They are going to name the Harris County Department of Education building on Irvington after RONALD REAGAN? This falls under the “I thought I’d seen it all” category.
Reagan was NOT the education president, contrary to what the misinformed Republican woman quoted in the Chronicle story believes.
It looks like Jessica Farrar and Sylvia Garcia tried to make the argument against the name change to no avail. This is just a damn shame. We have a county with huge percentages of minority kids, kids with inadequate to no health and dental care and kids below the poverty line.
In case anyone doesn’t remember, Reagan was continually slamming on people on welfare, acting as if all families on welfare were piling in their Cadillacs to go use their food stamps.
I was a high school teacher during Reagan’s presidency and those were dire times for education. Reagan started that ridiculous drumbeat of “let’s abolish the Dept. of Education”. He cut federal education dollars because, hey, that’s what you do when you are a Ronald Reagan – cut funding and decrease services! At the low income, racially diverse school where I taught, all I saw were kids on free and reduced lunch, and on food stamps, who really needed help to survive and keep their focus on learning.
Seriously, is this a done deal? Read the Chron article for an explanation of what in the heck HCDE is, and to see the photo of the HCDE board member holding up the photo of Reagan that he keeps in his wallet. A must see.
UPDATE (from Kuff): For an interesting Republican view of this, see Houston Consigliere.
More Republican myth-making. Much easier and more convenient to live in an alternative reality than in the one the rest of us must inhabit.
Reagan AND Bush hate children!!!!
Grrrr!!!!!!
I love the blog’s new direction. Keep up the fight, ya’ll! On ice, or whatever, too. Yeah!
Ah, the name-everything-Reagan crowd. I think of them as Marglar Republicans (which apologies to South Park).
Off the meds again, Kevin? Take a deep breath, maybe that’ll help.
I have no idea what “new direction” you’re talking about. I’m doing what I’ve been doing since 2002. Perhaps you’re the one that’s changed.
I was in high school during the Reagan admin, and I turned out OK.
Reagan didn’t roll over for the unions, and that’s simply a capital offense to the author.
G-man, are your eyes brown?
Because, you sound full of it.
Reagan almost singlehandedly created the crisis in air traffic control, because not only did he fire the union controllers, he destroyed the budget for upgrading the equipment.
In fact, much of the post-2001 “airport security” BS is an effort to hide the fact that the government doesn’t want people to fly — it costs too much to pay controllers and keep the equipment running, and if they could figure out a way to shut it all down, they’d do so.
(That no-fly-zone US in September 2001 saved the Bush administration more than its political fanny. Check it out sometime.)