"RBnDFW" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Yet, my town is loaded with Muslims, mostly East Indian. One is my son's
best friend. The ones I know are great, generous, hard-working people. My
cardiologist's name is Muhammed, and he's a laugh a minute. g I really
don't get it.

I do. He's a sleeper agent. Watch your back!

g And my endocrinologist, until I left him, was named Hussein. He's a
friend of my cardiologist, Muhammed. No kidding.



Defense is always going to be politically tough, but I'll be right behind
you. As for cutting federal education contributions, all it will do is
push the costs onto the states. I really don't see that one having legs.

I'm all for that. Education should be a very local issue.
The Feds should have never stuck their nose under that tent.

I think it's the opposite. The more local you make school control, the
dumber it gets. You won't find local control among any of the countries that
beat our kids' pants off on standardized tests.

The very idea of a local school board is like a comic parody. Once they've
set the date for the senior prom, and decided who is going to fix the leak
in the elementary school roof, they're out of intellectual gas.



Education, we don't need a federal department of education. Let the
States deal with it
on their terms. You seem to have a lot of faith in the feds. I have a
lot of faith in
the individual states. If one state is screwing up, it will soon look
to how the other
states that are getting it right are doing it.

I have almost no faith at all in the states. I agree with James Madison
that government becomes less competent as its geographic and population
scope become smaller. If they weren't propped up by the federal
government, they'd collapse like so many houses of cards.

If by competent you mean efficient, I don't know that I want a very
efficient federal government. Germany was very efficient until about 1943.

I mean capable of coming up with good solutions to problems, having the
resources to do something about them, and having access to the people who
can get it done. The smaller government gets, the less likely all three of
those things are.

Going back to Madison and Jefferson, Madison's point was that you needed a
certain number of people in a governing body, no matter how many people were
being governed, just to avoid being victimized by factional interests. In
fact, state legislatures tend to have a high representative rate compared to
the federal government -- often by 50:1 or even more.

As the population from which you draw gets smaller, you have decreasing
likelihood of coming up with enough quality people. Jefferson, on the other
hand, thought that small units of government were a good thing, but that
they had very limited competence. All of the FFs thought we needed a federal
government with real authority to get the big jobs done.

I think all of them had an important insight, based on their understanding
of immutable human nature. And I think that education is one of the big
jobs.


And they're much more corrupt. The state governments are mostly either
corrupt as hell, buffoonish, or both.

The Feds are giving them a real run for their money, but Illinois and NJ
are way ahead. But there are plenty of good examples in State government.
If you ignore Rick Perry (and we do), I think we're doing OK on that score
here in Texas.

I think that Louisianna is still highest on the FBI's anti-corruption
investigation unit list, but we're in the running. g Regarding Texas, when
the Democrats in your legislature have to hide out in Oklahoma so the
Republicans can't assemble a quorum, you have your share of buffoons, too.
d8-)



We can even put charging coils in interstates and main arteries to
increase range of EV's
to make them acceptable.

Probably cause cancer, or at least insanity.
(Do I really have to put a smiley after a line like that?)

It's hard to do a tongue-in-cheek.

I love all of these futuristic ideas. I don't mean to make light of them. I
just want to see some real projects underway, rather than being the subject
of future-science articles in the newspapers, or "color" stories that wrap
up the evening news.

--
Ed Huntress