In 1988, my first and only child was born and with her birth came the almost indescribable and unimaginable mixture of emotions that I’m certain most new parents experience. The minute she appeared, I knew without hesitation that someone with a severely twisted sense of humor was standing over some cosmic blender creating ad hoc a numbing concoction of torturous emotions.
This twisted chef with green drool dripping from its evil grin, glowing eyes and demonic chuckle was tossing in equal parts of excitement, trepidation, fear, angst, joy, hope, worry and some extra “holy shit; what in hell did we do?” then for a little extra fun pours in some exhaustion and some god-awfully smelly diapers; turns on the blender to puree and sits back to enjoy the fun.
And there you have it; the very reason(s) my daughter is an only child AND my utter confusion as to why the rest of the world fails to see and utilize the easiest, cheapest, most natural form of population-limiting birth control available; the experience of the first child.
What person bearing any semblance of sanity whatsoever would do such a thing more than once??? Even in my youthful stupidity I learned after the first time not to jump out of the back of a pickup onto the gravel road while traveling at 30mph, so I ask; why does ANYONE repeatedly slam their heads against the proverbial concrete sidewalk?
As if the concoction wasn’t quite right, the demon cook, now bored with the original maelstrom swirling around in the pureed mass of what was once a stable, happily married, fun-loving, human couple belatedly tosses in education to spice it up a bit.
What to do! Where to go! How do we know what’s right for her? “Holy shit; what in hell did we do?”
In California, shortly after the human can of gasoline was tossed into our fire, a hotly debated issue began to emerge during what can easily be seen now as the dawn of the decline of the world’s seventh largest economy; a debate centered around what, perhaps arguably was once the premier system of easily accessible higher education as it began showing the signs of failure and in fact is now literally coming apart at the seams. Granted, we had a few years to worry about higher education, but the immediate concern of primary education was even then a system that was already in the throes of decay.
If one studies education in the United States they can readily see a less than stellar system from the very beginning. We have, rather than education, a means to instill conformity and rudimentary training, the development of which, curiously enough coincided with the Industrial Revolution.
For the average Jack and Jill in the United States we don’t actually have a system of personal education and never have; what we do have is a hodgepodge of the six “Rs” - readin, rote, ritin, rithmatic, religion and racism; all traits that were necessary to work in the United States’ industrial complex developed simultaneously with the “education” system of the mid 19th century, the system that still exists (all be it in a dilapidated form) today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson - “We learn nothing rightly until we learn the symbolical character of life….I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.”
Also, in the womb of American education was a system developed in the far northeastern sector of the United States, a system of vouchers which would allow a student to attend a public school in a local community outside that in which the student lived as a stop-gap measure for small townships which could not afford to establish a formal education system on their own.
However! In the mid 1950s, an economist and metacapitalist by the name of Milton Friedman promoted the concept of vouchers for an entirely different reason – to promote privatization of public education. Friedman’s theory was that privatizing the education system would promote “healthy competition,” thereby improving the quality of education. Given the fact that this debate was considered as long ago as 62 years, gives reason to believe that education in America was less than stellar even then.
Friedman’s theory of “free market education” is widely accepted by most, if not all right-wing ultra-conservatives (and to be fair, a small congregation of “Democrats” as well) including billionaire John T Walton (son of Walmart’s founder Sam Walton), Grover Norquist, David Boaz and Ed Crane of the Cato Institute; conservative author Dinesh D'Souza; Dean Clancy, who was an education policy analyst for House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert; and Howard Phillips, the once president of the Conservative Caucus.
Wisconsin State Representative Chris Sinicki, who was a Milwaukee School Board member when vouchers began in Milwaukee in 1990, says there is no doubt that vouchers "are a Republican strategy to take down public education and the unions. This is partisan politics, completely."
Other very notable conservatives include John McCain and the Republican Party’s heir-apparent, Willard Mitt Romney.
When you look at the true underlying reasons in support for privatization of education, you quickly realize that it has absolutely nothing to do with education in and of itself, in fact I dare say that most of the supporters probably couldn’t care less about the benefits of real education for those in what they perceive as the lessor ranks of America’s society; or perhaps they do care and fear the results that educating the masses would give rise to; at any rate the issue emanates purely from political and economical classification; it divides the classes more effectively than anything else other than direct ethnic and racist policies.
From an ultra-capitalist’s “republic” perspective, the privatization of education accomplishes the following:
- Creates a multi-billion dollar windfall for corporations
- Aids in the ever-present goal of the conservative’s superiority concept of separating the cream from the milk so to speak
- Reduces the concept of public sector
- Drastically reduces, if not totally disbanding unions related to education, one of the few remaining union strongholds and arguably the most influential
- Redistribution of wealth and political power
The name of another supporter should be of no surprise to you for his home state continues to make attempts to privatize education and George W Bush continues to promote his reign’s failures in education policies.
In less than a month, on June 22, King George II will bring his charade-parade to Las Vegas to continue his promotion of separating the economic and social classes in the U.S. He will be speaking (if one can logically use that term within the same sentence as George W Bush) at Mandalay Bay during a meeting of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities – APSCU an organization that promotes furthering the already misuse of more than 32 billion dollars in OUR tax money for private business, a presentation sponsored by an organization highly suspect in fraudulent use of non-profit funds to influence politics – Pearson
Pearson is a large, publicly-traded, corporate conglomerate diversified in publishing textbooks (ask ANY student about the absurd costs of textbooks and see for yourself the wondrous effects of capitalism in education), testing and certification, education software development and consumer publication.
Any time King George II is in town, I will be there along with the rest of Occupy Las Vegas, to protest the continued funneling of tax dollars to private organizations. We need to improve education for our children and for the future of this country, not hand over to Wall Street our tax money to do what we’ve seen them do best – destroy our future.
There are social benefits that should NEVER be privatized; education, healthcare, fire and police protection, social aid and government itself and I worry the latter on the list is not far away as we continue to see our social programs be consumed as rapidly as we consume fossil fuels.
I worry about the future of my daughter and the future of all Earth’s children as our politicians continue to give what wealth we have remaining to the private corporations to expand the ever-widening gap between the elite and the rest of us.
For more on this story, see David Halperin’s article on “Huff Post.”
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Rachel Velamur
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Eljekar
Poor Woman
sagemerlin
James M. Emmerling
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Comments
And you mention privatizing FIRE departments? That's a new one for me. Made my heart jump. I wonder if they are doing that anywhere? Because that is terrifying.
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/07/15/time-to-re-privatize-fire-depa
http://reason.org/files/c2bbfe415eccfdff424a2bf7c8a20585.pdf
People forget history so quickly.
Fire departments were in fact private companies early in American history which would often create havoc with one another during attempts to fight fires in order to move business away from their competition, thereby allowing the fires to destroy property that could otherwise have been saved.
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R♥
Jack – I’m not one to fear much, but there’s one thing in this world that can truly frighten the hell out of me and that would be a nun. I worked for several years for a healthcare company called Catholic Health Initiatives, prior to which the only contact with a Catholic was watching “The Flying Nun” (I thought Sally Field was one hot little lady).
On the day I was informed by the company’s CFO that I'd been selected as the one to be working for them, I vividly recall thinking; “well how cool this is going to be; working with sweet, little, matronly ladies running around the hospital all dressed in black and white robes and hats.”
MAN! Was I ever baptized by fire when I inadvertently let one of them down one day! 12 years later my knuckles still hurt and she didn’t lay a hand on me. Give me the devil to deal with any day; those “little ladies” are ferocious.
I really couldn’t care less about EPs, but I do care about friends, one of which I proudly claim you to be, so not to worry; your comments, as always are welcome and enjoyed.
You wonder what it feels like to those selfish politrickians who've sold us out.
It feels like it would to anyone who has a chance to rub shoulders with, and receive orders directly from, his god. Their god is power and wealth. They, being largely untalented in any useful skill, sell what they have, their souls, to gain some small portion of it.
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The first professional, publicly supported fire department was founded in 1853.
The New York City Police Department was founded in 1845, but
We also know for a fact, that the very first public school, The Boston Latin School, wasn't founded until 1635. Before that, education was also accomplished through private instruction or by the church....but what's wrong with our educational system isn't who controls it but, rather, the structure of the system itself.
Here's the conundrum in a nutshell: what's wrong with our educational system is that it was designed for a previous era, before the computer revolution changed everything.
Once a child has learned the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, absolutely everything else that child needs to learn is a available online.....if what you want for them to do is to learn.
If, on the other hand, you want professional credentials and the access they confer, well, you can choose between old style brick and mortar institutions or the newer online educational establishments....but note that virtually 100% of these new institutions are private, for-profit operations.
Education was once the sole province of the churches. There were no such things as public schools. It was only with the age of enlightenment that free or public schools sprang up to compete with the church run educational establishment.
The key difference between church based schools and the public school systems was the precise doctrines their students were indoctrinated with....and it was the unique nature of the public schools that they did not teach from the religious perspective.
To anoint public school systems with some extraordinary merit because they were free - to the extent that they were supported by tax revenues - merely begs the question of why our literacy rates have fallen so dramatically since the introduction of the factory school concept championed by Thomas Dewey and now practiced across the United States.
What Dewey did was to take education away from the context of the holistic environment, where a cohort of children studied together and advanced according to their accomplishments rather than their ages, and replaced it with a rigid system in which students were advanced grade by grade until they graduated...by timing out of the system.
I was completely taken in by the charter school concept, wrote several proposals to establish them, but it always bothered me that a specific requirement was to eschew unionized employees. Fortunately, none of my proposals were funded but many others were.
In fact, however, the extreme ultra-right is dead set upon creating a two tiered society. When we talk about the 1%, we are falling for their rhetoric, not ours.... and education reform is one of their tools.
The actual division is closer to 20/80%, which is the classical division between haves and have-nots in any culture. For the past 65 years, since World War II, we have been living in an illusion of collective wealth. What really happened was that some of the wealth leaked out into the larger society...and now it's being gathered in again.
As long as we labor under the illusion of the 99 to 1 relationship, we will fail to realize that many people whom we think of as allies are really adversaries.
Within the 80% there's another 3o% who THINK they are part of the 20%. Their lives resemble the lives of the "real" haves to the extent where they align themselves with the power-holding elite and in fact provide the balance of political power....but they remain wage slaves, indentured to their jobs, cemented into place by the matrix of desires and debts that ensnare them beyond extrication.
The elite only want to educate the 30% far enough to make them useful workers. The 20% are educated further, to make them useful as creators and developers. The one percent are born to rule and are educated that way in certain elite school and post-graduate programs, including the military, for that purpose.
The true revolutionary knows that the deck is stacked and that there are no peaceful means through which we can demand a new deal. The only way we are going to get a new deal is to throw out the old deck and break open a new one.
For me, the answer is collectivity, but I have long-since despaired of finding qualified people willing to enter into collective organizations because those who have the capacity for such efforts are already ensconced in the system and have no wish to exchange the creature comforts they get there for a new and uncertain future.
But I am just a frustrated old man speaking from the perspective that comes from the end of life. I wish you well in your protests and your witnessing activities....but I'm too used up to join them, and that frustrates me too.
It's amazing how many things can be tied to the Pareto Principle, isn't it. It's one concept that seems to fit everything.
Reading of Romney's support for vouchers so students could attend private schools is just one example.
Or the mentioning of the so called OWS protesters as over educated children of hippies now living in their parents basements and enjoying a life of unemployment...
Education of the young in this country through public education is less than stellar by any account, but is at least provided for currently. Underfunding our public schools and deliberately making these schools suffer the consequences will scar many of our children forever.
All the while championing the wonders of private schools and pointing out the problems of public schools but failing to mention funding cuts brought on by the elitists...
I find this scam beyond the pale Bob. Gagging on my coffee at the whole mess...
Little do they know that the same elite whom they so admire is actively, and with conscious intent, working against the interests of the majority.
This is one of those social concepts that one can discuss for years without settling it. The only evidence that I can offer is the amazing way in which that same majority repeatedly votes for political parties that openly espouse policies detrimental to the majority.
To my mind this is also evidence of how confused people are by the unnatural blending of an economic system, capitalism, with our social system. This blending has led to economic principles being advanced as social principles. And herein lies the rub. By doing this we put our economic system above our social system, forgetting that we came together and formed a social system so as to share the burden of common requirements, education being one of them.
The economic system is not fit to rule the social system. It is properly fit only to serve the society. It must be controlled and regulated firmly and without relaxation at all times.
Until we take back control of the raging monster that is greed capitalism, our society will suffer horribly. Capitalism CAN be controlled. Capitalism MUST be controlled. Capitalism not "owned" by society is an abomination that has led many fine people to adopt its mirror image concept, socialism... another disgusting concept that maintains the pyramid shaped power structure of capitalism, changing only the fat butts of those who sit in the seats of power.
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Also, just to add to your education quote above, here's my favorite quote on the subject, from Thoreau (1850): "What does education do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out a a free, meandering brook."
Great coverage, Bob. Thanks for updating us on this subject so thoroughly.
R
The month I left healthcare and the workforce for good, the local state-funded hospital, University Medical Center; a typical teaching hospital that we see all over the U.S. associated with universities, this one, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Medical School, was having very, very serious issues.
These issues were not just the standard; "where do we get the next dollar from," but "what services PLURAL are we going to have to cut to stay open.” This bullshit we euphemistically call Obamacare has done virtually nothing to advance health care for those who desperately need it, but everything to advance the corporate bottom line for the uber-rich insurance companies.
As a result of state budget cuts, the ONLY publicly-funded cancer center in the entire southern two thirds of Nevada closed and since they are connected, I imagine UNR (Reno) followed closely behind, the only publicly-funded dialysis center closed and the only publicly-funded kidney transplant center closed.
And what was even more disturbing (but not particularly surprising) was the response from the for-profit healthcare sector such as the one I worked in; they were disturbed NOT that people would no longer have a viable place to receive healthcare in absolutely vital areas (life expectancy is extraordinarily short with untreated cancer, without kidneys or dialysis), but that they would have to pick up the tab in providing these services at their expense, for it’s illegal to turn people away from hospitals because they have no ability to pay. In corporate healthcare this is referred to as “indigent care,” a phrase used by CEOs and CFOs with acid dripping from their tongues.
It is beyond the absurd that we cut funding in education then cut funding for the social benefits commonly connected with the undereducated, all the while corporate executives, boards of directors, and high-level management continue to increase their own pay on a whim.
I can only hope that my daughter in law (who is a newly minted professor of sociology at Old Dominion University) will at some point engage in some research on all this--but I kind of doubt it.
I love Bill Maher's work. Wonderful discussion group.
:P
It certainly would be nice if either of you could point me to the link that shows evidence of these education cuts. Let me spare you a nasty case of carpel tunnel in your efforts to scour the internet for proof, we spend more on education today than ever before. Sadly, the money we spend largely goes to pay the pension of teachers that retired long ago.
So I agree with you Mission, schools are underfunded but not because education funding is declining. Thankfully, there is a solution. Private schools don’t bow down to the egregious demands of unions by giving their teachers unsustainable benefits. They recognize that the focus of education should be on the kids and not on the teachers. To the extent a private school would ever shift funding from the classroom to retired teachers, guess what would happen to their enrollment?
Boomer, you can add to your to-do list a search for the link that shows funding on healthcare is declining.
Johnny Fever is 100% right. We are spending more than any other nation on education but a larger share of the annual education budget goes to covering the pensions of retired employees....but that's a function of having been PUBLIC employees, not a function of having been educators per se....and the practice of giving public employees such generous pensions developed from two factors: the belief that public employees were compensated at a much lower rate than equivalent employees in the private sector, making it more difficult for them to provide for their own retirement, and the absence third party retirement programs for public employees such as 401K plans and, where they existed, the absence of employer contributions to the funds.
The question is whether it is moral to renege on promises made to retired public employees, who traded lower salaries for extensive retirement benefits, or legal for that matter.
This took me maybe five minutes....
http://www.mn2020.org/issues-that-matter/education/education-funding-the-downhill-slide-continueshttp://www.mn2020.org/issues-that-matter/education/education-funding-the-downhill-slide-continues
http://fairschoolfundingcoalition.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50&Itemid=56
http://www.arizonaeducationnetwork.com/2011/09/arizona-education-funding-cuts-dramatic/
I commend you for taking my challenge. It helps me understand how easily education funding data can be manipulated. For example, your first link (second link didn’t open) only focuses on one aspect of education funding, state aid. It also happens to be the highly controversial product of a liberal organization committed to advancing a liberal agenda (see CPBB website).
Education budgets are largely funded locally via property taxes with assistance from both the State and Federal Government. So focusing on state aid, as the CPBB has done, is misleading. One would have to go into the budget of a school district to truly be able to say conclude that funding has gone down.
Take a look at the linked national chart; it’s indicative of three things. 1) there was ample financial resources available during the stimulus year to cover shortfalls in future years (translation: state leaders should have conserved rather than pigged-out) 2) on a national level, we currently spend more on education than any year but the stimulus year 3) There is little if any link to money spent on public education and good public education.
http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/education-federal-budget
Sagemerlin:
I disagree with your final question. Today’s students and tomorrow’s taxpayers shouldn’t have to suffer for the financial decisions of their elders. Much like a company that can’t have bit off more than they can chew, municipalities can and should go into bankruptcy. They’ll emerge from bankruptcy with a clean balance sheet and the education budget will once again be used for education.
As for education, private delivery with money following the child is also common in Europe, and has never been a problem in New England--both Vermont and Maine permit "tuitioning" in rural areas where it is cheaper to send kids to private schools than to build a school and maintain it. See The Myth of the Common School by Charles Glenn. Here in Boston, a bank president once made the mistake of saying he could hire students with better English from schools in the Netherlands than Boston high schools. For telling the truth I don't think his p.r. people ever let him near a microphone again.
Cause it feels good when we stop!! ~:D
Rated!
has slowed down. Largely because families, certain families, are
having less children , because it takes so damn much time and money
to raise & educate them...
so we have an upper echelon in the industrialized nations
with a zero or less population growth...
yes, even less developed nations, or should i say cultures,
are cutting back too...
the future? An oligarchy as always.
there will be mighty class conflicts in the upcoming century,
unless...something happens to convince the oligarchy
to , well, makes steps at collectivizing, sharing...
i cannot see what that could be.
well, yes i do...a natural or manmade or health catastrophe...
Woman – it is rather captivating isn’t it, but it also dredged up emotions for me that I thought had long ago dissipated somewhere into the cosmos; an extraordinarily unsettled feeling, even an all out revulsion from deep inside that developed from years upon years of living around the searing hate, the ignorance, the closed minded stupidity, god, “America; love it or leave it,” “blacks (content edited for the sake of decency) have it better now than they used to, if they don’t like it, they should go back to Africa,” vote republican because, well, just because. People like this hate even other white people, for "their white is not our white." What a way to live and I lived amongst it for the first 20 years of my life. Soooo damned glad I don’t anymore.
Johnny – Google education cuts and healthcare/Medicare cuts; you’ll find more sources than you can possibly assimilate without the need for me to complete a task list for you.
However, I both agree and disagree with one very important point you made; today’s students and tomorrows generations should not have to pay for poor decision-making by the powers in place now. However, the sad and more importantly, the painful truth is that’s precisely what they will be doing unless something is done about it NOW. Waiting for things to change such as waiting for municipalities to go bankrupt is not an acceptable approach to change; it never has been and is precisely what got us where we are today – everyone waiting for things to get better; they won’t.
Those percentages of elitists to commoners, that Merlin and I have been discussing, whichever numbers one wants to use? They will not allow things to become better for us, they have a vested interest in direct opposition to doing so and as Skypixie pointed out so well; as long as we continue to link together economic and social issues, we’re simply begging for problems.
Education is a social issue, not an economic issue, as is healthcare; everyone has a right to be healthy and receive necessary healthcare just as everyone, not just those who can afford such has the right to a high quality education and that education, as Merlin pointed out should be geared towards the individual’s needs rather than the system’s demands.
A note about healthcare: In the later 1970s, a concept known as DRG’s (Diagnosis-Related Groups) also now often referred to as Diagnostic Regulatory Groups, was developed by some gentlemen at Yale. The concept was finalized and implemented beginning in 1980 and the intent was simply to identify products (in reality of course, services) offered by hospitals. The story is long and convoluted, so I’ll cut it severely short here; the end results were that the insurance companies began using them as a means to reduce their liabilities to their policy-holders by reducing reimbursement to hospitals. Despite the fact that healthcare is a massive industry, insurance companies wielded then as they do now far more power in the political arena and that power eventually lead to what is now known as the corporatization of healthcare.
Out of sheer necessity for survival due to the advent of those DRGs, hospitals began forming groups in the mid 1980s to combine both purchasing power to reduce their second highest expense – supplies/equipment and to combat the impact of the DRGs imposed not only by private insurance companies, but by, I believe around 1983 or 1984 Medicare too. If you’ve received care in any hospital in the U.S. since the later 1983 or 4, you have witnessed first-hand the disaster of combining capitalism and social benefits.
Corporate healthcare has one goal in mind now and it has absolutely nothing to do with patients, health, care, or employees, but rather shareholder returns. In fact, ask any nurse today who has worked in a hospital since the 1980s and they will be happy to espouse the evils of finance mixed with healthcare for the patients.
Combibing healthcare and Wall Street is combining one of the most diametrically opposing concepts imaginable, in fact corporate healthcare institutions now view patients as a necessary evil, hell even a pain in the ass byproduct of the business in which they are truly in – venture investments.
Merlin – one question, well maybe several; one I will PM you with. You’re correct as I would expect, but I wonder if perhaps an overhaul of the system is necessary to separate economics from social issues for the sake of the future. You and I are in the same age bracket I think, or at least close enough to claim to be and I wonder; perhaps if we do as many before us did and sacrifice a bit of what we have now for the betterment of future generations, would we then be progressing down a truly morally correct path? Maybe those retirement funds (if they’re even still viable after Wall Street absconded with so many of them) could be diminished a bit voluntarily; so many questions for which I have no answers, as I grew up with capitalism just as most in the West thereby probably coloring my perception beyond my ability to see through it.
A renovation, while I am quick to write and scream to make changes, is beyond massive and I honestly wonder; where is the starting point? How do we move something the size of the movement that’s going on around the world today towards a common goal and real achievement? Moving an entire planet is far beyond my comprehension.
I will PM you the next question, I think you may be intrigued if nothing else and I would love your feedback on it.
Con – education: Last night I read two very pertinent and astutely written posts regarding this very thought process (Fusun A’s “is Freedom of the Press Under Attack in Montreal and Siobhan Curious’ “Who’s to Blame for the Mess in Montreal”), both very articulately posed the issue they’re struggling with in Canada; in essence, Montreal VS the rest of Canada.
Canada’s student voice is worrisomely muted when it comes to Montreal’s issue with rising tuition and the laws passed to prevent public vocalization of those issues. The thought process being; “why should I fight for someone whose tuition rates are lower than mine?” This is speaking of course of Montreal VS the other Canadian provinces in relative terms of tuition rates and this is fragmenting the issue in very localized areas, a tactic politicians and the rich love us for.
I think standing up for what is right is not a local issue, it must be a global one; otherwise we will never succeed in changing anything other than perhaps local plumbing laws or which night the community centers present bingo.
Private fire: I don’t think we can accept a few successes as a means to preclude a disastrous future. In 19th century New York, competing fire companies often created more damage than they prevented. Perhaps it works OK for now, but I’d personally dislike being on the wrong end of a fire when a private company allows my house to burn to the ground for being a couple days late with an installment for their services. And that will certainly happen as privatization of such services continue.
Tink – too funny. Or perhaps the narcotics given us make us think we feel better : - )
James – I’ve occasionally half-wondered if a population reaches some sort of critical mass and like nuclear fission explodes, instantaneously vaporizing entire civilizations. Maybe that’s why the Mayans seemingly vanished or the plague was so effective in reducing Earth’s population. Maybe it’s Mother Nature’s means of mass natural selection. A one-stop extinction shop.
rather -
Combining healthcare and Wall Street is combining two of the most diametrically opposing concepts imaginable
And as I've grown older, I've become very, very cynical about Friedman and what he believed. I've come to see him as little more than a shill for private interest at all costs, shoved into the limelight during a period when the system found it harder and harder to discover new sources of real productive profit.
Rated.
I’m like you. Age seems to have grown brain cells that actively rebel against my youth (thank god for morphine : - ). I remember reading some moronic phrase somewhere; the phrase was something to the effect “for a person who is a liberal when they are young, they are young; for a person who is a liberal when they are old, they are stupid.” I think it was worded differently, but the essence is there.
It seems as we grow older, hair disappears from where it’s suppose to be only to reappear where it’s not suppose to be, our bellies and asses become one, our energy gives way to nap time and our intelligence turns to wisdom. Apparently, despite all my efforts to the contrary, I have absolutely no influence on the former of either example, but I’m absolutely fine with the latter in both examples.
“However, I both agree and disagree with one very important point you made; today’s students and tomorrows generations should not have to pay for poor decision-making by the powers in place now. However, the sad and more importantly, the painful truth is that’s precisely what they will be doing unless something is done about it NOW. Waiting for things to change such as waiting for municipalities to go bankrupt is not an acceptable approach to change; it never has been and is precisely what got us where we are today – everyone waiting for things to get better; they won’t.”
That something was proposed by your next President, read your own blog, start with the title. You seem to think it’s a bad idea; would you please enlighten me as to a better one?
Just be crystal clear, Romney is proposing vouchers. If public schools are superior to private schools students can continue to go to public school. Newsflash: they aren’t better and they won’t go there.
Fever – I just posted around 23 paragraphs containing somewhere in the neighborhood of 1500 words, 5 bullet-points, 1 quote, 9 links and one video to enlighten you.
You seem to have a very odd fixation on assigning folks tasks; the Web is a wonderful and powerful place to gain enlightenment and since you don’t seem terribly interested in reading things already researched and written in B&W for you, try Google and look it up yourself; it’s easy to use and perhaps you may even benefit a bit from doing a little research on your own.
Walter – I think Santini was my father’s middle name, he only spent a short time in the Navy during WWII and Korea, but apparently he was quite predisposed to the syndrome for her picked it up ever so well.