Californians’ Lives Not a Joke

Most of the time I hear Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice, I change the station. It irks me how he always seems to be joking about things I do not find funny. It’s a trait George W. possessed as well. I think it betrays their inability to discuss the situation at hand intelligently, like the class clown who acted out because he couldn’t read.

Californians are suffering. The budget has been hung up for months, over what increasingly looks like Republicans’ failed ideological stance against raising taxes. They even ousted their leader last night, during their budget nightmare sleepover that failed to reach an agreement. Due to the lack of one Republican vote, 20,000 people are getting pink slips in our state. Those are real people who probably would have chosen to pay a few more cents on the dollar in taxes to losing their jobs and their abilities to support their families.

 

Mocking Education at the RNC

I couldn’t believe my ears yesterday when Abel Maldonado, a Republican state senator of CA, mocked Barack Obama’s education. He invoked his hard-working father, who has just a fourth grade education.

Among the speech lines receiving the most applause: “My father knows more about economics than Senator Obama does with his degrees from all those fancy schools.” (Mercury News)

Was Abel Maldonado criticizing Obama for attending College and receiving an advanced degree? Would he prefer our nation’s leaders drop out of school and do manual labor?

I take his point, that his father has learned a lot about economics by running his own small business. That’s admirable and enviable in today’s economy. But why wasn’t Maldonado a bit concerned about bragging about his father’s skill at managing the family budget considering his state, California, is currently without a state budget and its public schools are facing a budget crisis?

And why wasn’t Maldonado, hand-picked by Bush to appeal to Latino voters, concerned that lauding his uneducated father’s story when Latinos in his state drop out at a staggering 30%?

I know this is politics and they’re trying to win an election, but imagine if Maldonado had stood up and talked about the need for a quality education so that Latinos from working class backgrounds, like himself, could share in the American Dream, which he claims to be living. How much of that dream is available to Californians with a fourth-grade education?