I'll be back

This will be the last blog I write for about 10 days. For the next 10 days I’ll be spending time with my mother, step-father, daughter and four of my grandchildren, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have to blog. Don’t give up on me. I’ll be back.
I love my family. All them! I can’t imagine anyone not loving their family as much as I do mine. As a mother, I look at my mother and have greater respect for her every day. I’m not sure I could have done as well as she has done dealing with the same situations she has dealt with. Each generation has its own hardships.

We learn to appreciate our mothers when we become mothers. We learn to love without condition when we hold our babies in our arms and watch them struggle into adulthood. No loving mother wants their child to suffer or to live in hopeless conditions. That is why it is so important that we defend our democracy and that we don’t let it go so far to the left or to the right.

It would be dangerous for our children if we allowed our country to develop into a full Socialist state. While we have some socialist programs, it would be dangerous for our children if we allowed the government to take over too many areas of our lives. I want my children and grandchildren to have opportunities to advance in life that are not dependent on the government making the decisions for them. I want them to be as self-sufficient as possible.

It is equally important that we don’t go too far to the right. We must take care of the members of society who are vulnerable and can’t take care of themselves. We must also insist that the government protect us when we can’t protect ourselves and we are not always able to protect ourselves. The more complex the society, the harder it is. I can’t protect myself from contaminated waters sources when industries dump pollutants that can make their way into the water supply.

None of us can protect ourselves from the damage caused by the oil spill. We really need government to effectively regulate that industry. However, government should not focus on taking over business as they did with General Motors. That is not the role of government.

As a loving mother, I want my children to have the opportunities that capitalism offers, but I also want them to be protected from exploitation, environmental contamination, and unethical practices. We need a government that is large enough to do the job, but not so large that it takes over everything for us. Long live democracy.

Well I’ll be back on line in about ten days with some new stories.

Stick to the facts

I have been sitting in meetings for the past month with adults who cannot speak with civility when discussing issues. It is wearing on the nerves. How do people get to be adults and believe they can speak in any tone of voice they wish? Lack of civility simply escalates the problems, it doesn’t address solve any of the issues that are being discussed.

These same adults preened themselves and made sure that everyone in the room knew that their mothers’ had raised them correctly and taught them well. They called on their religious backgrounds to give evidence that it was okay for them to speak disrespectfully and block out any point of view that was not their own.

It seems to be human nature to take a position and to justify it even when it is not the opinion of the majority. Each generation of people have their own definition of acceptable behavior. For my generation, you didn’t take ugly in public. If you had to have a “discussion” with someone, it was done in private, resolved, and the parties emerged with an “understanding.” It was considered vulgar to shout at people, insult their ideas and insult them.

I insulted a teacher when I was in elementary school and my father took me home to explain it to me. Then he took me back to school and stood in the doorway while I apologized. The apology had to be as public as the insult.

Okay, maybe everyone didn’t have the same rearing that I had, but my rear was definitely held accountable for the tone of voice that I used as well as the words that came out of my mouth.

The mid-term election is approaching in November and the candidates, while not as ugly as during a presidential election year, have already started pointing out each others’ faults, insulting, and justifying their past behaviors. Enough is enough. Give the voters a break and just talk about the issues. Stick to the facts. What will you do if you are elected? How do we know we can believe you?

The Road Sign

While driving into Atlanta today, I saw a road sign that said “God is not a Socialist.” I have been thinking about it for a couple of hours and I would like to comment on this road sign.

God certainly isn’t a capitalist either. He would never condone the use of child labor in factories that Nike was guilty of at one time. He would never condone taking short cuts in drilling for oil to save money. He wouldn’t take advantage of his mortgage clients to make additional profits. He wouldn’t packages junk and sell it as “gold.”

The only time that Jesus became angry was with the money changers in the temple. They were taking advantage of the people who needed to buy sacrificial animals. He taught compassion, caring for the sick, caring for the children and caring for the elderly.

Since the New Deal the United States has been moving toward socialism. The United States practices socialist policies. We provide social security, unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, aid to farmers through agricultural supplements. Title I in education is a means to level the playing field educationally for poor children. The federal school lunch program is a socialist program.

Try to eliminate social security benefits and every American who has paid into the program becomes a socialist except for those who can afford to retire because they made enough money and had enough knowledge to make wise investments. Most people I know who had their retirement in stocks, lost their large portion of their portfolios because of the loss of stock values in Enron, Worldcom and other similarly sleazy dealings on Wall Street. Even the government banking bailout only helped those on Wall Street and not those on Main Street.

While I believe we should have a free market, I believe that free market taken to its extreme hurts the average worker and there should be some government oversight. The whole nation is hurting because of bad business practice from a relatively small percentage of people.

How many people are now working but can’t afford to invest, can’t afford to visit a doctor, can’t afford to fix the air conditioner in a broken down car…. They keep on working and rely on the belief that they will be able to collect social security when they reach a certain age. While the socialism practiced in fascist countries is certainly not good and takes the role of the government to an extreme, we can practice something that provides protection and still allows capitalism to flourish.

Capitalism and socialism both have problems. Neither one is free from fault. Don’t let labels fool you. We need to watch and make sure extreme beliefs don’t take root but we also need to address issues of taking care of those who cannot take care of themselves.

Cost of College Education

My husband and I cleaned some stuff out of our storage room today. It belongs to one of my children. This particular child came to visit with 15 large suitcases filled with “stuff” and only left with four of them. I’ve decided that it is time that I reunited the owner with the “stuff.”

Another one of my children is going to move “stuff” out of the rented storage shed and move it into my Condo “temporarily” so that storage rental won’t have to be paid. By Wednesday of this week, I will have moved one child’s stuff out and another child’s stuff in. Just what every mother wants to do.

The revolving door between parents and children is happening more often with this generation than with mine. When I moved out, I moved out. In my circle of close friends almost all of us have adult children living at home or we are taking a heavy responsibility for helping them support themselves. As a young woman, it was expected that I would grow up to be self-sufficient. Jobs were plentiful, if not high paying. The possibility of advancement was there, and so was hope that things would get better.

Those hopes are gone. I read an article today that the purpose of a college degree was to create so much debt that a person would have it paid off by the time they retired. It took ten years for me to pay off my college loans when I earned my bachelors degree. Banks didn’t give credit cards out so freely then, so except for my college loans, I left college with no debt.

Students leaving college today frequently have $10,000-$20,000 in credit card debt and $80,000-$100,000 in college loans. The job market isn’t what it used to be. The college graduates are taking jobs that pay $10.00 per hour or minimum wage and commissions. To survive, our children are moving back in with us. My son’s college loans are $400.00 per month.

The tuition and fees for a college education has become such a financial burden that many students are dropping out.

If we want to keep a strong middle class, we must have an educated population. To have an educated population, we must have a strong university system. To have a strong university system, we must have government funding to maintain affordability.

Shame on a government that creates a university system for the privileged rich, scholarship entitlement for the poor, and a university education that the middle class cannot afford.

Don't come home, Mama

I was on my home from work one day when I received a call on my cell phone telling me that I needed to go somewhere else. “Don’t come home, Mama. I’ll call you when it’s okay.”

My daughter and two granddaughters were living with me at the time. It seems that my granddaughter had spilled chocolate syrup on the floor and had used some lipstick on the wall. It doesn’t take long for a small child to get into trouble. It only takes a few minutes without supervision. Small children have a great need to do things themselves and to experiment.

When my daughter discovered the mess, she knew I was on my way home from work and that my stress levels would go up when I saw the mess. So she called me and told me to go get a cup of coffee or margarita, go shopping or do something and give her time to clean up the mess.

I went shopping and about an hour later I received a call that I could come home. By the time I arrived back at the condo, the mess was cleaned up.

There is no doubt that President Obama has a mess to deal with also. In fact, he has several situations that are messy. One is the economy. He has placed his confidence in an advisory team that doesn’t seem to know what to do to fix things. Unemployment is still high, people who are employed are making less money, mortgage foreclosures are still high and people have quit spending on anything that is not an absolute necessity.

The minimum wage increase that was voted on before Mr. Obama became president, the uncertainty of health care costs and an unwillingness to invest capital have contributed to the recession.

President Obama has an economic team in place that is not able to clean up the mess. Economic models do not support the policies that have been placed in effect since he became president. His stimulus program has been called “schlock economics,” and “his Chicago colleague John Cochrane says they’re based on discredited fairy tales.” They sound good to people who are not aware of how the economy works, but they do not work.

Mr. Obama hasn’t received a call to come home yet. It might be a while before it happens unless he changes his cleaning crew or at least seeks suggestions from new sources that might lead to economic growth.

Stem cell research

Imagine what it would be like to have a family member cured of a degenerative disease. What it would be like to have a deaf baby hear or a cancer patient cured.
What scares me more than death is a long, painful illness or watching one of my children die from an illness. I have spent a great deal of time in doctor’s waiting rooms and in hospitals with my children and I know that people who appear healthy can have severe health problems.

Currently, there is a lot of research being done with stem cells and genetic engineering. Tonight, ABC news had a spotlight on a stem cell procedure that was used to cure blindness in people who had experienced burns on the cornea. As I think about the possibilities for this new medical technology, I don’t the United States doesn’t fund research. To ease suffering, to provide a higher quality of life for people with injuries or illnesses, and to create new technological innovations are all beneficial to the citizens of our country.

To ban stem cell research is the equivalent of starving people refusing to eat food because it is from genetically engineered seeds or a person refusing an organ transplant from a dead person. The person takes a moral stand, but the cost in human suffering is very high.

The Catholic Church placed a ban on scientific discovery during the Middle Ages. We also call that time period the “Dark Ages.” When scientific inquiry is banned, it will simply go underground, as it did during the Middle Ages, or to other countries. The scientific inquiry will still occur. The problem with the inquiry going underground is that it will not be regulated. The problem with the inquiry going to other countries is that the United States will lose its technological edge in the world economy. This is what happened when President Bush banned certain types of stem cell research in the United States. It went overseas.

I was happy when President Obama removed some of the barriers to what he called “responsible stem cell research” however, I believe that the government should increase funding of stem cell research or alternatively it should enhance the research incentives. This could save the lives of our children or grandchildren and it could make our own old age easier.

In the beginning

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. After that, humans have managed to mess up almost everything. We are always struggling to have things that we don’t have. We want more of everything. This leads to war, crime and personal irresponsibility.

Currently, the U.S. has troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan so that the United States can have “more.” President Obama has committed to a surge of U.S. troops this summer to Afghanistan so that we can “stabilize” the area. Look at the history of the area and see if you can find a time in history that it has been “stable.” I understand that we can’t just pull out until the infrastructure is more stable than it is currently but we are still in South Korea after sixty years. How long can we sustain being the world’s police force when we are struggling with our own internal problems?

Are we safer with troops in Afghanistan and Iraq than we would be if we brought them home? This is a question that I struggle with.

We can’t control the gun violence in our own country, adequately respond to the disasters that routinely occur here, and protect our borders from illegal aliens. Look at what has happened inside our own borders since January 1st. We have had flooding in Tennessee, Georgia, Massachusetts and southern California, wildfires near Flagstaff, Arizona, multiple outbreaks of tornadoes and the oil spill in the Gulf. We haven’t had a hurricane yet. Everyone is waiting to see what will happen then. We are also waiting to see if other terrorist attacks occur since the Time’s Square bomber has said that other attacks have been planned.

We moved quicker with the Haiti disaster than we have done with the oil spill, but then it was primarily private efforts and not those of the government.

The larger the animal, the slower it moves. Our government is no exception. It has become so large that it moves slowly, and stumbles over its own feet. It intrudes in other countries and leaves our homeland vulnerable in order to do so. There needs to be a greater balance between what we do overseas and what we do inside our own country.

Chicago gun violence

The news is always depressing. Chicago reported more than 50 shootings over the weekend. I am a strong supporter of the Constitution. At the time it was written, ordinary people needed guns to hunt for food and to protect themselves and their families. Originally there wasn’t an army to protect the settlers and as the more and more settlers moved onto Indian lands, the conflict grew. Indians had to protect themselves against the settlers and settlers had to protect themselves against the Indians. The French sponsored Indian attacks on English held territory and the English sponsored Indian attacks on French and Spanish held territory.

The desire for more and our willingness to kill to take land or to keep land grew as our desires grew.

The gangs of today want more. They want the territory of other gangs and to control the flow of drugs, prostitution, gambling, and protection. Like in the past, violence is seen as a means to an end. Guns are readily available to almost anyone who wants one. If you can’t buy one legally, you can buy one on the black market.
Our Constitutional right to bear arms is for self defense and for hunting. It isn’t to commit crimes or to kill for fun and score points with gangs. How do we keep our Constitutional freedom and maintain a civil society where gun violence isn’t just another event in the daily lives of citizens. How do we keep illegal guns off the streets and out of the hands of teens and children? We must address these issues.

Charlton Heston’s comment that they would pull his gun from his “cold dead hands” is fine if you are an old man who has lived a reasonable life but it isn’t a good creed for teenagers. With enough hormones and undeveloped frontal lobes they will use emotion instead of logic and are more prone to glorify the use of violence.

Look at the games teenagers play. The more violent the better! They are stimulated by and fascinated with violence. Frequently Mom and Dad are absent or they work two jobs to support the family. As a result, teenagers are, more often than not, unsupervised and left to roam in the afternoons after school, on weekends and during the summer. This is a prescription for trouble.

As a nation, we must address the increasing use of guns in violent crimes, the use of guns by children and teenagers and the sale of illegal guns on the black market.

Little Debbie Snack Cakes

I was in charge of a fund raiser for the drama department at one of the schools I worked in. We sold “Little Debbie” Snack cakes at school. I had cases of “Little Debbie’s” in my classroom. Every time I pulled the snacks out to sell them, I ate one and put money in.

During this fundraiser, I gained ten pounds. My children would come to the classroom at the end of the day and I would be eating a snack. One day, one of children told me that a lot of “Little Debbie’s would make one big Debbie.” I didn’t eat another snack after that.

The same can be said about government growth. We look at wanting the government to do one small thing. Then we give them another small responsibility. This keeps going on until the Government is too big for things to function properly. When we look at the growth of federal powers during the 20th Century our founding father’s would not recognize the government they created.

The government that began as three departments (War, Treasury, State) has eaten so many “Little Gov” snack cakes that it has become cumbersome, slow, indecisive, and has agencies that are redundant and fail to act with wisdom. Law enforcement is only one example. We have multiple agencies doing the same or similar jobs and they might talk to each other and they might not.

One private job site (federaljobs.net), disguised to resemble a real government site, currently is advertising that the IRS needs 17,000 agents to enforce President Obama’s new health care legislation. Although I hope that the IRS is not adding that many agents and that the job site has misleading information, I understand that any job added to a government agency is one more that I’ll have to pay taxes to support.

We need to audit the agencies and responsibilities of each agency. Doing this, we can streamline government services and at the same time we can help make government more responsive to the needs of the citizens.

We need to be careful about the number of “Little Gov’s” that we add to the government. When we give the government more responsibility, we give up our responsibility. We do not give our children very much responsibility and as a result they do not have many rights. When we turn our responsibilities over to the government we also turn over some of our rights.

Waiting for something better to come along

We had a guest speaker at work today. He was trying to motivate us to work harder and to understand that we could achieve our dream if we put had a positive attitude. Now remember, we’re teachers. Our positive attitude is usually gone by June after we have been cursed out by parents and students at least twice a week during the school year and documented everything that we did in case of a lawsuit. Almost every teacher I know wants to walk out the door and never look back.

It is sad that we have a country where more social prominence is placed on whether a student can pass a football, hit a baseball, or cheer than on how well students do with their reading and mathematics. Children have more electronic gadgets and toys every year, than I’ve bought in the last ten. They have Ipods, cell phones, Xbox, hand held video games…. But they don’t read many books. National Standards say that a child should read 25 books every school year. There is a direct correlation to the number of books a child reads and to how well they will do in school. Many students I work with can use technology, but they struggle to read because they wait and watch the movie.

I was on spring break in South Georgia last spring while a rural school system was still in school. I went with some friends to get a manicure and pedicure on Friday afternoon. A mother had checked her Junior High daughter out of school so that she could get her toe nails painted to match her swimsuit. The 12 or 13 year old girl was going to the beach on Saturday and her mother thought that it was more important for her daughter to get her nails done than to attend school. Just from the attitude of the girl and the way she talked to her mother and to the manicurist, I bet the teacher was glad that she left early.

We can continue to funnel more money into education programs that are “proven” to work, we can constantly reform education but we must address one of the most significant problems of all. There is a lack of respect for education in the United States. Until society places its values in the right place, teachers will do the best they can with the students they are given and will continue to pray for something better to come along.

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Do you remember that game? Children would play it and using their geography they would try to locate Carmen. If Carmen were a terrorist today, that would be hard to do. We have more security issues in the United States than the sieve in my kitchen.

We all know about the border issues along the Mexican border. Those are on the front page. What has been hidden in plain sight is the fact that U.S. passport covers with digital chips are being made overseas and that security is not very good.

The Government Printing Office outsourced the manufacture of e-passports because they couldn’t be made in the U.S. (in a pig’s eye) but they did not develop “security plans and procedures for ensuring that blank e-Passports – and their highly sought technologies – remain safe from terrorists, foreign spies, counterfeiters and other bad actors as they wind through an unwieldy manufacturing process that spans the globe and includes 60 different suppliers.”

In other words, our Government officials are once again out to lunch while the new e-Passports are available on the black market to people who don’t like us. Gee, instead of sealing the borders, we have made it possible for villains to come here and through government negligence we have made it harder to locate and identify them when they enter the country.

I know the government is moving the manufacture of these documents back to the United States, but why did they send them overseas in the first place? They were first manufactured overseas in 2006. The World Trade Center was bombed in 2001. We knew that we had security issues when it was done. This is like putting ice cream on the table before dinner and telling my children not to eat it and then leaving the room. What terrorist or spy could resist.

Heads should roll on this one.

Put your big girl panties on

A long time ago, I worked for a law firm and was trying to collect a debt owed to the bank the firm represented. While talking to the creditor I was stunned when he said that it was the bank’s fault that he owed the money. He told me that the bank shouldn’t have lent it to him in the first place.

I was watching TV a little while ago and a commercial came on. It was for a debt relief company. The commercial started with a lead-in that said “if you are in credit card debt and it isn’t your fault, call….” How can people be in credit card debt and it not be their fault? They applied for the credit card. They used their credit card to buy things they wanted. They didn’t want to wait and buy things as they could afford them, they wanted everything immediately. They had no self control and they used their credit card to live a lifestyle they couldn’t afford. If a person is in credit card debt, it is their fault.

Where is personal responsibility? I know that when I borrow money, I have to pay it back. If I don’t pay the money back, it will damage my credit and I will not be able to borrow money in the future. If enough people fail to pay their debts, banks make borrowing harder and the same people who don’t want to pay their debt complain that they can’t borrow money.

I charged too much on credit cards and I had to negotiate a repayment plan when the credit card companies raised the interest rate. I cut up my cards. I’m paying the entire amount I borrowed and I make my payments the way I agreed when I negotiated with the companies. I was stupid. It was my fault. No one made me do it. I had to put my big girl panties on and handle it. I didn’t expect anyone to take care of the problem for me.

Debt repayment companies are setting a bad precedent when they feed the concept that you are not responsible for poor choices in life. Following this train of logic, a murderer is not responsible for killing someone because he had a bad childhood, the government isn’t responsible for outsourcing the manufacture of U.S. passports to a company in Thailand because it didn’t realize that terrorist would have access to “real” passports made in an area where terrorist activity is high, B.P. isn’t responsible for the damage in the Gulf because they didn’t know so much damage could be done….

There should be a standard of personal integrity where a person’s word can be relied on, their sworn oath should mean something, and people and companies should hold themselves accountable for their own decisions and actions. When will we quit making excuses for bad decisions and bad behavior? Having someone else pay for your mistakes is not an entitlement. A friend told me one time to put my big girl panties on and handle the problem. It is time that we put our big girl panties and our big boy underwear on and take responsibility for our choices.

No oil, not here, not now

I am at home this weekend. The gardenias are blooming and the air smells wonderful; however it is too hot and humid to spend much time outside enjoying the aroma. I’m sitting in the den looking out at the dogwood and other shrubs and trees in the background. There is so much beauty in nature.

I have spent a great deal of time in the national parks. When I was younger, I backpacked and camped frequently and was able to experience nature. There is nothing like it. I also camped on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay and enjoyed sailing in regattas on the bay.

I’ve been to the Great Salt Lake and marveled at a different type of beauty there. This country has such a variety of landscapes and opportunities to experience nature. My husband and I were talking about our descendents today and how we have forgotten them as we make our own lives easier. He commented that while we have forgotten them, they will not forget about us; nor will they be able to ignore the damage we have done to the environment.

He is right. Today, in addition to the Gulf oil spill, Chevron is trying to stop an oil leak before the oil reaches the Great Salt Lake, and a North Carolina company is battling a natural gas fire caused by a lightening striking at a tank farm near Greensboro, NC. There was a natural gas explosion in Cleburne, Texas earlier this month.

The oil and gas industries create a great number of jobs. The governor of Louisiana doesn’t want a moratorium on oil drilling because of the number of jobs that will be lost. At the same time he is demanding that clean up of the current oil spill be handled immediately. The estimates of how long the clean up will take vary from a year to a hundred years.

I know that the people working in the oil industry need jobs. I also wonder if I’ll ever be able to take my grandchildren to the gulf beaches for a vacation without subjecting them to toxic water. I wonder how far the oil will spread. Will it hit the Atlantic and poison the fish there?

The oil experts are now telling us that there “might be” problems at other oil wells in the Gulf with the same shut off valve that failed at Deep Water Horizon.

Not only is oil a non-renewable resource, it is extremely dangerous to the environment. It contains toxins and carcinogens such as benzene, toluene, and xylenes. The chemicals will enter the food chain in the Gulf, will create health hazards for workers doing the clean up, and will cause pollution of the air when the BP does the necessary burn of the oil.

It is time to completely revamp our energy policy. We need to look at how we can create energy jobs in renewable, clean, sustainable energy. Our slogan can not be “drill here, drill now.” It must be “No oil, not here, not now.”

1-800-gethelp

I listened to President Obama on the radio day before yesterday when he said he was going to kick ass over the oil spill, he just needed to know whose ass to kick. Today he released a video stating that he had limited powers. He couldn’t dive down and plug the leak and he couldn’t suck the oil up with a straw.

Do you think he is feeling desperate? I believe he is. What he does not seem to understand is that people are frustrated over the fact that there is red tape developing between the Coast Guard, the Army Corp of Engineers, BP and other agencies. The frustration is that no one knows who to talk to in order to get answers or action.

BP and the government need a common go-to person who can cut through red tape, give answers and mobilize resources to areas in need. If a city has a problem, or a suggestion for doing something to improve the situation, who do they contact? There is not common 1-800-gethelp phone number and there isn’t a person in charge of organizing all response who is coordinating efforts between BP and the different agencies and cutting through the red tape. There needs to be a unified effort and response. Make it simpler for the people of the Gulf Coast to get what they need or to talk with someone who can get answers for the problem. It is not the reality that causes problems as much as it is the perception of reality that nothing is being done.

If I were president, this is what I would do.

Chicken vs. Skunks

I used to fix chicken for dinner every almost night. It was versatile and cheap. I could do so many things with it. One chicken could be turned into three meals. We had chicken casserole (1/2 of the chicken), chicken salad (the other half of the chicken) and chicken and rice soup (from the skin and bones).

There comes a time when you just don’t want any more of something. By the time my oldest son reached adulthood, he didn’t want any more chicken. He said he had “had enough” and he quit eating it for several years. I wonder what would have happened if Brooks quit eating chicken and started eating skunk meat simply because it was different from what he had been eating.

I can’t image that it would have been healthy for him. Skunks smell so badly that it is difficult to believe the meat would be good.

Well, the voters of South Carolina are so fed up with what is going on in government, they voted for an unknown Democratic Party candidate who is facing felony charges. His name just happened to be first on the ballot and he wasn’t one of the incumbents. So they voted for him.

Please be careful who you vote for. Research the candidates. Don’t get so disgusted with what you have that you vote a skunk into office just to get rid of the unpalatable chicken you have.

Educational Reform

I have a job interview tomorrow. I know that it is one of those courtesy interviews and I really don’t think I’ll get the job even though I have been invited to interview for it. In education, hiring decisions are frequently made before the interview but hiring rules require that jobs be posted and that there are a certain number of candidates interviewed. The business of education is more about who you know rather than what you know. It is very political.

In the last few years I have seen signs that this is changing. To create serious reform administrators need to understand instruction and how learning takes place.

Most teachers work hard and they get little respect from administrators, parents or students. They don’t go to work thinking to themselves “well I think I’ll do a crappy job today.” They are caring and compassionate people who love kids, work to make a difference and go the extra mile. They use part of their pay check every month to buy classroom supplies, give students lunch money, buy performance rewards for their students etc.

Teachers are required to teach all students so that they reach the same level of achievement regardless of student ability level, regardless of whether students come to school or come to class if they come to school. This isn't always possible. Imagine being in a top chef competition and having to make a perfect meal missing half the ingredients while another chef has all of the correct ingredients. A teacher is evaluated based on whether his/her students reached grade level performance, yet the teacher cannot choose the students in his/her classroom.

What happens if one teacher gets all of the gifted students and another gets all of the students who are reading on a 5th grade level when they enter the 9th grade. The teachers are not evaluated based on making progress with students, only on whether the students can work at 9th grade level at the end of the 9th grade. On paper, the gifted teacher looks like she/he is a better teacher. This isn’t always so. Because of this merit pay based on students reaching absolute levels means that the principal’s pet will always have the best students, and ultimately will have the best test scores and with merit pay, they will recieve higher pay.

Schools are always being reformed but reform will fail as long as the people in charge of the “reform” don't understand the issues in the schoolhouse. Imagine if public school teachers made the rules for teaching law or medicine. It would be royally messed up. Truthfully, the people doing the work need to be making the rules. We are the only profession that is not allowed to regulate itself because of politics. Just because a politician went to school does not make him an educational expert any more than going to a doctor makes me a medical expert.

Income loss, foreclosures, job growth, SBA

I’ve heard a lot of commentary about the economy lately. While running for president, Mr. Obama said that he was going to bring change. I believe he has kept his word. The recession that started with the Bush administration and the banking crisis has changed for the worse under Mr. Obama’s leadership. For me personally, things have certainly changed for the worse since Mr. Obama became president.

Although my mortgage is not in foreclosure, many Americans cannot make that claim. The mortgage foreclosure problem is still with us and there is greater difficulty obtaining a new mortgage. As incomes decline, mortgages foreclosures continue.

Additionally, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, the number of small business loans made by the SBA declined by 40 billion dollars over the amount loaned two years ago under President Bush. Bernanke also indicated that only 40% of the small businesses that applied for loans in 2009 had their needs met.

Okay, if small businesses can’t get loans, where are the jobs going to come from? Mr. Obama’s administration is acting slowly in this respect. The jobs he has added have been aimed at providing Mrs. Obama with more secretarial help than any previous first lady, misreporting job gains by manipulating the number of census jobs, and providing federal funds for improvements to be made last year and this year (what will happen to those jobs when the two years are up).

Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to understand the seriousness of the recession and the fact that many people are under employed, working reduced hours, or have exceeded the maximum number of weeks that they can draw unemployment benefits. With the last increase in minimum wage and little money available for businesses to expand, there are fewer jobs. People who are making slightly more than minimum wage or living on fixed incomes are really hurting. Most Americans have suffered a loss of purchasing power as the cost of basic needs has risen.

When the current two year stimulus package is up, we are likely to be worse off than we were before it was passed. There was little in the stimulus package that was aimed at long term sustainable economic growth. Now, we are looking toward what is called a double dip recession unless we do something that promotes private sector business growth.

I would like to suggest that the Small Business Administration temporarily loosen
the lending policies for small businesses. This is one way to jump start new business and create real jobs. Another possibility is that the federal government could increase tax credits for hiring and training unemployed workers and for creating and/or using non-petroleum based energy.

The Oath

When playing the word association game, why is it that the first word to come to mind when someone says “government” is “corruption.” We have a long history of political corruption. When Abraham Lincoln was president, he asked Thaddeus Stevens if Simon Cameron (one of Lincoln’s cabinet members) would steal. Stevens said that he would not “steal a hot stove.” Later, when Cameron confronted Stevens, Stevens was forced to retract. As a retraction he said, “Well, he is very mad and made me promise to retract. I will now do so. I believe I told you he would not steal a red-hot stove. I will now take that back.”

Dealing with political corruption is almost a daily event in America. It is evident from the lowest level of government to the highest level. Right now our former school superintended in a Metro Atlanta County is under indictment for racketeering, a County Commissioner in Mobile is under arrest for murdering his mistress, Rod Blagojevich the former governor of Illinois was arrested for corruption, bribery, wire fraud, and attempting to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat, David Paterson of New York has scandal brewing for interfering in a domestic violence case and soliciting free world series tickets. Paterson replaced Eliot Spitzer when Spitzer resigned after being entangled in a prostitution scandal. I can add John Edwards’ infidelity and Mark Stanford of South Carolina’s infidelity and trip to Argentina to see his girl friend. The list is endless. Tomorrow new names will be added to it.

What is it about power and corruption? Do we only elect people who are crooked enough to handle the other crooks or is it simply that only crooks will run for office?

When I think of all the funds that are spent to elect crooks to office, to keep them in office, to fund their personal projects and to provide for their retirement, I feel sick. Why do we have them swear an oath on the Bible when they are elected? It would be much more appropriate to have them swear the following oath. At least they would be honest when they took it.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of (fill in appropriate title), and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend my personal wealth, self centered desires as well as those of my closest cronies. At no time will I forfeit my own interest for those of the people who elected me. As an elected official, I promise to use your money, your children’s money and your grandchildren’s money in order to achieve these goals.

D-Day

Today is the 66th anniversary of D-Day. For two years the allied forces had been gathering and training troops for an invasion of Nazi occupied France. If this invasion failed, it would be difficult for the allies to gather enough trained troops and equipment to try again.

The allies used trickery to make the Germans believe that the invasion would happen at Calais and they assembled enough men to attack the Germans at Normandy that they could “afford” to lose a large portion of them to make sure the invasion was successful. The goal was to put so many troops on the beach at one time that the Germans could not kill them all.

How do we calculate acceptable losses? The soldiers in the European Theater of Operation did not want to be part of the “acceptable losses” but they went anyway. They landed on the beaches of Normandy, they watched as their friends died beside them, yet they continued to attack the Atlantic wall of defenses prepared by the Germans.

What drives people to sacrifice their lives to protect the greater good? What makes people sacrifice anything for the greater good? It is a sense of right and wrong. It is the belief that things will be worse if the sacrifice is not made.

Today, I want to thank the families of the people who have made the ultimate sacrifice and I want to thank soldiers who are away from their families serving our country. I also want to ask that we, as individuals in the nation, look at what we are doing individually and how we are behaving politically, socially and economically to make their sacrifices worthwhile.

Response to Hayward's "I want my life back"

Today, they were bragging on television about how much oil had been recovered from the leaking well. It seems to me that everything that BP has done since the explosion has been aimed at recovering oil and not at stopping the leak. I also take issue with the word “leak” as well. I have a leak in my bathtub faucet. The oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the oil well is more of an oil geyser than a leak.

Let me see if I understand what is really going on with BP. They are now able to recover 5000 barrels a day so that they have more barrels of oil to sell but there is still “some” oil is still “leaking” into the Gulf. Mr. Hayward, the CEO of BP is ready to get this emergency over with so that he can go home and "get his life back."

When Mr. Hayward finally is able to go home to England and live his “life,” the people on the Gulf coast will not have their lives back. The oil plumes that BP denies are below the surface have yet to come ashore. Sea life is dead or dying, estuaries are contaminated, beaches are ruined and oil is still gushing from the well in spite of the newest oil recovery effort. People working in the oil clean-up are also suffering health problems as a result of the exposure.

I understand Mr. Hayward’s sentiments. No-one wants to have to deal with something of this magnitude. If anyone wishes this had not happened, he does. However, he will not get sympathy from anyone on the Gulf Coast. He at least will have a life to go back to, while they will have to live in and with the results of the disaster.

Mr. Hayward did not make the decisions that caused the explosion but the company’s payment of bribes to inspectors did. Don’t you know that he now wishes he had set a different tone with his employees? It would have been less costly to have followed the safety inspection regulations than to clean up the mess, if it can be cleaned up.

The people of the Gulf Coast will struggle through this just like they struggled through Camille, Andrew, Katrina, Ike and other disasters. The biggest difference between this disaster and those disasters, is that this one could have been prevented by the use of integrity.

The big questions remain. How long will it be before BP stops the “leak?” How much life will be lost as a result of it? How long will it be before the damage is repaired? How far will the oil spread now that it is in the loop current? What happens if a hurricane comes through the Gulf?

Mr. Hayward, it will be a long time before you can "have your life back" and even longer before you will not think about this problem.

Creating new jobs

President Obama claims that the number of jobs has increased in the United States and has been celebrating the fact that the country is now in a state of recovery. The jobs added to the nation’s job recovery numbers are only significant in government service jobs, particularly the Census Bureau.

I find it hard to believe that we are in a true economic recovery. When teachers are laid off across the country, after several years of belt tightening, it tells me that the economy is actually getting worse.

I don’t know how long it will be before we have true recovery, but I have a suggestion that might help the people in political office reconsider their economic policy.

When my youngest son was young, he was the banker for the other two children. If they needed to borrow money, they went to him. He charged them interest and they were able to get what they wanted.

Where do you go when you need money for something? You go to the person with money! The older children would create incentives for Charles so that he would lend them money. In practical terms, if we want to create jobs, who has the money to do it?

The answer is simple. People with money! We don’t go to the poor for investment capital because they don’t have the money. The government has to raise taxes if they spend. Who is left? The rich or middle class with a willingness to invest and take reasonable risks with their money.

To create jobs, we have to provide some type of incentive for people with money to invest their money. Without incentives, Charles would not have loaned money to his brother and sister. Without incentives, investors will not invest. Without investment, there are no new jobs.

The socialist concept of government being the ultimate employer only works to a limited degree. If the government wants to create real job growth, it will happen when people with money are rewarded for investing in the private sector and in technological innovations.

The apology

Jim Joyce made a mistake. He made a bad call during a baseball game and the bad call cost pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game. When Joyce saw the replay of the play he admitted he had made a mistake but the results of his call remained the same. Armando Galarraga still missed his perfect game.

Mistakes happen in life. Everyone makes them and they move on to the next event in their lives. I would hate to always be judged by one event, one era in my life, or by someone else’s interpretation of what I did.

As I watched the news tonight, I was impressed by the character of both Joyce and Galarraga. Joyce apologized and admitted he made a mistake and Galarraga recognized that mistakes are made. Galarraga, although harmed by Joyce’s call, understood that sometimes things don’t turn out the way they are suppose to and he accepted the apology. The two men, then went out on the field and played ball again.

We need politicians and the media to take lessons from these two men. Greatness comes not from being perfect or showing an image of perfection but from recognizing that you have made a mistake and being willing to shake hands and continue to play the game. With the media harping on every mistake politicians makes, there is an increasing energy spent on spinning and protecting image. Politicians are human, they have made mistakes in the past and they will make them today and tomorrow. Good men and women do not run for political office because they do not want their past to be exploited on the news and their families to be targeted.

There is a difference in reporting the news and sensationalizing it. The media needs to look at how they report on candidates.

The other side of the problem is politicians. They need to do their jobs, make the best calls they can with the knowledge they have, acknowledge when they make a mistake, take responsibility for it, authentically apologize and move on and continue playing the game. They cannot become bogged down in the name calling that results when the game doesn’t go their way.

Maybe we should let Joyce and Galarraga teach them what is really important. Civility and understanding go a long way in making things better.

Kudzu

I was driving down the road today and I looked at what appeared to be a mountain of Kudzu. It made me start thinking about good intentions gone awry.
When Kudzu was first introduced in the United States, it was believed that it would help stop soil erosion problems. What wasn’t anticipated was that Kudzu would take over the landscape and that there would be problems controlling the Kudzu once it took root.

Kind hearted snake owners, whose pets had become too large to manage, released their pet pythons in the Everglade National Park because they didn’t want to kill their pets. Now we have a growing problem with pythons breeding in the southern part of Florida. Once again, an individual had good intentions for their pet, but they didn’t anticipate or expect that other python owners doing the same thing would cause the introduction of a foreign species in the United States.

Likewise, the introduction of foreign ideas can also cause problems. The idea that everyone is so special that they are exempt from the rules is developing with our children and is taking a toll on civility and decency.

The incivility begins to show itself in school. Students in school will curse at teachers for “disrespecting” them. While I always like to treat students respectfully, when did it become disrespectful to ask a student to show up on time, sit down in class, put up a cell phone, and be quiet during instruction?
Respect is something that is earned, it isn’t an entitlement. People who demonstrate rude and immoral behavior do not deserve to be treated as royalty. At some point in time, life teaches everyone that there is certain authority that we must obey and there should be certain lines that cannot be crossed. People who behave badly should not be placed on a pedestal or be able to earn money from their bad behavior. I question the value of the media creating celebrity status for poor conduct and low behavior.

A current example is the celebrity status of Rielle Hunter. Her claim to fame is that she slept with John Edwards and bore his child. When did being bad become “good?” I know that it isn’t possible to legislate morality, and I wouldn’t do it even if it was possible. However, the message that our children are hearing on television, at the movies and in music is that “being bad” is good for them and it is being reinforced through the difficulty of suspending students who have “behavior disorders” from school. The intentions of the rules for suspending these students are good and valid, the results are incivility in class, disruption of the educational environment for other students in the class, and difficulty in retaining teachers.