Why school systems are going broke

Among the main reasons public school systems are nearing the breaking point and public space is being eroded and privatized, are the two treasury-busting wars-without-end that Obama is inheriting from Bush and the neocons.

This year's projected budget deficit almost sounds like a joke: $1.2 trillion. After all, that's more than 29 times Bill Gates' vast wealth. To put it another way, Pennsylvania's state government, with a budget of not quite $30 billion, could operate for 43 years on that amount of money. The U.S. government managed to spend this staggering amount over and above the revenues from our tax dollars in a mere 12 months. How did we get here? We overspent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress allowed it because the Bush administration classified this spending as "emergency appropriations" that fall outside of normal circumstances. The only hitch is that this so called emergency funding has happened every year since we invaded Iraq in March of 2003.

(PennLive.com)