I have been around newspapers a long time, but I have never seen such an inflammatory piece of writing passed off as an editorial as I saw in the Detroit News last week.
It starts right off with the headline, “An iPod for every kid? Are they !#$!ing idiots?”
That’s a headline from a reputable, mainstream newspaper? The anti-Democratic crap that continues to flow from the Detroit News should finally dispel the ridiculous “liberal media” myth that the Republic Party has turned into a devastatingly effective political strategy. Then we get statements like this one in the hot piece, “The Democrats, led by their increasingly erratic speaker Andy Dillon.”
What can you expect from a newspaper where Nolan Finley is editorial page editor, and I’ll bet the farm he wrote this piece of garbage. The only thing in this hit piece that even makes sense is this lone sentence, “Michigan can't tax or spend its way out of this economic catastrophe.” Michigan can’t cut its way out either. We have cut taxes for 15 straight years, and the state has cut spending for almost the same amount of time. Where’s the prosperity if all it takes is cuts?
I haven’t really had the time to completely read and digest the Democratic plan, but it seems like a long term investment plan to me to truly lift us out of the economic downturn and address the structural budget problems, not just balance the budget with one-time fixes and gimmicks. We have done this “one-tine budget fix and gimmicks” since 2001.
How do we expect a company and corporation to come into Michigan and invest millions of dollars here when its own citizens refuse to invest in their state?
I have to admit I was a bit surprised and disappointed when I first read about the Ipod idea. That is until I thought about it. I’m not all that old – I’m not using my walker yet, but as a Baby-Boomer I can remember the most high-tech teaching tools we had when I was in high school were film strips and reel-to-feel film projectors and even handheld calculators were rare.
As I’m writing this I’m listening to “Lord of the Flies” from the Playaway hanging from my neck that I borrows from the Howell Library. Can you imagine the outcry that came when VCRs and DVDs were introduced in schools?
Now, we have students sitting in class with cell phones small enough to fit in their pockets taking notes on their wireless laptop computer than has Internet access that gives the student access to almost everything that has ever been printed. If you told us that would have been the case 20 years ago we would have said you were crazy, but now we want to say no to new technology.
We’re talking about MP3 players not the more expensive Ipods that are getting smaller and smaller everyday and dropping in price each day. They can load both audio and video, including such things as the day’s lessons or homework. They can also be modified so that only schoolwork can be downloaded, not just music and music videos.
With the volume buying power the state has the price should be rather low.
