Take this to heart!

C

centerfire

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How to catch a wild pig


There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some Exchange Students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.


The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.


In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"


The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. "You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a Fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.


Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity."


The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. While we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.


One should always remember, "There is no such thing as a free lunch!" Also, "You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.


Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this email, but God help you when the gate slams shut!
 
Millions of "piglets" get on yellow buses each morning and are dropped of at indoctrination centers. By the time they are adults, they will be ready for slaughter. The Democrat party is the corporate farmer in that scenario.
 
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Millions of "piglets" get on yellow buses each morning and are dropped of at indoctrination centers. By the time they are adults, they will be ready for slaughter. The Democrat party is the corporate farmer in that scenario.



I thought those yellow things were called Lemming Cages? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Dawg, In some of our discussions about the war you have asked me what my solution was. I was unable to come up with a solution that wasn’t without serious repercussions. So in light of your serious issues with public education, what is your solution?
 
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Dawg, In some of our discussions about the war you have asked me what my solution was. I was unable to come up with a solution that wasn’t without serious repercussions. So in light of your serious issues with public education, what is your solution?



I'd like to weigh in on this if I may... Rimmy, you liberals are all about choice, how about giving parents choice in the education of their children? One productive thing that could be done is to give parents whose children are in underperforming schools vouchers to take their children to better public schools or private schools.

Want another suggestion? How about paying teachers well enough to recruit the best and brightest to the profession, but demand accountability for their work? Why should a teacher not be responsible for the quality of their work? Underperforming teachers should not be insured a lifetime job without successfully teaching students like they are paid to do.

Another? Disband the NEA. This group of socialist democrat thugs is the largest stumbling block to learning in the country. They are more interested in funneling money to the DNC and protecting liberal fools in the teaching profession that are there only to indoctrinate our children.

More? Move back to teaching students how to read, write, and be well versed in mathmatics and geography instead of trying to build the next generation of homosexual loving socialist democrats. I am not sending my child to school to learn about "Heather has two mommies", I'm sending him to get an education.

There is no one that I have more respect for than a great teacher. There are a few over the years that greatly impacted my life and really taught me something. I will always remember their passion for teaching and helping children develop into well rounded adults. For those out there who take teaching to an art form, pay them what ever it takes to keep them and get more of their kind, but for those who have learned to use the system, indoctrinate children with liberal drivel and fail to accomplish what they are paid to do, show them the door.
 
Totch pretty much nailed it. Two things I would add would be the elimination of all federal funding for schools and the dismantling of the the Education department(it's not in the Constitution and they have never educated a soul.) Another would be to eliminate the teacher's unions at the state level. While my children with their vastly superior home school/private school educations will run circles around the Ritalin addled, sex addicted, socialist clones the government schools crank out, it would selfish of me to want that to continue. I believe that competition is the lifeblood of both business and society. As a nation our academic standards and scores are very low when compared with other countries- countries that spend a fraction per pupil that we do. But since government schools are a creation of the government, their answer to the problem is always to throw more of my hard earned dollars down the toilet.
 
I pretty much agree with Totch with a couple of exceptions/refinements. Vouchers won't work to get the government out of the schools because the money still comes from the government. Even if the government really wanted to get out of education they would still be legally required to stick their noses in. That's black letter law decided in a number of SCOTUS cases.

TAX CREDITS would accomplish the same result, and WOULD eliminate the legal necessity of having government interference since the money would never get to the government in the first place.

You can't legally disband the NEA no matter how much good that would do. People have the right to collective bargaining. By publicly paying for ALL children's education with tax credits however, you would allow thousands of specialized private schools to start, which would essentially castrate the NEA. They would have to convince teachers whose pay was based on performance that somehow the union was beneficial. I doubt that would be successful with very many of the better teachers, and the ones who would be attracted to a labor union would probably also gravitate to lower standard schools that would gradually disappear in a competitive marketplace.
 
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I pretty much agree with Totch with a couple of exceptions/refinements. Vouchers won't work to get the government out of the schools because the money still comes from the government. Even if the government really wanted to get out of education they would still be legally required to stick their noses in. That's black letter law decided in a number of SCOTUS cases.

TAX CREDITS would accomplish the same result, and WOULD eliminate the legal necessity of having government interference since the money would never get to the government in the first place.

You can't legally disband the NEA no matter how much good that would do. People have the right to collective bargaining. By publicly paying for ALL children's education with tax credits however, you would allow thousands of specialized private schools to start, which would essentially castrate the NEA. They would have to convince teachers whose pay was based on performance that somehow the union was beneficial. I doubt that would be successful with very many of the better teachers, and the ones who would be attracted to a labor union would probably also gravitate to lower standard schools that would gradually disappear in a competitive marketplace.



+1 /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif Well Said Leon, a competitive marketplace would cure a lot of the ills associated with Education right now.
 
Dawg, Totch, nmleon,
You guys have contributed more common sense in this short thread than Congress has in a entire year. You guys are dead on right. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif
 
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Totch pretty much nailed it. Two things I would add would be the elimination of all federal funding for schools and the dismantling of the the Education department(it's not in the Constitution and they have never educated a soul.) Another would be to eliminate the teacher's unions at the state level. While my children with their vastly superior home school/private school educations will run circles around the Ritalin addled, sex addicted, socialist clones the government schools crank out, it would selfish of me to want that to continue. I believe that competition is the lifeblood of both business and society. As a nation our academic standards and scores are very low when compared with other countries- countries that spend a fraction per pupil that we do. But since government schools are a creation of the government, their answer to the problem is always to throw more of my hard earned dollars down the toilet.



Many good points. Throwing money at teachers and paying them more will not, however, enhance the quality of education UNLESS the federal government is out of it for good. Otherwise as long as they are taking federal $$ they will be told what to teach and when to teach it. The time to get off the federal teat is NOW............
 
My first question is if a free market model of education is so good why didn’t it evolve that way? Why did people decide that education should be a function of government? For education to be a free market type system does that mean that the financing of it becomes the sole responsibility of the parents of the students enrolled in it? How would you make the change over from public to private? Would it be a sudden move or would it have to take place gradually?
 
Rimmy,

If the government run socialist model of everything cradle to grave is so sound, why are all of the communist/socialist countries failing??? Why do you not go to Canada for your healthcare??? It has evolved in the way that it has because socialist democrats have been slowly moving our entire system of government to a nanny state for years and playing class warfare with the poor and uneducated. Politicians have created a dependent class to ensure their own survival and re-election, it has nothing to do with efficiency or good education.

As far as a sudden move, the end of indoctrination and teaching liberal values(or the lack thereof) could end right now! A system of accountability for schools and teachers could start right now! Shutting down underperforming schools and letting parents take the tax dollars used there to educate their children elsewhere could start right now! Take the same dollars spent right now on a broken system and transfer them to a private system of accountability in a competitive marketplace and you will see instant improvement. You see, if a private enterprise does not preform, they go out of business. It is survival of the fittest. (I thought you liberals understood evolution?)
 
So you’re expecting the public to turn tax dollars over to Private schools without any oversight? Do you really think that a private corporation will be more responsive to the parents than the elected officials on a school board? Do you remember all the scams that were going on involving diploma mills and private schools offering worthless degrees? These were supposed to be college level schools and yet you want to apply the same model to elementary schools? The free market model may adjust in the long run but you could have several years of chaos before the market adjusts. Do you really think that all of a sudden there will be enough private schools to take over the task? I can see the problem of a lot of rural areas where there isn’t enough of a market to attract private corporations being completely out of luck. Why would a for profit corporation bother with a small number of students?
 
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So you’re expecting the public to turn tax dollars over to Private schools without any oversight? Do you really think that a private corporation will be more responsive to the parents than the elected officials on a school board?





I rest my case!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif You believe that the government is more responsible than the individual to manage their lives and money. I know that this may come as a shock to you Rimmy, but there tends to be a little abuse and waste in the government from time to time. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif You'll excuse me if I trust the private sector more than those who have spent their lives converting the public safety net into a hammock. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smiliesmack.gif
 
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I rest my case!!! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused1.gif You believe that the government is more responsible than the individual to manage their lives and money.


You’re not talking about an individual managing their own money. You’re talking about a private corporation managing tax dollars collected from all of us. I don’t trust corporations any more or any less than I do the government.
 
Rim Runner- Education DID evolve as purely free market. The change-over from a pure free market system to a taxpayer funded system happened in fits and starts, starting with philanthropist funding of "public" schools in the 1800s for commoners (why what we would call private schools, Eton, Harrow, etc, are called "public" schools in Britain).

The first taxpayer funded schools were started I think in MA in the mid 1800s and by the turn of the century it was pretty common, though the funding was always from the local level, usually as a property tax levee. It wasn't until the 1920s (I think) that elementary school was compulsory for all kids (though not necessarily public school).

After WW2 we had a huge expansion of government power (socialism) in all areas including education. School systems (public) went from being a purely local entity to being controlled by states and then more and more by the federal government. I believe before the war there were something like 120,000 school districts, but by the mid '90s there were less than 15,000.

With the advent of civil rights laws the federal government became more and more involved in the day to day running of education. The Supreme Court has ruled that wherever the feds supply money the have an obligation to enforce federal regulations. That has been interpreted to mean any money of any type, to the point that for example Hillsdale College (one of the very few truly private schools and the genesis of some of the Court rulings) won't accept students who receive any federal aid including GI bill funding (it's a matter principle, they were accepting black and women students from before the Civil War). Here's the short version of the story.

We now have some of our largest (and worst) school districts administered by federal judges whose only mandate is racial integration. Education isn't even in their brief.

Coincident with the passage of a huge number of civil rights regulations, in the '60s the NEA legally changed from a Professional Association to a Labor Union and began to agitate for more federal and state control. That was sold to the public as being an improvement for educational quality when of course it was actually just a means for the union to gain bargaining power and hurt educational quality (as subsequent events have proven).

I agree that education should be publicly funded. I think it's in the country's best interest to have a well educated citizenry and that includes people of all economic strata.

I vehemently disagree with governmental involvement on several levels. One is that with government control comes the danger of government indoctrination (liberal OR conservative), another is that because of the rulings of SCOTUS, if the government is involved their primary focus legally HAS to be enforcement of federal regulations and NOT education.

The question then becomes by what mechanism would it be possible to have public funding of education without government control. Vouchers wouldn't do it (see the Hillsdale link, google Grove City College vs Sec Ed, Brown vs Board, etc) but tax credits would.

Tax credits would accomplish what folks want to do with vouchers, which is give parents choice in where their kids go to school. It would also remove the legal justification (and requirement) for the government to be involved in education. It would in affect do what just about every (good) teacher I've ever spoken with says needs to be done, get control of local education back in the hands of local administrators, parents, and teachers.

Unfortunately it's an uphill battle to get it done. Those with power are loath to give it up, whether that's the fed or state governments or the teachers labor union.
 
I missed a couple of posts while typing.

I believe you are framing the question incorrectly Rim Runner. It's not a question of trusting government or corporations, it's a question of trusting government or the consumer.
 
Where is the oversight now for the government schools? From the teacher's unions? And aren't government schools "diploma mills" already? Kids are going to college with alledged diplomas and and are being taught remedial reading, math and science. All your concerns about privatization have already come true under government control Rim. Who's to say the system would be taken over by large corporations anyway? What we have now is completely broken and needs to be scrapped. Generations of uneducated dolts don't benefit America, only Democrats. Is this why you are for the status quo?
 
It's not a question of taking control from the government and giving it to corporations.

Under the current system you DO have to pay the government BEFORE you can shop elsewhere.

You don't have to pay Wal-Mart before you are allowed to shop elsewhere. Wal-Mart doesn't have any control over where you buy your groceries (or whatever), they have to compete for your dollar.
 
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