Nice Bailout. Now Pay For It!

"Above ALL THINGS I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for a preservation of a due degree of liberty." -Thomas Jefferson

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline. Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing.

Voters: Compare the SUPPORT (money) we're being asked to give private organizations to bail out these failures versus the kind of support our public schools need to effectively help all of our children. Where should our tax dollars go?

No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without funding to implement these improvements. Schools are listed as "failing schools" and lose funding (no bailout here) because of unrealistic goals that are not funded by this mandate in the first place. What is left in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students, who we hope will lead us and support us when we are old?

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists have effectively secured deregulation, loopholes, and what they consider "optimal" conditions for their financial success. And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of money.

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth has infected our entire way of running our society.

Unfortunately young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire lobbyists. Their teachers and their schools have limited resources. And there are few organized efforts to effectively reform our schools to prepare our future. In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there are serious efforts to improve, fund, and prioritize education.
THIS IS INVESTMENT IN OUR MOST IMPORTANT RESOURCE: HUMAN CAPITAL!

In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Hopefully (as we say in school) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.

I am not in favor of the bail out unless it comes with a price to the people that ran the companies in such a reckless manner. Why should we the tax payers be on the hook for their mismanaged companies and they get off the hook with millions of dollars in severance and compensation. Anyone remember the news articles some months ago when Millions of dollars of bonuses were given out on Wall Street? Let them retire on that money, not on the bail out money that we the tax payers have to put up to save the companies. I would not trust any board to set the compensation as they have never done a good job to begin with.

I love how the politicians and the media keep repeating the meme "our children will have to pay for". Oh how most of us secretly wish that was true. Nope. It's going to be us, not our children. It's time for some honesty. Yes we will need higher taxes and I suggest we aim them right at the people who benefited from all the bailouts at the expense of ordinary americans -- the wealthy who controlled and looted it all at ordinary citizens expense and risk.