Education Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

Don’t you hate a lazy liar? When someone doesn’t even take the time to come up with something remotely believable or at least go for an over the top (alien abduction) incredible lie, you feel personally insulted.

 Hate the sin not the sinner. This is a fine proverb if the sinner and the sin aren’t too closely connected.  In the Dec. 21 MDJ, East Cobb State Rep Don Parsons and State Senator Judson Hill begged the Cobb School Board not to blame them or the state for the shortfall in funding for Cobb public education.

After all they said, state school funding has been increasing for the last five years. Perhaps they know that the amount of the state increase hasn’t matched the increased number of students. The per-student expenditure is the only real measure of funding for education.  If state spending goes up 1% and student enrollment goes up 5%, then per student state funding has gone down 4%. They didn’t even mention the billions that were cut from Gov. Perdue’s budgets with their votes.

The Governor and his Republican legislature should stop telling that “we’ve raised funding for education every year lie”. Their base is getting wise to the deception. PTA moms are getting upset and one is running against Rep. Matt Dollar (R) in the Republican primary. Republicans, you can lie better than this. Make the effort; put your Nixon hats on.

There is the possibility that neither Rep. Parsons nor Sen. Hill have a clue that they aren’t telling the truth. In East Cobb, the notion that the President wasn’t born in America is common and don’t forget death panels. Fanciful thinking is more common than the sniffles East of I-75. Forrest Gump always said that stupid is as stupid does. Are these representatives’ liars or stupid?

If they only had town hall meetings or engaged the public in some fashion, they wouldn’t live their legislative lives in a fact free bubble. On the other hand, they may be fully aware of the lies that they tell and offer this shallow lie to deflect criticism. Everybody has been lied to at one time or another. While we hate the experience of being lied to, it is worse when the liar makes little effort in telling the lie.

We expect better lies from our elected representatives.  

Rep. David Wilkerson (D) Powder Springs has regular town hall meetings to inform his constituents and to learn from them. Last week he invited about a dozen residents of his district to a “meet and greet”. The subject of the conversation and direction was up to the residents and it went back and forth, while Rep. Wilkerson mostly listened and learned. Is this possible with East Cobb Republicans? No.

In East Cobb our elected state representatives fear the Tea Party and listen to lobbyists.

Our school board thinks that if they can blame the state for their dereliction of duty, they might be able to redirect voter’s attention and anger in another direction. If the county commission can come up with $300 million tax increase for the Braves, and Marietta can raise taxes $68 for developers, then the school board needs to step up and show some imagination and think outside the box also.

Read my lips – raise Cobb’s taxes to support quality public education.