It’s not often that Republican speak the truth about their overarching agenda. They more often cloak it in palatable language that makes it more appealing and disguises their heartlessness and their true goals. But every once in awhile one of their members gives us a glimpse of what their real agenda is. Mitt Romney did it when he made his “47 percent” and “binders full of women” remarks, for example.
That happened in Michigan this week when Republican House member Tim Kelly of Saginaw Township made this rather stunning comment:
I believe in publicly-funded education, not necessarily publicly-delivered.
The remark was made in the context of his outrageous proposal to simply eliminate the Detroit Public School system because, according to him, “They’ve had their opportunity and…they’ve squandered that opportunity.” That proposal, particularly coming from the chairman of the House Appropriations School Aid Subcommittee, is shocking enough. But it was his statement about publicly-funded education that’s not publicly-delivered that reveals the real agenda of the Republicans in Michigan and elsewhere across the country: to use tax dollars to enrich private education corporations.
That is, simply put, what Kelly is proposing. He wants to install a direct pipeline between the state coffers containing our tax dollars and the bank accounts of for-profit charters and other corporate education interests.
The fact that for-profit education is no more effective – often LESS effective – than public education is irrelevant to this conversation. Actually, educational outcomes play a secondary or even tertiary role. Enriching private corporations and destroying teachers unions are the main drivers for the Republican education agenda.
It’s just not every day that one of them admits it where people can hear.
[Photo credit: Anne Savage, special to Eclectablog]
