In a recent NY Times Article, Paul Krugman writes:

“So maybe I was wrong. I used to consider health care our greatest national shame, considering that we spend twice as much on medical care as many European nations, yet American children are twice as likely to die before the age of 5 as Czech children — and American women are 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as Irish women.”

Chilling reality.

“Yet I’m coming to think that our No. 1 priority actually must be education. That makes the new fiscal stimulus package a landmark, for it takes a few wobbly steps toward reform and allocates more than $100 billion toward education.”

Thank you Mr. Krugman: the last time we valued education was in the ‘post sputnik panic’, our national reaction after the Soviets launched the first earth satellite in Oct of 1957.  “How could those  godless communists have succeeded? ”

see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15kristof.html?em