Quote:
Originally Posted by Herodotus
There may be a time at some point in the future when the electoral college is done away with too. At that point someone may ask 'why do we need states', since state powers have been so weakened over time, and would be further weakened without the electoral college.
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I guess the short answer is, anything is possible. Citizens of the states, of course, make up the Congress. Presumably they would reject all measures to limit the powers of the states. But they have found it expedient to turn over to the federal government more and more of their perogatives. The reasons are always the same: money and uniformity. Nowhere is this more true today than in education.
Just read what Diane Ravitch, a research professor at New York University and fellow at the Brookings Institution wrote two years ago when discussing no child left behind. I used red to highlight the key sentence.
"America will not begin to meet the challenge of developing the potential of our students until we have accurate reporting about their educational progress.
We will not have accurate reporting until that function is removed from the constraints of state and local politics. We will be stuck with piecemeal and ineffective reforms until we agree as a nation that education - not only in reading and mathematics, but also science, history, literature, foreign languages and the arts - must be our highest domestic priority."
Of course, she's right. But she's also seriously wrong. We may improve education by taking away state control of it, but we will weaken the states in the process. Is that a healthy tradeoff? I don't think so.