Have you been in a school lately? Plus, the dividends of paying for education are often recovered a decade or two after spending the initial money. I'm all for teaching kids, but throwing good money after bad money isn't the answer for me.
This was Obama's mistake, rooted in the belief that these banks are run by Americans, loyal to their country and grateful to be given a second chance they really hadn't earned. Boy was he ever naive. He fell for the old Ronnie Reagan Trickle-Down Theory, which proved to be a poorly constructed flim-flam on the American worker. It didn't work then and it didn't work this time. What a surprise. I would have liked to see no bailout at all. What was needed, and still is needed, is a tidal wave of investigations, prosecutions, and incarcerations of what would probably be hundreds of thousands of mortgage brokers and lenders who willingly and knowingly broke all kinds of laws in putting these loans together and accepting them. I'd certainly support spending a couple trillion to make lasting examples of what happens to people who commit fraud against the government and the citizens of the US. Speaking of redlining (in another thread), it appears to me that the banks are at it again in a big way, judging from the clients I have who can get loans and those who can't. As for the economy, it will not recover until the base workers are paid a much higher wage than the ridiculous pittance they now struggle to survive on. To achieve a standard of living comparable to the 60's, minimum wage would have to be approximately $42 hr. That is how much rape and pillage the 2 parties (and the billionaires who control them) have done to the people they were elected to serve over the last 50 years.
It shouldn't at all. Used to be in times of peace, the Army would work on infrastructure. Ours is a mess due to the practice of tax-free deals to attract business who used to pay for the infrastructure. The infrastructure of Saudi Arabia was built almost entirely by the US Army Corps of Engineers back in the 60's-80's, mostly paid for by your parents's taxes. They repaid us with the 9/11 attacks. Put half our defense budget and soldiers and equipment to work on our infrastructure nationwide. That would jumpstart our economy lickety-split!
