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GOP War on Children Continues Apace

by: Dean Barker

Sat Mar 05, 2011 at 19:41:23 PM EST
First it was defining adequacy down.  Then repealing kindergarten.  Then lowering the drop-out age.*

But not to be outdone by the Bill O'Brien statehouse, the GOP controlled US House moved to cut funding for Reach Out and Read:

[Pediatrician Dr. Suzanne] Boulter said that, in New Hampshire, approximately 20,000 children are helped each year at 40 health care facilities, including several in the Lakes Region. She said that, last year, 35,000 books were given out.

...Boulter said the program provides new, age-appropriate books to children who are between six months and five years of age at regular pediatric checkups. Participating doctors and nurses also talk to parents about the importance of reading aloud to, and talking with, their children every day. She said it is crucial to healthy brain development and not doing so can have life-long detrimental learning effects.

...She added that the program especially targets poor and lower-income families.

I was raised in a lower income environment where TeeVee was often daycare.  But my single, working mother, who never went to college, looked everywhere for opportunities to get books into my hands.

Books that ultimately made me into the person I am today.

This move by the Republicans to destroy Reach Out and Read and harm the futures of lower income children infuriates me.

(birched earlier)

*Saturday Update: And now offering up the Abolish Education Amendment.  
Dean Barker :: GOP War on Children Continues Apace
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GOP War on Children Continues Apace | 9 comments
love the fetus (0.00 / 0)
hate the child.

Well, sort of love the fetus (4.00 / 2)
They aren't too keen on pre-natal healthcare for the incubator.  But if you don't care what happens to the child after it's born, I guess that makes sense, doesn't it?  No need to have a healthy mother or child, they're on their own after the birth anyway.
[ Parent ]
Which leads to the conclusion that (0.00 / 0)
the "Right to Life" position of the Republican Party is not driven by a reverence for life, which would result in support for pre-natal programs.

What's left as an impetus?

  1. A cynical, amoral strategy of exploiting voters who do have an honestly held "reverence for life"; or
  2. The desire to subjugate women, especially young, or poor, or minority women.

We could ask: What leads to such a deep need to subjugate women - fear, desire, inadequacy?

But then we would be moving from conclusions based inexorably on logic and facts, into speculation.

[ Parent ]
From the perspective of human husbandry, (0.00 / 0)
people are a natural resource, self-replenishing and eminently fungible, as Rumsfeld so cogently observed of the troops.

When humans are perceived as a natural resource, they are, like the other bounteous provisions of mother nature to be used and abused at the pleasure of their betters/makers/authorities.  When people are categorized as a natural resource, they're just like other material things, to be owned and disposed of by those who claim dominion over all the earth.

It's materialism to the nth degree.

Conservatives are opposed to animal rights, not because they compete with human rights, but because if animals have rights, then human rights can't be far behind.

"Property over people" is the conservative mantra.

[ Parent ]
Prenatal social Darwinism (4.00 / 1)
You're never too young to swim or sink.

[ Parent ]
Senator Shaheen on Washington Republicans' anti-education efforts. (0.00 / 0)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

--
Hope > Anarch-tea
Twitter: @DougLindner
Another Abolish Education Act n/t (0.00 / 0)




"When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on."  Franklin D. Roosevelt    
For a historical perspective that can't be beat-- (0.00 / 0)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/...

What truly horrible (4.00 / 1)
people!  
[ Parent ]
GOP War on Children Continues Apace | 9 comments

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