You should quietly begin preparing yourself for a mind-numbing amount of television political ads in the next 60 days. These mid-terms are going to be off the hook with election spending and it will mostly show up in your living room with a few hateful mailers thrown in for good measure. If it is possible the two sides should reach new lows in attack ads by the time this election cycle is over.
I will give Democrats credit. They have turned a country narrative about high inflation, high cost of living and a chronologically challenged president into a “Republicans are a threat to our Democracy” narrative. We will see if that narrative leads to votes, but I suspect it may have simply strengthened the resolve of the red voters, but time will tell.
History says that quiet voters come out to the polls very strongly. See 2016.
Missourians should keep an eye on public education in Arizona. Arizona passed a new school choice law that is going to change the landscape of public education and it is the general plan that many in Missouri are advocating. Participating families can receive over $6500 per year through education savings accounts, per child for private school, home-schooling, micro schools, tutoring or a wide range of other choices.
Public school advocates are stomping mad. School choice advocates are overjoyed and the rest of us get to see what happens as education shifts in this country.
It’s important to us locally because you don’t have to go far to see one of the ground zero centers for school choice. Just north of Smithville and south of Trimble, the Herzog Foundation has built a distinctive appearing building that houses their administrative offices. The Herzog Foundation has quickly become a national player in school choice, funding many students from the foundation directly.
After years of using their financial muscle on local education issues, the Herzog legacy through the Foundation is quickly becoming a national player in the push to reform public education through competing private school promotion. Well-known Platte County attorney and power broker Todd Graves is the chairman of the Foundation.
Stanley Herzog left behind a load of cash and a vision that will probably alter the school landscape for years and years to come. Arizona may be the clearest view of what that might look like if they are successful.
The unity that President Biden promised us has really been a breath of fresh air, am I right? That speech last week just made me feel all warm and fuzzy… on second thought, maybe it was the booze.
Public school establishment will and do squeal over all of these private school initiatives, but the fact is that unless public schools change their ways, they’re going to consistently get beat by public opinion on the matter. It is no longer a secret that public education is stuck in an abyss of increased administration costs, government regulation and an unrelenting bureaucracy that has stymied student growth in this country. Unless they can reverse that, private education will continue to challenge for students and dollars.
Let’s get back to the important stuff. Patrick begins slinging the football again this week. My warehouse guys, who are my Chiefs’ temp gauge, will begin to worry about Jackson, Brittany, Sterling and baby-to-be. They’ll be worried about making sure his house gets finished in Loch Lloyd and pushing for Jackson to do less TikTok dancing and worried about how many commercials Patrick’s doing.
I suspect they have pics of Patrick taped inside their metal lunch boxes. I don’t blame them. Find you someone you can love like they love Patrick.
(Guy Speckman can be reached at gspeckman@me.com or reveling in the new unity of our country)