Long rant... school budget cuts.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Well, that was a dig, yes--those things happen when you invade another country, no matter how good your reasons seem to be. Country gets invaded, kids get blown up. It's inevitable. Doesn't matter who, or what country. I do generally think the US should either poo or get off the pot--if we're going over to some other country to smack someone down, it should be without the kid gloves--full force with everything we've got, and over in a week. (If we went full force, it WOULD be over in a week). We'd get a terrible reputation, but our rep's not that great anyhow. This piddling around with a few dozen troops here and there is a waste of time, money, and lives.

As for the fancy equipment--the vast bulk of it's NOT EVEN BEING USED. It's in development for 10 years, and many a handful of guys ever get to use it, and it never winds up in the field. And most of it's geared toward putting people in places that people don't even have to go anymore.
And yes, the government does need to say "I'm sorry, that's too expensive, we're going to look for a contract with someone else if you don't lower your prices to something less than the cost of the Hubble Space Telescope".

The point is, EDUCATION IS JUST AS VALUABLE AS DEFENSE. It should have equal funding. If it did, the military could buy much fancier weapons for less money, because there would be plenty of people competing to build fancy weapons. Education does that.
Equal FEDERAL funding. The States clearly cannot afford it. Good education IS expensive. Yes, the system needs to be overhauled as well. All government-run systems appear to be increasingly corrupt.

Our founding fathers predicted that it would happen, so why is everyone so surprised?