Levie's Disturbing Vision

RUSD activist/indoctrinator Al Levie has a commentary in the JT today that should concern anyone interested in ensuring a fair and balanced education for children attending our public schools.

Levie assumes that the ideals of our country can be summarized in a few quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, and that equality of economic outcomes and "concerns of humanity over narrow individual wants" should be our goal as a society. The problem with Levie's assumptions and his more specific objectives -next paragraph - is that they can so easily run afoul of our actual priorities as they have been enshrined in our constitution.

Levie pledges to "redouble my efforts in the struggle for social and economic justice. Concretely, that means fighting to roll back the power of the corporate elite in our society, making the ultra-rich pay their fair share in taxes, fighting for adequate funding for our public schools, restoring collective bargaining for public employees, fair and humane immigration reform, and restoring the voting rights for all people living within our state and country."

Now to parse Levie's vague and flowery language.

Rolling back the power of corporate elites means curtailing the rights of free speech guaranteed in our constitution. In Levie's vision, it is just fine for one organization, a union, to forcibly remove cash from the paychecks of members forced by virtue of their profession to be members, and to use that money for political speech, but that it is not ok for corporations to similarly participate in the election process.

Fair share taxes and adequate funding for public schools are of course never quantified. The reason this is so is because enough is never enough. As a nation we pump more money into public schools than virtually every other nation and all we get is Levie's indoctrinating our children while failing to teach the fundamental skills needed to compete in society. Of course Levie doesn't want people to have to compete as he has a utopian vision for society. Anyway, while it is debatable whether Levie's tax-hell vision runs afoul of our constitution, it certainly runs afoul of economic realities and would leave us all much poorer, though perhaps equal.

Restoring collective bargaining for public employees means creating or recreating an inequitable system that grants powers to union bosses not available to other citizens. Wouldn't you just love to bargain over your property taxes? Thanks Governor Walker for restoring equal protections for the rest of us.

Fair and humane immigration reform of course is code for open borders and citizenship for people who violate our immigration laws. Levie is a big proponent of the DREAM Act which would elevate illegal immigrants above citizens insofar as the former would be granted in-state tuition, despite being unlawful residents of said state, while the latter citizens would pay out-of -state rates.

And lastly, restoring voting rights probably refers to Levie's efforts to ensure that people can vote without producing a valid identification. This of course enables voter fraud which disenfranchises legitimate voters.

Be concerned for our public school children, be very concerned.