Radio ads appeal to greed and voter stupidity

By SJ Otto

Some smarmy under-handed conservative group is running dozens of ads every day, on radio stations, trying to tell us that we need to let the "elected" officials in Kansas decide how much school funding Kansas schools need. These new adds are filled with inaccurate information, appeals to personal greed and fear mongering.

These ads imply that it is unfair to let the "unelected" supreme court justices decide how much money we really need for our schools. And they go into fear mongering—warning listeners that property taxes could double or we may end up paying more than 10 percent sales tax (which is close to what we pay now).

As someone who actually works for the school system, I have watched while our past Governor Sam Brownback, gutted our schools and cheated Kansas youth out of the quality education that the generation before them had. The damage that Brownback did will take years to fix. But not if the people who run the ads get their way. As with the rest of the nation, we have an obligation to provide a reasonable and adequate education to every citizen of both Kansas and this country. In the long run, allowing poorly educated citizens to mature, vote, work and live in our society is very dangerous. We already have seen what the poorly educated citizens have done to the office of the president. We have a man who was elected by those poorly educated and easily fooled into believing a $billionaire con man would be an ally of the working class. Our president today has done nothing but take the rights of working people away and has done all he can to make sure that employers have all the rights and all the decision making power over working people who have been stripped of any rights or control over their jobs.

Trying to educate on the cheap is irresponsible and just plane wrong. There are too many people who whine about having to educate someone else's kid. They need to get over it. A lot of the politicians who have gotten elected over the last 10 years have been counting on the less educated and the gullible. When these folks get elected we all pay.

We need to stand up to the big money and greedy political people who have wrecked havoc on our school systems and want to continue this mistreatment of our young. We need to be responsible for education all citizens, so they can enter the work place with the knowledge they need to function well, the ability to understand the system they live under and the ability to see a con job when they vote.

Pix by NBC News.