There are a lot of answers to Reagan and Gingrich, starting with the Head Start program and the Birth To Three program for early intervention to help disadvantaged children or to help children with learning or other disabilities catch up early in life when the differences are, in fact, correctable because the child’s brain is still developing and can be sometimes helped to work past — or at least learn to better manage — severe autism and other developmental delays or societal disadvantages due to family or neglect or other issues that may be in play.

Chronically underfunding thes programs so that they can’t advertise and can’t help children the way they are intended is guaranteed to make them fail — and, as a consequence, fail the children they are meant to serve. Funding them properly, with a budget that allows them to advertise the miracles they can perform for children from birth forward, helps to educate parents, medical providers and childcare providers on how they can guide parents and children into programs that can help get them on a better track.

And that’s just a single issue where things could be better with a program that works — and works well — and saves the state and federal government money in the long run in terms of children’s special needs services in schools.

It isn’t that we don’t have answers. It’s that people inevitably refuse to listen to them. Just because we do things back-assward in this country doesn’t mean we cannot do them better. And just saying that big government is the bogeyman misses the point entirely: bad government is always a bad thing. But good government — especially coupled with individual responsibility and community support — can work miracles for all of us. The more we all remember that we are all in this together, the better off we all are.

For example: confronted with the meme that Big Government is a Bad Thing, Democrats either laugh, sneer, or turn self-righteous; or, if they’re politicians they pretend that they think Big Government is a Bad Thing, too.

It’s the same with health care, the environment, the abrogation of the Bill of Rights, the wars, our never-ratified alliance with Israel–almost any liberal agenda item. The grassroots just know they’re already in the right, and the politicians pretend the changes we want aren’t really outside the so-called main stream. No one has really been able to put a dent into the conservative-Right premisses that see our agenda as dangerous, expensive, too big, too weak, or what have you. We have specific arguments for specific things, but we don’t have real answers to the Reagan critique–at least none that our political leaders and spokespersons have been willing to enunciate in public.

You can’t just blame the media, or the dumb southerners that everybody here takes such pleasure in mocking, just chalk it up to better and more organized zealots on the other side. It’s us, too. We don’t have an real answer to the Reagan. It’s not enough to say “Just look around,” or roll our eyes. What is our reply?

if people are performing the same tasks arent they supposed to be equally paid? and have the unions been involved?

Most positions have broad salary ranges which provides some cover for management.

Plus, I believe in Ledbetter’s case, she and the men in question were considered supervisory/management staff so the union would have no bearing, assuming it were a union facility.

News reports say that McCain skipped the vote to campaign in New Orleans, but says that he opposes the bill since it would provoke lawsuits [from the affected women, naturally].

Fuck John McCain sideways.

Paging Oxford English Dictionary…

I put the link in so they’ll follow it back here, and pick up your new word.

Oops- that was supposed to be “Hubris”. Is there such a word as “humbris”? Looks like a word.

It looks like it should means something like “false modesty”.