Let's talk about replacing GWBush in 2004.

Tom DeLay is in charge of Theatrics. Watch that body disappear and then magically reappear and ascend in 40 days.

Well, you see, we spend a lot of money on non-waronterror military stuff too. Like billion-dollar jets, etc...

I understand the need for innovation in our military but the defense budget is unbelievably high these days. These 'temporary defecits' that you speak of are not as temporary as you think.... without heavily curbing spending over the next ten years, we will have a hard time making ends meet and paying that defecit down. Hopefully we will be able to.

A military build-up also costs huge amounts of money to maintain. This is part of the reason Carter shaved our military down - following Vietnam, we just weren't in a lot of active battles anymore. Keeping equipment up to operational spec is expensive, storage is expensive, etc. The money just keeps on rolling along.

And I'm positive that the fact that the money is flowing into the hands of the former (and most likely future) business partners of the senior administration officials couldn't possibly have anything to do with the situation, either. Yup....

Cycloptichorn

A lot of military hardware goes into production as a theoretical piece of equipment: no one knows if it will work as intended. There is also the problem of obsolete equipment and disposal of the same.

Does anyone remember how there were no jobs during the late days of the Vietnam War?

And, Carter finally got it all straightened out - yes, I do....... And, when we are paying for the Bush War - the righties will blame it on the President at hand!

They may not ask to make RayGun a god, but they're proposing the idea of putting him on the US currency and on Mt Rushmore.

Military spending is one of the few contitutionally legal fundings of the gov't, there are many unconstitutional programs that millions are spent on and those keep rolling on too.

Reagan and Bush both pushed both of these areas of spending higher than any other Presidents in history, hmmmmmmm!

...and Bush pushed the education budget higher than ever....

No, he incorporated a requirement that is not funded....................... What a jerk!

I doubt anyone can say that Bush has made education any sort of priority whilst in office.

Total nonsense. Under Bush the Younger, Education Spending has surpassed, by a wide margin, that provided by any previous administration. The 2005 Budget calls for $57 Billion in Federal Support to Education, an increase of 36% from 2001. Not since Kennedy has an administration placed as much focus on, and devoted such significant resources to Education. The discontent of The Democrats stems from the fact this spending is not a simple handout, but requires accountability and is based on performance. Bush the Younger's education plan is an investment in the future of The Nation, not a buy-off of special interest groups such as the NEA and the DNC, two anong many organizations outraged by, and unable to come to grips with, the fact that their free ride is over.

I'll believe that $57 billion when I see it. It wouldn't be the first time Bush has called for money that isn't there.

And I'm sure I don't need to bring up the rather ironically named NCLB act as an example of just how much of a priority Bush has CURRENTLY placed on education, no matter what his FUTURE plans are.

Cycloptichorn

crap Timber, pure unadulterated crap.......

Timber is speaking the absolute truth. No president has ever allocated as large a percentage of the budget or as much money to education as has GWB. Here is what William Raspberry, foremost Pulitizer Prize winning LIBERAL analyst and commentator has to say about it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21079-2004Jun6.html

GWB has also allocated more dollars to AIDS research than has ever previously been done too, but how many of you ever hear about that from the mainstream media?

If you figure facts are crap, BillW, so be it. Perhaps that explains a lot.

No explanation of the successes of the No Child Left Behind Act, Timber? That was supposed to be Bush's big education reform, correct?

Cycloptichorn

Disappearing Children
"We disappear our kids," McNeil said, a usage normally heard in connection with Central American death squads. Many children -- far more than 50% in the cities -- who enroll in the first year of high school in Texas don't make it to graduation. There's an institutional incentive for them to leave. If test scores are low, schools are rated low-performing. In low-performing schools, principals lose their jobs. Tests as a single criterion to evaluate schools provide an incentive for principals to disappear weak students to keep their campus test scores high. (This is not just about job security and money. Most public-school faculties in Texas will jump at the chance to push an incompetent principal out the door, but teachers will also fight a system that drives away dedicated, competent principals working with limited resources and against great odds.)





The low-performing students encouraged to go quietly are mostly Latino, African-American, and students with limited English proficiency (LEP). After they leave, the Texas Education Agency cooks the books. In 2001 the agency released dropout figures -- all under 4%. But the conservative Manhattan Institute came up with a dropout rate of 52%. The Intercultural Development Research Association, a liberal education-advocacy group based in San Antonio, has tracked dropout numbers for ten years. It says the rate is 40%, which translates into more than 75,000 teenagers each year. A state senator from Corpus Christi calls the TEA dropout numbers "treasonous." The Dallas Morning News reports that the feds threatened to cut dropout-prevention funds because the Texas formula for calculating dropouts is so inaccurate.

McNeil and her Rice University researchers found a Texas Education Agency accounting system that would have done Arthur Andersen proud. Principals desperate to keep kids away from tenth-grade exit exams discovered a Never-Never Land, a special place where kids never make it to the tenth grade and never take standard exams. All they need is a waiver from the state to allow kids who failed one course in the ninth grade to stay there. These "technical ninth-graders" sometimes stay on ninth-grade enrollment ledgers for three years -- if they stay in school. Sometimes, McNeil wrote, they're discouraged from taking the course they failed, which would allow them to advance.

In one Houston high school with a student body of 3,000 only 296 kids took the tenth-grade test. Barring fluctuating fertility rates, there should have been between 700 and 750 students in the tenth grade. "All our children will be tested. No one will be excluded," claimed Houston superintendent Rod Paige, the year before Bush named him secretary of education.

The kids who stick around for the tests aren't exactly reading Faulkner and solving quadratic equations. Listen to almost any teacher in the state of Texas and you'll hear a story about valuable classroom time lost to drills that prep students for the test. About art teachers compelled to drill a half hour each day for the test. About English teachers required to start every class with a drill that teaches students to underline the central ideas in short paragraphs. About testing consultants who charge a stiff fee to help principals get campus scores up by telling teachers to focus all their drilling efforts on "the bubble kids" -- the ones in the small "bubble" of scores just below passing. (Forget the children at the bottom -- you'll never get their scores anywhere close to the magic passing number.) About a small school district spending $20,000 on prep handbooks for the TAAS, the recently replaced Texas Assessment of Academic Skills.

Heard about Guerrilla TAAS? A neat little test-attack-skill handbook with a camouflage cover. "Cool," say the kids. "Cami."

There's more.

The guerrilla consultants show up at schools to lead Guerrilla TAAS pep rallies. They wear camouflage combat fatigues. Even the principal and assistant principals get to suit out in camouflage -- all included in the price of the Guerrilla TAAS package.

"Hey, guys, we're going to teach you how to kick this test's butt."

Some miracle, huh?

Is there a papal nuncio in the house?

You make some good points, Mr. Thomas, but unfortunately you did not rebut the facts that I gave in my Friday June 4th 1:28 am post. Can you do so? I mean specifically rebut them? I mean can you say that it is untrue that:

A. We will see a 5% growth in GDP for 2004

B. 61% of Private companies surveyed have added workers

C. Business confidence has risen to a 20 year high

D. Capital Spending will now constitute over 20 Percent of the growth of GDP( As someone who is conversant with Economics, I am sure you know how important this one is)

E. Sales improved in 58 out of 60 scordboard industries.

F. Household wealth is at its highest level- 45 Trillion dollars.

Now, Mr. Thomas, sir- Please be so good as to specifically show that these comments are not factual or important to the economy.

If you dan't or won't--they stand.

And, sir, You have not responded in any way to my analysis of the Government's Ability to being able to finance its debt as being tied to the growth of the GDP.

Am I to assume that you agree with my analysis?

If so, thank you- It stands.

With all the improvement in our economy, the public debt continues to increase at over $1 billion very day.

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

For those of you who don't have a clue what NCLB is all about, here's a primer:
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml?src=mr

Here is some info on the funding:
http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html

And this:



And this from the NEA:

http://www.nea.org/esea/

And this from the U.S. Dept. of Education:
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/index.html

More funding info from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/education/K12Funding.aspx

Education Week on the Web re NCLB:
http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=59