As parents learn that they have options, it is by using those options that they can be most instrumental in bringing about change. By voting down school levies, by using other forms of education to teach your kids, by taking advantage of every opportunity available, the parent of a child will go a long way to ending these massive public education debacles that are making a joke of education in the United States.
But doing nothing will only make the situation worse.
If you’re a CEO and you think you can fudge the books in order to make yourself look better, we’re going to find you, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to hold you to account. –President George W. Bush, 2002
Yet school boards are still trying to hold on to the old way of learning. They are completely unable to think outside the box of tradition and embrace aspects of education reform that have been presented by Representative Coley. This is why Lakota, and many schools are floating the idea of another levy for November of 2011.
It is gravely unfortunate that the Lakota School Board has made it known that they intend place another school levy on the ballot in November of 2011. While the Teachers Union at Lakota had a much publicized wage freeze in August of 2010 mysteriously the wages for Lakota teachers crept up anyway.
Lakota has assured everyone that they have done their best to cut costs, they’ve cut busing, they made sports a pay for play program, they’ve cut electives, and teaching positions, but out of all those supposed reductions, not once did anyone address the problem of paying teachers too much.
Last year at the NoLakotaLevy.com web site we brought out an article where 434 teachers made over 65K per year, that was in 2010. In 2011, there are over 625 teachers that make over 65K per year. Nobody is looking out for the tax payers in the Lakota School District.
The No Lakota Group met on this issue early last week, in anticipation of the school boards announcement. So here’s what we’re going to do. Any board member that votes in favor of another school levy will be looked at to be replaced with a new board member. If you are interested in becoming a school board member please contact us at NoLakot@roadrunner.com. We have several people who have spoken to us over the last couple of months, but we would like the opportunity to put the best candidates on the school board and would like to begin interviewing now. The best candidates would be over 55, preferably retired, or semi-retired and not looking to use the school board as a political platform for higher office, or to enhance their real estate professions. We want people who will not cave to the union, or pay 50K just to look for a superintendent that they intend to over-pay at 200K to 300K per year. We want people who have been successful at life, and therefore able to run our school system without corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.
The crowd that showed up at the school board meeting in West Clermont was upset, saying “This board has done a pathetic job. You’ve been gilding the lily, and now we’re paying for it.”
Then with great shock, the school board president, Dan Krueger said “If you don’t like what we’re doing, vote us out, but whoever you put up here is going to find the same things we found.” He went on to say the board is not there to serve the tax payer, but to serve the children. (Brace yourself before you watch this video. You may want to act lash out in anger)
We have no choice but to call these people thieves since they refuse to give an interview to Channel 9, or WLW to say otherwise, because all the evidence points to these people as first class crooks.
Click on the link below to get to Brendan’s page where you can look up your districts superintendent.
I have a very talented daughter that does some fantastic photographic work. My wife and I took her to launch on Saturday and I had to take a minute to admire the person she has become. As a photographer her pictures are worth millions of words.
These are the pictures that reflect the young woman who sat across from me on Saturday and ate Teriyaki Chicken. It was impossible when looking at her to not think of jet setting all over the world, camping at Stonehenge, crawling on her belly through the mud to take a picture of a flower in the wet morning mist. To see the young adventurer that will fight through the thugs on a DC subway to get unbelievable pictures around the nation’s capital, or the young woman who went with her husband every weekend by train into London, and rode ferries to the shores of France in the frigid punishment of the English Channel.
She is a remarkable young lady that gets better by the day. And her extraordinary ability comes through in her art, captured through the lens of her camera. This was the young woman who laughed at her joy of living while stuffing the Teriyaki Chicken into her mouth, which seemed so incredibly fitting. I wondered while watching her how her vision would increase in the future. What she has managed so far is quite impressive.
She likes friends, so if you want to meet her, here’s her Facebook.
She enjoys that kind of thing much more than I do. But that’s part of what makes her unique, and why I think her photography provides a glorious insight into the human experience.
The Bush administration was already projecting the largest deficit in American history—$475 billion in fiscal year 2004…But a big election was coming up that Bush and his party were desperately fearful of losing. So they decided to win it by buying the votes of America’s seniors by giving them an expensive new program to pay for their prescription drugs.
When the legislation came up for [an important vote on a motion to proceed]…it was failing by 216 to 218 when the standard 15 –minute time allowed for voting came to an end. What followed was one of the most extraordinary events in congressional history. The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principle Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-Span cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.
A lot of people forget that I was one of the first people in Butler County to call Michael Fox, Butler County commissioner a crook and a thief in the media. I fought him toe to toe from 2001 to 2005.
Only when our society stops treating thieves as heroes, or as our leaders, will we stop the looting government from open theft and expanding to rob us in every aspect of our lives. The solution is simple, but it requires our resolve to commit to it.
Matt Mayer always has great information at the Buckeye Institute. He has an article that shows the origin of this behavior that we are being asked to pay for in school levies. Click onto this link to see his report and a copy of the magazine that the Ohio Education Associate sends its members. This tells you all you need to know about the social agenda of the OEA.
“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Most people know THX as the sound system that is a Lucas property, and yes, the origin of that name comes from that epic, break-through film. Here’s a trip down memory lane for movie lovers.
THX-1138 had problems because it hit too close to the fears people have about the culture of spoils and looting that goes on in politics. It makes people inwardly who participate in this diabolical behavior feel guilt. That’s why the Warner Brothers executives didn’t like the movie. That’s why the audiences didn’t like the movie, initially. It’s not a movie that desires to make people feel good and eat popcorn. It’s a warning of a possible future of which we are quickly heading.
What is terrifyingly obvious once a little investigation is applied to school systems is that superintendents as a group seem prone to fill empty aspects of their lives with the value of money. That’s where Keynes fails as an economist, it does not account for corruption and failures of the human heart.
In 1944, FDR was fulfilling a long sought after promise of progressives, which his cousin Teddy Roosevelt helped begin, to create a better, more fair world, which were a direct play-book from socialist thought. FDR like his cousin, whom I admire because of his energy and intelligence, suffered from a desire for power, and a belief that he was one of the elites that were enamored by God to help the less-fortunate.
Here is FDR reading his Second Bill of Rights from 1944. Just like a king from a far away land, he consults his subjects in a similar manner, which is fundamentally an incorrect American philosophy. Unfortunately, for those in society that have a tendency to be skittish by nature, socialism is an attractive idea because they naturally lack courage. Those are the kind of people who embraced FDR and his New Deal policies.
“The Economic Bill of Rights”
Excerpt from President Roosevelt’s January 11, 1944 message to the Congress of the United States on the State of the Union[1]:
“ It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[2] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
Americas own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.
For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.
Cass Sunstein is working toward a different kind of America. People like me completely reject what Cass proposes.
This is a video from Cass Sunstein during 2006, long before he was Obama’s regulatory tzar. He is exactly why the FDR’s Second Bill of Rights would never work, because people like Cass are weak-kneed intellectuals that would rather have price fixes instead of allowing competition to drive the market.
The Overmanwarrior 