The First Generation Of Mismanaged Children

Well the Leno video & follow up message last night presenting Citizen Control Point #1 as the answer to the question "What does this say about our educational system?" continued to stir things up. 

 

Below is the best response to these last two postings I received that correctly puts parents to blame ahead of teachers in the decline of our pitiful government school educational system.  You can argue which came first - the chicken or the egg - but it is clear that parents lack of interest & involvement as well as their belief that their children were entitled to all America had to offer without any work preceded the decline of the quality of teachers that in turn gave rise to the problems with the teachers' unions & tenure.  If the parents had been more involved the teachers' unions would not have been able to or had the need to abuse their profession.

 

The writer of the message below along with her husband have home schooled their three children for years.  She may be frustrated now but her children will not have to run - they will walk - past the type of people shown in the Leno video who represent what I have called for years the first generation of mismanaged children.  Unfortunately we are well on our way to the second generation.

 

With regard to her final point I believe that all of the doctors in our network are not members of the AMA or plan to sever their relationship in 2010 - pretty savvy bunch in their own right.  I know our messages have helped in this regard with some of the docs.

 

---Response To Leno Video & Education System Problems---

 

A little biased here, and although we home school now, my father was president of a teacher's union, and although I am again biased, the crap he had to put up with involved much more around worthless, lazy parents way more than anything else.  Part of this involved watching one of his fellow teachers lose his teaching license because he pulled a high school child off of a teacher, who he was beating up.  The child – of course, he was just fine and went on with his life.  The teacher who was beat up quit, and the teacher who pulled the kid off and was "mean" to him – lost his teaching license.  If anyone in this country needs a union – it is teachers.  Compared to other countries where education is valued – in this country we pay more money to our athletes than the poor people who teach our children.  And parents?  Now THERE is another issue.  They want teachers to be paid minimum wage, yet teach their children morals, social values, academics, and practically how to eat and drink – and what do they do at home?  Ride around in SUVs on cell phones going to have their nails done and their Botox injected.  It's pitiful.  The private schools do not provide a better education, rather they foster the feelings of entitlement, and that doesn't work well for future generations either.  But of course, everyone thinks the home schoolers are the crazy ones?  I think not.  My children can hold a conversation with someone whether they are 2 or 92.  But it involves actual parental involvement – something that most parents today don't want any part of.

 

Now here's a union worth taking a look at – the AMA!!!  The largest union in the country, yet no one touches the good old docs!

Responses - An Unfunny Humorous Video

The subject message & video brought several comments all in the same vein, like - "To paraphrase Ebenezer Scrooge: 'I am happy to hear the public schools are still open and pursuing their useful course'" & "What does this say about our educational system?"  To answer this question I have copied & pasted below what I call "Citizen Control Point #1."

 

Go to ReturnToExcellence.net to read the other four citizen control points in the piece entitled "The Five Points Of Citizen Control" found on the left hand side of the blog - 3rd one down.  They are just as scary & show where we have been heading for decades - & we are almost there.

Citizen Control Point #1 - provide seemingly free education through government schools where the graduates are little more than illiterate & not proficient in math or science.

Professor Milton Friedman writes in "Free To Choose" that "@ first schools were private & attendance was voluntary.  Increasingly, government came to play a larger role, first by contributing government support, later by establishing & administrating government schools….That movement gained additional ground in the 1930s along with the general tendency toward both expansion & centralization of government."

Today over 90% of people are educated by the worst monopoly going - failing government schools which make up the largest socialized enterprise in the USA.  To keep passing & graduating children who really do not know anything useful (& are too poorly educated to know that they don't know anything) will create a government dependent society, like we increasingly have been becoming for decades.  A socialist school system is going to teach socialist values.  The monopoly power is being exercised by teachers' unions.  They are running the schools to promote their own objectives, not the objectives of the students.  Neal Boortz has stated that "teachers' unions are more dangerous to America than al Qaeda" & he is so right.

"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."  James Madison - Father of the Constitution

 "An enlightened citizenry should abandon the superstitious worship of logic & the outmoded reliance on reason. ...so people who are not qualified to think should leave all thinking to the (government) experts & have faith in the (government) experts' higher authority."  Dr. Robert Stadler - Head of the State Science Institute in Ayn Rand's fictitious novel Atlas Shrugged 

 

An Unfunny Humorous Video

Thanks to a subscriber to ReturnToExcellence.net for passing along this video of Jay Leno questioning several people who I am afraid are representative of many you would meet on the street today. Enjoy the humor until you realize that these people may have already cancelled out your vote somewhere along the line or even worse - they may be the people who will be organized to be added to the ones who have already cancelled out your vote in the past. I completed the circle by wondering who would possibly employ them & then realizing their job potential is not much the thought of taking care of them for the rest of their lives through one government program or another made the entire thing very enlightening but not very funny.

Stopping Legalized Theft

Despite numerous conversations & messages posted to the contrary many in our group thought that the election of Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate last month would kill BO's quest for universal healthcare as the filibuster proof Senate lapsed with Brown becoming the 41st vote.  (In a disappointing early sign Brown voted with the Democrat majority & four Republican statists on a spending bill in just his third vote.)

 

As the February 25 date for BO's healthcare summit with the Republicans draws near Steve Lonegan sums the matter up - "Put simply, Thursday's Summit is designed to fail. It is nothing more than a PR effort to make it seem that the White House attempted to be inclusive and bi-partisan while they really are just preparing to use the nuclear option of reconciliation to force government-run health care on the American people."

 

Now the transformation of America through BO's healthcare reform plan is just a taste of what we quite likely will have to face in the future.

 

I have said since the 2004 Presidential election that wealth creating people will never field another Presidential candidate that can win elective office because wealth creating people in America are simply out numbered.  I especially remember telling THE charter member of our group (there was a time when it was just he & I sending messages to each other) that his side will never win another election if the statists ever get organized & of course in 2008 BO, ACORN, MoveON, Soros, et. al. proved that when they get organized we are out numbered @ the polls.

 

Now a report has come out showing the Hispanic demography will seal the deal.  As the Hispanic population continues to grow in large electoral vote states like California, Texas, & Florida the possibility of anything but a Socialist Democrat winning the Presidency in the electoral college is almost impossible starting as early as 2020, if not sooner.

 

The pitiful Republicans counter this fact with, for instance, front running California Gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman telling Hispanics she would have voted against the Republican backed 1994 measure barring illegal immigrants from receiving social services.  This is exactly the type of candidate that may win elective office for herself but will sell us down the river.

 

This is not intended to be a message of gloom & doom (I was heartened to hear on the Neal Boortz radio program yesterday that Marco Rubio was 18 points ahead of the detestable sitting governor Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race) - it is a message to let you know the statists recognize the amount of wealth existing in this country & that their plan to confiscate it is accelerating as they recognize more & more every day the apathy & sheer ignorance of our citizenry.  A recent poll showed that 40% of all adults, Republicans, Democrats, & Independents had never heard of the Tea Party movement - now that has been stunning to everyone I told this stat to.

 

Go out, find & support candidates that will make a long term difference.  It could never be a Democrat & it is more likely every day that it will not be a Republican.  There are people emerging who still give us a long shot chance to reverse this terrible statist trend peacefully.  It is not a viable future to think that we can oscillate near the 50% mark in every election with both major parties vying for the fickled Independents who go back & forth one time thinking Democrats are their answer & the next time thinking it is Republicans.  This is a slow (but getting faster) burn to hell as the margin keeps decreasing.

 

If (when) we lose @ least we will have identified some people that can be added to the Jim DeMint-like base that will dismantle BO's programs when they return to power.

 

You never thought for a second, did you, that the millions of people in America of substance, education, ability, & strength would see their wealth taken away from them without a fight to a group of elite statists who specialize in what Professor Walter Williams calls "legalized theft"?

The Non Relationship Between Healthcare & The Constitution

Thanks to our mid-west member for passing along this video of the great libertarian Judge Andrew Nopolitana speaking about the non relationship of healthcare & the Constitution. The Judge is a constitutional expert. In this video he explains, among other things, the Founders' meaning of the Commerce Clause that has been used by Congress exactly the opposite of its original intent - namely to regulate anything & everything they please under the guise of regulating commerce per the Constitution. In the case of BO's currently seemingly stalled healthcare insurance reform, relying on the Commerce Clause is once again the plan to ward off the constitutional challenge of 13 State Attorneys General presented on this blog last month.

Now BO's invitation for the Republicans for the first time to join the healthcare reform negotiations starting on February 25 is just the latest ruse that will end with the Senate using the parliamentary maneuver called "reconciliation" that does away with the long standing Senate rule that requires 60 votes to bring a bill's deliberations to cloture. Only a simple majority of the Senate is required under "reconciliation." Of course "reconciliation" will not be needed if the Republicans capitulate which is highly possible. BO, Pelosi, & maybe Reid consider using "reconciliation" despite the Massachusetts victory of Senator Scott "41" Brown.

Betsy McCaughey sums up this chance of a generation for the statists - "Obama defends the current Democratic health bills, claiming they will reduce the deficit. That's a shell game. These bills are paid for with $500 billion in new taxes over ten years. A vast expansion of government is not deficit reduction. It's freedom reduction." And that is exactly BO's intention.

Turning Around A World That Is Upside Down

I have received many thoughtful & insightful comments re the recent messages concerning both the Social Security solvency problem & the improvements needed for BO's budget.  In the opposite vein please consider the following paradoxical points that highlight how easily the majority of people are controlled & can be purposely led in the wrong direction because of a lack of common sense or otherwise not being able to think for themselves.

 

1.  AFP reports that BO picked this past week to announce the formation of a new global warming bureaucracy within the Department of Commerce.  The news conference announcing this new "climate service" had to be canceled due to the D.C. area blizzard.  Cap & Trade remains BO's next priority.

 

2.  A recent Gallup Poll indicated that 36% of Americans have a positive view of socialism, including 53% of Democrats & 20% of conservatives.  With re to the Democrats I would have thought it was higher than that.  America has been over 50% socialist for decades.  Assuming the 36% of Americans with a positive view of socialism are part of the 70% of our citizenry who receive some sort of government check or benefit it means that 34% of us are not satisfied & possibly want to go further into government dependence.

 

3.  Government programs are expected to account for more than half of all healthcare spending by next year - this is before BO reinvigorates his universal healthcare program with negotiations with the Republicans on February 25.

 

4.  Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was stripped of his certification by the ICE division of DHS to enforce federal immigration laws because some human rights groups criticized his enforcement of these laws for allegedly using racial profiling.  After Cap & Trade BO plans comprehensive immigration reform.  Sheriff Arpaio plans to ignore ICE's order saying that he has the inherent right to enforce the law.

 

5.  BO continues to study whether or not to try KSM in NYC - a hard decision for him.  With re to this pending decision & BO's State of the Union criticism of the Supreme Court's broadening First Amendment rights to corporations Roger Rice writes - "let me get this straight - it is all right to grant Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, & Eighth Amendment rights to foreign terrorists who want to destroy the U.S., but granting First amendment rights to foreign corporations, many of which have businesses in the U.S. & hire American workers, is wrong."

 

6.  Monthly healthcare insurance premiums for a 20 year old in Indiana range between $50 to $202 while in NY the same person with similar coverage pays premiums anywhere between $832 & $ 1,047.  The difference is almost entirely due to NY's regulatory mandates that require such things as chiropractic & maternity (including people who can not have babies).  When the healthcare debate begins again without the provision to buy healthcare insurance across state lines think of this example.

 

7.  The economic performance of the PIGS of the Euro Zone (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, & Spain) threatens another financial crisis.  America's debt burden statistics (deficit/GDP, national debt/GDP, & interest payments as a % of revenue) resemble Greece's more & more every day & yet BO & the Democrat controlled Congress continue to propose programs that will plow us deeper into debt every week.

 

8.  The wage gap for American workers keeps getting wider each year & thousands of manufacturing jobs continue to be outsourced yet manufacturing output increases.  The average manufacturing worker's output is almost $250,000 per year & the American manufacturing sector is the 4th largest economy in the world behind the USA, Japan, & China.  Why would someone stop their education & training @ the point where the work they are qualified to do can be done by another in a foreign country making pennies a day unless they were brainwashed into thinking government will take care of them?

 

9.  Recent polls show that if the 2012 presidential election were held today that BO & Mitt Romney would be in a statistical dead heat.  Now as we know the great majority of Americans are against BO's healthcare insurance reforms & yet the Republicans keep putting Romney forth as a preferred candidate even after his healthcare insurance reform plan in Massachusetts has been a proven disaster.

 

Based on the above points you can easily think that the world is upside down - where we can no longer tell right from wrong.  It is only people who take the time to read messages like these & get involved that can correct & make it right - there is simply no one else.  It is up to us to return the world back to the point where wrong is no longer right & vice versa.

 

Along the way you can walk not run past people who are not the least bit concerned that Social Security benefits paid last year almost exceeded the taxes collected.  These same people are worried to death that the earth may be one degree centigrade warmer 100 years from now.

Today's Social Security Benefit Worry

Below is a piece from Neal's Boortz's blog that he discussed on his radio program today. The segment pointed out the similarities between Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme that literally ruined so many trusting foolish investors to that of Social Security.

Now Neal & I have both described the problems with Social Security's (& Medicare's) solvency for quite some time - I think that benefits will @ least be reduced as the ratio of people paying into the system continues to dwindle. Politicians are being as cruel as Madoff was by just kicking the entitlement can down the road until disaster strikes the millions of aging people who are mistakenly relying on receiving benefits.

Neal presents in the piece below another worry that brings the insolvency of Social Security to us - not in 2017 as previously forecast - but today.

THIS ONE ALMOST SLIPPED BY ME

By

Neal Boortz

@ February 9, 2010 9:05 AM Permalink Comments (31) TrackBacks (0)

Why did Bernie Madoff go to prison? To make it simple, he talked people into investing with him. Trouble was, he didn't invest their money. As time rolled on he simply took the money from the new investors to pay off the old investors. Finally there were too many old investors and not enough money from new investors coming in to keep the payments going. Next thing you know Madoff is one of the most hated men in America and he is off to jail.

Some of you know this .. but not enough of you . Madoff did to his investors what the government has been doing to us for over 60 years with Social Security. There is no meaningful difference between the two schemes ... except that one was operated by a private individual who is now in jail, and the other is operated by politicians who enjoy perks, privileges and status in spite of their actions.

Do you need a side-by-side comparison here? Well here's a nifty little chart.

BERNIE MADOFF	SOCIAL SECURITY
Takes money from investors with the promise that the money will be invested and made available to them later	Takes money from wage earners with the promise that the money will be invested in a "Trust Fund" and made available later.
Instead of investing the money Madoff spends it on nice homes in the Hamptons and yachts.	Instead of depositing money in a Trust Fund the politicians use it for general spending and vote buying.
When the time comes to pay the investors back Madoff simply uses some of the new funds from newer investors to pay back the older investors.	When benefits for older investors become due the politicians pay them with money taken from younger and newer wage earners to pay the geezers.
When Madoff's scheme is discovered all hell breaks loose. New investors won't give him any more cash.	When Social Security runs out of money they simply force the taxpayers to send them some more.
Bernie Madoff is in jail.	Politicians remain in Washington.

OK ... I've understood this scheme for some time now, so just what was it that almost slipped by me? For some time now we've been told that it would be 2016 or 2017 before Social Security started paying out more money than it was taking in. Well ... we're here. In 2009 the economy forced many more people than expected into retirement. These people filed for their Social Security benefits. Last year Social Security durned near ran out of money. The benefits paid almost exceeded the taxes collected. There is, of course, no "trust fund" to go to. That money has been spent. For Madoff that was a crime. For our politicians, it wasn't. Now the chief actuary of the Social Security system says that we're going to "go negative" for the next year or two.

Now the politicians will naturally be looking for a solution. They cause the problem because they just couldn't stand seeing all of that money sitting in the trust fund. They just had to get their hands on it ... and leave behind some IOUs. Now the IOUs are due, and there's no money to pay them off. The solution? Well, they'll probably have to raise the retirement age. Then they may well introduce means testing. They'll tell retiring seniors who have done well with their own retirement plans that they may well lose their Social Security benefits. Can they do that? Oh hell yes they can. There is no federal law which guarantees Social Security benefits to anyone who has been forced to pay the taxes.

Then, of course, they'll try to raise the Social Security taxes. The earnings cap for this year is $106,800. My best guess is that the Democrats will propose a change in the law that allows the current earnings cap to stay, or to possibly adjust it to $100,000. Then they will give all income between $100,000 and $250,000 a year a pass .. then all incomes above $250,000 a year will be taxed with no further caps.

Wunnerful wunnerful.

Improvements To BO's Budget Plan

Last week was another monumental despicable one for America's finances under BO's administration. First BO presented a $3.728 trillion dollar budget where 31% of the outlays are financed through borrowing - meaning another $1.15 trillion will be added to our national debt. The federal budget was $2.7 trillion only two years ago. Next, Congress voted to increase the debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion - this followed a $290 billion debt ceiling increase on December 17. The debt ceiling is a tool to provide the Treasury with more leeway in the administration of debt - as if they need more leeway.

Now these numbers are so large they really become meaningless to most of us other than they sound like trouble brewing so the best thing to do is to refer to something like the above graph prepared by the Government Accounting Office in 2007. Since the graph is almost 3 years old it does not include BO's draconian spending increases of the past 13 months. It is going to be sooner than shown on the graph that mandatory spending will exceed all government revenue thereby leaving no money @ all for any other program like defense. Jim Bennett has a slide that he uses in his seminars that shows only interest on the national debt consuming all of our revenue in the not too distant future.

BO has recently tried to camouflage his reckless profligate destructive spending ways by talking about reducing the deficit but this is just another ruse. The real fiscal danger, as BO very well knows, is the amount of government spending not the deficit - Professor Milton Friedman used to teach that the nation would be better off with a budget half the current size but with larger deficits. For BO to balance (no deficit) a large spending budget through taxes will still bankrupt the nation before long - just as he plans.

Please check out this video of our Posterity reciting a pledge to the debt we will leave them.

We have momentarily held off BO's programs for both socialized medicine-universal healthcare & Cap & Trade legislations thanks to the Town Hall & Tea Party movement - & nothing else. I hope that people saw Sarah Palin's presentation @ the Nashville Tea Party Convention on Saturday night & will continue to get behind & support this movement.

In the meantime if the fiscal integrity of America is important to you I recommend that you let your elected reps know that you have some suggestions for improving BO's budget plan - like, for starters as recommended by Ann Coulter - elimination of the Departments of Health & Human Services, Education, Commerce, Agriculture, HUD, Transportation, the EPA, the National Endowment of the Arts, & the National Endowment for the Humanities, & the progressive income tax (& replacing it with the FairTax - my suggestion.)

FairTax Returns To NJ 101.5 FM Radio

The FairTax will be featured again on the Jim Gearhart Show, NJ 101.5 FM radio, this Thursday morning, February 4, 2010 after the 7:00 a.m. news. Jim Bennett will be on for at least half an hour &, if there are enough calls, stay for the full hour.

As you know, NJ 101.5 FM is one of the most popular news-talk shows in New Jersey, and it competes with national media out of New York and Philadelphia.

Jim Gearhart is having Jim Bennett back because of the overwhelming response to the FairTax following the interview on the station last month & to answer questions that Mr. Gearhart did not feel he was able to answer himself.

Please call in to the show at 1-800-283-1015 Thursday, between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.

You can also listen through the Internet by clicking here.

Blair's Interrogation & The Lessons Of 9/11 Not Learned

Long time readers of these messages know it seems like ages since the Iraq front in the war against Islamic Fascists has been the subject of these messages. The WSJ's report of last week's interrogation of Tony Blair by the John Chilcot Commission brings the issue back into focus. Below is my letter responding to the Journal's great editorial entitled "Tony Blair's Iraq Statesmanship."

Suffice it to say that the majority of Americans have learned nothing about preserving our security since 9/11 & BO continues to exploit this ignorance as he refers to the would be (not alleged) Christmas bomber over Detroit as the "Nigerian student," holding KSM's civilian trial in NYC (although even this is becoming a too obvious destructive ploy against America), & of course vowing to close the Guantanamo prison for no good reason.

The danger to America & the world could not be more front & center as Iran fails to acknowledge BO's December 31 deadline to take up his invitation to negotiate their nuclear program. I refer to my posting immediately below, dated July 14, 2007 - nothing has changed except adding our troops in Afghanistan to the immediate jeopardy.

"Middle East oil dependence is one thing but the nuclear ambitions of our Muslim enemies is another. Iran has had nuclear ambitions for quite some time & there are many intelligence estimates that conclude that Iran is very close to obtaining nuclear capability - a capability that the Iranian President has said he will share with every Muslim nation on earth & I think he would also include al Qaeda in Iraq. Since Iran constantly sends IEDs & car bombs into Iraq to kill our troops by the dozens, just think what would happen if Iran gets a nuclear bomb & its first unannounced target is the nearby Baghdad, where the Iranians couldn't care less about civilian casualties as they target 150,000 American troops in one fell swoop that would be like shooting fish in a barrel."

Dear Editor,

You write in "Tony Blair's Iraq Statesmanship" that it is "worth remembering" Mr. Blair's words "...given over one million people whose deaths he (Saddam) had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program?"

Well not only do I remember but I will never forget the words of WSJ Editorial Board Member Susan Lee in the fall of 2002 answering Stuart Varney's question on the Journal Editorial Report - "can we afford to spend $87 million on a war in Iraq?" Ms. Lee responded "we cannot afford not to."

The Congressional Joint Resolution authorizing the use of U.S. Armed Forces against Iraq was dated October 11, 2002. There were seventeen enumerations in the Resolution & I invite every one to read them to see how little mention there was of WMDs despite what the hostile anti-American media would otherwise have us believe.

The grilling of Mr. Blair by the Chilcot Commission highlights to me that the lesson of 9/11 still has not been learned by many Americans. In 2008 then Senator Obama thought he had an iron clad position saying that he never was for the Iraq invasion. Mr. Obama was counting on people looking @ Iraq then & not remembering either the time or circumstances that resulted in our attack on Baghdad.

Put yourself back to September 2002 - just one year after the murderous attacks on our soil by seemingly primitive people living in the mountains of Afghanistan. With all of the intelligence, literally in the world, pointing to Iraq as a terrorist haven & past user of weapons of mass murder - ask yourself if the majority of the electorate had learned anything by electing a commander-in-chief who thought we could afford to find out the hard way just how much of a threat to our survival Saddam Hussein was.