Let the Fight Over Who Owns MAGA Begin!

On Tuesday and again yesterday, I posted stories about my experience at Holyoke High School in Holyoke, MA, where I came in as a substitute teacher and found myself confronting a classroom environment which was almost too toxic to be described. The school, which has been under state supervision for the last seven years, has a complete and total absence of even the slightest degree of order, discipline or anything which would allow even the most rudimentary teaching activities to occur.

The result is that the school has a graduating class each year in which more than half the students cannot read or write at a 10th-grade level, which means that at best they will be consigned to the lowest-paying, crummiest jobs for the remainder of their working lives. That is, if they ever get a job.

The City of Holyoke has an average annual household income which is 60% lower than the average household of the state of Massachusetts, and this school isn’t doing anything to help things change. At least not for a change to the better.

But the problems with public schooling in Holyoke shouldn’t alter the fact that as a society we must be wholly and completely committed to increasing literacy and learning skills across the board. I don’t understand how the government doesn’t classify lack of reading and writing skills to be as much or more of a handicap than the ability to see.

Earlier this week, another one of the Trump 2024 wannabees, in this case Mike Pompeo, was asked to name the most dangerous person in the world. Everyone assumes that when a GOP fumfer like Mike Pompeo is asked that question, the response will be Biden, or Putin, or the North Korean guy, or maybe that Bolsonaro character down in Brazil.

But Pompeo came up with a new one, a real doozy in the name of Randi Weingarten, who happens to be the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which has been a rock-solid financial and ideological supporter for the Democrat(ic) Party, having given more than $50 million to the blue team over the last forty years.

Why is Weingarten Pompeo’s Enemy Number One? Because the teachers, according to Pompeo, are teaching ‘filth’ primarily by promoting trans-gender programs which various alt-right groups cite as a reason to vote for the GOP. The…