Starve the Beast. Keep defunding programs and agencies to bog them down and make them slow and ineffective and then complain about how slow and ineffective they are to justify more defunding so Congress has more money to give to the oligarchs or the Military Industrial Complex.
In the meantime they raise my,
Air Transportation Taxes
Biodiesel Fuel Taxes
Building Permit Taxes
Business Registration Fees
Capital Gains Taxes
Cigarette Taxes
Court Fines
Disposal Fees
Dog License Taxes
Drivers License Fees
Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax
Employer Medicare Taxes
Employer Social Security Taxes
Environmental Fees
Estate Taxes
Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans
Federal Corporate Taxes
Federal Income Taxes
Federal Unemployment Taxes
Fishing License Taxes
Flush Taxes
Food And Beverage License Fees
Franchise Business Taxes
Garbage Taxes
Gasoline Taxes
Gift Taxes
Gun Ownership Permits
Hazardous Material Disposal Fees
Highway Access Fees
Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas)
Hunting License Taxes
Import Taxes
Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes
Inheritance Taxes
Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses
Inspection Fees
Insurance Premium Taxes
Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes
Inventory Taxes
IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes
IRS Interest Charges
IRS Penalties
Library Taxes
License Plate Fees
Liquor Taxes
Local Corporate Taxes
Local Income Taxes
Local School Taxes
Local Unemployment Taxes
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Taxes
Medicare Taxes
Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare
Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax
Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income
Parking Meters
Passport Fees
Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation)
Property Taxes
Real Estate Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Taxes
Registration Fees For New Businesses
Toll Booth Taxes
Sales Taxes
Self-Employment Taxes
Sewer & Water Taxes
School Taxes
Septic Permit Taxes
Service Charge Taxes
Social Security Taxes
Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction
Sports Stadium Taxes
State Corporate Taxes
State Income Taxes
State Park Entrance Fees
State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)
Tanning Taxes
Telephone 911 Service Taxes
Telephone Federal Excise Taxes
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes
Telephone State And Local Taxes
Telephone Universal Access Taxes
The Alternative Minimum Tax
Tire Recycling Fees
Tire Taxes
Tolls
Traffic Fines
Use Taxes
Utility Taxes
Vehicle Registration Taxes
Waste Management Taxes
Water Rights Fees
Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees
Well Permit Fees
Workers Compensation Taxes
Zoning Permit Fees
So they always get theirs and you can’t do a fucking thing about except grab a tent and join the city.
They talk about how regulation is stifling business while ignoring how regulation has stopped things like the dumping of industrial waste into public waterways that necessitated tax dollars being spent for clean up.
They say the economy can't handle wage increases...so the min wage hasn't been raised in a decade
They say tax cuts encourage the economy...so we have some of the lowest tax rates in American history
They say regulations stifle indistry...so we've cut regulations on industries across the board
...and yet, the economy is fucking terrible.
And they want us to keep cutting taxes, keep gutting regulations, and oppose any type of wage increases.
They've lied to us for 40 years, and our infrastructure is crumbling, inequality is booming, and we are more mired in household debt than at any point in American history.
We have witnessed the total failure of Conservative neoliberal economic ideology, and it is threatening to destroy the American Middle Class.
>the economy is fucking terrible.
Corporate profits are at record highs. What's terrible is how it's helping/working for the general public. The people at the very top have never done better.
Guess which group the GOP cares about?
I got into an argument with a Libertarian who tried to claim that legally binding Contracts actually make corporations more reliable than the government.
He then promptly never got back to me when I asked who enforced the legally binding part.
It’s all a con. Less government means more power in the hands of the few. And the right has been successful in selling their vision by appealing the base drives of people (e.g. fear, outrage).
Yeah the government might do shady shit like engage in cocaine trafficking for latin american death squads in order to buy AT missiles for Iran. Good ol' Reagan was a genius.
As someone that grew up in NYC/NJ during the crack epidemic, it was like living in an open air mental asylum. It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out that the CIA were responsible for all that misery, chaos, and lives lost. Then the government's response was to use the war on drugs to finish off anyone that it didn't get the first time, instead of actually fixing the situation they created.
It’s difficult to describe what Reagan did as anything but evil once what happened (and is still happening) is understood. Dude skullfucked the trajectory of multiple generations of people.
It's fun to read futurist stuff from the '70s, like from Philip K. Dick or Robert Anton Wilson. There was this real belief that while it didn't bring about nirvana, shutting Nixon down was definitely a positive thing for the betterment of mankind. We'd take intelligence-enhancing pills and rent personal rocket shits for cross-country travel. A base on the moon? Please. We're mining asteroids and giving the moons of Jupiter a practiced look. Leaving behind racial strife and embracing sexual liberation, the only question was if the New Age would begin in 2000 or 2012.
Reagan must've been like a bucket of iced battery acid to those poor bastards.
We went back to a Puritan society with Reagan. Then Bush Sr got elected and wasn't authoritarian enough to keep the momentum building. Conservatives see the problem with Bush being that he wasn't Reagan so the issue was the constitution not allowing Regan to run again in 90 and 94. They think that if Reagan had the advantage of FDR black people, I mean bad people, would have stopped being bad. The Constitution fucked them over so they now need a King.
One of the first things the Reagan Administration did, I mean one of the *very first* things was repeal the Mental Health Systems Act. We spent the '70s recognizing mental illness as something we could actually treat with compassion and humanity instead of locking it away in a hidden attic. The landmark legislation was one of Carter's last successes and Reagan's first kills.
The end result was a whole lot of people who really shouldn't have been left to deal with the world on their own - if not for them then for the sake of public safety - were turned loose and forgotten. Basically, it left things worse than before and made it so it would be much harder to even get it back to where it was in the '70s.
And then the CIA/crack connection and the War on Drugs hit like a ton of bricks.
Simultaneously arming both sides in both a drug war and Iran/Iraq and engorging the oligarchy to boot. Really an evil genius that blows any Bond villain scheme out of the water, the kind of thing that makes me wish hell was real.
Republicans were the party of crime and corruption long before Trump.
They've always LOVED government control, so long as they are the ones controlling it! When they don't get everything they want on the federal level, they start complaining about state's rights, but they don't mind having the state impose their beliefs on everyone living in the state. If they really believed in what they say, then blue cities in red states would be allowed to do what they wanted.
It is happening all over Texas, from rural consolidated schools to big cities. These candidates are backed by massively funded PACs, hell bent on instilling their far right ideology into school boards. And make no mistake, the Mothers for Liberty group is anything but a group of nice suburban moms trying to protect little Susie-they use fear, intimidation and outright lies to ban books they don't like, teachers they don't like, curriculum they don't like. It is out of control.
They're dumbing down the next generation so the children can't escape to college, unless its one of those useless bible schools.
They're teaching their kids lies about history, to divide the country even further. No way to agree on anything if one side lives in a vastly different reality.
The problem is that that's stupid and they haven't realized it yet.
They're behind on the grift, the food production and housing market have already squeezed every available penny out of the average American. There's no way they'd be able to afford to pay to send their kids to school. Those kids get to go work in the mines. Charter schools will fail en masse because suddenly no one is sending their kids to ANY school (except rich people who will only send their kids to the 2-3 best ones.)
Which sounds great for corporations, until you realize that that just means A) You have an absolutely worthless workforce of children and other people who never even got around to learning the alphabet, and B) The charter schools will absolutely use every dollar they have left to force kids to go to school anyway.
Either way, people just stop having kids. Abortion bans and Contraceptive bans will mitigate it somewhat, but the meteoric rise of dumpster babies will cancel out a lot of the impact of those policies. It's not like it was in the 70s. Being a single mother then was extremely difficult with a lot of social stigma. Being a single mother (or even just unprepared young couple) is becoming a simple mathematical impossibility. We're a year of corporations gouging our food prices out from 'ditch the baby or we'll all starve' being an absolute reality for anyone in the working class.
Everyone with two cents to rub together has their straw in the same grift, and there just isn't enough money to go around.
>The problem is that that's stupid and they haven't realized it yet.
They don't care because it will NEVER impact their family.
Hundreds of thousands of times we've seen conservatives are literally too fucking stupid to understand the effect of something until it affects them personally.
>worthless workforce of children and other people who never even got around to learning the alphabet
I am picturing that hospital scene from Idiocracy in my head right now, where Not Sure is trying to explain what's wrong with him and the dead-eyed woman behind the counter only has a series of pictures to choose from.
Since they are talking so much about mental health as a deflection from guns, read the article to discover what their movement really thinks about mental health.
In short, it's a bunch of very old white men who think anything but learning "hard facts to memory" and "patriotism" is a waste of time and is biased. Mental health, counselors (both behavioral and guidance) are useless and get completely eliminated in the article.
They've taken over school boards here in Missouri too. Like you said, huge funding, all repeating the same mantras about CRT, wokeism, book bannings, all the buzzwords. Acting as "concerned parents" and "patriot mama bears".
This has been a concerted effort across the nation.
They're all just useful tools for the real agenda, which is to privatize education and quietly funnel public funds into companies that will do a horrible job outside of a few wealthier communities where parents will pay a little bit more.
You can't give the GOP anything these days, extremists have organized to take over every level of government from school boards to the office of the comptroller to the position of dog catcher.
Fortunately, today’s school student has the attention span of a cockroach. They will not be able to indoctrinate them. Consider them successful if they can get most of the students to pay attention for more than five minutes at a time and do some of their homework. Source: been in public education for 35 years.
Also how many of these "takeovers" have you survived because my uncles and aunts have taught that long and these Concerned Liberty Patriot types have been squirming their way into these positions for decades now where I'm from, screwing everything up, and promptly leaving in scandal or voted out
Don’t forget all the while throwing money into charter schools! Their goal is to ruin public education so anyone with money will fork out money to send their kid to private for profit schools, managing to turn a public good into a site of extraction and profit.
They want everywhere to be like De. Where the public schools are so underfunded everyone sends thier kinds to private schools who can afford to do so. Leaving public schools empty of funding and abandoning the poorest students to grossly underfunded public schools trying desperately to get by.
It's happening in the suburbs and rural towns. Major city schools get to avoid that.
But the state did recently take over Houston ISD for bullshit bad faith reasons.
For f@cks sake… if the usa turns into a theocracy (even more) then we the whole human civilization is in danger. These rabid religious fanatics won’t stop at the is border.
I was so grateful that all three positions on the board this year in my area didn't go to the conservatives that were running. I'm in a blue leaning area in a red state, but there's a lot of red push. GOP was pushing money into the race.
I felt the Conservatives barely had a platform. One guy felt it was time people without education backgrounds were on the board (he's a "businessman"). One mostly was just a "Conservative mother". They sent out some mailer trying to blame wokeness for drops in testing scores, even though the years they cited didn't line up. They insisted all of these weird CRT things were happening even though the curriculum is publicly listed and parents could comment on it when it was being suggested.
I thought they'd sweep it, but none of them made it. I'm hoping it's a sign for the area, but who knows.
We had the same scenario in my town, but they only got 1 of the 3 available seats. Still one too many, but at least we didn't lose 40% of our high school staff so, good enough, I guess.
Yes. We had a school board meeting about them banning CRT that was not being taught at the k-12 level. The board, having the 412 church majority hired some guy for 15k (our tax dollars were used) to teach teachers why CRT/history is bad and making their poor children hate themselves. It is ridiculous. A black pastor who spoke at the meeting once done was told to go back to his own country by a 412 church member. The pastor was escorted out of the meeting for telling the woman that his family was in the country since 1619. The were not going to walk out the white woman who said what she did, UNTIL my friends started chanting to escort her out as well for starting the exchange.
My friend, who speaks out regularly at these meetings is being doxed by these people and they recently poured red paint all over their cars/house front. It is getting ugly out here. The 412 church is also working with Mom's for Liberty in Southern California to get political appointee's in low level political positions. So much for all that christian love? They are collectively awful people.
No I think it’s beyond that. They’ve seen the current voting group of gen Z hates them. So they are trying to stop the younger ones from learning that. They want to shape the hearts and minds to be on their side. A hitler youth if you will. Because the nazis who fought didn’t just get called up. They were raised in that ideology.
I live in Colorado Springs, and Woodland Park is a pretty well off area. Not quite to Aspen or Boulder cost of living, but an average home price in that area is around $600k. Beautiful mountain views all around. These are the FYGM type of Republicans. Property values are the only thing that will get these folks to reconsider.
>These are the FYGM type of Republicans
I really, really hate that I did not know what "FYGM" meant but got it first try.
I don't know much about Colorado, but I do know that Aspen is a beautiful place ruined by rich douchetools with private jets.
One thing I've learned that conservatives and liberals agree about is that no one can deal with schools being closed. The absolute meltdown over the pandemic taught us that. Without resources and with attacks by the Board, in a state where you can easily relocate and find new jobs in education, they're going to have a hell of a time keeping teachers and they're going to have to look at 4 day school weeks or closing and consolidating schools or hugely expanding numbers of kids in class. When push comes to shove, people want their kids in school above all else.
That’s why I’m strongly considering a school board run myself. To prevent it from happening to my school district which is full of these kinds of people.
My MIL ran last year for our high school board and the guy whose seat it was tried to sue her and everyone who tried to run against him it was very eye opening.
Run as a double agent. Get in with the conservative funding then do what’s right once elected. This gets you into the position and prevents them from finding a right wing nut to run against you.
No way it’s the middle guy, look at how he’s barely lifting his hand, I guarantee he’s the least “inducted” of the 3. The left guy on the other hand, tall, semi-formal, and I can go out on a limb and guess that he would probably be a “fun teacher” that would throw parties at his house for his 7th grade class, based on the vibes I’m getting from him
Here’s the full article. We are letting these people steamroll us. In a few years we’ll be pearl clutching and shocked while wondering how it happened here.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna83311
Thanks for posting this article. I needed to know which district, and the article had a lot of helpful info on the process they took. Ugh. The way they made people lose their jobs for even speaking out is so awful!
Thank you for posting the article. Reading it, the name Witt was really familiar. I realized he was one of the ones recalled in Jefferson county, which I live in. I remember seeing the student walk outs and protests. Basically he was ousted from here so he went to the springs to pull the same crap.
Fucking conservatives want a permanent under class who is so uneducated and desperate that theyll do anything for a dollar. They also want dead gay and trans kids.
They will look at this as a win. Eliminating public schools has been an objective of the Republicans for decades. They want to privatize everything so they destroy what isn't.
The irony is that they do it by being the corrupt government officials that they are so worried about.
As someone who lives in said Colorado town, this is exactly what these guys want. They hurriedly pushed through a charter school here last year that not everyone was exactly against, but the way they went about it was real shifty. The guy in the middle, our interim superintendent but will probably be kept around if current board doesn’t go in November, worked with an organization, Education reEnvisioned BOCES, which helped to establish our charter school before he was voted in by the board of education. Before that he was fired from a neighboring district for his crazy pro-patriotic/anti-civic engagement agenda he tried to push over there. Fortunately, they’re pissing off a lot of people in the town so my hope is that they’re all gone by the end of the year, but who knows.
Crap like this is why local elections matter, too. It doesn't matter how "unimportant" a position is, Republicans need to be voted out, period. Don't even vote for a Republican dog catcher.
>“This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front,” David Illingworth, one of the new conservative school board members, wrote to another on Dec. 9, 2021, weeks after they were elected. “Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was great at this in his first 100 days.”
This is from the article. They knew from the jump that what they were doing was against what the public wanted and planned on how to do it so they couldn't be stopped.
>Teachers grew particularly alarmed early this year when word spread that Ken Witt, the new superintendent, did not plan to reapply for grants that covered the salaries of counselors and social workers.
>At Gateway Elementary School in March, Witt told staff members he prioritized academic achievement, not students’ emotions. “We are not the department of health and human services,” he said, as teachers angrily objected, according to two recordings of the meeting made by staff members and shared with NBC News
This is the same party that claims mental illness is an issue but purposely eliminates help for people who are having issue.
This is in Colorado, a solid blue state, just south of Denver, a solid blue city (being specific because lots of Colorado outside of Denver, Boulder, and fort Collins is rural af and red)
It’s a microcosm of the broader conservative playbook. Win office by telling voters how terrible government is. Spend your term making government infinitely worse. Then run for re-election by telling voters see, this is what I was saying! Government is terrible! And these liberals are asking you vote for more terrible government!
Except this time, it’s a much shorter-term, direct goal. Take over school boards, sabotage public school districts (see above), then use the failure of these districts as a justification for school choice (read: voucher) programs to send white kids to segregated religious schools.
Oddly enough, we live in an even redder county just south of this Colorado district and last year the entire slate of MAGA candidates for school board got their asses absolutely handed to them in a nonpartisan election. Voters are definitely beyond conservative in Fremont County, but fucking up the schools and driving away teachers was a bridge too far for them. Instead, they elected candidates with backgrounds in education — one of whom has a PHD in education. It’s not hopeless.
My god “Did not reapply grant to pay for counselors” these are the same idiots exclaiming that EVERY mass shooting is something mental illness related. So yea gut a program that can, I don’t know, help with a kids mental issues and to get help. They’ve been sitting with their thumbs up their asses for so long they are now elbow deep fisting themselves.
But this is what conservatives want. They want to destroy public education and replace at home religious indoctrination. Working parents that need to send their kids to school will be forced to send their kids to taxpayer funded parochial (evangelical christian) schools.
I had to look up where this is, and found that it is "Colorado Springs-adjacent" to use real estate jargon.
And suddenly all the pieces fell into place.
What happened to CO? I thought you guys were way out in front when you started selling weed. But that didn't last long. So many ultra right/ Christian groups polluting that state.
Ah not quite. Counties elected to not be part of the "liberal agenda" and said you still can't weed here. So people go to different counties to buy. I've always lived at the edge of a pussy ass county line so I can still get weed close enough. There is an infestation of horrid monsters in this box.
Most of the front range is pretty blue. This is part of the front range that isn't, think suburban/rural, outside of Denver. A lot of Colorado is red on maps, thankfully representative democracy is working and our government is run by (mostly) sensible people
The Republican Party is a communist cult. Until they are labeled correctly they will continue to ratfuck our democracy because they have religion on their side. Their seven mountains mandate is the communist manifesto written by priests
They are defunding public schools so they can steer people towards for profit charter schools and they can have control of the curriculum and disband the teachers unions. It’s all about money.
They’re doing what they did with postal service and government. Strip away everything to not allow it to function properly. Then make it to where private industry is only option left (private/Christian schools)
Racism will be the downfall of the United States...not because of the people who live under it's oppression, but how it motivates people to do things utterly against their own self-interest.
53% of white women voted for Donald Trump because he hated brown people like they do...and as their reward, their collective uterus is own by the same people who didn't allow them to vote until this century, and who pay them approximately 70 cents on the dollar. Smart.
These people elected a bunch of right wing nut jobs...and 40% of the staff quit, so now they will have their children in overcrowded class rooms just like in the dreaded "inner city"...
They aren't shy about advertising the fact that they are bigoted grifters who want healthy public institutions to fail, so you get what you vote for I guess. Stupid morons. I feel bad for the kids.
Sadly if you look at the comments on that thread, there are a whole lot of people celebrating this. "This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
We let Rush Limbaugh and his ilk spread like wildfire on the radio with no rebuttal in Red State rural America when we got rid of the Fairness Doctrine. Rural America used to be pretty split between conservatives and liberals. Not anymore.
It's a very militant playbook, and they are targeting your kids. I really hope people are starting to pay more attention to these school board elections.
Republicans: sCHoOl sHOoTIngS aRE a MEntAl HeAltH iSsUe!
Also Republicans: Only rich kids with stable home lives should have access to anything that helps them with mental health. Poor kids should go fuck themselves.
I fully believe right wing conservatives are intentionally trying to destroy the country from within so when the country collapses, they can rebuild it how they see fit. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.
Don't be fooled, crashing the schools IS the republican plan. They have done just what they set out to do and they will repeat this all over the country.
When you control the schools, you control the kids. When you control the kids, you control the narratives. When you control the narratives, you got yourselves a base. That's how they gonna keep Republican votes coming.
Is there some kind of database or list of these cruddy schools? People educated in these school systems are going to be dumb af and employers might want to avoid them.
Kids at these schools and schools in Florida won’t be able to compete in the modern world due to their lack of education.
Unfortunate but it’s the reality adults around them are creating.
Ronald Reagan told America that government was the problem, and the GOP has been doing everything they could to prove him right...
Starve the Beast. Keep defunding programs and agencies to bog them down and make them slow and ineffective and then complain about how slow and ineffective they are to justify more defunding so Congress has more money to give to the oligarchs or the Military Industrial Complex.
And the Prison Industrial Complex
What little there is only works due to redundancies.
In the meantime they raise my, Air Transportation Taxes Biodiesel Fuel Taxes Building Permit Taxes Business Registration Fees Capital Gains Taxes Cigarette Taxes Court Fines Disposal Fees Dog License Taxes Drivers License Fees Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax Employer Medicare Taxes Employer Social Security Taxes Environmental Fees Estate Taxes Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans Federal Corporate Taxes Federal Income Taxes Federal Unemployment Taxes Fishing License Taxes Flush Taxes Food And Beverage License Fees Franchise Business Taxes Garbage Taxes Gasoline Taxes Gift Taxes Gun Ownership Permits Hazardous Material Disposal Fees Highway Access Fees Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas) Hunting License Taxes Import Taxes Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes Inheritance Taxes Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses Inspection Fees Insurance Premium Taxes Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes Inventory Taxes IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties Library Taxes License Plate Fees Liquor Taxes Local Corporate Taxes Local Income Taxes Local School Taxes Local Unemployment Taxes Luxury Taxes Marriage License Taxes Medicare Taxes Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income Parking Meters Passport Fees Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation) Property Taxes Real Estate Taxes Recreational Vehicle Taxes Registration Fees For New Businesses Toll Booth Taxes Sales Taxes Self-Employment Taxes Sewer & Water Taxes School Taxes Septic Permit Taxes Service Charge Taxes Social Security Taxes Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction Sports Stadium Taxes State Corporate Taxes State Income Taxes State Park Entrance Fees State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA) Tanning Taxes Telephone 911 Service Taxes Telephone Federal Excise Taxes Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes Telephone State And Local Taxes Telephone Universal Access Taxes The Alternative Minimum Tax Tire Recycling Fees Tire Taxes Tolls Traffic Fines Use Taxes Utility Taxes Vehicle Registration Taxes Waste Management Taxes Water Rights Fees Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees Well Permit Fees Workers Compensation Taxes Zoning Permit Fees So they always get theirs and you can’t do a fucking thing about except grab a tent and join the city.
Literally the definition of a Republican
"Government doesn't work! Vote for me so I can make things even worse!" -Every Republican for the last 50 years
They talk about how regulation is stifling business while ignoring how regulation has stopped things like the dumping of industrial waste into public waterways that necessitated tax dollars being spent for clean up.
They say the economy can't handle wage increases...so the min wage hasn't been raised in a decade They say tax cuts encourage the economy...so we have some of the lowest tax rates in American history They say regulations stifle indistry...so we've cut regulations on industries across the board ...and yet, the economy is fucking terrible. And they want us to keep cutting taxes, keep gutting regulations, and oppose any type of wage increases. They've lied to us for 40 years, and our infrastructure is crumbling, inequality is booming, and we are more mired in household debt than at any point in American history. We have witnessed the total failure of Conservative neoliberal economic ideology, and it is threatening to destroy the American Middle Class.
>the economy is fucking terrible. Corporate profits are at record highs. What's terrible is how it's helping/working for the general public. The people at the very top have never done better. Guess which group the GOP cares about?
But it hurts ***those*** people more, so to the conservative mind it is a raging success.
Republicans and removing environmental and workers protections are synonymous. Than pass the blame when it fails.
I got into an argument with a Libertarian who tried to claim that legally binding Contracts actually make corporations more reliable than the government. He then promptly never got back to me when I asked who enforced the legally binding part.
They conveniently forget about the worldwide financial crash caused by dodgy lending by deregulated banks in 2008.
It’s all a con. Less government means more power in the hands of the few. And the right has been successful in selling their vision by appealing the base drives of people (e.g. fear, outrage).
Next election: see how bad the government is!
Most major modern problems in the US can be traced back to that asshat.
There's a subreddit dedicated to how great he was. I stopped reading after a few posts and comments.
He was a large part of the problem himself
Fuck reagan.
This right here!
Yeah the government might do shady shit like engage in cocaine trafficking for latin american death squads in order to buy AT missiles for Iran. Good ol' Reagan was a genius.
As someone that grew up in NYC/NJ during the crack epidemic, it was like living in an open air mental asylum. It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out that the CIA were responsible for all that misery, chaos, and lives lost. Then the government's response was to use the war on drugs to finish off anyone that it didn't get the first time, instead of actually fixing the situation they created.
It’s difficult to describe what Reagan did as anything but evil once what happened (and is still happening) is understood. Dude skullfucked the trajectory of multiple generations of people.
Yeah, but the rich got richer. - GOP defense
It's fun to read futurist stuff from the '70s, like from Philip K. Dick or Robert Anton Wilson. There was this real belief that while it didn't bring about nirvana, shutting Nixon down was definitely a positive thing for the betterment of mankind. We'd take intelligence-enhancing pills and rent personal rocket shits for cross-country travel. A base on the moon? Please. We're mining asteroids and giving the moons of Jupiter a practiced look. Leaving behind racial strife and embracing sexual liberation, the only question was if the New Age would begin in 2000 or 2012. Reagan must've been like a bucket of iced battery acid to those poor bastards.
We went back to a Puritan society with Reagan. Then Bush Sr got elected and wasn't authoritarian enough to keep the momentum building. Conservatives see the problem with Bush being that he wasn't Reagan so the issue was the constitution not allowing Regan to run again in 90 and 94. They think that if Reagan had the advantage of FDR black people, I mean bad people, would have stopped being bad. The Constitution fucked them over so they now need a King.
One of the first things the Reagan Administration did, I mean one of the *very first* things was repeal the Mental Health Systems Act. We spent the '70s recognizing mental illness as something we could actually treat with compassion and humanity instead of locking it away in a hidden attic. The landmark legislation was one of Carter's last successes and Reagan's first kills. The end result was a whole lot of people who really shouldn't have been left to deal with the world on their own - if not for them then for the sake of public safety - were turned loose and forgotten. Basically, it left things worse than before and made it so it would be much harder to even get it back to where it was in the '70s. And then the CIA/crack connection and the War on Drugs hit like a ton of bricks.
Simultaneously arming both sides in both a drug war and Iran/Iraq and engorging the oligarchy to boot. Really an evil genius that blows any Bond villain scheme out of the water, the kind of thing that makes me wish hell was real. Republicans were the party of crime and corruption long before Trump.
And then increased the size of the federal government more than any President up to Bush 2.0
They've always LOVED government control, so long as they are the ones controlling it! When they don't get everything they want on the federal level, they start complaining about state's rights, but they don't mind having the state impose their beliefs on everyone living in the state. If they really believed in what they say, then blue cities in red states would be allowed to do what they wanted.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woodland-park-colorado-school-board-conservatives-rcna83311](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woodland-park-colorado-school-board-conservatives-rcna83311)
It is happening all over Texas, from rural consolidated schools to big cities. These candidates are backed by massively funded PACs, hell bent on instilling their far right ideology into school boards. And make no mistake, the Mothers for Liberty group is anything but a group of nice suburban moms trying to protect little Susie-they use fear, intimidation and outright lies to ban books they don't like, teachers they don't like, curriculum they don't like. It is out of control.
They're dumbing down the next generation so the children can't escape to college, unless its one of those useless bible schools. They're teaching their kids lies about history, to divide the country even further. No way to agree on anything if one side lives in a vastly different reality.
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The problem is that that's stupid and they haven't realized it yet. They're behind on the grift, the food production and housing market have already squeezed every available penny out of the average American. There's no way they'd be able to afford to pay to send their kids to school. Those kids get to go work in the mines. Charter schools will fail en masse because suddenly no one is sending their kids to ANY school (except rich people who will only send their kids to the 2-3 best ones.) Which sounds great for corporations, until you realize that that just means A) You have an absolutely worthless workforce of children and other people who never even got around to learning the alphabet, and B) The charter schools will absolutely use every dollar they have left to force kids to go to school anyway. Either way, people just stop having kids. Abortion bans and Contraceptive bans will mitigate it somewhat, but the meteoric rise of dumpster babies will cancel out a lot of the impact of those policies. It's not like it was in the 70s. Being a single mother then was extremely difficult with a lot of social stigma. Being a single mother (or even just unprepared young couple) is becoming a simple mathematical impossibility. We're a year of corporations gouging our food prices out from 'ditch the baby or we'll all starve' being an absolute reality for anyone in the working class. Everyone with two cents to rub together has their straw in the same grift, and there just isn't enough money to go around.
>The problem is that that's stupid and they haven't realized it yet. They don't care because it will NEVER impact their family. Hundreds of thousands of times we've seen conservatives are literally too fucking stupid to understand the effect of something until it affects them personally.
It will impact their children and their children's children. It won't affect THEM. Republicans don't give a shit about their kids.
Once they’re out of the womb, they stop pretending to even give a damn.
>worthless workforce of children and other people who never even got around to learning the alphabet I am picturing that hospital scene from Idiocracy in my head right now, where Not Sure is trying to explain what's wrong with him and the dead-eyed woman behind the counter only has a series of pictures to choose from.
They already voted to add a charter school into the district. One third of the middle school is allocated to the charter school.
Kids will still be able to buy a Liberty U degree if they can afford it...
That’s a big IF.
Since they are talking so much about mental health as a deflection from guns, read the article to discover what their movement really thinks about mental health. In short, it's a bunch of very old white men who think anything but learning "hard facts to memory" and "patriotism" is a waste of time and is biased. Mental health, counselors (both behavioral and guidance) are useless and get completely eliminated in the article.
They've taken over school boards here in Missouri too. Like you said, huge funding, all repeating the same mantras about CRT, wokeism, book bannings, all the buzzwords. Acting as "concerned parents" and "patriot mama bears". This has been a concerted effort across the nation.
They're all just useful tools for the real agenda, which is to privatize education and quietly funnel public funds into companies that will do a horrible job outside of a few wealthier communities where parents will pay a little bit more. You can't give the GOP anything these days, extremists have organized to take over every level of government from school boards to the office of the comptroller to the position of dog catcher.
Fortunately, today’s school student has the attention span of a cockroach. They will not be able to indoctrinate them. Consider them successful if they can get most of the students to pay attention for more than five minutes at a time and do some of their homework. Source: been in public education for 35 years.
Also how many of these "takeovers" have you survived because my uncles and aunts have taught that long and these Concerned Liberty Patriot types have been squirming their way into these positions for decades now where I'm from, screwing everything up, and promptly leaving in scandal or voted out
Don’t forget all the while throwing money into charter schools! Their goal is to ruin public education so anyone with money will fork out money to send their kid to private for profit schools, managing to turn a public good into a site of extraction and profit. They want everywhere to be like De. Where the public schools are so underfunded everyone sends thier kinds to private schools who can afford to do so. Leaving public schools empty of funding and abandoning the poorest students to grossly underfunded public schools trying desperately to get by.
It's happening in the suburbs and rural towns. Major city schools get to avoid that. But the state did recently take over Houston ISD for bullshit bad faith reasons.
For f@cks sake… if the usa turns into a theocracy (even more) then we the whole human civilization is in danger. These rabid religious fanatics won’t stop at the is border.
I was so grateful that all three positions on the board this year in my area didn't go to the conservatives that were running. I'm in a blue leaning area in a red state, but there's a lot of red push. GOP was pushing money into the race. I felt the Conservatives barely had a platform. One guy felt it was time people without education backgrounds were on the board (he's a "businessman"). One mostly was just a "Conservative mother". They sent out some mailer trying to blame wokeness for drops in testing scores, even though the years they cited didn't line up. They insisted all of these weird CRT things were happening even though the curriculum is publicly listed and parents could comment on it when it was being suggested. I thought they'd sweep it, but none of them made it. I'm hoping it's a sign for the area, but who knows.
We had the same scenario in my town, but they only got 1 of the 3 available seats. Still one too many, but at least we didn't lose 40% of our high school staff so, good enough, I guess.
Do you live in a town that sounds like Semecula, in California? Cause this sounds too familiar.
My bad, 3 of these people did make it onto our school board. It is infuriating.
They promptly banned CRT after they were elected too. Their whole platform was aimed at the brain rot that's gripping the area.
Yes. We had a school board meeting about them banning CRT that was not being taught at the k-12 level. The board, having the 412 church majority hired some guy for 15k (our tax dollars were used) to teach teachers why CRT/history is bad and making their poor children hate themselves. It is ridiculous. A black pastor who spoke at the meeting once done was told to go back to his own country by a 412 church member. The pastor was escorted out of the meeting for telling the woman that his family was in the country since 1619. The were not going to walk out the white woman who said what she did, UNTIL my friends started chanting to escort her out as well for starting the exchange. My friend, who speaks out regularly at these meetings is being doxed by these people and they recently poured red paint all over their cars/house front. It is getting ugly out here. The 412 church is also working with Mom's for Liberty in Southern California to get political appointee's in low level political positions. So much for all that christian love? They are collectively awful people.
Repeat after me: There's no hate and scorn like Christian love.
Nope I’m in the Midwest
Did they claim the vote was fraudulent and they were cheated and ask for a recount? Seems like a common move for losers lately
Conservatives hate children. They hate America. They want fascism and should be seen as the enemy of the people.
It turned out that twenty years ago when conservatives said that Muslims hate us for our freedoms they were projecting.
They've wanted sharia law all along, it's only the language of the word and the color of its people that they're scared of.
No I think it’s beyond that. They’ve seen the current voting group of gen Z hates them. So they are trying to stop the younger ones from learning that. They want to shape the hearts and minds to be on their side. A hitler youth if you will. Because the nazis who fought didn’t just get called up. They were raised in that ideology.
The school system will tank and everyone who voted for these clowns will see their property value go down. Libs: OWNED.
We have much bigger problems than that
Almost got me with that image.
Nothing gets done until it affects property values, tho. That’s when the rich people start becoming affected.
They don’t live in the places they instill these school boards.
I live in Colorado Springs, and Woodland Park is a pretty well off area. Not quite to Aspen or Boulder cost of living, but an average home price in that area is around $600k. Beautiful mountain views all around. These are the FYGM type of Republicans. Property values are the only thing that will get these folks to reconsider.
>These are the FYGM type of Republicans I really, really hate that I did not know what "FYGM" meant but got it first try. I don't know much about Colorado, but I do know that Aspen is a beautiful place ruined by rich douchetools with private jets.
To be fair, that’s a very large portion of that whole metro area. Hitting them in the pocket book is the only thing they’ll notice.
They want to shut down public schools. So they cab privatize it and then funnel tax money to the wealthy. The same thing they do with everything else
My heart aches for those families that don't have the option to pull their children out of the district.
I'm guessing the reviews for the school are going to be horrid. Hence people with children avoid and home values tank.
Assuming this is in Douglas county, then that's a conservative hell hole and the voters love what's going on.
One thing I've learned that conservatives and liberals agree about is that no one can deal with schools being closed. The absolute meltdown over the pandemic taught us that. Without resources and with attacks by the Board, in a state where you can easily relocate and find new jobs in education, they're going to have a hell of a time keeping teachers and they're going to have to look at 4 day school weeks or closing and consolidating schools or hugely expanding numbers of kids in class. When push comes to shove, people want their kids in school above all else.
That’s why I’m strongly considering a school board run myself. To prevent it from happening to my school district which is full of these kinds of people.
My MIL ran last year for our high school board and the guy whose seat it was tried to sue her and everyone who tried to run against him it was very eye opening.
Sue for what?
Making him try
Run as a double agent. Get in with the conservative funding then do what’s right once elected. This gets you into the position and prevents them from finding a right wing nut to run against you.
They already think I’m a republican but when it comes to political talk i pass the puck and avoid it.
That district needs to practice 'pulling out'.
Does anyone want to guess which one of those three will be arrested for child sex crimes first?
I’m smelling a trifecta.
Middle
No way it’s the middle guy, look at how he’s barely lifting his hand, I guarantee he’s the least “inducted” of the 3. The left guy on the other hand, tall, semi-formal, and I can go out on a limb and guess that he would probably be a “fun teacher” that would throw parties at his house for his 7th grade class, based on the vibes I’m getting from him
I agree. He looks like he goes to his barber and says, "gimme the chomo!"
The one who doesn't know where his heart is
I bet a paycheck it’s the one in the middle
They want public education gone, and they’re winning. If people thought Americans were fucking idiots now…
Here’s the full article. We are letting these people steamroll us. In a few years we’ll be pearl clutching and shocked while wondering how it happened here. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna83311
Thanks for posting this article. I needed to know which district, and the article had a lot of helpful info on the process they took. Ugh. The way they made people lose their jobs for even speaking out is so awful!
Thank you for posting the article. Reading it, the name Witt was really familiar. I realized he was one of the ones recalled in Jefferson county, which I live in. I remember seeing the student walk outs and protests. Basically he was ousted from here so he went to the springs to pull the same crap.
I figured it was Jeffco, Kyle Clark keeps covering the shit show it's become, and if it wasn't affecting anyone it would have been entertaining
Yikes.
Fucking conservatives want a permanent under class who is so uneducated and desperate that theyll do anything for a dollar. They also want dead gay and trans kids.
It would be funny if it wasn’t for the kids in that district no longer having any options for their futures.
"Make America ~~Great bigots~~ stupid Again"
That poor guy’s heart is located in his stomach apparently.
It’s because he’s consumed too much MAGA and he’s full now.
repuplican "education"
I know there are some serious issues at play here, but I still feel like I scrolled too far before finding this.
They will look at this as a win. Eliminating public schools has been an objective of the Republicans for decades. They want to privatize everything so they destroy what isn't. The irony is that they do it by being the corrupt government officials that they are so worried about.
As someone who lives in said Colorado town, this is exactly what these guys want. They hurriedly pushed through a charter school here last year that not everyone was exactly against, but the way they went about it was real shifty. The guy in the middle, our interim superintendent but will probably be kept around if current board doesn’t go in November, worked with an organization, Education reEnvisioned BOCES, which helped to establish our charter school before he was voted in by the board of education. Before that he was fired from a neighboring district for his crazy pro-patriotic/anti-civic engagement agenda he tried to push over there. Fortunately, they’re pissing off a lot of people in the town so my hope is that they’re all gone by the end of the year, but who knows.
As a resident of the district that fired him, I’m sorry you now have to deal with him.
He’s not very popular here so I’m hoping his time with us is short
drab ad hoc tan sloppy aware wild toothbrush fuel run recognise *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Crap like this is why local elections matter, too. It doesn't matter how "unimportant" a position is, Republicans need to be voted out, period. Don't even vote for a Republican dog catcher.
MAGA conservatives are going to destroy anything they touch.
“The MAGA Touch - when you want the absolute OPPOSITE of The Midas Touch!”
>“This is the flood the zone tactic, and the idea is if you advance on many fronts at the same time, then the enemy cannot fortify, defend, effectively counter-attack at any one front,” David Illingworth, one of the new conservative school board members, wrote to another on Dec. 9, 2021, weeks after they were elected. “Divide, scatter, conquer. Trump was great at this in his first 100 days.” This is from the article. They knew from the jump that what they were doing was against what the public wanted and planned on how to do it so they couldn't be stopped. >Teachers grew particularly alarmed early this year when word spread that Ken Witt, the new superintendent, did not plan to reapply for grants that covered the salaries of counselors and social workers. >At Gateway Elementary School in March, Witt told staff members he prioritized academic achievement, not students’ emotions. “We are not the department of health and human services,” he said, as teachers angrily objected, according to two recordings of the meeting made by staff members and shared with NBC News This is the same party that claims mental illness is an issue but purposely eliminates help for people who are having issue.
Red states will soon have no OB/GYNs or teachers. Good luck.
This is in Colorado, a solid blue state, just south of Denver, a solid blue city (being specific because lots of Colorado outside of Denver, Boulder, and fort Collins is rural af and red)
Now place your hand over your beer belly and pledge allegiance to Trump.
I Hamberder cofveve, do solemnly swear to lie, cheat and never tell the truth so help me perma tan and Cheeto dust.
The only time a conservative wants to do sonething its to make the world worse
It’s a microcosm of the broader conservative playbook. Win office by telling voters how terrible government is. Spend your term making government infinitely worse. Then run for re-election by telling voters see, this is what I was saying! Government is terrible! And these liberals are asking you vote for more terrible government! Except this time, it’s a much shorter-term, direct goal. Take over school boards, sabotage public school districts (see above), then use the failure of these districts as a justification for school choice (read: voucher) programs to send white kids to segregated religious schools.
Oddly enough, we live in an even redder county just south of this Colorado district and last year the entire slate of MAGA candidates for school board got their asses absolutely handed to them in a nonpartisan election. Voters are definitely beyond conservative in Fremont County, but fucking up the schools and driving away teachers was a bridge too far for them. Instead, they elected candidates with backgrounds in education — one of whom has a PHD in education. It’s not hopeless.
My god “Did not reapply grant to pay for counselors” these are the same idiots exclaiming that EVERY mass shooting is something mental illness related. So yea gut a program that can, I don’t know, help with a kids mental issues and to get help. They’ve been sitting with their thumbs up their asses for so long they are now elbow deep fisting themselves.
Everyday this country makes me happy I decided to never have children. Who wants to subject a child to all this insanity.
Federalize and standardize education. Proper education does not vary from state to state.
"Breaking news, putting white trash in charge of a school will ruin it"
This mf pledging allegiance with his hand on his pancreas.
Why do we keep calling these people “conservatives” and not calling them what they really are FASCISTS!
Those poor kids are going to be so pissed if they were taught how to read
Destruction of public education is their goal
The offense of getting elected to a post and immediately running the department into the ground should be punishable by jail.
It is easy to destroy. Republicans cannot build.
Is someone going to tell them the Pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist?
But this is what conservatives want. They want to destroy public education and replace at home religious indoctrination. Working parents that need to send their kids to school will be forced to send their kids to taxpayer funded parochial (evangelical christian) schools.
God damn this country is so scary right now and it feels like it's gonna get worse before it gets better.
I had to look up where this is, and found that it is "Colorado Springs-adjacent" to use real estate jargon. And suddenly all the pieces fell into place.
What happened to CO? I thought you guys were way out in front when you started selling weed. But that didn't last long. So many ultra right/ Christian groups polluting that state.
There are pretty sizable pockets. I mean Bobert is still a rep from there so sums it up
Ah not quite. Counties elected to not be part of the "liberal agenda" and said you still can't weed here. So people go to different counties to buy. I've always lived at the edge of a pussy ass county line so I can still get weed close enough. There is an infestation of horrid monsters in this box.
Most of the front range is pretty blue. This is part of the front range that isn't, think suburban/rural, outside of Denver. A lot of Colorado is red on maps, thankfully representative democracy is working and our government is run by (mostly) sensible people
The party of family values... or so they say.
The plan is slowly unfolding.
The Republican Party is a communist cult. Until they are labeled correctly they will continue to ratfuck our democracy because they have religion on their side. Their seven mountains mandate is the communist manifesto written by priests
Dumb fucks. Hey, but at least y’all have your guns. Murica!
The guy in the middle looks more like he is experiencing indigestion than a reverence of the flag.
I live in this county. The children are suffering from this and the worst part, it’s what their parents want.
Woodland Park was already a bunch of dumbass people. Gonna get worse.
I have to ask, why is that one guy in the middle grabbing his heart burn instead of heart?
You're looking at the Sin of Gluttony made flesh. He has no heart.
“Fuck them kids”
So they are literally grooming children?
They want to tear down education so they can keep kids dumb and easy to manipulate, turn them into more right wing nuts and nazis.
They are defunding public schools so they can steer people towards for profit charter schools and they can have control of the curriculum and disband the teachers unions. It’s all about money.
They’re doing what they did with postal service and government. Strip away everything to not allow it to function properly. Then make it to where private industry is only option left (private/Christian schools)
That dope in the middle thinks his heart is in his belly.
Who here thinks after this crash and burns though leave it for a more liberal or democratic bunch to fix it
And don’t forget how they’ll cry and whine when it’s not fully and completely fixed within 24 hours after the liberal replacements are elected.
All while blaming them
Racism will be the downfall of the United States...not because of the people who live under it's oppression, but how it motivates people to do things utterly against their own self-interest. 53% of white women voted for Donald Trump because he hated brown people like they do...and as their reward, their collective uterus is own by the same people who didn't allow them to vote until this century, and who pay them approximately 70 cents on the dollar. Smart. These people elected a bunch of right wing nut jobs...and 40% of the staff quit, so now they will have their children in overcrowded class rooms just like in the dreaded "inner city"...
Their budget should be reduced according to the number of staff that leave.
They aren't shy about advertising the fact that they are bigoted grifters who want healthy public institutions to fail, so you get what you vote for I guess. Stupid morons. I feel bad for the kids.
As intended then. Wreck public education beyond repair and funnel the kids to private schools. They know what they're doing.
Why is the middle guy just resting his hand on the top of his stomach?
This is happening across the country and will get worse.
Sadly if you look at the comments on that thread, there are a whole lot of people celebrating this. "This is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause."
Give me 2 guesses where in Colorado this is. It's either Colorado Springs or BoBo's district.
The one in the middle don't know where his heart is.. It must be hard for a Republican to feel it.
I wonder if any of their children attend the schools under their "care" 🤔🤔🤔
We let Rush Limbaugh and his ilk spread like wildfire on the radio with no rebuttal in Red State rural America when we got rid of the Fairness Doctrine. Rural America used to be pretty split between conservatives and liberals. Not anymore.
It's a very militant playbook, and they are targeting your kids. I really hope people are starting to pay more attention to these school board elections.
Republicans: sCHoOl sHOoTIngS aRE a MEntAl HeAltH iSsUe! Also Republicans: Only rich kids with stable home lives should have access to anything that helps them with mental health. Poor kids should go fuck themselves.
I fully believe right wing conservatives are intentionally trying to destroy the country from within so when the country collapses, they can rebuild it how they see fit. It’s the only thing that makes any sense.
“All of us is dumber than none of us”
Don't be fooled, crashing the schools IS the republican plan. They have done just what they set out to do and they will repeat this all over the country.
Smart people never vote Republican. They know that. They want dumb fuck people. Everywhere.
Make no mistake, this is a fascist takeover.
When you control the schools, you control the kids. When you control the kids, you control the narratives. When you control the narratives, you got yourselves a base. That's how they gonna keep Republican votes coming.
This is why voting matters, both sides are not the same.
As a middle aged white guy I’m getting tired of middle aged white guys running this country.
Big dummy doesn’t even know where his heart is.
He’s a MAGA, you think he has a heart?
Middle aged white men 🤦♂️
The guy in the middle had indigestion
Middle dude literally doesn’t know where his heart is…
Conservatives don't need nor want an educated youth. Indoctrinated youth in the other hand ....
"The aging, overweight, Christian, cishet, white male way"
While everyone else is learning how to prevent fascists, we'll learn how to join them. - Republicans
They literally need to make more dumbasses to vote for them
I thought Norm McDonald passed away…
It boggles my mind that the concept of a school board exists, and people vote on who gets to be a part of it
Nice work, dipshits
Is there some kind of database or list of these cruddy schools? People educated in these school systems are going to be dumb af and employers might want to avoid them.
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NO MORALES
Kids at these schools and schools in Florida won’t be able to compete in the modern world due to their lack of education. Unfortunate but it’s the reality adults around them are creating.
Is that ab-Norm-al McDonald?