A Liberal Dose, March 7, 2025 "Some American Voters Are Feeling Buyers' Remorse"

 

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

“Some American Voters Are Feeling Buyers’ Remorse”

 

It is only five weeks into the second Trump administration, and I am starting to see evidence that some of his voters are experiencing buyers’ remorse. Of course, there are plenty who are delighted with much of what he has done so far -or, at least, who defend it all. But even many of them are a little unsure about some of it. What a lot of them didn’t realize -and a few are starting to -is that when he talked about “those people” who don’t deserve what they have, he didn’t just mean immigrants and minorities. Unless you are a billionaire, he was talking about you, too. Nothing he has done so far is going to improve the economy -if anything, between tariffs, mass firings, and closing down government agencies set up to protect the public, he is making it significantly worse. And a lot of people who supported him are the ones feeling the pain. In fact, the way things are going, it is going to be red states that suffer the hardest. Some of my conservative friends are not concerned about this -you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few (very expensive) eggs, they basically say. But it hasn’t hit them personally yet. I predict a different tune will be sung once it does. And it’s coming.

Actually, though, while many of his acts are shocking, none of them should really be surprising. He may not be doing what he said he would… but he is doing exactly what everything about him predicted he would. I think a lot of people have projected things onto him that were never there -like the idea he would ever sacrifice his own comfort or benefit for them, or that he cares about them or about the country. For some of his supporters, it is probably embarrassing to admit that -no one likes admitting they were fooled. But if that describes you -whether you would admit it or not -you are in good company. He has been fooling, and using, working class people his whole life. How many people have done work for him -contractors, construction workers, even basic staff -and never been paid a fraction of what they were owed? And he has always bragged about that.

Look, too, at his international relations. He only seems to care about countries that he perceives as powerful, that are run by authoritarians or dictators who crush the common people under them. He admires men like that (notice it is only men). He seems to have disdain for countries, and leaders, who care about democracy, human rights, ethics, or ideals. He also disdains countries (“s-hole countries”) that are not extremely powerful. Strength and power are all that he sees, or wants to see.

Are you powerful? If not, then you are a tool to be used and discarded. Once he has what he needed from you- your vote (which he will not need again, because he can’t run again -though he wants to -and he doesn’t really care about the fate of the Republican Party), you will be ignored.

Which brings us back to my earlier discussions about robber barons. They treat you like you’re a peasant there to serve their wants, not like a human being worthy of respect. Everything they do is for their own enrichment, or for those like them (because that would naturally benefit them as well). Judge them by what they do, not what they promise to do. Republicans in Congress are all set to cut Medicaid to the bone, and free lunches for poor kids, and SNAP, and are even talking out loud about cutting social security. Musk has actually fired much of the social security staff, including in Tennessee, which is going to slow down processing and payments. Why? Out of concern for the budget? Trump raised the deficit more than any president in history last time around. No, they want to do those things so they can give massive tax cuts to other billionaires.

It's like, on the state level, what just happened with school vouchers. The vast majority of Republican legislators, and the Republican governor, supported them… despite the fact they have been proven not to work as well as public school so far as level of education, despite the fact there is little to no opportunity in rural counties, and despite the fact most beneficiaries will be wealthier people (plus the lobbyists and businesses that endorse the private schools). Its defenders dressed up their vote with rhetoric about “freedom”, but it was actually about the freedom for you to give your hard-earned tax money for breaks to rich people.

Judge them by their ACTIONS.

By the way, fun fact: South African venture capitalist Peter Thiel, mentor and chief donor to J.D. Vance, has said that “freedom and democracy are incompatible” because the common people are a mindless rabble who don’t know what’s good for them. His alt-right supporters call for an end to democracy and a return to feudalism. You know, feudalism: that practice in the Middle Ages when the barons were served by peasants.

Do you want to be a free American, part of a free world, or do you want to be a peasant in service to what George W. Bush called “the Axis of Evil”?

Because you’re about to find out, if you haven’t already, what being a peasant feels like.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, February 28 "Will You Be Living on the Scraps?"

 

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

“Will You Be Living on the Scraps?”

 

If there’s one thing I hate talking about, it’s economics. First, because I don’t like math and numbers, and second, because I don’t like discussing money (coming as I do from a family with practically no experience with it). But as a historian, it has been my sad experience that you can’t talk about history without addressing economics. Unless it’s one of my classes abut indigenous culture, then there is no money discussion until the Europeans show up, and then -like everywhere else -it becomes all about the cash.

Maybe you’re the same way. Maybe economics is like a made-up language other people are speaking, that makes your head spin so you skip over that part. This is most likely to be true if you are working class, because in that world the only economics you know is how much your paycheck falls short of paying all the bills, so you don’t want to think about it. To quote an old Everclear song, “you have never been poor, you have never known the joy of a welfare Christmas.” It becomes even more depressing when there are people all around you saying that if you were really a good person God would bless you with wealth, so that people who have been more fortunate carry around an open sense of moral superiority over you.

There are some people who count on you feeling that way. They tell you that you don’t have to worry about it- they’re going to fix everything, just trust them. Oddly enough, they are usually people who already have a lot of money -and by the time they’re finished helping you, they have even more and you have even less. If you happen to notice that, and point it out, they accuse you of being envious and trying to stir up class warfare. If you say things should be done more fairly, they will probably accuse you of socialism.

Let’s take a look at the efforts of Elon Musk, and his assistant Donald Trump, to slash the federal budget. I’ve heard many Trump supporters in White County say things like “I can’t believe these liberals are whining so much! How can you be upset by somebody cutting waste?” Well, because they’re not cutting waste. They are cutting all the things they are ideologically opposed to, most of which revolve around fairness and/or providing necessary services to the public. Any service designed to help people (unless they are robber barons) is automatically evil, because in their worldview helping people is stupid -it should be every man (always a man) for himself. What will be the long-term (and maybe not a distant long-term) result of these actions? Well, the immediate result is that they can give massive tax cuts to the super-wealthy yet still be able to say they are trying to “balance the budget” (bear in mind that Trump added more to the deficit than any other president in history in his first four years). What about beyond that?

All these hundreds of thousands of jobs that are being lost already have a huge downside, in that airplanes are running into each other in the sky, no one is working on curing or containing diseases, parks are closing down, veterans are losing access to healthcare, and so on. But let’s think in a wider circle. Since those people are being fired “for cause” (with no actual cause), they won’t be able to collect unemployment. So they’ll have NO money. Unemployment numbers are going to shoot up. Unemployed people who have no money -and I know this might sound crazy -DON’T SPEND MONEY. Their families won’t be buying new clothes and other items, or going out to eat. Manufacturers and restaurants will start losing money, and will close down or lay off part of their workforce -and then THOSE people won’t be spending money. The economy will bog down. Inflation will go up even more. This will all be greatly exacerbated by Trump’s insane tariffs, which will have two results- the price of goods will go up even more, and our trade partners will just start buying their goods from some other country (which Canada has already started doing). Farmers are going to be hit especially hard by all this.

What I have just described is how economics works. It’s how we can understand the depressions and recessions of the past. When the people at the top have too high a percentage of the overall wealth, the people in the middle and at the bottom stop spending money and the whole operation grinds to a halt.  And it is coming, to all of us. When it is all over, Trump, Musk, and a handful of their buddies will have everything, and you will have nothing -and these would-be barons will expect you to be their grateful peasants, and beg them for scraps.

Look around, folks. It’s already starting.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

"Democrats Need to Construct a Populist Counternarrative- What You Can Do"

 

“Democrats Need to Construct a Populist Counternarrative- What You Can Do”

Troy D. Smith

 

As a historian, I’ve spent much of the past decade -like many of my colleagues -trying to sound a warning to the public about the dangers of authoritarianism and fascism from a certain orange presence coming down a golden escalator and into our political lives. Just before the election of 2016 I took an informal poll of about a hundred fellow historians from around the country -a few of them said that, at the time, Trump might not technically qualify as a fascist, but at the very least he showed strong authoritarian and fascist tendencies. Not one said he did not. Like many Americans, I was genuinely shocked on that November day when he was declared the winner over Hillary Clinton. I sincerely did not believe it was possible that a sizable percentage of the American people could possibly cast their vote for president for such a crass, vulgar, sexually abusive, cruel con artist. Even with attempted Russian interference, I thought it would not even be close. I learned a lot about the American people that day -things that many LGBTQ+ folks and people of color have always known.

I had some slight reassurance about human nature when he was easily defeated by Biden in 2020. At last, I thought, the American people have learned their lesson. I watched in numbed horror as the January 6 insurrection unfolded. Horror turned into existential dread when, within a week, his at-least-temporarily-shamed supporters started downplaying the whole thing or denying what we had seen with our own eyes, and soon thereafter Republicans in the Senate cravenly refused to convict him in his second impeachment, which would have prevented his ever holding office again. From that moment, I began to strenuously do my small part to help prevent him from returning to the White House, this time without even the handful of semi-sane people who had tempered his worst impulses in his first term.

I started writing a weekly political column in my local newspaper. I cried out in the internet wilderness. I became a committeeman of my state Democratic party. I joined activist groups. I tried to reach the public with the lessons of history. I appealed to their sense of morality, religion, patriotism, logic, reason, kindness, and basic human decency, as did thousands and thousands of others like me.

But… the price of eggs.

That is, of course, an oversimplification. But not by much. Trump not only won, he actually made advances among women, young people, and most minority groups. Many of the very people he targets with his vitriol. He did it in two ways: by turning them against each other, and by promising to magically fix the economy (which he had helped tank).

This election day, I was not surprised. I was not despondent. I was filled with a cold rage and a grim determination. And a dark realization. The majority of voters, at the end of the day, are really only concerned about their own wallet. Lofty ideals and spiritual affirmations are fine, until it cuts into their bottom line. That’s not true of everybody, of course, not by a long shot. But there are not enough lofty people in today’s America to win an election on, and without winning elections we will -under the authoritarian morass the once respected Republican Party has descended into -lose more and more of our freedoms and ideals, and the more vulnerable among us will lose their lives. It is time to get strategic. It is time to balance our idealism with pragmatism, perhaps even a dose of cynicism. At the very least, realism.

Before I go any further, let me clarify what I do not mean. Unlike many party analysts giving election post-mortems, I do not propose “backing off the woke stuff” because it ticks off Middle America. I do not propose backing off on our commitment to diversity, justice, and equal rights for all. That is the essence of who and what we are. But I do propose a different approach.

I know you’ve all heard people saying that the Democratic party’s weakness is losing touch with the working class, and that we need to embrace economic populism. Some among us feel betrayed by such talk, because, after all, we are talking about people who would like to take away their rights or even their lives. So far, though, I have not seen anyone lay out that argument as clearly and in quite the way I am about to -at least, not in public.

Trump wins because he appeals to people’s fears and angers, like many a despot before him. Fear and anger are among the most powerful human motivators. And they come in a broad palette; Hitler used fear and anger to fuel the Holocaust, and the rest of the world used its fear and anger at what he was doing to stop him. Our only hope of stemming the tide of authoritarianism is to redirect the public’s fear and anger toward a different, and legitimate, target.

Another thing the Trump approach leans heavily on: the American public is not good at nuance or complexity, and are wooed by narrative. It is preferably a narrative in which they can envision themselves as the hero, or part of the hero team. Of course, a narrative is a story -and an effective story must have conflict, which requires antagonists. I used to say, in the writers’ workshops I led for years, if you don’t have conflict you have a bunch of characters hanging around being happy and no one will read it. “Us versus them” is an aspect of human behavior we rightly wish to relegate to the past -which is not easy, as it is so hardwired into our cultures and the human condition -but Trump has used it to great effect. It avails us nothing to deride or condemn Trump to his followers, who identify him as the chaos-figure they would like to be, vicariously burning everything down and disrupting the social structure. Pointing out that he is doing those things only makes them admire and identify with him more, reinforcing to them that they are part of his “us.”

We need a different target, especially considering that -should the republic stand -Trump will be unable to run for office again and no one else will have the sort of charismatic hold on his followers that he has achieved. Instead of focusing all our ire on Trump, let’s make it the entire billionaire class. Let us construct an (accurate!) narrative with an appropriate set of villains- let us reintroduce words like fat cats, big shots, and especially robber barons, pointing out that they will reap all the benefits and the common people will suffer. People can identify with that, and already have fears about it. Let us emphasize that all the rest of us -despite race, religion, or ethnic origin -are all in the same boat, being trickled down on by the ones at the very top. The whole 99% is the “us”, and the 1% is the “them”. As we do this, let us make sure to point out the many wealthy Americans of the past who stood beside the regular folk and served their country tirelessly, such as both Roosevelt presidents and John F. Kennedy, to reinforce that we are not advocating for what they will spin as a communist class war. It’s fine to be rich, so long as you are the Scrooge of Christmas morning and not the Scrooge of Christmas Eve -and today’s robber baron class is very much the latter. No, we are asking for their votes in order to defend the country from greedy monopolists.

As despondent as many progressives have been since election day, the ground for such an approach is more fertile now that at any time since the Occupy movement. Far from lowering the price of eggs, Trump’s insane tariffs and the DOGE debacle are going to seriously rock the economy, especially for working class people, and many of them are starting to come around to that fact. This will be much more true by the time of the midterm elections, so we need to be softening their defenses now with as many broadsides as we can deliver. It is time to take off the gloves.

Many within the Democratic Party will resist such a strategy, as they are themselves too invested in the status quo and the Clintonian centrism to which the party has continually reverted over the last three decades. They will be concerned about the donor class. We need to drag them along kicking and screaming if need be -if the people are mobilized, corporate donors will follow, if nothing else to protect their bottom line. Trump has shown us how true that is. Continually tacking to the center against a prevailing wind leaves a vessel dead in the water.

It is time to be a movement, and move.

That’s what we can be doing now, as the economy is already starting to totter. Screaming from the rooftops that we’re all being screwed over by the fat cats. The anger will build, and at least some of the people who were not hardcore MAGA -just remarkably short-sighted and not very empathetic -will start howling too, when the economic effects of Trump’s policies start affecting them. We don’t need to reach them all, or convert them all -we just have to turn a few, or help them reach a point where if nothing else they stay home on election day, and it can make the difference.

A Liberal Dose, Feb. 21, 2025 "Medicaid May Be on the Chopping Block"

 

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

“Medicaid May Be on the Chopping Block”

 

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently unveiled their draft for a budget (which was supposed to have been done in October but has kept getting pushed back due to politics). This proposed budget calls for 4.5 TRILLION dollars in tax cuts (which would almost all be for the top 1%), and 2 trillion dollars in budget cuts to help make up for all that lost tax revenue. Among other things that could be on the chopping block according to this draft are possibly massive cuts to Medicaid (which covers over 70 million Americans, maybe including you or your parents) and up to 20% cut from SNAP benefits (which feed poor kids. Maybe YOUR kids, or your grandkids). If you recall, I feared this was coming since right after the election; whenever the GOP is in control of both houses and the Oval Office, they always want to subsidize more tax cuts for the super-rich by cutting what they refer to as “entitlements” but what many people -not just the poor, but working and middle class -refer to as “how I (or my aged parents) eat and get healthcare.” And before people start saying “Fake news! Trump wouldn’t do that!” he TRIED to do it last time, and it didn’t pass Congress. THIS Congress gives him whatever he wants. On a closer level, Republicans in our state General Assembly (and governor’s mansion) showed just who they wanted to help in that school voucher scam, which most Tennesseans (including rural county education boards) opposed because it would really only be helping people with money, not working class or rural people.

Then we have Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who has been put in charge (along with his twenty-something-year-old tech bros) of “eliminating waste.” They’ve been cutting stuff left and right -but most of it is not waste, much of it will be felt by you and people like you. But not the fat cats and robber barons, you can bet good money on that. Judges have issued injunctions preventing much of it from actually happening… but if and when it does, you will lose a whole lot of government services that you rely on. Again, all to pay for massive tax cuts for the people at the top. Counting on that tax refund arriving on time? Not if most of the IRS workers are fired. But robber barons who cheated on their (already criminally low) taxes? THEY’LL make out fine. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariff wars have already disrupted the stock market, and we’ll all soon be feeling it in our wallets as prices keep going up and up. Remember how he said he was going to decrease heating bills and the price of eggs “on Day One”? And yet Waffle House is now charging a surcharge on eggs, they’re so expensive. I think we should all call this “the Trump surcharge.” What DID he do on Day One? A bunch of Project 2025 stuff that most of the people who elected him weren’t voting for, and weren’t expecting, because he said it was a hoax and they believed him. Turns out the denials were the hoax.

Know what would be a good way to get rid of waste? Send some of these folks home next election, and put in people who are not owned by the big shots. They said they were going to “clean up the swamp”… but haven’t you noticed that you’re still sinking in the muck? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they’re robbing us all blind, and they think we’re too dumb -or too worked up over the social issues they throw around to distract us -to notice. Well, I’ve noticed. Haven’t you? If you haven’t, mark my word, you will soon.

But they can’t keep robbing us blind if our eyes are open. So open them wide -watch what happens these next few months, and see if I’m not right. In the meantime, call John Rose, Marsha Blackburn, and Bill Hagerty and encourage them to grow a spine and look out for your interests instead of a bunch of billionaires. But considering that before their political careers they were all millionaires, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Maybe it’s time to send some real people to Washington for a change.

 

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

 

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

A Liberal Dose, Feb. 14, 2025 "This Is Not a Time to Hide in the Shadows"

 

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

“This Is Not a Time to Hide in the Shadows”

 

 

For the last few weeks I’ve been repeating a message about robber barons, on the national and state level. It has been a message aimed at the political middle, and at the working-class voters who have felt left behind. But this week, I am going to share some words of encouragement for those of you out there who already feel as I do on these topics, and have been feeling discouraged.

This is the social media post I made on Inauguration Day, which also happened to be MLK Day. Although a few weeks have passed, I thought I would share it with you, as well. Here it is:

To my fellow Dems, liberals, progressives, lefties, etc.

This is a strange day- commemorating two very different men, Dr. King and that other guy. I really don't see how it is possible to truly honor and respect both of them, as they cancel each other out. You'd have to twist yourselves into a strange pretzel indeed to even try. But be that as it may.

It is easy today, and since the day of the election, really, for folks like us to feel despondent and want to fade into the shadows until it is all over (if it ever is), to pull the covers over our heads and withdraw in fear and despair. And right now is the most important time in our lives not to.

I believe that right now, today, January 20, 2025, is the real day that tests our character and determines what happens going forward. More so than the January of 2017, or even of 2021. TODAY is the day we have to reach down into ourselves and find the courage of MLK, the courage to march into hell for a heavenly cause. To have the courage to stand on the mountaintop knowing we may not ourselves see the promised land, but that how we face today will help ensure that those who come after us will.

Today is the day to remember the words of Thomas Paine, written during the seemingly hopeless days of Valley Forge:

“These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

Today is not a day to take off work, today is a day to take ON work. This week is a week to take on work. This year is a year to take on work.

Today is not a day to be demoralized, today is a day to be RE-moralized.

Today is not a day to hide in the shadows, it is a day to stand in the sunlight.

In a time of monsters, you can be the rabbit that hides in the brush and is beneath their notice, or you can be the lion they come for first because they fear you... and the taller you stand, the more people will be inspired to come out of the brush and stand with you, and they can't come for us all.

Stand up for what is right BECAUSE it is right, not because you have calculated that it is safe to do so.

All around us, these past few months, we have seen celebrities, politicians, news media, and businesses that once spoke up for what is right now cowed and currying for favor. That may seem like a strategy for survival to them, but it is not: it a strategy for submission and defeat. Bullies cannot be trusted.

We once believed that our ideals had become the norm in this country, but clearly they had not. Our ideals are not the status quo so they must become a movement (again), and movements have to MOVE, not play dead or bow down.

The Civil Rights Movement is NOW. TODAY.

So stand tall, friends.

Whatever happens over the next four years, never forget that Donald Trump was inaugurated on Martin Luther King Day, and that Dr. King was never so dedicated to peace and harmony that he stood silent in the face of oppression. Yes, he had a dream... but he took action to make that dream a reality, and he did not back down.

All the power to all the people.

Right on? Right on.

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

 

A Liberal Dose, February 8, 2025 "You and Your Children Are Being Robbed"

 

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

February 7, 2025

“You and Your Children Are Being Robbed”

 

As you probably know, last week the Tennessee General Assembly passed Governor Bill Lee’s school voucher plan. This passed -via a majority of the Republicans in the legislature -despite the fact public school teachers, every school board in our area, and a majority of people in our county were opposed to it, because it would only benefit people with money and ultimately hurt rural counties like ours. I heard that one such legislator told voters who called him that he had to do what was good for the state, not the people in the county that elected him. But was this even for the good of the state? It will expend hundreds of millions of YOUR TAX DOLLARS to give $7,000 scholarships to parents who want to send their kids to private schools. 20,000 such scholarships the first year, and a growing number each year after that. Half of them are to go to “low-income” families -and their definition of low-income is less than $170,000 per year. In what universe is $169,000 dollars a year “low income”? The other half can go to anybody. As I outlined last week, the average private school tuition in Tennessee is $12,000 per year. TRULY low-income families will be out of luck, as they will still have to scrape up thousands of dollars which they don’t have. The only people who will be benefiting by this “choice” will be those who already can afford to send their kids to private schools. They’re going to get to pocket a big wad of YOUR MONEY. And bear in mind, almost half the counties in this state -the rural ones -do not have one single private school.

Know who else is going to benefit? Lobbyists, special interests, and big-donor fat cat pals of the governor. Scamming your kids is a lucrative business. Now, some Republican legislators listened to their constituents -and their conscience -and voted against this bill, including White County’s own Paul Sherrell, and bravo to them (Paul Bailey voted yes). Of course, it is true that some of them were supporting the bill right up to the point the vote was taken, and when they saw it had enough votes to pass changed their vote to “no” to avoid the anger of their voters back home, but some were sincerely motivated. In addition, they would not even allow an amendment to make sure special needs children were protected in this plan. Conservative Republican Todd Warner, from district 92 (out past Rutherford County), had this to say:

“This legislation is NOT conservative, fiscally responsible, or in the best interest of Tennessee families. It’s a blatant abuse of taxpayer funds, a betrayal of our principles, and a handout to special interests at the expense of our communities… This is not conservatism—it’s corruption. Conservatism is supposed to be about limited government, fiscal responsibility, and local control. This bill is the opposite of all three. It creates a massive new government program with no guardrails, no accountability, and no limits on costs, bloating the state budget and burdening taxpayers for generations… this isn’t school choice, it’s a scam masquerading as reform.”

Folks, everything this party does is to scam you and make their robber baron pals even richer at your expense. Trump disrupted the lives of working people all around the country with his spending freeze last week (which was stopped by judges). He has handed control over dispersing funds to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world (and not elected or congressionally approved to any actual office), and he is now going to be in charge of your social security and Medicare. Trump tariff wars -on our closest allies! -are about to send prices through the ROOF, and he has already stated that once prices go up he can’t get them back down.

Look. The Republican Party has always been the rich man’s party, and the Democrats have always been the party of the working class. Many of us forgot how to SAY that, and show it to you, but that is changing rapidly. The chaos we are seeing now, local, state and national, is what happens when you give all the power to one party. They do whatever they want. If our legislature, and every rural county around, were not super-majority Republican, there would be alternatives when decisions like this one about education come around. Stop just pulling that lever because it has an R next to it. When the next election rolls around, REMEMBER how you felt this week, and do something about it at the ballot box.

They try to keep you all worked up about who’s going woke so you don’t notice who’s going broke -you.

Kentucky had a state-wide referendum on this voucher issue on November 5, and the people voted it down. It would never have passed in Tennessee if the voters had been given a direct say. In two years, let’s vote the whole bunch out and replace them with someone who listens to their constituents and not the fat cats.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

Buy the book A Liberal Dose: Communiques from the Holler by Troy D. Smith HERE

You can find all previous entries in this weekly column HERE

A list of other historical essays that have appeared on this blog can be found HERE

Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE

 

A Liberal Dose, January 31, 2025 "With School Vouchers, Follow the Money"

 

A Liberal Dose

Troy D. Smith

“With School Vouchers, Follow the Money”

 

This column is going to be challenging for the next four years. I don’t even know what to say. Every time I think I have a topic something even crazier happens- though that is, no doubt, by design. So this week I am going to start with the local, and expand it to the national.

As I write this the General Assembly is in special session, taking up (LONG overdue) hurricane relief for East Tennessee, and tying it to Governor Bill Lee’s favorite chew toy, school vouchers. He tried to push it through last year, and failed, so this time he is tying it to something else that people actually do need, hurricane relief, and something they think they need, a statewide immigration agency, and I fear his odds of winning this time are better than before due to the current political climate. But they shouldn’t be.

To be specific: Lee is calling for a $424 million dollar voucher program that would, in the first year, give awards of $7,000 each to 20,000 students, half of whom must be low-income. But that last part is misleading. First, because their definition of low-income is under $170,000 per year. In what universe is someone making $169k low income? Second, the average cost of private schools in Tennessee is about $12,000 a year, higher for high schools. Now, I was low income for most of my life, and at no time did I ever have an extra five thousand dollars to send my kid to private school, which is what these truly low-income families are going to be stuck with. There ARE cheaper schools, of course, but with that you get what you pay for, which is not much. This is why, on average in this state, public school kids score higher on assessment tests than private schools do. In other words, unless you have the money to pay for an expensive school -even with the $7,000 -your child will actually be getting an inferior education compared to public school students. So what is the point?

Follow the money. In politics -especially Republican politics -always follow the money. Since this isn’t really going to help working class families much, because they still won’t be able to afford the quality schools, who will it help financially? In other states that have adopted such programs, 75% of the people who take advantage of them are folks who already have the money to be sending their kids to private schools. Meanwhile, it is going to be taking money from public schools and therefore from YOUR kids. First, this money could be spent on public schools instead so your overworked teachers wouldn’t be having to pay for school supplies out of their own pockets, and your kids could take music and art classes like we all did. Second, public schools get their funding according to how many students they have, so draining away students will cause an even greater financial burden on the public school system. This plan is only going to help those who already can afford expensive private schools, and those few who want their kids in a religious school, and make things harder on public school teachers AND their students. And the benefits will mostly be in the counties where the money already is.

In other words: the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer.

By the time this reaches print, the decision may already be made. But you all know who your representatives are, and do not forget how they vote on this issue come election time. If it hasn’t been decided yet, as soon as you read this reach out to Paul Bailey and Paul Sherrell and tell them what you think, and remind them who keeps them in office. It isn’t Bill Lee and his fat cat buddies, many of whom reap financial benefits via their companies from all the tampering Lee (and his predecessor) have done with our school systems.

Haven’t you had enough of this? If your representatives won’t protect our public schools, next time vote in somebody who will.

 

--Troy D. Smith, a White County native, is a novelist and a history professor at Tennessee Tech and serves on the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. His words do not necessarily represent TTU.

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Author's website: www.troyduanesmith.com

The author's historical lectures on youtube can be found HERE