And what would the message of this movie be? "America has expensive but fancy private schools"? I think we already knew that. Yeah, if you're willing to shell out some coin, you can indeed buy a great education for your kid. So what? With more money you can also buy better healthcare, go to better colleges, eat at better restaurants, drive safer cars and live in better houses located in better neighborhoods.

Actually, most teacher's unions would just prefer the money be spent on hiring more teachers. Regardless of what class sizes actually are (and regardless of all the evidence that suggest class size isn't all that important relative to other factors), a union's top priority will generally be to ensure more money is spent on its rank and file.

While unions are a huge problem in our public education system, they are far from being the only problem.

There is no public policy remedy for a lack of parental involvement. Public policy can change the way in which we hire and fire teachers. Public policy can set curriculum and determine what sort of things we test for. The sort of technology schools purchase can be set by public policy. You can blame the parents all you want, but that will never accomplish anything since it is outside the realm of problems that are solvable.

The Iraqi oil fields are owned and operated by the Iraqi Government. Occasionally they lease production to American drilling firms but Iraq's oil industry is largely a competitor to America's.

And if Chinese taxpayers foot our bill, what's the problem with that exactly? I'm not bothered by some foreign country subsidizing my lifestyle.

Not really. They pretty much get standard equipment depreciation schedules, present in virtually all heavy industry. They also get to deduct dry wells and other losses, also pretty standard stuff. Ethanol is a racket and basically just exist so that we may sacrifice to the corn gods, but oil and gas don't really get many subsidies that aren't standard for all industries. Per kilowatt hour, renewables get far more in the way of subsidies than oil or coal.

In other words, capitalism fails because it is exactly like every other system. I don't recall people praising Mao or Stalin for their open-mindedness.

Can you imagine a society that officially renounced belief in God? I can, because the USSR and Mao's China essentially did just that... and promptly started to promulgate fear, hatred, ignorance and death at a rate that has yet to be matched by any society in history. Germany, under national socialism, also devoted a great deal of effort towards science and essentially squelched the church and ended up with similar results.

I personally agree with the idea that evolution should be taught and not creationism but I'm not about to denounce religion without contemplating the alternatives.

Actually, I would disagree with the notion that evolution is a basis for the economy. The overall economic impact of the teaching of the theory of evolution is probably pretty limited. Yes, it matters to those with careers in biology, but those people would probably be taught about the theory of evolution (in much greater detail) during college.

Like most "social issues" such as gay marriage, abortion, the NSA PRISIM program, assault weapons laws, etc. the way students are taught about evolution may make an effective political wedge issue, but its actual effect on people's lives is generally small.

Regardless of their opinion of evolution, I imagine most Texans simply vote their party and the vast majority probably couldn't tell you who their school board member is or what he believes. A sizable chunk wouldn't even know what they themselves think about evolution. Many simply have never stopped to think about it because they're busy with other aspects of life.

This is also true of any other state. Almost any state will have drawbacks. I'm just as uncomfortable with some left wing state dominating the textbook market. If California were the market leader for instance, I can imagine we'd go from the creationist in Texas being a voice to the eco-cult of California insisting that GMO's cause cancer / environmental collapse / human mutations. Rather than dealing with the global warming deniers in Texas, we'd be dealing with the Chicken Little "the sky is falling" types which, if we're being honest, aren't really any more productive.

California is much more of a "local control" state than Texas is. Texas gives the Texas Board of Education a huge amount of power in deciding which textbooks are purchased while California largely lets individual school boards (and in some cases, individual schools) make those decisions. Thus the entire State of Texas pretty much ends up buying the same books making Texas the most influential market in the country for textbooks.

Science is more of a process than a belief. When we use the term "science" we are referring to the use of the scientific method to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Science itself prescribes no ethics, no meanings to life, no philosophies and, being the study of the natural world, has nothing to say regarding the existence of supernatural beings. If you look at scientific scholars you will find a diverse array of religious beliefs, philosophic beliefs and life practices. Science is not a belief system.

Except that God isn't "tossing" people into the lake of fire. Christian theology seems to suggest that people who willingly reject God are going to hell by their own hands.

The Koch brothers inherited a family owned business and, rather than going public, decided to keep it family owned. Just because their business is larger than others doesn't make it unique. Plenty of business owners inherited their family's firm.

Yes, Bush inherited political clout. Names like Bush, Clinton, Kennedy, Roosevelt, etc. have long carried power in the states dating clear back to John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams (John Adams even alluded to believing that the USA might benefit from inherited titles of nobility)

Some families produce politicians. Some families produce musicians. Some families produce football and baseball players. Some families produce businessmen. You can inherit talent and you can inherit a family name just as well as you can inherit wealth or good genetics. This isn't news to anyone.