Somewhere in the middle of Tuesday\u2019s workout, I changed channels.\u00a0\u00a0My standard\u00a0MSNBC Morning Joe\u00a0<\/em>was doing a review of the year; and 2020 was bad enough the first time.\u00a0\u00a0So I made a foray into the alternate universe of\u00a0Fox and Friends.\u00a0<\/em>I used that to distract me from the \u201cspecial high intensity training\u201d of a stiff resistance elliptical machine setting. And\u00a0Fox\u00a0<\/em>often gets me fired up to work even harder.\u00a0\u00a0Yesterday was no exception:\u00a0\u00a0former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, was propounding on the state of politics today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It didn\u2019t hurt my motivation that one of Gingrich\u2019s first statements was that there was no need for Congress to increase the $600 stimulus. Millions of Americans \u201cmade money\u201d on the pandemic he said, in fact, \u201c\u2026millions of government workers, particularly teachers, sat on their butts doing nothing and collecting their paychecks,\u201d during the crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I retired from public school teaching in 2014, but I did take a full-time substitute-teaching job on March 9th<\/sup> of 2020. A week later the pandemic closed the school, and I was one of those teachers who went home to prepare to teach \u201conline\u201d. For the next two months, I learned all about developing video lectures and Zoom classes, Google classroom communication and online testing. I am, in the teaching world, an \u201cold dog\u201d but I had to learn a whole lot of new tricks. It was the hardest teaching I did in a thirty-six year career. Yes, I was at home, and yes, I was sitting on my \u201cbutt\u201d in front of a computer. But, like most teachers then and now, I was working that \u201cbutt\u201d off to try to teach my kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that got my through a mile of Tuesday\u2019s workout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watching Newt reminded me of the \u201cRevolution of \u201894\u201d he led. This was before Trump and the Tea Party, but Gingrich was able to gain control of the House of Representatives in 1994 with his \u201cContract with America\u201d program. It promised less government and more \u201cfreedom\u201d. The overall theme of Newt\u2019s program: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that Joe Biden is going to be the Forty-Sixth President of the United States, we are going to hear many of those same themes once again.\u00a0\u00a0The \u201cContract with America\u201d was a \u201crepackaging\u201d of the standard Republican line when they aren\u2019t in power.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s already happening.\u00a0\u00a0Republicans in the Senate are now worrying that the Government is spending too much money to combat the pandemic economic collapse.\u00a0\u00a0This is after they have voted to give more than a trillion dollars in tax cuts in the past three years, mostly to those Americans with the top one percent of income. And this week they are ready to override a Presidential veto and spend $738 billion for the National Defense Authorization Act.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The difference between Republicans and Democrats really isn\u2019t about how much money they are willing to spend. It\u2019s what they want to spend the money on. Spend money on incredibly expensive aircraft that are ready to fight the Cold War of the 1960\u2019s: most Republican legislators think that\u2019s great. General Dynamics and Boeing and Raytheon all need the contracts. Spend money to allow Americans to stay at home and stop the spread of COVID, like most other modern industrial nations \u2013 well, workers need to get off their \u201cbutts\u201d and get to work. Let\u2019s call them \u201cessential\u201d so they feel important, but not provide the funds to safely get their jobs done.<\/p>\n\n\n\nA Revolution?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Priorities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n