So this is a pretty eye-opening New  York Times article. I have just a few thoughts I’d like to share, and I hope you will think about it and do the same.

I am a bit confused. How is it OK to use public tax funds to fully reimburse people for donating to private school scholarship funds? It’s been promoted as “a way to give poor children the same education choices as the wealthy.” You know what else is designed to give everyone equal education opportunities? PUBLIC SCHOOLS!

I do not want my tax dollars paying for segregation and inequity! I do not want my tax dollars feeding into illegal high school athlete scholarships, or supporting schools that teach creationism instead of science, or detracting further from public school budgets so that the lucky few can succeed in private schools while the majority suffers under a glass ceiling of lack of opportunity. Why are more people not outraged by this?!

Yes, we need to improve our education system. But funneling more money into private school scholarships so a handful of lower-income families can send their children to private high schools is not the answer. That would be a good solution if our goal were to give a small percentage of people access to an elite education. But that is not what we want, really, is it? What we SHOULD aim for is a system that gives ALL kids access to a better, equal education by improving our public schools.

If you want scholarship funds to get more poor kids into religious private schools, because it’s a shame that working class children have to be exposed to the horrors of secular, reason- and fact-based education, then let the already tax-exempt churches pay for them. Not dollar-for-dollar tax credits funded by the rest of us. 

(An article in English: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/324906#ixzz1uwxvSmt0)

Norway just abolished its state church—the one that’s been the official state-sanctioned ‘Church of Norway’ since the Lutheran Reformation in 1536. This move creates a separation of church and state and Norway will no longer have an official religion. For the first time in about 500 years. I feel like this is pretty big news.  What do you think?

What are we supposed to do when some enormous corporation has purchased control over every organization meant to research environmental health and spread knowledge necessary for protecting public health? What are we supposed to do when there is no more scientific research ‘for the greater good,’ when every scientist’s paycheck is contingent on propping up for-profit interests with misrepresentations of manipulated research? What are we supposed to do when all government regulatory agencies have only Monsanto-manufactured information upon which to base regulations? 

Must we continue to stand idly by and watch our food, soils, water, and air turn to poison, as all other organisms grow ill and die until no other living things share the biosphere with humans except Monsanto-trademarked crop ‘species’ and the superbreeds of pesticide-resistant, antibiotic-resistant diseases and insects those technological ‘advances’ help to produce?

Hva faen er meningen?
I give up.