The Earth, The Sky and Everything In Between

When did education become the whipping boy for excessive government spending?

When, at any point, has a state increased their budget line for education? Education seems right in there with police & fire as those services that only trim budgets. I cannot recall the reverse happening, ever. Am I crazy, deaf, blind, correct, or all of the above?

Surely, surely, surely, we can find non-critical government agencies, or silly grant programs, or silly aid, or (shocker) trimming social benefit programs, or (&^&**SHOCKER&**(0&*) raising taxes?

I can't say what goes into these decisions - I'm not in the room. Thanks to blogs, I have the luxury of firing my artillery shells from my couch with a viewership of 20. I'm barely accountable for my under-informed opinions.

All said, I think targeting education is a lame excuse. Like many lame excuses, the comedy is how universally true this excuse has suddenly become. Earlier today, Providence, RI, put all of their teachers on layoff notice. All. Of. Them. I will venture this guess: Without the precession of excuse-laden state governments saying the same thing, Rhode Island's actions would count as some sort of social treason. We might even read about it in our history books someday, right up there with South Carolina firing on Fort Sumpter, thinking 'this should work out well'.

Let's assume that the first state to target education (for confidentiality reasons, we'll call this state 'Aggies') had legitimate reason for doing so. What makes their 'legitimate' problem equally legitimate in every other fiscally gluttonous and unrelated state in the union? Where is the correlation, other than 'well, that excuse seems to work for them, so maybe we should use it, too?'

I think teachers and kids are getting royally screwed. Again, I am beyond uninformed in this arena. But, I also think I'm right.