GOP Tea Party frontrunner: ‘Abolish’ public schools

By Sahil Kapur A Tea Party-backed Republican congressional nominee has championed abolishing public schools in California, and is currently the favorite to win his November election.

The candidate, David Harmer, a corporate lawyer who has yet to serve in public office, is up against two-term Democratic incumbent Jerry McNerney for California's 11th district -- located in Northern California -- in the House of Representatives.

Harmer made the argument to kill public schools in a 2000 op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, which was dug up Thursday by Nick Baumann of Mother Jones.

Framing the issue as a struggle between government tyranny and freedom -- a preferred political tactic of conservatives -- Harmer wrote: "In the freest and most prosperous country on Earth, in the midst of the information age, government ownership and operation of the schools is a counterproductive anachronism."

He added: "So long as the state Constitution mandates free public schools, a voucher system (or refundable tuition tax credit) is the best we can do. To attain quantum leaps in educational quality and opportunity, however, we need to separate school and state entirely. Government should exit the business of running and funding schools

The GOP candidate argued in the Chronicle that his vision for education reflects "the way things worked through the first century of American nationhood." As Baumann notes, that was an era "when educational opportunities for poor people, African-Americans, women, the disabled, and others were, to say the least, extremely limited."

Although Harmer holds a slim lead in the polls -- 49.4 to 48.4 percent -- polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times analyzes the dynamics of the race and gives the Tea Party favorite a considerable 54.7 to 45.3 percent chance of victory next month.

Yet Harmer's views on education, largely ignored so far, could hurt him in a state where the public school and college system is so treasured that even Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman -- bucking her party's trend of defiance to publicly-funded education -- has pledged to strengthen California's public schools.

Read Baumann's Mother Jones article for more context and perspective.

M.C.L Comment: Another example of why liberals should vote in three weeks, I'm currently going back and forth with one of these "concerned" citizens on the right and I told him if Dems lose this election I won't be angry at the tea party people or blue collar conservatives for the simple fact these idiots since the election and re-election of President Reagan have always voted against their own best social and economic interest it's nothing new but my anger would be direct on our side because we knew what was at stake and we knew what will happen if the orange bastard becomes speaker Orange Bastard. But instead of voting just to keep some form sanity in the government liberals decided because President Obama didn't handle their pet political issues the way they wanted, they took their ball and ran home thus allowing the forces of the greedy and the stupid to take over the country. And the people on the left who advocated this plan of staying home and allowing Republicans to obtain power will be the first ones screaming about how crappy the outcome is the morning after.

Bachmann’s Plan: To Deal With Debt, We Must ‘Wean Everybody’ Off Social Security, Medicare

By Lee Fang This past weekend, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) addressed the right-wing Constitutional Coalition’s annual conference in St. Louis. She had dropped out of the Tea Party Convention occurring on the same day in Nashville to make the appearance.

Speaking to a small group of conference attendees and ThinkProgress during lunch on Saturday, Bachmann outlined how the Republican Party and its 2012 nominee must address the national debt. Bachmann referenced Glenn Beck, who falsely warned about a $107 trillion in supposed “unfunded liabilities” from Social Security and Medicare. She then called for a “reorganization” of entitlements where people “already in the system” would continue to receive benefits, but “everybody else” would be weaned off:

BACHMANN: Is the country too big to fail? No, the country can fail. We can, we’re not invincible. And we’re so close now to being at that point because the thing is, as Glenn Beck said last night, it is true. The $107 trillion that he put on the board. We’re $14 trillion in debt, but that doesn’t include the unfunded massive liabilities. That’s $107 trillion, and that’s for Social Security and Medicare and all the rest. You add up all those unfunded net liabilities, and all the traps that could go wrong we’re on the hook for, and what it means is what we have to do is a reorganization of all of that, Social Security and all. We have to do it simply because we can’t let the contract remain as they are because the older people are going to lose. So, what you have to do, is keep faith with the people that are already in the system, that don’t have any other options, we have to keep faith with them. But basically what we have to do is wean everybody else off. And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.

Bachmann is echoing a growing chorus in the GOP caucus. Recently, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) introduced an alternative budget plan which would privatize both Medicare and Social Security. As the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo has noted, the type of private Social Security accounts Ryan proposes would have cost seniors tens of thousands of dollars in the 2008-2009 market plunge. But Bachmann takes Ryan’s effort a step farther and seems to be suggesting a full repeal of the retirement safety net.

Bachmann, who has gained influence within Republican leadership circles, was a star at the event. At his speech on Friday, Glenn Beck proclaimed that Bachmann was the only person he trusted in Congress. Other accolades for Bachmann were heard throughout the conference. At one point, Heritage Foundation scholar Matt Spalding, who had been whispering in Bachmann’s ear while other panelists spoke, exclaimed, “if there’s one person who everyone at Heritage has a crush on, it’s Michele Bachmann.”

M.C.L comment: You know what Michele run that thought on national tv as loud and as often as you please.