Angela Giron and John Morse, two fired politicians

Last night two state senators from Colorado got fired. Following a long campaign into which everyone from the NRA to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC injected two cents; millions of dollars worth, Senate president John Morse and Senator Angela Giron were recalled by the fine citizens of Colorado. What did they do? They were a bit too anti gun.

Like a whole bunch of politicians, Morse and Giron were motivated by the shooting massacre in Newtown Conn. to push for stiffer gun control. They wanted universal background checks and a ban on high capacity magazines. Sounds reasonable to me.

I’m pro gun by the way. But even a violent luddite such as myself can see the wisdom of universal background checks. They are already used at gun shops. Why not close that gun show loophole, if it will keep guns out of the hands of fools like the one who showed up at McNair Elementary last month? (Insert rational, non-paranoid argument here. I haven’t heard one yet.) As for high capacity magazines, I don’t think it will make a bit of difference one way or another. But I’ll tell you this, I sure don’t think that my right to buy a banana clip is important enough to march down to the pole place and vote someone out of office over it. More than 50 percent of the residents of a few districts in Colorado felt otherwise. And now two senators are unemployed.

While I disagree with the citizens of Colorado, I admire their spirit. They did exactly what you are supposed to do when you no longer believe that your political representatives represent you. They put them in the crosshairs and got rid of them.

It makes me wonder why the employment rate among Philadelphia’s politicians is so robust. I mean, am I the only one who felt like Mayor Michael “Kermet D'” Nutter should have been recalled for going through with stop and frisk? More importantly, faced with a $304 million deficit, the Philadelphia School District just closed 23 schools and laid off 3,783 employees, including 676 teachers and 283 councilors. We need those people, particularly the teachers and councilors. Otherwise, our kids might end up in jail. Thankfully, the state is investing $400 million into a prison in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

Those closures are going to come down hard on the people who can least afford it. The chart below spells it out. While Philadelphia is 44 percent Black, we will be shouldering the majority of the burden of the school closures.

Where are the recalls? Nutter can go. Despite his soft spoken demeanor and mild mannered affectations, he has shown a vicious willingness to wage war on the poor folk of his city. But why stop at the low lying fruit? Surely Governor Tom Corbett should be polishing up his resume right about now. He would make a perfect Walmart greeter, but as a Governor he’s just coming off as a grumpy old man.

It’s funny how people can rally so much passion behind getting rid of these…

but when it comes down to the simple things, like education, people are kind of, “meh…”

I mean, if Bloomberg can throw millions of dollars at eliminating high capacity magazines and reducing access to guns, then surely there’s some rich dude out there willing to put a couple of stacks on protecting high capacity text books and open access to schools. Oprah? Jay?

In the meantime, we’ll count our blessings that we left Philly when we did. Some people vote in the ballot box. We voted with our feet.

I’ve written about education before. It’s all part of life for a family of educational nomads.

This article is about the long search for the best schools. Here and here are two articles about the averted school shooting at McNair Learning Center in Dekalb County. My step son went there last year. Then we moved.