Massie: Gutting Public Education Not Enough; Kill It Dead

Northern Kentucky's own teabagging Thomas Massie is veering perilously close to performance art territory. No matter what society-demolishing idea congressional repugs come up with, Massie can find a reason to vote against it because it's not destructive enough.

Down with Tyranny:

Not a single Democrat voted for John Kline's anti-education bill, H.R. 5. It passed Friday, 221-207, a dozen Republicans crossing the aisle and voting with Team Pelosi. The bill, which Kline and the rest of the GOP zombies call the Student Success Act, was supposed to rewrite No Child Left Behind. If anything, they've managed to make a terrible law even worse.

Even Obama's way too corporate Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, couldn't stomach it. He said that beside locking in crippling cuts to education funding. it “marks a retreat from high standards for all students and would virtually eliminate accountability for the learning of historically underserved students-- a huge step backward for efforts to improve academic achievement.” The Senate will never pass this garbage and Obama said he would veto it if it ever reached his desk.

The 12 Republicans who voted NO, are mostly in purple districts where it's hard to get away with voting for this kind of crazy-ass legislation. (It is worth noting, however, that Congress' most anti-education Member, Louie Gohmert, also voted NO, but he voted NO because he opposes public education completely. 4 Libertarian-types who also oppose public education-- Justin Amash (R-MI), Tom Massie (R-KY), Walter Jones (R-NC) and Sam Graves (R-MO)-- voted against the bill as well.

Meanwhile, Hal Rogers, the pride of Southeastern Kentucky, has come up with a budget to eliminate all spending on anything and everything that doesn't kill or imprison black, brown and non-subservient female people.

TPM:

House Republicans unveiled legislation Monday that dramatically cuts funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and various arts and wildlife programs.

The draft legislation (PDF), which will face committee hearings starting Tuesday, slashes the fiscal 2014 budget for the Interior Department and for the EPA by $5.5 billion from existing levels enacted for 2013 — a 19 percent cut that brings base funding down to $24.3 billion. It’s $4 billion below levels already required by sequestration — automatic spending cuts that both parties say are senseless and onerous.
House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) said the bill “reflects the extraordinarily hard choices needed to maintain critical investments and services for local communities,” while “dramatically scaling back lower-priority, or ‘nice-to-have’ programs.”

The proposal reflects the GOP’s opening salvo in what is shaping up to be an ugly battle to keep the government open when funding expires on September 30. Republicans are demanding a swath of new cuts to domestic programs, in part to protect the military budget from long-term spending reductions that the two sides agreed to in 2011.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

So, here are the options so far:

1. Slashing government programs like the EPA which the Republicans characterize as "nice to have" but nonessential.
2. Slashing the social insurance programs instead (preferably with some phony "tax reform" so Democrats can pretend that they soaked the rich even though they didn't.)
3. Already scheduled military cuts which President Obama, most Democrats and all Republicans have said they cannot tolerate.

Gosh, I wonder how this is going to go?

 We're not moving toward a feudal lords-n-serfs society any more.  We're already there.