tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post109790258194778513..comments2024-03-23T07:49:50.940-05:00Comments on The Middle Ground: Reality Road Check: Undecided Voters Part IV You And Your MoneyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098242133186916902004-10-19T22:15:00.000-05:002004-10-19T22:15:00.000-05:00Tammi...that is exactly what I am trying to convey...Tammi...that is exactly what I am trying to convey. we were going to have a recession, period. didn't matter who was in. the question would have been, who would do what to jump start it again and how long would it have been.<br /><br />One thing that is constant is Alan Greenspan. If I remember correctly, at no time did he suggest lowering the federal interest rate before Sept 11. If there is one person that knows the economy, it's Mr. Greenspan, whether it's a democrat or republican in office. It was not until the catostrophic effects of Sept 11 that anyone started to consider taking drastic measures to pull us out of the nose dive we were in.<br /><br />I mean, do you know of any countries anywhere that can have a GDP of .8% and then return to 3.7% in three years? It doesn't happen. You have only to look at Russia or India or even the European countries.<br /><br />Frankly, had France or Germany had this type of catastrophe, you would have seen some major cutting of their benefits. The market as it exists would have collapsed and you can bet your bottom dollar we would have been enacting all sorts of economic packages to pull them out.<br /><br />did anyone see any European countries do anything to pull us out? No. Because they couldn't afford to. We saved ourselves and will only continue to save ourselves by diversifying services and products. By innovative technologies. Nobody saved us but the US citizens and the policies of the President. If taxes had remained as they were pre 9/11, we would be now still talking about 2% GDP and praying for relief.<br /><br />That's a fact.<br /><br />Ciggy...yes, I do find it very interesting that the "Men of Harlech" was sung by a British troop some 400 years after it was sung by the enemy of England, the Welsh.<br /><br />Irony in it's fittest form.Kathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05208095650375780838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098223587219076092004-10-19T17:06:00.000-05:002004-10-19T17:06:00.000-05:00I'm very glad I didn't post my economic piece. You...I'm very glad I didn't post my economic piece. You did everything that I wanted to AND added charts and graphs (I thought I'd gone to analyst heaven there for a moment).<br /><br />You are exactly right when you point out that the recession was on it's way, no matter who was in office. It's economics - pure and simple. What goes up MUST come down at some point. Also - when 9/11 struck (which I agree was deliberate timing) it just put everyone into a freeze. No one traveled, no one shopped. It was devestating here in Florida, as we were hit like the rest of the country, add to that no tourists, so there were many jobs cut due to no traffic. And those that didn't get cut were too afraid to spend any money that it just kept spiraling out of control.<br /><br />We are still limping along. (of course the damn hurricanes didn't help either.) It's better but not where it could be, or even where much of the country is.<br /><br />And as to the unemployement figures, honestly - reporting 96,000 new jobs in the last Labor Department report with a constant in unemployment is actually pretty amazing considering the past 3 years. I know that doesn't sound good when you are one of the unemployed but it actually is pretty amazing.Tammihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13985883231772506578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098174010820873832004-10-19T03:20:00.000-05:002004-10-19T03:20:00.000-05:00G-Man and Ciggy...
I agree with you in many respe...G-Man and Ciggy...<br /><br />I agree with you in many respects. I think that what we have here is two problems:<br /><br />1) Money does not solve all of the problems. Money unwisely spent solves no problems and I think that is where we've had many issues with our school funding since the late sixties. The 70's and busing were definitely outcomes of this poor management. Schools need to be about teaching children reading, writing, math and science. Language is important as well as civic and history classes. Lots of good classes can be taken.<br /><br />I think something that happened in the 70's and 80's was that we were seeing a change in social attitudes, as Ciggy points out "the great society" in which we, the entire village of the USA, were made responsible for the growth and development for children we have no control of. In a real sense, negating the parents' responsibility or over riding it with societies "sensitivities". <br /><br />2) Discipline: For the record, when I was growing up, we got spankings. Not harsh beatings, but definitely two strokes of the hand or paddle. This was usually preceded by a 10 minute lecture (that seemed like hours) on how we disappointed said parent.<br /><br />I think that discipline works whichever way you enforce it, but what I've seen (from cousins and others with children; I have none so you can take what I say with that in mind) is that those that instill discipline (I mean good behavior with encouragement and punishment, whether corporal or some other physical manifestation like "timeout") immediately upon an incident, usually have better adjusted children. Those that continually threaten discipline without taking the steps on a regular basis, have out of control children.<br /><br />By time they impart some sort of discipline, the child already seems to have won the upper hand. In particualr, children younger than 12. You cannot reason much with a 5 or 7 year old who is throwing a fit or behaving badly. They do not understand "reasoning" in the sense of an older child who already has had "right and wrong" instilled in them.<br /><br />Children are really small people. Just like adults. Adults, for instance in business, who do not feel the consequences of their behavior, tend to believe that they can continue their behavior ad infinitum because there are no consequences. <br /><br />My parents both worked. My dad sometimes had two and three jobs. It did not stop them from keeping an eye on us, encouraging us or disciplining us. I don't believe they felt any guilt about working so much to take care of us.<br /><br />That may be the other issue that guides people in reducing discipline: guilt. We have become a society so over ridden with guilt, it seems we can't justify administering discipline when necessary.<br /><br />In conclusion, if you guys want to read what I think about "no child left behind", I pretty much wrote exactly what you were commenting on: the downfall of our society in interacting with our children. <br /><br />Again, they are based on observations.<br /><br />http://themiddleground.blogspot.com/2004/07/passion-for-equality-raising-men-or.html<br /><br />EnjoyKathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05208095650375780838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098163022051277382004-10-19T00:17:00.000-05:002004-10-19T00:17:00.000-05:00Three is a charm. I forgot to also comment on the...Three is a charm. I forgot to also comment on the loss of income from the bust of the dot-com boom.<br /><br />In that peak year of 2000 I was making $115K, as opposed to my present $89K. Now, $89K is not a poverty-level salary by any means, but I didn't have the authority to tell my mortgage lender that I'd decided to pay them 26/115ths less in my mortgage payment, nor could I tell the bank servicing my auto loan that I unilaterally decided to pay that much less to them. So there was a tightening process that required me to refinance the house (conveniently enough this coincided with the prime rate drops that accompany recessions), and generally live less of a playeresque lifestyle, be less of a hot-shot.<br /><br />I don't blame Bush for the decline though, seeing as it started before he even had a chance to enact any policies, at all. The bubble was just that: a bubble. The $115K I was making before was an untenable level of income, $26K more than could be justified in a corrected market. Clinton is not to blame for this collapse, nor was he to be credited for the temporary annual $26K bonus. Primarily a lot of hype about the Internet that didn't pan out, that afforded me to live beyond what my current means are.<br /><br />I do feel "pain", but I don't place blame where John Kerry is trying desperately to get me to place it. And I am ever-cautious about his promise to restrict tax increases to "only" those making over $200K. My current employer has a $200 billion market cap, so, will they have to whack my position in order to pay Kerry's tax bill? That is a question far too few Americans are lucid enough to ask, unfortunately.Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Fileshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11847781147692094361noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098162244005787672004-10-19T00:04:00.000-05:002004-10-19T00:04:00.000-05:00Kat, I forgot to mention about that "Men of Harlec...Kat, I forgot to mention about that "Men of Harlech" song. Isn't it ironic that that song is a battle hymn that was once used by Cornish warriors while FIGHTING what later became "The British" (a.k.a. "the Saxons")? I thought so anyway. ;)Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Fileshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11847781147692094361noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098162095024967432004-10-19T00:01:00.000-05:002004-10-19T00:01:00.000-05:00G-man, when a school counsellor interprets reasona...G-man, when a school counsellor interprets reasonable punishment as "abuse", then certainly that should be an item on which a school should be measured and the school itself, punished.<br /><br />At first I thought you were alluding to spanking in your comment, and I was going to say that I managed to raise a daughter without ever spanking her, and she was a model child and at 16 is a well-behaved, well-adjusted treasure. <br /><br />Taking away the video games is abuse... well, then that school that refuses to fire that counsellor, they should get their funding yanked until the paint peels off the walls. Or until that counsellor is replaced by a competent human from the planet earth, whichever comes first.Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Fileshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11847781147692094361noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098074025321165102004-10-17T23:33:00.000-05:002004-10-17T23:33:00.000-05:00bad parenting is at the root of bad education.
Th...<I>bad parenting is at the root of bad education</I>.<br /><br />The problem is that parenting is becoming more and more challenging. The world has become a place where the temptation for kids to do wrong has grown immensely while the tools in a parent's tool chest to parent their children has grown smaller. The things our parents used to teach us right from wrong are now considered abuse. <br /><br />Recently, a friend of ours found out that her son was shooting out windows of passing cars with a friend's BB gun. She found this out because she was called into the police station to pick the up the wayward child. <br /><br />As a punishment, she confiscated his Gameboy Advanced and all the attendant games and sold them to a pawn shop to help offset the expense of having all of that auto glass repaired. The child complained at school and our friend received a call from the school counsellor who informed her that her actions amounted to abuse (go figure). <br /><br />It seems like these days, regardless what a child has done, you are not supposed to punish them. There should be no such thing as consequences in this brave new world.G-Manhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10770308023843594923noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1098071054568319962004-10-17T22:44:00.000-05:002004-10-17T22:44:00.000-05:00Hi Kat,
While I generally agree about outsourcing ...Hi Kat,<br />While I generally agree about outsourcing and China and India, to a point, I also think that any time there is slave labor, what that tends to do is to export misery. There is never going to be a way to compete with "free" (a.k.a., slave labor). I'm mostly free market, most of the time, but when slavery gets involved, I start to hand the mic over to the Dick Gephardt types and let 'em regulate.<br /><br />On "No Child Left Behind", I was a contractor for the State of Minnesota in a pet program pushed for by Governor Pawlenty (Republican) in his own version of NCLB, the basic Republican obsession with "school measurement". I learned one major thing which agrees with Republican theories, and one additional major thing that nobody on either side of the political aisle is willing to fess up to and admit, because it slaughters everybody's sacred cows everywhere.<br /><br />The big Republican thing I learned to be statistically true is that there is no correlation between dollars spent on a child, and educational output as measured by any combination of test scores, disciplinary incidents, graduation rates, or even school attendance. If anything there is a negative correlation, almost as if the more money you throw at a student, the worse their performance gets. Republicans right, Democrats wrong. On that score anyway.<br /><br />The big secret that no one wants to talk about is WHY that non-correlation (or negative correlation) is there. In my statistical analysis, coupled with my knowledge of certain locations, it's painfully obvious to me that bad parenting is at the root of bad education. Dollars thrown at a school with bad parents dragging the students down, are powerless to drag them back up. It's throwing good money after bad.<br /><br />The painful thing to have to do, if we're to have any hope of improving education in America, and ultimately the American economy, is to reinstate an old practice from "back in the day", of removing children from particularly egregious homes and placing them where their upbringing will be more conducive to their education, hence, their solidity of citizenship and contribution to the economy (rather than dragging it down as a multigenerational welfare case).<br /><br />This cuts up the Republican sacred cow because it means "school measurement" and "rewarding schools and teachers based on performance" is an exercise in futility. You cannot hold institutions responsible for things beyond their control. You can teach a student, as a teacher, but can you make sure they get to bed at night? Make sure they shower? Make sure they spend the evening in more productive pursuits than "jacking"? No. Schools are in bondage to measurement efforts, and are feeling great frustration at the illogical burden placed at their doorstep.<br /><br />It cuts against the Democrat sacred cow because it shows their "Great Society" programs in the 1960s have roundly failed. They took bad parents and subsidized them, which was the direct opposite of what needed to be done. Bad parents need to simply have their children taken away, which sounds draconian, and there will be no end to liberal screaming over the matter, outbursts like "have you no compassion?" But just the same, it must be done if we're to have any hope at all, of surviving as a nation. It all hinges on how much teeth Social Services will really have, in the coming years. Will they have to just sit back and watch when a child is in a family full of crack addicts? If so, just hand the keys over to China and beg them to save us from our own stupidity, while the begging is good.<br /><br />"Zulu": That movie was a staple of mine as a youngster. It's almost in the category of those films that just plain CAN'T be remade, partly due to politically correct Hollywood, and partly because the original was just so damnably inimitable.<br /><br />Michael Caine was the perfect English officer. "Ta ta. Do carry on with your... mud pies." I love that crack.<br /><br />I'll have to disagree about the Zulus being "stupid" though. That strategy of theirs, the bull with the horns, that's actually one that has been adopted into modern military thinking. And if you look at how technologically "challenged" the culture was, in spite of that they achieved enormously sophisticated social organization, far beyond what any other human tribes could ever have done without the use of, say, horseback riding at least (for communication). They just got out-tech'd by the British, and there was a slight psyops advantage on the part of the Brits in the movie, because there was no retreating anyway, and that clever song kept their spirits up. For the Zulus, everywhere the Brits WEREN'T was an opportunity to flee, and it's hard to keep the cadence of those Zulu songs when so many are dropping to gunshot wounds, left and right, and screaming from the agony.Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Fileshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11847781147692094361noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7152221.post-1097951772965981222004-10-16T13:36:00.000-05:002004-10-16T13:36:00.000-05:00Jeffrey...I am so glad to see you. I've wondered ...Jeffrey...I am so glad to see you. I've wondered where you've been. I am glad that you enjoy the blog. Although, after reading my late night posting, I feel that I need an editor. I read this at least 10 times and can't believe I had so many spelling and sentence errors left over!<br /><br />C'est la Vie!<br /><br />Anyway, yes, the Chinese are the new economic frontier along with India. That is why there can be no guarantee of stopping "outsourcing". The only guarantee of jobs is for the American people to become innovators and drive more research and development. this is what I see for America. It is one other reason why I agree very much with the "No Child Left Behind" act. It's not enough to stop drop out rates from schools. We must develop our children into scientists, inventors, etc. <br /><br />Only through invention of technology will we improve our lives and be able to continue to compete with the growing nations of the world.<br /><br />Robert: I love that movie "Zulu". Michael Caine was so haughtily British in that picture. But yes, my favorite part was the "Men of Harlech" (cornwall) song. It's interesting about that song and Rick Riscorla singing it as he ushered people out of the towers. Someday, people will forget and they'll tell stories. The story of Rick Riscorla singing will be like an urban legend. A myth like all the tales of heroes that came before. But for once, we will know it was true because we live in this time.Kathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05208095650375780838noreply@blogger.com