A Senate Lion is silenced

Late last might a Senate Lion was silenced forever. However his legacy will
live on for generations. Sen. Edward Kennedy was a statesman despite his
personal problems. He was able to reach across the aisle and many pieces of
legislation which bear his name also bare the names of Republicans as well.
One of these pieces of legislation which I remember is Kennedy-Casabaulm
which dealt with Sen. Kennedy's favorite subject, health care. It barred
insurance companies from turning people down due to pre-existing conditions.
I don't remember if this ever passed but I do remember its existence.

Sen. Kennedy has been mentioned for his involvement with the ADA which
should not surprise you given his family's links to the disability
community. There is his son Edward Jr. who is an amputee and there is his
sister Rose who was developmentally disabled. It was this connection which
got the special Olympics its start in the late 1960s, I believe, in Chicago.
Rose lived at St. Colletta's I in Wisconsin until her death a few years ago.

Sen. Kennedy was involved in many pieces of legislation and championed many
causes in the disability community. He was actually a co-sponsor of S. 841,
the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. He was involved with the
Dear Colleague letter earlier this year for the increase in funding for
Technical Assistance and Dissemination (TA&D) for deaf-blind within the
Dept. of Education. Last I heard, there is likely to be an increase of $1
million which is pretty good in a bad economy.

Sen. Kennedy knew how to reach across the aisle even though he was a liberal
Democrat. This was true when it came to education reform. He worked with
then President George W. bush on that issue.

While I didn't agree with Sen. Kennedy's politics, he did have a way of
getting things done. He fought for what he believed in and he was larger
than life. He will be sorely missed in Washington by those who work in the
Capitol and beyond. A Senate Lion has been silenced forever. Let's all
reflect on the many achievements of this public servant for he knew what
public service was, having served some 47 years in the Senate. Will we ever
see another one like him? I highly doubt it.

Rest in peace. Your fight is over.

Education today what's wrong

As I said in my last post, there are issues in education. I did elude to
some of these issues in my last post but not all of them.

There are many issues today, some go to the way we educate our children and
what is expected of the schools and some goes to how education is funded.
Let's start with how our children are educated.

First of all, you have the self-esteem crap that is so pervasive in the
schools. This shows up in how grades are administered, what constitutes
failure and the like. In one district, the grade was changed, I believe,
from F to E; but who were they kidding? The children still know what it
means. You could get 50% and still pass. What a load of garbage. That's
mediocrity and is not acceptable in my opinion. Whatever happened to
striving to do one's best? It went by the wayside when the touchy feely
folks got a hold of education.

Along with the self esteem crap, you have teachers, some of whom are good,
who get burnt out because they can't control the little darlings because you
can't discipline them anymore or you might be facing the angry wrath of a
parent who is otherwise uninvolved in their child's life. There are parents
who are very involved and who make sacrifices to do that. These parents are
to be commended for they have a tough job and are putting their children
first and setting their priorities. If only other parents could emulate
these parents, the world would be a better place.

You have the fact that subjects are not taught as they should be. History
is but one example of this. There are some who say that one does not have
to know the facts. They just need to think historically or some such
nonsense. How can you understand history if you know nothing about the
facts? You can't and the educrats don't see the problem with their logic or
lack thereof.

As far as discipline you have what I would call liberals who absolutely
abhor anything which might even be remotely violent such as a swat across
the butt; and I'm not even talking about hitting. These pambyies don't even
like yelling as it might be too violent for them. Well, here we go with the
bubble wrapping of our children. We want to protect them from everything so
that they are ill-equipped to deal with the world when they become adults.
And we wonder why they can't handle rejection. Take a look and you will see
why this is. They've never been taught how to deal with rejection at an
early age because they have been protected from it. When everyone makes the
team andyou don't keep score because someone might not feel good about
themselves, then you have a problem. Whatever happened to doing better the
next time? It too went by the wayside along with respect and responsibility
which are not taught by some parents let alone the schools. Don't even get
me started on the subject of helicopter parents as that is a subject for
another day and would further lengthen this post.

Unions are also part of the problem as it is difficult to remove an
incompetent teacher. The administration must jump through an insane amount
of hoops in order to do this. There are also other work rules which must be
followed or the administration could end up having a grievance filed against
them. I work in a facility which has a union and I see this all of the time
with the schedule. The paraprofessional staff does not realize that the
supervisor has other duties over and above the scheduling of the
paraprofessional staff. However, due to the need for heavy documentation of
everything that is done, this can take more time than it should; and the
union and its work rules are the reason for it. Unions, in my opinion, have
largely outlived their usefulness and are relics of a day gone by. There
needs to be a different model but that won't happen anytime soon
unfortunately, especially with the current administration in power in
Washington.

Funding is another issue which must be dealt with and I don't know how to
deal with this one as I don't want my tax dollars going down some black
holes in this state; and there are some districts in this state that I do
consider black holes. That's why the property tax is still used. Yet over
70% of the property tax can be tied to the schools who keep going to the
voters again and again until they get what they want; and that is squeeze
more money out of the taxpayers whom they consider a piggy bank. There was
a recent referendum which I voted for but would not have had I known about
the superintendant's contract. There is another referendum which I did not
vote for but which passed because there were too many gullible people who
voted for it.

Well, I don't know what the answer is totally but teachers do need to be
accountable for what children learn. Parents need to be accountable for
making sure their children are ready to learn which means being properly
fed, clothed and disciplined. The school cannot and should not be expected
to fulfill these rolls. The schools are being asked to babysit many of
these children as parents go off in their own little worlds and go to work
and serve on all of the boards they think they need to serve on and all of
the rest. The schools are expected to feed these children breakfast, lunch
and then keep them entertained after school. It wasn't like that when I was
growing up and I think I am better for it.

Where did we go wrong? We went wrong in a number of places. There are too
many work rules thanks to the unions. There is too much touchy feely self
esteem crap thanks to the administrators and there is a funding crisis
brought on by the fact that taxpayers don't want to see their hard-earned
money go down what they view as black holes of under-performing districts.
I haven't even touched the removal of prayer from the schools and the fact
that someone is always looking for something to be offended about.

There needs to be choice. Parents need to have a choice of where they send
their children; whether that choice is public or private schools, they need
to be able to send their children to the school which will do the best job
of educating their children according to their values. Liberals
traditionally oppose this as they know that people will migrate away from
the public schools which they helped change for the worse. I've heard one
city's system referred to as a jobs program for the union rather than
someplace where children are educated. That's a pretty sad statement.

Will we solve these issues overnight? No we won't but if we don't do
something to regain control from the special interests, we will pay for it
with the loss of tomorrow's leaders today; and I for one don't like the
thought of that.

Kids TODAY

I was recently involved in a discussion of education today and this
discussion has led me to some thoughts about kids today. There are many
differences between kids of today and those of my generation. Some of these
differences are not necessarily for the better either.

First of all, when I was young we could go out and play and in fact were
encouraged to do so. Such is not the case today due to the hyper fear of
kidnapping or sexual predators. While both of these problems are issues, I
believe that the media has overblown these fears to the point of hysteria.
That's possible today with so many sources for news and information and what
passes for same. One must be careful about sources as not everything seen
on the Internet is accurate with some of it being outright false.

Back to the topic of kids today. Many of these kids are in organized sports
and the like so that parents can get them out of their hair. This is not
necessarily good either because there is no time for imagination which
unorganized play allowed for. You can't play cowboys and Indians anymore
because that's not pc or politically correct. Well, in my world PC means
personal computer and nothing more. However, certain groups, mostly
liberal, have shaped our world when it comes to this type of stuff. You
can't play the above-mentioned game because someone might be offended or
something. It might send the "wrong message". Give me a break.

Then we have the self-esteem crap that is peddled in school. This is why
you don't keep score in games anymore and why kids can't play dodge ball.
In both cases, someone might feel bad about themselves if they are on the
losing end of the game and we can't have that. As a result, you have kids
who feel good about themselves and feel entitled as well. Can you say
"cute and authorized"? I can and hate it. This is a lot of what you see
in restaurants these days when you have brats running around sticking their
grimy little hands into everything and the parents not stopping them and the
restaurant staff afraid to do anything due to the fear of being sued for
doing what the parents refuse to do. Anyone who does try to do something is
likely to catch hell from the uninterested parents of these brats. Well,
discipline them and establish control at an early age and you would not have
these problems,now would you? These parents don't get it.

Then you have parents who are too busy and self-absorbed to get involved in
their child's life, a formula which only leads to problems later in life.
Where were these parents when their child was 2? Where were these parents
when their child was 12 and running around the neighborhood totally
unsupervised? How come the parents knew nothing about their child's friends
when the child is 18 and wearing a prison jumpsuit? These are the parents
who have really failed to own the responsibility as some like to call it.

You have good parents who don't give their kids everything they want, who
challenge their kids to do good things, who see failure as a way toward
success by allowing the child to learn from that failure thus allowing for
success the next time around and who teach respect and responsibility.
These are parents and children you don't hear about as good news does not
sell. Bad news, however, does sell and there's plenty of it too.
Unfortunately the bad kids stick out a lot more than the good ones do and
you see examples of the former in the grocery store and the like, more so
than you see the good ones because the good children are quietly doing good
things while the bad ones are making everyone's lives miserable.

Are their bad parents out there? You bet there are and often times bad
parents lead to bad kids. These are parents who don't discipline their
children and let them run wild because they can't be bothered. These are
parents who should have never had children in the first place.

Are there issues in education? You bet there are and those issues are a
topic for another day and another entry.'

Little brat go away

You might ask who I am referring to in the title of this entry. The answer
to that one is Brett, I mean Brat, Favre who is the former QB for the Green
Bay Packers. I say this because he won't just retire and go away. That's
all I want to see him do right now.

As a friend said this morning, Brat has a serious case of Peter Pan Syndrome
meaning he won't grow up. At some point you have to move on to the next
stage in your life but this guy just doesn't get it and he's ruining his
legacy by his actions.

Ted Thompson, Green Bay's General manager, was right to get rid of him last
year after not wanting to put up with his indecisiveness and me, me, me
attitude. The Jets dumped the problem after last season and now Minnesota
has the problem. Well, all I have to say to Childress and the others is
don't cry about it when you have to deal with Mr. indecisive next year. You
can't plead ignorance because He's done it to two teams already. Why the
hell would you want to be the third one? You have to be awfully desperate
and lack trust in your current players, not to mention your own GM. If I
were Rosenfeld or Jackson, I would be wondering what I have to do to get
playing time. Could either one want a trade? We'll have to wait and see
but the Vikings have added an off-the-field distraction to their club if not
an outright cancer to their locker room.

I hope the Packers legally wipe Brat Favre all over the field this year. It
serves him right for what he did. He's hell-bent on revenge against Ted
Thompson and Thompson will be the one who comes out smelling like a rose,
not Favre. Is that how he wants to be remembered? It must be because he's
certainly being a little brat about the whole thing. Just go away little
brat!

One clunker of a program

When the government tries to run something, the outcome usually isn't good;
and cash for clunkers is no exception. There are a myriad of problems with
this program from not knowing how much money is left to what will happen to
all of the clunkers that are traded in. Can you say unintended
consequences? I sure can.

Let's start from the beginning. The deal on this one is that $1 billion
will be spent by the government, who will get the money from God knows
where, to get inefficient vehicles off the road and allow people to trade
them in for more fuel-efficient vehicles. The goal is to get these clunkers
off the road permanently. Obviously the clunkers will be scrapped. The
amount of the rebate depends on the increase in fuel efficiency of the
vehicle purchased vs. that of what is being traded in.

After the first week, dealers are wondering if they will get their money and
there are questions about how these clunkers will be disposed of. I have
also heard about snafus with the government website for this program as
dealers complete mountains of paperwork, with said paperwork being typical
of any government program. Now no one knows how much money is left in this
program and the House was in a hurry to rush another $2 billion down this
black hole. The Senate doesn't want to move so fast which is just fine with
me. Let them ask some tough questions because I am quite certain that the
administration can't answer the questions.

Then there is the disposal of these clunkers. Enter unintended
consequences, something Liberals don't think about. There is a shortage of
the chemical which is needed to kill the engines on these vehicles so that
they will never run again. That's
one unintended consequence. The other is where and how to dispose of the
dead engines and the other parts of these vehicles. I've seen headlines to
indicate that these are not a boon for junk yards either. Can parts other
than the engines be used or not? Likely not as that would defeat the
purpose of the program in the eyes of this administration and its liberal
friends. It's for the environment but they forgot to think about the
environment when they were conceiving this program. If they had been
thinking, this program would have died a merciful death.

You say things would be different in the area of health care. I highly
doubt it as the government has proven before that it can't run other things
well. Take the digital TV conversion which started under a Republican
administration. This one was botched from the start. There was no
consideration of accessibility for people with disabilities to the menus at
all. Heck I can't even turn on the stupid TV at work due to the need for an
analog to digital converter box that is inaccessible to me. People from the
government were clearly clueless on that one as demonstrated by two
underwhelming appearances at ACB functions in 2008.

These are but two programs that illustrate why you don't put anything
crucial into the hands of the government. They will, and usually do, find a
way to screw it up. The two examples given show that in two
administrations. Need I say more? I don't think so.