"A Crisis is a Terrible Thing To Waste" (Rahm Emanuel)

Thomas Sowell has a great piece at Capitalism Magazine which explains to a tee the political mind - a crisis is an opportunity for a power grab.

If the Beltway politicians aren't really trying to solve this crisis as quickly as they could, what are they trying to do?

One important clue may be a recent statement… Rahm Emmanuel, that "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste."

This is the kind of cynical revelation that sometimes slips out, despite all the political pieties and spin. Crises have long been seen as great opportunities to expand the federal government's power while the people are too scared to object and before any opposition can get organized.
That is why there is such haste to do things that will take effect slowly.

What are the Beltway politicians buying with all the hundreds of billions of dollars they are spending? They are buying what politicians are most interested in-- power.

In the name of protecting the taxpayers' investment, they are buying the power to tell General Motors how to make cars, banks how to bank …

This administration and Congress are now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s-- use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations.

…we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s. We have the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") taking reckless chances in the housing market that have blown up in our faces today, because FDR decided to create a new federal housing agency in 1938.

Who knows what bright ideas this administration will turn into permanent institutions for our children and grandchildren to try to cope with? (Read the whole article by Thomas Sowell at www.CapMag.com)

Newt Gingrich on How to Change Our Failed Education System

Mr. Gingrich's position is that our Public School System does not work and has not worked for decades. He says

"Our greatest strategic challenge we face is education and that education in that sense is a national security, national defense issue of the first order because if we don't fix education we will not be capable of competing with China and India.."

So if we are to compete in this global economy with China and India surging ahead with their highly educated young people then we must use a different formula for educating our own young. He has some very interesting and original ideas -

* reading skills of 17 year olds have declined in the past 25 years
*We are 25th among industrial cities in math skills among 29 other countries
*Detroit schools graduates 1 in 4 entering freshmen students on time
*We are 20th in graduating rates among industrial nations

"How can anyone look at this data and not say that we are in a crisis of the first order and unable to have a discussion about it? "

Listen to Mr. Gingrich and pay attention to his solutions. They are very thought provoking.
http://www.americansolutions.com/SolutionTV/