Thinking long-term

I was talking with my dad the other day, and he was mentioning about the unfairness of having to pay taxes for schools even if you're sending your kids to private school (full disclosure: my parents did send me to private schools for most of my primary schooling).

I have no trouble seeing where he's coming from. And my daughter will be going to at least one year of private school; not looking forward to paying both for that year.

But this diary from kos about Michigan schools reflects a large measure of what I'm afraid will happen if that "unfairness" is eliminated. And the inevitable result of pursuit of policies along those lines will be large numbers of uneducated people.

While that situation might ensure that the rich will stay the rich (it will, because they'll be the only educated ones), it means that they'll be the bigger and bigger fish of a smaller and smaller pool. Unfortunately, it seems like they can't look up and see that. Really, in the long term, it won't work out for anyone.

I was listening to something on NPR yesterday evening, and they had one of their normal "ads". Anyway, the group in question (I forget who) said something about helping an "informed and educated electorate", which made me wonder where they're going to find such a thing.

Thanks to the internet, the tools are there to be more educated and informed than ever before, but the media has become completely useless for being informed. And education is becoming less and less available, thanks to policies like those in Michigan. And stuff like "No Child Left Behind", which is some pretty window-dressing for leaving lots of children behind. As the worst aspect of that, just look at the teacher cheating scandals to see where the teacher priorities are in NCLB (not to imply that that's the only failure, but it's certainly the biggest).

This kind of leads to what I see as the biggest failure of the modern GOP: an inability to see government spending as investment. Not to say that every kind of government spending is that, but a sizeable amount of it is, and that kind of spending has a fantastic RoI. Unfortunately, the return is not this year or next year. It might be five or ten years down the road. But if they're careful, it'll be there.

I have no problem whatsoever with cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. The problem is that the indicators on that that exist show that there isn't much of it. And the largest part of what does exist is probably in the DoD (per Donald Rumsfeld), especially in the large acquisition programs. But, of course, those are the only things that the GOP refuses to cut. That's why, I think, they are completely incapable of putting forth specific policy suggestions.

And their inability to put forth specific ideas is hurting everyone. Not just because it has led them to a scorched-earth "Just Say No" policy, but because it makes it impossible to have intelligent debates on policy.

A real opposition party would be good for everyone, as good solutions could be worked out. But when only one party actually wants to find solutions, everybody loses.

A specific example of this is the war on terror. The government has admitted that there is no foreseeable end to that. The GOP could be a constructive opposition by playing this up, and forcing policy discussions towards ending that, and towards limiting incursions on civil liberties in pursuit of terrorists.

But they have no interest in that, because it's an easy way for politicians to make money (through the stock market, even if more direct routes are cut off (and those routes might also be available; I don't know)).

So that just leaves more and more money going to the rich, and everyone else getting screwed.