School Shootings

If you watch cable news regularly, you know there's been a rash of school shootings recently. There's also been a rash of soldiers dying in Iraq recently, but if you watch cable news you wouldn't know that.

All deaths are tragic, and these are particularly troubling to me. My mother teaches elementary school, and her principal just announced that she would be equipping all teachers with walkie-talkies in case of emergency. This is not standard in the school budget, but comes out of that principal's discretionary fund.

That safety for teachers and students is not part of the normal budgeting process should alarm people. And so should the fact that over the last 6 years, in a post-Columbine world, the Bush Administration has consistently reduced funding for school violence-prevention programs. This is just bad budget priority, and while I don't consider school shootings to be epidemic, it would not take that much money to secure classrooms nationwide. But God forbid we take one dime away from missile defense or the failed war in Iraq or the $20 million dollar victory party.

Domestic spending on earmarks and boondoggles for the districts of troubled incumbents, and in corporate giveaways to pharmaceutical and energy companies, has ballooned dramatically, while domestic spending where it's needed and where it can be effective is eliminated. I'm willing to have a real discussion on how best to manage our government spending when the insanity of the federal budget is stopped. We have lost control of this government with respect to how it lards money on its pals and corporate contributors rather than where the needs are most dire. It should shock everyone. The Democrats actually have a plan to incorporate "pay-as-you-go" controls to budget spending, to refocus our investment where it's needed most crucially, and to take back the government from these insidious lobbyists. I don't think they go far enough, and should they take power I'll be extremely critical of any effort to dole out cash in the same way. But fiscal conservatives have a far better chance throwing in their lot with the Party that's only half in the tank to Big Business rather than fully so.