AH: Well, exactly and you know we had a demonstration of that in San Bruno recently when pipes that had not been properly maintained ended up exploding and killing people and destroying homes. That is really what we are dealing with across the country. We could have hundreds of San Bruno's. Here is really where the betrayal is coming into play. You know if we were a full employment economy we would still need to do something about that infrastructure. Imagine, now that we have unemployment almost at double-digit levels how desperately we need a real infrastructure policy, rebuilding our infrastructure which would offer the additional advantage of creating jobs that cannot be outsourced and helping local industries.
RK: Yet we didn't see it happen, hardly any of the money that went into TARP went into it and the money that was dedicated to it wasn't all spent, right?
AH: Well, what's happening is that the stimulus bill clearly had the desired effect of making sure that things didn't get worse. But, we saved some jobs, we created some jobs. But it wasn't enough. So that the problem was that it was an inadequate response to the crisis. And, as Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister, said "You cannot jump across a chasm in two leaps."
RK: Good line. By the way, I've got to say I have a quotation website and have built a quotation database for OpEdNews and your stuff is, you're very quotable. I've got more "Qs" to quotable lines in this book. You're competing with Jesse Jackson.
AH: Ahh [laughter]. That's sweet, I like that.
RK: Well, it's good stuff. You talk not just about the disintegrating infrastructure which you just mentioned, but also the need to expand and one of the areas that you say is most important is education and you mention the new movie that is just out. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
AH: Yes, I write about the release of Waiting for Superman which basically, in a very evocative, powerful way connects us to the crisis in education. We all know that again our public schools are failing our children, that there are many good public schools, but there are also many dysfunctional public schools. We all know that there are many phenomenal teachers, but also there are teachers who cannot teach who nevertheless have tenure and continue to teach children. And you know we have this phenomenon where only 1 in 2500 teachers is ever fired compared to 1 in 37 or 1 in 67 lawyers and doctors so clearly there is something askew here.
We have not again brought that sense of urgency that Geoffrey Canada who is turning lives around in Harlem is bringing into the movie and when you see the lottery that takes place in the movie for children to be able to leave their dysfunctional public schools and go to a decent public charter school nearby, you see that the middle class American dream has beame of chance, literallcome a gy.
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