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And now welcome to the award-winning Best of a Left Podcast with clips today from Jim

Hightower, Democracy Now, the Black Agenda Report, Counter-Spend, AJ Plus, Bernie Sanders,

The Young Turks, and Activism from Strike Dead.

Public education used to be, you know, public, as an essential societal investment for the

betterment of all paid for by all through school taxes. In addition to privatization schemes to

turn education over to corporate profiteers, public schools themselves have steadily been

perverting the idea of free education into one of, quote, fee education. This is a product of

the budget-slashing frenzy imposed on our schools in the past 15 years or so by co-headed anti-public

ideologues and unimaginative acquiescent education officials. Be set by budget cuts, too many school

systems are accommodating the slasher's by shifting the cost of educating America's future

from the general society to the parents of students who are presently enrolled. Won't

to play a sport, take a class trip to a museum or participate in a debate tournament, pay a fee.

Won't art, music, drama, or other cultural courses, pay a fee. Need a uniform? Pay a fee.

Now comes a new level of monetizing public education. The ubiquitous yellow school bus.

Yes, just getting to and from school is increasingly being treated not as a necessary public service,

but as a private luxury to be billed to the families of students. Districts in California,

Colorado, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas, and elsewhere are charging around $400 a year per

child. For the poor and downwardly mobile middle class, that's a real hit yet another barrier

...