Random Thoughts

[Vick]

Hmmm .... have a flu so while sweating it out last night with a fever a lot of things crossed my mind (short trip)

Something I've often harped on (and will never stop)

Joesho was speaking about Kerry's and Bush's educational platforms

If I understand correctly Bush is in favor of School Vouchers and more emphasis on state programs and his No Child Left Behind legislation while Kerry is in favor of more federal funding for schools along with making college affordable (which I am all for)

I think either candidate would sign the No Child Left Behind bill even though each candidates version would differ

But ... they are both wrong

We don't need better schools, yes you read that correctly

We need BETTER PARENTS,
we as parents educate our children, every second of every day, public (or private) schools aren't somewhere to drop your children off and expect them to get an education, schools provide a secondary education to what we share with our children

We need more emphasis on personal responsibility, not pushing it off on a school system

You don't get an eduction, you take an eduction - from the Wharton School of Business all the way to your local elementary school


If you want to raise money for schools locally - lotteries are the answer
Here in Maryland we have 2 beautiful stadiums partially funded by lotteries - now some of those funds go into education - that's how to raise money on the local level

[Mike AI]

Vick you are 100% correct.

Throwing more money at schools will not help. Public schools in New Orleans cost roughly $7-8k per year per student, and the students can
barely read or write.

I went to Catholic School, it cost my parents $2-3k per year and I got a MUCH better education then those in public schools.

Teachers unions are corrupt, they are only interested in money and power and NOT the kids.

School choice, voucher system seems like a great idea to me.

[Meni]

i'm all for
implanting microchips in children
who's with me?


calgary 4-1 mike

[Vick]

Bill Cosby is right
From his speech to the NAACP
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38565

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'

"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"


Remove this from the black community and apply it across the board to everyone - it holds true

Frightening example, I was in a mall a week or so back, rather crowded and someone stopped in the middle of the aisle - what do I hear
"mutherfucker, I can't believe these mutherfuckers stopping in the walkway"

I looked to see who said it, a women late 20's......... holding the hand of a 3 year old child

[Meni]

microchips
gov issued microchips
god how stupid are you people

[Nickatilynx]

Originally posted by Vick@May 26 2004, 09:51 AM
Bill Cosby is right
From his speech to the NAACP
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38565

"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids – $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.'

"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"


Remove this from the black community and apply it across the board to everyone - it holds true

Frightening example, I was in a mall a week or so back, rather crowded and someone stopped in the middle of the aisle - what do I hear
"mutherfucker, I can't believe these mutherfuckers stopping in the walkway"

I looked to see who said it, a women late 20's......... holding the hand of a 3 year old child
What a stupid motherfucking bitch!

;-)))

[SykkBoy]

What's wrong with "society" doing their part?

While I don't expect the teachers at my kids' school to teach them everything, I do expect them to do what they are paid to do. My kids are there for 7 hours a day to learn. I'll handle the other 17 hours. What's wrong with their teacher teaching them the three R's while I concentrate on educating them about life lessons, etc.?

While just throwing money at it won't make the problems go away, letting the educational system wallow in poverty isn't going to help either.

We love to blame "society" for all of the ills, yet we never credit "society" with the good things that happen, like communities who band together and form neigborhood watch programs and take pride in their communities.

When I grew up, we knew our neighbors and they knew us. We could play outside by ourselves until dark and not worry. People took care of their homes the best they could and if they couldn't, everyone else in the neighborhood helped them.

These days we fear our neighbors, we'd rather avoid any sort of eye contact with a stranger rather than offer them a helping hand or even a smile.

Maybe if people started caring about their neighbors, community and society at large a little more, our kids could actually relax a little and maybe it'll help the educational process and we'd stop looking for some annonymous, faceless "society" to blame for all of the problems. Maybe we'd get better teachers who cared about their profession, had some financial stability and would dedicate themselves to teaching and not have to worry about being replaced by a teacher who is younger and will work cheaper.

As a scoiety, it seems lately, we're really lacking on confidence and esteem...



Last edited by SykkBoy at May 26 2004, 01:05 PM

[Meni]

THE CULTURE OF FEAR

[Vick]

Originally posted by SykkBoy@May 26 2004, 01:05 PM
What's wrong with "society" doing their part?


That's a nasty, nasty question

You don't have to be concerned about "society" doing it's part if you do your part (as a parent) and have personal responsibility

The neighborhood I've chosen to raise my son in you can play outside until dark, I know most of my neighbors at least on a passing say good morning basis and we all take care of our homes

(funny thing this spring once we did the flower beds in front of the house many of the other neighbors starting doing outside projects - just don't look over the fence into the backyard right now as I'm going for the meadow effect)

That's all just being a reasonable, descent human being and having PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

As soon as you start to bring "society" into the equation you start to remove PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

[JoesHO]

America will continue it's downward slide on the educational ladder, if there is not some TRUE accountability, and the proper resources to insure otherwise.

[Vick]

Hmmm .... maybe teachers should be paid year end bonuses on how well their students perform on standardized tests

Money is a good motivator and a great way to show appreciation for a job well done

and it'd make for a nice vacation bonus for public school teachers

[Vick]

Turning a negative into a positive ........ (excuse the oversimplifications to follow)

.... ending welfare

I read the other day that welfare payments are around the 3,000,000,000 (yes 3 BILLION) a year mark

How does that happen? Why? How does anyone get paid for not doing anything, much less how can anyone ACCEPT money for not doing anything? - That has got to be the craziest thing I've ever heard

Let's put the questions and my fingerpointing aside for a few minutes and focus on solutions


I'd end welfare today, tomorrow every former welfare recipient has the options of either going to school (I believe education is the answer to a lot of problems) which the government will fund and provide the same support the welfare recipient was receiving

It doesn't have to be college, it can be a trade school

or going to work (part of the plan is to teach welfare recipients to be daycare providers in supervised controlled conditions)

If we can change the dynamic of a welfare recipient from being a burden to the taxpayer to being an asset to the country we're all better off

Even if it costs more in the short term



I'm still shaking my head, who ever came up with the idea, here's $ for doing nothing ....


Edit - for spelling



Last edited by Vick at May 26 2004, 03:30 PM

[JoesHO]

Originally posted by Vick@May 26 2004, 12:09 PM
Hmmm .... maybe teachers should be paid year end bonuses on how well their students perform on standardized tests

Money is a good motivator and a great way to show appreciation for a job well done

and it'd make for a nice vacation bonus for public school teachers
That is a great thought in theory, but who would handle the oversight?

we have allowed the foxes to guard the hen houses for to long, and that is the problem with the uncontrolled spending.

a third party needs to be the one to test, and award any bonuses on merrit IMHO.

[Vick]

Joe - first you're making this tougher than it needs to be

second - it helps to drop the fingerpointing if you want to arrive at useful solutions

Obviously a 3rd party would have to do the testing, when I was a child we were given something called IOWA tests (I don't know if students still take these)
which would let our teachers (and parents) know our education level and how we performed against the rest of the country


Today instead of having test to measure progress we have functional literacy tests (not kidding, here in Maryland students have to pass a functional literacy test before graduating)

[SykkBoy]

Originally posted by Vick@May 26 2004, 03:29 PM
Turning a negative into a positive ........ (excuse the oversimplifications to follow)

.... ending welfare

I read the other day that welfare payments are around the 3,000,000,000 (yes 3 BILLION) a year mark

How does that happen? Why? How does anyone get paid for not doing anything, much less how can anyone ACCEPT money for not doing anything? - That has got to be the craziest thing I've ever heard

Let's put the questions and my fingerpointing aside for a few minutes and focus on solutions


I'd end welfare today, tomorrow every former welfare recipient has the options of either going to school (I believe education is the answer to a lot of problems) which the government will fund and provide the same support the welfare recipient was receiving

It doesn't have to be college, it can be a trade school

or going to work (part of the plan is to teach welfare recipients to be daycare providers in supervised controlled conditions)

If we can change the dynamic of a welfare recipient from being a burden to the taxpayer to being an asset to the country we're all better off

Even if it costs more in the short term



I'm still shaking my head, who ever came up with the idea, here's $ for doing nothing ....


Edit - for spelling
see there are some non-wrestling and non-music things we agree on ;-)

I agree that all the money going for welfare is better spent on educational programs. In a Utopian society, everyone would have a wonderful education and make a lot of money, but bottom line, some people missed their first chance at an education or bought into that whole "work for one company for life" mentality.

A lot of people on welfare get trapped in a vicious cycle of being kept poor. I'm all for extending uemployment benefits, etc. because people have paid into that system while working, and I can see helping out in an area where the main iundustry may have left and now the town is full of 40 and 50 year olds that have only known one job/company and have no other experience.

This is what welfare should be, a hand up and not a hand out. It's easy to point fingers and say soeone made a bad decision in life, but shouldn't they get a second chance?

Maybe my perspective in life is different because of where I grew up. When they closed down the iron ore mine in Atlantic City, Wyoming, it not only left a lot of people jobless (including the retail merchants who relied on the income from the miners to support them) it devastated the local economy. I saw a lot of people who only knew working in the mine. They often were very hard workers who did their job well, but it's the only job they knew. Here's where a "second chance" education program could have come in handy. By spending money on something like that instead of people having to seek welfare to keep a roof over their heads (and believe me, a lot of those good old boys kept their pride and only did that as a last resort) it might and grown the community in a new direction. Maybe it could have become an early high tech haven (low costs, low land values, etc.).

The one good thing I did see come of that was this community thing I rail about so often. People were willing to help out those who were more seriously affected.

[Vick]

Funny thing, my ideas on welfare borrow from business concepts

Turning a negative into a positive ......

Take a glance at 2 companies we know who were in part founded on that principle

http://www.directnic.com - In part got tired of paying for domain registrations and founded a very successful company

http://www.national-net.com - In part got tired of paying for bandwidth and founded a very successful company


Edit - incorrect URL



Last edited by Vick at May 26 2004, 04:06 PM

[Vick]

For anyone who is thinking that the democratic party is a better alternative than Bush
and I'm not making this up

Jerry Springer will be a delegate at the Democratic National Convention




.... what's he doing, looking for new guests for his show?

[SykkBoy]

Originally posted by Vick@May 26 2004, 04:05 PM
Funny thing, my ideas on welfare borrow from business concepts

Turning a negative into a positive ......

Take a glance at 2 companies we know who were in part founded on that principle

http://www.directnic.com - In part got tired of paying for domain registrations and founded a very successful company

http://www.national-net.com - In part got tired of paying for bandwidth and founded a very successful company


Edit - incorrect URL
Don't forget
http://www.halliburton.com that turned a relationship with the Vice President and a war into a HUGE profit opportunity...
I think I choose the wrong path...I should have become a war profiteer
;-)



Last edited by SykkBoy at May 26 2004, 05:15 PM