You probably read that Florida Governor Rick Scott announced his proposed budget in front of tea partiers in central Florida, instead of in Tallahassee where the budget has been announced in the past. Clearly designed as pageantry to flatter the tea partiers, the Governor boasted some $5.2 billion in cuts (only to later have to admit that the number was inflated and that the cuts were “only” $3.5 billion).
The announcement of our state budget, by the way, was held in the Eustis First Baptist Church. Okay, it was supposed to be in a park but they had to move it due to rain. Of course the tea party is “not religious, it’s just about taxes,” it just so happened that when they had to move the event, they went straight to a Baptist church led by a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
After sharing with us her special invitation to be among 150 people to see what was in the budget before everyone else, my local tea party leader Billie Tucker took time out to fan a little ugly xenophobia in her blog post: “$1.3 MILLION DOLLARS OF OUR MONEY TEACHING ARABIC IN SCHOOLS.” [caps in the original]
So now the First Coast Tea Party (FCTP) is up in arms about the Mansfield School District in Texas, which received a federal foreign language teaching grant. The grant program (part of No Child Left Behind) targets Arabic, Chinese and Russian as crucial languages not enough Americans can speak, and funds elective language study in grades K-12; Mansfield is launching an elective Arabic program.
As if it’s not bad enough that she doesn’t see the economic or national security value of having Americans who are conversant in the languages of those with whom we must engage, she adds: “How about (teaching) the ‘Christian culture’ since the ‘Arabic culture’ was one of their missions of this program.” Of course, she was quickly outdone by the commenters to her post, one of whom suggested cutting “all of the foregin language teachers and keep only ENGLISH teachers.” (sic)
These are the tea partiers that Scott is fawning over. Oh… and Scott has a plan to stop “Obamacare” too. In addition to supporting the state’s court challenge; he’s just not going to implement it.
I’m starting to hope Harold Camping is right and that the Rapture will occur in May of this year; then maybe they’ll go away.
