Letters to the Editor
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@ShawnWM
You wrote:
"Bots read this again and again and again and again until you get it. Older people remember the Clinton years and that's why they support her. You can try to rewrite history and say it was crappy for Pennsylvania in those years, but everyone who lived it knows otherwise and won't buy it."
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Total Bullcrap. You don't live in PA and are lying about the record. I lived until 2 yrs ago in Philadelphia. Almost 4 decades. I am also an educator who worked in the Philly school system and I know about PA. This state has suffered for decades. People in big cities like Philly suffered with rampant crime, corruption and a poorly funded educational system. Bill and Hillary did not do anything to change that.
Ed Rendell, whom I voted for twice made a critical shift in the Police Dept. and there were some dramatic improvements. He also worked hard to build Phila. as a destination city (which it is now.) What he, former Gov Ridge and the Clinton admin as well as the Bush admin totally failed to address, like every other politican in Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Capitol Hill, was the embarrassment that is the PA educational system. It's poorly run and under-funded in most areas of the state, STILL in Philadelphia despite an array of changes. The suburbs, with their high tax base have some truly excellent school districts: see Abington, Council Rock and Lower Merion. But did you know that kindergarten is STILL not mandatory in PA? This state is educationally in the Dark Ages.
As for PA, the big cities, rural and poor small town areas have poor performing schools. That's the bottom line. There has been no economic resurgence either during the Clinton years or the Bush years. If you have a grain of common sense, you know why then that the schools haven't changed dramatically over decades. The base of school funding is property taxes and the economy in many areas of PA has been sinking for several decades. There never has been nor is there now any economic turnaround.
The Clinton yrs heralded in Welfare-to-Work. You know that platform: poor and poorly uneducated people are put in low wage jobs that still leave them below the poverty line. How did that help struggling families? Poor people in rural, small town PA still struggle with an economy where most well-paid factory and steel jobs have left long ago. Nothing has replaced it and no one has attempted a fix, until now. Both Clinton and Obama are talking about job re-training and guaranteeing green jobs to replace ones that have left and will never return. Now that's a great idea but long overdue.
Please show me where Bill Clinton achieved great things for poor or working class people. He heralded in Welfare to work, NAFTA, which accelerated job loss, and failed totally on revamping healthcare or schools. These are my big problems with the Clintons. They had 8 yrs to forward an agenda for poor and working class people, to create a more equitable system, and did none of those things.
People like me and my family, are different. My husband did very well with the DotCom bubble in the '90's and has done very well for our family for the last 15 yrs. We are solidly middle class people with a nice home, an inground pool, a decent school district for our son and have significant savings. Yes, we did well. But then, we are educated, professional people. We have options. This is not the reality for most people in PA who do not have our education and skills. They have been suffering and they still are.
ShawnWM, you don't know PA, you don't know the issues in PA.
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Everybody worries about the quality of the questions
Nobody seems to be worrying about the quality of the answers. Clinton got just as many "gotcha" questions as Obama, but she was prepared, so she answered them so smoothly that they looked like softballs. Obama didn't have answers for any of the questions thrown at him. This was an important debate, but Obama simply didn't do his homework. Fortunately for Obama, before the debate ended the "story" on the blogs was not about his poor performance, but about the bad questions. Axelrod's Army had already gotten their text messages telling them to start spreading the meme, and they did so quite effectively. By the time those of us who actually watched the debate (including the media pundits) got around to our favorite web sites, they were plastered with complaints about the quality of the questions, so that became the talk of the day. I have to admit that I like the strategy. Too bad we can't vote for Axelrod for President.
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@AlecsMom -- all very good points
At one stage in the late 60s early 70s my mother taught Math and French in the South Bronks -- it was grim, very tough, pay was tiny too. She refused my father's entreaties to drive to the school because "the car would not be there at the end of the day." Instead she walked 4-5 blocks to the school, and everyday she told me, there was a building less (lot of arson those days in New York.) Girl after girl hit 15-16 and stopped coming to school -- she would see the on one on corners... Years later, in the early 90s she found herself at a function in Colorado, at a University there, and woman approached her and called her Madame ____. She asked her how she knew who she was -- it turned out this was one of her students from that high school, now chair of the French department at that university. She walked on air for weeks -- saved one!
The core of the economic problems afflicting the US is exactly where you say, in education. The US had the best education system in the world from about 1900-1970 or so, in terms of overall results. This is what made the US rich. And States like PA had, by international and even US standards a very good system through the 50s or so. The problem is that other countries educational systems have overtaken the US in results and quality. I am researching a new book (I deal with jet lag by writing) and in the course of it I have found some very scary numbers.
For a start go to the OECD website and get the executive summary on the PISA study of 15 year old achievement worldwide in science, math and reading (Google OECD PISA and 2006), it will worry you. Then read this summary:
www.petersoninstitute.org/publications/chapters_preview/4136/01iie4136.pdf
These two sets of reports illustrate the seriousness of the problem. The US is not producing enough high-skilled workers, and the next generation of US High School kids, those heading for college are (broadly) under-skilled to study hard science subject.
By the way it is not that education levels have declined (though in some places they have), it is that they ceased rising in about 1960. Thus the US is within the next decade going to reach a situation where the cohort of workers retiring, i.e., 60-64, is better educated than the cohort in the their productive prime, aged 30-35.
Now I do not think a President can do that much about this (though publishing state-by-state PISA scored might help) since education in the US is so controlled at the State level. But someone seriously committed to change may help, if they had two terms and the next president kept policies in place for two more.
However, I do disagree with your criticisms of Clinton having done nothing in two terms. A President in the US has, as I said limited power to change education, but even less if that President faced a hostile congress, which was the case for 6 odd years of Clinton. I also do not agree that Hillary Clinton does not realise that education is a big issue - I just think Obama is more likely to achieve results. As it stands, he has more of a history of trying to achieve those results, in far example his role as a state legislator and in the Woods Fund (where he served on the same board as Ayers.) Still as Governor or Arkansas (a notoriously dumb state in the past) Bill Clinton increased spending for schools, created gifted children's programs, increased vocational education, and raised of teachers' salaries.