Seattle Times again duplicitously portrays itself as a champion of public education

They’re at it again.

Two months after launch­ing a disin­gen­u­ous pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign to urge the state Leg­is­la­ture to prop­er­ly fund high­er edu­ca­tion, the Blethen-con­trolled Seat­tle Times has devot­ed more than half a spread at the end of its Sun­day A sec­tion to not one, not two, not three, but four unsigned, buzz­word-filled edi­to­ri­als demand­ing that our schools and uni­ver­si­ties be spared from fur­ther bud­get cuts in the upcom­ing spe­cial ses­sion of the Leg­is­la­ture that Gov­er­nor Gre­goire has called.

As with his “Greater good” ad cam­paign, Frank Blethen is dis­hon­est­ly try­ing to por­tray him­self and the news­pa­per he owns as noble-mind­ed cham­pi­ons for pub­lic edu­ca­tion. In real­i­ty, as we’ve point­ed out before, he is the worst friend that Wash­ing­ton’s stu­dents, par­ents, and teach­ers could pos­si­bly have.

Since the econ­o­my began cool­ing back in late 2007, Blethen has twice sup­port­ed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives (I‑960, I‑1053), inten­tion­al­ly writ­ten to wreck our sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy and pre­vent the Leg­is­la­ture from demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly act­ing to pro­tect vital pub­lic ser­vices in bad times.

Blethen has also fierce­ly opposed pro­gres­sive bal­lot mea­sures that would have pro­vid­ed a bad­ly need­ed boost to our schools and uni­ver­si­ties (I‑1098, R‑52).

Through his edi­to­r­i­al page, Blethen has repeat­ed­ly argued that state spend­ing must match the rev­enues at hand. (Those ital­i­cized words are tak­en direct­ly from a Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al pub­lished last year).

At the same time, he has argued that slash­ing more dol­lars from pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties or pinch­ing pen­nies on ear­ly-learn­ing pro­grams are false economies. (That’s from one of the four edi­to­ri­als pub­lished today).

These two posi­tions, of course, are irrec­on­cil­able — if law­mak­ers don’t raise rev­enue (which Blethen says is bad), there’s no way they can pre­vent fur­ther cuts to edu­ca­tion (which Blethen also says is bad).

So which posi­tion does Blethen real­ly hold? The for­mer. The stances he’s tak­en on bal­lot mea­sures at elec­tion time make it pret­ty clear he is firm­ly opposed to rais­ing rev­enue — even rev­enue explic­it­ly ded­i­cat­ed to pub­lic education.

So it’s not sur­pris­ing that none of the edi­to­ri­als pub­lished today even men­tion the word rev­enue. It’s just not there. If you search for it, you won’t find it.

Since his edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers know that dis­cussing pos­si­bil­i­ties for rais­ing rev­enue is taboo, all they were able to come up with for this morn­ing’s Sun­day edi­tion was a large pile of plat­i­tudes, bereft of any use­ful coun­sel the Leg­is­la­ture can act on.

I have no doubt that they could have squeezed Frank’s emp­ty sen­ti­ments into just one edi­to­r­i­al, but they were appar­ent­ly under orders to come up with four, so they duti­ful­ly gen­er­at­ed more than a thou­sand words worth of cor­po­rate memo-style lip ser­vice to pub­lic edu­ca­tion. Pret­ty pathetic.

I know I speak for many fel­low stu­dents, as well as teach­ers and par­ents, when I say that the last thing our schools and uni­ver­si­ties need right now is more lip ser­vice. We are in the midst of a cri­sis. As a state, we face two choic­es: Either we raise rev­enue to pro­tect vital pub­lic ser­vices like edu­ca­tion, or we enact more bru­tal cuts and pro­mul­gate a vicious cycle of aus­ter­i­ty that will ulti­mate­ly destroy Wash­ing­ton as we know it. There isn’t a third option. Any­one who pre­tends oth­er­wise is pre­vent­ing us from hav­ing a frank dia­logue about what’s at stake.

POSTSCRIPT: THE BEGINNING OF AN NPI ADVOCATE INITIATIVE… From this day for­ward, each time the Seat­tle Times runs anoth­er faux pro-edu­ca­tion edi­to­r­i­al, we’re just going to make this post sticky at the top of The Advo­cate for a day. That way, we can respond to future dis­hon­est edi­to­ri­als with­out hav­ing to expend valu­able time and ener­gy repeat­ing our­selves. We’ll keep a run­ning tal­ly below of which edi­to­ri­als and Blethen columns this post con­sti­tutes a response to.

This post is a reply to…

• When we fail to edu­cate our chil­dren, our future is bleak (by Frank Blethen him­self, pub­lished online July 25th, 2014)
• When we fail to edu­cate our chil­dren we are des­tined for fail­ure (by Frank Blethen him­self, pub­lished online June 23rd, 2014)
• Leg­is­la­ture must reform and invest in Wash­ing­ton’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem (Pub­lished in print Novem­ber 20th 2011; online Novem­ber 18th, 2011)
• K‑12 | It’s time to stream­line Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools (Pub­lished in print Novem­ber 20th, 2011; online Fri­day, Novem­ber 18th, 2011)
• More bud­get raids on high­er edu­ca­tion imper­il the state’s future (Pub­lished in print Novem­ber 20th, 2011; online Fri­day, Novem­ber 18th, 2011)
• Wash­ing­ton Leg­is­la­ture should hold the line on ear­ly learn­ing invest­ment that pays div­i­dends (Pub­lished in print Novem­ber 20th, 2011; online Novem­ber 18th, 2011)