America's Public Schools - Still Receiving Failing Grades

Consider the following facts from Christine Armario of the Associated Press in her May 11, 2010 article, "Nation Has High College Remedial Education Rate":

• Using Broward College in South Florida as an example, Ms. Armario reports that two thirds of entering students there require at least one remedial class in math, English or reading.
• Nationwide, abut 33% of freshman students had taken at least one remedial course, according to the Department of Education, and at two year colleges that percentage is over 40%.
• In a 2007 AST National Curriculum Survey of College Professors, 65% of the respondents said that their states poorly prepare students for college level coursework.
• A 2008 study by the nonprofit Strong American Schools found that nearly four out of five remedial students in college had a high school GPA of 3.0 or higher.

From another Department Of Education source, I found an estimate that said the United States spends about $529 billion a year on public education at the elementary and secondary levels or over $9,000 per student. And what do we get for this annual half a TRILLION expenditure, according to Ms. Armario? Not much. We are essentially paying for the same service twice when students in colleges have to take course work and be educated on topics that they theoretocally should have learned in high school. Not only did they not learn the material but they were rewarded for not learning since many of them got out of high school with a GPA over 3.0.

Many times we have referred to a commission that Ronald Reagan presided over that presented its finding on public education in 1982 in the landmark study, "A Nation At Risk." Twenty eight years and many TRILLIONS of dollars later we are no closer to solving the problem of failing public schools in this country than we were when we were determined to be at risk as a nation in 1982. Imagine how much of a risk we are at now.

Bush tried with the No Child Left Behind Legislation but I think most people would conclude that this multi-billion effort was also a failure. The Obama adminstration's education effort announced a few months ago was not much different and is also probably doomed to failure. This article did mention that "the Obama adminstration is pushing states to adopt tougher standards, and governors and education leaders across the country are working together to propose a uniform set of common standards."

Nowhere, either in this article or elsewhere, have I seen proof that tougher standards and a uniform set of standards are the root causes of the failing public schools. Much like the health care reform legislation, the political class is running off proposing solutions to problems that they do not understand. If you do not understand the root cause of the problem, the chance that your solutions will be successful are very, very small. Who is to say that faulty teacher training is not the problem vs. tougher standards. Who is to stay that parental involvement is not the problem vs. a set of common standards? Who is to say that tenure abuse is not the problem vs. tougher standards and a uniform set of standards?

Those politicians in charge are mostly lawyers, they should not be the ones identifying and solving root causes to problems. That is why Step 27 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" is so important. It would establish a panel of smart Americans to analyzae the problem, identify the root causes, and propose solutions based on their findings and expertise. We cannot rely on politicians and lawyers to solve the problem. They were provided a solution in 1982 and still could not even execute the plan after all of the work had been done.

Twenty eight years from now we do not want to be sitting around and talking about how bad public schools are in the country. However, if we allow the political class to manage this problem like we have in the past, that is exactly what will happen.


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Obama's First Year - No Change, No Progress, No Improvement

Today marks the first anniversary of Barack Obama's swearing in as President of the United States. Back then, the nation was hopefully looking forward to a new administration and a different way of operating the Federal government. In fact, the entire Obama campaign was based on the notion of "change." At that time, President Obama's approval rating was between 70 and 80%, providing him political capital and air cover to make the positive changes he had promised. I did not vote for Obama but I did maintain my record of having never voted for a Republican for national office in my life. While skeptical of his campaign, I was willing to give him a chance to succeed.

A year later I can say without reservations that his administration's first year has been a disaster. There has been no change of consequence, no progress in addressing any of the nation's ills, and no improvement in most aspects of life affecting Americans. In fact, a case could be made that things are worse in many areas since he took office last January. Consider some of the promises he made during his campaign:

• Although he promised to get us out of Iraq, one of his biggest promises, we have seen virtually no draw down of troops so far. Major draw downs are somewhere down the road and after some major draw downs, there will still be about 50,000 troops stationed within the country. Hardly consistent with his promise to get us out of the country.
• On several occasions and on his campaign website, he vowed to cut down on the numerous earmark and pork barrel projects spending that wastes billions of dollars every year. He was explicit in his goal of keeping the number of earmarks well under 2,000, the levels last seen about eight years ago. Unfortunately, as reported several times by this blog, the number of earmarks in his recent budget came in at over 11,000. Thus, he missed his target by a factor of about eight fold.
• He promised to close down the military terrorist prison at our naval base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay, citing his opinion that it was a source of propaganda for the recruitment of terrorists. While he has tried to shut it down, we are not much closer to that reality than we were a year ago. In fact, he has muddled the entire justice for terrorists argument. He is having four of the worst terrorists tried in civilian courts in NYC claiming it will prove to the world that we have a fair and honest justice system. However, both he and Attorney General Holder have already proclaimed that the four defendants will be found guilty, sort of undermining the whole principle of American justice, innocent until proven guilty. He will also try some detainees in military tribunals and some detainees will never get a trial and will be held indefinitely. Thus, whatever propaganda gain he might eventually get by closing Guantanamo, has already been destroyed by his inconsistent prosecution of other terrorist suspects.
• He promised that households making less than $250,000 a year would not see any tax increases. He fell short on this promise in two large ways. First, his administration did raise cigarette taxes significantly. Since a higher proportion of lower income households smoke than higher income households, many, many households making under $250,000 did pay higher taxes for their addiction. More importantly, his administration's first year financial management was atrocious, spending about $3.5 TRILLION on revenue of only about $2.1 TRILLION. The difference was made up with borrowing and deficit spending. His budget plans show that the country will incur about a $9 TRILLION deficit over the next decade unless changed. Thus, while taxes may not have gone up yet (with the exception of cigarette taxes), everyone, regardless of income level, will eventually have to pay extraordinary higher taxes to finance the budget deficit trend his administration has created. Thus, his promise of not raising taxes for those making under $250,000 is a complete fabrication. In fact, the taxes required to cover his deficit spending ways will affect American households for years and generations to come.
• He promised prior to his inauguration that he would reach out, in a bipartisan manner, to Republicans and unite the country under his administration. However, if anything, the country is more bitterly divided than ever. He missed several opportunities to bring us closer together but his silence spoke volumes:

1. When a Florida Democratic Congressman called all Republicans "knuckle dragging Neanderthals,", the President was silent. Not a good way to unite the country when a member of your own party is insulting other Americans.
2. When one of his czars called Republicans a#$h*&$s, the President was silent. Not a good way to unite the country when a member of your own staff is insulting other Americans.
3. When Nancy Pelosi called those expressing their opposition to the current health bill as being un-American, the President was silent. Not a good way to unite the country when those exercising their right of free speech are called un-American.
4. When Harry Reid insisted that American tourists to D.C. in the summer were bodily smelly, the President was silent. Not a good way to unite the country when a member of your own party insists that the very taxpayers that pay for government are smelly.
5. When a certain d-list Hollywood actress called all those opposed to Obama's policies as being racist, he was silent. Not a good way to unite the country when you allow honest disagreement to be called racism. His silence has allowed the bitter partisan political environment to grow and intensify, something he said he would consciously work against.

His record in international affairs shows little progress or difference with the Bush administration:

• We are no closer to reigning in the nuclear weapon intentions of Iran. While Obama has postured strongly many times with regard to Iran, his actions have not backed up his words as deadlines and ultimatums go unheeded, and a year into his administration finds us no closer to the goal of a nuclear weapon free Iran. We have given the rulers there at least another year of development time for their weapons program with no viable deterrent action imminent, giving them more time.
• We are no closer to reigning in the nuclear weapon intentions of North Korea. North Korea has alternately shown a willingness to dismantle its nuclear program and bold saber rattling, the same old, tired story from the Bush and Clinton administrations. In fact, recent news reports indicate that when the North Koreans signed the agreement in 1994 to dismantle their nuclear program, they actually intensified their efforts to develop nuclear bombs.
• Although he gave a well received speech at an Egyptian university, nothing has improved in the Mideast peace process. In fact, no one could say that matters are worse as Israel continues to expand its settlements, aggravating the situation with the Palestinians, whose poverty levels have not improved. Hamas and Hezbollah are still major terrorist organizations with uninterrupted support from Iran and Syria.
• The Obama administration ticked off the Czech and Polish governments, stout allies, by suddenly shutting down the missile defense system that the Bush administration had planned. The administration gave both governments only a one hour notice of the termination in order to cozy up to Russia. This gesture has resulted in nothing of consequence from Russia as far as cooperation.
• Protecting us from terror attacks seems to be slipshod, given the complete breakdown of the security apparatus as it applied to the Nigerian who almost brought down a Detroit bound jet with an underwear bomb.
• Other world trouble spots are still world trouble spots including Yemen and terrorists, the genocide in the Sudan, piracy off the coast of Somalia, tense relations between India and Pakistan, etc.

The Obama's administration failures in handling of the economy and the nation's financials have been analyzed many times in this blog and include the following:

• His deficit spending ways will heavily tax current households and future taxpayers for decades to come.
• His economic stimulus plans have not worked and official unemployment numbers are up to around 10% while hidden, unofficial unemployment numbers are around 18%.
• His stimulus projects included fixing bridges that did not need to be fixed and other extraneous spending that did nothing to benefit the country or the economy.
• Both the number of earmarks and value of earmarks are near an all time high.
• His administration gave away billions of bailout dollars to banks and other financial organizations in a very slipshod and untrackable manner, bailouts that most did not need since almost all of the them have paid back the bailout money just months after receiving it.
• Our trade deficits with China continue to soar unabated.
• The administration wasted billions of tax payer dollars on saving Chrysler and General Motors, rescuing them from their own incompetence, and wasted more billions of dollars on the ill run and ill conceived Cash For Clunkers program.
• The administration does not realize that when the government goes into deficit spending mode, he sucks up available capital for private industry and businesses to use to expand production, employment, and the economy. By not understanding basic economic theory, the administration has made a bad economy worse, not better.

In the matter of Afghanistan, he made several important mistakes:

• While Americans were dying on the battlefield and the Taliban were regaining the upper hand, the President was discussing his NCAA basketball tournament picks, he jetted off to Europe to plug Chicago as a host of the Summer Olympics, and he took time to film a television commerical for the George Lopez Show. It was not until ten months into his administration did he finally come up with a plan.
• And it is not a very good plan. It will cost another $30 billion of taxpayer money to deploy an additional 30,000 U.S. troops. But he put a deadline on the use of troops, 18 months, which gave the enemy a definite time frame that they need to stick it out. Rather than break the enemy spirit with the use of more forces, he undermined the entire reason for the troop increase.
• By not consenting to follow the enemy into Pakistan, he gave additional comfort to the enemy. They can rest easy knowing that the increased presence will not follow them into the safe havens across the border and they can hang out for 18 months before the withdrawal begins.

Thus, I find little to be optimistic about regarding Obama's first year. Some of his supporters would say that he inherited a mess from Bush and that is why there has been little progress. But let's not forget that the Democrats have controlled Congress and the Federal budget process for three years. Never a big fan of Bush, he did try to fix the housing problem before it exploded, as we documented in a late 2009 post, but he was constantly blocked by the Democrats. Anyway, Obama had any number of opportunities to execute some positive actions, if only to criticize those that devolved into name calling (Neanderthal, racist, un-American, etc.). Some of his supporters would claim he is close to passing the first ever national health care reform law. To that I say two things. First, passing a law for the sake of passing it when it is a horrible piece of legislation should not be counted as an accomplishment. Second, he has not passed the bill yet.

The following saying, often quoted by Jon Gruden, ex-head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, seems appropriate: "You are only as good or as bad as your record." Bad economic policy, no progress in international relations and situations, more division between groups of Americans, a faulty anti-terrorist security system, two lingering and expensive wars, high deficits, high unemployment, public schools that still are failing, a drug war that is still unwinnable, no national energy program, no viable immigration plan, etc. President Obama is only as good as his record and his record is not good. Maybe I should send him a copy of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." How much worse could he do than executing the fifty steps in the book?

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.

A Simple Idea For Change

In most of these blogs, I try to be analytical and non-emotional in explaining how we need to take action to fix the ills facing the country today. However, every once in a while it is good to get a little passionate and today is that day. The paragraphs listed below are from an email I recently received from a relative. The origin of the email is unknown since no one takes credit for the contents. The author's plan is to circulate the contents of the email to as many people as possible in order to start changing the political forces in this country in a nonpartisan way and to start with next year's Congressional elections. The call for change is to do it peacefully and within the framework of the Constitution. I think that you may be able identify with the passion of author and his or her disgust with the way this country and it's citizens are being treated by the political class:

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All I ask is that you consider the suggestion here. The entire Congress of the United States is corrupt. And I mean both Houses and I mean both major parties. I realize that a few Members of each House are trustworthy, but, as a group they are absolutely the most corrupt bunch to ever disgrace our Nation.

In November of 2010 the entire House of Representatives will stand for re-election; all 435 of them. One third of the Senate, a total of 33 of them, will also stand for re-election. Vote every incumbent out.

And I mean every one of them. No matter their Party affiliation. Let's start all over in the House of Representatives with 435 people who have absolutely no experience in running that body, with no political favors owed to anyone but their own constituents. Let's make them understand that they work for us. They are answerable to us and they simply have to run that body with some common sense.

Two years later, in 2012, vote the next third of the incumbents in the Senate out. We can do the same thing in 2014 and, by that time we will have put all new people in that body as well.
We, the People, have got to take this Country back and we have to do it peacefully.

That's what the Framers of our Constitution envisioned. I am also suggesting term limits on the members of the House Of Representatives - eight years maximum and twelve years/two terms for Senators. No exceptions, the longer they stay in office the more power they get. They love it and will do anything to get re-elected. We have term limits for Presidents, now let’s term limit Congress.

And we do away with their Special Retirement system and their health program (they should have same health programs everyone else in America does). When they are through serving their country they go back to being private citizens. They should view their service as a privilege; after all it was designed to be a part time job to represent the voice of the people, NOT the special interest groups and those who can do favors for them. If they don't like this proposal then don't run for office

Please, if you love this Country, send this (as I have done) to absolutely everyone whose email address appears in your address book. This thing can permeate this Country in no time. Let's make it happen.
VOTE THE POWER ABUSERS OUT........LET'S TAKE AMERICA BACK ! IF YOU LIKE THE WAY THINGS ARE GOING IN OUR COUNTRY, THEN DO NOTHING...

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Is this an analytical approach? No but I think it typifies the underlying uneasiness that exists in this country today. The promise of change from President Obama has not materialized and it does not look like it will. Entrenched politicians and the lobbyists in D.C. do not want any changes, even for the good of the country. Lack of leadership from the President, as illustrated many times in this blog, has not helped upset the special interest groups. Our overseas military comitments are expanding, just like under Bush, our Federal budget deficits are exploding even more so than under Bush, wasteful, trivial spending programs and earmarks are just as high as under Bush, public schooling continues to fail as under Bush, drug addiction continues unabated as under Bush, gay rights is just a phrase as it was under Bush, health care costs continue to escalate as under Bush (and will go much higher under the current proposed legislation), etc. Nothing has changed for the better and this author wants to make a difference, peacefully and legally.

These suggestions for change are very consistent with a number of steps proposed in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government":

• Step 6 - allow only individual Americans to contribute to politcial campaigns to address the corruption issue the author raises.
• Step 8 - strengthen the Federal Elections Commission to also address the corruption issue.
• Step 14 - fix the Congressional districting process which almost always a guarantees the re-election of incumbents.
• Step 37 - make Congressional pay raises conditional based on performance, not automatic as the currently are.
• Step 39 - the most important step of all, institute term limits.

Feel free to take this author's suggestions to heart and spread the word if you agree. It's a simple plea but possibly the only way left to truly change the negative direction of the country.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.

Afghanistan Math - Part 3 (And a little more)

This is the last time we will discuss Afghanistan for a while. There are just too many other areas to discuss where the political class continues to waste away our tax dollars, our freedoms, and our credibility as a free nation. Today's post is based on an AP report from Brussels where NATO announced that some two dozen countries will send an estimated 7,000 additional troops to Afghanistan next year. As with the previous two posts, let's do some math:

• The 7,000 additional troops is a boost of about 18% over current troop levels from other nations. The U.S. increase is over 40% more than current levels.
• The 7,000 increase consists of 5,500 firm commitments and 1.500 possible commitments. If only 5,500 show up than the increase is only 14% above current levels.
• Britain, which suffered through fatal terrorism transit attacks several years ago has pledged to send an additional 500 troops. The United States has six times the population of Great Britain but is sending 60 times the number of additional troops.
• If 7,000 additional non-U.S. troops are sent to Afghanistan and they come from 24 countries as stated in the article, then on average each of our "allies" is sending less than 300 troops each. The word token seems appropriate here.
• No sign that our major economic competitors, Russia, India, Brazil, Japan, and South Korea, will be contributing anything to the fight.

The bottom line conclusion is the same as the past two posts: the United States is contributing far more in money and blood to this worldwide terrorism fight than our allies. As we bleed both money, resources, and our soldiers' blood, many of our allies, including those that have tasted terror attacks on their own soil, are just not stepping up. The image of Hillary Clinton and others almost begging for support from our allies is an indication of how far we have fallen in the eyes of the world. Two weeks ago President Obama went to China to beg for their cooperation in helping us get out of our own economic mess and now the administration fawns over allies that donate only 500 troops to the fight in Afghanistan. Very sad.

Thus, the urgent need for Step 30 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." We need to reassess and dramatically downsize our military footprint around the world. We no longer have the economic power, the political clout, or the track record for interfering in foreign affairs that have only minimal or only imaginary impact on our own citizens. From Vietnam to Somalia, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, we have accomplished very little at great expense from a military point of view. The world has changed but our military deployment and strategies have not.

A few observations about the new Obama administration Afghanistan strategy:

• There is no doubt he was not dealt a good hand from the Bush administration. Bush had Bin Laden and his thugs on the run in 2001-2002 and then used the terrorism umbrella to go after Hussein and Iraq, both of whom posed little danger to the United States. In the meantime, Bin Laden and his terror network were able to reestablish themselves, most likely in Pakistan, and this has led us to the morass we are in today.
• Nevertheless, I see a number of troubling facets of Obama's handling of Afghanistan in the past year, the most important of which was the foot dragging to finally make a decision. Rather than gong on Leno, Letterman, and filming TV commercials for George Lopez's show, maybe he should have been focused on getting a new strategy together sooner, it might have saved some lives.
• I think he made two major mistakes in his speech. First, he set a timetable for withdrawal. I think that Senator McCain spoke to the point best when he said that you do not usually win a military conflict with just guns, you usually win it by breaking the will of the enemy. By setting a semi-firm deadline for getting out, it will be tremendously more difficult to break the will of the enemy if they know you are leaving shortly. This deadline also gives the corrupt officials of the central government reasons not to worry too much about any corruption crackdown if they know it will all be over in 18 short months and they can continue their corrupt practices at that time. I believe that Obama set the deadline to pacify members of his own party, i.e. he set political priorities above military strategies. This will make our soldiers jobs more complicated since the enemy knows we are leaving. He also was thinking as a politician rather than a leader by setting this deadline since he probably wants the war to be a distant memory when he comes up for re-election. Again, politics trumps good strategy, wasting our resources and making our troops lives more difficult.
• His second mistake was the short shrift he gave to the Pakistan border areas. We can never militarily win this war unless we go into the havens in Pakistan to flush out the terrorists where they currently reside. Now, maybe he plans to do this and does not want to tip his hand on this cross border incursion. However, I doubt it. Without going after the enemy in hot pursuit wherever they go to hide there is no chance of a military victory.
• Although I will not go into it now, there are some excellent papers from the Cato Group and other organizations that have analyzed the situation and believe that not only should we not increase our troop strength, we should begin withdrawal immediately. These analyses go into details about the history and current status of Afghanistan and why the military options as it was defined by Bush and is currently defined by Obama, have no chance of succeeding. Their conclusions come up with some interesting alternative strategies based on logic and data, something that the political class seldom uses.
• My prediction: similar to Vietnam, the new strategy will devolve into finding any excuse to proclaim an empty victory and get out before the next Presidential election. It will waste tens of billions of dollars and many American lives. We will be no better off than in 2001 when the whole debacle began. Bush started the downfall of the mission and the current administration will finish the job.

I hope I am wrong and the President knows what he is doing based on information that I have no access to and should not have access to. But given that the government could not prevent unwanted guests from getting within arms reach of the President in the White House, I am doubtful that same government will be able to find thousands of terrorists hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, especially if our troops are not allowed to even look for them.

Visit our website at www.loathemygovernment.com to order an autographed copy of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government -Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" and to sign up for the cause. The book is also available online at Amazon and Barnes And Noble.

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