People who vote for Republicans generally vote their values, not their interests. As George Lakoff said in his book:
voters vote their idenity and their values, which need not coincide with their self interests.
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This could be the new day weāve talking about it.
That reminds meā¦
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We can thank Trump for that. He is so over the top evil that the entire GOP has been unmasked. Say what you will about our red state Republicans, turns out they want health care, safe roads and a good education for their children. Turns out all the corruption is even too much for them. I believe the MSD students unleashed this by being unafraid to stand up and be counted.
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I think youāre largely correct about that - their courage is inspiring.
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On the other hand, Kentuckians outside Jefferson and Fayette counties love to hate their politicians, vote for politicians they know theyāre going to hate because they love to hate their politicians and seem to have a positive aversion to voting for politicians they think they might end up liking because then they wouldnāt get to hate them.
I suspect Bevin is making himself disliked and may well get voted out next go-round, but you look at how deeply hated Mitch McConnell has been for a couple of decades now and how much everyone hated Jim Bunning and yet how both kept getting reelected and you just feel that very local and special kind of exasperated despair that only a liberal Kentuckian can feel.
it seems like the only really sure-fire way for a politician Kentuckians already hate to get themselves voted out of office is to get the state mocked by the rest of the nation the way Ernie Fletcher did. The national laughingstock because of the DC airspace violation was the capper, but I knew he was doomed as soon as I saw that smiley face on the license plates. Because if thereās one thing Kentuckians hate more than their politicians, itās that gawddamn smiley face symbol. āāItās That Friendly?ā No it by-God aināt, you dumbass motherfucker! āWeāll show you some friendly!āā
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So, is anyone going to point out the great big flare lit elephant in the room? The one where Republican office-holders who have kids uniformly send them to private school, consider public schools big gubbamint socialist handouts to poor brown people and see literally no connection between prosperity and education for anyone other than the privileged?
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Iāve been teaching for twenty years and throughout that time educators have been the whipping boy of the right and the poster child for their small government/pro-management āreforms.ā A tremendous amount of ink has been spilled tying the insufficiencies of our education system to the purported ineptitude of the teachers while turning attention away from the inequities of an education system which, in and of themselves, make its purported mission impossible. The belittling of educators included rhetoric portraying them as little more than a class of sinecurists whose unwarranted pay and benefits harmed the public wheal, thereby justifying a roll back of their protections, pay and benefits so as to afford a general reduction in government revenues.
I hope that the ham handedness of the Drumpf administrationās pursuit of what has been long standing GOP policy has brought about the shift in public opinion needed to sustain these job actions and reverse a decades long policy of upward redistribution. Itās been a long time coming.
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Please be aware that there are states where teachers are still considered valuable assets to our communities and where pay and benefits have kept up although it is pretty much universal that teachers in the US are worth more than their pay indicates. About 15 years ago I was on a town building committee that was responsible for planning and building a new elementary school. I recall talking to another fellow on the committee who had a daughter who was about to start college at Boston College and he mentioned how ironic it was that his daughters education was going to cost about $50,000 a year all for a job that starts at about $35,000 a year. She wanted to be a teacher like her mother.
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Couldnāt happen to a more deserving bunch of assholes.
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That is so funnyā¦sadā¦but funny and true!
I dunno thoughā¦something feels different this time. Fingers crossed as well as doing what I can to help.
Aināt that the truth! And for me personally: My alma mater was destroyed, my basketball team was destroyed, my state is under assault, my country is under great duress and our favorite dog park is a muddy, littered mess from the floodingā¦arrrghhhh.
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Yup. The stories are trueāand not just for teachers. I was a school administrator longer than I was a teacher, and administrators also do these things, particularly in the poor, rural schools where I worked. For some (many?) students, adults they encounter at school are the most responsible adults they will interact with every day. For those students, vacations and summers off are torturous.
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I always ālovedā the part where the āreformsā were devised and enacted without teacher/principal input.
This article from Education Week (2010) captures this concept very well:
Not being paid well is one thing. It is another thing, entirely, to have our hard-won professional expertise summarily discounted. 
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Unlike with management, the assumption always seems to be that weāll act with irresponsible self-interest. Itās an ongoing affront to our professionalism and dignity.
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I actually think KY may be one of the easier states to flip. Youāve got to remember that until last year Democrats controlled half the state lege for 150 years. Weāve also only had four Republican governors since the 1930s. This has never been a batshit Republican state. Hell, Iād go so far as to say our state government has been more Democratic in the past 50 years than most deep blue states. Now that scary black man is no longer president, Bevin has again and again shown himself to be loathsome piece of shit, an utterly disgraceful tax bill will soon pass, and along with the hateful manner in which theyāve dealt with teachers, Iām hoping weāve had more than enough of Republicanism.
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I agreeā¦butā¦those Dems of yore were Dixiecrats and good Lord the ones 150 years ago were Confederates.
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Republican office-holders who ā¦ see literally no connection between prosperity and education
Republican politicians apparently inherently believe a caste system would be better. Since itās part of their taken for granted understanding, they just donāt have such thoughts. Perhaps a sense of approval or disapproval, but āthoughts?ā Nah.
Good Lawd, this is so true. UofL is just a fucking hot mess! It just feels like itās all falling apart, like everything you know is being ripped out from under you. And tornado season has just begun in earnest.
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So hereās the thing. Most people, most voters, actually want a government that works. They want good schools for their kids. They want roads and bridges that are in good condition. They want someone knowledgeable and helpful on the phone when they call the IRS help line. They want parks that average folks can afford to visit. They want grandma not to get kicked out of the nursing home, and they donāt want to have people dying on the hospital steps because they canāt pay for medical services. All kinds of things.
Human nature being what it is, and common sense aside, many of them would also prefer to get all these good things without having to pay for them.
Hence the seductive siren call of the tax cutter.
At an intellectual level, Iām sure that most folks understand that There Aināt No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. But give them a chance to vote on the promise of one, and many people will buy it.
Sometimes this āI can have my cake and eat it tooā mentality can be so embedded that things have to get pretty bad to shake people back to reality. And that is exactly what the extremist right-wing policies in places like Kansas and Oklahoma have finally managed to achieve.
Heck of a job, GOP.
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Even so, Bevin is only the second Republican in governor in my lifetime. Fletcher got run out of Frankfort on a rail and I tend to think Bevin wonāt fare much better. Things have changed a lot, but they havenāt changed that much.
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