Good article. But once again, how much is spent on the Department of Energy and Education every year compared to the war in Iraq. People often grossly overestimate how much domestic programs actually cost since it is so easy to take potshots at "Big Government."
If Republicans will waste my money abroad and Democrats will waste my money at home, you can damn sure bet I will vote Democrat every time.
Obama's healthcare plan is pretty necessary considering how simply deplorable our health care plan is. The daycare plan may be important too, but it isn't anything I am attached to. We are actually doing way worse at the high school level compared to other countries than we are at the fifth grade level compared to other countries.
PAY TEACHERS MORE! And give school districts more freedom to fire bad teachers and to give good teachers more money. Teachers unions, unfortunately, are causing a lot of problems. But even non-unionized districts are doing bad as well. The main downside to government jobs is it is hard to fire people, but the upside is the government will do jobs that no one else will touch (i.e. market failures).
Edit: I bet all the money spent on the National Endowment for the Arts since 1967 wouldn't compare to what three months in Iraq cost.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
