Protect your mind, they are out to twist it, deceive it, undermine its integrity, and manipulate it. They are politicians, and they will say anything, do nearly anything, to get you to vote for them. They will bribe you with federal tax dollars while increasing the national debt. They will lie to you telling you how wonderful things are becoming under their leadership. They will threaten you with mayhem, terrorist attacks, and loss of jobs if you vote for the 'other guy'. What is a voter to do?
The things politicians will do to get your vote are incredible. In Arizona, Republican candidates are telling the National Republican Congressional Committee to go away and stay out of Southern Arizona politics until after the elections. Reason: the NRCC backed a Republican moderate leaving 4 competing Republican candidates swinging in the wind. Which begs the question: are these Republican candidates loyal to their party. They are certainly not loyal to their party's decisions. Appears these candidates are only loyal to themselves, and if the party stands in their way, they will tell the party to get lost. Sen. Lieberman said the same thing to his party when he lost the primary election. What does this say about the respect that these candidates will give voters, who have an opinion or directive, different from theirs?
The problems Congress should be addressing for the sake of the nation and the people are on hold; all save one, if what Republican leaders say is true. Congress has returned to devote the entire month to national security. Sorry, no time to deal with deficits and debt, no time to deal with illegal immigration or education quality, or saving social security or reforming Medicare so we can halt its march toward bankrupting the nation. They have no time to deal with deadly heroin coming from the New Taliban in Afghanistan filling our hospital emergency rooms with overdosed users. No time for insurance, tax, voting, or campaign finance reforms. Failing to address any of these issues in the past effectively, Republicans are going to spend the month addressing the one issue a slight majority of Americans still give them credit for, national security.
Article comments
1 - Baronius
David, there is a lot to argue about in this article. There's probably one thing we agree upon, the weakness in our educational system. But where did you get the 25% graduation rate? The lowest I've ever seen is 50%.
2 - David R. Remer
Baronius - glad you asked. Here are some quotes:
Completion Rates* 1983"2006
Two-year Colleges
Highest Lowest Current
% % %
Public 38.8 (’89) 26.6 (’06) 26.6
Private 66.4 (’90) 51.9 (’04) 55.9
All 44.0 (’89) 28.9 (’06) 28.9
Source is ACT . You'll want to click on the last entry in the menu indicated below:
National Collegiate Retention and Persistence to Degree Rates
(Formerly called "Dropout and Graduation Rates")
* Trends: 1983"2006 (4 pages, 39KB)
(PDF download)
3 - RedTard
The problem with this country is assuming that getting more or different politicians or government will help solve the problems you mention. Even the most powerful, invasive statist regimes have hurricanes, wars, nuclear accidents, starvation, poverty, and medical malpractice. As the anarcho-socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon aptly put it:
"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
I'm sick and tired of the government 'saving' me from problems of it's own creation. Don't fall into the trap of believing the world has been made better because of more proactive government, it has not. It has been made better by improved technology, communities, and people which all started a few hundred years ago when governments gave up absolute power.
If you want a true protest vote and you're disgusted by the government promising to save you from problems it created itself - don't vote in the next group of manipulative, power-hungry politicians. The problem is not left versus right it's statist v anarchist. Absolute anarchy has been rightly laughed at, but absolute state power is much scarier (and much closer to reality).
4 - troll
yer singin' my song Red
5 - Baronius
Ok, I see the problem in your statistics. You're looking at completion rates for two-year schools, in three years. That's very different from the lifetime completion rate for four-year colleges.
Many people who attend community colleges ("two-year" colleges) have no intention of completing a program. Others hope to earn an associate's degree over three, four, five years. Community colleges typically get less-apt students, who are less able to meet their own academic goals. All these things contribute to a low 3-year graduation rate.
The ACT site also lists the five-year completion rate for four year schools. I don't see much value in that statistic either.
6 - David R. Remer
Baronius, yes, the trend is as disturbing as the actual statistics. Downward. Not a good sign. As I said in the article, we will need to import even more of the degrees our technological economy needs, all because Congress and the states won't put education into its proper priority slot for America's future.
Importing brains and uneducated labor, while exporting middle class earning jobs, is a prescription for harming our future economy. Our economy is held together by the middle class. We may be entering a period of middle class shrinkage as lower economic classes and upper classes grow in size. That is a prescription for class warfare in the future.