In Which Zandar Answers Your Burning Questions

Steve M. notes FOX's "fair and balanced" coverage of Obama's request for $26 billion to save some thirty thousand teacher jobs and the GOP attacks on the money as a "bailout of teachers' unions" (they are clearly as overpaid as bank CEOs) and asks:

And just so we're clear on the logic of this, recall that Republicans denounce bailouts because they think the magic of the free market should correct any economic problems, up to and including crashes and depressions. Are they now arguing that free-market forces should decide whether or not your kid has a teacher at all? I know they don't like public education, but given the fact that the vast majority of American parents send their kids to public schools, would Republicans be willing to stand up and tell the public that they consider education to be not a right, but a service your town shouldn't provide if it can't afford to?

And the answer to that is "Of course."  Republicans don't want schools, they want women in the kitchen home schooling the kids with  Texas textbooks.  Kids that actually learn things in school might grow up voting Democratic, you know.  Better for the education to be "under the full control of parents" because after all, Real Americans have dad owning his own successful small business while mom can stay at home and teach the kids about creationism, the evils of liberalism, and how everything a Democrat does is just like Hitler's Germany in 1938.

Republicans wanted to do away with the Department of Education.  Hell, they want to do away with anything that's science or learning or critical thinking, and replace it with rote reptition of their "facts".  You'd better believe there's millions of people out there who would have no problem abolishing schools in this country and giving Americans their tax money back to buy copies of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.  They sure as hell would abolish them in inner city America and claim education enslaves minorities, what the lazy bums need is some good hard work instead and a steady job flipping burgers at 15 instead of high school...so they can still be flipping burgers at 35.

Yes, you will see Republicans say "let the teachers be laid off.  Only the bad ones will have to go.  Don't like the class sizes of 40 students?  Pull them out and teach them yourselves.  You DO really love your children, yes?"