Change We Can Believe In? A Huge Disappointment

If you thought I was too rough on Obama in "One Billion U.S. Dollars", let me expand on my problems with him.

1) We have 15 million unemployed Americans and Obama is doing nothing about putting them back to work even though it would be easy to begin repairing out infrastructure.

2) A record number of Americans have been unemployed for a record length of time.

3) Any body with any brains knows that a large number of the jobs that the currently unemployed used to have are gone forever.

4) We desperately need a re-training program to teach many of the currently unemployed new skills.

5) Community colleges are ideally positioned to provide the needed retraining. In "The Great Recession Conspiracy" we described how a couple of community colleges are doing exactly that by providing training for wind and solar industry jobs (jobs that pay up to $100,000).

6) Obama should be funding any community college program anywhere in the U.S. that meets a couple of simple requirements to ensure the program provides valid retraining.

7) Instead, he is cutting funding for colleges everywhere. In doing so, he is helping create a permanent unemployed, and unemployable, under class in the U.S.

8) Wait!! It gets worse!! We have a very, very serious K-12 education problem. We rate 15th, 16th, etc. in reading, math and science test scores compared to other countries. As assembly line jobs continue to disappear, U.S. competitiveness in the world, and our standard of living, will depend on the mental skills and training of our workforce.

9) Our K-12 teachers now come, overwhelmingly, from the bottom one-third of the SAT scoring population. I don't mean to disrespect anyone. I have had some great teachers. But the facts are the facts. Our teachers do not come from the best of the best.

10) Everyone agrees, without exception, the most important aspect of education is really good teachers.

11) To get better teachers, we simply have to pay teachers more. Period. End of story.

12) But Obama is doing absolutely NOTHING to attract better teachers. So much for his sanctimonious posturing about how concerned he is with the future of the U.S. In fact, his inaction is destining the U.S. to second class status.

13) Hang on! It gets worse. Here is April 4th front page of the Los Angeles Times.

"Teaching is tough sell amid layoffs

Teacher layoffs and other education spending cuts are thinning more than current ranks of California's classroom instructors. The number of people training to be teachers also is plummeting, and that trend is likely to continue.

Education experts are warning of a shortage of new teachers in a few years as large numbers of baby boomers start to retire from teaching jobs and larger numbers of youngsters enter elementary school.

.............

In California, the number of teaching credentials issued annually fell 29% during the last five years, from 28,039 in 2004-05 to 20,032 in 2009-2010......."

14) You know as well as I do that those people who pursue a teaching credential now are the ones who can't get any other career (Not all, but most). So we driving the teaching profession further into the ground and filling classrooms with the least capable teachers.

15) So the President who says he is deeply concerned about the future of the U.S. has done just about everything in his power to ensure that we have a miserable future.
*He is creating a sub-class of unemployable Americans who will never again work.
*He is forcing the kids in school today to get a second rate education.
*He is ensuring that kids in the future will get a truly third rate education.

This is beyond simple disappointment and approaching real anger.