Kentucky Governor Blames Striking Teachers For Child Abuse

Following the example of their colleagues in states such as West Virginia and Oklahoma, teachers in Kentucky went on strike for the day on Friday to protest disputes between the statewide teacher’s union and the state legislature over education funding. In response, Kentucky’s Republican Governor Matt Bevin made an utterly bizarre claim:

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) suggested Friday that children were physically harmed because they were at home during the statewide teacher strikes, when teachers gathered at the capitol to protest school funding.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,” said Bevin, who sought to shut down bills aimed at expanding the state education budget. ”I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have enough money to take care of them.”

Bevin reportedly complained of the teachers sprawled across the capitol grounds, telling reporters he saw them smoking and “leaving trash around.”

Because of the protests, “hundreds of thousands of children” were likely left at home without childcare, he said.

Thousands of teachers left their schools to push the state House of Representatives to overturn Bevin’s vetoes on a $480 million tax increase and corresponding two-year spending plan, which would spend record levels of state revenue on classrooms.

Bevin said the tax increase would not be enough to provide the kind of funding demanded by teachers, but the Republican-majority state House voted to overturn his vetoes.

I’m honestly not even sure how to respond to insanity such as this, to be completely frank about it.

FILED UNDER: Education, US Politics, , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. michael reynolds says:

    Have you noticed that when you see some staggeringly stupid, offensive, bizarre statement from a public official you don’t really need to check the party membership? 90% likelihood it’s a Republican. We can blame the politician, or we can blame the voters who elected him. There is something deeply wrong with Republican voters.

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  2. CSK says:

    This is far from being Bevin’s first excursion into Bizarro World. Remember when he ran against McConnell for the senate? He gave a speech at a cockfighting event, which he later claimed he didn’t know was a cockfighting event, despite the fact that he was speaking in front of a banner that read “COCKFIGHT.” Then he claimed that if Hillary Clinton won in 2016, the blood of our children would be shed in armed insurrection.

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  3. MarkedMan says:

    @michael reynolds: Your basic premise is true, but if you go to right wing sites there are in fact plenty of crazy quotes by Dems or liberals. The difference is that with Republicans it is governors, Federal Representatives and Senators, cabinet officials, etc. while on the right wing sites it is some hitherto unknown associate college professor at an obscure midwestern liberal arts college.

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  4. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Once again with Republicans, is this just a matter of projection?

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  5. teve tory says:

    @michael reynolds: Fox news started 21.5 years ago. Limbaugh’s been on since the late 80’s. Take a group of people with below-average education, and drench them in propaganda for several decades, and you get what we’ve got.

    I’ve even seen some of the more intellectual conservatives on twitter say they can’t have productive discussions with their brethren anymore because the rank and file conservatives don’t live in a factual universe now, hence no possible starting point. Anything they don’t want to hear is Fake News and doesn’t count.

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  6. teve tory says:

    Your basic premise is true, but if you go to right wing sites there are in fact plenty of crazy quotes by Dems or liberals. The difference is that with Republicans it is governors, Federal Representatives and Senators, cabinet officials, etc. while on the right wing sites it is some hitherto unknown associate college professor at an obscure midwestern liberal arts college.

    I said something adjacent to this last week. I’m not so much worried about the associate professor at Oberlin trying to deplatform a rude comedian, nearly as much as I’m worried about my own governor prohibiting all state employees from even using the term Global Warming under threat of firing. They’re both dumb douchebags, but their effects are incommensurable.

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  7. tess says:

    good grief the don’t republicans have enough to worry about w/o stupid comments?

  8. de stijl says:

    I don’t even want to know what happens in Kentucky on snow days, in-service days, let alone during summer recess.

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  9. de stijl says:

    Isn’t Gov. Bevin also implicitly arguing that public education in Kentucky is extremely valuable if only as a means to protect the children from predatory adults, noxious household chemicals, and narcotics? And that teachers deserve a raise and schools merit additional funding?

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  10. Kylopod says:

    @michael reynolds: @MarkedMan: The only recent example I can think of of a Democratic elected official going into bizarro world is that DC representative who made the remark about the Rothschilds. That was literally the first in ages. I’m willing to be proven wrong about this, but in my experience when righties list examples of dumb or offensive Democratic statements they typically turn out to be overblown, out-of-context, and/or irrelevant.

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  11. michael reynolds says:

    @teve tory:
    This is largely about white, evangelical Christians. They are raised from birth to ignore evidence and reject the truth in favor of pabulum shouted at them from a stage by a strutting man with bad hair. They are primed for fascism and Trumpism. Limbaugh and Murdoch found ways to monetize stupidity and finally the dumbest among us managed to put a strutting, pabulum-spewing clown with bad hair in the White House. And surprise! He is in so far over his head he’d get the bends if he ever tried to surface.

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  12. steve says:

    They educate kids AND they keep them from getting abused? They should ask for a bigger raise.

    Steve

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  13. teve tory says:

    Dear Mr. Bevins–if the only thing stopping Kentucky children from being abused and molested is that they’re in school and unavailable several hours per day, you need to call in the national fucking guard, because your state is failing.

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