TAP You're It
So the hope for today was to talk about The Nation . And I assure you, there would have been winning remarks about that dumb period in its name. But unfortunately, The Nation is not all the way on the Internet yet, and since we all have German history discussion sections to head off to, or the equivalent thereof, and god even knows when The Nation . will finally show up, now we have to talk about The American Prospect . TAP is all well and good, except many of the articles require your money, but we're only going to be talking about those that don't so DON'T WORRY.
"The Education Wars": Dana Goldstein—who along with Danas Milbank, Priest and Perino, is one of the Washington Danas You Should Know—has a long piece about education reform. In one corner we have the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, and their retainer of fatcat Big Education lobbyists who hate No Child Left Behind. In the other we have self-described "reformers", who hate unions and love No Child Left Behind. But the real character in all this is a one Randi Weingarten, a Sapphic Jewess who is the first openly gay leader of a major union (the AFT). She's all about compromise, and also merit-based pay for teachers. Except she's calling it "differentiated pay", and assigning teachers the color green, which means they are paid more, and red, which means they are paid less. This has made her all sorts of enemies, it seems! Fancy that. [The Education Wars ]
"Post-Consumer Prosperity": The big cover story boldly proclaims that "LESS IS THE NEW MORE." Well then! Okay so here's the plan: Maybe we won't ever have indulgent capitalist luxuries like homes or jobs anymore, like we did in 2007, but maybe that's cool now. Yeah, see, we can be happy— happier , even—without going back to the way we were. If you look at gross spending as something that's done to achieve actual goals—buying $150,000 worth of Oscar de la Renta pantsuits from Neiman Marcus, for example, in order to look like you have a basic understanding of the US government. Anyway, when everyone buys $150,000 worth of pantsuits, then no one has a leg up, as it were, and we're back to square one. Well, back to not being able to afford our mortgages on square one. [ Post-Consumer Prosperity ]
"Beyond Sunny Hopes and Windy Rhetoric": Ooh big trouble ahead for us, the US, because we don't have a renewable energy industry, which in theory would mean creating jobs and renewable energy. Plus, all the renewable energy things we do do are only done with equipment purchased from Asia or Europe. So what's to be done? A bolded sub-sectioned list is to be done, by TAP ! This list offers some constructive criticisms that will set America straight with all this.