We all have experiences that form who we are as a person. That mold our view of the world, and that give shape to our politics. For me, the most poignant of these experiences happened while I was in high school, when I had my teacher explain to me that I would never be able to be more than who I was, because of what I was.
My father worked skilled trades in the local auto factory, his father had worked in the same factory. I come from working people, and that was the issue. This particular teacher had decided that I had turned in a plagiarized paper, because she assumed someone who came from my background was couldn't write what I had turned in. She explained that to me. Your father works in a factory, your mother in a nursing home. People like you don't go to college, and you didn't write this. At the time, I was livid.
Since then, I've grown to appreciate the honesty. She at least had the honesty to speak aloud what so many others just thought in their head. I was able to finish college. Hell, I got my master's degree, was ABD, and adjunct taught for a while. That all came to an end when I found that wage theft happens to "educated" people too. With my background, I thought I'd at least be able to get work as as secretary at the local university. Boy, was I wrong. I had someone I went to high school with, who worked at there, explain to me that they got their job primarily because their father had hired on the hiring manager back in the day. I suppose it's this personal experience, that makes me so pissed about this:
I suppose some more explanation is in order for those not from the Hoosier State.
Between 2008 and 2012, a man named Tony Bennett was the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana. Bennett was a rising star in the Republican Party, drawing the fawning praise of ALEC, who sought to disseminate his attack on public schools as their "Indiana Education Reform Package." If you've seen legislation trying to defund public education, and shift the money to charter schools, in your state, this is why. Bennett's efforts prompted a backlash that saw Democratic candidate Glenda Ritz elected as Indiana's Superintendent of Public Education in 2012. Shortly after Bennett left office, a series of scandals involving use of his office to manipulate state statistics for campaign donors charter schools and perform campaign work broke. I can't do this all justice, for more background on Bennet, you can read here.
This was but the beginning of a whole new series of conflicts between the newly elected Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz and the Republican Governor Mike Pence. Ritz actually received more votes than Pence in the 2012 election, but this did not stop him from passing a law stripping her office of its power, and handing it over to a newly appointed State Board of Education. Where the newly appointed Vice Chair Sarah O'Brien is actually the daughter of State Representative Bill Fine, who sits on the committee which reviewed the bill, and actually coauthored it. Fine refused to recuse himself, despite the fact that he knew his actions would likely result in his daughter being hired for the new state job being created by the bill. Suffice it to say, this is at odds with Indiana's nepotism rule which states:
Summary of the Rule
Don’t hire relatives.
Now what's this got to do with inequality?
See the problem is that this entire saga, Bennett pushing charter schools, the backlash leading to Ritz's election, the legislative effort to strip Ritz's office of its power are all part and parcel of the corrosive influence of money in our political system. I imagine that for most of you the idea that an elected official is being replaced midterm by an appointee who's literally the offspring of the legislative effort to do this raises your blood pressure. In Indiana, after Bennett, we've become inured to this sort of impunity. People with money and power do what they want, and there are little to no consequences. The rest of us pay the price.