Janitors are not “trained” by our tax dollars; nor are principals. What exactly would you major in to be a school administrator? Administrative studies? Did the government start paying for college for anyone who majors in that without my knowing it, or retroactively refunding school admins the cost of undergrad? Teachers are often able to find cheap loans from the gov’t to finish out their degrees, (as per the site’s training supposition) but usually with strings attached (like a required number of years teaching in inner cities or other areas where it’s hard to find qualified teachers.) As far as public school “authorities” growing fat on salaries and pension, it is worth noting that the site changes language here from teachers to administrators. Few would be stupid enough to accuse public school teachers of suckling on the teat of society’s largesse–at least in southwest VA where my mom teaches, typical salaries range between 40k and 60k annually depending on how many years one has been teaching.

Finally, yes, public school education does operate something like a planned economy, except for the economy part. The inclusion of that word is unnecessary except to make school sound vaguely red. This site is right on the money here. But, again, why bother even pointing it out? Would you *not* plan an education–teaching huckleberry finn, and then sesame tree? Fundamental language, fine motor, and math skills progress in a particular order and if the system did not plan around a gradually improving skill set it would be wasting its time.

Especially in a bathroom! I’ve heard too many cases of CCTV’s being installed in school bathrooms as well. Now, I understand the need for the safety of our children and have worked in the school board before. It is outrageous that this is even being considered! If this is implemented in my child’s school, he will be withdrawn that day and a law suit will be filed immediately after wards against the school board and police department.

In 2003, US National Debt was $6.7 trillion, up $562 billion over 2002. Despite this, in 2003, Paul Ryan voted for the UNFUNDED GOP Medicare Rx Modernization Act (MMA). You read it – UNFUNDED. A massive health entitlement program that benefited drug & insurance companies with $200+ billion windfall profits, but sent Rx prices soaring – wasn’t paid for, in a year with already ballooning US deficits.

GOP lied to Congress that MMA would cost $400 billion to get it passed. To-date cost to US taxpayers is $1.2 trillion & $7 trillion added to Medicare’s unfunded liability. Even before its full cost was known, a 2004 Duke Law & Technology Analysis stated “the estimated $540 billion price tag on the MMA will have far-reaching economic effects that will likely force legislators to make fundamental changes to the tax system in the future and may ultimately cause the healthcare system in the United States to falter.” You bet it did.

And Paul Ryan voted YES, voted for screwing American seniors with Rx prices at double what the rest of the world pays, voted to restrict the government from negotiating lower Rx drug prices for seniors & didn’t mind dumping $7 trillion into what is now $38 trillion unfunded liability…what he calls: “empty promises to my parents’ generation, our generation, our kids’ generation.

Yeah, Mr. Ryan, “empty promises” you helped grow. Now, to fix what you helped do to America’s seniors, you’re promoting a budget that renegs on government’s promise to seniors by cutting $650 billion off Medicare over 10 years, then kills Medicare…and replaces it with a voucher system which will prematurely kill seniors when its face value can’t buy nuts in a high-priced private insurance world and won’t keep pace with rising costs.

You don’t have any credibility to critique FUNDED Obamacare and the CBO, when you approved UNFUNDED Bushcare’s $1.2 trillion cost & $7 trillion liability & over 8 yrs voted for programs that added $4 trillion to the national debt. Your sudden onset “fiscal responsibility” can’t be trusted. We have to protect America’s seniors – you have an ANTI-seniors, ANT-public health BUT PRO-business voting record on issues. Surprise!

Last Friday, 80 leading US health economists urged Congress to pass Obamacare, citing a “system in crisis” and “ultimately unsustainable state and federal budget deficits”. I’m listening to them.

Decriminalization on the other hand would allow growers to band together and form co-ops. These revenues then could be taxed, but if you leave out the growers, they will keep growing and pay no taxes.

One plant can produce enough smokable buds for five to twenty five people for a year. So the smart guys will grow their own and trade to their friends, the guy who doesn’t want the problems related to growing would be buying weed at a store.

It is tough to grow quality cannabis, not everyone is a farmer. But commerically grow cannabis could be inspected by the FDA and resold by the DEA, now that at least makes sense.

The fed gov needs to RE-legalize all drugs & let them be sold in dispensaries. This should be done on the state level. Those who want to use illegal dangerous drugs should be mandated to take a Consequence Of Use education class.

This way those who are stupid enough to use crap like meth, heroine, X what have you, would at least have a support team to help them quit when they realize what a serious mistake they have made. Also the doses would be uniform saving lives from OD death if the manufacture was done in state run labs..

Cannabis should be RE-legalized straight up & treated like alcoho. Rx drugs are the real killing epidemic any way. Far more die from legal drugs than illegal ones. If peeps can make beer & wine at home why not cannabis? Cannabis is much more safe than even aspirin.

SamFox

Unfortunately, the Cousteau name is being degraded by Jacque Cousteau’s granddaughter, she is heading up part of Greenpeace. On the issues of Greenpeace, (granddaughter Cousteau) and their efforts, it seems they have been problematic, misguided, and perhaps, the wrong approach in an effort to make headlines.

It seems they’ve been labeled “eco-terrorists” due to their methods, and it is hard to refute that label. They have been engaged in eco-terrorism, and it is a shame, and I am sure this is never what Cousteau had intended, it is very sad indeed.

Really Green Peace has done some pretty devious things in the name of the environment. It would be nice if they would knock it off, and stop it, so that we could bring forth solutions. Worse, their actions are enabling their supporters to do things that are quite unlawful, and jeopardize lives, while detracting from the real work being done to keep our world clean.

Still, we do have issues with dead-zones, giant floating garbage patches (sickening), coral reefs challenges, algae blooms, over-fishing and all those things are going to come back to haunt humankind. Things are getting pretty bad in many places such as off the coasts of all the large cities in the World; raw sewage, urban run-off, chemicals, farm nitrates from fertilizers, etc. – pretty serious stuff.

Unfortunately, Greenpeace is part of the problem in many regards, not really part of any meaningful solutions and quite frankly, I am appalled and not impressed with their actions in the least. Please consider all this.

McCarthy and his few supporters were eventually discredited and disgraced — his own political life in shambles. He died not long after.

Savage, ugly in both appearance and thought, would accuse his own mother of communism (or any other nasty insinuation) if it would bring attention to himself.

I have a blog (click on my name) and write a long essay each year and hopefully it will be on education next year.

This year’s is on Murray Rothbard’s _Conceived in Liberty_ series and should be posted in April. Last year’s is on Murray Rothbard’s works on monetary policy which could be stated in 3 words: End the Fed. That essay is there now.

I was also a public school “inmate” thru 8th grade. It was so demoralizing that the slightest task was difficult; bordom can *paralyze!* Fortunately I went to private schools after that and it was much better.

Parents (”parents”) that come home and sit immediately in front of the idiot box are just strangers to children who see and hear from the STATE 8 hrs per day… no one ever thinks of this–the state is educating your children and it isn’t providing them with knowledge; it is indoctrination to beliefs and the wants of the state… period… no questions.

This is standard wording in the Independence Acts passed by the British Parliament. The UK did not want an immigration problem on its hands, and therefore only a small class of people were allowed to hang on to their British Nationality after independence. The section quoted above is meant for people who were born elsewhere in the British Empire and then moved to Kenya – they were allowed to keep their British Nationality if where they were born was still British at Kenya’s independence.

Neither Obama Sr nor Obama Jr qualifies for any of the exemptions. If they did, almost everyone in Kenya would have had British nationality, and the UK certainly did not want to see all of them attempt to move to the UK.

I look ahead to more similar postings like this one. Does This Site have a newsletter I can subscribe to for anymore information from you?

I started out hating school, but I was a lucky one, smart enough to see the best escape was to do my very best as quickly as possible, and I was given more free time, special privileges, projects and finished almost a year ahead of my class with honors. Few students have the foresight or skills to adapt in this manner.

This was before Columbine, the deluge of street drugs, crime and many other threats of todays world, which made me want to keep my kids home for their safety. Than goodness I found The Tennage Liberation Handbook, by Grace Lewellen, which made the “how to” of homeschooling sound easy and fun, besides being the best option One graduated with honors and the other a year ahead of his class, and both have the same opportunities as their peers for college, and jobs.

Thank you for this website and a forum for discussing this most important topic. Free our kids from the “prisons” that rob them of their childhood!!

When you as a consumer buy something for $10,000 a year, wouldn’t you absolutely expect to get your money’s worth? Wouldn’t you expect a special tutor or $10,000 a year private school to teach your child to read well, even if it takes individualized instruction?

Yet MILLIONS of public school children ‘graduate’ who are barely able to read their own diplomas. So what are the schools doing with our children for 12 years, at $10,000 a year in tax money per student, with such incompetent results? Shouldn’t parents expect an educator or school getting $10,000 a year in tax money to, at the least, make their child a good reader?

If public schools are supposed to be the education ‘experts’, as they always claim, why do they need the help of parents, parents attending ‘conferences’, etc. to do the basic task of teaching children to read?

As John Stossel’s program showed about one boy who was already in high school and could barely read at 5th grade level, when the parent took that boy to a private school, in short order that boy’s reading level dramatically improved.
So, while I agree with you that parents can certainly help with their children’s education, public school teachers should not try to pass the blame onto parents shoulders for students poor reading skills, when it is THEIR primary job to teach children to read in their classrooms, especially with the schools getting $10,000 a year of parents tax money to pay for high-priced public schools that aren’t doing the job parents are paying them to do.

Also, I do not really blame public school teachers for this problem. I blame the system they have to work for that either does not teach public-school teachers how to teach children to read with phonics any longer, or because of the general incompetence of a government-controlled, bureaucratic school system that can can strangle good teachers with senseless regulations, meaningless curriculum that wastes children’s time, or idiotic reading instruction methods like whole-language/balanced literacy that can literally cripple children’s ability to read.

The same teachers who now teach in public school, if they worked in a good private school that taught kids to read with phonics, and had the children spend much more time on the basics of reading and math, would be good teachers, because the system/school they worked for would be far more competent in educating children, and give parent’s their money’s worth. Joel Turtel

One of the opening shots was of a mother of a high school student who is complaining that her son cannot read. Where was this mother during her son’s years? Did she attend conferences? Was she told that her son had problems and the things that she could do to help him? And what about the grandmother who complained that her granddaughter could not read or do her math? Where was this child’s mother? It is my experience that parents who take an active role in their child’s education have students who exhibit quite different behaviors then those students in Mr. Stossel’s footage.

However, only true Republicans should be doing this, as I see too many “Bush did 9/11″ nuts that can’t get off of the Bush did 9/11 stupidity. Those people aren’t welcome in any party, because every one of them is a loser who has no money, doesn’t participate in anything, screams when they don’t get their way . . . sounds like another party if you ask me.