Disqus - Latest Comments for Dr. Forbush

Re: Contrast the difference

Dr. Forbush — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 20:24:48 -0000

I understand your sentiment. If Howard Dean, Nancy Pelosi or John Murtha were saying that everything was for naught. But, they are actually saying that we have done what we set out to do. They are saying that the Iraqis need to take responsibility for their country. If the US keeps its troops there for another year it will be harder not easier for us to bring the troops home. The Iraqis are like welfare recipients that find it easier to take the handout than to do the hard work. If you have any doubt, ask yourself why we can get a US soldier ready to fight in a short boot camp, but its taken more than 18 months of training and we only have 1 Iraqi battalion that is ready to fight? Why? If we make the Iraqis take over the more difficult areas they will be motivated to work harder for their country. If the US troops are brought to the sidelines and then called in when the Iraqis show that they are struggling, we will build the Iraqi army and the Iraqi people will begin to support their own troops and government.

Re: Your Libertarian Purity Score

Dr. Forbush — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 15:58:51 -0000

Actually we have many more times 50 education systems. Each local district in many states use property taxes to fund individual districts. The point is the chaos from this system. One can argue that individual districts know where to spend the money best, but the districts get different amounts of money per student depending on the wealth of the district. Poorer students are more likely to fall through the cracks if they live in poor districts with poor resources. These students drop out and become criminals unable to work at a high paying job to afford the lifestyle advertised by corporations.

Wherever the funding comes from isn't so important if there is a method to equalize the per student funding so we all don't have to pay for it in the future. Also, some unified structure is needed to establish the standards so that a student in California could be desirable to an employer anywhere in the country, not just at a farm in the Central valley.

Re: Your Libertarian Purity Score

Dr. Forbush — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 13:49:01 -0000

I have realized that I was a libertarian way back. Less government in social issues as well as fiscal issues. But, sometimes government investment makes a lot of sense. Moderation in most political ideas seems to make much more sense in the long run. If we let extremists of any ilk gain control of government we are bound to suffer.

Imagine the religious right pulling our society further to the social conservative direction we will have more and more laws that reflect the moral beliefs of one religious group. This isn't any worse than environmental extremists shutting down US business in order to restructure the entire US infrastructure with tight government controls.

However, investment in education for our children will surely pay off in the long run. Privatization of education has been a failure because the output is not tangible in the same way a manufactured product is. Only the companies that hire the graduates can judge whether the education was a success, and they aren't going to report the salaries offered to these people. Therefore there is a true hole in the method needed to measure whether a school is performing up to an acceptable standard.

Sorry about the long winded reply, but your post got me thinking... How extreme should we be?