Bush Proposes Private School Relief Plan

[Rose Siding]

The Bush administration yesterday proposed nearly $500 million in federal funding to help displaced private school students from the Gulf Coast enroll in private schools elsewhere in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The proposal, fleshing out a goal President Bush had announced in a speech to the nation Thursday night, would amount to the largest federal school voucher program ever, if enacted. A groundbreaking school voucher program in the District receives about $14 million a year in federal funding.

The new administration proposal drew immediate criticism from senior congressional Democrats and teacher union leaders who have long opposed vouchers as a drain on scarce public school resources. But private school voucher advocates hailed it as a measure needed to address an immediate educational crisis.

Separately, the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this week introduced a bipartisan education relief bill. The proposal from Sens. Mike Enzi (Wyo.) and Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.) omitted school vouchers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601723.html

[rodeodance]

1. oppertunitists--promoting their agenda!!

[rodeodance]

3. one of the things the Heritage Foundations wants is to privatize NO school

Their proposals are on their website.

[daninthemoon]

2. Will they ever miss a trick?

[tsuki]

4. We cannot fund medicaid, but the rich get another cut of the tax money?

[Judi Lynn]

5. God forbid the voucher private school students should have to mix

with the riff-raff at public schools. First things first, huh?

[Lars39]

6. Well, that's #2 in the Friday Night News Dump.

Any others I've missed, and god help me do I really want to know?
Not meaning to hijack...but these are doozies.
Here's one:
Veterinarian named AD of Women's Health at FDA

New FDA Appointee
FDA Appoints Official from Office of Veterinary Medicine to Office of Women's Health
September 16, 2005 CONTACT:
Erin Kiernon [phone]

Washington, DC — FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford has appointed a man who has spent the majority of his career in the office of veterinary medicine to the position of acting director of the Office of Women's Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Norris Alderson will replace Dr. Susan Wood, a key women's health expert, who resigned on August 31 in protest of the FDA's handling of the application to make Plan B emergency contraception (EC) available over the counter.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America Interim President Karen Pearl issued these comments on the appointment:

"The appointment of Dr. Norris Alderson, a man who has spent the majority of his career in the office of veterinary medicine, to the position of acting director of the FDA's Office of Women's Health speaks volumes about the priority the Bush administration places on women's health and safety. The appointment of Dr. Alderson to replace Dr. Susan Wood further undermines the shaky credibility of an agency that has allowed politics to trump sound science, medical evidence, and women's health.

"Following the needless delays in granting women over-the-counter access to emergency contraception, this appointment is another two steps backward on the FDA's long road toward restoring its integrity with women and their health care providers like Planned Parenthood."


-MORE-

http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/media/pressreleases/pr-050916-fda.xml

[Pirate Smile]

9. OMG. Is that true? These assholes have learned nothing about

appointing appropriate professionals to governmental offices.

UN.F@#KING.BELIEVABLE!

[Rose Siding]

10. o.m.g.

:wow: Is that posted in the General Discussion forum?

This is the only other coverage I could find-

September 16, 2005

Male Veterinarian Appointed Acting Director of Women's Health

Symbolic of the importance the Bush Administration places on women's health, a male veterinarian has been appointed by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Lester Crawford as acting director of the Office of Women's Health. Norris E. Alderson, PhD, has spent the majority of his career at the FDA holding various positions in the Center for Veterinary Medicine.

The Office for Women’s Health, which ensures that the FDA remains gender sensitive and monitors the progress of women’s health initiatives, was most recently headed by Dr. Susan Wood. Wood resigned late last month in protest over the FDA’s refusal to grant over-the-counter status to emergency contraception.

http://www.msmagazine.com/news/uswirestory.asp?ID=9276

[nvliberal]

30. Apparently that was an error.

The FDA corrected the press release.

It's somebody else much more qualified.

[Solly Mack]

12. After I pick my jaw up off the floor , I'm going to yell

I may not stop yelling. I think this has done it for me. I'm officially over the edge...

[Lars39]

16. I'll be right there with you, if I don't stroke out first.

[Castilleja]

20. What the hell...is this someone's idea of a joke?????

x( x( x( x(

[DBoon]

25. They see no difference between women's health care and a dog's

this is something that belongs on The Onion.

It is so bad I have a hard time believing it is true.

[pfitz59]

34. Brood mares R' Us!

Actually, the appointment makes perfect sense to the Talibornagain! Women are for breeding, like domestic stock!

[BadGimp]

7. what`s next?

luxury allowance for the well heeled evacuees?

this is such bull@&!)

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. I chewed my tongue for the last couple of weeks, fearing that

they'd pick up on this, but it did occur to me with thousands of predominately black kids displaced throughout the U.S., it was this Administration's wet dream come true. Here these kids are in strange cities and don't know the history of the private schools in the area. They're sitting ducks.

[jobycom]

11. So much for Bush trying to end inequality, eh?

Can't have those private school kids sinking to the level of public school kids, or vice versa. That would upset the natural order of things.

As in many places in the south, private schools in New Orleans are a way to segregate. Poorer students, mostly black, go to public schools, while richer students, mostly but not exclusively white, go to private schools. That way you get segregation, and a lock-ed in poverty demographic. Vouchers are a clever way to pay for the resegregation of schools, so naturally the Nazi party in America are all for them.

[Occulus]

29. And that is the number ONE reason why

we should fully fund public education and abolish private schooling. You should still be able to home school, but private schools by their very nature establish a sense of inherently deserved privelege and social entitlement in the student.

I don't hate or resent the rich. What I hate and resent are the rich who use their money and power to behave as if they are the betters of everyone else. Private schooling is one way to cement that behavior and insulate their concerns from those of the public.

These are some of the same reasons I dislike the concepts of membership clubs, "secret societies", and the like. Such things have no place in supposedly democratic society.

[MichiganVote]

13. They haven't even funded NCLB the dirty bastards

[progressivebydesign]

19. Considering N.O. schools were broke, this is especially wrong.

That man has no conscience.

[leesa]

14. This is just soooooo sick!

[killbotfactory]

15. Go fuck yourself, Bush.

Fucking asshole

[melody]

17. wonder why his Poppy doesn't still do the private school pimp thing

Well, Georgie, why doesn't your dad talk about the private school he used to pose in front of? The one where I attended school? The one where, if someone with a "black" or "Latino" voice called to inquire about their children attending, they were told the school was full. I know this, because my mother worked in the office there.

Bush was a friend of the principal who was a great believer in segregation. I guess that's how the Shrubs figure they can introduce it again, if they can't drown all the black and brown people beforetime.

Bastards.

[progressivebydesign]

18. 500 Million for PRIVATE SCHOOLS? no fucking way!

That is SO wrong. I'm sorry these kids can't go to their private school anymore, but I'll be DAMNED if I'm going to pay for someone's religious education with my tax money. They can go to public schools like the rest of the children who lost everything.

[sinkingfeeling]

21. OK, check that one off the GOP RW agenda! Eliminate public schools!

[nvliberal]

31. Well, of course they want to eliminate public education.

In their warped little view of the world, ANYTHING that helps people get a greater share of the economic pie is to be eliminated, including unions.

Education and unions are the chief means of upward mobility in this society. If you are one who believes the economic elites have the divine right to rule, just because they are rich, which makes them automatically intellectually superior, then you don't want to open up opportunities for those who are inferior.

These "conservatives" are no such thing. They don't believe in conserving ANYTHING which is beneficial to society; they want to destroy all institutions in their attempt to undermine social cohesion.

They are much like the extreme leftists of the 1960s who wanted to destroy the "establishment," but the difference is these fascists have big money behind them and could actually succeed in destroying this country.

These are no-good sons of bitches we are dealing with.

[MrBenchley]

22. How many of those private schools were "whites only" d'you suppose?

[MountainLaurel]

23. Considering that

Many private schools in the south cropped up after desegregation, I'd say a good portion were de facto whites only.

[MrBenchley]

24. And so the GOP panders to the old Jim Crow crowd

and tries to hide it behind "vouchers"....

[DBoon]

26. *ALL* of them

a way to evade Brown v. Board of Education.

[MrBenchley]

27. Probably...and that's what the voucher scheme is, too....

[DBoon]

32. vouchers = "roll back desegregation"

back to the pre-1954 era

[MrBenchley]

35. Exactly...

Nor are voters fooled--vouchers have been offered on the ballot around the country ten times, and all ten times they've been turned down flat.

[melody]

37. In California, too

Bush's dad backed the private prep school I attended, and it was covertly "whites and Asians only" - and in California.

[fortyfeetunder]

28. DU Activitsts...we need to jump on this one...

The nerve of that SOB. How about the millions of public school students who have no place to go?

[buzzsaw_23]

33. helping those who need it least

and leaving those who need assistance the most left out in the cold. Hard times, real hard f**ckin' times comin' this winter for those displaced and poor. And those who are just poor and soon to be displaced.

god I detest these criminals. They don't let up and throw it right out in the open. We all gotta WAKETHEF***UP!!!!!!!


From d.a. levy
"Really"
                     the police try to protect
                     the banks - and everything else
                     is secondary"

[all.of.me]

36. poor little preppies.... i feel so bad for them!

[dansolo]

38. What about the public school students?

Notice how this proposal only goes towards private school students from New Orleans. I don't magine that he is also going to propose extra funding to offset the costs incurred by the public schools that have taken in displaced students.

[genieroze]

39. This guy can't stop giving welfare to rich people.