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Apr 16

What should kids learn in school?

Posted on Friday, April 16, 2010 in Issues, Opinion, Political campaign

It will come as no surprise to those who’ve read my previous blogs on our education system that I think it stinks, a Prussian military invention that has produced a fearful nation of non-readers and non-thinkers. Pouring more money into more of the same will only make things worse. We need to totally rethink what an education should be, and whether government should have any role at all in providing it. We need diversity in education, not all be stamped out like sub-standard parts on a Chinese assembly line.

Our schools do not teach us how to grow, preserve and safely handle food, the most important thing anyone can learn. Our schools do not teach us how to eat properly, what to eat and what to avoid. It is ruining our health. The information is out there but it isn’t being passed along.

Our schools do not teach anything about the law, an amazing fact considering we’re a country founded on law.

Our kids are not taught how to diagnose illness. Africans were taught that with a yes/no chart and could diagnose as well as 99% of American physicians after three months of practice.

Our schools do not teach us how to build or fix things electrical or mechanical, so remain ignorant of such things in an electro-mechanical world.

Our schools do not teach the practical aspect of ethics. No person can rise above the level of his own character.

What the teacher’s union IS allowed to teach is very strictly dictated by competition, so nothing one can earn a living with is allowed to be taught. Of course, the real point of our education system is to act as babysitters, while parents, both of them, are working at mostly boring and irrelevant jobs, working twice the hours necessary just to feed an overblown military/welfare/police/prison state that doesn’t even resemble what our founding fathers imagined.

It isn’t the state’s responsibility to educate your children; it’s a parent’s responsibility. The whole point of an education is to teach people the art of providing for themselves. Does that sound even remotely like what public education does? No wonder the kids and teachers hate it.

All the other candidates in this governor race say education is their top priority but all just want to spend more doing the same thing, digging us deeper into this trench. Delegating someone else the responsibility for educating your children is like having another guy take your wife on her honeymoon.  Some things you must just do for yourself.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

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Apr 16

The 800 pound gorilla

Posted on Friday, April 16, 2010 in Opinion, Political campaign

We all appreciate the sacrifice made by our boys in uniform. That’s not the point. The point is that military spending is bankrupting the country. How disappointing to hear President Obama declare a freeze on desperately needed investments into our capital infrastructure but won’t cut back a dime on military spending. This is not the action of a capitalist. It is the action of a fascist.  If that doesn’t alarm you, you need a remedial course in history.

I wish our politicians could read a balance sheet and financial statement. A tank is not a capital item by any definition of the word. It is an expense, a night watchman’s expense. Based on the spending for military nonsense the past 50 years one could make the case that we have had a military coup in this country. In fact, we have. It seems everyone welcomes it. Well, not everyone but the military has an 80% approval rating. Compare that to the approval rating of congress.

I’m a factory owner, competing in a market economy. If I had the same night watchman’s expense as the United States I’d have to double the price of everything I sold –  which explains our trade deficit. Our military consumes half our total industrial output annually. Is the reason we aren’t told this because we’d instantly see the lunacy of such a policy? This misdirection of our labor, credit and material resource must come to an end. Nothing is more detrimental to commerce than war, invented or real. Unless of course, you own stock in defense contractors.

We’ve been sold protection we didn’t need. We have no enemies with the capacity to do us real harm. We are protected by vast oceans and are individually armed to the teeth, impossible to occupy by foreign invaders. The simple fact is nobody wants our territory, so polluted it is. Our forests are ravaged. Our roads, sewer systems, bridges and cities are crumbling before our eyes. Our farms are sterile and poisoned. And all we do is make weapons. This is a mindset worthy of a true hillbilly.

thruthout.org: A Plea to the US Military and Its Enforcers

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Apr 8

Second Amendment

Posted on Thursday, April 8, 2010 in Issues, Opinion, Political campaign

Second Amendment: A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Having been oppressed by a professional army, the founding fathers of the United States had no use for establishing one of their own. Instead, they decided that an armed citizenry makes the best army of all. George Washington created regulation for the aforementioned “well-regulated militia” which would consist of every able-bodied man in the country.

The reason I’m bringing this up has nothing to do with the National Rifle Association but with the fact that we ARE oppressed by a professional army—our own! I wrote about this a few blogs ago in my 800 pound gorilla piece but nagging is profoundly underrated so here I am again, nagging you to do something about this travesty. Do you really enjoy working six months every year and giving every penny you make to support this expense that gives us nothing in return except the hatred of the world? I’m sick of it.

When I point this out to most people they respond by saying that military spending is only 5% of GDP. Why they would use non-standard accounting to justify this stupidity astounds me. GDP is just everybody’s salary—regardless of what they do. GDP means nothing whatsoever, except as a ruse. Military spending consumes over half of our total industrial output! That’s the real truth. We could cut our work week in HALF with no loss of incomes if the military industrial complex would  stop oppressing us.