Here's the rundown of what each school district in Montgomery County is going to face in putting together next year's budget. This, along with reduced revenues from property tax reassessments and recession-related fallout, is going to have a huge impact on public education. It's going to mean much higher property taxes and giant cuts in staff and programs...in other words, you'll pay lots more and get lots less. Maybe this will wake up Montco voters who thought that electing Tom Corbett meant they'd be paying a bit less at tax time. I don't think I'd want to be a Republican state legislator who has to face the voters after they get next year's property tax bills.
Wonder if the Tea Partiers will go after Corbett and his party with the same fervor they've attacked President Obama? But at least the gas drillers won't have to pay any taxes...as they say in Texas, "Yee-Haw!"
Anyway, these figures are transcribed courtesy of Democratic Staff on the House Appropriations Committee in Harrisburg. You can look for yourself by clicking here.
This is what Twitter was born to do: Somebody comes up with a concept, throws a hashtag on it, and then anyone who has a creative spark is free to pile on.
His proposed 2011-12 budget would cut in half state funding for the State System of Higher Education and for state-related universities including Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh, Republican and Democratic legislative sources said last night.
50-percent. My God.
The article goes on to say "Lawmakers braced for deep cuts in education, community and economic development, and welfare programs."
You know, maybe it's just me, but I don't think of Education as another "program" to be cut. Whether it's public K-12 or Pennsylvania's Higher Education system -- and both are going to be officially nuked later today -- state-supported public education is a primary responsibility that we owe to our kids, ourselves and our society.
I hope that somebody organizes a Wisconsin-type protest against this outrage. Hundreds of thousands of PA taxpayers need to arrive in Harrisburg to show this governor that his priorities are not just wrong, they are immoral.
Destroying schools so that gas drillers can do their dirtywork tax-free is an abomination.
I am ashamed of my state. Deeply and completely ashamed.
This week, Tom Corbett is going to show Pennsylvanians that he's the tough, no-nonsense Governor that they voted for by sending his first victim to the death chamber.
Surprisingly, it won't be a child murderer or a cop killer that Corbett signs the death warrant for. Instead, it will be Pennsylvania's public schools.
Harrisburg politicos and pundits around the state are abuzz over what Corbett's budget address this week will reveal. But for anyone who's been paying attention - not many, apparently - this much is already known: schools will be the prime target, and they will be hit severely.
In fact, Corbett's budget director has already written to at least one local school district and informed them that the new budget will contain "catastrophic cuts" in funding for education.
Catastrophic. This is the word that Corbett's own aide is using. One can only imagine what that is going to look like.
"We the taxpayers have a right to cut teachers salaries and benefits – they work for us! Bankers are not suckling from the taxpayer’s teat…except, of course, for the billions of gallons of taxpayer-bailout teat milk they sucked on so voraciously." - Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 3/3/11
Expose people to a 24-hour a day stream of infected right-wing propaganda and pretty soon, they start acting like this:
I know this is the same kind of speech that the Supreme Court just protected in the Westboro Baptist Church decision. But it is ugly and it is hateful and it is as un-American as any act of terrorism. No matter how many flags they wrap themselves in.
