Posted on 04/09/2011 3:43:57 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The thugs are taking their intimidation road show elsewhere, the non-native hippies have disappeared, and the native ones have resumed sleeping till noon back in their own unwashed beds.
Thank you Waukesha County and the rest of WI taxpayers! We done good!
While I applaud your sentiment, it still won't solve the problem.
One of my daughters, a junior in high school, is fairly outspoken and will get in her teachers' faces sometimes because she is tired of the indoctrination, dumbing down, and low standards that exist at her school.
In her economics class, she asked her teacher where Stimulus money came from. At first he told her, "oh, the air...in the trees". She pressed him for an answer at which time she was told this was not an "appropriate" subject to be discussed in (ECONOMICS) class!
She told me about it and I asked her if she knew where the money came from - she said, "not really", so I told her that we borrowed it and that the government also just printed a bunch of new money and injected it into the system.
She went back to her teacher and told him she found out that we paid for Stimulus by borrowing and printing money, but he told her that it was "not really correct", and she should be careful of her sources when finding answers on her own.
The story goes on, but she eventually got the student teacher observing the class to acknowledge that she was correct.
You’re welcome; it will be interesting to see how it works out. Best of luck in Wisconsin!
Wow, that is a horrific story.
I wasn’t even referring to general politics in the classroom - but rather to the conscription of our children to fight the teachers’ battles for higher wages and continued collective bargaining.
Your story just shows how far the system has fallen. There used to be such a thing as social studies classes which took on the task of explaining how our government worked - without a political agenda from the left.
They might not have gotten rid of tenure and collective bargaining in NJ, but they sure got rid of a lot of unionized policemen, firemen, and teachers. It had reached a breaking point where many people who couldn’t sell their homes were simply letting the banks have them back rather than come up with $10K+ per year for what really isn’t a good standard of living.
In other parts of the country $10K in property taxes means a mansion; in NJ it means an average house on a small piece of land with crappy road surfaces. I’m sure banks starting sounding the alarm over the past few years, because there is still a glut of empty houses here. Building has stopped because the developers are competing with these empty homes, many fairly new, that have their prices keep dropping. The reality is that if they gave the houses away for free, nobody is going to be saddled with that tax bill while our incomes steadily drop.
What an ungodly mess we’re in.
I have no horse in this race either way, but I’ve never met a cop who only worked 180 days, in six hour shifts.
You are right about the police, though; last year a report was released in which an astounding number of policemen in NJ were earning more than $100K. Many of them are not in dangerous areas, and many of them simply ride a desk (and their union resists any attempt to replace those with civilians at a lower cost to their employers - us).
The Asbury Park Press did a great service to the people of NJ; I take my hat off to them for exposing so much of this.
When people read in the news that NYC cops were starting at $26K a few years back, they were horrified. It turned out the more senior members had such outrageous demands (which were met by the city) that there was little left to pay new cops. Of course, with overtime they could drive up that salary, and in five years they themselves would be screwing the rookies out of a decent salary.
It was pointed out at the time of the Newark/Jersey City/Camden layoffs that those cities were being left with a middle-aged police force that could hardly be expected to chase down young thugs. The ethnic crowd complained that this left them in danger, but they were also concerned because all of those departments are probably more proportionately “white” than they’ve been since BJ Clinton was in office pushing the affirmative action nonsense. In my area in particular my town was forced to allow Newark residents to take civil service exams while Newark was allowed to keep a residency requirement for theirs; I’d think 90%+ of the civil servants let go (if seniority alone was the basis) were either black, Hispanic, or women.
Let me get off a pre-emptive “Women and minorities impacted most”...
It is a mess, but at least now it is out in the open. Before, it was just buried. At least we can go about correcting it; the days of those pay scales and benefits for the public sector are gone.
Now would this be the Clinton "10,000 cops on the street" unfunded mandate to the states? (I guess that was an earlier version of keep public unions employed.)
His push was on compainies as well; I finished school when BJ came into office, and an increasing number of apllications were asking your ethnicity & gender. The big accounting firms, which in the past had recruited at Accounting Society events, instead started recruiting only at NABA (National Association of Black Accountants) functions.
This was the beginning of the slippery slope, which brought us to where we are today: whites need not apply (at least the guys), and you will get telemarketing calls from Americans that you can barely understand...
There. I fixed it.
To make an analogy: the Trabant was an East German Car. This is how it was described:
It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was also exported to countries both inside and outside the communist bloc. The main selling points was that it had room for four adults and luggage in a compact, light and durable shell and that it was fast (when introduced) and durable. With its mediocre performance, smoky two-stroke engine, and production shortages, the Trabant is often cited as an example of the disadvantages of centralized planning; on the other hand, it is regarded with derisive affection as a symbol of the failed former East Germany
Ditching the teacher's union would be like trading an expensive Trabant for a less expensive Trabant. It might be cheaper, but it's still a Trabant.
Single payer monopolies NEVER work. Getting rid of the union would just make a crappy education cheaper. Individual parents must control the purse strings, and it must be their own money. That is the only way schools can be held accountable.
Don't misunderstand me though, I'm all for outlawing the teacher's unions and ending tenure (if parents had to pay for their children's education, both would disappear). I just don't think a dramatic improvement in education would result.
Thank you for the comments. I agree. Schools of Education (just as Schools of Journalism and Schools of Government) are factories designed to forge lock-step socialists, not teachers who know their subject matter and who care about instilling knowledge and love of country into their students.
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