OK, but all of a sudden you have a problem with them having a dedicated headquarters? They have been in temporary quarters since its formation and it has been largely inadequate. I find it highly hypocritical by the GOP to make an issue of this expenditure. This is the department that is supposed to keep us safe. Fact of the matter is that it has been known this was needed and was directly asked for in 2007, and now it is considered pork?
Woohoo, three examples out of a few hundred thousand high schools. I could give 2 dozen examples of schools that dont face the issues you mentioned but are lacking in thier capacity, and facilities.
There is no question that a quality teacher is important to education here. We can agree on that. But we can put the best teachers who have antiquated facilities and the level of education goes down.
We need modern science and technology labs, and the capacity to have enough books per student, enough room in the halls and a teacher-student ratio that is condusive to learning instead of baby sitting.
But then you throw in the basic problems that is found in No Child Left Behind and the whole problem is compounded. I dont disagree with your assesment that schools in areas that are poorer, achieve less. But it is worthy to point out that under NCLB, parents have and students have zero accountability for thier own education, and it is left purely to teachers and adminstrators and when they "fail" they lose funding. When it comes to school vouchers, parents and students have more incentive to fail than achieve.
Light traffic in California? I definately missed that. But in that time period, the internet wasnt exactly available in my village. So I probably missed it. But either way, if the economy is going to bounce back, it makes sense to add more capacity now. One thing I do remember from that time frame was that there was no enough airport capacity to deal with the traffic.
Here in AK, I know that traffic levels have done nothing but increase, but I am in a small and rather isolated state so it might be entirely different in the lower 48.
You might think it is good for consumers, but as someone who is on the outside end of the line, and is paying $7 a gallon, I will tell you it is flawed considerably.
If we go on the supply and demand model that the GOP loves to embrace, then there was no reason for oil to drive as high as it did last summer and fall as much as it has this winter. And a single event that has not happened yet, that has nothing to do with supply or demand could drive the price up again, to even a higher level.
Oil was trading at $150 a barrel 6 months ago. Now it is less than $40. The consumption of oil has not decreased even %10, and the supply increase has not risen enough to even begin to justify the decrease in price, also less than %10.
So, what we have is, speculation driving the world market. Nothing else but speculation. Supply and demand would never account for the raise and drop we have seen in oil prices.
