Take a shot of Jäger every time Michele Bachmann makes you say "WT-EFFING-F" in this story.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

October 28, 2011 02:30 PM
Bachmann: End the Dept. of Education to Solve Teen Bullying

By David

?key=1319837063

"I think that is an issue that needs to be handled at the local level," the Minnesota congresswoman explained. "I don't like to have the federal government involved in telling the local schools what to do. For one thing, there was no federal Department of Education until the late 1970s. So, I don't want the federal government involved. I actually want to end the federal Department of Education."

"No one thinks that bullying is a good thing," Bachmann continued. "Bullying is a bad thing. If you've ever been bullied, you know what it's like. It's awful. But I think it's up to the parents to insist with the local school districts that while their child is in the care of the local school, that the school stand up and stand against this. And kids need to be punished accordingly."

"You don't reward kids for doing bad things, you punish them. And the kids who are good kids, who are getting bullied through no fault of their own, somebody needs to stand up for them. Because sometimes when it is bullying, it isn't just one kid, it's a whole band of kids and that's where the schools have to step in."

She added: "It's $1.8 billion and I want to send that money -- I want to make sure that money goes back to the schools so that the schools can handle these issues."

[JohnnyRingo]

1. It's simple really...

She merely wants to end the Dept Of Education and use that "billion and a half dollars" to bribe kids not to bully the nerds.

I'm sure this is what Jimmy Carter planned all along when he upgraded the 1867 department to a cabinet level position, but didn't see a second term to follow through. At the time, Republicans were apocalyptic because they argued that "education" wasn't in the constitution, and they feared the day would come that voters would become too informed to elect GOP candidates like Bachmann.

In 2007 GW Bush moved the 5,000 ED employees to their new HQ in the Lyndon Baines Johnson building in Washington DC so when President Bachmann takes the oath, all she'll have to do is slate the office building for destruction when no one is looking.

As testimony to the department's ultimate failure, Michele Bachmann wants to save the $1.5b budget of a department whose budget was raised from $46b to $60b by GW Bush by the end of his 1st term. Bachmann is living proof that a child can still achieve a diploma in public schools and not know shit.

She's definately old school GOP.

[monmouth]

3. I think you meant 1967, typo...n/t

[JohnnyRingo]

4. Not according to "The Internet":

Wikipedia:

Establishment

A previous Department of Education was created in 1867 but soon was demoted to an Office in 1868. As an agency not represented in the president's cabinet, it quickly became a relatively minor bureau in the Department of the Interior. In 1939, the bureau was transferred to the Federal Security Agency, where it was renamed the Office of Education. In 1953, the Federal Security Agency was upgraded to cabinet-level status as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Upgrading Education to cabinet level status in 1979 was controversial and opposed by many in the Republican Party, who saw the department as unconstitutional, arguing that the Constitution doesn't mention education, and deemed it an unnecessary and illegal federal bureaucratic intrusion into local affairs. However many liberals and Democrats see the department as constitutional under the Commerce Clause, and that the funding role of the Department is constitutional under the Taxing and Spending Clause.

On March 23, 2007, President George W. Bush signed into law H.R. 584, which designates the ED Headquarters building as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education

I didn't believe this myself, but apparently those "good old days" Repubs always long for, really are before the civil war. Since the DE takes away "states rights" that allow each state to decide who gets an education and who goes to what school, they could in theory take us back to a day when it was illegal to teach a black person to read in some states.

Interestingly, it seems every modern day GOP candidate has promised to eliminate this office during campaign stops, but has done nothing while in office. GW Bush even added "No Child Left Behind" to the budget.

[monmouth]

5. Sorry, I had read it wrong,

[TlalocW]

2. NO!

I'm afraid of dying by alcohol poisoning.

TlalocW