As parents learn that they have options, it is by using those options that they can be most instrumental in bringing about change. By voting down school levies, by using other forms of education to teach your kids, by taking advantage of every opportunity available, the parent of a child will go a long way to ending these massive public education debacles that are making a joke of education in the United States.
But doing nothing will only make the situation worse.
If you’re a CEO and you think you can fudge the books in order to make yourself look better, we’re going to find you, we’re going to arrest you, and we’re going to hold you to account. –President George W. Bush, 2002
Yet school boards are still trying to hold on to the old way of learning. They are completely unable to think outside the box of tradition and embrace aspects of education reform that have been presented by Representative Coley. This is why Lakota, and many schools are floating the idea of another levy for November of 2011.
It is gravely unfortunate that the Lakota School Board has made it known that they intend place another school levy on the ballot in November of 2011. While the Teachers Union at Lakota had a much publicized wage freeze in August of 2010 mysteriously the wages for Lakota teachers crept up anyway.
Lakota has assured everyone that they have done their best to cut costs, they’ve cut busing, they made sports a pay for play program, they’ve cut electives, and teaching positions, but out of all those supposed reductions, not once did anyone address the problem of paying teachers too much.
Last year at the NoLakotaLevy.com web site we brought out an article where 434 teachers made over 65K per year, that was in 2010. In 2011, there are over 625 teachers that make over 65K per year. Nobody is looking out for the tax payers in the Lakota School District.
The No Lakota Group met on this issue early last week, in anticipation of the school boards announcement. So here’s what we’re going to do. Any board member that votes in favor of another school levy will be looked at to be replaced with a new board member. If you are interested in becoming a school board member please contact us at NoLakot@roadrunner.com. We have several people who have spoken to us over the last couple of months, but we would like the opportunity to put the best candidates on the school board and would like to begin interviewing now. The best candidates would be over 55, preferably retired, or semi-retired and not looking to use the school board as a political platform for higher office, or to enhance their real estate professions. We want people who will not cave to the union, or pay 50K just to look for a superintendent that they intend to over-pay at 200K to 300K per year. We want people who have been successful at life, and therefore able to run our school system without corruption and abuse of the taxpayer.
The crowd that showed up at the school board meeting in West Clermont was upset, saying “This board has done a pathetic job. You’ve been gilding the lily, and now we’re paying for it.”
Then with great shock, the school board president, Dan Krueger said “If you don’t like what we’re doing, vote us out, but whoever you put up here is going to find the same things we found.” He went on to say the board is not there to serve the tax payer, but to serve the children. (Brace yourself before you watch this video. You may want to act lash out in anger)
“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.
Here are the immediate articles from the Pulse Journal talking about the two big levy issues ofLebanon and Little Miamifresh off the defeat announcements.
By Richard Wilson, Staff Writer Updated 10:23 PM Tuesday, May 3, 2011
LEBANON – Voters soundly rejected a proposed tax to support Lebanon schools Tuesday, forcing officials to consider laying off teachers and cutting services.
With 100 percent of precincts counted, the numbers show 4,105 voters, or 56 percent, voted against the levy, while 3,202 voters, or 44 percent, were for it, according to final, unofficial results from the Warren County Board of Elections.
The defeat means the district could return to the ballot later this year with a similar proposal. If no new revenue is approved for next year, officials will be looking at cutting $6.5 million out of the district’s annual $44 million budget.
“We just lost by a pretty good margin. The results speak clearly. We have a lot of work ahead of us,” said Lebanon schools Superintendent Mark North.
As part of the defeated tax proposal, the district planned to make permanent annual cuts to the budget of $500,000, effective next school year. North said those cuts, primarily classroom teaching positions being eliminated through attrition, will still be made.
North said he and Treasurer Eric Sotzing have already recommended to the board to return to the ballot if the levy was rejected. North said Tuesday’s results did not change that recommendation.
“We can’t keep a district operating with cuts that would amount to $6.5 million,” he said.
Lebanon schools is not far behind what led to the demise of its neighbor, Little Miami schools, which is in state receivership because of an annual deficit of millions of dollars. Lebanon schools is projected to run out of cash reserves and be operating at a deficit by 2013.
That’s a scary thought for many voters, like Bryan Pennix, a district parent who is a teacher at Blanchester schools.
“I’d like for the schools not to go in the toilet,” Pennix said after exiting the polls. “If Little Miami folds, Blanchester will have to absorb some of those students. I’d hate for Lebanon to head down that path. I think the no voters are shortsighted on what that could do to a community.”
After exiting the polls at the Praise and Worship Center on Miller Road, Gary Conger of Lebanon said he voted against the proposal. He said school salaries are too high and district leaders have shown poor fiscal management.
“They need to work with the funds they got. The administrators are making too much money,” he said.
Voters narrowly defeat Little Miami levy
By Richard Wilson, Staff Writer Updated 9:50 PM Tuesday, May 3, 2011
HAMILTON TWP. — Voters narrowly rejected Issue 2 – a five year, 13.95-mill operating levy to support the Little Miami Local School District, according to early, unofficial results from the Warren County Board of Elections.
With 100 percent of precincts counted, the preliminary numbers show 51 percent voted against the levy, while 49 percent voted in favor of it.
The levy would have enabled the district to resolve its debt, balance the budget and eventually emerge from state receivership. Additional taxes would be necessary to bring back eliminated staff positions, reduced services, like high school busing, or to reopen any of three shuttered elementary buildings, school officials have said.
The school district has been forced by the state oversight commission to reduce services and staffing to state operating standards, amounting to more than $8 million being cut from the annual budget since 2008. Tuesday’s results mean the district has experienced its eighth consecutive defeat of a proposed new tax. The district is likely to return to the ballot later this year, as the key factor determining Little Miami’s future is getting a levy approved, according to the state commission’s financial recovery plan.
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.
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.
On Monday April 18th, 2011 I did a long interview with Channel 9 News that will be shown on May 9th 2011. This will be an investigative report involving education issues and will also feature two other education reformers in Jennifer Miller formerly of the Mason School Board, and Sharon Poe, the leader of the levy defeat of the last Mason levy attempt.It promises to be a revealing report that I will not disclose until the airing of the program. Needless to say, there is a lot wrong with modern education, one of those things is in the quality of the teachers. It has been taboo to speak about this quality problem, but as evidence to those concerns look at this video just released.
Any threat to that fraternity is to be sought out and destroyed out of preservation of the government entity. I make no secret about it. I don’t like public education. It does not produce the type of students I think are relevant to society. It’s not the kids fault or even the parents directly. The school systems have for decades allowed them to become social police officers regulating life’s dangers such as making the shape of a gun with a child’s hand while they try to play cops and robbers, or discouraging any type of behavior that might be perceived as violent. And the result is that kids grow up to become passive adults that are easily steered by the persuasive words of a con artist like Barrack Obama, or even a Bob Taft. (He was a Republican) How anyone in society could listen to Jessie Jackson or Louis Farrakhanwithout asking why those people have a national platform to speak from, but just to accept it as a fact says everything, that people have allowed themselves to become so dumbed down and sensitive that they can no longer think critically. The fault of that starts with parents and then public education is to blame. As I look around at the way people vote and spend their time, I would say that public education is a miserable failure, because people are only living the lives of a fraction of what they should be.
The way the world should be is that a school should not have any business in whether or not a kid attends school. Truant officers have no place in American society. Who gave them any authority at all? Of what intention were they even conceived? Is it of the social need of a child to get an education and become a productive citizen? If so, how have the results been? Have they successfully made American civilization a better country, or just a complacent country that easily follows new rules such as seat belt legislation, or legislation against texting in a car. Look at the definition of truancy as described at Wikipedia:
Truancy is any intentional unauthorized absence from compulsory schooling. The term typically describes absences caused by students of their own free will, and usually does not refer to legitimate “excused” absences, such as ones related to medical conditions. The term’s exact meaning differs from school to school, and is usually explicitly defined in the school’s handbook of policies and procedures. It has no relation to homeschooling, although sometimes parents who practice homeschooling have been charged with this.[1]
A good friend of mine recently said to me, “kids need to be pushed, and that is the role of the teacher.” That thought drove me to consider……………………..why?
People have a natural desire to do well. So that leads to the definition of, “well.” Someone must understand what, “well,” is before they can define it. But public school defines well in a mechanical way, by grades A thru F. Wellness is somewhere between those two measures. But wellness is much more than that, so with such a narrow scope we are already setting kids up to fail. We believe that to perform “well,” we can coax them to perform with force, and that is the role of the teacher, to push the child to wellness.
This happens because of traditional learning that does not prepare the mind to think critically with divergence. If our society is to survive, we will “PRESERVE” the divergent thinking of our children and not destroy their minds with mind numbing, Marxist disguises of social engineering known as “public education.”
Reform now before it’s too late. And certainly don’t throw any more money at it. To find out why, tune in to Channel 9 in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 9th at 6 PM.
So when I hear people say that Donald Trump is not a serious enough candidate to even consider for the American Presidency, that Trump’s desire to throw his hat in the ring as a kind of circus stunt and not to be taken seriously is misguided. I say why?
I remember the negotiations Reagan had with the Soviet Union during the 80’s and Reagan held the line in his sheer belief that he was on the moral side of God. His determination shocked many of his advisors who second guessed him to no end. But Reagan did us all a favor with his hard-line negotiations and in hind-sight appeared to be a brilliant negotiator. The United States could use the best that we have in that department, and in this modern age, it’s Donald Trump.
So I say put Donald Trump on the ticket. Let him go at Obama, because the next election will be a fist fight, and that’s the kind of guy it’s going to take to win this presidential election. Not some soft-spoken nice guy that is super smart but doesn’t have the ability to convey their ideas to a public that just wants to watch TV reality shows. Trump understands how to do that. He’s currently a TV star, so why not?
I have a kindergartner at one school and two kids at Independence. Both schools start at the same time. She will have to take the older ones early and the process at each school will be at least 25 minutes. So she will have to take the other child to the other school and then pick her up at noon since kindergarten will NOT be a full day, and then at 4:00, she has to pick up the older ones. Thanks for the loss of income!
This leads me to some obvious questions that she should ask herself. Is it my fault she has kids so close together? Why isn’t she home during the day? Does she have to work because she and her husband bought too much house, too many cars, or ran up their credit card debt too high? Is she a single woman and if so why did the marriage not work? What is she doing about finding someone to help her with her family burdens? Is there a mom that can help, a dad, a brother or a sister? If not why? Do they live in another town? If so, why does she live away from them? Are all three of these children from the same man? Are all three of these children from her, or did she obtain a few of them from a new marriage with a man who has kids from a previous marriage? If so, why did she marry a man with kids from another woman? Didn’t she think that she might have trouble raising them?
I’m sure some of that doesn’t apply to her, and I’m sure that some of it does. But as a tax payer, none of it is any of my business. It’s her life and her decisions………………….until she asks me for money. Or until the school system has to engage in a program to help a woman like her by supplying buses or schedule deviations to accommodate her busy life. In fact, the school issues where the school attempts to be everything to everybody for every possible circumstance is the microcosm of the macrocosm to the federal problems. Every program created to help women like her is money, it’s expensive, and it plays to the weaknesses of our population by pandering to them. So I do not support it. I do not want to pay for behavior that will perpetuate the destruction of our population psychologically. And I don’t want my personal property taxes to go up just so she can get her three kids to kindergarten. That’s her job to figure out. Not mine and certainly not the school system.
Human beings like to be challenged. Competition is a natural process that cannot be engineered out of evolution. You can see it in young people when they play video games. In the video game world, all things are equal. Strength, speed, agility, it is the mind that guides the characters, and if you have ever played a game online, you’ll see that human beings are a competitive species. So to make the most of the human race, competition must be a part of the society. This is why capitalism is the economy that produces skyscrapers and communism produces village huts. And we are teaching our children to create village huts. That is the direction of our current society and I do not support it without question. It is not important whether or not it’s inconvenient for a mother to get her three kids to kindergarten. What’s important is that she thinks of a way to do so. The competition and will to survive is the key to making a prosperous human being. So to my mind I would help that woman best by giving her the challenge of figuring out the problem. Not throwing money at more convenience, because that makes people lazy. It’s the “I can’t find the remote” syndrome. You know, where you keep the TV on the same channel even though you don’t want to watch what’s on that station, because you can’t find the remote to change the channel. You could still get up and change the channel manually on the cable unit itself, but often that isn’t even an option in the mind of the lazy TV viewer. When I was a kid, before TV remotes we always had to change the channel by hand. It is with the invention of the TV remote that such a task seemed laborious.
Now, as a father it was my job to make sure that she has things to think about on such a day. It means a great deal more to receive a gift like that, which she made by hand, as opposed to some manufactured item produced by someone else. Because there is value in her production, and her production is a reflection of how she feels about me. And if I didn’t give her anything to feel, that would make me a bad parent. And if I had just done what everyone told me to all my life, I would have been a crappy parent.
But when my kids were growing up, I didn’t follow the rules of society. I took what I valued, and rejected the rest as tripe. I picked the path I wanted instead of the one provided. I do that at state and national parks too. I seldom ever stay on the trail. I break the rules often, proudly.
The Overmanwarrior 