As we continue to spend billions every week in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, states continue to cut basic programs for lack of funding. The latest is Illinois, which just cut all funding for drug and alcohol abuse treatment in the state and Michigan which has ordered Detroit to close half of its schools (driving class size to 60 students). What is striking is the lack of any connection drawn between these states which are short hundreds of millions of dollars in their budgets and the expenditures of billions each week in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our leaders, including President Obama, continue to refuse to end these wars while watching our cities and states continue to close or sell off basic services and lands. There is a remarkable disconnect in the coverages of these stories. In oil-rich Iraq, we continue to spend billions of U.S. dollars to prop up the government. In Afghanistan, we have a president who repeatedly refers to us as the enemy and sympathizes with the Taliban. We have a government that is seeking to tax us for fighting their war and a populace that repeatedly states in polls that they oppose our presence. Yet, Obama has kept us in this war for over two years at the cost of lives and treasure.
It defies logic that we continue to deny our children basic education and our citizens basic services to support these wars. The reason is simply a lack of courage among our leaders. Many would rather have our soldiers killed and our states close programs then take personal responsibility in calling an end to our financing of these wars.
Source: Daily Mail
Jonathan Turley
Amen to what Mespo stated.
This is a mess that will continue until we get out of these wars and end this love for corporations. The wealthy must pay their share instead of getting excessive tax breaks and corporations must be punished for sending jobs overseas. Finally, since the Tea Party and the Tenthers and Birthers want to take us back to the 19th Century, I think the wealthy should pay taxes at the same rate that they did during the good old days of the Eisenhower administration. They should also pay Social Security Taxes on all of their income, just like I have to.
This is what a corrupt govt. looks like. As in Egypt there is a ruling class who is above the law and desires not just a piece of the pie, but the entire pie. It is the ruling class which profits from financial malfeasance and wars. Everyone else pays dearly for both.
As in Egypt, the ruling class has put it’s people into most key positions in the society– in the presidency, the congress, the courts, the state govts., the media etc. There, they are protected and nurtured through a thoroughly corrupt system.
Corruption is the connection between what is happening in WI, Washington and the Arab world. It is the connection in why we have severe environmental degradation, yet do nothing. It is why we have a repressive regime at home supporting multiple dictators overseas, people who will kill their own people to stay in power. To understand what is happening is to abandon the Democratic/Republican paradigm and start seeing the interconnections between the foreign and domestic policy of the ruling elite. This is what a corrupt govt. looks like. This is what a corrupt govt. does.
I see no need for government at all. Let’s live in rock outcroppings, barter for our food, and hunt wild animals with bone implements. We will then progress to Tootie’s economic paradise where she is finally free to offer all the burnt offerings she can muster to her Sun god.
Good point Mespo, to return to living in rock outcroppings.
Man is destroying the planet. More roads, more buildings, more consumption of natural resources, more urban heat island effects.
Don’t worry, high speed rail is here to save the day.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/michele-bachman-glenn-beck-can-solve-our-financial-problems.php?ref=fpi Possible presidential candidate turns to Glenn Beck for the answers to our financial problems.
Another fine lesson from the Constitutional Scholar, Taliban Tootie.
Tootie:
“We could abolish useless, dangerous, or unconstitutional departments like the DHS, the BATF, the Ed Dept, Health and Human Services, and Labor. Less money going to the feds could be redirected and used in state programs for substance abuse.”
*****************
I see no need for government at all. Let’s live in rock outcroppings, barter for our food, and hunt wild animals with bone implements. We will then progress to Tootie’s economic paradise where she is finally free to offer all the burnt offerings she can muster to her Sun god.
Get your Mastodon before they’re all gone!
It would be good for many US public schools to close, but not like this. Sadly, the Detroit teachers’ unions have been, for nearly half a century, a force for incompetence. They have driven the failed polices of the Detroit Public Schools for a very long time. This is not an issue about money either.
The courts and the Feds have only made things worse, but it is the unions and the leftists who have pushed for taking the schools out of the hands of the locals and demanded court, state, and federal intervention.
Diane Ravitch writes in the Troubled Crusade “In a similar vein, J. Myron Atkin, dean of the school of education at Stanford University, reflected somberly in 1980 that the nature of state and federal involvement in education policy had changed dramatically in the previous two decades. Until the 1960s, he wrote, few could have imagined that ‘politicians and civil servants might determine how mathematics was to be taught, how twelve-year-olds were to be tested, or how instructional plans for individual children were to be developed.”(page 317)
60 kids per classroom is not necessarily a bad thing (especially if 2 teachers are in the classroom). Stevenson and Stigler (The Learning Gap) discovered that the smartest kids in the world (in Asia) sit in classrooms with large numbers of students. They usually have two teachers per class. This allows for teachers to take breaks and have the students still supervised. It also allows for collaboration between the teachers (or an aid?) to meet the specific needs of their individual students. It appears having more than one teacher in the classroom is part of the Asian success story.
But the key is curricula. That doesn’t cost a lot of money either and we already know which curriculum works. School districts like Detroit are run by stupid people who refuse to follow best practices and that is the only reason its students are struggling.
And with budget busting problems, it makes things worse. I’ve mentioned it before, but Johns Hopkins supervised an experiment in which a private school curriculum was plopped down in an inner city school with disadvantaged children. It was very successful.
This is pretty much all it takes to meet the needs of students, especially disadvantaged ones. It doesn’t take fancy surroundings. Or expensive equipment (like that loon Bill Gates advocates). It simply takes the right curriculum. And if there are 40 to 60 kids in a classroom, it takes two adults. In China, kids in the study sometimes worked in the most primitive conditions without heat or furniture or supplies. This did not stop them from achieving.
The key is curricula and the proper number of staff (two adults in the classroom). You could make ace students in an old grocery store with folding tables and chairs, as long as you had the right curriculum and two teachers (adults). You don’t even need computers (but they are good idea).
The loss of drug and alcohol program funding is indeed bad news since, apparently, they work relatively well.
Time to decriminalize pot and other similar drugs. And time to find new inexpensive ways to help people with addictions. I’m thinking Hollywood could help with this. It would be nice for them to do something useful for humanity.
We could abolish useless, dangerous, or unconstitutional departments like the DHS, the BATF, the Ed Dept, Health and Human Services, and Labor. Less money going to the feds could be redirected and used in state programs for substance abuse.
And like Mr. Turley writes: get out of the Middle East. But let the money “saved” stay in the states.
That is how we best help Americans.
Every state gets black grant money from the feds that must be matched with state money to fund alcohol and drug rehab and prevention activities. If you look at the stats in Ill. for alcohol and drug addiction, you can see that they can ill afford to cut from what they presently have. It also means that the state won’t get some of the federal money that they are entitled to have.
Alcohol and drug funding is not politically easy to ever get broad-base support. So, once it is de-funded, it is more difficult to bring back when things are better.
Bdaman Eliminating middle class government jobs certainly does not help.
It’s getting better all the time. 🙂
Gas up over $3, foreclosures increasing as people realize that even if they stay in their home there still is up keep and pretty soon no deductions. Food prices skyrocketing. Cant walk in and spend less than $200 for a family of four for a week. People rioting in the streets around the globe. Long standing dictators and governments are being over thrown.
You got to admit it’s getting better it’s getting better all the time.
Life will go on but differently in that for many Americans, it will be for worse.
It sure aint the day of dem Beatles. People are mad at their schools teachers that taught weren’t cool because they were building them up with all their rules.
ARGGGGGGGGGGGGG….
frank, We can’t afford an empire any longer. The re-adjustment will be difficult, but it does not have to be destructive unless the tea party prevails.
September 11, 2001, the terrorist attack.
September 15, 2008, the American financial collapse.
Humpty Dumpty isn’t coming back.
How best to prepare for life in a very different society that our parents grew up in is the question for me.
Life will go on but differently in that for many Americans, it will be for worse.
I always wondered what it was like to live through the end of an empire. Certainly the post-WWII experience of England and France showed some of how it would be, both good and bad. But really, after WWII they were not actually empires any more, not like we are. I don’t get the sense of ugly from the fall of the UK ,and what I have read about Rome and Greece makes it difficult for me to compare.
The US empire is dieing, and it looks as if it it will be an ugly, violent death. It didn’t have to be this way but I don’t see anyone interested in making it any other way.
Eniobob I’d be ok with it if ALL became more involved in the community. There are some terrific foundations that could be established for a small portion of a lucrative contract be it a head coach or that multi-million dollar player.
“whats up is down and whats down is up”
Just ain’t right is it.
Nobody knows the trouble I seen
Nobody knows but Jesus.
Sometimes I’m up sometimes I’m down
and sometimes almost to the ground.
Can’t wait to get the Mr. Jefferson feeling and feel like I’m movin on up, to the Eastside, to a deluxe apartment in the sky eye, ah, I.
Well were movin on up, movin on up, to the Eastside,
cus Melo got his piece of the pie, eye, ah, I 🙂
He in da big leagues !!!!!
Nearly everyone on this blog has called for an end to these wars. Iraq is winding down. Hopefully after seeing how these republican governors operate, we won’t get a tea party president that expands the wars, eliminates legal abortion, and destroys the unions. I think if enough people stay home, 2010 will happen again. Obama has no primary opponent other than Randall Terry so far. Many on here called for the defeat of Nancy Pelosi and the democratic party in 2010. While Pelosi was not defeated in her home district, she was removed from power and the anti woman agenda of the republican party has came to the forefront.
I know they are not related but come on:
““Illinois To End Funding of Alcohol and Drug Programs While Michigan Orders Detroit To Close Half of Its Schools”
“Texas Tech Freezes Faculty Salaries While Giving Its Football Coach a $500,000 Year Pay Increase”
I wish I could find the thread where I said “whats up is down and whats down is up”
It just seems that there are so many instances lately where that is so true.The two examples above are just what it means.
“Let’s face it, Melo doesn’t want to go to the Nets until he’s exhausted every opportunity to play for the Knicks. He may even stay in Denver if it comes down to playing for the Nets or the Nuggets in order to get his three year $65 million dollar contract extension before the collective bargaining agreement.”
Not to single Anthony out but its crazy what is going on.
Wars bestow a seriousness and sense of power and purpose to the Presidency. The public has ignored the cost, long-term consequences and illegitimacy of most of the Empire’s wars for decades now.
The public also does not see a clear trade-off between local services and wars, in part because wars aren’t seriously debated across our society. Why should we expect to make any trade-off at the end of the day? We can rack up trillions in additional debt each year and can fund endless spending through inflation. It is therefore a choice (and not a constraint) of the federal government not to aid the states further. Ending wars wouldn’t change that.
I predict ultimately the federal government will guarantee state and municipal debt, and/or take over major parts of state services.