Yes, I agree with your stats. But what, specifically, shall we do? We can all agree that strong family units are preferable, but what does your "war" look like?  April, my war looks like this.  Our education system must, let me repeat MUST, be completely reformed and taken out of the corrupt, and admittedly criminal, Federal governments hands. We have tried this “social engineering” experiment for decades, spent trillions of dollars, and it is still an abject failure.  I know many believe government is the ultimate savior of all our domestic, economic, social and personal problems, it isn’t. What we have allowed is a massive bureaucracy that is strictly concerned with maintaining the status quo to preserve their jobs to continue at tremendous cost to our future prosperity. In the meantime our society is collapsing into decay.  Just look at the abysmal failures our other “wars” on crime, drugs and poverty have become.  Most major cities are war zones when the street lights go on. We have over 30,000 gangs marauding our streets and neighborhoods with an army over 1 million strong. These are primarily in our “sacrosanct” sanctuary cities that we allow laws to be ignored in the name of political correctness and tolerance. But I digress.  You can buy virtually any drug in middle-school parking lots. We allow a porous border, for political purposes, which allow criminals, drugs, human-traffickers, kidnappers and drug mules to simply cross and continue to addict our citizens and create chaos. More than 22 million Americans age 12 and older - nearly 9% of the U.S. population - use illegal drugs, according to the government’s 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.The total costs of drug abuse and addiction due to use of tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs are estimated at $524 billion a year. Illicit drug use alone accounts for $181 billion in health care, productivity loss, crime, incarceration and drug enforcement. That’s nearly $2 trillion over 10 years.  Poverty affects nearly 50 million—one out of six—Americans. Since the Great Society, we have spent more than $20 TRILLION fighting this “war” and the poverty rate has not improved at all. As a matter of fact, it has increased from 14% in 1965 to 14.3% today (15.1% including recessionary effects). This year the Federal government will spend more than $668 BILLION on at least 126 different programs created to fight poverty. States and local governments add about $284 BILLION annually to fight poverty. Almost $1 TRILLION dollars is spent on poverty every year. This amounts to $20,610 for every poor person in America, or $61,830 per family of three. How many more TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS are we willing to waste on this unwinnable war?  We spend more than any nation, other than Switzerland, yet we continue to rank in the bottom ½ to 1/3 in math, science and reading as compared to other OECD nations.  42 million adult Americans can't read. 50 million adult Americans are limited to a 4th or 5th grade reading level or can only recognize a few printed words.  More than three out of four of those on welfare, 85% of unwed mothers and 68% of those arrested are illiterate. About three in five of America's prison inmates are illiterate.  U.S. adults ranked 12th among 20 high income countries in composite (document, prose, and quantitative) literacy.  Approximately 50 percent of the nation's unemployed youth age 16-21 are functional illiterate, with virtually no prospects of obtaining good jobs.  Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers, or "functionally illiterate." They can't carry out simple tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job.  Nearly half of America's adults are poor readers, or "functionally illiterate." They can't carry out simply tasks like balancing check books, reading drug labels or writing essays for a job.  Over one million children drop out of school each year, costing the nation over $240 billion in lost earnings, forgone tax revenues, and expenditures for social services.  One-fifth of high school graduates can't read their diplomas.  If this isn’t shameful enough.  54% of all teachers have limited English proficient (LEP) students in their classrooms, yet only one-fifth of teachers feel very prepared to serve them.  So, we have massive illiteracy and we only have 20% of teachers who feel they can help!  You can’t make this stuff up.  Crime, drugs, poverty and the collapse of the nuclear family are all directly and indirectly linked to our massive illiteracy problem. This is most prevalent in the minority demographics and is obvious to anyone willing to be honest. If you are functionally illiterate and have no reasonable chance of getting ANY job the results are crime, drugs, poverty and abandonment of the family unit.  Not to diminish the deadbeat dads effect on the erosion of the nuclear family, when he has no possible means to provide for himself, his only solution is to leave. In our convoluted politically correct world any accusations, especially of minorities, promptly gets you labeled as a bigot, intolerant, biased or racist. When black children are indoctrinated by their parents, peers and society that getting a good education makes you “look white”, the system fails. When we are on our second, and sometimes third, generation of illiteracy, the solution compounds itself.  There has been a dramatic shift over the past century, more exactly the past 50 years, in our education system. From academic education that predominated through the 1950’s to values education between 1960 and 1980 to the current workforce education training, or better known as outcomes based education, that obtunds our children. Education reformers have even found a nice term for our children, human capital. The mind of the average American has become “trained” (conditioned) to accept the idea that education exists solely for the purpose of getting a good paying job in the global workforce economy. Critical thinking, based on creativity and ingenuity, has been replaced with instructional adherence of programmed inputs.  Success or achievement has been minimized and mediocrity accepted and encouraged. If you can’t pass the test it must be because the test was unfair rather than the student was unprepared. Emotions have displaced competition, if you fail you still get a trophy, or in this case a passing grade. Students cheat, teachers cheat, parents cheat and we expect success.  If we expect the middle class to “lift all boats” we have to name the ship the S.S. Education. Whether we like it or not, the 21st century will be dominated by a global economy. To be competitive in this economy we must stress the science, technology, engineering and math curricula. The days of an unskilled, untrainable, illiterate high-school dropout walking into Ford Motor Company, or any other job, and making $50k with benefits is long gone. Those menial repetitive jobs have been replaced by innovation, technology, decentralization, automation and outsourcing. Today we have 6.7 billion people beyond our borders on this planet that are willing to work for whatever they can make. This won’t be changed at any time soon. Realistically we don’t want these jobs, but to be competitive and provide everyone with an equal opportunity we have to provide a solid K-12 education. We advocate a college education but most students have to take remedial classes in college to learn what they should have learned in primary and secondary school.  Education must be returned to the private sector through a system of vouchers and charter schools that create competition among teachers and students. The division of labor in schools must be returned to the simple principal of the teacher teaches and the student learns. We have to stress the basics of a good education rather than worry about whether our kids can put a condom on a cucumber or they understand why “Bobby has Two Daddy’s”. Children have to be encouraged that an education, not crime, drugs and poverty, is the only way to truly succeed.  Combined with a good, loving, supportive, family an education is the future for our great Republic.
An Amber Alert issued for two young children believed to be “in danger of serious harm from their parents” was deactivated Saturday when the kids were recovered safely in Sacramento, Calif., authorities said.