Archive for category Education Facts & Policies
Entitlement Generation’s Generation…Our Schools Train Socialists But Not Much Else!
Posted by Tom in Economics, Education Facts & Policies, State Finances, Taxation, Unions on February 12, 2010
Our great grandparents ventured from the old world to settle this new world, risking, sacrificing, and working for a better life. Our grandparents braved grueling covered wagon treks across the plains, deserts, and mountains to stretch the boundaries of this new world while scratching out a better life for their families by sacrificing and hard work even though outcomes were none too certain. Our parents fought in foreign wars to maintain the freedom and livelihood that their families enjoyed in this new world and help establish those freedoms worldwide.
Sadly we, circa babyboom generation, became complacent. Things were handed to us. We expected them. When they weren’t there we got mad. We rebelled against authority. We had “rights.” In short, we were entitled!
Why work? Why pay tuition? Job, what’s that? The state will pay it and if it doesn’t we’ll protest. Our children are entitled to the best education free. They are entitled to reduced class size and private tutoring if need be. We are the entitlement generation.
And what we are and what we have spanned is an embarrassment to our heritage.
This from the Las Vegas Sun: “UNLV students let their voices be heard on proposed education cuts. Organized walkout of classes joined by president, chancellor.” Yes, UNLV President Neal Smatresk, Chancellor Dan Klaich, and Chairman of the Board of Regents Dean Leavitt participated in the protest.
And this today from the Las Vegas Review Journal: “Desert Oasis students walk out of class to protest budget cuts.” Over 400 students walked out to protest state budget cuts to education. Of course, they won’t be punished because they got permission from Principal Emil Wozniak before the walked out!
The leftist educators and their poorly educated students are “entitlees.” They don’t know the meaning of work, sacrifice, or individual responsibility. They are the embodiment of the leftist model. How will they compete in a world where people do understand those virtues?
Sadly, we have been spending our hard earned tax dollars to support the exorbitant costs in terms of salaries, pensions, and general waste of this public unionized system. Economically, it is unsustainable.
Tom Motherway
Nevada’s Constitutional Standoff-Governor Gibbons is Correct
Posted by Tom in Economics, Education Facts & Policies, Nevada, Politics, Social Security, Unions on January 11, 2010
The spend and spend Democrats in the Nevada Legislature and their SEIU and Teachers Union (NSEA) employers have bristled at Governor Gibbons proposal to put the state back on the track of fiscal responsibility and adopt his educational reform proposal.
To refresh your memory from my January 7th post, the proposal embodied the following:
- Abolish collective bargaining. This has no place in government.
- Abolish the class-size reduction program, a make-work union rule. (There were 70 in my 3rd grade with one teacher!)
- Create a statewide school voucher system.
- Eliminate full-day kindergarten requirement.
- Repeal the prohibition against using student achievement data in teacher evaluations. Another union boondoggle rule!
Sensible, practical proposals for a state facing deficits, unfunded liabilities, and declining revenue this year and next at the very minimum. But the fat cat Democrats howled because their union bosses told them to howl!
So the Governor has asked the legislative leadership to draft bills along those lines for consideration in a special session. The Democratic leadership has refused. The Governor has contemplated a lawsuit against the legislature. Unfortunately this has echos of Guinn v. Legislature. Recall that was another phony, laughable suit filed by RINO Guinn and his then Attorney General Brian Sandoval against the legislature to compel action on the budget. Result: laughable decision derided nationally as reported in the WSJ and finally recanted by the same Supreme Court that issued it!
The Governor has correctly made his point. The Democrats have made theirs and shown who owns them–not the voters but the unions! The remedy for this constitutional standoff is at the ballot box, not in the Supreme Court. Simply, the Court cannot legally, constitutionally compel legislative action. The Democrats will have failed to do their Constitutional duty to consider legislation proposed to correct our fiscal insanity. Then, let the Nevada voters decide if they want the public servants making more money, with better benefits, and higher unfunded pensions that the average voters have. Let the Nevada voters decide if they want the state and local governments to be bankrupt while the fat cat Democrats laugh all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately, Brian Sandoval the Republican candidate opposing Governor Jim Gibbons for the party’s nomination, has shown himself to be the spend and spend RINO he was when he argued the Guinn v. Legislature lawsuit many years ago. He too opposes Governor Guinn’s very good proposals on education reform and fiscal sanity.
Tom Motherway
Kudos to Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Education Facts & Policies, State Finances, Taxation, Unions on January 7, 2010
Finally, a conservative solution to help put fiscal sanity back into the state and improve the quality of education at the same time. Jim Gibbons announced his education plan yesterday with these highlights:
- Abolish collective bargaining. This has no place in governmental service.
- Abolish the class-size reduction program. A make work union rule.
- Create a statewide school voucher program.
- Eliminate full-day kindergarten requirement.
- Repeal the prohibition against using student achievement data in teacher evaluations. Another union boondoggle rule.
Predictably, Democratic candidate Rory Reid who like his father is owned by the unions opposes the suggestions.
Sadly, Brian Sandoval also panned the proposal. Methinks Sandoval is showing his true, liberal colors. Remember, Guinn v. Legislature? Brian like Guinn was a tax and spend RINO then; doesn’t look like he has changed!
Tom Motherway
Victory Through “Three Cups of Tea”
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies, Foreign Policy, Military Policy on December 14, 2009
My friend Gene Humphrey, not short of combat experience or U.S. intelligence work, sent me an engaging little book, “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson. It opens with the heartbreaking defeat of an attempt to summit K2 and continues with the comparable struggles to build schools in the dauntingly remote Himalayas of Northern Pakistan but these are victories indeed. Gene picks his reading recommendations well; “Three Cups of Tea” has become required reading for U.S. commanders and troops deploying to Afghanistan.
“We can drop bombs and hand out condoms and build roads or put in electricity but if we don’t educate children, and especially girls, nothing will change in society….I find it somewhat amazing how very nimble and small, poor organizations are able to exploit the lack of education very quickly and use ignorance to feed their own agenda. I think that’s why I feel that educating girls is so important. If you educate a boy, you educate an individual but if you educate a girl, you educate a whole community. There is a proverb in Afghanistan that, roughly translated, says that the ink of a scholar is holier than the blood of a martyr. And I believe that. Education is our greatest weapon.” Greg Mortenson author of “Three Cups of Tea” in an MSNBC interview on December 3rd.
This is an interesting concept. Is there any validity to it? According to an article in Pars Times by Golnaz Esfandiari, Dr. Said Peyvandi who follows Iranian education from Paris said the number of Iranian girl in the educational system is growing dramatically even following the 1979 revolution and Islamization of the educational institutions. “The remarkable educational progress of Iranian girls is the last decade should be considered a social phenomenon, because its implications for social relations, the labor market, and the status of women in society and in the family are very, very important in determining the future of Iran.” A good argument can be made that we are seeing the results of that societal progress in the current demonstrations and uprising against the illegitimate regime in control of Iran, Ahmadinejad and his mullahs.
It’s good to know that the U.S. continues its support of education in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps victory will eventually come.
Tom Motherway
Out of Step, A Bit Perhaps, With America?
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies, Law, Morality & Religion in the Public Square, National Character on December 11, 2009
Obama has made some dumb appointments, like Charles Freeman as Chairman of the National Intelligence Council; remember the guy with ties to China who downplayed China’s brutal suppression of dissent and ties to Saudi Arabia who bashed Israel. Or Green Jobs Czar Van Jones the black nationalist, anti-capitalist, and self-declared Communist revolutionary. The list is long including some still serving like a Secretary of the Treasury who knowingly refused to pay taxes. But by far one of the most out of step is Kevin Jennings who is Obama’s “safe school czar.”
Kevin Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in 1990; he had to take a cut in pay from that organization when Obama appointed him to run the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools in the Education Department. In all fairness he worked in the Obama campaign and was very successful in fundraising co-chair for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) community. Now political paybacks are fine, but couldn’t Obama have found a better job for this guy?
According to a December 9th editorial in the Washington Times, Obama’s Risky-sex Czar, Jennings was involved in teaching 13-year-olds strange sex techniques! This at a youth conference at Tuffs University in March 2000. There are evidently tapes of some of the sessions which are nothing but vile smut. Things like oral sex and “fisting” were discussed with these youngsters. Evidently Jennings is also a big supporter of Harry Hay and the North American Man Boy Love Association.
Talk about the role of government. It can be open to wide dispute on many issues. But I doubt the dispute would be wide at all when it comes to teaching children about kinky sex. As the Times editorial states, “Teaching children sexual techniques is simply not appropriate.” Indeed!
I for one (with six grandchildren) don’t want Kevin Jennings anywhere around an educational system, here or elsewhere! Maybe you could find something for Kevin in the prison system, Mr. President. There at least he could do less harm!
Oh, and by the way, you previously said to judge you by your appointments…so far that judgement is that you are either “one brick short of a load” or more than a little out of touch with America. Neither of these makes one feel sanguine for America while you’re at the helm!
Tom Motherway
Labor In Control-Obama v. Calderon, Reagan, Common Sense
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies, Politics, Statism, Unions on October 19, 2009
When I was a kid I was lucky enough to get construction jobs during my summers to pay for college and law school tuition. One requirement was a union card from the laborers and hod carriers local union. The card and dues were a minor drag, a tax, on the ability to earn enough to pay for the schooling. I appreciated the union because the job paid well. There was really no apprentice program as a laborer, no school on how to shovel or wield a pick but there was “union scale” for which a share out of my paycheck for that “scale” seemed a reasonable price.
What I didn’t understand in my early years was the social and economic price exacted for the union control in the industry. Each summer I started and worked hard. Each summer I was told to “slow down, kid, ‘ya don’t wanna work us out of a job….and that’ll hurt you back when you’re my age!”
Unions promote not work productivity but work continuation. Unions promote not uniqueness or excellence, but mediocrity. Sad to say but teacher unions now control our education. Recall Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All of us are equal, some are more equal than others.” The pigs’ leader was Napoleon.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady pens an excellent opinion in the March 19th WSJ. In it she tells how big labor elected Obama and how he has started to repay the debt, Chrysler unions ahead of creditors, steel workers ahead of China our largest creditor. We see his efforts at “card check” unionization and union board membership of GM. All just down payments on the votes to come. Poor kids in DC without vouchers and without education pale in significance to Obama votes!
O’Grady contrasts Obama to Calderon in Mexico who has just ordered the federal police to take over operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly and fire 42,000 union electricians; only 8,000 are needed to do the work! She also recalls Reagan firing the air traffic controllers. Both gutsy moves from principled presidents. No doubt that Calderon has big cajones.
Bottom line here is that we have a dangerous vicious circle taking deep root at the federal level. It has grown at the state level in the public union sphere over the last decades. It will doom us to serfdom in the end. Unions elect politicians, politicians promote unions. Jobs and productivity limiting work rules abound; excellence, innovation, entrepreneurship and individuality suffer. The vicious circle feeds upon itself to ultimately disastrous ends.
So far the state and local results are untenable budget deficits on a universal basis and unfunded pension fund obligations that will drive taxpayers to indentured servitude. The national results will be much worse.
Well we now have a new Napoleon in the White House. We are just starting to suffer for it. God save us.
Tom Motherway
Best Not to be Poor in DC and Want an Education
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies on April 10, 2009
Deroy Murdock points up the hypocrisy of Obama and his Democratic Congress in killing the successful DC voucher program. Turns out that Arne “lets play hoops” Duncan hid a study showing success of the program. Guess we should expect this from these low life rulers.
With young black kids themselves begging for vouchers, why would reputedly pro-poor, pro-black Democrats kill this popular and effective school-choice program?
Follow the money: Teachers’ unions’ paid $55,794,440 in political donations between 1990 and 2008, 96 percent of it to Democrats. Senator John Ensign’s (R – Nevada) March 10 amendment to rescue DC’s vouchers failed 39-58. Among 57 Democrats voting, 54 (or 95 percent) opposed DC vouchers.
As the late Albert Shanker, former American Federation of Teachers president, once said: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
When poor, black school kids start making political donations, Democratic politicians will start fighting for them.
Deroy Murdock is a New York-based columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution.
via RealClearPolitics – Articles – Obama Admin. Stifles Favorable DC Voucher Study.