http://news.yahoo.com/7-states-win-federal-education-competition-050217258.html

Seven states got to split up $200MM in a contest called "Race to the Top" whereby the citizens of all 50 states get to donate their tax dollars to the lucky winners.

This is nothing but promotion of the ever-growing "plantation mentality" where only the all-knowing Federal Government knows what to do by "awarding" education funds that have been taken from the taxpayers of all states.  The slaves on the plantation get to compete against each other to receive the fruits of their own labors.  It is a strategy consistent with the (now shown to have been fabricated) "Willie Lynch speech".

Best that the money were never taxed and the states were left to figure for themselves how to spend THEIR OWN MONEY.  There is no such thing as "Federal money"; it is all "State money" or to be more specific "worker money".

New Jersey has the second-highest per capita income in the USA.  Why do they need wage earners from other states to subsidize their schools?  Ditto for Illinois which is #17 in per capita income, Colorado which is #13.

Federal government has no business being in the Education business, other than to enforce that the states administer school programs inconjunction with the United States Constitution, spending their own money.

I found this whole thing a bit unsettling myself.  I don't think that only a few states should be getting these funds, I thought all states should be getting these funds.

I found this whole thing a bit unsettling myself.  I don't think that only a few states should be getting these funds, I thought all states should be getting these funds.


If the money was not confiscated from the states then the states would not have to do stupid dog tricks to beg for their own money back.

New Jersey has the second-highest per capita income in the USA.  Why do they need wage earners from other states to subsidize their schools? 



Walk through Camden or Newark and you'd never know it.

Local control sounds sounds good, but it ends up helping most the localities that need it least.

Walk through Camden or Newark and you'd never know it.

Local control sounds sounds good, but it ends up helping most the localities that need it least.



Right!  Per capita is a sorry index to go by.  If they took the Donalds income and my income, added them together and called it per capita it would look like I am doing extremely well.  ::)

Walk through Camden or Newark and you'd never know it.

Local control sounds sounds good, but it ends up helping most the localities that need it least.



And somehow you think that a Federal level of control will somehow miraculously be better?  That it somehow has some miraculous source of wisdom that is not imparted on municipal, county, and state governments?

The concept of Federal control is the antithesis of the "99% - 1%" concept.  The usurption of State finances and States' Rights by definition narrows the level of control of peoples' lives to the very few lawmakers in the Federal government. 

Besides, what have massive infusions of money into Newark and Camden gotten us?  More crime, more poverty.  There comes a time when failing communities have to be allowed to fail without outsiders propping them up.  My county is a great example,  We have Aliquippa, which is the greatest recipient of state aid in the county, and its schools are a mess, and it is the crime center of the county.  The surrounding towns do pretty good.  Aliquippa wants to blame its fate on the local steel mill shutting down, but the fact of the matter is that most of the mill's workers lived in the surrounding towns... which do not receive massive state aid but whose residents and governments figured out how to figure it out.  26 years after the mill closed, Aliquippa still plays its "woe is me" scheme on the State and Federal governments, sucking up our tax dollars to fund its culture of crime, drugs, and laziness.

I give props to the new Governor of Pennsylvania, who said "enough" and cut off Aliquippa's "Weed and Seed" money, which was nothing but a state dole to local politicians and "community organizers" and "religious leaders" so they could sit around and complain about a steel company that was so bad it has not been in town for 26 years.  He also cut back the outrageous amount of state $$$ to the school district, which has been an abject failure despite massive money spent on it from outside.  The town's decline has only been prolonged by these stupid "Robin Hood" programs.  As long as the government continues to expand Section 8 housing and all sorts of other subsidies, the town's ultimate fate (becoming a true ghost town) is only made longer and more painful.  Hey I do not like that my old home town is going to disappear, but the Federal Government turning it into a Section 8 sprawling ghetto did not fix things.  People don't invest in that sort of environment.

Camden and Newark are ghost towns with people still living in them.  To make good of the bad that's been done would take such a radical shift in federal priorities it would be nothing short of revolution.  Our federal government will gladly subsidize massive deindustrialization and then provide meager welfare programs, but it won't invest in the country's infrastructure.  Communities "fail" when they lose their economies.  Everyone who can move out does.  Then the Republicans say *** the poor if they're not keen enough to get out the slums!  Then Dems say "We'll work hard to bring jobs back to Springfield," and then they'll vote for the same neoliberal poison the Big Business tells the Republicans to vote for.
::)