Vig,
I know this is way off topic, and I apologize. After the discussion about the muslim world the other night EVERYONE here needs to read thei months Imprimus from Hillsdale college!! A REAL EYE OPENER!!!

Joe, mine came in the mail two days ago but I haven’t read it yet. Looks like a good read.

Nadzieja, he’s both a leftist and a bully, essentially the same thing.

Vig,
NAH, to be a bully one has to have at least a few fooled into thinking they are superior to them. J FOOLS NO ONE!!!!

Good point.

His bet saved the bacon of the UAW hogs who negotiated such cushy benefits over the years that GM could not possibly have met the unfunded obligations. He violated bankruptcy law by moving the bondholders to the back of the line, and put the taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars still unpaid and unlikely to be paid. And all this to pay back union support for his campaign.

Vigilant:

it also went to insure that there was enough money for the unions to give him more this election… it might be only 1% of the government money he gave them but what the heck? It didn’t come from him the first place.

Ye gods, Bubba. He “saved” NOTHING but union jobs [high wages=expensive vehicles=reduced competition]. Don’t you get tired of stumbling and falling down via those damned blinders? You sound like a drugged-out brown-noser who would have LOVED being in Hitler’s WWII Germany. You are INCREDIBLE, comrade. Love the fuhrer. Follow the fuhrer. Worship the fuhrer. This is America, comrade.

Doc Sarvis: Sure glad he invested in our failing auto industry. His bet saved the industry and so many American jobs.

But the government still owns 500 million shares of General Motors which, if sold at today’s market price of $20 a share, would leave taxpayers on the hook for $16.5 billion in losses. The U.S. would have to sell its GM stock per $53 a share to break even, far higher than the $20 it is trading at now.

The stock liability puts the Obama administration in a double bind. If the stock were sold all at once, the market would be flooded with a half-billion shares, causing a precipitous drop in price and even greater losses for the United States. But holding on to them leaves a multi-billion dollar albatross around his neck, making the president’s rhetoric championing the unqualified success of the bailouts ring false.

Seton Motley at Less Government has a solution.

“GM is sitting on $34 billion in cash. To make our stock whole, it would cost $26.5 [billion],” he told The Daily Caller. We need “an orderly transaction of all 500 million shares from one owner to the other,” Motley argued, in order to avoid a drop in GM’s stock price.

Obama has been “touting GM as the Exhibit-A success story for government interloping in the private sector,” Motley noted. “So if he sells the stock and we lose $15 billion, how successful was it?

“If he holds on to the stock, the question then becomes, if it was such a success, how come the American people still own 500 million shares three years later?

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/14/taxpayers-still-own-500m-underperforming-gm-shares-obama-says-investment-was-worth-it/

Doc,
Well I”M glad he saved the jobs at FORD!!! Oh, wait, he didn’t, did he??? THEY made it on their OWN!!! They REFUSED the funds offered!! They are much stronger for the act, too. Take Chrysler, how many autos do they make that get 40 miles to the gallon?? ZIP, ZERO, NADA SENIOR!!! Ford has, I believe TWO. Both selling well!!

sc,
evidenced by Adressograph, here in Ohio. For many years, the company used a formula to figure a persons retirement, written in their handbook. The union went along with it, the employees retired on it. Well, it seems that after the company started having money problems, they claimed that said formula was wrong!! there were people that were retired for ten years and longer that had their retirements cut almost by half! A friend of mine Sam S. had to go back to work for a little crap shop running a radial drill to make ends meet. ALL THIS WAS GOVERNMENT APROVED!! didn’t help much as they closed down!!

Seems to me all of the Tea Party congress people and all of the Republican Presidential candidates have graduated from college. Are you painting all of them as Socialists?

Sarvis, your postings might be more credible if you’d stop and put on your thinking cap once in awhile.

Many, if not most, of the people in politics today, especially the ones who espouse the correct Constitutionalist position, went to school before the socialist programming took deep root. You’ll note that the rise of anti-Capitalism and socialist sentiment took place as more and more graduates of the public so-called “education” system became part of the electorate.

As for whom I’m painting as socialists, look at the Democrats like Obama, Schumer, Durban, Frank, Dodd, Waters, Waxman, Pelosi et al, people of the 1960s who were brainwashed “true believers” long before they became the opportunistic, self-serving politicians they are today. They either know nothing about the Constitution, or worse, they’ve violated their oath of office for purely personal advancement. I include a number of Republicans in this group as well.

I graduated from high school in 1964, and it’s a very sad statement of the failure of the education system that I and my generation were and are more educated than the socialist-programmed, dumbed down robots of today. It has been largely the influence of the 60s radicals who became teachers, partnered with a Dept. of Education and teachers’ unions who couldn’t care less about true education.

By the time I got my second degree in 1980, I already saw how the universities were being influenced by these radicals and socialists. Attending college for the first time in 1964, I saw by 1980 the deleterious effects of this socialist agenda,

Vigilant,
Please spare me your “expert” analysis of our educational system based on your limited experience and false premise. Just as your labeled socialists (who incidentially are not Socialists) went to college in the 1970′s and 1980′s so did a lot of today’s conservative “leaders”. There have always been hotbeds of progressive education along with hotbeds of conservative education. In reality, most post-high school education is centrist in its orientation.

“In reality, most post-high school education is centrist in its orientation.”

Good God, Sarvis, that’s the most egregiously false statement I’ve ever heard you make. You are truly ignorant if you believe that. Ever read a newspaper, ever read a book or research studies on the nature of post-high school education?

Ever heard of Ward Churchill or a slew of other anti-American, anti-Capitalist professors whose socialist-based diatribes in university classrooms are remolding the youth of America? I suggest you step out of your tunnel-visioned cubicle and read David Horowitz’ “The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.”

Care to explain why Conservative speakers are booed off of college stages? Those “hotbeds of progressive education” have grown from places like Berkeley to now include most colleges in America.

No, sonny, my expert analysis is not based on anecdotal evidence, it’s based on years of reading, seeing, listening and understanding. Only a dyed-in-the-wool socialist would look at modern university “education” and call it centrist.

BTW, what’s the difference between “socialist” and “Socialist?” For my part, my failure to capitalize the first letter is purely a token of my disrespect.

You neglect, as I expected, to explain today’s conservative leader’s post High School education.

And you neglect, as I expected, to counter any of the details of my factual assertions.

This Saul Alinsky tactic may get you some purchase on a leftist site, but the one-line zinger gets you nowhere here.

Conservative, traditionalist thinking is the only hope for America. The intelligent people, not the wet-behind-the-ears kids who are putty in the hands of the socialist programmers, have a knowledge of history and a love for this country that transcends attempts to channel them into the groupthink destruction of the nation.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the heritability of IQ and other factors belies the efficacy in reprogrammming so desperately attempted by the left.

No matter how much you attempt to revise history, no matter how much the failures of socialism are covered up by the education establishment, regardless of the appeals to the indolent to remain on the public dole, the intelligent and knowledge-thirsty individual will understand the will of the Founders and the beauty of the Constitution.

I do not include progressives in that list of intelligent individuals.

Sarvis, here’s another one you might read if you have the intellectual mettle for it: David Horowitz’ “One-Party Classroom: How Radical Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine Our Democracy.”

Somehow I doubt you’d even consider a point of view different from your own, but I offer the title anyway.

Doc:

Are you trying to say that only the members of the GOP are college graduates? That would mean that the Demos get all the people who aren’t smart at all!

To answer your first question; we have simultaniously increased the funding/access to those things that detract students from school work. Television, the internet, gaming of various sorts all distract young minds from the important work at hand.

45caliber’s spot on. One of the mainstays of liberal (e.g., Sarvis’) thinking is that you can cure any problem if you throw enough money at it, regardless of the number of times this has proven to be false.

For the progressive, the only way they can attempt to support this crackpot theory is to get you to believe that the human brain is a blank page (“tabla rasa”) at birth, a clean receptacle into which the ultimate character of a person is determined solely by experience and by the nature of the information put into it. In short, it denies the heritability of many human personality factors and predispositions.

In the Nature vs. Nurture argument, such outstanding works as “The Bell Curve” are denied or denigrated (even called ‘racist’) because they prove beyond a doubt that such things as IQ are largely determined by DNA and not by environment. And NO amount of money thrown at the situation will improve it!

Even Sarvis can’t divert the argument by rationalizing away the failure of funding to improve the education system. Recent history shows just the opposite: in states where the spending per pupil is highest, so too are the failure rates in high school.

Kids aren’t one whit dumber than they used to be; they are wrongly educated, period.

“…….. we have simultaniously increased the funding/access to those things that detract students from school work. Television, the internet, gaming of various sorts all distract young minds from the important work at hand.”

And tell us doc just how will throwing ever more money at a failing education system overcome something that is occuring OUTSIDE the classroom.

Vigilant:

I agree. They are certainly wrongly educated.

Other countries like Japan educate their children on the basics such as reading, writing, math, sciences. The US tends to require our kids be educated on things like environmentalism, homosexuality, sexual education, etc. Our kids are just as smart as we were but … they don’t have time for the basics!

Doc:

Yes, there are lots of things to distract kids now. They were lots of things when I was a kid too. TV, playing in the yard, board games, books, etc. That didn’t keep me from studying.

The real problem today is that the students are required to learn things that are of little use in actual real life. Things that should wait until they learn the basics instead of learn instead of the basics.

doc,
Here’s a little bit of support for 45calibers statement of FACT. the Cleveland ohio school system spends more per student than any other system in NE Ohio, yet their drop out rate and failure rate is higher than any of those other school systems as well!! Yeah, Doc, good idea throw more money at the problem, maybe you can bury it under tax money!!!

Libertytrain, you are 100% correct. jopa actually buys into the canard that everyone is suited for college. I wonder what world he lives in?

Yeah right, jopa, give everyone a 4-year degree (and you’d have to literally GIVE them away), so that your housekeeper or garbage man can charge you $200 an hour for services rendered.

Or do you wish to reserve those jobs for illegal aliens only?

Lib:

Our company requres at least two years of college to get on here. Why? Because high school diplomas mean nothing any more. I’ve seen grads who have barely a 2nd grade education! They can barely read and write their own names and can’t even work math problems such as 26 + 15 = ? If they can pass two years of college they still don’t have the education I had when graduated but at least they can read and write enough to know what it says.

45cal, you are of course right.

The first year or two of college courses in many places are to make up for what the student did not learn in high school. Those courses were high school courses in my day, but now the schools have so dumbed down their curricula that the universities must babysit them through the basics.

Given the requirements (or lack thereof) to become a teacher nowadays, it’s no wonder this situation exists. Allow me to submit that today’s educators are less educated than we were even before college.

Did you see the recent news item where the high school posted a sign to the effect of “LAEP for Literacy?” I rest my case.

Vigilant:

One of the problems is that so many colleges have expanded that they want to fill their seats. So obviously they try to persuade everyone that if you get a college degree you’ll be set for life.

Take engineering for example. The universities insist that the US needs 450,000 new engineers every year. The government quotes them. Actually, the US needs about 150,000 but it would cut 300.000 from their rolls. Those are the ones who pay and graduation proudly as an engineer and then end up getting a job as manager at some McDonalds … if they are lucky. But the libs all believe we need the degrees and teach the kids that.

My favorite “got college” story was a gal who had just graduated from a fine Journalism School in Wisconsin – this story is about 25 years old……So proud she was … but she said to me “I can’t get no job.” – oh yeah, college is definitely the way to go……

Lib:

My favorite story was one I saw on TV news in AR one time. An English teacher wasn’t rehired for a second year at the high school in Little Rock. She was insisting that it was because she was a minority person.

Her comment on the news? “They ain’t got no reason to goin’ to fire me ’cause I’s black!”

No one ever said you have to go to school. But you should have the option open to you. It has been expressly brought up to also have vocational skills and other worthy knowledge as it all makes for the greater good.
No one ever said everyone has to go to college….wait a minute that was Santorum that said it that way…paraphrasing so he can make his mistaken Snob comments. He’s the effete snob along with Romney.
Stop listening to the idiots you been listening to.

Listening to whom? I’m talking about my own experiences of watching folks for the last 50 plus years that should have never wasted time or money in school just because our society started making it appear that they were foolish or ignorant if they went to trade school or didn’t go to college or might have wanted not to go to college. It became the “in” thing to do – go to college – whether you wanted to or not. Doesn’t take much to realize colleges or universities appear to have been dumbed down on their own during the last several years – graduates are frequently no brighter than kids graduating high school in the past – you need to look around – talk to some of these college-educated kids…..

Vigilant:

A couple of years ago I was talking to a boy about to go to college. I asked him what he was taking. He was going to take Business – and was going to get a job as a CEO when he got out making millions a year.

I reminded him that the CEOs had to work their way up starting at a lot less. His argument? “I’m worth more than that! If they won’t pay me what I’m worth, I just won’t work for them!”

Too many times the last few years I’ve seen young people take a job (agreeing to work 8 hours a day for the offered salary) only to insist after they get the job that they aren’t being paid enough to work more than a couple of hours a day. And they can’t understand why the business owner/manager won’t accept that and pay them more! Or why they end up being fired.

and 45 you are probably like me and slam your head against the wall in disbelief of the brilliance or lack thereof of this college-educated bunch of doofuses the high-priced colleges and or universities are churning out…. scary.

If you think having a higher education is only so you can earn more is a Capitalist Pig.
How about having thought out opinions and being able to understand the words and their meanings. Articulate conversation instead of blabber is a great joy in life. Most here can’t get complete sentences together but continue to spew ignorance and cheap shot verbage.

Dave,
As i posted here a couple of days ago, My Father, whom I am very proud of had only a fifth grade education. He did jig and fixture welding, from Blue prints, did R&D welding from little more than a napkin with a drawing on it. He taught himself carpentry, masonry, metal working, He even built a caterpiller ( bulldozer) from an english ford anglia, and another small car. He did the mathematics to figure the length of the tracks, machined the adaptors to adapt a second transmission to it, even manufactured the brakes for each side for turning. He could figure out almost any problem and speak very itelligent as well. HE WAS SELF EDUCATED! BTW, He also built his first home from the ground up! Wired it himself, plumbed it and only had an inspection after to pass code. A College education does NOT guarantee a persons intelligence nor his ability to succeed in life. Without a good measure of common sense, and a will to succeed, the college educated man can still fail at even the most simple things in life!

Joe – I agree with your comments…

What are You good for?

They are not funding “education”. They are funding “indoctrination”.

ChristyK has it perfectly within the crosshairs, it’s pure indoctrination. The money has no bearing on the outcome of the product, as it’s a ploy to tax further under the heading of “It’s for the children” whine. Want some wake-up info? peacerevolution.org And listen to what John Taylor Gatto has to say.

whack the indoctrination & we can eliminate at least 1/2 of school expenditures, plus teach children how to read, write, & add! Whack a few butts & eliminate the school police & protection racket. eliminate tenure & hire teachers who have not been through the commie colleges… lots of opportunities