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.
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.
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.
“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.
“Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life, but to make them as unlike their fathers as we can. While we are followers of Jefferson, there is one principle of Jefferson’s which no longer can obtain in the practical politics of America. You know that it was Jefferson who said that the best government is that which does as little governing as possible…but that time has passed. America is not now and cannot in the future be a place for unrestricted individual enterprise. The people of the United States do not wish to curtail the activities of this Government; they wish, rather, to enlarge them and with every enlargement, with the mere growth, indeed of the country itself, there must come, of course, the inevitable increase of expense…It is not expenditure but extravagance that we should fear being criticized for.”
That is a quote from the father of modern education and president of progressive policy who along with Social Gospel soldiers such as John Dewey created the situation you see on the below chart. The quotes are from Woodrow Wilson.
Government is a corrosive, corruptible creature, and teachers are a reflection of everything that’s wrong with it. They take too much and do too little. Tocqueville proclaimed in 1840 “Having thus taken each citizen in turn in the powerful grasp and shaped him to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much from being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but in hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.”
Few tax payers ever really consider how much they actually pay in taxes, which robs them of money for themselves and gives it them to the mediocre only to feed a government monster with a big appetite.
And that’s where your tax money is going ladies and gentlemen. Remember, if you vote for a school levy, a social welfare levy, a tax increase of any kind…………………………..you’re stupid!
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” Thomas Jefferson.
I spent my twenties reading Joseph Campbell who was an intellectual very well-respected among virtually everyone no matter what the political affiliation. And after I read every Campbell book, some of them several times, I read his autobiography by Stephen and Robin Larsen called A Fire in the Mind, The Life of Joseph Campbell and I remembered with some surprise the quote from that book on page 466 paragraph 3, “Campbell believed in a great revolution of the spirit, and deplored the authority figures of the world who sought to keep human-kind in line. While he seemed to be siding with the powers that be, on the other hand he felt that the revolution of the Marxists and the Maoists was no real revolution but only the triumph of a new kind of collectivism, perhaps even worse than the old religious orthodoxies, because it had totally repudiated the spiritual element—and even worse, the celebration of individuality.” That comment came on March 10th in 1969. It made Campbell very upset that many of his students at Sara Lawrence College were missing class to protest the war and that is the context of his comments.
Today is my 23rd wedding anniversary with my wife. She knows what to give me, a guy that reads and writes continuously while watching the news and cutting hours of radio broadcasts into digestible bits so people who miss valuable information can hear them at their convenience. So she made me an American flag blanket which she gave me this morning.
I agree with the Bull Dog from 700 WLW that Donald Trump is the kind of guy that can level out that curve. He may not be the guy everyone loves, but we need a media equivalent to the Marxists, Socialists, Maoists, radical extremists, union interests composed of the same elements, that are embedded in our culture and it will take someone like Trump to do it. If someone comes up with better candidate, fine, but the Bull Dog articulates the problem very well in this bit.
. To repair the nation it will take each and every person that makes up that nation to do their part, be good individuals and work toward the goal of renewal, and we’ll do it one stitch at a time, or one word at a time, but we will get there because I have committed myself to as much in this next phase of my marriage. That’s why my wife gave me that gift, to show her support of my effort.
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK — More Oklahoma families will be able to send their children to the schools of their choosing, following today’s passage of the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act. The bill will provide partial tax credits to individuals and businesses that donate to nonprofits that distribute private-school scholarships to eligible families.
By a vote of 64-43, the Oklahoma House of Representatives approved the measure, which previously passed the Senate chamber by a vote of 30-14.
“This is another step in the direction of choice for Oklahoma’s parents and children,” Robert Enlow, president and CEO of the Foundation for Educational Choice, said. “We look forward to seeing school choice continue to flourish in the Sooner State, and we are eager to watch other states follow Oklahoma’s lead.”
The Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship Act, sponsored by Rep. Lee Denney (R) and Sen. Dan Newberry (R), would make families with incomes up to 300 percent of the income needed to qualify for the federal Free and Reduced-Price Lunch program eligible to receive scholarships; however, scholarship-giving nonprofits must spend a portion of their expenditures for low-income students in an amount equal to or greater than the percentage of low-income students in the state.
Eligible students, 50 percent of whom must be enrolled currently in public schools, can receive scholarships worth up to $5,000 or 80 percent of the average per-pupil expenditures in the school districts where they reside. With a “cap” of tax credits allowed set at $1.75 million—and with the tax credit itself being worth 50 percent of the donation—the program will provide potentially $3.5 million toward scholarships. The program also provides a separate $1.5 million in tax credits for donations made to nonprofits that distribute “educational improvement grants” to public schools, which is similar to a 10-year-old program in Pennsylvania.
If the Senate agrees to the changes made in the House, the bill will proceed to Gov. Mary Fallin.
The Foundation for Educational Choice is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, solely dedicated to advancing Milton and Rose Friedman’s vision of school choice for all children. First established as the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation in 1996, the foundation continues to promote school choice as the most effective and equitable way to improve the quality of K-12 education in America. The foundation is dedicated to research, education, and outreach on the vital issues and implications related to choice and competition in K-12 education.
