party… into the hands of right wingery is, or might be, left wingery.
jazz… i know the difference between the crazy right and the natural conservativism of working people.
and i wish the hard left would stop driving the working class into the arms of the crazy right.
jazz
no doubt that under current conditions where “your vote does not count” people don’t participate.
change the electoral structure so voters have a real chance to discuss issues and elect people they know and you might see more participation
because even lazy people would get tired of being told… “if you don’t like it why don’t you come to the town meeting?”
Bev
“Period” means “I have stopped thinking.”
the arrangement Kimel cited will be perceived by the working people of that “middle class town” as them being taxed in order to pay those rich folks to live in a nice house so far from the school their kids can’t walk or even ride the school bus.
taxing me to pay for what you want is left wingery.
but even us poor working folk, and probably a few evil rich white men can see the point of paying taxes for what we “all” need. opinions may differ about what “we all” need, and that’s why we have elections.
the problem is that we see no need to compromise or even understand each other, and the politicians get elected by appealing to our primitive ideas.. right or left… while selling out the country to the highest bidders.