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Cut $50 billion/year of funding to schools? Federal funds make up about 10% of all education funding. So how to make up the shortfall? Raise state taxes, local property taxes? Dont provide the best technologies for schools or programs to upgrade science and math education to keep US competitive?
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KISS. Classrooms don't need Smartboards; blackboards work just fine. Likewise nobody in Middle School needs a new $3,000 microscope for science classes when the older units work just as well. Quit dumping money into the newest, latest, greatest, shiniest reinvention of the Wheel. Try getting rid of the crappy power-mad illiterates the NEA insists -must- continue teaching and getting some actual educators instead. A good teacher is a whole helluva lot more important than a shiny new toy for a shitty teacher to play with.
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And how about that highway funding? Postpone long-needed infrastructure improvements of the deteriorating federal highway system (much more than just the Interstate System). Forget the economic impact of letting the infrastructure continue to deteriorate?
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How about leaving that responsibility with the States, where it belongs? Maybe then the Fed will stop using federal highway/infrastructure money to blackmail and browbeat States into going along with whatever ridiculous social-engineering scheme is popular that week. If the States want to raise their taxes, hold a lottery, or hire guys in clown suits to take donations, that's fine and that's what elections are for.
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Of course, we can now forget about any comprehensive clean energy legislation to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, not to mention putting the US even further behind China, India, Europe in developing new energy technologies. Or just subsidize "drill, baby, drill" with more tax breaks to Exxon and BP, and, reduce federal regulatory oversight at the same time....good, forward thinking plan.
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Maybe the Feds could try getting out of the way of new nuclear-generation technologies. The reason the Chinese and French have left us in the dust is that a pack of moronic Luddites have stuck us with old, outdated, less-safe technology left over from the late 60's. Pebble-bed reactors, to say nothing of the micro-reactors being developed in Japan and Sweden (and currently being tested in Alaska), are leaving us in the dust technologically. They're safe, they're clean, they're getting a -lot- cheaper, and the rest of the world (except Germany, which gets the vapors whenever someone mentions
Atomkraft) is laughing at us. Allow reconstitution of spent fuel and you've not only tackled particulate pollution but cut the nuclear-waster problem by 2/3 or better.