Maybe Wisconsin unions need UA Civility classes

The Arizona Daily Star has an article this morning tagged “Organized labor vows “revenge” against the Wisconsin state legislators. There is a picture showing screaming union employees who appear to be great candidates for the UA’s new “National Civility Institute”. There seems to be at a minimum, 1,800 but potentially 80,000 potential enrollees, far more than enough to help our beleaguered education budget woes.

More “failing schools”

Today’s Arizona Daily Star’s article on potential failing school rates approaching 82% should be a wake up call. What is really disturbing about the article is the disagreement by the various participants on how to solve the problem. On the one hand, President Obama is alleged to support enactment of new legislation that would loosen the accountability rules. Just what does “loosen the accountability rules” conjure up in ones mind? Maybe lower the standards so we look better. That’s what I get, what about you.

There’s obviously something wrong and I don’t have a fix-it but I do know that any attempt to throw more taxpayer money at the problem is “not” the solution. Unless of course we want to take some credence from the Public Agenda survey referenced below.

One thing that could be beneficial is for us to revisit the “merit-based pay” for teachers. Barack Obama supports merit pay for teachers. He believes teachers' pay should be increased based on performance, not "arbitrary tests". He wishes to work with the NEA to find a new system to evaluate performance. In his first major education policy speech as President, Obama said that he supports "rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay." President Obama negotiating with the NEA would be more like a “How much of a donation can we depend on to drop this”

Take a look and make up your own mind.

But there certainly are some common denominators that can be looked at when trying to determine No. 1.

1.  Many students don’t dog school. More than one in four students in 20 of the 28 OECD member countries surveyed "consider school a place where they do not want to go." With 46 percent, Belgium had the highest proportion of reluctant students, followed by Canada (37 percent), France (37 percent), Hungary (38 percent), Italy (38 percent) and the United States (35 percent).

2.  " U.S. students finished 15th in reading, 19th in math and 14th in science - and in a study that only ranked 31 nations.

3.  The testing used focused on age 15, which purports to allow countries to measure outcomes of learning that reflect both societal and education system influences, and measure students' preparedness for adult life beyond compulsory schooling."

4.  Countries with lower spending per pupil far outranked the U.S.. An average of 10 percent of 15-year-olds in the world's most developed countries have top-level reading literacy skills - that is, they are "able to understand complex texts, evaluate information and build hypotheses, and draw on specialized knowledge." Australia, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and the UK scored highest in top-level readers, with between 15 percent and 19 percent of their students registering in that range.

5.  In terms of gender, 15-year-old females outperformed males in reading in every country. In mathematics or science, however, there were no significant differences between the sexes. "Significant differences between countries reflect the varying abilities of countries to provide a learning environment or broader context that benefits both genders equally," the study noted. "In all participating countries, males are more likely than females to be at Level 1 or below in reading - in the case of Finland, the best performing country, over three times as likely."

6.  The U.S. has the 3rd highest spending per secondary student in this study.

And coincidentally, perhaps another element of educational quality surfaced in another recent survey from Public Agenda (www.publicagenda.org). That survey asked U.S. school leaders, "Do you have enough freedom and autonomy to remove ineffective teachers from the classrooms?" Only 28 percent of the 853 surveyed public school superintendents said that they "have enough" autonomy to get rid of bad teachers. Of 909 participating principals, only 32 percent said that they had enough clout to dismiss bad teachers. Put another way, in the Public Agenda survey, the folks supposedly steering the ship weren't No. 1.

 

OECD/PISA Study:
Reading Literacy

1. Finland
2. Canada
3. New Zealand
4. Australia
5. Ireland
6. Korea
7 United Kingdom
8. Japan
9. Sweden
10. Austria
11. Belgium
12. Iceland
13. Norway
14. France
15. United States
16. Denmark
17. Switzerland
18. Spain
19. Czech Republic
20. Italy
21. Germany
22. Liechtenstein
23. Hungary
24. Poland
25. Greece
26. Portugal
27. Russian Federation
28. Latvia
29. Luxembourg
30. Mexico
31. Brazil

Source for all charts: OECD/PISA. Outcomes of Learning: Results from the 2000 Program for International Student Assessment of 15-Year-Olds in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy.

Is the American voter wrong, again?

Everywhere we turn today we are faced with the dastardly acts of the newly formed “Tea Party”. Most recently they are being chastised for doing what they were elected to do; “reduce government and cut government spending”. From where did these perverts emerge and what poor informed citizen had the audacity to vote for them? Look around folks, your neighbor and their neighbor must have voted them in. Maybe you and I are part of that group? They were sent there in place of both Republican and Democratic nominees and incumbents. We listened and bought into their mandate that we must trim government size and spending. Well folks, it’s time to pay the Piper. But let’s be realistic, they are not the problem, we are. Or at least I think we are. Yes, you and me, the voters, especially those of us that are age challenged. We want our cake and we want to eat it to boot. We say to cut spending on the one hand, yet on the other we say don’t touch our Social Security, our Medicare or our Medicaid. Well hell folks, that’s about 50-60% of our spending and it grows day in and day out, hour by hour and minute by minute. The unfortunate thing is that we want them to cut any and everything unless it effects us. Take our freebies and we will hate you. Actually they aren’t freebies, since we, or most of us, have been paying into them for 40 or more years. And we damn well want our pound of flesh. However the time to reconsider is here and now. And better we do it and not pawn it off on the future generation. So here is what I consider proposing.

Social Security could consider:

     1. Pushing early retirement to age 65 and full retirement to age 70

     2. Have a declining scale of benefits based on a persons financial worth with a minimum floor for all, no matter how wealthy

     3. Increase the wage ceiling but only charge 1/2 the rate over $150,000 and reduce it to 1/4 the rate over $500,000

     4. Tax 100% of benefits, not the 85%, for all recipients with income over $175,000

     5. Change mandatory withdrawal from IRA’s and others to age 73 but increase the minimum.

     6. Obviously we will need a formula to consider inflation, deflation et. al.

     7. Have a start date that eases us in, and out.

Now that is just for starters. Put on your thinking caps and add or subtract from this if you have the mettle. Then let your Congressperson know what you want them to do

Medicare and Medicaid are next up.

Sweet smell of freedom

Libya is making a run at overthrowing a tyrant government. Almost 235 years after we did the same.

And they don't have a Second Amendment; hell they don't even have a Constitution.

Number of Privately Owned Firearms

The estimated total number of guns held by civilians in Libya is 900,000.

Military Firearms

The defence forces of Libya are reported to have 535,200 firearms

Law Enforcement Firearms

Police in Libya are reported to have 22,022 firearms.

On paper the free militia of Libya has a 1.6 to 1 majority of guns over Gaddafi and his henchmen.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/libya

Say what you want but our Constitution states that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Thomas Jefferson summed it up when he was quoted as saying:

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Mid East Countries Looking for Democracy.

In mid-January the people of Tunisia rose up and smote down their authoritarian government. Then just a little over a week ago we saw the same thing erupt in Egypt. Topping that off, we see today that Jordan’s king has replaced his entire government. It now appears that this unrest is spreading at a faster pace than anticipated in other countries.

Just where this is going is anybody’s guess at this time, or is it?

Most of these corrupt governments have been propped up for years by our government and now that they appear on the brink of falling we are not sure where we need to place our support. For my 2 cents worth I say we need to support the people and not the government. I would rather have the 150 million look at us as a friend that supported their efforts than a country who continued to support a corrupt government.

On another side of the coin, buried away in the today’s Arizona Daily Star, on Page A18, in the bottom right hand corner is an article entitled “Tunisia – 219 killed in ongoing protests, UN says”. The article goes on to say that a Jewish synagogue was set afire by a "gang". The article further states that this appears to be the first attack on a Jewish institute so far. Does anyone want to venture on how many more there will be in the coming months?

In Cairo the daunted Muslim Brotherhood has been instrumental in organizing the mainstream protests. Yes, I know, it is politically incorrect to go down this road. However, you won’t hear it from anyone in Washington.

However, this just in: President Obama “just” got back in the fray, so things might heat up now. When you visit the “fray” site take a look at the “halo” around our president’s head; really rather ominous don’t you think.

Just released is a demand by Muslims demanding that the new Prime Minister of Jordan must step down. Obviously they didn’t get who or what they wanted so now the demands start?

I urge each of you to get involved, don’t just set there and watch things unravel in front of you on the tube. Let your government know what you expect of them. I am not asking for you to support me, but I am asking that you do something in a manner consistent with what you believe

Your dead, yells Arizona tragedy victim.

One week to the day and after being shot two times in the tragedy involving Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, James Eric Fuller attended another town hall meeting. Afterwards he took pictures and yelled out at a tea party leader “YOUR DEAD”. This little altercation was limited to a small article in the Arizona Daily Star "Your Dead". Do you wonder how the press would have covered this if it had been part of a Democratic town hall? Does anyone really have any questions as to what side of the aisle the Star resides on? Is this vitriol rhetoric? I think not, just my attempt to call a “spade a spade”.

Obama, the never ending opportunist.

Our President has seized on the tragedy in Tucson to turn the attention away from his failed and detrimental policies. It is unfortunate that he leeches on to the country’s remorse over the shooting of our Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and uses this as a stepping stone to the voters in 2012. He will of course expound on the virtues of his repeated attempts to reach across the aisle and of continuously being rebuffed by the other side. What you will not hear is what they have done to immediately cope with the unemployment situation, how they will address the glut of government spending that has this country on the thresh hold of bankruptcy, or what is being done to secure our borders.

He will talk about the virtues of Gabrielle and what she has meant to the citizens of Arizona as well as the country. And he will be right, except his comments it will be from the re-election environment as opposed to being from the heart. Yes, I know, I should at least give him the benefit of the doubt, but do any of you honestly believe that he is coming out of compassion for Gabrielle? It is nothing more than a photo op to embellish his re-election efforts in 2010. In February 2010, Congressman John Murtha died and President Obama sent his hatchet man, Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/09/john-murtha-barack-obama-democrats.

If per chance there is to be a speech of compassion, it should be delivered by the First Lady Michelle Obama, who by her behind the scene involvement with youth in general, has clearly demonstrated that she really cares.

I hate to bemoan the point but the President will use this platform to further his socialistic agenda. It will also afford him the opportunity to expound the need for tighter gun control which we all know that Congresswoman Giffords was opposed to http://giffords.house.gov/2008/09/VOTESTOREPEALBANONHANDGUNSINTHENATIONSCAPITAL.shtml.

The last thing that is needed is more laws when it is apparent that they cannot enforce the ones that we already have.