The war on the middle class continues to be waged on both sides of the aisle. This is less of a comprehensive blog about the topic and more of a call to action. After America more or less lost our manufacturing base and moved to a service economy that exports bad debt as our main source of GDP, Wall Street types decided to start making profits off of government services. In Illinois, this means that the fight to protect our education system from Wall Street profiteers is on. An Oregon-based organization is pushing legislation that will deter the best and brigthest from teaching and ultimately enter Illinois’ schools into the race to the bottom.
State Representative Keith Farnham, an Elgin Democrat, is holding a town hall forum at the Gail Borden Public Library (270 N. Grove St., Elgin, IL) on Wednesday, Dec. 29th at 7:00 p.m.
Representative Farnham is on the education committee and it is important that he hear from teachers, parents and community activists before returning to Springfield in January. It is believed that this legislation is being put together in a hurry and that it is part of a backroom deal (Republicans will get a large part of their anti-middle class agenda in exchange for a tax increase). It is expected to pass before January 11th, 2011 (when the new assembly takes office).
This bill does not have an official number yet, but here is a screen capture of part of the copy that I obtained. Click the pic to read the most significant part. Click the link to read the entire bill.
