Bill Scher: Would You Close Your School To Pay For Iraq?

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Would You Close Your School To Pay For Iraq?
By Bill Scher

April 8th, 2008 - 8:54am ET


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Gen. David Petraeus testifies today about the status of the Iraq occupation, I'll be thinking about my neighborhood elementary school.

Because the Bridge Street School in Northampton, Mass., may have to close for lack of funds, while we continue to waste billions on a failed foreign policy.

My town is facing a shortfall in our school budget between $800,000 to $1 million. We are forced with a choice between closing an entire school, which doesn't even make up the entire gap, or a series of cuts across the entire school district, including teaching positions, school buses, special education, music and arts education and supplies.

We're not alone in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe reports:

Across Massachusetts, cities and towns face the prospect of deep cuts in what appears to be the grimmest fiscal year since 2003. Local revenue and state aid can't keep up with such rapidly rising expenses as employee health insurance, heating oil, and even street paving. School costs, like special education requirements, are sapping local budgets. And now beleaguered residents are seeing home values dip even as taxes continue to rise.

And it's not just Massachusetts, school budgets are being squeezed across the nation.

While we are starved for investment in our schools—not to mention our health, our energy, our environment and our infrastructure—the occupation saps our resources. As Joseph Stiglitz, co-author of "The Three Trillion Dollar War," said on MSNBC yesterday:

Spending on the war is the worst form of spending. I mean, just think about it. Paying a Nepalese worker to work in Iraq doesn’t stimulate the economy in the same way that spending that same dollar in the United States.

Watch it: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/would-you-close-your-school-pay-iraq


Paying for cheap Nepalese labor (sometimes lying to lure them into Iraq) doesn't even help rebuild Iraq's economic foundation, let alone ours.

How does this relate to the Bridge Street School's possible closing? ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/would-you-close-your-school-pay-iraq

[islandmkl]

1. maybe they can find some oil in your neighborhood...

that seems to work every time with the neoconazi money people....

[AlinPA]

2. My wife and I talking about this subject today; wasting billions a week in Iraq

and our schools are suffering. I understand that the US is going to keep sending Iraq billions for their schools and infrastructure.

[Devlzown]

3. Why can't Iraq's oil money pay for their

infrastructure? Where is that money going?