New Jersey; a contender in America's Race to the Bottom

Last week New Jersey' leading newspaper conglomerate who's cornerstone print publication is the Star Ledger and online NJ.com announced massive layoffs in the wake of continuing decline in revenue and circulation.

The Question is WHY?

The Garden State
where yesterday's
Flower Children
became today's
Bloomin' Idiots

Is it the changes in technology that plagues the Star Ledger group?

Or is it that the people of New Jersey are finally turning their backs on the liberal propaganda that the Star Ledger is known to spread?

As a student of our nation economy I regularly read newspapers from coast to coast, the Sacramento Bee, the Oregonian, the Star Ledger, Santa Barbara Independent and the San Jose Mercury News.  I'm often shocked simply reviewing the headlines, often asking myself is this for real? I have to confirm the date the story lines are so void of substance. So many media sources skip the important stuff. Astounding at times how deceitful and  biased these large regional news sources can be.

Frankly I think it is good to see the demise of the liars. The economic landscape has been squandered and undermined by liberal media deceit. The lose of these  jobs are nothing compared to the ruinous economic events precipitated by decades of liberal lies.

The tripe and irrelevant drivel that makes it to their lead story lines is a testament to the the Star Ledgers failure and a contributor to a vast ignorance across large segments of NJ society.

Many people in New Jersey are detached from reality, vacant on the critical issues our nation faces. I wager few New Jersey residents are aware that their state is ranked as the most financially unstable in the country. Few know the state debt hit a record $40.4 Billion after rising 4.1 percent in 2013. Add to that their unfunded employee retirement liabilities which are estimated to be the highest of all the states on a per-capita basis. (This includes both the pension and "other" contracted retirement benefits.)

SCARY MIGRATION TREND 

Add to all that the fact that New Jersey is experiencing the highest outward migration of any state and, well it is not a pretty picture.

New Jersey's Poster Child; Jon Corzine
First he almost destroyed Goldman Sachs,
 then he added ruin onto New Jersey.
The third times the charm,
He led MF Global into bankruptcy
at a stunning pace and a billion
dollars disappeared at the same time.
I believe he is still facing charges on that.

The debts and excessive expenses that have grown to unmanageable levels will be born on the shoulders of a declining population. It could be even worse, in the last census period New Jersey lost a congressional seat. It is too early to know if that will happen again, but it may.

Once the spawning grounds of visionaries now left to the rot of a parasitic culture that feeds on corruption, thuggery and taxes. Bankrupt in morals and bankrupt financially.   A bifurcated society where the government and its corporatist cronies suck on the souls of those that chose to stay behind.

The ties that bind,
a generation so blind 

Yesterday's Flower Children turned into today's Bloomin' Idiots

A soul-less society that will feel the scorn of it's children.  It is far better to let New Jersey fail, let the death dealt by liberalism cleans the economy and the culture.

ARE BAILOUTS IMMORAL?

The "too big to fail" argument must end, PERIOD.  It should not be an acceptable concept,  it is not reflective of a balanced and healthy free market, in fact the existence of the premiss is evidence that there are improper inducements in the markets in the first place.

New Jersey can fail, Chicago can fail, LA can fail. California - maybe it is too big to fail and there are serious efforts to break it up. In fact Tim Draper the famous venture capitalist is working on qualifying a 6-state breakup concept to be on the 2016 ballot in California.  That will be interesting.

Good intentions with predictable bad results are bad choices, period. Criminal? Perhaps.

If New Jersey or any other state or company or bank is on the road to failure it must be left to fail. To do otherwise in light of all we know now should be considered a criminal act.

Common Core State Standards Initiative has uncommonly bad problems

I attended a lecture by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush last year at which he spoke positively about the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS), explaining that governors and state commissioners or secretaries of education developed the program. It is entirely voluntary, and is designed to set uniform high education standards in the states that participate.

The idea seems potentially beneficial, given that the states control it and not the federal government. In support, Mr. Bush cites the fact that the U.S. has fallen behind many other countries in educational attainment, and that CCSS can reverse this trend.

“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Bush said recently at the Broward Workshop business breakfast, as reported by The Miami Herald. “In Asia today, they don’t care about children’s self esteem. They care about math, whether they can read – in English – whether they understand why science is important, whether they have the grit and determination to be successful.”

Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio program the host breached the idea that CCSS would be a national curriculum. “In fact, standards are different than curriculum,” Mr. Bush responded, “and that’s where I think the biggest misnomer is where people legitimately get concerned. I would be concerned if we had a national curriculum influenced by the federal government. My God, I’d break out in a rash.” The curriculum, he said, “should be driven by state and local school districts and by policy makers at the state level.”

So, CCSS sounds pretty good. Ideas often fail to reach their expectations, however, and where Common Core is concerned there are numerous examples of how its implementation fails to match up with the high ideals Mr. Bush believes in.

To say that the Common Core approach to basic mathematics is different takes understatement to a new level. If the problem is to find the sum of 26 and 17, we would normally put the addends one above the other, add 7 and 6 to get 13, put the 3 down and carry the 1, then add the 1, the 2 and the other 1 to get 43.

Not so with Common Core math. Here’s how CCSS does it:

Add 26 + 17 by breaking apart numbers to make a ten. Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10. Since 6 + 4 = 10, use 4. Think: 17 = 4 + 13. Add 26 + 4 = 30. Add 30 + 13 = 43. So, 26 + 17 = 43.

Does the CCSS method work? Well, yes, it works. And perhaps some beneficial learning takes place. However it is somewhat like when trying to fly from Washington, DC to New York City, you first fly to Nashville, TN, then to Atlanta, GA, then to Boston, MA then to NYC.

Most important in education, however, is the content presented in the classroom. The most high-minded goals are meaningless if what students actually experience ignores them.

Testifying before the Alabama Senate Education Committee, Becky Gerritson focused primarily on an 11^th grade literature textbook called The American Experience: 1900-Present by Prentice Hall, with the words “Common Core Edition” on the cover. She explained that it contains anti-American themes and misrepresents our nation’s founding, and she supports a bill to allow local school districts to opt out of Common Core.

But where she really got the Committee’s attention was when she began reading six sentences of Toni Morrison’s book The Bluest Eye, which she said is recommended reading for 11^th graders.

What she read produced gasps from the audience, and the chairman stopped her, and did not allowed her to finish. You see, this book recommended for 11^th graders is the story of an 8-year old black girl. The six sentences she chose to read were a graphic depiction of a sex act between a pedophile and the 8-year-old, and contained, among several pornographic phrases that are inappropriate for this column, the F-word that brought the testimony to a close.

Defenders of Common Core might argue that most 11^th graders are familiar with such language and concepts, but that is totally beside the point. It is completely inappropriate for a high school classroom.

And political pressure is also present.

According to Susan Kimball, a kindergarten teacher of 20 years in the Sikeston, Missouri Public School District, her opposition to Common Core resulted in bullying and intimidation from administrators and fellow teachers.

Ms. Kimball related that she was told at an in-service meeting to “be careful about what you post on Facebook, or talk about in the public regarding Common Core.  Don’t say anything negative.  It could affect your job.” But she continued to speak out.

“When I turned in a personal day request to come support the rally for House Bill 1490,” she said, “I was asked by my principal, ‘Do you really want that in your personnel file?’ And then I was bullied and ostracized by my administration, a few other teachers and the president of the school board.  And that continues today,” she said.

Common Core must be carefully investigated and cleaned up before being adopted. Or maybe just scrap it.

End of an error? The State of the Union campaign event needs to go

End of an error? The State of the Union campaign event needs to go

The State of the Union address to Congress is really just a routine presidential duty defined in Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1787-88: "He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

That simple requirement to update the Congress and recommend certain things the president thinks are important has evolved into the political orgy we now witness each year.

We have become accustomed to the spectacle of last week because that is the way the message has been delivered for a hundred years. However, there is no requirement for the president to actually appear before the Congress and orally deliver the message. And in fact, beginning with Thomas Jefferson's first State of the Union in 1801 and lasting until William Howard Taft's final message in 1912, the State of the Union was a written, often lengthy, report sent to Congress at the beginning of a new Session of Congress.

It’s time to return to the more sensible and less hype-driven process of Jefferson through Taft, because instead of a restrained message addressing the problems the country faces and perhaps some discussion of the successes that it has experienced, for years we’ve been treated to a campaign event all dolled up into a grandiose political revue that is little more than an exercise in political expedience.

It is a stage perfectly set for the delivery of propaganda with no real-time truth detector. The president says whatever he wants to say, and with the possible exception of a sour expression on the face of someone in the audience, or an unacceptable verbal complaint like the one back in 2009, there is no contrary opinion expressed until after the speech when the opposition party responds. By that time, many have tuned out, and given the setting and the pomp, and the fact that people still respect the office enough to often accept a president at his word, the damage is pretty much done.

Remaining true to form, at this year’s address President Barack Obama did not let the opportunity pass without making sure he got his points across, even if they were at odds with reality.

No less a dependable source for advocating liberal positions than The Washington Post identified six of Mr. Obama’s claims that attracted the attention of fact-checkers, presenting them in “a guide through some of President Obama’s more fact-challenged claims.”

In one of them the president noted, “the more than eight million new jobs our businesses have created over the past four years.”

Subtracting the jobs created not by businesses, but by government, that number is actually 7.6 million, and that number is correct, as far as the claim goes. The Post says the net new jobs created during the Obama administration is 3.2 million, and that there are 1.2 million fewer jobs today than when the recession began in December 2007.

Further, Newsmax reports that by last April, the number of Americans on food stamps had grown by 16 million since January 2009, which is more than twice as many people as got jobs.

“Our deficits — cut by more than half,” Mr. Obama bragged.

However, according to The Post, ”the federal budget deficit has declined in half since 2009, from $1.3 trillion to about $600 billion, but that’s not much to brag about. The 2009 figure was not just a deficit Obama inherited from his predecessor, since it also reflected the impact of decisions, such as the $800 billion stimulus bill, enacted early in the president’s term.

“Moreover, the deficit soared in the first place because of the recession, so as the economy has improved, the deficit naturally decreased.  The United States still has a deficit higher than it was in nominal terms and as a percentage of gross domestic product than it was in 2008 and a debt much greater as a percentage of the overall economy than it was prior to the recession.”

The only beneficiaries of this sort of event are the president and his fellow party members. Those who take the president at his word – and that certainly includes the millions of Americans who do not investigate what they read and hear – are less well informed than before the address.

One thing the president was accurate about was his intention to continue using Executive Orders to enact measures the Congress won’t pass, or to change them to his liking. Apparently, the former constitutional law lecturer doesn’t remember the full text of the authorizing language for the State of the Union, with emphasis on the phrase “recommend to their Consideration.” It does not say, “tell them the edicts he will issue if the Congress does not act.”

President Obama needs a remedial class in what the Constitution means. The Executive and the Legislative Branches are co-equal, along with the Judicial Branch; the president cannot make law, dictate what laws Congress will pass, or alter laws he does not like.

Why won’t the Congress stand up and defend its Constitutional prerogatives and obligations and make the president behave constitutionally?

A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

America has lost its decency, manners, politeness……………soon without quick changes character!

Listen to the young people, F-this, F-that, and nary anyone will step up and correct them- even with wife and kids in tow!

New high school principal

We watched high school principal Dennis Prager of Colorado , along with Sara Palin and Tom Brokaw on TV a couple of weeks ago….what a dynamic, down to earth speaker. Even though Palin and Brokaw were also guest speakers they did little but nod and agree with him.

A Speech Every American High School Principal Should Give.
By Dennis Prager.

To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so.
There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that some ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity.
I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships. The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American.

This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans. If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity, race and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America , one of its three central values — epluribus Unum, “from many, one.” And this school will be guided by America ‘s values. This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.

Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism — an unhealthy preoccupation with the self — while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more. If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interested in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.

Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible. The English language has united America ‘s citizens for over 200 years, and it will unite us at this school. It is one of the indispensable reasons this country of immigrants has always come to be one country. And if you leave this school without excellent English language skills, I would be remiss in my duty to ensure that you will be prepared to successfully compete in the American job market. We will learn other languages here — it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English — but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor , everything in this school will reflect learning’s elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school’s property — whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events. If you can’t speak without using the f -word, you can’t speak. By obscene language I mean the words banned by the Federal Communications Commission, plus epithets such as “Nigger,” even when used by one black student to address another black, or “bitch,” even when addressed by a girl to a girlfriend. It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way — the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago — by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.

Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will be devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue… There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately fortunate — to be alive and to be an American.

Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

If all schools nationwide adopted this ideology for their schools, I know we would all be better off!

Pass this along if you agree. . . . If not delete …. .and later regret it !