Whatever your faith tradition, there is something nice about that. Yes, I know all the arguments against greed and the consumer culture. Yet there is still something nice about doing something to make someone else happy.
That may be why the armies of shoppers today will include even some Jewish people I know and a whole lot of completely secular folks who buy their loved ones presents.
Doing something for others you care about, especially, something that makes sense in the long run, really shouldn’t be seen as a sacrifice at all, especially if it benefits you too.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. However, it does seem beyond the ability of the Michigan legislature to grasp much of the time. Today, they are still squabbling over a series of simple education reforms they need to make in order to not lose $400 million dollars in so-called “Race to the Top” federal education aid. Given how much the schools have lost recently, you’d think that Lansing would have snapped up that money in a heartbeat.
In fact, they were supposed to have recessed for the holidays already. But no, the lawmakers are, as usual, finding things to fight about. Charter schools, for one thing. Republicans want a whole lot more of them, and demanded this be part of the legislation.
They want, essentially an unlimited number of charters. Democrats, who are closely allied with the main teachers’ union, the Michigan Education Association, don’t want that.
They may be near a compromise on that issue, but the leadership also has been fighting over whether high school kids should be forced to pass a curriculum designed to prepare them for college, and over what to do with clearly failing school districts.
Should the state be able to take over the academics of an entire failing school district, or should it be allowed to do so only one building at a time? One would have thought the sad spectacle of Detroit’s Public Schools would be an adequate answer.
All this comes after a session in which our cash-strapped state missed out on other opportunities for billions in federal dollars, because lawmakers refused to come up with matching funds.
For example, we lost $600 million in federal highway funds because we wouldn’t come up with the $120 million we needed to get that money. The legislature wouldn’t do anything because, of course, all new taxes are bad, even if we get four times the money back. As a result, the state may cancel $200 million in road repair projects.
Maybe our lawmakers think potholes will heal themselves. Now, there is a chance that Congress may give us these funds anyway. The House has voted to do so; the Senate is yet to act.
But even if they do, the legislature too often, in too many ways, has become the grinch that is stealing our future, mainly through partisan and pressure group nastiness. A few years ago, there was a movement to change the constitution to convert us to a non-partisan, one-house unicameral legislature, something Nebraska has now.
At the time I thought that was a silly idea.
Today, I think I just might have been wrong.
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