Census Bureau Provides The Obama/Bush Legacy: One In Six In Poverty In The US From 2007-2010

This is the Obama/Bush legacy.

The top-down/federal-gubbermint-gunna-fix-it-all/crony capitalist, utterly incompetent and corrupt approach to governance does. not. work. Oddly enough, the real descent into Perdition coincides with the Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress in 2007. Hmmm....

One in six in poverty. Do we need to wait a bit longer for more results? Until it's one in five, perhaps?

Oddly enough, OS found this tidbit from a link provided by the NEA, aka the Democrat party's most obsequious Kool-Aid consumers.

How do they fail to understand?

Another NEA Moment To Remember: Congressman John Tierney Addresses The NEA Higher Education Conference

Ahhh, the National Education Association!

Sometimes, they just make it so easy...

The Left, wherever it is encountered, be it occupying the capitol rotunda in Madison (celebrating their state senators who skipped the state during the legislative session), or in central London (vandalizing shops, starting fires, assaulting police, defacing war monuments), or Athens (damn near taking it apart brick by brick), or...

Well, wherever they are, they share the Essentials of The Faith:

1. The citizens exist to support the state, and the employees of the state, and there is no limit to what should be extracted from them. Cuts in spending are, by definition, unthinkable because they are immoral.

2. There is no shortfall between receipts and expenditures that are already hard-wired into the state's obligations. That is a fiction created by those Wascawy Wepubwikans.

3. The debt incurred over the past 70 years or so is really not a problem. 14 trillion, 14 schmillion.

4. If more cash is needed, it should simply be confiscated from 'the rich', or 'the corporations'.

5. If anyone disagrees with us, we get to shut down the government, call wildcat strikes, harass people we don't like at their homes, and smash the windows of businesses we don't like. Because we're right.

And...

6. Ethics is for other fools, and Repubwikans. We are exempt from such minor details, because we serve TheGreaterGood, tirelessly working for the triumph of the state over the culture.

So, class, with those points reviewed, let's move to a recent Higher Education Conference staged by the NEA. One keynote speaker, who enthusiastically tells them all what they wish to hear:

By Mary Ellen Flannery
What’s your tax rate, U.S. Congressman John Tierney asked higher education employees at the NEA Higher Education Conference on Saturday. Is it a mere 2.4 percent – like the tech giant Google? Or is it zero — like Boeing or pharmaceutical king Pfizer?
Maybe you received an enormous refund like General Electric?
Probably not.

“We need a fair, progressive tax rate in this country where everybody pays their fair share,” said Tierney, a Democrat from Massachusetts. But we’re not getting it — instead, right-wing politicians are pushing for tax cuts for the very wealthiest, which would be financed through cuts in education at all levels.

“They’ve already started nibbling away at Pell Grants. They’ve already started to nibble away at regulation. Last week, they met in hearings to figure out how to help their friends in for-profit education… They’re more interested in making money for their pals than anything else.”

Let's look at that last sentence more closely: They’re more interested in making money for their pals than anything else.” Hmmm...that's a pretty serious thing to say about someone. That's saying they're ethically challenged, dishonest, ought to know better, behave better, and insist on the same from their colleagues. Hmmm...

John's been lonely of late, since his wife has been in Federal prison, for abetting a tax evasion scheme on behalf of her brother.


Wakefield — March 25, 2011

Patrice Tierney, wife of U.S. Congressman John Tierney, was released from prison last week.

Tierney, 60, was serving a 30-day sentence at a federal women’s prison in Connecticut for tax fraud charges. The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed she was released on last Tuesday, March 15.

“Certainly she is happy to be home,” said Jennifer Flagg, a spokeswoman for Patrice Tierney.

The congressman’s wife will soon begin a five-month home confinement, which was part of her deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and will be on probation for two years.

Patrice Tierney, of Salem, pleaded guilty last October to aiding her brother, Robert Eremian, in filing false federal income tax returns. She was sentenced in January by U.S. District Court Judge William Young.

Prosecutors said she was handling her brother’s finances while he was living and doing business in Antigua, where they say Eremian was operating an illegal Internet gambling business. Eremian faces numerous charges, including racketeering and money laundering. Also charged in that racketeering indictment were co-defendants Richard Sullivan of St. John’s, Antigua and Marblehead and Todd Lyons of Beverly.

What The NEA Leadership Tells The NEA Rank-And-File

It's or  interesting to see what the leadership of an organization, any organization, says to the rank-and-file. Everybody does it--churches, businesses, organizations like NRA, or...labor unions. OS thinks the folks who turn out this copy, day after day, lull themselves into thinking they are holding a private conversation. They forget that, when they hit than 'Print' of 'Send' button, it actually means 'Publish'.

The following is a sample from today's 'NEA Today' email, which arrives every morning in OS's mailbox. OS, as a public service, shares them with you...with explanatory notes included.

• Ohio Senate Passes Collective Bargaining Overhaul (Those Wascawy Wepubwikans,Winning That Election Without Our Permission)

• Public Adamantly Opposed to Cuts in K-12 Education, Social Security (Sit tight! We've got those conservatives cornered!)

• NEA Kicks Off Read Across America Day

The National Education Association launched its annual Read Across America campaign on Wednesday with a star-studded celebration of reading at the Library of Congress.
A proclamation by President Obama declared today Read Across America Day, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel told the event’s crowd of students decked in “Cat in the Hat” stovepipe hats.“Today, there are 45 million people doing what we’re doing: wearing funny hats and reading!” he said.

You really must must must hit the link to see The First Lady in front of a crowd of Cats-In-Hats. Words fail. Not even Dr. Suess is equal to this occasion.

• Wisconsin Governor is Waging ‘Jihad’ Against Unions (Beheadings? Honor Killings?)

• What You Need to Know About State Pensions (It's all the fault of greedy legislators and the housing meltdown. Stand fast, brethren, we'll get every penny. There is no real crisis...)

• House of Representatives Slashes Education for Low-Income Kids (Those Wascawy Wepubwikans, With Their Dwaconian Cuts!)

Day-in, day-out, year-in, year-out, the copywriters grind the verbiage out. Little wonder they, and their audiences, come to assume that they have a true and unique grip on reality, sharing a unique knowledge with a private audience.

Little wonder we witness the protests in Madison and Providence.

As he types out his thoughts, to be launched in a blog-bottle onto the sea of the internet, OS is watching Waiting For Superman, currently available on DirectTV Pay-Per-View movie service. It is staggering to watch, dismaying to view. The segment showing the lotteries for spaces in the good schools is agonizing to view.

The 4.99 spent keeps the movie going for twenty-four hours, and OS will be viewing it again.

The NEA loathes it, preaches against it, vilifies it at every turn. Little wonder. Prophetically, some of the most damning anecdotes are told about Madison, Wisconsin.

The State Of Wisconsin v. The Public Employee Unions

The Chicago Tribune reports that Gov. Walker has the votes needed to end collective bargaining between the government and public employee unions.

The unions, especially the NEA, are not amused, and use Wisconsin as a case in point about those gweedy, wascawy Wepubwikans who are starving chilluns and depriving them of their futures.

Wisconsin, for example, faces a two-year budget deficit of $3.6 billion. Ellsworth Community School District in Wisconsin is slashing 24 of its 150 school personnel positions to save $1.1 million.

One of the educators not returning next year is Shelly Moore, a 13-year English and drama high school teacher at Ellsworth Community High School. Moore teaches grades 9-12. She also is the school’s only Advanced Placement instructor. Moore took her message to Congress last week, reminding lawmakers that investing in education is the right thing to do for students, communities and the nation.

“This is devastating,” said Moore. “How am I going to look at my students in the eye and tell them I won’t be here next year to help them? In all my years teaching, I’ve never seen so little regard for our future. We have to put students first.”

Ms. More's tale of woe is further detailed here.

OS keeps looking for NEA's proposals to stop the arterial bleeding of red ink from both state and federal budgets, and only encounters these stories of heartbroken union members.

They also spend a lot of time and energy going after any alternatives to the 'single-provider' government system.

Hmmm....

NEA and their state organizations have always been the frontline troops for the left edge of the Democrat Party. They helped push Jimmy Carter over the top in 1976, and were rewarded with the Department of Education, which has become a vast black hole of increasing expenditure and decaying returns. Any program, anywhere, anytime, that increased the cost, size and reach of government was loudly supported, and still is. Their support of Obama was breathless.

Obama kept his promise, and mainlined boatloads of borrowed cash into the states to prop up the unsustainable system, gambling (literally, putting the future wealth of the nation on the table) that this would generate enough votes to consolidate control in 2010, when he could really really really get on with the borrowing and spending to set up for 2012, when he really really really get on with the borrowing and spending from 2013 onwards.

Reality has finally set in, just a bit, and the painful cuts (long overdue) are now just being proposed. The worst is ahead.

Now, Himself is finally giving a news conference, talking about having 'an adult conversation', a 'full open debate with the American people', etc. etc. Is this the same guy who in 2009 was holding public speeches about letting the Republicans join in, as long as they 'rode in the back of the bus'?

It's time, long past time, to send the NEA on its way, for the counties and townships and states to take back their school systems from the Federal government and the unions. And, if the unions remain imbedded at the state level, it's time for the localities to take their schools back.

The current system has failed. It began failing in earnest in the 1970's, with the rise of the NEA. It is time to change course.

Now.

Or, alternatively, we could just print up a whole-lotta moh' hot money, and helicopter it down to the states. That's what The Left tells is the answer. That's what they've always told us.

The NEA Begins To Feel The Heat

Reality is beginning to set in on all parties.

The headline is: Educators Find Themselves Vilified by the States They Serve

The opening paragraphs are:

Teachers and education support professionals recently started a new semester that brought with it new students and ideas, lesson plans, schedules and all the other pieces that go into making a school year. Added to their plates, however, will be a serious and growing concern: the vilification in state after state of teachers and other school employees, as critics seek to silence their voices in the debate on how to improve America’s public schools.

Everyone it seems, whether or not they have teaching experience or an education background, knows how teachers should do their jobs, be evaluated and paid. Some proposals are based on valid research, but increasingly governors and state elected officials are pushing legislation and policies that paint teachers as obstacles that should be removed from decisions involving what goes on in the classroom.

Cast by some politicians as the enemy standing in the way of improving schools, teachers have become the target of choice. These politicians are using the current budget crises as an opportunity to turn public opinion against teachers and other school employees — all in the name of education reform.

The sense of triumph from Fall 2008 has turned into a real sense of fear, following fall 2010. The headline news was the recapture of the US House, fueled by the Tea Party. More significantly, there was a sea change in the state legislatures of the US, toward the conservative end of the Republican Party. These are the people who make the real decisions on where a state will and won't spend money, and very few of that new majority in any state will have the interests of the teachers' union held dear to heart. Many of them ran on the promise to reign the public sector unions in.

As appalled as he is about the situation in our schools, OS doesn't think that it's good to beat teachers up. It's a tough job, and those who do it well are part of the glue that holds a county or city together. However, the US as a culture has done an abysmal job of educating its young for forty years, and we are really feeling the effects of that failure. The militancy of the teachers' unions during that same period has not proven wise. The message has been perceived to be: 'Give us more, and we'll deliver more.' The taxpayer delivered massively more money, a huge bureaucracy was built, and the schools deteriorated.

Very easy to direct one's ire at a convenient target, in this case, the teachers' unions. Very easy to simply vilify, use that broad tar brush. The unions, without a doubt, are part of the problem, and their protests of innocence are aggravating. But they are only a part of the problem.

In the meantime, for those with kids in school: You likely have some good teachers in the building, spitting in the wind of a hostile culture. Offer to help, and offer words of good cheer as you can. Make as sure as you can that your family and your kids are not part of the problems they face every day.

Your state is out of money, and jobs and pensions are going to be reduced. The jobs may come back, but those pension and bennies packages won't. That's just math. Vilifying your local teacher won't solve the math problem.

As members of the union, they'll have to soon sort out what to do about a leadership that has led them over the cliff. Vitriol directed at your local teacher will only harden and strengthen the hand of the hard-core statists now at the helm.

International Test Results In Reading, Math, Science: Shanghai Wins

OS keeps coming back to the same tired theme: We have major economic challenges as a result of the terrible way we have behaved as a culture for the past several decades.

The results have been published for the Program for International Student Assessment. Fifteen-year-olds around the world were tested for reading, math and sciences.

Here's a summary chart.

You'll have to keep scrolling down to find the United States students. Past Shanghai, Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong (Keep going, bubbah, this'll take a while!), Australia, Canada, etc.

Go browsing this evening to view the condition of Shanghai in 1945, to get a bit of perspective.

Now, what does this mean? By the time a kid is fifteen, his/her work ethic and intellectual curiosity is pretty well set in stone. There are exceptions, and OS has witnessed a blessed few of them, but they are exceptions. That means that the generation of kids now fifteen will struggle to compete with their peers in a global economy for the next fifty years!

Remember Jimmy Carter? OS does! This is the guy, who in payment for the votes of the NEA, established a new Cabinet department: The Department of Education. The message was as follows: Write us checks. Big ones. Bigger ones each subsequent year. If you don't do that, you are anti-educashun, and you obviously hate children.

We'll take it from here, and deliver you a wonderful educashon system, assuming you write us more checks, keep yoh' mouths shut, and don't question the experts, e.g., us. The NEA, Department of Education, and Democrat Party have lived hand-in-glove for over thirty years now. Hundreds of billions, poured down the rat-hole.

This hasn't worked well at all. The results are simply inexcusable.

For a sampling of what the NEA feeds its constituency on a daily basis, go here.

Time to begin the debate in earnest about what to do. It must begin with the admission of failure.

In the meantime, Mom and Dad, if you can--homeschool or private-school. If you can't do that, understand that the public schools have failed, and one way or another, you'll have to see that Junior arrives to adulthood as an educated person.

Best wishes.