Obama and Early Childhood

Barack has pleased the Gay Uncle even more recently with his announcement that he plans to spend about ten billion (with a b) dollars a year on early childhood education, helping to expand its availability to under-served communities with young kids which, since we currently have no coordinated national early childhood education policy, and since our current Idiot-In-Chief has seen fit to repeatedly propose budget cuts for the limited programs that exist, includes just about everyone in America. This counts in Gunc’s mind as just one more reason to vote for the big O. If you’re not convinced that expanding quality E.C.E. offerings is a useful, functional, and economical investment, perhaps you should read the works of James Heckman–a University of Chicago economist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and influential adviser to the current Democratic candidate–whose research has shown that every buck spent on pre-K schooling and infant and family care and education, saves seven to ten dollars down the line on programs like special ed, remedial ed, and prisons. Still not convinced that Barry’s your family man? Then check out John McCain’s early childhood plan:

That’s not a typo (Gunc never makes mistakes; he went to a good preschool.) That’s it, in detail. Nada. Of course, you could also go with the Palin Proposal which includes insuring that school-age kids receive no real information about reproductive health, and that every teenage girl that gets pregnant accidentally, or through rape or incest, is forced to drop out, have the baby, marry the father, and stay home. Hey, maybe some of these barefoot teens will get together and start a creationist home-school collective, and you can send you kids there! Talk about Ownership Society.