The Wheels on the Bus Go Ka-ching! Ka-ching!

From THINK PROGRESS:

Last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) — buoyed by legislators who received hundreds of thousands of dollars of special interest cash — signed into law legislation that would dramatically expand access to school vouchers, which funnel taxpayer dollars into private schools. Scott is doing this despite proposing nearly $3 billion in cuts to public education, meaning that he is essentially transferring money from public education to private education.

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It’s enough to drive you crazy, if you let it!

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

The GOP continued its bloody walk into the Medicare buzzsaw Wednesday, when 40 out of 47 Senate Republicans voted in support of the House GOP budget, and its plan to phase out and privatize the popular entitlement program.

The test vote failed by a vote of 57-40. But the roll call illustrates that Medicare privatization — along with deep cuts to Medicaid and other social services — remains the consensus position of the GOP despite the growing political backlash against them.

Voting with all of the Democrats against debating the plan were Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — both 2012 incumbents — along with Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Rand Paul (R-KY) voted against it because it wasn’t radical enough.

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Shock and Awww, Not Again!

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

GOP Looks To Shock Failing Medicare Plan Back To Life With New Message

Beset by a constant barrage of attacks from the left and increasing unease on the right, House Republican leaders plan to relaunch their proposal to turn Medicare into a privatized voucher program. Leading the charge will be the GOP budget’s architect, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who is scheduled to deliver an address on the topic at the Economic Club of Chicago on Monday.

Because shit always smells better when you stir it up again.
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Screwing America, One School at a Time

From AlterNet:

Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions.

Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But “school choice,” as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.

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CPAniC

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the last of the possible Republican presidential candidates to address CPAC on Friday, strode to the podium at tonight’s Ronald Reagan Banquet and turned back the clock to the 1980s: the thing we have to fear, he said, is the growing Red Threat.

“In our nation, in our time, the friends of freedom have an assignment, as great as those of the 1860s, or the 1940s, or the long twilight of the Cold War,” he said. “As in those days, the American project is menaced by a survival-level threat.”

“I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence,” he added. “It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink.”

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Priva-tea-zation

From coloradoan.com:

During a television interview months ago, Republican Ken Buck discussed the need for public-private partnerships while talking about how the federal government is inefficient.

Now, less than a month before the election, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s campaign is criticizing what it calls Buck’s suggestion to privatize the Centers for Disease Control.

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