"ABOVE ALL things I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."  Thomas Jefferson

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline. Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing.

Voters: Compare the SUPPORT (money) we're being asked to give private organizations to bail out these failures versus the kind of support our public schools need to effectively help all of our children. Where should our tax dollars go?

No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without funding to implement these improvements. Schools are listed as "failing schools" and lose funding (no bailout here) because of unrealistic goals that are not funded by this mandate in the first place. What is left in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students, who we hope will lead us and support us when we are old?

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists have effectively secured deregulation, loopholes, and what they consider "optimal" conditions for their financial success. And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of money.

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth has infected our entire way of running our society.

Unfortunately young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire lobbyists. Their teachers and their schools have limited resources. And there are few organized efforts to effectively reform our schools to prepare our future. In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there are serious efforts to improve, fund, and prioritize education.

THIS IS INVESTMENT IN OUR MOST IMPORTANT RESOURCE: HUMAN CAPITAL!

In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Hopefully (as we say in school) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.

another wonderful idea of Bush  - take care of your own social security! thank goodness that wasn't implemented!

Well under McCain CEOs are safe along with there mega-gold severance pay for the next ten years?? Under Obama the CEOs get zip till the  people are paid off!! As long as CEOs pay is in jepordy, no bill will pass. The GOP will never pass a bill in the peoples favor either! you chose, and chose wisly! if you wish to retire in a home, and not left homeless due to a CEO who took 50 million off the top, for the next ten years. While you wait ten years, for a judge to award you 500 bucks!

I'll go Obama/Biden 08

Not McCain/Quayle,opps Palin

Don't bet that your investments will be safe when there are so many crooked brokers and brokerages out there playing financial scams in order to make money.  I hope the Dems in Congress do not act before they think the way Paulson did coming up with this phony baloney $700 billion plan to bail out his rich and greedy white collar crimninal cronies on Wall Street while leaving Main Street high and dry and having to pay the bill.