The "Surge" is big for Senator John McCain.
He believes that the "Surge" has worked in Iraq making the violence a little more manageable.
"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told "Good Morning America" that he was glad Obama was in Iraq and insisted the trip will give his Democratic rival an opportunity to see the success of the surge strategy.
"He'll be able to have the opportunity to see the success of the surge. It is a success. This is the same strategy that he voted against, railed against," McCain told ABC News' Diane Sawyer. "
More recently, he has extended his "surge-talk" to matters of the economy.
As reported:
"Our surge has succeeded in Iraq militarily, now we need an economic surge to keep jobs here at home, create new ones," McCain said in a statement to the press.
However, John McCain prefers to support the philosophy of "re-deployment" of students in the form of vouchers when it comes to public education that is having problems.
His comments at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati--as reported:
"Then he moved on to current issues, emphasizing education reform and pointing out that low-income African Americans are most seriously affected by poor schools. He touted vouchers that would give parents options to send their children to private or charter schools, dismissing Obama's comment that talk about the program is "tired rhetoric."
"All of that went over well with the teachers union, but where does it leave families and their children who are stuck in failing schools?" McCain said."
It is ironic that Obama is willing to support 'redeployment' when it comes to Iraq:
"Speaking in Jordan following a two-day visit to Iraq, Mr Obama stressed that Iraqi leaders were ready and willing to take responsibility for security. "The best way to support Iraqi sovereignty and to encourage the Iraqis to stand up is through the responsible redeployment of our combat brigades," he said."
But for McCain it is all about 'surging'.
Why is it so difficult for conservatives to understand that pulling students out of failing schools and giving them vouchers is about admitting to defeat. Cutting and running in the face of failing to educate our youth.
It is time for a Surge in Public Education! We need to commit funds, people-power, and resources to address our war on ignorance.
Please Senator McCain, don't leave education in disarray. With education, it is you Senator McCain who embraces the "audacity of hopelessness", preferring to admit defeat, turn the education of our young over to untried charter and parochial schools, abandoning our public schools to continued rot and decay.
Surge now on Education!
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Comments: 14
"pulling students out of failing schools and giving them vouchers is " the first step in dismantling public educations, that which set America apart from other nations for years. There are a lot of things you might do but keep vouchers out of it. They are a start on funding religious schools which should be anathema to everyone.
I believe that the role of the federal government in schools is and should be extremely limited. I'd do away with the department of education and put that money into the schools themselves, which should be run by the people whom they serve. The entire NCLB program is a violation of the correct role of government and has not been beneficial. It has altered the nature of education in this country to be a "teaching the test" method rather than real understanding experiences.
The voucher program would not make it possible for a poor family in a ghetto to send the child to a prestigious private school but would bring money to the school from persons who are not a bit deprived in the education department!
As far as the surge working and getting our troops out of Iraq during the next administration: I have a child serving in the military and I would love to see his deployment shortened however it would be in vain if we leave before the Iraq goverment has control over the country and from what I read and what I am told they are very far from that.
Yeah, they can't even get us to leave so they can regain control of their own country.
This has always been the case with public education. I agree with the accountability portion of No Child Left Behind...but it wasn't funded anywhere near what they promised, and it only took care of the back-end accountability portion of the process. Good education has many important factors along every step of the process that need attention. Merely testing and the rewarding successful scores/punishing unsuccessful scores is not the answer - it's a small part of the answer. But, it's the easy way to go, isn't it? Standardized testing is extremely easy, even as testing goes. There's nothing revolutionary or new about it.
It is all about privatizing everything that is good about government---including public schools.
True, Robert. Only some areas of society are better off NOT being dependent on private corporations and institutions. There's the religious angle you mention - religious schools are not accountable to the state for their performance or many other measurements, including the hiring of certified staff. There's the corporate angle - what happens to a school when it is viewed as a profit center? Will we see the same kind of corporate raiding done when execs need to raise the value for the shareholders with expense cutting (i.e., reducing staff, reducing quality, etc.).
There is so much to do in public education to improve it - but privatizing it is not the answer. Just as we have seen with medicine, greed runs high and diminishes quality.
This is the harsh reality that the corporatist privatizers don't want you to know, however, so don't expect to hear that on your evening "news" broadcast. To my eyes, the best way to examine any further privatizating efforts in this country is to look at the national disasters that the privatizing of the past 30 years have brought us.
Does anybody feel that the airlines are in better shape today? How about the phone companies? How many are happy that the oil industry has been allowed to form a monopoly, so that they could completely control the cost of oil and gas? Anybody think that Halliburton/KBR/Blackwater/CACI/etc., etc., etc. have done better work in Iraq, for less money than our own soldiers could've? Anybody think that our healthcare system is cheaper than that "horrible socialized medicine" that other countries rely upon?
The simple, ugly truth is, the neocon obsession with "free market capitalism" has nearly destroyed this country since it was rolled out under Redink Ronnie. During the past three decades of this idiotic economics policy, we've grown our national debt to nearly $10 trillion, from a mere $1 trillion in 1980.
Rest assured, the longer this "free market" bullshit keeps up, the more trillions in debt we'll rack up. Neoconomics is a grand lie, meant for one thing and one thing only...to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the lower 99% and into the hands of the upper 1%, and particularly, the upper 1/10 of 1%.
The push for privatization in our schools is no different than the push for privatization in every other sector of our national infrastructure. It's all about transfering the public's wealth into the hands of the oligarchs. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Most conservatives honestly believe that government is inherently bad, and want as little as possible. Progressives understand government better and how to work with it to succeed, and don't have the irrational fear conservatives seem to have.
Therefore, conservatives cannot believe that anything can be done by government as efficiently and well as by private enterprise. They ignore the efficiency of Medicare compared the private insurance and make excuses for the military as they consider it to be the greatest in the world, which is true. However, how can a government that is inherently bad and inefficient have two such successes as these?
This has been a traditional standing of the Democratic and Republican parties as far back as I can remember. Democrats do sometimes get carried away with what they want the government to do and control, but generally, they are far better at preparing and making programs work. Look at Roosevelt and the WPA and CCCs. These were effective programs and while WW II ended the depression, these programs kept a lot of people from starving in the meantime, while Hoover wrung his hands and did nothing.
Of course, they do not consider that most of the programs which they have deemed failures have been tremendously underfunded, while the military gets most of what it wants because we fear not to.
Many conservatives labor under the misconception that there is some kind of "free market" which is simply not so. Their idea of "free market" is a market that favors corporate and business America at the expense of the common working class person.
Don't ever expect agreement from most of those who post here as their mindset is both rigid and unrealistic, because of the bias I've mentioned. I have to make some exceptions, I've had debate with a few who were reasonable, civil and willing to listen to and try to understand what I've said, (doesn't mean they agreed with me), so I don't want these comments to be taken as blanket condemnation.
I heard an author recently make a very good point about this obsession with privatization. He said the major reason that we should NOT privatize many of the present functions of the government (and should take many others, such as healthcare out of the hands of private hands) is that when something big (like education, or healthcare, or energy) is in the hands of government, the PEOPLE of the country run the show. Maybe indirectly, but the government IS the people. It is answerable to US. If we don't like how it is being run, we can change it, directly or through our representatives. When important societal functions are in private hands, they are NOT answerable to the people. They are only answerable to their shareholders. So, the people who can afford to invest, and even more so, the people who can invest the MOST, are the ones that call the shots for everybody.
I think that is an excellent reason to have the most important components of our society - security, health, transportation, education - governed by US, not by CEO's and BOD's.