RETOOLING AMERICA
“When I call a recession…that means that process is starting to feed on itself, which means that you can yell and scream and you can write a big check, but it’s not going to stop.”
-Lakshman Achuthan-
Education is the first step in retooling any nation. No need to tell you how bad schools are in the United States; just read the papers or watch the News. The world has gone high tech. The United States is being left behind. In order for our country to keep pace with the other global economies, our school systems (pre-Kindergarten through university) need a complete overhauling. Junk the entire American educational system! Change starts in the cradle.
As a 32 year veteran teacher I think I’ve learned something in my past career.
Remedy:
· Have an 8 hour school day. · Train/hire qualified teachers and pay them similar salaries as upper echelon (i.e. business, legal, and medical) professionals. · Have smaller class sizes (15 to 20 students per classroom with at least one teacher aide assisting. · Remove disruptive students from classrooms! Classroom discipline is the primary problem in schools. Disruption should be dealt with swiftly, fairly, harshly, and resolutely! · The Office of Disciplinarian replete with paddle should be reintroduced in public schools. · The 7th and 8th grades are all about paying extra teachers and enriching textbook companies. Many countries graduate their students at the end of the 6th grade which is the reading levels of most major American newspapers. Abolish ‘junior high’ schools. · Due to nutritional factors, the Internet, and other maturation factors, children are developing into adulthood far faster than previous generations. High school should be from 7th through the 10th grades. · The school year should be year round using the 45/15 system as a model. (Search: 45 school days/15 day in between breaks school year.) · Foreign language education (Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, etc.) should be mandatory at all educational levels. · For starters the American system should model itself on either the Japanese or New Zealand public (private) school systems which I consider excellent models. (Use search engine to locate examples.) · Voluntary nondenominational Prayer/ Moment of Silence should be reintroduced and made part of the daily curriculum. (See: Madalyn Murray O’Hare.) America and Europe is on their ‘butts as a direct result of showing GOD ‘the door.’ · Cooking (Home Economics, Computer Education, Moral Development, Life Skills, Art, Music, and ‘Gym.’ Physical education should include exercise, swimming, martial arts as self-defense (bully proofing) classes should be taught daily. · Extra curricular activities should be just that EXTRA and not permitted to disrupt valuable instructional time. · School cafeteria meals should be wholesome, nutrition, and not highly caloric or sugar laden in content foisted upon our children by profit only food corporations. As an ex-teacher I can say that children tend to become disruptive immediately after lunch.
We want healthy boys and girls not lazy, disruptive, fat bodies all ‘basket cases’ bordering on Type C diabetes. Good schools provide for a good work force. Only competent workers are capable of creating viable industries. Healthy minds, bodies, and spirits contribute to the total wealth of any society.
Before any learned can take place teachers need to have good classroom discipline. In order for this to happen teachers must have assistance from parents, principals, auxiliary personnel, and the general community or all education never happen.
Individual schools would work much better if students, parents, teachers, and others would take true pride in their place of business. People associated with a particular school should strive to make their school the pride of the neighborhood simply because they are in it. School pride should be an aim of any decent school administration.
A school’s curriculum should reflect the neighborhood what the school is in. A relevant curriculum would not only facilitate better learning but would enable a sense of pride of place within each neighborhood where the school is located.
IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL WORK.
Complaining over jobs lost to foreign countries is like crying over spilled beer; an utter waste of time and some mighty good brew depending on what brand you bought. LOL! Britain invented the Industrial Revolution but it was the United States who brought the machine age to maturation. Jesus said: “Let the dead bury the dead.’ Look to the Future.
Remedy:
· Create new industries. · Build state-of-the-art manufacturing centers. · Create new markets and trade venues. · Monitor Wall Street and keep the ‘banksters’ (banking criminals) in check. · Replace petroleum based fuels with high-powered long-life battery powered modes of transportation and energy. Do this and radical Islam will wither and die. Arab oil fuels Islamic militancy. Once the West’s addiction for Arab oil is kicked, the entire Islamic empire-in-building will quickly recede into the desert sands from whence it sprung. · Invest heavily in Research and Development. Usher in a new Age of Inventions. · Turn science fiction to science fact by employing our best minds to invent a whole new planetary lifestyle the will in time lead humanity to the stars and back!
When this country surrendered to the false gods of greed, materialism, irreligion, deviant sexual behavior, sloth, indecision, the ‘isms’ of race, sex, and a host of other evils America lost its collective soul. Well it’s time to tear the old ‘house’ down and build anew. The old adage of GOD, GUTS, and GET-UP-AND-GO seems appropriate in our current situation.
CURRENT JOBS PLAN IS BOGUS.
‘Obamaspeak’
I just finished reading the transcript of President Barack Obama’s Jobs Plan bill. When I read his speech I mentally questioned the President: ‘What new jobs are you proposing? How are you going to ‘work it?” In general I thought the President’s speech was witty, entertaining, but more than a wee bit vague; just my opinion. (See: www.newschannel9.com for transcript of 10/20/11 speech.)
“Tea Time anyone?”
As a writer I have to be impartial in my judgments and visualize all aspects of an argument. I wanted to check-up on those fine Americans who call themselves the Tea Baggers. I read what they had to say. Here’s what I found after reading and listening to their speakers. By my estimates these folks don’t have any concrete plans for ending our current national mess. I heard a lot of name calling, knit-picking, they quoted lot of statistics most of which we already know, and they rattled off a litany of national problems both real and imagined.
That Grand Old Party
One thing you can say about the Republicans, they are organized. After reading their little booklet ‘The House Republican Plan for America’s Job Creators’ (I didn’t read what the Senate Republicans had to say; felt I didn’t have to at the time.), I got the impression that were very skilled at talking around situations. Maybe I’m wrong but these were my impressions. Unlike the Democrats and Tea Baggers, there were many methods to their madness. (Go to: www.gop.gov.)
Remedy:
· All political parties and movements should cooperate and merge putting the interest of the American people first.
TAKE CARE OF #1.
“A nation of sheep breeds a government of wolves.”
-Thomas Jefferson-
Life is a lot like being in debt. Before you can consider yourself debt free, there are certain drastic steps you must take. Cutting up credit cards, cutting back on non-essentials, placing yourself on a tight budget, and monitoring your money are among the first things any sane person must do before fine tuning other aspects of their financial life. The same holds true with governments.
Remedy:
· Pull the plug on the war in Afghanistan and leave Iraq on schedule. The two wars, U.S. global policing, consumer credit card greed and a corrupt banking system are what got us in this mess in the first place. We dug these ‘holes’ we got to dig ourselves out! We have nobody to blame but OURSELVES. · Drastically cut all foreign aid packages. Cases in point: why send money to Cuba our ideological enemy, Pakistan the alleged ‘Mother of Terrorism’ according to many pundits and to other ‘enemy’ countries? Tiny Israel receives a walloping $3,000,000,000 per year the most of any recipient country! (Source: Chicago Tribune)
END THE WELFARE MENTALITY
Whenever I attend Mass at a certain near north side Chicago area church, I nearly always cross paths with a certain aggressive panhandler whom I nicknamed ‘The Parasite.’ Rain, sleet, shine or snow this guy will be standing outside the church after each Mass hustling worshipers for money. Why these guys only camp out in front of Catholic churches beats me. On several occasions I’ve spoken with him about him getting work. His reason is always the same, “I’m disabled…I can’t work…my leg-blah-blah-blah.” The man’s too lazy to sell ‘Streetwise’ the popular publication that empowers the homeless and others down on their luck nor will this guy go to places that would assist him to find employment. He’s not alone.
I used to write for ‘Streetwise Newspaper’ for a number of years. I can personally vouch for them. They do a lot of good for needy and ambitious poor people. There are many agencies secular and sectarian that provides jobs, clothes, set up job interviews, distribute food, operate free clinics, and in many instances provide shelter for homeless persons. Problem is a lot of these folks are just plain lazy and expect regular handouts. Some even get belligerent if you don’t support their ‘habit’ of sitting around doing nothing. I first learned this when I was a kid from an African-American social worker who worked in the heart Chicago’s south side ‘ghetto’ (47th and Indiana Av.). She informed me that a lot of the indolent are happier than we ‘working stiffs’ are.
I’m a firm believer in the Apostle Paul’s injunction of ‘those who don’t want to work shouldn’t eat.’ The welfare mentality is a big part of what’s killing our country. Too many of our ‘could be-should be’ productive citizens espouse the liberalist mentality of FREE DRUGS, FREE SEX, and a FREE RIDE. They espouse a lifestyle where everything’s handed to them without any effort of their own.
Remedy:
· I think that people should be made to work unless severe disabilities prevent them. Think Phoenix, Arizona’s tough Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s anti-vagrancy ordinances. · An Army veteran of the War in Vietnam once told me that the U.S. Veteran’s Administration has a rule that all ex-service people applying for benefits must be sober. He also told me that there are a lot of homeless vets who are on drugs and are habitual drunkards. These two facts alone have barred many vets from receiving their rightful benefits.
THE AWESOME POWER OF PRETTY
Have you ever noticed how the rest of humanity kow-tow to beautiful people? The get all the best dates, the top jobs, have plenty of friends, close associates, and in families they’re given the most respect regardless of their limited accomplishments.
There’s even an entire so-called ‘reality’ television show the centers around several beautiful females. In fact an entire cult of the beautiful is built and developed around them. What have they contributed? As far as this writer has ascertained-not a damn thing of any positive nature. But despite this these people have amassed more money than any 100 teachers, doctors, human rights attorneys and other valued human beings than any of the professionals I’ve mentioned. Why; because they’re good looking.
Physical Beauty is that all important key to acceptance in American society today. In times past all one had to be was smart, hard working, and dedicated. I read it somewhere that if Abraham Lincoln were running for election today
He would loose because he’d be considered too ugly for public office.
Given modern sensibilities towards the physically and visibility disabled, persons in these categories wouldn’t have a chance in winning elections or getting top paying jobs. Popular television show ’60 Minutes’ did a special on beauty versus brains; beauty won.
Remedy:
· People should be valued for their contributions to society and not for their physical attributes that they were born with.
“HE TOUCHED ME!”
The quickest way to sink any human ‘ship’ is to get him/her in a sexually abusive situation. In today’s hair trigger American society just the mere accusation of sexual improprieties is enough to destroy the target person’s career and sometimes get that individual incarcerated. Case in point: GOP African-American presidential hopeful and frontrunner Herman Cain has been accused of sexual harassment of four women when he was president and CEO of the National Restaurant Association. Whether he assaulted these women or not just the mere accusation that he did has all but buried his candidacy.
Remedy:
· Due to the destructiveness of crimes of this nature (sexual harassment) the media should only air sex related charges if and only if there is absolute proof that a crime has been committed.
MARRIAGE AND & THE GAY AGENDA
Reader in order to rebuild any society from the ground up, you must start at the bottom. It all starts with the Family the ‘Hub of Society’ as my 8th grade teacher used to tell us ‘way back when (1950’s).’ Sister Eleanor was right then and if you look around at what passes for contemporary American marriage, she is certainly correct now. I don’t have to delve into details. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock since 1966 you should already know them. If not read the papers, watch the News, pick up any periodical, see a movie, and so forth to jar your memory.
The United States is the only country in the world where it appears that the rest of the planet wants to move to and or imitate. In short we’re the people everybody else craves to be. If American marriage, the world’s model continues to spiral out of control, planet Earth is in some deep s***.
Remedy:
· Save marriage, save the country, you save the world. It’s as plain and simple as that. How can one person save the world? If individuals can screw up entire nations (Caligula, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi, and similar assorted scum) surely single individuals can ‘unscrew’ things up. Reader this is where you and I come in.
Marriages cost $$$$$ a LOT of money especially if there are children involved at the time of the contractual agreement.
Remedy:
· Government taxing agents, banks, and other less ‘noble’ institutions should remove any and all financial restrictions and penalties from new families. This is to help them get on their feet and start their marriages aright without staring mountains of financial debt in their faces; new wife/husband, children, new residence, NO DEBT-FRESH START. All societies should be family oriented, not celebrities, those potty-mouthed movies ‘stars,’ not greedy governments, nor other artificial agencies but the AMERICAN FAMILY. · Societal entities (legal ‘industry,’ government agencies, the churches, welfare agencies, etc.) should actively work towards RECONCILING AGGRIEVED COUPLES with divorce the final option. Children of divorced couples have high drop-out rates. They are discipline problems in schools, develop anti-social behavior, lean towards criminality, and tend to perpetuate abusive situations in their future families. Your writer was once most of the above. Stable marriages + stable homes = stable societies. · And this is what really p***** me off; all this talk about making gay (homosexual) ‘marriage’ legal is a misnomer. Despite what liberal policy makers preach same sex partners CAN’T MAKE BABIES! The Gay agenda’s constant battering away at traditional marriage through the law courts, liberal religionists, the mass media (television, movies, publications, etc.) don’t make it right. If the Sacrament of Marriage continues to take a beating from all sides, marriage will become a thing of the past. This would wreck havoc with future generations! · Two men can’t make babies nor can two women produce children. Male and female couplings are the law of Nature and GOD’S will. To have sex any other way is unnatural hence perverted. Policymakers should use their influence to foster traditional marriage. · Homosexuals deserve love, respect, and support from society as do we all but their civil unions can’t be construed as marriage. SAVE MARRIAGE SAVE SOCIETY. (Partial source: ‘A Marshall Plan for Marriage; Rebuilding Our Shattered Homes’ by Chuck Donovan-June 7, 2011 www.heritage.org/marshshall…)
“RENDER UNTO CEASAR.”
-Jesus Christ-
Oppressive taxation to support America’s massive military machine is reminiscent of Imperial Rome. At the time of this writing (11/11/11) I read in the Chicago Tribune that the IRS will eliminate many deductable items that’ll have middle class taxpayers paying much higher taxes as if they don’t already pay enough. The end result of over taxation will be the extinction of the middle class in this country and its attendant value system. Worse case scenario this could lead to the elimination of the country once known as the United States of America. We will be erased from the map of history!
Remedy:
· A flat tax in which every American citizen would pay 20 of their total income to invest in new homegrown industries, QUALITY schools, medical facilities, tax incentives for entrepreneurs, etc. · Trim the ‘fat’ off highway programs. The guaranteed annual funding for highways should be scaled down in event of an absence of projects for a particular year. It don’t take four years of taxpayer funding to build a stretch of road less than a city block long! Whose pockets is American taxpayer money going in?
OCCUPY WALL STREET!
The Occupy Movement was an idea waiting to happen. The inspiration behind the worldwide Occupy Movement is 94 year old World War II former French resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, and ex-United Nations diplomat Stephane Hessel. His pamphlet size book ‘Indignez-vous’ in quick time became the written voice of the Occupy Movement. Hessel’s tiny tome set off a fire storm of protest around the world.
The movement is about global inequality, corruption within the international banking community, the rapidly diminishing global middle-class, and proliferation of despotic regimes around the world. As with the earlier French Resistance the raison d’etre of the book inspired movement was one of indignation, anger, engagement, and non-violence though the Resistance movement was ultra-violent in nature and purpose.
In the United States the Democratic and Republican parties are pawns of Big Business. American Business is controlled by the international banking community who in turn are influenced if not dominated by members of the Bilderberg Club (Search: ‘Bilderberg Club.’). What can the occupiers do about it; plenty.
Remedy:
· First the occupy people shouldn’t alienate the very people they should attract by using tactics that turn working people off (They took over Chicago’s La Salle Street bridge holding up traffic for ½ hour or more inconveniencing the working people whom they say they support. · The Occupiers should press forward the need for Entrepreneurs to secure start-up monies to create jobs with low interest loans and tax incentives. · The Movement should insist that the government stabilize America’s currency. Don’t print money if there’s no gold (Ft. Knox) to back it up. Think: Weimar Republic (Pre-World War II) Germany. · Don’t allow foreign investors to buy America! Other countries permit overseas investment but place severe limitations on what things are off limits to non-native investors. · Insist that our government strictly monitor Wall Street and Bank officers. Give stiff prison sentences to ‘banksters’ (crooked bankers) and other investment crooks and white collar criminals. With so much money to be made expect chicanery but punish the perpetrators! · Open Wall Street and all avenues of the financial ‘industry’ to qualified minorities and women. · The government can’t mandate morality. You can’t make people love you but you can make them respect you even if it means suing the pants off them if they violate your human rights. In Don King the movie the King character said, ‘if respect is not given it must be enacted.’ · Recently departed Steve Jobs was by all accounts a person to be reckoned with. The man was a genius. Baseball great Ty Cobb was purported to have said, “The youth of America needs heroes.” We all should learn from this great man. We should utilize his driving spirit, study his revolutionary ideas using them to build new industries from scratch if we have to. · Create mind challenging jobs not low paying, brain dead, dehumanizing work. In a radio program hosted by the late Studs Terkel one of his guests said that ‘the American work place is one of the most dehumanizing places in this country.’ The man was right. In other countries (i.e. Philippines) ones workmates are considered members of ones extended family. It the U.S. it’s a cut-throat dog-eat-dog existence one I’m glad I’m out from. We can do better than that! HUMANIZE THE WORKPLACE! · Raise wages, level taxes, and periodic price fixing. Why raise wages only to have greedy companies, merchants and grocers raise prices to astronomical levels thus robbing the people of their rightful wage hikes? Greed will only erase any gains made by workers. · Government must be for the People not against the People. All I can say about this is that ordinary people must have access to positions of power and authority. Why should greedy self-serving political thug millionaires run our country? ORGANIZE! EDUCATE! CALL A GENERAL STRIKE IF NECESSARY! · Aforementioned alternative energy sources will destroy radical Islam. With no money in its ‘war chest’ Al-Qaeda and other Islamicist groups will financially starve to death. (Go to: www.radicalislam.org.) Develop alternative energy/fuel sources or else!!
STAND BEHIND OUR PRESIDENT!
Like it or not the President of the United States is OUR president. Even though you may or may not have voted him in office, he’s the leader of the entire country and not part of it. Below is this writer’s ‘remedy’ for standing behind the man in office. Just a side note: my use of term ‘man’ is not intended as an effrontery to women; it’s just that there hasn’t been a female chief of state though I hope some day soon there will be.
Remedy:
· Americans across the board should stop lambasting the two dominant political parties. Not only is it nonsensical, its’ counterproductive ergo stupid! · We don’t need a ‘Tea Party,’ a Democratic Party, a Republican Party, or any other political organization to successfully govern America. What we do need is an educated electorate with the more daring among us willing to force positive change. · People in our country need to by-pass partisan politics and concentrate on getting our country up and running. It won’t be easy for many of us to wean ourselves from partisan politics but we must try if we are ever going to get off our two party merry-go-round. · If you must create a third party to challenge the two dominant but stagnant political parties. The Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same con-oops-COIN! However if ever a third party is established human nature being what it is, leaders of this opposition third party could bear watching too. Human nature is basically contrarian to divine and human laws. If unchecked the third party would in time become even more rotten as the current two political parties are. Freedom isn’t free; constant vigilance is needed. · Any sitting president should be so in tune with the people and make them feel PROUD TO BE AMERICANS!
RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT
“Do not let any one claim to be a true American if they ever attempt to remove religion from politics.”
-President George Washington-
GOD is the lynch pin that hold any successful society together. Moral development is the ‘yeast in the societal dough.’ If the ‘dough’ (morals/mores) is rotten so will society be.
Ours is a nation where church (religions) and state (government) are kept separate. Like most Americans I endorse this healthy separation. However what I don’t endorse is that within American secular systems just the mere mention of anything religious is enough to set off a fire storm of negativity.
During my teaching years I once applied for a transfer to a school on the far north side of the city. I used all the regular avenues to get transferred only to have my efforts blocked by the school principal who was angry with me over my resume. My resume mentioned that I was once a missionary in Canada during my youth. During my interview he kept on carping ‘It’s religious! It’s religious!’ This man’s religious paranoia prevented my transfer.
At the time of this writing it’ll be the start of the Christmas Season that time of the year when people are expected to ‘shop until they drop.’ Materialism, that eternal quest for ‘stuff,’ is just getting underway. The Yuletide season is also kick off time for the annual ‘Christmas Wars’ when local and state governments generally get reminders by vengeful branches of the ACLU, American Atheists, and other virulent anti-Christian groups. They want to remove and or destroy all references to the Christian holyday made by the media, on religious billboards, and Nativity scenes placed on public lands (Go to: www.catholicLeague.org.).
Nations that abandon God end miserably. As December 25th nears secularists are sharpening their ‘teeth’ preparing for their annual attack on Christianity. What can religious people do to counter this? The only remedy I’ll leave with you is this simple poem written by Judge Roy Moore which explains it all.
Remedy:
America the beautiful,
or so you used to be.
Land of the Pilgrims’ pride;
I’m glad they’ll never see.
Babies piled in dumpsters,
Abortion on demand,
Oh, sweet land of liberty;
your house is on the sand.
Our children wander aimlessly
poisoned by cocaine
choosing to indulge their lusts,
when God has said abstain.
From sea to shining sea,
our Nation turns away
From the teaching of God’s love
and a need to always pray.
We’ve kept God in our
temples, how callous we have grown.
When earth is but His footstool,
and Heaven is His throne.
We’ve voted in a government
that’s rotting at the core,
Appointing Godless Judges;
who throw reason out the door.
Too soft to place a killer
in a well deserved tomb,
But brave enough to kill a baby
before he leaves the womb.
You think that God’s not
angry, that our land’s a moral slum?
How much longer will He wait
before His judgment comes?
How are we to face our God,
from Whom we cannot hide?
What then is left for us to do,
but stem this evil tide?
If we who are His children,
will humbly turn and pray;
Seek His holy face
and mend our evil way:
Then God will hear from Heaven;
and forgive us of our sins,
He’ll heal our sickly land
and those who live within.
But, America the Beautiful,
If you don’t – then you will see,
A sad but Holy God
withdraw His hand from Thee.
Merry Christmas and GOD be with you.