Come one, come all! Gov. John Kasich wants to privatize everything!!!
From the Republican-loving, Kasich-worshipping, Columbus Dispatch, we have this item:
The job of preparing and serving more than 150,000 meals a day to inmates in Ohio’s adult and juvenile prisons could be turned over to a private company, saving taxpayers $16.2 million annually under a Kasich administration plan.
A request for proposals will go out today for a privatized joint food-service contract for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and the Department of Youth Services. The adult prisons estimate saving $15 million a year, while youth prisons calculate a $1.2 million annual reduction.
Up to 456 state jobs could be lost, but many employees could be offered positions with the private contractor, officials at both agencies said. Exactly how many jobs that would be is unknown.....
Are there Republican contributors that would fit the bill in providing food services to Ohio's prisons? Would those 456 state workers be offered the same pay, and benefits that they currently have? Is this John Kasich's way of decimating unions in the state by slowly privatizing various agencies and departments?
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Now, some of the school leaders in Ohio that thought they were getting more from the governor's new budget have been able to separate the facts from Kasich's b.s.
Dispatch:
......New figures released by Kasich’s administration this week show that 60 percent of school districts, including a number of poor districts, would get no additional funding despite the governor’s pledge that they would get more aid and wealthy districts would get less.
“I almost think it’s going the other direction. It’s like the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,” said Brad Miller, treasurer of the Dawson-Bryant School District in southern Ohio’s Lawrence County.....
“No, I don’t look at those because it’s the philosophy that matters,” Kasich said after a town-hall meeting with business professionals in Dayton to promote his tax proposals. “And to look at a (computer) run and yank out one part of it distorts the whole purpose of it. … We said we were going to fund the school system on the basis of dollars following pupils.”
I'm no rocket scientist, but I can clearly see that Kasich's philosophy is certainly more important than funding the education of our children. Is there something more behind this? If poorer districts receive less, and less money, does that mean that it would be easier for corporate charter schools to move into these areas and take over?
Mother Jones magazine noted that a Michigan Americans for Prosperity member had the following comments about charter schools:
Among the AFP set, reforming public schools usually means converting them into non-union, privately-run charter schools. Nationally, AFP is a vocal proponent of charters and "school choice." And at the Michigan citizens training, one of the featured speakers, Norm Hughes, a member of the North Oakland Tea Party Patriots, offered this take on charters:
Kids aren't going to charter schools if they're "A" students. They go to charter schools because they're failing students and, by and large, the charter schools have a higher percentage of poor families, ethnically challenged families…Ethnically challenged? Hughes did not explain what he meant, but you won't find that take on charters anywhere in the AFP literature. (Listen here to the audio of Hughes' comment, grabbed by Progress Michigan, a liberal advocacy group.)...
Fairness? Equality? Publicly-funded equal education? Apparently, some on the right are definitely against such things.