“The trend adds to the nervousness of Southwest Ohio school officials and school parents who await the state budget’s unveiling later this month. Smaller enrollment often means less school funding in Ohio’s biennium budgets. And fewer state dollars mean districts often ask voters to pay higher school taxes.”
You can read the rest of that hilarious article at the following link.
As Lakota continues to decline in enrollment, it may well be possible that Lakota could reduce its staff and administrators by up to 50% by the time 2020 arrives from what it is now. For the tax payers of the Lakota school district that is wonderful news. For business owners looking to invest in the community, that is wonderful news as well, as tax increases should not be needed. It’s also good news for the family of two who have lived in the Lakota district for twenty to thirty years and has been considering selling their home to avoid the property taxes by retiring to Florida. Now those empty-nesters can remain in their homes as the tax burden at Lakota should not increase.
Yet the administration at Lakota did not see this good news. Instead they somehow translated that information as meaning they would need a tax increase…………..and that is HILARIOUS! Do they believe that the same staff level will be maintained when the student population drops down to 11,000 students, or even 10,000? Are teachers going to be teaching in classrooms of only 5 to 10 kids? Is that what they think? Well, apparently………they do. Such a statement about tax increases when enrollment decreases just goes to prove how terribly out-of-touch those types of government employees are, and what little management actually goes into making business decisions in public schools.
The right thing to do at Lakota would be to have a reduction in force every year that there is student enrollment decreases and make sure that the most highly paid employees are either forced to leave, or reduced in force to dynamically supply the student needs. But public education is never interested in doing what’s right. After all, they are “progressive” organizations. They believe they exist to give away jobs like Santa Clause at Christmas time, and they actually entertain the idea that they might have to raise taxes to keep all their employees on staff. That is what was suggested in the Enquirer article, which is absolutely preposterous. Such thinking is the construct of idealism and has no basis in reality.
The decline in enrollment has nothing to do with the three defeated school levies which took place from 2010 to 2012. It may have in a small way prevented the very rare type of real estate purchaser who would be attracted to the Four Bridges type of housing developments, the affluent latte sippers who buy half million dollar homes then expect the community to give their children a free baby sitting service complete with an education. But what has been lost in real estate sales from those types has been gained in retained businesses that have not had to flee the community due to high taxes, and proved conducive to affluent home owners who enjoy living in a community where the children do not run the entire town. Rather the decline in enrollment is part of a natural process, and is the byproduct of a society that does not value the building of families but instead promotes the value of single status lifestyles which last well into young adults thirty something years. If every home in the Lakota district had a mom and a dad, (which most do) yet only produce 1.7 children per home, then the population not just of Lakota as a district will decline, but the nation as well.
Because the district of Lakota is considered affluent, and there are barriers to entry, not quite as excessive as there is in Indian Hill, but is moving in that direction, this means that fewer families can qualify to send their kids to the Lakota school system. Those that can have probably already raised their families and are looking for the kinds of social offerings that come with developments like Carriage Hill Homes, or the upcoming Liberty Center shopping complex. The face and nature of the community are changing, and that change does not center around the neurosis of a local school system, but on quality, and affluence by people who can see through the tantrums of Lakota schools and the bottomless pit of tax increases they wish to impose hiding their lack of management skills, and gross negligence of proper head-count maintenance.
It was funny while it lasted, not its just sad………………………………..
A couple of things occurred lately on the education front concerning my friend Kelly Kohls and the labor union interest centering on the contract being negotiated at Springboro schools. A labor supporter who writes me often passed along a letter he sent out to public education teachers encouraging them to work less, if districts are not going to pay wage increases. Not only did he name me in the letter but other education reformers in Southern Ohio as well who stand against tax increases.
I am very disappointed that Kelly is asking for a renewal levy. I would like to see her walking taxes backwards, not trying to maintain the current tax amount, which should be the goal of every governing body. I hope that voters will take this chance and vote down the renewal levy so that Kelly can then take that mandate from the community and further cut salaries in the Springboro schools system bringing down their per pupil costs.
As to the perception of value that the letter writer represents he forgets what I have told him privately many times, that I do not have a value for the teachers he’s advocating for. I would like to see competitive options to public education that would drive down the cost of education, and give families alternatives to left-leaning education practices. When labor unions declare that their teachers are the pillars of a community, the question that must be asked is for whose version of “community.” My version of community is far different from William Schmidt. He sees his treasured teachers as a value to children; I see them as parasites that rot the minds of creativity and puts chains upon their thoughts before they can hardly read a book. Test scores and social observation support my opinion. I would like to see public education dismantled and for parents to take responsibility for educating their own children with the saved money that roll-backs would provide them. If Kelly’s district of Springboro defeats their levy forcing the school board to make financial adjustments, the tax money saved by residents could be applied to a charter school that teaches something other than progressive education.
When Schmidt says below that nobody has come up with “creative” ways to fund education that is because the value of education is in question, not the dollars that should be found to pay for it. The type of education is the current problem. That must be solved before ways of funding it can be analyzed. In the most simplified form, teaching and the responsibility of education must shift back to the parents and away from government, particularly at the state and federal level. The collective summation of all a community’s children thrown into a big pot of stew while the parents run around doing whatever they feel like as community funded baby sitters take care of their offspring is not working. The parents get lazy because public teachers are raising their kids. Teachers get lazy at their jobs because there are no measurements of quality to keep their job. They get paid pretty much the same whether they are good or bad teachers because their collective bargaining agreement says so, an agreement that robs money from every home in a school district for a system that is a complete failure.
I’m including the letter Schmidt sent to me so that it can be seen how the other side thinks. I don’t think he’s a bad person, just as a lot of people on that side are not bad. But they believe that the wrong things are important. They hide their misconception about reality behind a shield of children. Regardless, I am disappointed that Kelly is putting a renewal levy on the ballot. That’s why she’s a school board member and I’m not. She still wants the system to work, and I don’t. I want it defunded, and re-invented with competition as the foundation. And that answers the second issue to Mr. Schmidt, it is not my job to find a way to raise the “community’s” kids, and pay for the labor of it with a government school. I support private tutors, and if people can’t afford that, then home school the children. Children are better off with a parent who has limited knowledge about the world, but a lot of love to give them than a teacher with a doctorate who makes too much money and is instructing children to vote for progressive causes ruining the mind of young people for the first 15 years of their life, till they wake up at age 35 and realize that all the leftist causes they believe in were the creations of their public schools. They spend the rest of their lives unlearning all the garbage they learned in K-12 education. It would save them a great deal of headache later to not learn those things at all and let a computer at home teach them the basics like math, English, science, then letting The History Channel teach them everything else. That would be much more effective than even the best public schools paid for with stolen property tax money.
Sent by William Schmidt:
During its meeting on June 19, the Springboro Community City Schools Board of Education (BOE) voted in favor of placing a $9.2 million renewal levy on the November ballot.
“We want to underscore that this is a renewal levy, and we are not asking for new money. As a result, taxes will not be raised for residents,” said Kelly Kohls, BOE President. “The renewal is necessary to continue to fund the academic programs that have helped our school district achieve an Excellent with Distinction rating. We are committed to operating the district within the budget that Springboro taxpayers have approved. With the renewal levy, the board believes the district will be sustainable until 2017.”
This renewal levy announcement comes while negotiations are in progress between the Springboro BOE and the Springboro Education Association (SEA), the union representing the teachers and support staff employees.
“The board and administration have worked diligently together to manage the budget,” Kohls added. “By applying fiscally prudent measures across the school district, we have been able to reinstate textbook purchasing, technology upgrades, bus replacements and facility improvements. We have also provided necessary intervention at the elementary grade level, as well as enhanced services for gifted children.”
What I find interesting is that somewhere in Springboro’s past, this money that is suggested to be renewed was new money. Originally, why didn’t Springboro live within their means and and sustain their Excellence with Distinction without this money? I can’t find out when this levy (now needing renewal) was passed. But since then it seems that Springboro has needed these funds.
Now, however, Springboro seems to not need any new money. The logic is lost to me. It seems that as long as the labor force is willing to accept pay freezes and no step increases and many other concessions, the district can sustain itself without asking for new money. Why didn’t it do that before passing the levy (now needing renewal) in the past? Why does it need this renewal to fund academic programs to remain excellent?
The real fact is there is an assumption that the labor force will sustain their current efforts of sacrifice and working extra hours in the face of pay freezes and dwindling benefits. I contend that this assumption is what is truly not sustainable.
Once again, I call on the teachers of Lakota and now Springboro to stop working outside of the borders of their contract. Work a normal day and then use time that used to be devoted to school outside a 40 hour work week and seek employment elsewhere with that time or devote it more to their own families. Once a plan is in place to sustain the extra efforts that teachers have provided in the past, then they can go back to a more professional approach. School budgets can always be sustained without new money and levy passage as long as the increased burden is placed on the labor force. North Coast, No Lakota Levy, Educate Springboro, Sharon Poe, Arnie Engel, Rich Hoffman, Kelly Kohls and other like-minded groups and individuals have never looked into the future and tried to solve the issues of school funding. They have only used ideas, void of creativity, to find ways not to raise taxes, regardless of the burden they place on the labor force. Will any of these groups or people ever suggest that new money for schools be needed?
The fact that Springboro needed a new money levy some years ago and needs it renewed now seems to suggest that The Springboro School Board policies are not forward thinking. They need to consider if their current dealings with the teaching staff are truly sustainable. I think not.
So what is it that the Tea Party wants in a president, or for that matter in a government? Do we want a royal prince to fly all about the world to kiss the rings of kings, queens and ass clowns? No. Do we want a political class of acadmianuts to dictate to us a morality derived one half from unproven faith, and one half scientific scholarships based on incomplete analysis from intelligentsia? No. Do we want a government with no concept of growth, who can do nothing but over consume until they are bed-ridden mounds of flesh that cannot even get up to walk? No. But when in history was there ever a president who did not exhibit these traits? The answer of course is Calvin Coolidge who took office as vice-president in 1920 and became president in 1923 when Warren Harding died. Coolidge is one of the few presidents who left office in 1929 with a government smaller than when he came in. His time in the White House was quit and relatively uneventful. However, his handling of the economy led to a surge in laissez-faire capitalism after the over-reaching years of the Woodrow Wilson regime took American into the roaring twenties. My good friend Matt Clark interviewed Amity Shlaes who wrote a wonderful biography on Calvin Coolidge simply titled Coolidge. Watch the video of that interview here to learn more.
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was the 30thPresident of the United States (1923–1929). A Republicanlawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state. His conduct during the Boston Police Strike of 1919 thrust him into the national spotlight and gave him a reputation as a man of decisive action. Elected in his own right in 1924, he gained a reputation as a small-government conservative, and also as a man who said very little.
Coolidge restored public confidence in the White House after the scandals of his predecessor’s administration, and left office with considerable popularity.[1] As a Coolidge biographer put it, “He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength.”[2] Some later criticized Coolidge as part of a general criticism of laissez-faire government.[3] His reputation underwent a renaissance during the Ronald Reagan Administration, but the ultimate assessment of his presidency is still divided between those who approve of his reduction of the size of government programs and those who believe the federal government should be more involved in regulating and controlling the economy.[4]
Critics of the way Coolidge shrunk the federal government of course were in love with the severe micromanaging of the government that was being displayed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union. Coolidge would get the blame for The Great Depression which began in the United States in 1929 after Coolidge’s presidency ended. However, the cause of the depression was the global fascination with socialism, and hard-core communism which extended to every corner of the world prior to World War II. In the United States, the period after Coolidge’s White House term was called The Red Decade, because of the spread of communist ideas into mainstream thought.
The Red Decade was a term coined by journalist and historianEugene Lyons to describe a period in American history in the 1930s characterized by a widespread infatuation with communism in general and Stalinism in particular. Lyons believed this idolization of Joseph Stalin and exultation of Bolshevik achievements to have reached its high point in 1938, running deepest amongst liberals, intellectuals, and journalists and even some government and federal officials.
Lyons argues that American intellectuals gave the then-Stalinist Soviet Union (and by extension, Stalinism) a certain international goodwill and respectability that it did not deserve.
Much like the failure in modern America to identify the threat of radical Islamic government ambitions, the political left during the Coolidge years failed to identify the downside of communism which was not reported to the public in the newspapers they controlled, and radio broadcasts they voiced. Stalin represented the opposite form of government that Coolidge ran, which has delivered America to the doorstep of tyranny ever since the 1930s. Intellectuals training America’s youth in colleges all over the world had bought into the seduction of Joseph Stalin as they found Calvin Coolidge’s small-government ideas appalling to their statist desires.
Under Joseph Stalin’s rule, the concept of “socialism in one country” became a central tenet of Soviet society. He replaced the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin in the early 1920s with a highly centralised command economy, launching a period of industrialization and collectivization that resulted in the rapid transformation of the USSR from an agrarian society into an industrial power.[2] However, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Soviet correctional labour camps[3] and the deportation of many others to remote areas.[3] The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–1933, known as the Holodomor in Ukraine. Later, in a period that lasted from 1936–39, Stalin instituted a campaign against alleged enemies of his regime called the Great Purge, in which hundreds of thousands were executed. Major figures in the Communist Party, such as the old Bolsheviks, Leon Trotsky, and several Red Army leaders were killed after being convicted of plotting to overthrow the government and Stalin.[4]
In August 1939, Stalin entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that divided their influence within Eastern Europe, but Germany later violated the agreement and launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive battles of Moscow and Stalingrad. After defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies.[5][6] The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States.[7] The Yalta and Potsdam conferences established communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union in the Eastern Bloc countries as buffer states, which Stalin deemed necessary in case of another invasion. He also fostered close relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea.
In the 1930s, Stalin apparently became increasingly worried about the growing popularity of the Leningrad party boss Sergei Kirov. At the 1934 Party Congress where the vote for the new Central Committee was held, Kirov received only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received at least over a hundred negative votes.[46][47] After the assassination of Kirov, which may have been orchestrated by Stalin, Stalin invented a detailed scheme to implicate opposition leaders in the murder, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev.[48] The investigations and trials expanded.[49] Stalin passed a new law on “terrorist organizations and terrorist acts” that were to be investigated for no more than ten days, with no prosecution, defense attorneys or appeals, followed by a sentence to be executed “quickly.”[50]
Thereafter, several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. Article 58 of the legal code, which listed prohibited anti-Soviet activities as counterrevolutionary crime, was applied in the broadest manner.[51] The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an “enemy of the people“, starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD –NKVD troika– with sentencing carried out within 24 hours.[50] Stalin’s hand-picked executioner, Vasili Blokhin, was entrusted with carrying out some of the high-profile executions in this period.[52]
Many military leaders were convicted of treason and a large-scale purge of Red Army officers followed.[54] The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a “river of blood” separated Stalin’s regime from that of Lenin.[55] In August 1940, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since January 1937; this eliminated the last of Stalin’s opponents among the former Party leadership.[56]
With the exception of Vladimir Milyutin (who died in prison in 1937) and Joseph Stalin himself, all of the members of Lenin’s original cabinet who had not succumbed to death from natural causes before the purge were executed.
The Great Depression was caused by communism and the over-tampering of economies by left-leaning governments. Stalin was the exact opposite of Calvin Coolidge who presided over one of the best periods of economy the United States ever experienced even handcuffed with the Prohibition policies created during the Wilson Progressive Era. Stalin and his influence throughout the world articulated by seduced journalists created the Great Depression during the Red Decade in America as the statist architects of government wanted to carry America as far away from Calvin Coolidge as possible.
The political left and even many on the political right have found themselves shaped in 2013 intellectually, philosophically, morally, and even ideologically by the events mentioned above. America never recovered from this period of the The Red Decade, because immediately after was World War II, then a brief period of economic boom built off post war economics in the 1950s. Then the communists were back at it with more statist plans coming again through American colleges during the 1960s. The rest is history and indicate a very gradual slide toward complete statism exulted by Joseph Stalin who many intellectuals are glad to support the death, destruction and economic depressions so to witness the equality given to all by communism.
Calvin Coolidge was the shining example of what America could produce in a manager in the Executive Branch. He wasn’t a glory seeker, nor did he in any way desire to be viewed as a king. He simply wanted to work hard on behalf of the country and leave his office better than he found it—and smaller. If history tells any kind of coherent story it is that no matter how good a president is, or no matter how efficient the government, there will always be those threats to individual liberty who will gladly trade tyranny for some measure of security. There is safety in collectivism that is appealing to the weak heart and mind, and there will always be these types of people in a democracy who will vote for more statism through perpetually bigger government. And when things go wrong with their plans, even if they occur in an entirely different decade, they will blame somebody else. In our modern-day it is the incompetent manager in Barack Obama who still five years after taking office is blaming George W. Bush for his failing economy that is cause by his socialist tampering. And so too has history as it was written by liberals, college professors and social scum bags portrayed Joseph Stalin as a saint in spite of the millions of deaths caused by communism, and placed the blame of The Great Depression on the doorstep of Silent Cal, the American president who knew to stay as far away from government tampering as possible to give the economy a chance to grow, which it did.
It is important to know history, and those in the Tea Party are learning. It is for that reason that they find Calvin Coolidge so appealing, and the model for how government should be run going into the 21st Century. Without the methods of a future Calvin Coolidge type as President of the United States, all projected government activity in America is destined to bankrupt themselves because of their roots in socialism that began as far back as The Red Decade—a period of time created by the political left to answer the prosperity of Calvin Coolidge, one of the greatest presidents that America never knew about—which is how it’s supposed to be.
You can find Amity Shlaes book Coolidge at the following link:
The Looters of Lakota are at it again. They are planning to toss another tax increase on the fall ballot, as expected. Read the rest of the article from The Enquirer below.
LIBERTY TWP. — Voters in Greater Cincinnati’s second-largest school system will likely see a tax hike on the fall ballot.
The Lakota Board of Education voted unanimously Monday evening to place a combination operating levy and a permanent improvement tax on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Voters will decide on a 3.5-mill operating levy and a 2-mill permanent improvement levy combined into a single 5.5-mill school tax hike issue.
The board’s vote is the first of two required under Ohio law to place school tax issues on the ballot. Lakota officials have until Aug. 7 to file with Butler County election officials for the Nov. 5 ballot.
If approved, the levy would cost an additional $168 annually in new school taxes on a $100,000 home.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Speaker, thank you for doin’ this. Let’s talk first about these– revelations about the National Security Agency. Edward Snowden has come forward, said he brought the documents into the public eye. His supporters say he’s– a whistle-blowing patriot. His critics say he’s betrayed the country, broken the law. Where do you stand?
JOHN BOEHNER: He’s a traitor. The president outlined last week that these were important national security programs to help keep Americans safe, and give us tools– to fight the terrorist threat th– that we face. The president also outlined that there are appropriate safeguards in place– to make sure that– there’s– there’s no– snooping, if you will– on Americans– here at home. But– the disclosure of this information– puts Americans at risk. It shows– our adversaries what our capabilities are. And– it’s a giant violation of the law.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As you point out, the president has said these programs are effective. They’re fully constitutional, fully approved by Congress, and limited. Do you agree with all that?
BOEHNER: I do. I’ve been briefed on all of these programs. Remember, this is all past– and– and broad bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate. And– and when you look at these programs, there are clear safeguards. There’s no American who’s gonna be snooped on in any way– unless they’re in contact– with some terrorists somewhere around the world.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So even though all of these phone records, not phone calls, but all these phone records are being scooped up– you believe that Americans’ privacy is still protected?
BOEHNER: Absolutely. And every time– that I’ve been in a briefing, nine of the ten people in a room are lawyers– there to protect– the privacy of the American people. George, throughout our history we’ve had this– we’ve had this tug– between our principle responsibility as the government to– to keep Americans safe– and at the same time, protect their privacy.
And so there’s this balancing act– that goes on. And I believe– that when you look at this program and what it does– we– you’ll find– that we protect the privacy of the American people– while at the same time, giving us tools– to keep Americans safe and to go after the terrorist.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator John McCain– I think he agrees with you in large measure. But he said that there should be an open hearing so the American public can be reassured about the program. Senator Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee also says she’s open to that. Do you think that’s a good idea?
BOEHNER: Well, I’ll let– the– the chairs of the Intelligence Committees– make that decision. But there is heavy oversight of this program– by the House Intelligence Committee on a bipartisan basis and the Senate Intelligence Committee. And that’s why I feel comfortable– that– that we can operate this program and protect the privacy rights of– of our citizens
The real issue with the NSA, the TSA, the Department of Homeland Security and every other government expansion program that was created in the wake of 9/11 is that the terrorist attack created by Osama Bin Laden against the World Trade Center was allowed because government did not do its job to begin with. It failed to recognize that radical Muslims are dangerous, it failed to teach people that they should over-take an airplane hijacked by terrorists carrying only box cutters, and it allowed the training of those terrorists to learn to fly an airplane when they showed no interest in landing. The FBI and CIA were aware of these terrorists from the start, and no amount of national security gathered by snooping can overcome incompetence, which is what happened during 9/11. It was incompetence that allowed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and nothing more. Many alarms were raised and nobody acted on them.
The same alarm flags were raised when the participants of the Boston Bombings of 2013 participated in radical Islamic rhetoric which migrated to the level radicalism in killing and maiming hundreds of Americans during the Boston Marathon, yet nobody acted on the information. Without question the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA all had hundreds if not thousands of emails, phone calls and other surveillance information indicating that the Boston Bombers were a threat to national security. Yet all those agencies because of the presence of political correctness were unable to call evil, evil for the sake of safety and act on their hunches, because they were paralyzed by the Muslim faith’s radical behavior and fearful of being targeted by their aggression. So nobody acted on the information gathered.
Because the government is incompetent they have decided in the wake of 9/11 to over-react and throw endless amounts of government jobs at every possible terrorist threat so that nobody in the public can ever accuse them of not doing everything they can. However, the issue of government failing to do their jobs time and time again to begin with is never brought up, so Boehner is as guilty as Obama for being an incompetent fool who has spent too many years in government and needs a private sector job to calibrate his rationale. Conspiracy theorists who appear more right than wrong will add that all this NSA nonsense has been established for years under the New World Order strategies that were outlined in the Jim Marrs book, Rule by Secrecy. Those same conspiracy theorists will say that the government has always had these plans in mind and simply were waiting for a good excuse to capitalize on the next terrorist attempt for which to launch the full NSA surveillance program that had been long-planned.
In the interview between John Boehner and George Stephanopoulos it is clear that what separates John Boehner the Republican from socialist (Democrat/Progressive) Barack Obama is very little. They both support an over-reaching government that snoops on every aspect of our lives so that they can never be held accountable for not doing everything possible to protect America from evil. That is everything except name evil by its proper name and hold people who are terrorists and breed terror accountable for their actions. For bureaucrats like Boehner and his golf buddy Obama, it is easier to just spy on everyone and hope that it serves as a deterrent for terrorism which the Boston Bombings proved false. Unable to act, or name evil by a proper name, all government can do is infringe on everyone so that nobody dare step out of line—thus keeping their incompetent political class out of the hot-seat, and in office long enough to become rich by looting the American tax payer, while never having to do anything substantial to earn the money.
If you’ve ever had to deal with a government school employee, be it a principal, teacher, or even a simple secretary, you surely know by now that they are typically arrogant, presumptuous, bastions of mundane complacency that act as though they are perpetually doing you a favor by giving you the time of day when forced to speak with them. Occasionally, there is a sincere teacher who is quite good, but the systems they work within handcuff them to an institution that relishes poor performance the way middle management executives relish the Golf Channel. Public school employees are generally horrendous at customer service, because they work for institutions that do not have to compete with anyone else for your business. They know that if a parent owns a home in their school district, then the parent has no choice but to send their child to that particular school or suffer prosecution by law. Public school employees really don’t care if they make their customers happy, or satisfied. They are able to put on a good show for the parent teacher conferences, or other meet and greet events so long as the parent doesn’t attempt to get too involved in their kid’s life at school, but this quickly erodes once the business of teaching migrates beyond formality. Then the real teeth of the wolves show as the not so subtle ownership of the children’s lives becomes clear. Public education employees believe that they are co-parents with the real parents, and they treat those real parents as an incompetent spouse that has eyes on an affair finding fault with everything the real parents do. The education professional believes their teaching methods are superior to that of parents, and they are not shy to make it known. That is why it brings my heart great delight to see that some parents are fighting back. Since they have no choice but to send their child to the public school of their home real estate, and typically cannot afford private instruction for their child, more and more parents are home-schooling their children at a rate that is justifiably alarming.
A little known fact since home schooled children represent only 4% of all school aged children is that home schooling enrollment has increased by 75% since 1999. Homeschooling has become increasingly popular as common myths that have long been associated with the practice have been debunked. Any concerns parents had about the quality of education children receive at home can be put to rest by the consistently high placement of homeschooled students on standardized assessment exams. Data demonstrates that those who are independently educated generally score between the 65th and 89th percentile on these measures, while those in traditional academic settings average at around the 50th percentile. In addition, achievement gaps between sexes, income levels, or ethnicity—all of which have plagued public schools around the country—do not exist in homeschooling environments. If you want to meet a smart child no matter what their background, you will almost 100% of the time notice that a parent is active in their life, and the best students come from homes where the parent does all the instruction, and does not send their child to a concentration camp called public school out of convenience in needing a tax payer funded baby sitter.
Recent studies laud homeschoolers’ academic success, noting their significantly higher ACT-Composite scores as high school aged students and higher grade point averages as college students. Yet surprisingly, the average expenditure for the education of a homeschooled child, per year, is $500 to $600, compared to an average expenditure of $10,000 per child, per year, for public school students. This is because the parent is invested in their child in a way that is biologically compatible. The public school attempts to defy the way human beings naturally learn with an artificial instruction that is rooted in radical labor unions that are too expensive not just monetarily, but mentally. In real dollars it costs ten times more to teach a child in a public school getting mediocre results at best, than the same child taught at home getting superior results.
The high achievement level of homeschoolers is readily recognized by recruiters from some of the best colleges in the nation. Home-educated children matriculate in colleges and attain a four-year degree at much higher rates than their counterparts from both public and private schools. Schools such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Stanford, and Duke Universities all actively recruit homeschoolers. They do this so they can bring their averages up in academic accountability and artificially show superior education results compensating for all the lack-luster students they are supplied with coming from public schools.
Similarly, the common myth that homeschoolers “miss out” on so-called “socialization opportunities,” often thought to be vital aspects of traditional academic settings, has proven to be false. According to the National Home Education Research Institute survey, homeschoolers tend to be more socially engaged than their peers and demonstrate “healthy social, psychological, and emotional development, and success into adulthood.” A home schooled child is more likely to be the leader of their “pack” than just a blind participant as their egos have not been crushed into mashed potatoes in public school for social assimilation into a collective.
Based on recent data, researchers such as Dr. Brian Ray (NHERI.org) “expect to observe a notable surge in the number of children being homeschooled in the next 5 to 10 years. The rise would be in terms of both absolute numbers and percentage of the K to 12 student population. This increase would be in part because…[1] a large number of those individuals who were being home educated in the 1990’s may begin to homeschool their own school-age children and [2] the continued successes of home-educated students.”
I have said it more than once, if a parent sends their child to public school, they must not care much for the child. Public schools are government schools, and they are not healthy places to raise children. Parents should never completely surrender their children to a public school and the employees who work in them, as the customer service is terrible, and the social implication is quite destructive. Based on the results, all parents should make it their number one objective in raising their children to instruct those children at home under their care, and to forego the public education entirely.
When parents look at their 16-year-old child and wonder what happened to the sweet little youngster they gave birth to, most of the fault can be placed at the feet of the public school which has sought to reshape children’s minds into some Frankenstein social experiment designed to make good citizens as unlike their parents as possible as viewed by the government. The rest of the fault rests on the parent who was too lazy, self-centered, or too stupid to instruct their own children, denying them an opportunity to be the best human beings they could possibly be. Years ago when I was deep in fighting Lakota schools which is in my local district I was told by the arrogant teachers and PTA Kool-Aid drinkers that if I thought teaching was so easy then I’d come and teach their classes. Well, on national radio, in the newspapers, and on television, even to members of the school faculty, I said I’d be happy to teach not just one class, but four at the same time. When I gave an interview to the Lakota East Spark Magazine, I told the young lady who interviewed me that I would be happy to teach all their classes at the school if anyone wanted to take me up on it. Ironically, that article never made it to print.
There are times when I truly do wish that I could home school everyone’s children, and teach them real knowledge, not the crap they get in public school. The public school employees and their followers thought they stumped me when they challenged me to teach their classes. They thought I would decline out of fear that I couldn’t match their “massive” intellects. Please…………….they think this way because they have no competition and do not know, or care to know that most people functioning in the world successfully know a whole lot more than they do. And thankfully for 4% of all school aged children, they have parents who understand that they are better qualified to instruct their own children than some arrogant government employee who is trying to use children to cash in on a cushy job. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if you love your children, you’ll take them out of public schools, and teach them yourself. If you want to raise a social malcontent, a diabolical menace to society, a pot smoking, future alcoholic, a liar, a cheater, and unstable social bully, then send them to be instructed in public schools where those are the skills of the instructors. If you want a smart young adult who is kind, thoughtful and reliable to their future spouse and the children that come from that union……………..then teach them yourself!
I continue to get a lot of email from people all over Ohio wanting to know how they can fight their local school levies and take controversial positions against fire/police levies. Without question the levy attempts will continue to be a problem in Ohio as collective bargaining agreements are wrecking the budgets of virtually every community. The idea of collective bargaining is a preposterous notion that only ignorant fools would support. They are a direct result of communist influence during the “red decade” reacting to extensive pressure from the Soviet Union, and should have never been brought to The United States in any form. The mistake of collective bargaining is that it pays employees value based on years of service, seniority and collective membership, not on individual merit which is essential to a capitalist system. Collective bargaining is the brain-child of Karl Marx and is anti-capitalism in its fiscal approach. The practice needs to be abolished before management of community resources can be performed properly. Collective bargaining is the single greatest cause of tax increases in any government endeavor. Employees are paid too much because of it, and too many people are paid with such over abundance—which recklessly drives up labor costs on a community forcing tax increases.
Although collective bargaining for private sector workers was adopted into federal Law in 1935, it was nearly 50 years later when public employees in Ohio obtained the right to negotiate workplace contracts. On July 6, 1983 Governor Richard Celeste signed the collective bargaining bill (SB133) into law, which went into effect on April 1, 1984 and is contained in Ohio Revised Code, Chapter 4117.
As a result of the collective bargaining law, six hundred thousand public employees including teachers, firefighters, police officers, state and local service workers, could not only form and join a union, but also enjoy legal rights in negotiating workplace contracts with the public employer (the taxpayer). The collective bargaining law also ushered in the State Employees Relations Board, principally charged with administering Chapter 4117 and resolving labor and management disputes through a three-member board appointed by the Governor, which almost every time favors the lobby power of the labor unions.
Until the mistake of Celeste in Ohio during 1983 and the 1935 federal law are abolished tax levies will continue. Many of the people writing me lack the network to fight the large well-oiled machines of community labor unions but I have been able to help some of them construct successful strategies to defeat their levies as they come up on the ballot. To date, the government institutions, particularly the schools simply ignore the election results when they fail and try again for another tax increase in the next business quarter. This scam is driven by collective bargaining agreements and unions flock to protect those agreements because it is the life-blood of their high wages. So, it is helpful to have a larger organization behind tax fighting efforts to match and surpass the scams proposed by labor unions in bed with statist government lovers.
I recently spoke with Hanna Faulkner from the Americans for Prosperity organization who is the Southwest Ohio filed coordinator. She offered the services of AFP to communities struggling to defeat their tax levies with the might of their dynamic group powered by incredible activists. They have organized and influential citizen leaders in every state who work at local, state, and national levels to embrace the principles of economic freedom. AFP understands that individual and entrepreneurial freedom creates a higher quality of life than government controls and excessive regulation. They also understand that efficient, effective and limited government protects hardworking taxpayer and allows the real economy to grow and thrive. AFP believes that genuine merit should determine success, not government cronyism or favoritism which is exactly what collective bargaining breeds everywhere it is applied. AFP knows that communities are healthier and more prosperous when personal responsibility is reward and dependency is discourage, so they are the perfect type of organization to help lend support when it comes to fighting tax increases.
According to Hanna, AFP is all about action. Throughout the year they crisscross the nation holding rallies, town halls, and grassroots events to inform, empower, and activate Americans to become influential voices in the battle for economic freedom. In addition to their aggressive stance on national issues, AFP frequently focuses on critical issues at the state and local levels. That’s why they mobilized massive resources to combat New Jersey’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), where they conducted nearly 50 special events and training seminars, resulting in Governor Christie removing New Jersey from the Cap-and-Trade scheme. AFP also played a major role in Wisconsin’s budget reform battle, where they defended those in the state who were fighting to balance Wisconsin’s budget. To that end, they took over the airwaves, rallied grassroots activists, and organized a statewide bus tour.
AFP’s North Carolina activists ensured passage of the first veto-proof budget without a tax increase in over a decade. The legislative success was the result of grassroots pressure involving AFP-North Carolina activists knocking on more than 56,000 doors and holding rallies as well as AFP’s large-scale paid media effort. AFP-Nevada activists logged a whopping 35,441 live, non-partisan, Get-Out-The-Vote calls leading up to the special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District. In Wisconsin, AFP deployed their vertically integrated grassroots strategy, 110,000 activists who ensured that Governor Scott Walker’s crucial collective bargaining reforms and spending cuts carried the day by running a statewide paid media effort, hosting dozens of large-scale rallies, and logging tens of thousands of live issue advocacy calls to households across Wisconsin. In Michigan AFP helped thwart an unnecessary international bridge project between Michigan and Canada after mobilizing tens of thousands of calls to elected officials in Lansing. In Texas, AFP along with a coalition of state-based partners, helped wipe out a $27 billion budget deficit in Texas without raising taxes or draining the state’s rainy day fund. American’s for Prosperity is a group that offers fresh troops to the budget battles of the day—and they are quite effective.
This is why I was speaking to Hanna. When my school district of Lakota attempts to place another levy on the ballot, I intend to beat that levy so badly that it will change state dialogue in Ohio with a mandate setting defeat that is so high-profile that every district in Ohio, and the board of education at the state level will shudder. To do this I intended to defeat the next measure by 65% or more at the ballot box, and to do that it will require different tactics than I have used in the past. The activism record of AFP is just the kind of thing I’m looking for, so such an alliance looks to be forthcoming. However, in the meantime, AFP is there for other districts all across the state, and they should be contacted to assist with those battles.
Levies must be defeated if the collective bargaining debacle of Dick Celeste is to be reversed. Tax increases are slow intrusions on the value of private property that were typically imposed out of graciousness so long as the value of homes continued to artificially increase. Now that the housing bubble has burst, the taxes paid to schools are not paid out of falsified property increase values, but out of the real value of property that is not going to increase by means of miracle for the owner. For the entire duration of Celeste’s diabolical scheme of collective bargaining, property values have artificially inflated with the perception that it would go on forever. But now reality has set in, and the villain of collective bargaining must be dealt with first by defeating the proposed tax increases, then removing collective bargaining from all government jobs in Ohio so that proper management of tax payer resources can be conducted. Yet these reforms do not have to be terrifying enterprises where only a few must stand against the many. Americans for Prosperity is there to help provide support for just this sort of thing, and I’d recommend contacting them over ballot initiatives in Ohio whenever possible.
Hanna Faulkner at American’s for Prosperity can be contacted at:
I had a conversation with a political mover in the Butler County area who did not share my excitement over the upcoming Liberty Center development in Butler County, Ohio which is shaping up to be one of the most dynamic shopping/entertainment destinations in the country. My enthusiasm was due to the recent announcement that the Cobb Theater chain of CinaBistro had just signed on to bring their 8th movie theater complex to the Liberty Center development which is unique in its concept. CinaBistro offers fine dining and other upscale options while watching movies. That includes serving bottles of wine and mixed drinks to the seat of movie goers and full course gourmet meals. CinaBistro is a fashionable experience that will prove very successful in the Liberty Township complex if for no other reason than I might be there with my wife every single day. I love movies and since CinaBistro will offer all the other entertainment options within the movie theater experience that I enjoy I will be a constant fan. What’s even better is the theater has restrictions on children under the age of 21, which means that unpleasant, pubescent, smelly, greasy adolescents won’t be able to attend without being present with adults. The way it appears to work at CinaBistro is that I can take my grandson to see the new Star Wars films there and we can eat a couple of New York Strip Steaks together in luxury. But my grandson won’t be able to go by himself to the theater with a bunch of his friends unsupervised even as a teenager. That is a GOOD thing!
The reason the political mover didn’t share my excitement is that Tri County Mall is being foreclosed upon in a sheriffs auction in July and the Cincinnati Mall down the road in Forest Park continues to struggle to find lease commitments, leaving one of the largest shopping malls in the world mostly empty. Tri County Mall has found itself in the hole by about $272 million, and is losing lease commitments rapidly. Even the long-standing Spencer Gifts finally pulled out along with Chick-fil-A recently. That is the sign of a dying mall. The city of Springdale hopes that the new owners of the mall will have the opportunity and money to restore Tri-County Mall to greatness—and personally I hope so too. I love the Tri-County Mall. I grew up with it, and it has always been an important part of my life. But when my own mother told me that she didn’t like to shop there any more, I knew it was doomed to failure because she isn’t alone.
When Tri County Mall allowed public busing to bring despots and welfare recipients from the inner city to the shopping experience of West Chester, they doomed themselves. And to no fault of Tri County Mall social policies in the surrounding area from Sharonville to Fairfield of higher property taxes and commitments to public housing have destroyed their communities in many areas. Those with money and value have consistently moved north over the years to run away from these destructive social policies which fail to understand that there are differences in human behavior, and some of those behaviors are not conductive to economic growth. Tri County is the latest victim of this progressive ignorance in failing to fathom that the working poor, the down-and-out, and the members of society on government assistance are that way for a reason.
I have known people who have lost everything in life, and have rebounded back on their feet within a few years. Businesses fail, tragedies happen, and life circumstances change. But good people find a way to bounce back and become prosperous once again. Then of course there are people who run across hard times and they never get back up. These people tend to surrender the responsibility of their lives to public assistance, whether it is public transportation, housing, food or whatever program that the government supplies to help them. The problem is that the two types of people do not mix well. People who fight every day of their lives to improve themselves and do good things for themselves and others do not have anything in common with the person on public assistance. If the government forces two men—one on public assistance and a “rich” man from the suburbs to sit down together and talk while in line at Tri County Mall, the later will not speak to the former and vice versa—because the two men have nothing in common beyond possibly support behind the local sports team. Their lives and philosophies are radically different, and they are not compatible as two human beings.
When Tri Country Mall allowed the Orange bus line to come to the shopping complex, it allowed a slow influence of people from neighborhoods where drugs, crime, and public welfare are common to interact with well-to-do, upper middle-class shoppers who are uncomfortable associating with people who act as though they might try to rob them at any moment. Teenage boys walking about with their pants down around their knees are not appealing. No woman wants to shop at a high-class venue only to see packs of teenagers hooting and hollering unsupervised and looking dangerous. Progressives have called these suburbanite women “snobs” for not wanting to share their shopping experience with such people. They have also been called “racists” for participating in some mythical class warfare. Instead of being called names the shoppers of Tri County Mall and Cincinnati Mills have stayed home or went else ware—such as to Kenwood Mall. The two types of people are simply not compatible in the same setting. Their quality of life is just too radically different, and quality is something that progressives always ignore in their social projects, which is why all their projects fail.
The feeling is that when Liberty Center opens that Tri County will sink, and that the Liberty Township development should be stopped because in addition to the amount of retail space it will suck away from complexes like Tri-County Mall, the movie theater isn’t needed. The political mover speaking to me used the AMC Theater down the road in West Chester and the Springdale Showcase Cinema near Tri-County Mall as evidence that the area is over-saturated with movie theaters. I pointed out that the AMC theater at The Streets of West Chester are havens for kids under the age of 21 and nobody wants to go there because of all the stupid kids. The new Cobb Theater at Liberty Center will solve that problem, allowing me to take my wife to a movie without having to interact with pubescent majorities who are only five minutes out of their mother’s wombs.
The real issue is one of value, and failing to understand that value. Value is determined by quality, and without some measure of quality, you get failure in any endeavor. If the assumption is that all human beings are equal—well they are if only arms, legs and heads define a human being. But if the kind of thoughts a person has is considered, and what they do with those thoughts, then quality becomes more than basic human function, and evolves into something much more complex. That complexity is why Tri-County is failing and why new developments like Liberty Center are being pursued.
I personally am willing to go to the worst areas of any city at any time and do whatever I need to do. In the past when I’ve needed a tire for a car I was selling, instead of getting one from the local tire store and paying $40 to $60, I would go down to Liberty Street in Over-the-Rhine and get a tire from the guys who operate a used tire refurbishing business for $5. They change the tires right in the street mounted, balanced and everything in about 15 minutes. I’ve walked the length of Vine Street from the University of Cincinnati to the river at 3 AM and managed just fine, so it doesn’t bother me to see a gang of thugs in the hallways of Tri-County Mall. But I do find I can’t relax as I am always on the look-out for some little pick-pocket or despot to cat-call in my wife’s direction. If I want to shop, I want to enjoy the experience. If I want to fight, I’ll go where fights are common. But it is unreasonable to expect suburban moms and dads to desire shopping in a hostile environment with people who are barely hanging on to life by their bad choices and a solid commitment to ignorance.
The Liberty Center project is a result of capitalism. There is a market desire and the economic viability is present for such a thing to offer upscale options to a shopping public. The Steiner Group has picked the location for demographic reasons. It has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with the quality of the people in that demographic region. There is no way on earth that such a project like Liberty Center would be proposed in Over-the-Rhine because the type of demographic group that could financially support such a project is not present. The type who are, no longer wish to go to Tri-County Mall not because the mall is a bad one, but because the social interaction has changed the economic viability forever leaving Tri-County to rot in the same way that progressives destroy everything they put their hands and minds to. The decisions one makes in their life has a major impact on the level of quality they offer the world.
The situation is so bad now in the Tri-County area that I no longer enjoy seeing movies at the Showcase Cinema which I have went to for nearly 40 years. It is impossible to go there any more without seeing gangs of kids making out, walking around with disheveled appearances, and worrying about my car in the parking lot. It is hard to relax and watch a movie because the type of people Springdale has allowed to take over their community does not respect private property, ownership, or personal value. The result is that I tend to now see movies at the Regal in Mason, where I don’t have to worry about those kinds of things. There are kids at that theater, but they are much better behaved as most of them come from complete families who live in the Deerfield Township area, where there is a mom and a dad living under the same roof. But when the CineBistro comes to Liberty Center I will be there often and with much delight. I will also thank capitalism for providing such options freeing my time and money from the social failures of progressive governments who wish to mix types of people together like a cook mixing ingredients that just don’t mix. People of value do not enjoy spending time with people who value very little. Those are the facts of life and the real meaning behind success and failure in business endeavors. Tri-County Mall is not failing because it’s a bad mall; it’s the same mall that it always was. But the people have changed, and that is a truly sad story for everyone involved.
Preventing Liberty Center from being constructed will not force the residents of Liberty Township and West Chester which number over 100,000 people to continue shopping at Tri-County, and going to see movies at the AMC Theater taken over by teen-aged kids, or Showcase surrounded by declining communities and broken family units. It will simply halt economic activity. Government manipulation of restrictive zoning will not force people like herds of cattle to destinations of desire by statist governments. The independent nature of people with value will simply cause them to rebel in some other way and spend their money elsewhere. The Orange bus line as a result will be dropping off despots to an empty mall at Tri-County because the social experiment of mixing “rich” and “poor” has failed—because the cause of wealth and lack of value was never identified. And the heart of that difference is why CineBistro will be an astonishing success at Liberty Center even though they do not allow unsupervised children under the age of 21 to attend and will serve Moët Imperial for $79 a bottle to each seat while Die Hard 10 starring a 75-year-old Bruce Willis kicks the crap out of bad guys on the silver screen……………….
………………………do you smell that………………………ahhhhhhh…………………………….CAPITALISM!
I can’t wait for the CineBistro at Liberty Center!
Government schools, politicians, union leaders, and busy parents too wrapped up in their own lives to raise their children attempt to justify why they should surrender education to their local government-run school district, will declare that Common Core standards will help all children reach a level of excellence within the public school system. Yet such an idea is only good from the perspective of the statist school designed by The United States Department of Education. For any other freedom loving individual Common Core is a gross tyranny that attempts to break down the primary family influence in a child’s life and claim children as property of the state. Common Core seeks to un-educate instead of create dynamic individuals who are free thinking and diverse in their thoughts and opinions. Common Core is essentially the first step which leads to Aldous Huxley’s novel A Brave New World, yet for busy, young neurotic parents and politicians who would gladly sell their soul to an airport baggage handler in exchange for a strip tease lap dance, Common Core in education is their children’s salvation, because it promises to make their children into good people and repair their short-comings as parents. Common Core was the brainchild of a former genius who was told by a statist society that they need to “give back” some of the vast wealth they’ve earned. Years of guilt and family tradition have turned Bill Gates and his wife to education philanthropy to prove they are not terribly greedy, rich people—but caring contributors to ideas greater than themselves starting with children, even though Bill Gates dropped out of college to start Microsoft—a company that is leading the charge for Common Core. These complicated dynamics were the subject of the May meeting at the West Chester Tea Party where Heidi Huber, one of the leaders of Ohioans Against Common Core, passionately explained the who, what, why, when, and where Common Core is targeting young minds to destroy for the benefit of statist government intentions. This group is leading the charge of taking Common Core out of our schools in Ohio.
I learned during my school levy fights at the Lakota school district that what Heidi stated in her speech was true. Education is not designed for the children; it is designed for the adults who support a statist view of government. This is why I moved my position from just a reformer of public education cost, to an advocate against public education completely—and instead favor competitive alternatives to drive the market cheaper with better results based on performance. The biggest problem with Common Core is it’s far from competitive. But don’t just take my word for it on this, feel free to watch ALL the videos provided here, and learn for yourself the severity of Common Core on children’s lives, and the future impact it will have on establishing a working philosophy for American society. I reject the effectiveness of modern education based on the results it has currently provided, children who would rather participate in evasion rather than think—so public education is a dismal failure before the implementation of Common Core. More of the same is simply not acceptable.
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are being sold as a state led initiative that will bring quality education standards to our schools. CCSS is an illegal overreach by the US Department of Education into local education. CCSS are national standards which the federal government is forbidden by law from creating, which were developed by a group of progressive education “reformers” in D.C. and released under the auspices of two Washington trade groups. Because those groups have members from the states, the creators claim this effort was ‘state-led.’ But state representatives had little or no meaningful input to the development process.
The states were coerced into accepting Common Core Standards as a requirement to apply for Race to the Top grant money and in order to receive a waiver from No Child Left Behind mandates. Ohio’s State Board of Education along with former State Superintendent, De Delisle and Gov. Strickland signed onto this federal intrusion with the RTTT application on January 19, 2010. Seeing this activity it was then that I decided to start the No Lakota Levy effort at my local school, to pick a large pristine school in Ohio that would get the attention of Columbus and let them know that they would get resistance to their far-reaching attempts to possess the minds of children with new impositions. During that January 2010 RTTT application there was no legislative involvement. Even today, legislators are in the dark about Common Core. Deb Delisle was nominated by Pres. Obama and is currently an Asst. Secretary at the US Department of Education. Small world……………..
The Ohio Constitution requires a State School Board to obtain legislative approval to change the state’s curriculum. Common Core radicals in Columbus did not obtain this approval prior to or after signing on to CCSS. Two consortia, SMARTER Balanced and PARCC, which are paid by the Department of Education with stimulus funds, have developed on-line assessments that are slated to replace the OGT test, but at a greater cost. Estimates put that cost at more than two times the OGT test costs. Because they are on-line tests, they will require school district to massively ramp up their technology inventory, at a time when school districts are already struggling to meet their existing operating costs because of their collective bargaining agreements with overly paid labor unions. This will cause more school levy requests which fulfills the long stated goal of all statist government, to tax private property even more so to discourage property ownership—surrendering those rights to the state in exchange for cheaper lease rates from renting. So Common Core for the statist government achieves two objectives, it attacks private property ownership, and placates the minds of generations of children with statist government philosophy breaking down the traditional family and replacing parental influence with “community ownership,” of children.
Home Schoolers and private schools cannot escape Common Core through self-instruction. The Ohio Department of Education will only confer a high school diploma to students passing the new PARCC national standards assessment. Lead author of Common Core, David Coleman, is now the president of the College Board, the developer of the SAT exam. They have made it impossible for families to control their child’s education, which should enrage every American with a child. The Feds, progressive “philanthropists” like Bill Gates and his wife, and the crony capitalists have taken over education. If CCSS proponents have their way, all standardized tests (ACT, SAT, etc) will align with CCSS forcing private schools and home school families to teach to the test or risk being unfairly evaluated for college and scholarship opportunities. Personally, I think that if a parent sends their children to a modern college with unfocused goals and spends $50,000 to $100,000 on their college education to be turned into a liberalized buffoon, that parent is an idiot. If the college taught conservative, or otherwise traditional values, that would be a different story, but they don’t. They currently instruct students to be agents of a statist system, and the results to our country are quite obvious.
CCSS is part of a broader federal effort to collect huge amounts of personal student and family data (P-20 longitudinal data system). This data, like that collected through the new health care mandate, will be shared among federal departments) e.g. HHS, Labor, Corrections) and private entities who claim a need to know for education purposes. Ohio’s LSDS system was a Senate added amendment (post-committee) to HB290 and done under “emergency” measure in the last hours of the December 2009 session to meet the RTTT application compliance. It is now law as ORC 3301.0712.
CCSS proponents said only English and Math standards were being crafted. They said Social Studies and Science standards development might be far down the road. With the consortia assessment structure in place, tests for these standards are almost a certainty. Both these subjects have the potential to contain ideology with which local school districts may not agree. States/local districts will not be able to change the standards, but our teachers and students will be evaluated based on them nonetheless.
Some contended that we need these standards because US students do not do as well as their foreign counterparts on national tests and that CCSS would be internationally benchmarked to help our students be more globally competitive. This contention conveniently ignores the differences in how other countries administer these tests which skews their results. Those other countries are also not “FREE” countries with a system of government that is unique to America. Additionally, CCSS standards have not been internationally benchmarked as promised. If Common Core Standards are so great, why did states have to be bribed with stimulus dollars and NCLB wavers? Why is Governor Kasich so willing to advance this federal intrusion? Well, for the same reason that Kasich is supporting Medicaid expansion—for federal dollars to help balance his budget. It shows no respect for state sovereignty, citizen representation, or limited government. It supports infinitely statist government perpetually with its implementation.
Some analyses [who?][16] use a dichotomy between state and market, viewing the state as a homogeneous institution capable of using political power to force policy on the market which is the sum of peaceful human action. Such an analysis depends on an elitist theory of power rather than a pluralist theory of power; that power is exercised by individuals and competing organizations within society.[17]
Authoritarianism, on the other hand, views a strong, authoritative state as required to legislate or enforce morality and cultural practices.[citation needed] The ideology of statism espoused by fascism holds that sovereignty is not vested in the people but in the nation-state, and that all individuals and associations exist only to enhance the power, prestige and well-being of the state. It repudiates individualism and the family and exalts the nation as an organic body headed by the Supreme Leader and nurtured by unity, force, and discipline.[citation needed]Fascism and some forms of corporatism extol the moral position that the corporate group, usually the state, is greater than the sum of its parts and that individuals have a moral obligation to serve the state.[citation needed]
The term statism is sometimes used to refer to market economies with large amounts of government intervention, regulation or influence over a market or mixed-market economy. Economic interventionism asserts that the state has a legitimate or necessary role within the framework of a capitalist economy by intervening in markets, attempting to promote economic growth and trying to enhance employment levels. Although this intervention may be undertaken in the name of the public interest, in many instances unintended consequences may ensue, to the opposite of those good intentions. For example, in one interpretation, the USA promoted the Federal National Mortgage Administration (FNMA) as a cure for widespread home ownership; however, coercion of banks to lend to multitudes of unqualified buyers, accentuated with unintended trading of the financial derivatives of these mortgages, led to a dramatic collapse of the housing market in the USA in the period 2008 to 2012.[19]
When career politicians are involved, what form of government would they logically pick? Is it any wonder that their philosophy of statism is imprinted all over Common Core? Failure to stop Common Core is the failure to exist as The United States of America. It infringes upon everything Americans think of themselves, and it is happening right under everyone’s nose because parents refuse out of inconvenience to admit that they have a problem. Over a year ago when I called out the PTA moms in my district and the parents who support school levies by essentially calling them prostitutes, I meant to insult them so that they might investigate my accusations and save themselves and their children from the course they are currently on. Their blind acceptance of statism policies is allowing tyrannical concepts like Common Core to migrate into the minds of our children, which is unfathomably foolish. They are too busy to pay attention the way people like me do to the status of public education and the conditions of society in general, and without their psychological investment into the world of government, statist policies will continue to favor people like Barack Obama, De Delisle, and David Coleman.
When kids picked on Bill Gates in elementary school for being a super geek, and his school teaching mother could not help him overcome those terrible bullies, Gates decided to place his fate in his own hands. He dropped out of Harvard and started Microsoft. But always in the back of his mind are those bullies, leaving Gates forever traumatized to the abuses of other bullies for the rest of his life no matter how many billions of dollars he has been able to ascertain to protect himself. When Microsoft met the bully of the federal government who took Gates to court over monopoly accusations, the old sentiments for his mother probably kicked in and with the same determination that built Microsoft into a giant corporation of incalculable human benefit, Gates dedicated his life forever forward with evidence that he was not a greedy, heartless, “capitalist,” but a bleeding heart progressive like the rest of the government bullies hell-bent on global statism. So he helped start a new cable television news channel called MSNBC and has spent around $30 billion dollars on philanthropy, to prove to those government bullies and statist leaning media outlets that he was not a bad person. Gates might be a genius at computer code and forward thinking applications, but the money that he made off his inventions does not make him qualified to continue the teachings of his school teacher mother by supporting Common Core with a social philosophy that he does not understand. Like most geek types, they are book smart, but socially awkward until they gain the kind of incredible wealth that Bill Gates has achieved where looters and moochers are constantly eating out of his hand giving him an illusion of power that he does not possess. Only people willing to sell themselves cheaply treat people like Gates as an authority on all manner of life. Gates is at a financial level where he has lost touch with reality, which is reflected in his advocacy of Common Core. Bill Gates earns$250 every second; that’s about $20 million a day and $7.8 billion a year! If Bill Gates drops a thousand-dollar bill, he needn’t even bother to pick it up, because it would take him 4 seconds to pick it up, he would’ve already earned it back. Bill Gates and Melinda Gates’ house worth of $150 million and annual taxes is over $1 million. Bill Gates is worth enough money to send every 18-year-old in the country to a 4-year college. If you change all of Bill Gate’s money to US $1 notes, you could make a road from earth to moon, 14 times back and forth. However, you have to make that road non-stop for 1,400 years, and use a total of 713 BOEING 747 planes to transport all the money. Bill Gates can donate US $15 to everyone on earth and still be left with US $5 million for his pocket-money. Yet with so much money, which he rightfully earned, statist bullies have taken his past torments and used them to their advantage—launching Gates on a progressive course that has ushered in Common Core as the single greatest threat launched against The United States. The attack is not with physical weapons, but with the destruction of the human mind, and they performed the feat by using one of the richest men in the world to do it.
I know many very wealthy people, and they all share this symptom that is seen in Bill Gates, the social pressure to prove that they are not bad people because of their wealth. But such a negative philosophy of wealth was created by statist governments so that they could find ways to get their hands on that money through altruistic practice. And this is how Common Core has found its way into our schools, seeking to eradicate the minds of children everywhere to non-thinking commitment to a Brave New World right out of the novel written so long ago, yet coming true in 2013. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Common Core is illegal, especially in Ohio and it can be stopped. To find out how, Visit the great web site at www.ohioansagainstcommoncore.com and find out how you can save children from the intrusive influence of Common Core before their minds are consumed by the evil mechanisms of statist government forever destroying families in the process by design for tactical aims that are more sinister than the most vivid imagination can conger.
“Woolwich Attack’ Man Killed in Terror-Attack London / Wednesday 22 May 2013”
In a statement, London’s Metropolitan police commander Simon Letchford said that police have shot two men who had attacked the victim in Woolwich’s John Wilson Street. The Telegraph reports that local MP Nick Raynsford said that he believed the victim was a soldier returning to his barracks, while several witnesses described the attack as a “beheading.” According to Bloomberg, two men are in police custody. The Guardian reports that British Prime Minister David Cameron called the incident “truly shocking.” Cameron asked Britain’s home secretary to chair a meeting of Cobra, the government’s emergency committee. Like lost children authorities and citizens have attempted to come to grips with the violent nature of the attack by a radical Muslim extremist on the quiet streets of London. Yet nobody has an explanation as to how a killer could be so enraged one moment killing another human being, then with hands still dripping with the blood of the victim, give a speech in dedication to Allah to a nearby cameraman.
The two things—murder and a vocal, articulate summation of the crime in broad daylight with bold audacity are elements not commonly associated together, leaving spectators baffled as to how to prevent such treacherous behavior in the future. Yet the evidence is clear, the killer wanted to be known for the crime. He remained in hiding, through plain sight for as long as he deemed necessary, then attacked at will which is the most jarring aspect of the terrorist attack. The behavior provides no measure for authorities to prevent such murders in the future as the patterned behavior falls outside the realm of acceptability. The killer obviously did not care that his life was effectively over when he gave the speech. He knew that police would be on the scene in just a few short minutes, and he was completely unconcerned about the crowd that had gathered around him. He spoke in a level-headed and thoughtful rendition of his view of reality to the camera freezing the world with his calmness.
To understand how this might have happened let’s examine the situation hypothetically so to perhaps understand how we might discover such a plot concealed behind good intentions that is obvious to many, but existing because of social paralysis. Let’s assume that the same type of terrorist as the London killer had decided to take a different path of Muslim extremism, one much slower, but over time much more effective than killing a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street. Let’s assume such a thing so that we might prevent being caught in America unguarded the way the Boston bombers were able to pull off their crime against humanity yet again.
Let’s just theorize dear reader that a young Muslim student from Jakarta thought in the same way as that killer from the London beheading, that dedicating their life to Allah was the ultimate redemption in life, and the more audacious the act, the more joy that Allah’s grace would earn them. Let’s consider that this young Muslim student had “daddy” issues and lacked a strong male role model in their life and turned to religion as a stabilizing force. Let’s assume that in their Jakarta public school system they learned to hate American colonialism and had fantasized bringing meaning to their life by bringing down the imperial beast and crushing the infidels not with a knife and dagger, but with bankruptcy and moral depravity. Let’s also assume that this young student had a communist mentor who helped shape his world view, and helped him get a student visa to American schools, and explained to the young lad that he could bring America down like the Trojan Horse of legend—from the inside. The communist mentor might explain that the young student could do the work of Allah be earning the trust of the infidels until they were unaware of the terrorism, until it was too late.
In college the young student learned about law, and made friends with terrorists connected to The Weather Underground. Together they learned how to subvert American politics in broad daylight by acting in ways that were contrary to accepted thought. The young student learned to smile and deceive to hide his true long term intentions which the terrorists explained to him was the best way to serve Allah. The great American beast could be slow bled from such terrorism and the best way to achieve it would be for the student to work his way into politics. But for the student to get elected he would have to pretend to be a Christian so to earn voter’s trust and not worry about the real objective of destroying American infidels in Allah’s honor, hypothetically speaking of course.
Once in office, the levers of power were available, and the work of Allah could be performed by stripping away the values of infidels starting with their families, their finances, and their culture. It was discovered quickly that such a task was easy and that other Trojan Horses in government were doing exactly as he was doing, sent to Washington D.C. by the same type of people from the same college professors all across the country. Washington D.C. was like a mini Jakarta school yard, with many patriots serving Allah for spiritual purity. The ruse was easy, all one had to do was pretend to be a Christian so to direct public eyes elsewhere, and if anyone asked any questions, the accusation of racism would quell any further investigation.
From the inside the young student from Jakarta found that many of his fellow patriots wanted him to penetrate The White House so they could really get to the heart of America and dismantle it from behind enemy lines. So the student ran for president and won, largely by appealing to other minorities, unproductive lazy sociopaths easily seduced by communism, and election fraud. Now the young student could spend the wealth of the infidels audaciously right under their noses taking lavish vacations, and running up a national debt that that would allow the collapse of the dollar to foreign interests who helped put him into The White House with their contributions. They got what they wanted, the destruction of America and he got what he wanted, destruction of imperialist America as a nation of Christian infidels. And if anyone criticized his movements, the call of “racism” would shield him from prying eyes.
He would endure scandal, after scandal, after scandal. The lies didn’t bother him because the oath of office was done against a Christian Bible and Allah had no use for such work of the infidels. The true objective initiated on the playgrounds of Jakarta was being fulfilled, America was seeing its last days and his people from the homeland would see him as a hero. Better yet, Allah would shine upon him. America was being decapitated not with a knife, but through its banking system.
Of course this is all………………”hypothetical.” But wouldn’t it be possible for such a scheme to play out in the same manner that the London terrorist remained in hiding disguising his extremism behind a thin mask of social acceptability, of failing to name a villainy by its true name for fear of being out of favor with political correctness, invented among academics for the purpose of such subversion? If the goal of the murder was to make a religious and political point, sacrificing himself to the altar of Allah, why wouldn’t a devious schemer lacking proper family influences ration that much worse could be achieved if such extremist acts could be done from the inside out over a long period of time so that nobody would see the daily details instead of a quick and impatient severing of the head to send a bold message to the western world that nobody is safe anywhere from the might of Allah.
On a separate note, but somewhat related, why is it that President Obama fails to identify that all the recent terrorist activity throughout the world, on the heels of the London murder and Boston bombings are acts of radical Muslims?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm………………………………………………
And on another completely unrelated note……………..why did Obama dedicate the once juggernaut of American technology, NASA, to the study of Muslim self esteem, shutting down the Space Shuttle program and cancelling the replacement vehicle?
The Overmanwarrior 