http://www.heartland.org/publications/school%20reform/article/9288/Would_Higher_Teacher_Salaries_Improve_Teacher_Quality.html

Quote :

"“[A]ttempts to recruit better teachers by using across-the-board raises for all teachers, irrespective of merit, makes no discernible impact on new teacher recruitment,” Bowman wrote in his report on teacher compensation. The Upjohn Institute came to a similar conclusion after conducting several years of detailed empirical analyses of teachers in both the public and the private sector. The “dramatic increases in teacher salaries over the past twenty years have done nothing to improve the quality of American public school teachers,” the institute reported."

3/3/2009 2:40:08 PM

what is a 'dramatic' increase?

Quote :

"“When salaries go up, schools simply pay more for the teachers they already have, rather than increase the quality of new hires ...”"

huh? does this clown actually think RAISING starting salaries to teachers to their current levels is going to attract new talent?

teachers in NC make ~$30k per year starting out. maybe that was a 'dramatic' increase from its previous place, but that is hardly competitive when you are talking about most professions that college graduates go on to....engineering, sales, management, etc...

not even close.

make that starting salary $45k with bonuses for student performance and advanced education and the school systems will have their pick of people to be teachers instead of the other way around.

3/3/2009 2:50:32 PM

For 2/3rd of a year of work, yes I do find that competitive.

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html
As Bill Gates noted at TED (I recommend it), a good teacher is hard to identify out the gate. As such, whatever you offer to pay, bad teachers are going to keep applying for teaching positions. As such, what matters is introducing an ability to weed out bad teachers. That way, bad teachers get fired and ambiguous teachers, some of which are good, take their place. If this continues over time, eventually most teachers will be good teachers.

Now, the problem is teachers unions have made it a part of their contract that the principle may not sit-in on class more than once a year and even then they need prior warning. And many systems go further than that, making it prohibitively difficult for principles to fire a teacher that is bad, even dangerous.

Now, fix this by making it easy to fire a teacher without cause, and then and only then will the question be retaining the good teachers you have.

3/3/2009 3:10:15 PM

those are good points and I generally agree.

I just think that the best and most brightest will never go teach for that kind of money, even if it is for 3/4 of the year. supplement that income with a part time summer job..say they make $2500/month (very generous) and you still have a teacher making $37,000/year. you can make a lot more money doing easier work in many other professions. I am sure we could name a few of our friends (or even consider yourself) who would be great teachers but have no interest because of their ambition.

again, bump that salary up and watch the competition for teacher slots jump way up. isnt that what we want? too many qualified people to be teachers applying?

I guess this has really strayed from Obama, although I am inclined to think that he would agree with me.

3/3/2009 3:19:08 PM

Quote :

"I just think that the best and most brightest will never go teach for that kind of money, even if it is for 3/4 of the year. "

You're clueless.

Quote :

"I am sure we could name a few of our friends (or even consider yourself) who would be great teachers but have no interest because of their ambition.[/quite] Quite the contrary. I can name 2 right now that are doing Teach for America (you probably don't even know what that is). I can name another 2 former Teaching Fellows that are still teaching long after their contract for the program has expired. [quote]again, bump that salary up and watch the competition for teacher slots jump way up. isnt that what we want? too many qualified people to be teachers applying?"

Or, watch all the worthless business majors jump on the teaching bandwagon because it is now paying more.

Quote :

"you can make a lot more money doing easier work in many other professions."

Such as?

3/3/2009 3:32:33 PM

Quote :

"You're clueless."

and you are an asshole. you pathetically attempt to troll anyone who doesnt share your opinion.

Quote :

"I can name 2 right now that are doing Teach for America (you probably don't even know what that is). I can name another 2 former Teaching Fellows that are still teaching long after their contract for the program has expired."

so your anecdotal evidence makes me 'clueless?' I know teachers as well who are very smart. however I also know that we have a nationwide shortage of teachers and I know many more who would teach were the pay more aggressive. I would definitely consider teaching as well if I thought I could support a family on the income.

Quote :

"Or, watch all the worthless business majors jump on the teaching bandwagon because it is now paying more."

whats your major? you are so confident in yourself that dont include any information about what you do or who you are. interesting. further, you just proved my point. whats wrong with more teaching demand from anyone that is qualified?

I am also not going to run down a series of professions that I think are easier/less stressful than teaching because that comment was not meant to denigrate any of them. It was meant to highlight how difficult and stressful it is to be a good teacher.

3/3/2009 4:03:28 PM

if you don't know who Fail Boat is an alias of, and therefore what his background is, you have missed the (fail) boat, big time.

3/3/2009 4:12:57 PM

well I dont know and I dont care. the fact that people have multiple personalities for different reasons on TWW is pathetic enough.

I win by default.

back to Obama!!

3/3/2009 4:16:29 PM

Quote :

"and you are an asshole. you pathetically attempt to troll anyone who doesnt share your opinion. "

I'm not trolling you dude. I'm wanting you to take at least one attempt at doing a teeny amount of googling to support what half concocted thought pops into your little skull. It's fine that that you want to be in left field and just post up whatever it is that intuitively makes sense to you with no support, but don't fire back yet another of the same reply when I've taken the effort to undermine your position with a little bit of googling then proceed to get offended when I dismiss you for being so fucking stubborn about it.

Quote :

"so your anecdotal evidence makes me 'clueless?'"

No, your refusal to waver from your position after I just offered you info that contradicts it without even making an attempt to back it up makes you clueless. A clueless hack.

Quote :

"however I also know that we have a nationwide shortage of teachers and I know many more who would teach were the pay more aggressive. I would definitely consider teaching as well if I thought I could support a family on the income."

Look, this data is from 2002, I suspect the situation may be a little different, but probably not drastically so
http://www.ncsu.edu/mentorjunction/text_files/teacher_retentionsymposium.pdf

Quote :

"The Supply of Teachers is Generally Adequate to Meet the Demand The data on teacher attrition reveals a surprising fact: The United States produces more than enough teachers to meet its needs. (see Table 1). In general, the demand for teachers can be easily met by current sources of supply. As Table 1a shows, in 1999, 232,000 teachers were newly hired into the system, but only 85,000 were newly graduated from college (which is less than sixty percent of the new teacher graduates that year). Almost 80,000 of the new hires were re-entrants from the reserve pool of former 5 teachers returning to the classroom. And an additional 67,000, were either delayed entrants, who had prepared to teach in college but who pursued other activities before entering teaching, or other new entrants who were hired without prior teaching preparation or experience.5 The bottom line is, the nation’s teacher preparation system has been responding vigorously to the increased demand for teachers over the last decade"

Quote :

"whats your major? you are so confident in yourself that dont include any information about what you do or who you are."

What does my major have anything at all to do with this discussion?

Quote :

"I am also not going to run down a series of professions that I think are easier/less stressful than teaching because that comment was not meant to denigrate any of them. It was meant to highlight how difficult and stressful it is to be a good teacher."

Really? I thought the problem was the teaching talent wasn't so great, implying that it isn't really all that difficult.

3/3/2009 4:17:54 PM

you have posted 2 links. the first of which I replied to...the conclusion of that study was weak and its information was incomplete. it didnt have any scales comparing pay raises to applicants...it just said, "it doesnt work." so I dismissed it because clearly teaching salaries now are not competitive.

your second link was from 2002 and misses the point, as well. its not just about having warm bodies to teach. its about having GOOD TEACHERS. this is a huge difference that you are refusing to acknowledge and is essentially the crux of my opinion. GOOD people will be attracted by a higher salary like they are in engineering, politics, computer science, etc...this concept is not difficult.

you have offered no points to change my opinion, only the anecdotal cases of 4 people and these 2 links. you can google 'teaching shortages' just as easily as I can. I am not here to write a research paper.

I asked your major because you wrote 'worthless business majors'...I am curious how 'worthwhile' your studies are.

Quote :

" Really? I thought the problem was the teaching talent wasn't so great, implying that it isn't really all that difficult. "

a warm body in a job with no accountability speaks nothing of its difficulty.

[Edited on March 3, 2009 at 4:46 PM. Reason : .]

3/3/2009 4:45:55 PM

This time next week I'll no longer be a teacher. Every school system is different and every school is different, but test scores won't improve until discipline improves. This starts at home, and it has to be backed up at school. The lion's share of resources are going toward non-performing students who will not perform, and the ones getting shortchanged are the students who actually give a damn. Spending time in an actual school would open some eyes. The pay's not bad, but I can make more without getting threatened, cursed at, having things thrown at me, etc... I am an agriculture teacher, and my class is a "dumping ground" for behavior problems that they don't want to put into classes that figure into ABC and AYP scores, and the behavior of the students is awful. The line from the powers that be is you can't kick them out permanently and the students know it, so the problems are recurring. Some people may like doing it, but I was able to find a better job without dealing with problems that are not going to get better unless some serious policy changes take place and are implemented, so I took it. The judge in Raleigh and all the folks in Washington can do what they want, but until the students and parents realize the value of a free education and take advantage of it, they are spitting into the wind. It's one of those things that everybody knows, but nobody will actually say it publicly. It's politically easier to pass the buck to the teachers, and the good ones leave when they can, so you wind up with a lot of substandard teachers along with the good ones who are left.

3/3/2009 7:04:46 PM

My last post about this


Lets go back to this first

Quote :

"does this clown actually think RAISING starting salaries to teachers to their current levels is going to attract new talent?"

#1, "This clown" is actually two people
Hanna Skandera is a Public Policy grad from Pepperdine, has TONS of articles out there about education public policy, and is apparently decent enough at what she does to be the 2007 Alumni of the Year award recipient. She is a public affairs fellow at The Hoover Institute
Richard Sousa has a MA in econ from UCLA, is a fellow, associate director, and director at The Hoover

#2
In addition to this very short piece, it sites 2 other studies, one from John Bowman of Children First Tennessee and from the Upjohn Institute, the latter which culled through 20 years of data over a period of a few years. It also includes a state from Dr. Myron Lieberman, chairman of the Education Policy Institute. But I guess if you don't like the conclusion to the study because of your cognitive dissonance, then it really would be a waste of time to track down these other studies to see what they were about.

#3 I posted that at 2:40. In barely 10 minutes (who knows how long it actually took you to see the post) you had read it, digested it, dismissed "the clown" that wrote it, and typed up a post that no doubt took a couple minutes or so. I think it's safe to say, none of what you read you contemplated.

So, if anyone would be mistaken for trolling here, it would be you, considering how retarded you're being.

Quote :

"you have posted 2 links. the first of which I replied to...the conclusion of that study was weak and its information was incomplete. it didnt have any scales comparing pay raises to applicants...it just said, "it doesnt work." so I dismissed it because clearly teaching salaries now are not competitive."

If it is so clear that teaching salaries are not competitive, seems like it wouldn't take but a second to prove that. You simply don't have any sort of credibility here to make such a statement. You definitely don't get any points for refusing to back it up. And you should stop crying "troll" when someone clowns you about it.

Quote :

"your second link was from 2002 and misses the point, as well. its not just about having warm bodies to teach. its about having GOOD TEACHERS. this is a huge difference that you are refusing to acknowledge and is essentially the crux of my opinion."

You're a real piece of work. You made yet another claim without any backing, this time about a teacher shortage, I tracked down some info about it, quoted what you said for you and posted the info I found, and you think I am addressing your earlier point about pay raises and teacher competency? FFS. I'm the troll?

Quote :

"GOOD people will be attracted by a higher salary like they are in engineering, politics, computer science, etc...this concept is not difficult."

So good people can't be attracted to teaching because they want to change lives no matter how little the pay? You have done NOTHING to show that higher salaries will bring better talent. No, you've basically called a handful of people VASTLY more qualified than you to make that determination clowns.

Quote :

"you have offered no points to change my opinion, only the anecdotal cases of 4 people and these 2 links. you can google 'teaching shortages' just as easily as I can. I am not here to write a research paper."

Dude, I haven't even had to use much brain power today. I've taken what you said, googled for it...because I don't know the answers any more than you do, and found answers. You can choose to be ignorant for all I care. Just don't cry when no one takes you seriously.

Quote :

"a warm body in a job with no accountability speaks nothing of its difficulty. "

Are you kidding? I guess end of grade testing is a waste of time. I mean, under no child left behind, if the scores aren't good enough, funding gets cut off. Nope, nothing about that says "accountability" to me.

[Edited on March 3, 2009 at 8:24 PM. Reason : .]

3/3/2009 8:20:24 PM

^^exactly the same thing I have heard from other teachers.

.

[Edited on March 3, 2009 at 8:23 PM. Reason : .]

3/3/2009 8:21:05 PM

Quote :

"Are you kidding? I guess end of grade testing is a waste of time. I mean, under no child left behind, if the scores aren't good enough, funding gets cut off. Nope, nothing about that says "accountability" to me."

this tells me all I need to know.

most anyone working in education will tell you end of grade testing is a huge waste of time and that 'no child left behind' while a good concept, is not working.

Quote :

"So good people can't be attracted to teaching because they want to change lives no matter how little the pay? You have done NOTHING to show that higher salaries will bring better talent. No, you've basically called a handful of people VASTLY more qualified than you to make that determination clowns. "

do you really want to argue that higher paying jobs dont attract more people, thereby leading to bigger pool of candidates, leading to a better overall hire? really?

[Edited on March 3, 2009 at 8:38 PM. Reason : why would any company pay a higher salary then?]

[Edited on March 3, 2009 at 8:39 PM. Reason : ..]

3/3/2009 8:38:04 PM

Is there any grey matter in there, or are you the first case known of a living human with a solid head?

Quote :

"do you really want to argue that higher paying jobs dont attract more people, thereby leading to bigger pool of candidates, leading to a better overall hire? really"

I've posted a link linking to several studies and expert opinions that show it doesn't. Game, set, match.

It could be that the teaching profession doesn't follow the same sort of rules or behaviors as other professions. I don't know that, but I doubt it's something you even contemplated. Shit, why should you contemplate it, you're right god damnit, expert opinions and years studies be damned. What do they know, they ain't shit.

Quote :

"most anyone working in education will tell you end of grade testing is a huge waste of time and that 'no child left behind' while a good concept, is not working. "

Waste of time or not, it holds someone accountable.

3/3/2009 9:44:39 PM

if it holds anyone accountable, it's not anyone that actually is in control of the scores. Also, education "research" is a joke. If you hear some of the stuff that is presented in teacher's improvement meetings by consultants who are retired teachers making a fortune for saying the same things that everyone has heard for years, you would bust out laughing. They say it's "research based" but you could make that stuff say whatever fit your agenda. A lot of tax dollars are getting spent on nothing.

3/3/2009 10:06:19 PM

it ain't the teachers

it's the parents

[Edited on March 3, 2009 at 10:12 PM. Reason : it bears to be repeated]

3/3/2009 10:10:50 PM

You are absolutely right.

3/3/2009 10:23:39 PM

For some insight into our school system, read any of John Taylor Gatto's books. I read "Dumbing Us Down". Great book, gives a lot insight into school and to our society in general. Actually I would recommend this book to everyone. It is really worth your time.


http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=John+Taylor+Gatto&x=0&y=0

3/3/2009 10:29:20 PM

The pay's fine for my position in my particular school.

I was tremendously underpaid while working in Fayetteville, so I left.

Math and Science teachers everywhere are tremendously underpaid everywhere, so they leave.


That's the only problem I see salary-wise in our education system; a philosophy teacher in Chapel Hill High makes roughly the same amount as a math teacher at Hillside.



Here are my thoughts.

A) Track the crap out of schools. College Prep. Vocational. Ditch Digging. Not all kids will/should go to college. We need to accept this and move on.
B) Stop focusing on drop-out rates. Prestigious law schools have high dropout rates. This isn't a bad thing. It makes degrees worthwhile. If a high school diploma actually meant something, more students would want one.
C) Place accountability back on to parents/students. If a kid chronically effs up, it's his/her fault, not the school's. Bye. This one alone would greatly improve teacher retention.

3/4/2009 8:08:28 AM

Quote :

"If a kid chronically effs up, it's his/her fault, not the school's."

Woah, keep that down. We don't want BridgetSPK to read it and get all bent out of shape...

[Edited on March 4, 2009 at 10:09 AM. Reason : .]

3/4/2009 10:09:11 AM

Quote :

"Here are my thoughts. A) Track the crap out of schools. College Prep. Vocational. Ditch Digging. Not all kids will/should go to college. We need to accept this and move on. B) Stop focusing on drop-out rates. Prestigious law schools have high dropout rates. This isn't a bad thing. It makes degrees worthwhile. If a high school diploma actually meant something, more students would want one. C) Place accountability back on to parents/students. If a kid chronically effs up, it's his/her fault, not the school's. Bye. This one alone would greatly improve teacher retention"

agree 100%. to go along with A), apprentice programs could be extremely valuable in high schools.

ps...and pay teachers a salary more along the lines of other professionals to encourage more applicants and a better hiring pool.

3/4/2009 11:47:30 AM

Quote :

"Not all kids will/should go to college"

completely agree. the school system and parents are pushing for everyone to go to college. colleges want to fatten their wallets, so they lower the requirements allowing more people to get in, thus making my degree worth less and less

3/4/2009 11:50:38 AM

The Dow Jones went up today.

Obama must have done something great today!

3/4/2009 8:59:13 PM

he did. he kept his stupid mouth shut

3/4/2009 9:03:15 PM

Actually, Geithner was speaking Monday for the big drop. Oh, and btw, he was speaking today too you ape.

3/4/2009 9:38:42 PM

This thread kinda sucks.

Although I don't like the prospect of a $1.75 trillion dollar deficit, I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt for a while before I start trashing the guy incessantly.

3/4/2009 9:44:39 PM

Yeah, Geithner was speaking about going after tax cheats. Pot, kettle is holding on line one. What did the Dear Leader say? Did he offer up a plan that markets would react favorably to or did he just defend wasteful spending and insurmountable debt?

3/4/2009 9:55:01 PM

DEAR LEADER

3/4/2009 9:55:57 PM

Quote :

"Yeah, Geithner was speaking about going after tax cheats. Pot, kettle is holding on line one. What did the Dear Leader say? Did he offer up a plan that markets would react favorably to or did he just defend wasteful spending and insurmountable debt? "

The point you sad hack is that leaders statements might move markets in the extreme short term (a day or less), but the overall macro picture is mildly out of their control other than setting policy and waiting to see what happens.

3/4/2009 9:59:22 PM

That is true to an extent "hack", but the policies that Obama and crew are presenting have a history of not working. Raising taxes, spending money that we don't have, multiplying the deficit, etc... while claiming to be fiscally responsible will not help us out of the recession. It will further Obama's socialist agenda, though and that's what he's doing. The idiot even campaigned on having a stimulus bill with no earmarks and turned around and signed one with thousands in it right after he took office.

3/4/2009 10:08:05 PM

Why don't you come back to the thread when you aren't so blinded by ideology. It will be more productive for everyone that way.

3/4/2009 10:26:29 PM

The Prez gave out some investing advice yesterday

Quote :

""What you're now seeing is . . . profit and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it," "

Could Obama have meant to say "price/earnings Ratio"? Shouldn't the man who is fixing the economy understand how the economy works?

--------
AFL-CIO big-wigs are holding their winter meeting in a $400-$1000 a night luxury hotel in Miami. They are enjoying the high-life while average workers are losing their jobs. Obama is quick to chide CEOs for living it up with private jets and Vegas meetings, why no criticism for union bosses?

3/4/2009 10:29:15 PM

Obama has a vision and signs shit to law. He has experts who do know what P/Es are telling him what they think would be good policy given the situation based on history and theory and he makes decisions based on that. Yeah, it would be a little more encouraging if Obama could have all the investing wisdom of a Warren Buffet, but for fucks sake, I'm not going to make a post about it on some stupid website in the corner of the internet and feel good about voting for McCain or Paul because of it.

Quote :

"Obama is quick to chide CEOs for living it up with private jets and Vegas meetings, why no criticism for union bosses"

Did they originate liar loans? Did they write credit default swaps? Did they ask for leverage rules relaxed so they could lever 50:1 when 10:1 is safe/normal? When all that shit blew up in their face, did they need taxpayer bailouts to keep their jobs?

You people are no better than the talking heads of the world, wasting everyones time with your partisan bullshit. Step your damn game up. Or better yet, just sit the fuck down and wait a couple more months and you'll have some real shit to complain about instead of trying to find something in the sea of nothing to be outraged about.

[Edited on March 4, 2009 at 10:36 PM. Reason : .]

3/4/2009 10:33:11 PM

Another strike against the Obama admin.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aG0_2ZIA96TI

Quote :

"The Fed refused yesterday to disclose the names of the borrowers and the loans, alleging that it would cast “a stigma” on recipients of more than $1.9 trillion of emergency credit from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. "

If my own approval rating of these guys was 90% on election day, it has fallen to about 60% already.
Same coin, different side.

3/5/2009 8:13:35 AM

Tax Cheat'n Treasury Sectry Tim Geithner is gonna crack down on tax cheating...

According to Bloomberg News:

Quote :

"Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the U.S. government will mount an “ambitious” program to crack down on companies that use offshore locales to avoid paying taxes. Closing loopholes and hunting tax evaders are especially important at a time when the economy is deteriorating and the government is running a record budget deficit, Geithner told the Senate Finance Committee."

3/5/2009 7:06:56 PM

I voted for this faggot and I think he's already done more harm in one month than Bush did in 8 years. Granted, I didn't like McCain, but I don't think McCain...as liberal of a "republican" as he is, wouldn't have put a couple trillion dollars on the tax payers in just over a month.

He's doing everything he said he wouldn't...besides "spread the wealth". He's partisan as fuck, he's playing to lobyists, and hiring criminals to his cabinet. I hate the guy already, and to think I believed some of the bullshit he put out there during the election.

3/5/2009 8:26:56 PM

10 year low

thank you

3/5/2009 8:34:53 PM

Obama would be much better off by solely focusing on the financial crisis instead of floating all the grandiose schemes of the left...health care, raising taxes on the rich, trying to fuck limbaugh, etc...

did I hear that the Obama administration has spent 20 trillion dollars now? wtf?

3/5/2009 9:06:08 PM

(he's not trying to fuck limbaugh, he's trying to tie republicans to limbaugh who is very unpopular with most americans. and it has worked for the time-being. seeing republicans bowing to that buffoon must be an embarrassment)

Quote :

"did I hear that the Obama administration has spent 20 trillion dollars now? wtf?"

on what?

[Edited on March 5, 2009 at 9:09 PM. Reason : .]

3/5/2009 9:09:02 PM

I think I heard it was $20 trillion of proposed spending...could be wrong

3/5/2009 9:10:27 PM

for this year or over the next decade?

because i can say with certainty that he's not proposing $20 trillion of spending for this year.

3/5/2009 9:18:33 PM

lol

20 trillion in a year

FAIL

[Edited on March 5, 2009 at 9:44 PM. Reason : .]

3/5/2009 9:43:37 PM

Quote :

"Obama would be much better off by solely focusing on the financial crisis "

That's so true.

Pres. Obama is so short-sighted. He should Fix the economy first..then repair bridges and do Green energy. It's almost like he knows how little time he has left before reg. working people wake up and realize how they were led astray.

But he lacks the appropriate philosophical foundation to fix our economy. He loathes the very base of our society- capitalism. He's probably proud that he doesn't know what a stock P/E ratio is.

This is a time when we need a rollocking capitalism-loving leader who can get people excited about investing and making a profit. Obama is the kind of luxury president for a fat and sassy country with lots of cash to burn. But the LBJ era is long since passed.

[Edited on March 5, 2009 at 10:35 PM. Reason : .]

3/5/2009 10:35:00 PM

its ok, he'll just become the next Carter and we'll (hopefully) get a Reagan in 2012

3/5/2009 10:36:52 PM

Quote :

" 20 trillion in a year "

no not in a year. I said in proposed spending...it could be over the next 10 years...I didnt hear it clearly. thats why I asked.

3/6/2009 7:34:37 AM

somebody needs to sneak in some shit about scrapping the whole tax hikes and other bullshit on his teleprompter a la ron burgundy

3/6/2009 9:33:47 AM

^Feel free to PM me if there is a thread you think is deserving of my attention. I occasionally honor requests to sound off so people can ridicule me and my opinions.

Otherwise, keep my name out your mouth.

Seriously, I've never made a spontaneous aimorris reference.

Hmmmmmm...

3/6/2009 9:44:02 AM

Quote :

" ..... the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place. And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis. What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society. Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime. - Krauthammer 3/6"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/a_dishonest_gimmicky_budget.html

Obama must be betting on the hope that as the economy sinks lower and lower, instead of turning on him, the public will beg for more chains.

3/6/2009 10:35:36 AM

imma set this bitch up

3/6/2009 10:36:52 AM