EDUCATORS WILL HAVE TO DO MORE WITH LESS, says NBC News

Brian Williams of NBC news pronounced on the nightly news (4/21/10) that our education system is financially broke. Districts will just have to learn how to educate our children with less money and resources, larger class sizes, shorter days and fewer school days to teach them. Here is another example of "Starving the Beast," the policy established by Ronald Reagan to starve each public service of funds until they are privatized or eliminated. This philosophy included spending the Treasury into huge debt, so the only choice is to eliminate public services or raise taxes so high that there would be public rebellion.

Education has been one of their major targets. Under this libertarian/conservative philosophy, education should be private and only those who can afford schooling will be educated. Moving the country back to the feudalism period in which the serfs (laborers) where not educated so as to remain an indentured labor force to the lords (corporations). By also eliminating organized labor unions, it will be easier to move laborers into the serf realm. An educated middle class is a threat to the aristocracy and the control of the countries wealth.

In the 1990's America saw a huge rise in the wealth held by the middle class through 401(k) plans and in the size of homes being built. Even though this increase in wealth also lead to one of the largest consumer spending periods that dropped unemployment to records lows, created surplus revenue for most states and the federal treasury, it also diluted the wealth being held by the upper 5% of the population.

George W Bush and his administration were strong advocates of starve the beast policy and indeed spent us into the great recession. This will force governments at every level to terminate or reduce public services, such as education. This will then force those services into the private market sector for those who can afford to educate their children.

Of course this is in direct conflict with the philosophy that an educated society is a free society, meaning one enjoying personal and economic freedom and not being indentured to a lord or master, as was the case with the plantations of the south.

Given the relationship of the conservative movement to the southern states political force, you can understand their serf and master philosophy. They are still angry that the Civil War destroyed this hierarchical economic system in favor of the democratic entrepreneur open market system of the north.