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Wednesday, May 9, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.
A recent Heard Elsewhere editorial from the Chicago Tribune about the failure of Congress and the Obama administration to address the entitlement programs can also apply to our local representatives who do not address public employee retirement programs.
How can these elected officials face their children and grandchildren, who will be paying for these benefits while we continue unrestrained government spending such as the train to nowhere or the new city hall?
An amazing Washington Post article [obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-the-debt by Peter Wallsten, Lori Montgomery and Scott Wilson 3-17-2012] shows that instead of doing what is right for America Obama made a political decision to break his agreement with John Boehner and Eric Cantor on a grand budget deal. It reads in part:
"The next morning at the White House, top aides circulated Boehner's latest offer [$800 billion in revenue] throughout the West Wing. They met repeatedly in Daley's office, scouring budget tables and Democratic vote sheets. By mid-afternoon, they told the Republicans that they were about to take a plan to the president for his approval.
A senior administration official said the White House team recognized that the two offers were coalescing and that the time for a decision was at hand. "The fact that we had Republicans willing to discuss revenue [$800 billion] was a breakthrough," Dick Durbin said.
At the Capitol, the Republicans waited. Shortly after 6 p.m., Daley called Boehner's office and said an update was on the way.
None came, and four hours later, house chief of staff Jackson told his staff to go home.
----------
What followed was a public press conference call by Obama for $1.2 trillion in revenue to embarrass and under cutting Boehner with the House Members.
The Post says "Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own Democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult for Boehner"
"Is there political benefit to coming to a big budget deal with John Boehner? Sure," Dan Pfeiffer said. "But every other political and message imperative was thrown out...."
And look at Illinois. On the verge of bankruptcy. Wasn't that the state our current President served as a part time junior senator for half a term? And look what happened? He went to DC and now the USA is tetering on bankruptcy.
Carmine A. DiFazio
The big tax cuts to the greedy affect our children even more . These cuts leave them uneducated and therefor they'er burdened with "onerous" student loan debt. If we provided public service jobs may they could pay them back. The only youth Social security and Medicare may affect is the trust fund youth.
The children will still be trying to pay off college loans. As far as the unfunded liabilities of SS and Medicare go, good luck. Not enough rich to tax.
" How can these elected officials face their children and grandchildren?"
Well Henry, they face their children and grandchildren the same way you do. You were probably a beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts which have all been borrowed money since 2003. I can only hope some of that actually was used for the benefit of your children and grandchildren.
So when you ask the question above of elected officials, search your own experience at facing your children and grandchildren and pass on any helpful advice.
Hi Jim Weber,
Most of those Bush Tax cuts were used for to murder hundreds of thousands of people in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. And this doesn't count the physical and mental wounded that have come back from those wars and will need care for the rest of their lives.
"How can these elected officials face their children and grandchildren, who will be paying for these benefits while we continue unrestrained government spending such as the train to nowhere or the new city hall?"
Schmid -- don't you mean "city HALLS"? North Vegas has a shiny new one too, and it's been broke a long time. Good point on entitlements, and as you can see it's nothing new at all.
For a picture highlighting your letter nicely, I highly recommend you search Google Images _ i only own a dollhouse
"Well Henry, they face their children and grandchildren the same way you do."
pisces41 -- hardly. Did Henry create all that new debt?
"...I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -- Thomas Jefferson in his May 28, 1816, letter to John Taylor
Republicans like to save their entitlement programs for the top 1% and global companies. Corporate welfare and trickledown tax cuts (Mitt paid 13.9% in 2010) is what keeps GOPers in office.
Henry,
You'll need to explain that liberals did not have any idea the costs of entitlements would be so high. Medicare's projected cost in 1965 was $12 billion dollars in 1990 but it actually was $120 billion dollars. Social security has an issue in that life expectancy in 1933 was barely over 60 years of age and now it's around 76 years of age, meaning, the cost of that program is much higher than was projected way back in 1933. Same will be with Obamacare. The cost of the new entitlement will be higher than projected because circumstances change and liberals do not care about who will pay for their cost miscalculations. Our economy is affected by the miscalculated cost of these entitlements. Now and in the future we will all see expensive government pensions either bankrupting cities or severely curtailing local/city services in order to pay for the lavish pensions. Liberals couldn't help themselves, they wanted to be more like Europe with slower GDP and job growth, more entitlements and they wanted barely over 50% of the American population to pay for everyone else.
Don't expect Dumbocrats to do anything other than demagogue the issue. Afterall, it is an election year.
<<And look at Illinois. On the verge of bankruptcy. Wasn't that the state our current President served as a part time junior senator for half a term? And look what happened? He went to DC and now the USA is tetering on bankruptcy>>
Sorry, but our current President served longer than a half a term as a State senator.
And tell us what other States are on the verge of bankruptcy. At least Illinois admits it, others try and hide it.
Oh yeah, what is the unemployment rate in Illinois v. the Nevada unemployment rate?
Teapublican/1%'er motto...
"Do as we SAY, not as we DO."
"My tax cut and my CEO's 5 million dollar BONUS is certainly more important than your silly little problem of trying to eat non-pet-food meals and buying your heart pills...please, who are we trying to fool here?
If the choice is doing the right thing by my fellow human beings like the very young and very old, or FILLING UP my POT OF GOLD, you must KNOW for whom the bell tolled...
It tolled for MEEEEEE!!!"
gmag,
Obama's class warfare tax plan that already failed would've brought in an extra $4 billion per year. Our deficit this year is $1.3 trillion($1,300 billion). Taxing top wage earners lowers the deficit to $1,296 billion. There isn't enough rich people in America to tax and pay for the entitlements.
The Pilgrims tried Socialism and it didn't work. No one worked the crops 'cause they all thought they'd get what "they needed" from the common storehouse. Only took one winter to figure it out.
Entitlement:
a : the state or condition of being entitled : right
b : a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract.
This defines executive compensation: 'having a right' to as much as they can take that is defined by contract and law.
In truth, the "entitlement class" that drains this country dry are actually the bankers, mortgage and insurance companies that reach into personal savings accounts and take the money from those accounts to create worthless mortgages and loans. For that, they claim to 'earn' commissions, salary, bonuses, benefits, perks, expense accounts and Golden parachutes.
Yet, no banker, mortgage broker or Realtor has ever paid back commissions on failed mortgages. They claim to have a 'right' to those commissions even if the transaction fails.
These are the people who have put America into severe debt and financial jeopardy for no good reason while never creating a single job - except for themselves. They also want tax reductions because they are 'entitled'.
There are continuing complaints about welfare types, but those who operate the financial system should also be considered on welfare because they never earn their incomes - they just stand over the money pot and take as much as possible.
Welfare in this or any other country has NEVER created the same international devastation as the professionals and 'Wizards' in the financial world. No welfare group has ever caused a stock market crash.
Bank failure in America is about 100 times that of Canada. Canadians don't loose their homes and jobs because they broke an arm - that's a modern American tradition.
The biggest looters are at the top of the income brackets and reigning in the entitlements should start there.
SunJon,
Simply put, if borrowers were able to pay their home loans each month there would not have been a housing issue. Blame lenders, blame the economy, blame the wilderness, blame global warming, blame anybody but the borrower I don't care. Government gave incentives to get more people into houses in the early 90's. The low wage earner played the game. Given the belief in eternal appreciation of house prices, low incomers would have been crazy not to take out a 2/28 ARM with no money down, and maybe a little cash back at closing. As Warren Buffett stated "Large numbers of people who 'lost' their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost. In these cases, the evicted homeowner was the winner, and the victim was the lender."
SunJon, can I take out a loan next week and blame your dog in two years for me not paying back the loan?
Forget future generations. People have to eat today. The construction industry is in shambles and is the main unemployment driver with millions in that business.
In terms of lavish pensions. The average govt pension about 2 grand a month and most including yours truly have to pay for medical out of that stipend. The cost of the plan I had in California (CalPers Bluecross PPO Family plan) is I believe currently approaching $2,000.00 a month. If you have a family and need the insurance you are basically left with nothing.
"Robb Quincey made $460,000 last year as city manager of Upland, California, a middle-class suburb east of Los Angeles at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. His duties included overseeing 325 employees, a police department with 25 cars, four fire stations and a library for the community of 76,000.
Last year, Quincey, 51, negotiated a new contract in which the city agreed to add reimbursements for his car, housing and other costs directly into his paycheck, according to public records. When he retired, the combined payments would be counted in his final year's salary and used as the basis for calculating his pension for life. Such loopholes allow some public employees to manipulate overtime, unused vacation and special compensation to boost their retirement pay. The practice, known as pension spiking, has drawn protests at a time when U.S. state pension assets are $479.5 billion under what is needed to pay promised benefits, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
"It's upsetting and confirms that we need change in local government," said Gino Filippi, who was elected to the Upland City Council in November, after Quincey's new contract was struck. "It's an abuse of the system."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-20...
Why not privatize everything, health care, Social Security, Medicare, prisons, education, whatever? That way when Wall St. greed tanks the market again, and they will, everyone will be flat broke, earning minimum wage and in hock to their eyeballs. Maybe then people will wake up to voting against one's own best interest instead of a false ideology such as "trickle down" economics.
Or Vernos, we could continue paying lavish pensions to state workers at tax payer's expense:
"In Ventura County, where the pension system is underfunded by $761 million, 84% of the retirees receiving more than $100,000 a year are receiving more than they did on the job. In Kern County, 77% of retirees with pensions greater than $100,000 a year are getting more now than they did before."
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-...
For every Robb Quincy there are millions of retired workers trying to make it on 20k a year.
Payton and Eli Manning make a combined 40 million a year. Compare that to the average Walmart worker. There is massive fraud and corruption in this country. A few like Quincy might get away with it but the average retiree, both public and private is struggling mainly due to sky high medical.
Public workers get pensions. Private workers SS Medicare and Medicaid to the tune of over a trillion a year.
I get a great pension but medical eats it up. My wife a much lower SS check but her medical costs are almost completely covered by medicare.
The last time they talked about underfunded pensions was the 1968-1982 high level stock market consolidation. World wide assets just under a trillion. Today public pensions are the world largest investor class with 20 trillion in assets. The form the base for every market in the world.
Average mutual fund returns for the last 10 years...a paltry 3.6%. This is killing everyone. The same methods pension fund managers use to generate returns individuals use.
Long bull markets lead to long bear markets. Investors cant meet necessary investment assumptions and they end up short until a new bull market begins.
Assumptions need to be adjusted until healthier markets return in the next few years.
Private sector pensions are also underfunded to the tune of trillions. Cant generate a retirement on 4% a year returns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension_fun...
Not a bad cushion till things improve.
What is in the SS and Medicare trust funds. Specifically designated intergovernmental debt.
I would rather have stocks, bonds, and real estate.
I'll bet the Rob Quincy ratio is much less :-)
California's $500-billion pension time bomb
"The state of California's real unfunded pension debt clocks in at more than $500 billion, nearly eight times greater than officially reported.Why should Californians care? Because this year's unfunded pension liability is next year's budget cut to important programs. For a glimpse of California's budgetary future, look no further than the $5.5 billion diverted this year from higher education, transit, parks and other programs in order to pay just a tiny bit toward current unfunded pension and healthcare promises. That figure is set to triple within 10 years and -- absent reform -- to continue to grow, crowding out funding for many programs vital to the overwhelming majority of Californians."
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/06/...
"Sorry, but our current President served longer than a half a term as a State senator."
You're forgiven. He served half a term as US Senator. State doesn't count. Local yokel office is not national. Try and keep up.
Carmine A. DiFazio
HEALTHCARE SHOULD NOT BEFOR PROFIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I recently had a doctor order a second MRI rather than accept one done two weeks earlier. I wonder why. Could it be that he was the owner of the facility for the second MRI? Oh my, he was!
WAKE UP SUCKERS!
"Oh yeah, what is the unemployment rate in Illinois v. the Nevada unemployment rate?"
Both as high or higher than they were in Jan 2009 when Obama was sworn in.
Carmine A. DiFazio
I can't fantom how anyone would justify Illinois after Gov Blogevich. A crook to to core. In jail for 14 years. That's Illinois's rep. A state of crooks and no nothings.
Carmine A. DiFazio
The republican's worship of money has no bounds-
Republican's true religion is greed and Money.
the tea party idiots that support the top one percent
Gordon Gekko
"The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's
wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work,
two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating
to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate
speculation. It's bullsh-t. You got ninety percent of the American
public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own.
We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the
price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while
everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're
not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy?
It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer
instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach
you. ....It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game,
somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's
simply transferred from one perception to another. ....The point is
ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
Gordon Gekko
Wall Street "
@Det_Munch: I wouldn't call voting present more than not as being someone that served his constituents very well. Oh and by the way Nevadas un-employment number might be lower had our President not once but twice dogged our great city nationally. Worst part is Reid is what the highest ranking Democrat and has done zero to help our state.
Seems you and your Cooke County compadre Dipstick will continue to live in the past. Try and stop blaming past presidents and tell us what our current President has done or is going to do to fix what you all say was messed up by others. Blame game is all I've heard lately. Isn't "Forward" the new slogan? Even though forward is a socilaistic term, lets move forward. Obama would get more respect if he stopped the finger pointing and worked to fix the economy.
Let's call it like is, Entitlements have broke America.
Neither party is willing to address the entitlement programs; they all want votes and they'll and say whatever is required for the vote.
They don't care, when they leave office, they get a plush consulting job where they're paid millions and some billions and they pass that money on to the offspring through irrevocable trusts and tax shelters.
The only difference is that conservatives and independents will offer up tax credits to offset the pain we have paying into a system that is designed by the liberals to further their sick immoral agenda.
I say, kudos to the tax breaks and tax credits"..we deserve them, all of them and more".
Obama failed to put a fix in for the college interest rate in his 2013 budget.
But now in an evolving flipped position Obama thinks it is a political problem and must find offset money for it. And the key reason why the loans must be discounted is that college graduates can not find a job.
This is the current weekly diversion political point so Obama does not have to talk about the economy and jobs
Two years ago Obama, Reid, and Pelosi forced all the student loans to be from the Federal Government and included the a stipulation that Congress would set the interest rates every two years.
The Obama proposal up for vote will cost American taxpayers who must subsidy the discounted rate over a trillion dollars over the next ten years.
----)
Meanwhile the key reason that students need to borrow is college cost are too high - and Obama is not doing anything about high college expenses.
Calpers has $270 billion in reserves and will pay out about $10 billion this year. This time bomb crap was the mantra of the 1960s and 70s. Thats when Americans started losing defined benefit pensions by the truck load.
What do they have currently...A grand a month SS check. WOW!!! When you pay have $27.00 in reserves for every buck you pay out that is called HEAVEN.
What do SS and Medicare have in reserve...NOTHING
Gerry- Even Obama's own former Chief of Staff, now Chicago Mayor, sees a need to address the pension problem:
May 8th, 2012:
"Mayor Rahm Emmanuel took his case for reining in soaring pension costs to state lawmakers today, saying change is needed or Chicago's "quality of life will suffer."
Emanuel called for a pause on cost-of-living increases for 10 years to allow pension systems "to catch its breath." He wants city employees to increase their contributions 1 percent each year for five years and to allow employees to be offered a choice of retirement plans.
"The day of reckoning has arrived," Emanuel said, saying taxpayers, retirees and employees want politicians to be honest and "level with them" about the problems.
A rare step for a Chicago mayor, Emanuel personally pitched his ideas for cutting costs to a House pension panel. It's an approach that his immediate predecessor, Richard M. Daley, had not taken, though he made a variety of appearances over the years."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local...
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/
My error...$232 billion...Largest pile of cash in the entire country. US Govt sector pensions have $3.4 trillion in reserves.
Given the corruption, banking collapse, lousy stock and real estate markets I marvel that these massive pools of cash haven't diminished more.
Pension funds have trillions and half the country can not come up with a grand. The lack of saving and investment by individuals is the big retirement problem.
In the mid 1970s they talked about Calpers going bust within 10 years. I think they had about 20 billion then. As stated above 232 billion today.
Hey Dip sounds like Rahm Emmanuel is jumping ship. Wonder why?
Rosienda - "The Pilgrims tried Socialism and it didn't work. No one worked the crops 'cause they all thought they'd get what "they needed" from the common storehouse."
The pilgrims also thought the devil possessed people so they drowned them or hanged them. By the way, they ended up having the local natives supply them with food that some would consider to be welfare, we now call it Thanksgiving.
You should also know that anti socialist Michele Bachmann worked on a kibbutz in Israel, one of the most socialized evironments on the planet.
I'm not in favor of a pure socialistic system but some of you people are pure hypocrites. You rely on the gov't. just like the people you complain about.
They absolutely due need to make substantial adjustments to reflect the cancerous financial markets and lousy return. Workers need to pay more into the system, retire later, and the investment assumption needs to be lowered from about 8% to about 6%. I totally agree that changes are necessary. BUT they have massive amounts of money and over time compounding will create more wealth. For a few hundred thousand California retirees to burn through hundreds of billions of dollars will take more time than I have left.
Changes...absolutely....going bust...hardly
Gerry- from Bloomberg:
Apr 30, 2012
San Jose Retirement at 50 Threatens Solvency
"Police officers and firefighters in San Jose, California, can retire at age 50 with 90 percent of their pay. The deal has left Silicon Valley's capital so short of cash that a library and community center has stood unused since its completion two years ago.
The predicament of the 10th-biggest U.S. city reflects the painful choices that rising public-worker pension and health costs are inflicting on municipalities. In San Jose, the burden has become a $2.7 billion unfunded liability, costing the city its AAA bond rating. Next month, voters will decide on a measure that would trim the city's payments for its two pensions. "Our police officers and firefighters will probably make more money in retirement than they did while they were working," Mayor Chuck Reed, 63, said in an interview last week in his City Hall office. "We're seeing the impacts of that on our ability to provide services." "
But according to you Gerry, there is no pension issues?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-01...
http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/10/pf/emerg...
The above is the real retirement catastrophe. Half the country with nothing.
Dippy do you have to keep repeating dippy Biden every day
Bin may be dead but terrorism is still alive and the volt is dead
GM did not pay any taxes last year. GM did not repay what they owe for the bailout
Problems are everywhere. I never said pension issues didn't exist. What I did say is that pension funds make up the worlds largest pool of cash.
Your above posts reflects poor management by the city.
The same holds true for cities like North Las Vegas. You always have to plan for rainy days. Or possibly rainy decades depending on how the current financial situation plays out.
Financial history is filled with booms and busts.
"Gordon Gekko
Wall Street "
Hollywood. Excellent reference source. Embellishment and make believe used to entertain. Movie roles and characters. Truth be told the movie stunk and the acting was terrible.
I hear tell a new movie is coming soon. Based on the real life of former Senator and Governor of NJ and one time expert financial advisor to Joe and O, Jon Corzine. You know the guy that can't account for $1.6 Billion of investor funds for MFL Global. The guy that Joe Biden said they always call before they make any financial decisions. If he were not a fund raiser and contributor to Joe and O, his carcass would already be so far down a hole, they would have to pump sun light into him.
Carmine A. DiFazio
"Financial history is filled with booms and busts.'
The purpose of electing our gov't representives and leaders is to encourage the former and prevent the latter. AND if already in process, then maximize the former and minimize the latter. How's Joe and O doing on these metrics? I know my answer. Do you know yours?
Carmine A. DiFazio
Sick...not sure of the point you are trying to make but I wish you all the best...Gerry
Sick,
I wish you well too. You stated on May 5th in another LVS article comment section that you were(past tense) "the director of social services for a not-for-profit housing agency in NY. The agency had acquired gut-rehabbed buildings & we required to have a staff to provide independent living skills." You stated in the same paragraph later that "As a teacher & professor I will qualify that many of my peers arent able to teach squat either."
Perhaps you can write again letting us know more accurately what you do and your scenario.
All the best to you.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/users/SickOfS...
The entitlement of education as it is being played out also robs us, bigger than we can know.
Envision wrapping a life path around a kid's interest, building the fire inside to acquire the skills she needs to succeed and letting the MOTIVATION and TECHNOLOGY fill in the basic education pieces more quickly and more effectively because the ONUS to LEARN is all different from what kids have been getting---all the basics jammed down their throats with no idea in hell what they're worth, versus a new way of letting their vision of how their life will become fascinating or at least "INTERESTING" supply the drive to acquire the basics and the mastery of technology, while the computer apps, On Job Training potentials arranged by teachers supply the basic foundations, the pieces they need.
People who are intrinsically motivated can acquire what they WANT to acquire WAAAY faster and better than folks who are being taught AT. The teacher's role is a manager of learning, not disseminator of facts...and the big factor is the complete evaporation of the myths in too many kids' minds - that they're invincible, that they'll live forever and that there'll be a time when they are told what they are going to do with their lives.
I think building the fire inside the kid to develop her own talents, grab her life by the parapets and GO FOR IT will succeed and the spoonfuls of pablum will fail in traditional methods, especially in light of what kids have at their disposal -- all the power in the world with access to information 24/7 , and all kinds of programmed learning possibilities already mostly sitting there, one mouse-click away.
The world has changed since you and i sat in schools. In a better world, good schools would provide a way for the best kiddos to propel themselves using what we know instead of playing around with this waiting game, the babysitting and pablum feed that schools have become even as technology and potentials have gone to the moon and Mars.
Kid who want to start careers in communication can learn SOOO much from writing and reading blogs, from making videos, slide shows, magazines...and all with a cell phone in their pocket. Kids who want to succeed are being BORED TO DEATH at school. Carnegie units still describe education, that is, hours sitting on their butts.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS OLD BLACK AN' WHITE PICTURE??
This entitlement has robbed our futures and our greatest wealth just as our potential is being denied its value by carrying the vestiges of the past into the future.
I meant to revise my previous post to emphasize the STEM aspect (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) which identifies the integration of key components associated with standard curricula, but in the case of what we could develop in the Building Science curriculum is both a personalized reach into what career opportunities are available today involving applications of what the student finds exquisitely fascinating together with the online research and project-based inquiry and mastery of facets of the background knowledge they will need to succeed in their chosen career path.
In short our schools in a better world could aim at what thrills a student with a blended mix of both On JOb Training and also theory and practice of the prerequisites through coursework of both standard individualized (or personalized instruction) and online resources.
So if a kid envisions architecture, she will hear from architects, shadow them, attend meetings with architects and their field engineers, go to job-sites, etc along with mastering higher math, physics, art, architectural history, architectural design, history of architecture etc. By being in the middle of Las Vegas especially the rebuilding that the downtown project (ZAPPOS) will provide, these abstractions will have concrete equivalents and hands-on opportunities to get dirty and acquire a strong taste of what her expectations might include.
If however a kid wants to do energy retrofits to upgrade existing structures, his emphasis would be on the theory and practice of construction techniques, western framing versus balloon framing, electrical systems, HVAC. indoor air quality, etc and enjoy field work in construction, demolition, insulation, installations of equipment etc. He would work with energy auditors, field personnel and pursue basics required to understand these life-works in various trades to get the tastes he needs of a future in energy and houses, remodeling and application of current available techniques with sustainablility and respect for what has come before, its failings and the improved model..
One of the best students in our class whose ambition was to become an Emergency Room doctor...until his senior year when his FIRST experience at an actual ER was of a large woman who was unable to pass a bowel. He and several other professionals used tiny little spoons to DIG the dried feces from out of her anus as she groaned and pushed and knelt on her knees on a table in the ER. One experience taught him to find other work, but the tragedy is the failed efforts and disappointing outcome of having wasted years by deluding himself with a 'TV' version of how it would be.
Job-oriented skills approach offers an alternative path to success as it enables young learners to see, feel and do what most only read about. I am a strong believer in early access to application of growing skill. It empowers by experience. Doing stuff is the sound of opportunity HAMMERING!
Carmine and chuck333:
Blagoyevich was a blow hard jerk and always was one even before he became governor. Met him once and that was enough. Short little sh&t, too boot with a roving eye!! He single-handedly ruined the reputation of Illinois and made it a laughing stock. Something Illinois politicians were quite capable of doing without his help. I did not vote for him because I was not living in Illinois at the time. Illinois should have stuck with their track record of voting in Republicans for governor, as they have for years. Even the Democrats vote for Republican governors.
Illinois does have a terrible reputation but it is my home and I will always feel affection for it and take it's side when the Nobodies out there who have never lived here or even visited start taking potshots. There is more going for it then the negative stuff you read in the newspaper or online. There's a lot of good people who live here. Hard working Midwesterners. Plenty of them living in Vegas actually and you certainly can tell when you first meet them. They're the ones who are most likely to smile at you and be polite. You know, actually acknowledge you.
But on the flip side - because of the financial problems the state is having because of mismanagement of funds, fraud, etc., I get extremely upset. And that's putting it mildly. I may very well lose my job because of the budget cuts the State needs to do. Many people will get hurt by these cuts. I am not happy about that because I will be in worse shape then I was when I was unemployed.
But Illinois is also not the only State with problems. What is killing so many State budgets, and the federal budget, is the perks the State and Federal employees get with their pensions and health insurance, Medicaid fraud, but it seems no one wants to change anything. They would rather cut funds for progams that serve the most vulnerable of our society and communities.
And tell me this all you Obama-haters - WHAT do you really think is going to happen if Romney gets elected? Do you REALLY believe things will get better??? If you do - shame on all of you!!!
By fulfilling our ENTITLEMENT OBLIGATION of a free education to youth, we can substantially impact the failing entitlements as we have traditionally listed the, namely SS & Medicare.
Educating our youth to empower their lives from the inside, from recognizing their own innate strengths and weaknesses, will create a whole new and better brand of American kid, one who takes responsibility for his/her lives and wants to make a success of it, as opposed to the laid back game-players we are developing now. The new American is like the old American, with more depth in the RED cheeks, a brighter WHITE in the toothy grin and a truer BLUE in what matters most -- life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness!
Entitlements as we knew them could become a thing of the past when learners actually apply themselves to their ambitious call to make their own way. They won't "need no stinkin' welfare, no SS and maybe not even Medicare" when they're busy on that happy path of pursuit, celebrating their freedom and independence and standing on the heads of giants with technology that empowers progress just the way we would want it in a better world.
Fixing the early kid is way better than spending gooolobs of dough welfaring the sick, lame and lazy.
A life without regrets comes from applying what cha got, using the tools available and going for the rainbows, not kicking back and waiting to be told where your next meal is coming from. We have lost too much by expecting entitlements, and it starts with poorly strategized schooling in our contemporary world far outpacing the Carnegie units-based measure of learning.
It's time to turn it around and refuse to accept programmed failure and mandatory mediocrity. America is the world's best chance, and we have let her go lazy and dumb, don't cha think??
If not now, then when?
If not us, then who??
Our attitude toward entitlements is robbing our futures
And it starts way before 62!
Maybe we could stop sending money overseas? Foreign "aid." Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers stationed in Europe, Asia, Greenland....stimulating other economies while draining ours. We need TROOPS ON OUR BORDER and troops to help locate, arrest, expel, deport illegal invaders. Then our economy has a chance at recovery. In the mean time, if we can STOP employers of illegals, we'd be going in the right direction. And stop paying "entitlements" thru the tax code--half of Americans pay nothing in federal income taxes. And, many of them receive refunds of money they never paid in. It is not "fair" or constitutional for government to decide which life styles to endorse, promote, finance.
Illinois and Obama lover, does the name Daniel D. Rostenkowski sound familiar?
"WHAT do you really think is going to happen if Romney gets elected? Do you REALLY believe things will get better??? If you do - shame on all of you!!!"
Here's my answer to you: I think Romney will make a much better leader and president than your favorite choice. And that's all that I have to think. I'm willing to give him a chance to prove me wrong just as I did the current President. But once he does [prove me wrong] shame on me if I vote for him again. I learn from my mistakes and so did most Americans. Shame on those who don't.
Carmine A. DiFazio
Carmie,
but if the opponents to the MITTEN appear to be gay, your good buddy will hold him down on the ground, smash his face and cut off his no-damn-good long girlie hair?? Right.
Yep that MITTEN is one tough dude!
SHAME on those who don't learn from their mistakes! Right?, Carmie??, right??
And are you sure that's all you have to think??
"my home and I will always feel affection for it and take it's side when the Nobodies out there who have never lived here or even visited start taking potshots."
From 1988-1992, I lived and worked in South County St. Louis. I could have chosen Illinois, right over the river and bridge. I didn't. No regrets. St. Louis is one of my all time favorite places to live.
Carmine A. DiFazio
"And are you sure that's all you have to think??"
Since you asked, No. I'm glad I don't have your name. If I did, I change it.
Carmine A. DiFazio
No one yet has mentioned wars, particularly wars of choice and fabrication as in Iraq. There were no terrorists in Iraq and not a single reason for invasion was justified.
Bus raised the national debt from $5.9 trillion when he took office to $10.7 trillion when he left. By contrast, the debt during eight years of Clinton only went up $1.1 trillion.
Iraq was a war created to spend the most money possible even though there were no terrorists or WMD in Iraq, known facts at the time. The Iraq war was created to generate debt so large that domestic spending would have to be cut.
The proof is to say that Bush and the GOP, creators of Iraq, are the same group that continually speak to dismantle public education, social protection nets and assistance medical care for the retired...because of the 'debt crisis', while giving enormous tax cuts to the wealthy, many of whom became millionaires and billionaires because of Iraq.
The GOP now claims that "entitlements" are destroying the future but what about the $50 billion/year we pay to China for interest on US Savings Bonds? That $50 billion could be used for education. Instead, it helps to pay for the Chinese military - which the GOP is ranting about.
The objective of the GOP is to break up the Government, take apart as much domestic protections and security as possible and create large numbers of unemployed youth in the process, a commodity for future military campaigns.
Mitt Romney is already saying that 'Russia will walk all over us' and that we need to stand up to Russia.
The GOP will re-create the cold war and scavenge every last nickel for military confrontation. They know that high school diplomas were never necessary to operate machine guns.
Re Freeman, you say:
"Simply put, if borrowers were able to pay their home loans each month there would not have been a housing issue."
No kidding! However, your statement proves you don't understand what happened in the real mortgage industry.
People without incomes were given loans, those that could never have made the payments in the first place. No bank is required to mortgage a house because someone makes an application but that is what happened.
The reward? Big commissions to the owners of the mortgage companies, real estate agents and bankers. They made their billions off commissions and never gave a cent back for failed loans.
Also, a borrower may be able to make the first level payments based on 2%-3% interest rates, but NEVER when the interest rate resets on a sky rocketing principal and the monthly payments jump up 2x to 3x.
This is what happened. Try getting the facts and tuning into the real world for once rather then spouting imaginary ideologies.
Last year, Nicolas Sarkozy decided that he was going to take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. The French Air Force bombed Libyan targets. But France also enlisted NATO support and NATO allies bore 80% of the cost of the war in Libya.
The actual cost to France was 320 million euros, which equals around $415 million. And not one French soldier died.
But the war in Iraq cost $4 trillion according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. More than World War II. 4,487 American soldiers died (and maybe 500,000 Iraqis).
Iraq is now the most expensive war this Country has fought, more than WWII - and against a third world country with few defenses.
The war in Iraq dragged on for eight years and nine months. During that period, U.S. taxpayers spent $415 million on the war in Iraq every eight hours. An average of 10 American soldiers were killed every week while George Bush insisted on Bible passages with the daily war reports.
As I said, the objective of Iraq was an excuse to BANKRUPT this Government and force the GOP's religious value system of austerity, deprivation, censorship on the less fortunate while putting the law of the State in the domestic bedroom, to force 'self reliance'.
Even with this, the White House announced last week that he had signed an agreement to extend the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan for twelve more years.
Military occupation has become an entitlement to an economic stimulus package in the form of war rather than peace. The prayers of bin Laden, not Bush, are being answered every day as the fallout from 9/11 continues.
Thanks Alan Grayson for the numerical statistics and core history.
SunJon,
The facts and data do not support your premises. Sorry guy.
The biggest failure of entitlements is the entitlement to a free and meaningful education.
If we had done this one right, our kids would be leading the world. But because of greed and sloth, we are closer to the bottom than the top nowadays.
Kids are entitled to develop their strengths, but not in our school. Rather they are forced into a compliance of sorts - swallow, spit and dance routine that consists of doing what they're told, rather than discovering what they could do.
Kids are entitled to an education that prepares them for THEIR century, not ours. That means:
* Critical thinking and problem solving with thought provoking open questions
* Collaborating and networking, influencing with frequent access to online sources, discussions, outside input
* Mental agility and adaptability with using existing knowledge together with new inputs to form better opinions, stronger appreciation and more powerful grasp
* Initiative and entrepreneurship through project-based learning exercises and cross-curricular over-learning and application
* Forceful communication skills from experiencing blogging, reporting, researching and presenting issues and opinions
* Accessing and analyzing information through search engines and library research techniques
* Curiosity and imagination development by wondering and trying and hooking what is to what might might be better
Our failed entitlement to a meaningful education has left us where we are - waiting for someone else to tell us what we can do, when we can do it, where our next meal is coming from and what to do when we grow up.
In a better world our kids would have the American spirit engrained in their souls along with an appreciation of who they are and what they can do. Motivation would be restored to its rightful origin - intrinsic as in WITHIN us, as opposed to what we have now - extrinsic, i.e. testing, grades and gold stars.
But what do we have?? A top-down dumbing down of the drive to seek, to find, to prosper, to thrive.
In a better world we wouldn't NEED SS or Medicare. We'd drop dead from frisky sex on mountaintops at 120 years of age with no regrets about anything except not starting earlier!!
Kids are entitled to a chance at life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. We perverted the entitlement that matters most.
"Kids are entitled to a chance at life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness. We perverted the entitlement that matters most."
Of course, having these passionate views about children and education, you volunteer your time to be a teacher and mentor, right! And you do it for free and have for many many years. Right!
Carmine A. DiFazio
Sure Carmie, I was a teacher, one who spent many unpaid extra hours developing what I considered the best instructional programming I could for my kids. Having started teaching at a young age, I made mistakes and learned from them. But it wasn't until later in life after several other career that I came across the works of several of my heroes whose works have inspired me to recognize the rrors of our ways as in the entitlement flaw in education that seems abundantly clear to me now in retrospect.
My heroes are obvious to anyone aware of the movements afoot to change our curricular strategies - Tony Wagner from Harvard, Daniel Pink whose book DRIVE is summarized in this youtube quickie video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFj... - and the new book by Peter Diamandis called Abundance. Taken as a whole these 3 chunks of perspective have motivated my reflections to seize upon the errors of our ways and join in the ongoing struggle to improve what we do in our school.
If you think for a second that people in their 60s have little left to live for, then you flunk the test. Most of the best kids I taught were the homeless ones, the knocked up and knocked down whose self-respect was so miniscule that they feared being seen as stupid as much as they hungered for growth. In a school full of castaway kids who could not get back into public schools because they had brought guns to school, got drunk and punched out some dumb teacher, had felonies on their records, had parole officers and probation officers at school weekly - these toughies enjoyed a 100% pass rate on the Nevada Writing Proficiency Exam. That's unheard of, buddy, in the best of schools with kids with parents!
Their reason for success is what we found inside, a drive to learn how to grow, to find the joy they had missed out on being homeless, parentless and hopeless. They wanted to see their strengths shine. And we wrote every day. They found the power inside them and honed the skill to put it down in words and pass something that meant a great deal to them and to their self-esteem. I wept when the principal told me about the results from the state exam. Wept with a joy most non-teachers canNOT fathom. My kids did it for themselves. It was their gift to me that I got to see them grow before my eyes.
Today's schools have too many failures to connect the drive to succeed with the gumption going stale from lack of a rigor that would stimulate intrinsic drive to find stuff out on their own. The emphasis is on grades and tests and not on what it seems to me is more important - those 7 starred items in a previous post, which Istole from Tony Wagner, the notions I sole from Dan Pink and the enthusiasm I stole from Peter Diamandis that together make sense to this geezer.
What we have done in our schools is create passive learners. It eliminates our better instincts and disconnects the kids from what moves them - discovery, accomplishment and personal recognition. IMHO.
A simple "yes" is all that's needed.
Carmine A. DiFazio
PS: Although, I am still unsure whether all your teaching, like mine, has been uncompensated.
Carmine A. DiFazio
BTW, did you use your own personal names/spellings for your students. Or do you reserve that peculiarity just for me here?
Carmine A. DiFazio
No, Carmie, it's a bigger issue...
Long-ignored, the gathering crisis of ecology, energy, economy, and society pierces our complacency now with undeniable urgency,
and we realize we have no choice but to accomplish the impossible.
Without the inclusion of the facets of education and our failure to provide what our kids are absolutely entitled to receive NOW, we will spin our wheels when the only way out requires traction and growth towards a better world THIS generation.
In San Francisco last week, a meeting of the NEW SCHOOLS Venture Fund surprised many of us with the recognition of the issues we face as a world, not just one country, state or problem. The picture is a cluster, Carmine, and the way out is not going to happen with exclusions. It's all or nothing, even those who pretend it's not their deal...it is.
Social, psychological, political and economic design factors are all in play here. As I write and speak with fellow elders we recall a once vital sense of community that has been lost. And, it is lost forever because we have evolved well beyond what we remember. We must create something new and as yet unknown. Some of us do see the current dramatic world changes as an opportunity for utterly new evolutionary possibilities of community. We have dared to hope for the designs that are just now beginning to evolve.
Kids have more power at their fingertips than when I was in school in the 50s and early 60s. The impact of technology and the impacts of failed education cry out for integration. If not this generation, then when? If not together, then how?
Communities evolve with shared influence. Coalescing needs the foundation of respect based on understanding. it won't happen in shredded, disinterested heads. Frank Lloyd Wright got it right with "The greatest feature of a functioning mind is the heart."
PS: Although, I am still unsure whether all your teaching, like mine, has been uncompensated.
Carmine A. DiFazio
I'm with you on the notion that the compensation doesn't take the form of dollars, but instead the sense of accomplishment, of satisfaction and of influence in some stranger's ability to get the act together, the ball rolling and the arrow to come at least near the damn target.
As a fellow teacher you know what preparation can mean for classroom success. The world is spit-wadding, we are out of the classroom and there's trouble brewing if you ask me. What it's gonna take, CarmiNe (my finger got smashed last week installing a mini-split heat pump on one of our projects and I don't type well yet. Doc says it's the most common injury to the hand, it'll heal by itself, and you owe me $500!" I told him to kiss my ass, my finger may heal but how 'bout the wound to my effing wallet. he laughed and said how 'bout $150? and I gave him 2 bills and we shook hands)
what's it gonna take to find a rational path out of what we have in this collapsing world community where everyman is throwing every spi-ball we cam muster??
It's gonna take some recognition of what we could be doing that we're not doing...and that is...? ..what Rodney King said - "Can't we jus' get along?" in my book. How 'bout choo, CarmiNe?
Uh, Jim "life is JUST a JOKE" Reid who bashes teachers...
here's a direct quote from wiki for your information... caps, mine!
The right to education is a universal ENTITLEMENT to education, a right that is recognized as a human right. According to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the right to education includes the right to free, compulsory primary education for all, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, in particular by the progressive introduction of free secondary education[2], as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, ideally by the progressive introduction of free higher education. The right to education also includes a responsibility to provide basic education for individuals who have not completed primary education. In addition to these access to education provisions, the right to education encompasses the obligation to rule out discrimination at all levels of the educational system, to set minimum standards and to improve quality of education.
Here's another hunk of legal discussion regarding the history and entitlement in Educational Law you may enjoy, joker jim...especially pages 218 -238
http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/vi...
Yes, education IZZ an entitlement, and yep, we have goofed it up and of course the kids suffer from our failures, but, what's it to you?? Just another goddamn JOKE, right?
Jimbo, let me make it easy for you.
Page 234 and i quote
"Students are successful when they take control, not
when they are passive in educational processes. The literature
on school improvement calls upon students to empower
themselves and to assert their rights in the learning
community.l27 The literature simply reinforces what teachers
have long realized. Students must be viewed as, and actually
be, active "producers" of their own learning.l28 This is actually
a traditional hope of education: develop the dispositions and
skills that incline people to take responsibility for their own
lifelong learning by developing habits, capacities, passions and
interests to commit themselves to a lifetime of engaged
personal learning.l29 The best learners have learned how to
formulate the most useful questions to the relevant problems
they face and have learned how to engage in the kind of
problem solving that enables them to draw upon the best
available information.l30"
The teachers you had were obviously failing you. You apparently lack this life-long learning drive that the law addresses. Too bad, huh?
But to pass on the fukkups from God knows where and when you struggled in school to the next generation seems a failed delivery of an entitlement, in my book> How 'bout chores? Jim "Life is Just a JOKE" Reid??
"I'm with you on the notion that the compensation doesn't take the form of dollars, "
That was not my point but it is a good one. My teaching for years and years has been uncompensated. In other words I volunteer my time and expertise to youngsters of all ages on both sides of the pond in classrooms and out entirely for free. And yours?
Carmine A. DiFazio
BTW, proper addressing of others in the use of their names and spelling, especially those you don't know, is a sign of culture and education. Hope that finger of yours heals soon and gets back to normal.
Carmine A. DiFazio
Mostly in America and Indonesia, on Bali and in and around Jakarta. i even sponsored 4 Chinese Indonesians to get first green cards and then citizenship here when the 'riots in Jakarta' had them marked as targets.
Drunken gangs of Indonesians were gang-raping, chopping up and burning Chinese Indonesian women following the riots. They killed over a thousand in about a week. Back in the late 50s and early 60s when the same environment was happening there, they killed a million or so Chinese Indonesians while the world watched. I couldn't let that happen. I flew over and got my friends out, got them started on a new life. I met Jimmy Carter and had lunch with him on Bali one day.
Most of my volunteer work now is training kids in how to improve the energy and comfort profiles of houses. But in the past I taught some high school, college and university for SUPER PAY and incredible benefits as you might imagine!
Though the plans for middle and high school students involved in Zappos Downtown Project are a bit off into the future, I've been cooperating with some folks there and at a great funding source - New Schools Venture Fund to incorporate technology, personalized instruction and OJT to wrap a life path of possibilities around a kid's interests. Trade unions have shown interest in connecting, the venture fund is showing interest and so is Zappos.
It would be quite an integration, but it would be a gas to go where no man has gone before, hooking up self-directed instruction with college prep curricula in Building Science to make Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) classes include a hands-on element so they see and do what others read about. Experience adds values that vicarious learning ignores. Mechanical engineers, architects, architectural engineers, civil engineers and trades artisans can sprout here.
I'm also working up similarly hands-on life-learning courses in communications (writing, video and media) along with teaching, restauranteering and import/export. It'll probably kill me, but nobody gets out of here alive.
"I met Jimmy Carter"
Small world. I worked for him when he was president.
****************************************************
"But in the past I taught some high school, college and university for SUPER PAY and incredible benefits as you might imagine!"
No, can't say I can. My HS and college teaching assignments have always been volunteer and uncompensated positions. ALWAYS. In fact, even at the grammar and junior high levels, I always taught pro bono. But, like you said and with which I thoroughly agree, it's not about the financial reward.
Carmine A. DiFazio
Hodding and I went shopping in Ubud. Jimmy and Rosalyn are some of happiest folks I ever met.
One of my associates in Portland shared the hospitality of his home with the Carters back when the President was into saving tax dollars by staying at homes of folks instead of fancy schmancy hotels.
When I taught university level writing, they paid me $300 per credit hour. Most courses then were 3 credit hours, meeting 3 hours a week; with prep and office hours, I'd spend easily 12 hours a week for 16 weeks or so to slurp up that trough full of compensation at, say, $4.50 an hour in the early 70s.
I started my teaching career in high school full time plus coaching football for $5000 a year. I made the big bucks back in those days.
What ever possessed you to give it away for free when there's such a lucrative career to be had?? :)
It's absolutely not about the dollars, but rather clearly about the sense of fulfillment.
"What ever possessed you to give it away for free when there's such a lucrative career to be had??" :)
I don't view teaching, for me, as a career. It's always been a calling. And a wonderful way for me to give back in thanksgiving for all the graces and blessings God bestowed on me.
Carmine A. DiFazio
uhh, Jim "life is just a joke" Reid...
perhaps you haven't been able to read the previous posts. Understandable, but here's more
Jim "Life is Just a JOKE" Reid"
Again I refer you to facts as you continue your typical hate mongering
A definition of entitlement from a dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionar...
Federal ENTITLEMENT funds go to states and from states to local education(LEA)
http://www.donjohnston.com/funding/feder...
One example of entitlement of education, for kiddos http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/1012/...
A list of many entitlements here, SS, Medicare, Education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_prog...
From a good article about you and your oblivious stance.. "Our most basic services are public education, Social Security and Medicare, which are paid for by citizens. They are not given to us. The right wing continues to rant on about entitlement programs."
Read more: http://santamariatimes.com/news/opinion/...
And from wikipedia, easy enough for even you to read Jimmy:
The right to education is a universal entitlement to education, a right that is recognized as a human right. According to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights the right to education includes the right to free, compulsory primary education for all[1], an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all, in particular by the progressive introduction of free secondary education[2], as well as an obligation to develop equitable access to higher education, ideally by the progressive introduction of free higher education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_ed...
So in conclusion, it is obvious your stance on whether education is an entitlement has been proven over and over again to be not just ignorant, but oblivious to what has happened here on this planet. You and i pay for the education, and as my posts here and in "GETTING EDUCATION RIGHT" - now available on your screen!- will demonstrate, the future is way better than the past which produced people like present company, Mr. Reid.
Marriage is one of the oldest forms of entitlement, particularly in the classic format - marry young,work and stay together. Then when one slows down and looses their job, the union doesn't automatically open up to outside bidding. Loss of energy doesn't mean being kicked out in the street and loosing all they have worked for because one isn't able to contribute.
By that virtue, Marriage is also the oldest form of socialism known. Marriage is a legal union and not the domain of the strongest competitor. Even common law marriage carries legal obligations. To ridicule entitlements and aspects of socialism is to ridicule marriage itself.
Police, fire and military are also socialistic elements of the government that are treated as entitlements because laws pass the 'rights' of those services to the public.
Jim "Life is just a JOKE" Reid!
I gave you eleven chances to read about it. The problem you demonstrate repeatedly here is the reason our education system is robbing future generations. You refuse to participate in the community of development and you simply waste the time of those among us who are actually involved in bringing about change for the future generations by supplying them the possibilities to discard the worthless and replace it with what works, namely effort.
In your post of 1:59, you say education is not an entitlement. I cited chapter and verse.
In this country and in all the countries belonging to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), Education is a right and an entitlement.
In other words, Mr. Reid, we think education IZZ important, we support it and it is actually a mandatory piece of the world we are living in, like it or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_ed..., Economic and
Once more, Jim, for the lame and lazy..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_ed....
Click the mouse on that link and READ the FIRST SENTENCE!
I quoted you about this very human right from several sources, but it's obvious your miserable education somehow deprives you of not only comprehension but also human decency.
Whereas education IZZ a human right, and whereas you and I pay into the fund to supply this right to our young-ins, it, like SS and medicare is classified as an Entitlement, the subject of this article and the object of the first question you asked of me. In the material cited in answer to your question, numerous references are made to education as a human right and as an entitlement.
This is the last time Jim. Bye Bye
Personally I find your inability to read, reason or relate a pitiful condition, and my hope is that your loved ones, if you are lucky enough to have any left, can find a way to help you out of your miserable hole, whether you deserve it or not.
Having repeatedly answered every question with cited chapter and verse, I rest my case about present company failing to acquiesce, remaining obstinately oblivious to facts and continuing the decline of rightful entitlements in Education, SS and Medicare by denting any role in its demise.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Send a kid to school, but if life is just another goddamn JOKE, then this cantankerous and antagonistic attitude is what replaces a once-potential ability to think.
Happy Mothers Day!
Ace Jim: I agree (why discourse is impossible with a liberal.) I frequently don't even read their run-on posts. I skip the longest ones almost always. I make an effort to read some of the "other" sides but when they continuously fail to consider the issues...or they state that every problem is based on what political party they think you affiliate with....
birds of a feather...rosie and the joker...Isn't hate wonderful!