Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for December 02, 2011

So why is the kid reading “The Great War”? “The Great Gatsby”, maybe, or “The Grapes Of Wrath” from the other side…

steverino: “The Great War” represents the out-of-date textbooks that students in many underfunded public schools are forced to use.

thats not fare publik skhool is not bad i went 2 publik skhool and I got a good learning

“I taught for many years and the one thing I can say with certanty is that the only people who are experts on education are the ones who are not in the classroom.”-Dan Arnold

I don’t think it’s so much being able to AFFORD books for their kids (books are much cheaper than big-screen TVs), but it’s about having the ETHOS to get books for their kids.

If what the author/artist is trying to imply is true, then why don’t socialist and communist societies outperform the USA? Even those among the bottom have more in the US then practically anybody who was not among the elite in the USSR or PRC (before they wised up and began to adopt capitalism.) I went to public school from K-12 and paid and borrowed my way through a college education. It can be done, and it can be done by almost anybody if they care to do so. There is something to be said for personal responsibility.

I was born and raised in a communist country and we had free medical, free dental, free books and pretty good eating. It all came from high taxes of course but hey, the taxes didn’t go to enrich the military-industrial complex. Living in USA made me realize what total sham the so called "capitalism’ is. Everyone in USA loves to get a government job. Bolling totally nails it as usual.

Oh yeah, nobody has mentioned the the pizza = vegetable thing yet. Bolling got it yet again.

It was George Carlin who said: “That’s why they call it the American DREAM – because you have to be asleep to believe it!”

Huked ahn foniks werkd fur mee…

American public schools are the envy of most of the world. I studied in dumpy public schools and I know I got a better education than my friends who studied in elite Mexican private schools.I love public libraries.. give me those before Barnes&Noble any day. The public library in my mom’s rust belt pop. 20,000 hometown is better than any library I have seen in my adopted hometown of Monterrey, Mex. And Americans, even the poorest, are far better nourished than say, Cubans.I do believe in reforming health care and I am not defender of elitism, but the US isn’t full of suffering poor if you have any sense of global relativity.

What a load of liberal crap.

a book called “richistan” from about 2006 is about the (then) richest 8 1/2 million people on earth. 3% were sports/arts/entertainment, 16% was old money, and the rest were wealthy since 1980. the people on the bottom of this group (1 to 10 million besides assets) were refered to by those above as “affluent”. read recently the number is now 10 million. very interesting book.

You got me to go looking for any data on that; found several repetitions of the assertion, but nothing to substantiate it. There may be some poor become $M’s, and some $M’s become poor, but it’s sure much less now that after WWII, when Americans had expectations of improvement. That’s all gone now, and may be years before a hope of ‘upward mobility’ returns.The echo chamber has been hard at work, but keep in mind that 93.7% of statistics like this are made up. That’s what many of us call BS.I grew up around the Marine Corps (AKA military brat) and thought I was edging into the ‘middle class’, and the last layoff, after five years, edged into my declaration of retirement. If they muck up Social Security and Medicare, even that will be gone.

…Our whole nation is this rich.Our poor are the envy of the world:52 inch plama Tvs,4G cellphones…but does our gov’t get any credit?NO! …

You are aware that Communist China and Socialist India are out performing the US right now.