Category Archives: Fail

Reflections

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Moochelle is in the news again. She and her food Nazis have failed in at least two schools. The story appeared on Drudge yesterday. Two schools, and they are not the first, have dropped out of the government school lunch program. Why? “It’s nasty,” say the kids.

Missouri, Alabama schools drop Michelle O’s lunch program

September 17, 2014

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – New federal school food regulations promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama are becoming a massive headache for many schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program.

dumplunchAnd many, like Missouri’s Notre Dame Regional and Saxony Lutheran high schools, are taking matters into their own hands.

Those schools and numerous others across the country are ditching the federal regulations and the funding that comes with them to save their cafeteria programs, which have experienced a nose-dive in sales and skyrocketing waste since the new rules were implemented in 2012.

At Notre Dame, school officials turned to the professionals at My Daddy’s Cheesecake, Papa John’s, Tractors Classic American Grill and Chick-fil-A to bring in nutritious and tasty meals students enjoy for “restaurant Wednesdays,” SEMissourian.com reports.

Notre Dame’s lunch participation had dropped to about half of its 565 students and 65 faculty members under the federal guidelines, but jumped drastically to about 75 percent once officials did away with the tight restrictions on calories, fat, sodium,  whole grains, and numerous other aspects of school meals.

“The biggest change is that you don’t have to be so strict with your menus. You don’t have to keep track of all the sodium and calories,” Notre Dame food service director Joan Dunning told SEMissourian.com.

“You can go back to a little more home cooking and not have to analyze it all to death, and by doing that can make it a little more tasty. You can put a little more butter or margarine in the vegetables,” she said, which means students are “not throwing it in the trash like they did before.”

Saxony Lutheran is also offering Chick-fil-A for lunch on Tuesdays and breakfast on Fridays, as well as chicken wings on Thursdays. By discarding the federal regulations, the district can now also offer chips, snack crackers, protein bars, muffins, cereal and Pop Tarts, many of which were banned until this year, the news site reports.

“We want to make sure we’re serving a well-rounded, healthy, balanced meal,” Saxony principal Mark Ruark told SEMissourian.com. “We don’t think the current federal guidelines give kids enough calories to sustain (them), especially those in extracurricular activities.”

“Kids will not eat what doesn’t taste good,” he said.

That’s the same conclusion parents and school officials in Alabama are coming to.

At Cleburne County Schools, where lunch participation dropped by 29 percent under Michelle O’s rules, Maria Gilbert said her children will no longer eat school food. Her 11th grader says it’s “nasty” and has opted to bring microwave food from home, at least until the school removed the appliance from the cafeteria. Gilbert said she’s often forced to find a quick meal for her famished kids after school, AnnisonStar.com reports.

“The drive-through at McDonald’s is always full after school as Gilbert and other parents stop to feed their hungry children on the way home, she said,” according to the news site.

“Many of the student athletes need four times more calories than an average school lunch provides and therefore are bringing their lunch,” superintendent Claire Dryden told the Annison Star.

The district’s lunch sales have plummeted from 106,362 meals served in 2012-13 to 75,610 last year because of the federal lunch mandates, she said.

Statewide, lunch sales went from 131.9 million meals in 2011-12 to 127.1 million last year – a decrease of 4.8 million meals, the news site reports.

In Ohio, it’s the same story.

“We are seeing a trend where meal counts are going down just because students aren’t accepting all the changes that are taking place,” Ohio School Nutrition Association member Jeni Lange told ABC.

“There are fewer students eating.”

Experts at the National School Lunch Association estimate 1 million fewer students eat lunch at school than when the regulations went into effect in 2012.

A National School Nutrition Association survey also found food waste is up in 81.2 percent of schools nationwide, and a study by Cornell and Bringham Young universities estimates the waste at $4 million per day. Students in Los Angeles schools alone are throwing away $100,000 in food per day, ABC reports.

“I have to think that across the country, it has to be a staggering amount of food going to waste and I think there are people out there who could really use that food,” said Gene Kirchner, superintendent of  Fort Thomas Independent Schools near Cincinnati, another district that dropped out of the National School Lunch Program.

“The biggest change is that you don’t have to be so strict with your menus. You don’t have to keep track of all the sodium and calories,” Notre Dame food service director Joan Dunning told SEMissourian.com.

“You can go back to a little more home cooking and not have to analyze it all to death, and by doing that can make it a little more tasty. You can put a little more butter or margarine in the vegetables,” she said, which means students are “not throwing it in the trash like they did before.”

Saxony Lutheran is also offering Chick-fil-A for lunch on Tuesdays and breakfast on Fridays, as well as chicken wings on Thursdays. By discarding the federal regulations, the district can now also offer chips, snack crackers, protein bars, muffins, cereal and Pop Tarts, many of which were banned until this year, the news site reports.

“We want to make sure we’re serving a well-rounded, healthy, balanced meal,” Saxony principal Mark Ruark told SEMissourian.com. “We don’t think the current federal guidelines give kids enough calories to sustain (them), especially those in extracurricular activities.”

“Kids will not eat what doesn’t taste good,” he said.

That’s the same conclusion parents and school officials in Alabama are coming to.

At Cleburne County Schools, where lunch participation dropped by 29 percent under Michelle O’s rules, Maria Gilbert said her children will no longer eat school food. Her 11th grader says it’s “nasty” and has opted to bring microwave food from home, at least until the school removed the appliance from the cafeteria. Gilbert said she’s often forced to find a quick meal for her famished kids after school, AnnisonStar.com reports.

“The drive-through at McDonald’s is always full after school as Gilbert and other parents stop to feed their hungry children on the way home, she said,” according to the news site.

“Many of the student athletes need four times more calories than an average school lunch provides and therefore are bringing their lunch,” superintendent Claire Dryden told the Annison Star.

The district’s lunch sales have plummeted from 106,362 meals served in 2012-13 to 75,610 last year because of the federal lunch mandates, she said.

Statewide, lunch sales went from 131.9 million meals in 2011-12 to 127.1 million last year – a decrease of 4.8 million meals, the news site reports.

In Ohio, it’s the same story.

“We are seeing a trend where meal counts are going down just because students aren’t accepting all the changes that are taking place,” Ohio School Nutrition Association member Jeni Lange told ABC.

“There are fewer students eating.”

Experts at the National School Lunch Association estimate 1 million fewer students eat lunch at school than when the regulations went into effect in 2012.

A National School Nutrition Association survey also found food waste is up in 81.2 percent of schools nationwide, and a study by Cornell and Bringham Young universities estimates the waste at $4 million per day. Students in Los Angeles schools alone are throwing away $100,000 in food per day, ABC reports.

“I have to think that across the country, it has to be a staggering amount of food going to waste and I think there are people out there who could really use that food,” said Gene Kirchner, superintendent of  Fort Thomas Independent Schools near Cincinnati, another district that dropped out of the National School Lunch Program.

In one Vermont school district, officials devised a plan to “repurpose” their lunch waste as feed for about 3,000 hogs at a local pig farm. In Medina, Ohio, volunteer parent Marcie Henning is taking advantage of the massive waste in her district to feed the homeless and less fortunate.

“Operation Lunch” lunch was launched two years ago, when the new lunch rules were implemented and waste went through the roof, and has so far provided 35,000 items, including 1,314 fruit cups and 841 oranges and tangerines, to those who can’t afford a “healthy” lunch, ABC reports.

“Students donate nutritious food to those who need it so it won’t go in the trash,” Henning told ABC.

In one Vermont school district, officials devised a plan to “repurpose” their lunch waste as feed for about 3,000 hogs at a local pig farm. In Medina, Ohio, volunteer parent Marcie Henning is taking advantage of the massive waste in her district to feed the homeless and less fortunate.

“Operation Lunch” lunch was launched two years ago, when the new lunch rules were implemented and waste went through the roof, and has so far provided 35,000 items, including 1,314 fruit cups and 841 oranges and tangerines, to those who can’t afford a “healthy” lunch, ABC reports.

“Students donate nutritious food to those who need it so it won’t go in the trash,” Henning told ABC.

The School Lunch program was bad before Moochelle stuck her hands into it. It is the usual ‘one-size-fits-all’ federal program that fits none. No two kids are alike. None are the same in their food likes or needs. Active kids need more, especially those engaged in athletics. The feds take none of that into account in their regulations. Like most (all?) federal programs, it fails to meet its original intent and the results are the opposite of the goals of the program. That won’t stop the feds from forcing this—and other programs down our throats.

When I was in grade school, I attended a small county school. It was originally an endowment of fifteen acres. In the late 1920s, the school was a one room brick building. It had plenty of funding…there was an oil well on the school property and the endowment included mineral rights. By the time I attended the school, the one-room brick building had expanded. It had three classrooms, indoor restrooms, school office, a basement with a cafeteria and central heating (coal, no A/C), a gym and stage. The enrollment had grown to 80 students. The employees were three teachers, a circuit music teacher who traveled between three small schools, two cooks and a full-time janitor/school bus driver. At one time, my mother was the Principal, and my older sister was the music teacher.

But this reflection isn’t so much about the school as it is about the cafeteria and the food.  The two cooks were local widows. Neither had dietary degrees but both had raised large families and had either grandchildren or nephews and nieces attending school. They received menus from the state as part of the school lunch program.

That program was much different then. It was menus provided by the state as guidelines, and the ability to buy bulk food from the US Department of Agriculture. The food was delivered in large, multi-gallon cans…all of it. Not only canned fruits and vegetables, but also meat. I remember some had US Army and US Navy stamped into the metal of some of the cans.

If it came in a can, we found it on our lunch table. I think the only items that didn’t was our Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas hams. On the last school day before each holiday, a truck arrived just before lunchtime from a local bakery. The truck delivered cooked turkeys and dressing, or baked hams. It was an arrangement the school had with the bakery.

The typical menu was one or two meat offerings, two or three vegetables and dessert. We paid a dollar a week for milk except for the kids on Relief. They got theirs free. The school received a voucher for their milk costs each month. For another 2¢ a day, we could have chocolate milk. Twice a month, we were marched down in the afternoon to the cafeteria for orange juice, a single 8oz glass for each of us.

We, the students, were a bit weird with our food. One of the menu items was spaghetti with meat sauce. The state required the usual two vegetables on the menu. By popular request, one of those vegetables was peas. To this day, I like to add and mix peas to my spaghetti.

Another menu offering was meat balls. For some reason, meat balls never appeared on the menu with spaghetti. I guess it was because both were meat items. The meat balls were hand made and were about the size of a baseball. They were baked in an oven, and just before lunch, they were allowed to simmer in a 5-gallon pot of spaghetti sauce. Another of the standard vegetables were potatoes. When we went through the line, the meat ball came first, mashed potatoes came next. We would ask the cook to dump the potatoes on top of the meatball and add some spaghetti sauce as gravy. I don’t remember what the other vegetable was. I have a faint memory of having corn on the cob sitting next to a mound of mashed potatoes covered with spaghetti sauce.

Each meal was accompanied by one or two desserts. We usually knew what was on the menu by the smell rising up the stairwell from the cafeteria. Desserts were baked in the cafeteria each day in two of the four ovens in the kitchen. One of the cooks worked in a local bakery during the summer. Every day, the cooks baked pies and sheet cakes. On occasion, they would make pudding, vanilla or chocolate, with graham-crackers added.

Unlike the students in the article above, we rarely dumped food. Usually, we went back for seconds and thirds until the food was gone. Anything that was left over, went home with the cooks for their suppers. I don’t remember any days when the cooks did not take something home but it wasn’t much. Just enough for one or two people. I do remember a few occasions when, for some reason or another, we had leftover desserts. The students were allow to take some dessert home as did the teachers. Since all the kids rode buses to and from school, I don’t think any dessert survived long enough to reach home.

To us, dumping food was rare. The only thing I remember that was not well received was the day we were served ham and lima/butter beans. Some of the kids loved it. I didn’t nor did most of the other students. I remember one day when my mother was teaching at the school when she was offered a gallon of ham and lima beans to take home. She didn’t. She nor Dad liked them. I wondered, on occasion, who did get the beans. Whomever it was, I was thankful it wasn’t us.

I suppose the success of that grade school cafeteria was the cooks. They were both widows and had lost husbands and sons in WW2 or Korea. The state provided menus, suggested menus, but the cooks provided the recipes. One dessert I’ve never forgotten and my wife has never been able to recreate was applesauce pie. Take a normal pie crust and fill it, not with apples, but with applesauce. Normally, when you try to serve a wedge of applesauce pie, the applesauce runs out leaving the crust behind. The applesauce pie served in our cafeteria didn’t have the filling run out. When a wedge was cut out, the filling remained inside the crust just like any other fruit pie. I don’t know how they did that. I’ve considered they may have added some gel to the applesauce but that wouldn’t work until the pie had cooled.

Ah, memories. I have fond ones of that old grade school cafeteria. What kind of memories are being made from today’s school cafeterias? Not fondness, I would bet. More likely, revulsion.

Let’s never forget. Governmental tyranny comes in many forms. Moochelles food nazis are just one example.

 

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Friday Follies for March 14, 2014

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Coyotes are back. Mrs. Crucis and I were awaken around 1:30am when several coyotes started howling. That was soon followed by yipping, then growling and fighting. I fear one of my neighbors let their pet stay outside in the warmer weather and they became lunch for the coyotes.

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If you are not, what Rush calles a ‘low information’ voter, or not interested in the news, you may not have seen this Drudge headline:

DOJ PULLS FBI OFF HARRY REID

It appears the FBI investigators were getting too close and were about to get the real dirt on Harry Reid. Holder couldn’t let that happen, so he recalled the FBI. They asked, and someone granted permission, to give the local Utah prosecutors their case…along with all the evidence. It’s up to those local prosecutors, now, to do the job that rightfully belongs to the FBI. ‘Course, that assumes we have a law-abiding federal administration, not the criminals currently in authority in the DOJ.

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Chrissy Matthews must have read my post earlier this week. He’s throwing in the towel on the dems retaining the Senate after November.

Chris Matthews is already bracing for a disappointing November for Democrats, and he sees little that can be done to change that outcome.

“It’s going to be very hard to hold the Senate — I think the Senate goes,” he said on Morning Joe on Thursday. “I think we heard from the Ghost of Christmas Future this week; they’re going to lose the Senate,” he added, referring to Republican David Jolly’s victory Tuesday in Florida’s special congressional election.

Matthews offered his own campaign advice for Democrats if they want to minimize the damage this fall: Go all-in on scare tactics. He encouraged Democrats to up the ante on various issues, such as framing voter-ID laws as attacks on minorities and pro-life measures as attacks on abortion rights. — The National Review.

According to Matthews, the only hope for democrats is to lie and smear their opponents. Isn’t that business as usual for democrats?

Matthews looked at the results of the Florida Jolly (R) vs. Sink (D) election and panicked. The democrats used their usual tactics in a district that twice voted for Obama. It was a done deal, they thought.

Sink campaigned on the usual democrat Eco-wacko topics and attempted to paint Jolly is a “flat-earth” denier. Jolly didn’t take the bait. Instead he hammered on one issue—time, after time, after time: Obamacare. Jolly, an unknown Washington lobbyist won. Sink, the democrat golden-girl didn’t.

‘Pubbies, there is a lesson there if you’re smart enough to learn it.

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Erick Erickson has a column today about Lindsey Graham selling us out on another ‘hot mic’ incident recently. Do you ever wonder why you never hear about these incidents on the MSM. You shouldn’t. They only mention ‘hot mic’ bloopers when it affects ‘pubs. In this case, they didn’t want anyone to know Graham was betraying us again—especially before a primary.

IMF Bailout Exposes Schism in Party

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  March 13th, 2014 at 03:50 PM

If you are looking for an illustration of why we need to replace most of these failed Republican incumbents, look no further than Lindsey Graham’s hot mic comment to John Kerry today.

As I noted earlier, Senate Democrats have attached to the Ukraine bill an IMF bailout that will weaken our power on the international stage.  McConnell and the Senate Republican Surrender Conference are willing to capitulate.  However, as of now, Speaker Boehner is opposed to the IMF provision.  Take a look at this video and watch Lindsey Graham sell us out to Kerry.   After Kerry pitched the IMF proposal to the Senate committee, Graham was caught reassuring Kerry: “Hey John, good job. Let me know what I can do to help you with Boehner.”

This type of behavior will not change with a Senate majority so long as the same members are in charge.

On the other hand, Senator Cruz is taking the lead on the issue.  He is sending a letter to Senate colleagues urging them to oppose this rider to the Ukraine loan bill.

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Obama continually amazes me with his stupidity and lack of business and economic sense. I guess if you’re a ‘community organizer’ you don’t need intelligence. His latest scheme for income equality concerns overtime.

Obama signs order to revise overtime pay rules

By |

President Obama on Thursday unveiled his latest initiative to boost workers’ pay, saying he wanted to “restore the common-sense principle behind overtime.”

Obama signed an executive order directing the Labor Department to develop new rules to expand the number of Americans who can receive overtime pay. The president was joined by workers he said would benefit from the strengthened rules at a White House event.

The move is the latest executive action Obama has taken this year to push his economic agenda in the face of opposition from the GOP-controlled House. He has signed orders raising the minimum wage for new federal contract workers and created new public-private partnerships on manufacturing and education.

Obama has said that he will work with Congress on his economic agenda where he can but will move unilaterally where lawmakers fail to act.

“I’m going to do what I can on my own to raise wages for more hardworking Americans,” the president pledged.

“I’m going to use my pen to give more Americans the chance to earn the overtime pay they deserve,” he continued. “If you have to work more, you should get paid more.”

The president is asking Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to expand the number of workers who qualify for overtime by revising an exemption that allows employers to avoid paying overtime to employees deemed to have managerial positions and who are paid more than $455 a week.

For most of my working life, I’ve been salaried. I did work hourly for a short period before I went into the Air Force (no overtime allowed per union rules.) Thereafter I was in salaried positions as a manager or as a professional. My boss told me that being salaried meant I never had to ask for overtime. I was paid to get the job done, not by the hour. He was right. I usually worked more than forty hours per week. Often, much more than forty, much, much more.

The difference was that as a salaried manager or engineering profession, I wasn’t paid overtime…nor did I expect it. If I met my work goals, I kept my job. If I exceeded those goals, I received a bonus at the end of the year. Frequently those bonuses were five-digit ones.

Under Obama, that would all change. No more bonuses and overtime would be strictly regulated—read that is seldom. You see, overtime is an expense that must be budgeted and funded up front.

Bonuses are paid from the profits you helped make for your employer. No profits, no bonus. Overtime, however, has to be paid, if actually worked, regardless of profitability.

What will be the result of this scheme? Fewer jobs. The cost of doing business just went up. Employers must budget costs against expected revenue. If that revenue doesn’t appear, the company takes a profitability hit. No profits, no jobs.

Democrats and liberal just can’t, or won’t, understand that simple piece of business math. Increased cost, such as making all those formerly salaried jobs, hourly, is a cost…an expense. It’s no joke Rush Limbaugh calls his show and his products, ‘profit’ centers. All too many employers have people work in ‘cost’ centers.

What’s the difference? HR, for example, is an expense, a cost of doing business.  Their primary purpose is to insure a company complies with employment—local, state, and federal, law. Salesmen sell. They bring revenue to the company. They are a profit center. HR = cost, Sales = revenue. HR is on the expense side the balance sheet, Sales are on the income side of that same sheet. When costs exceeds or equals income, the company makes no profit. No profit, no company and no jobs. Isn’t that easy to understand?

Obama is just stupid, stupid, stupid!

 

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A Rose by any other name…

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There have been strange items appearing in the news today. Cuba has announced that “everyone” will pay taxes in the future. In general, the Cuban people have not paid taxes since the 1959 revolution—the country was subsidized by the former USSR. That ended in the 1990s.

With the reshuffle of their government two years ago, small, low-level capitalism was allowed in Cuba. Some were small business, a few were small private farms. The Cuban government wanted their share of those small successes.

It wasn’t enough. Now the Cuban government says everyone will pay taxes, not just those few “greedy” capitalists.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.  The parasite class in the US was sold a bill of goods by Obama and the dems declaring a plethora of free goodies. They, too, will discover like Cubans, that the list of freebies will end and someday the bill will come due. For the parasite class, that will begin next year with the first portions of Obamacare is implemented.

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Here in Missouri, and I expect in many other states across the nation, conservative groups are gathering to form a unified platform they hope to implement in the Republican Party. Included in these groups are conservative ‘Pubs, Libertarians, Constitutionalists and Ron Paul supporters.

The hoped for fusion of these groups is to create an opposing force against the tactics of the ‘Pub establishment and the rule changes the establishment forced through in last Summer’s convention. They have a long list of grievances against the ‘Pub establishment—most of them well justified.

The discussions have, for the most part, been limited to private Facebook groups and other private lists. The initial goal of these groups is to work within the party to force a bottom-up change to core the party. Most of the members but not all, recognize that unification means power. They don’t want to create a new third party. A third party doesn’t have sufficient power to enact change—witness the futility of the Libertarians and the Constitution party. No, their goals are to change the nature of the Republican party, to stop the slide towards being just another democrat party, to reform the ‘Pubs to the original conservative, small government party of Reagan and Goldwater.

I haven’t seen much unification so far. All the motivations that created the conservative splintering still exists. The Libertarians cling to their party manifesto with its legalization of drugs and emasculation of themilitary. The Ron Paul faction still has their personality cult. It is now shifting to Rand Paul with the expectation that he, Rand Paul, is a clone of his father. That’s not yet proven. And, the Constitutionalists still hate the ‘Pubs for all their supposed offenses against conservatism.

So the name calling, the backbiting and backstabbing continues. Maybe, just maybe, these divergent groups will settle their differences and merge into a single force for change in the Republican Party. I’m not confident of their success. It will be interesting to see what happens. After all, as the old story goes, “Perhaps the horse will learn to sing.”

***

authoritarian
Definition:
au·thor·i·tar·i·an
1. strict and demanding obedience: favoring strict rules and established authority
2. demanding political obedience: belonging to or believing in a political system in which obedience to the ruling person or group is strongly enforced
au·thor·i·tar·i·an NOUN
au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism NOUN

Synonyms: strict, tyrannical, demanding, totalitarian, despotic, absolute, dictatorial, autocratic

Antonyms: liberal

Why bring this up? Well, Harry Reid is attempting to create a dictatorship in  the Senate with himself as the dictator. How? By eliminating the fulibuster…the sole remaining weapon of the ‘Pubs against a rubber stamp for Obama’s political appointments and foreign treaties. The dems were all against this when the ‘Pubs controlled the Senate prior to 2006 and they were the “obstructionists.”

Reid threatens filibuster change

McConnell hits back, says move threatens collegiality

By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times, Monday, November 26, 2012

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Monday he will push to change Senate rules and curtail some Republican filibusters next year, setting up a major test of collegiality and power politics in the usually chummy chamber that bills itself as “the world’s most exclusive club.”

Republicans said that if Mr. Reid goes ahead, he’ll not only ruin the unique nature of the Senate, but he’ll poison chances for bipartisan cooperation just as members of the next Congress are taking their seats in January.

The back-and-forth spilled over onto the Senate floor Monday, with Mr. Reid facing off against Sen. Mitch McConnell, the chamber’s top Republican, in a rare and acrid head-to-head debate.

“This is no exaggeration. What these Democrats have in mind is a fundamental change to the way the Senate operates, for the purposes of consolidating their own power,” the Kentucky Republican said. “In the name of efficiency, they would prevent the very possibility of compromise and threaten to make the disputes of the past few years look like mere pillow fights.”

The fight is not only about the filibuster, but the way the Senate writes all of its rules — of which the filibuster is just one example.

Mr. Reid plans to use his newly expanded majority to make the changes on the first day of the new Congress next year, which is the only time rules can be adopted on a simple majority vote. Any other time, a rules change requires a two-third vote, and most major changes are done through the two-thirds method.

Mr. Reid, though, said Republican blockades of bill after bill have left him no choice but to use the majority route — dubbed the “nuclear option” in some quarters — and said voters in this month’s elections showed they want faster action in the chamber.

“We’re going to follow the rules to make a couple of minor changes to make this place more efficient, and that’s what the Senate has always been about, is revising itself to become more efficient,” Mr. Reid said, dismissing GOP “threats” as bluster and wondering, “What more could they do to us?”

If Harry Reid is successful, the minority party—the ‘Pubs, will be powerless. A simple majority—which the dems already have, will be sufficient to pass anything not already requiring 2/3rds of the Senate. And, with this rule change, those 2/3rd requirements could be changed to require simple majorities as well. That is the real danger of Reid’s proposal.

Our government is funded by a series of “continuing resolutions” not a budget. The Senate has become a democrat rubber-stamp. Obama continues to act like a dictator ignoring the Constitution whenever it prohibits his acts. And 51% of the voters lap at the public trough.

It’s going to be a rough four years.

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Signs of a failing nation: Education

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This post is the third of the theme of the trend towards failure of our current civilization. Monday’s post was on the subject of factionalism. Yesterday’s post was on the failure to secure our borders. Today’s subject is the failure of education.

The failure of education is not solely a US issue.  We see the same trends in Europe and other “first world” countries.  There is opposition of this trend in southern Asia (India) and coastal Asia, Taiwan, Japan and portions of coastal China.

Anyone here in the US over the age of 50 can see how education has changed.  When I was in elementary and high school, we were taught, reading, US and global geography. We were required to memorize all US  and Canada state capitols, European geography, borders, major rivers and national capitols, the same for the Mideast, Africa, Asia and the major Pacific Islands.  Surprisingly, we didn’t study the territory of the former USSR because, “the Soviets kept changing the city names and internal boundaries and we can’t keep up.”  That statement was from one of my high school teachers—a WW2 and Korean War disabled veteran.

We were also taught writing—handwriting specifically, grammar and composition along with government, US and Western History.  

We were required to take and pass state examinations on our state (Illinois) constitution and US constitution for graduation from high school. If  you didn’t pass, you re-took that test until you passed or you didn’t graduate.  Many students took the class in their Junior year. The class was taught again during summer-school for those who failed the first time.

My mother was a teacher. She started teaching me to read when I was four years old. I was able to read the comics in our local paper when I was in the first grade.  I wasn’t unusual, many first-graders could read enough to read the comics. 

It was the stated goal in my country school that every child would have the reading skills to read and comprehend the newspaper—not just the comics, but also the front page.  We were taught phonics to enhance reading. We were taught the relationship between letters and combination of letters and sounds. And, we were taught to use the dictionary. Every third-grade student was required to have a dictionary in their desk.  If parents didn’t have one at home, one could be purchased through the school and the parents would be billed.

Now take a look at the list above and compare that with our current school curriculum.  Reading? Sight reading, no phonics. Spelling? Not in my local school district. When I was in grade school, we posted our spelling, math, drawing, and samples of our handwriting on the school room’s walls. We had monthly PTA meeting—at night so everyone could attend. If a parent worked at night, the other parent attended.  Parents roamed the school rooms and closely examined their children’s scores and compared those scores to others in their class. Kids who scored low often received a spanking when they got home.

Returning to the comparison between then and now. We were taught geography. Not today. We were taught writing and composition, not today. We were required to take and pass state tests on US and state governments. Not today. We were taught US and World/Western history.  If taught today, the lesson must adhere to socialist philosophy and has been heavily altered to conform to political correctness—regardless of the validity of those changes.

The Wisconsin teachers are upset with changes proposed by Scott Walker.  Earlier this week it was revealed the 66% of Wisconsin 8th graders did not score as “proficient.”

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”    

Those of us who are old enough to remember the education of ourselves recognize the failure of education of today.  Today, we have “social” promotions in school and graduate students who are functionally illiterate.  We have the education system who supports open registration for our colleges and universities regardless of test scores. The failure rates of first and second year university students is astounding and largely ignored.

How can we expect our future generations to be capable of self-government when they have no understanding of our representative republic and how that is different from mobocracy democracy?

Civilization requires an educated populace. When my generation passes, that will no longer exist.
             

Cartoon of the Day: Michael Ramirez

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I suddenly got swamped with some projects and helping a friend fix her computer.  Consequently, I’ve not had time to research for a regular post for today.  Tomorrow may be no better. While I’m tied up, here a Michael Ramirez cartoon that “may” educate some so-called journalists. I’m not holding my breath.

        

Something different…DRM fails

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With all the hoo-ha coming from the state media about AZ, I’m going in another direction for today—DRM, or Digital Rights Management. It’s the dream of those who worry about piracy, of unauthorized duplication of their products.  Mostly for music, video, and electronic books.

Some information has come to light.  First DRM fails.  It’s too easy to strip off.  There are free products on the internet that will allow anyone to strip DRM in a few seconds.  Second, it appears that if your product is being pirated, it’s a  good thing because most likely your sales are going up too.  It’s scarcity that drives piracy.  If people can buy your product, they won’t pirate.  

This interview gives some background on this bit of information.

What’s the current impact of piracy on the book publishing industry?

Brian O'LearyBrian O’Leary: We don’t know. Some people will tell you that it’s the biggest problem facing publishing or that ebook piracy will kill publishing. None of those perspectives are informed by solid data.
We undertook research two-and-a-half-years ago with O’Reilly, and we’ve been studying Thomas Nelson as well, to measure the impact of piracy on paid content sales. We approached it as if it were cooperative marketing. We would look at the impact of what sales looked like before there was piracy, say for four to eight weeks, and then we’d look at the impact of piracy afterward. Essentially, if the net impact of piracy is negative, then you would see sales fall off more quickly after piracy; if it were positive, the opposite.
Data that we collected for the titles O’Reilly put out showed a net lift in sales for books that had been pirated. So, it actually spurred, not hurt, sales. But we were only looking at O’Reilly and Thomas Nelson. The results are not emblematic of publishing overall. It could be more conservative, it could be less conservative. We just don’t have enough data. I’ve tried to get other publishers to join in, but it really hasn’t been a successful mission. Even at a low- or no-cost offer, publishers seem reluctant to collect the data required to reveal the true impact of book piracy.

Can content tracking tools, such as those from Attributor, curb piracy?

BO: Companies like Attributor gather data that specifies how many files were uploaded or downloaded from pirate sites. Their methodology, to me, is a little problematic, but that’s not really the big problem. The most significant challenge is we don’t know what the impact is on paid sales. Common methodologies count the number of times that something appears on a site and assumes every one of those is a lost sale.
I would offer two counter points: First, the method for counting downloads of pirated books is clunky at best. Second, you can’t say that every download is equivalent to a lost sale. Some are, but there’s at least some likelihood that the pirated titles either spurred sales or represented a download that never would have resulted in a sale anyway.
The other thing, too, is you’ve got to look at where the downloads occur. If it’s a North American title and the downloads occurred in Romania, I’m not that worried about it if I’m a publisher. It actually, if anything, says to me I should be moving my English language rights and my translation rights faster.
It’s not that piracy is not a problem, it’s just that it’s not demonstratively a problem until you know what’s actually happening.
…
Some companies are focused on applying fairly strict DRM software to their digital books. I’m pretty adamant on DRM: It has no impact whatsoever on piracy. Any good pirate can strip DRM in a matter of seconds to minutes. A pirate can scan a print copy easily as well. DRM is really only useful for keeping people who otherwise might have shared a copy of a book from doing so.
…
Is piracy really a threat to the book industry?
BO: I don’t have enough data to say unequivocally “yes” or “no” to the extent of the piracy threat. I think what leads to rampant piracy is not meeting emergent demands. The publishing industry should be working as hard as we can to develop new and innovative business models that meet the needs of readers. And what those look like could be community-driven. I think of Baen Books, for example, which doesn’t put any DRM restrictions on its content but is one of the least pirated book publishers.
As to sales, Paulo Coelho is a good example. He mines the piracy data to see if there’s a burgeoning interest for his books in a particular country or market. If so, he either works to get his book out in print or translate it in that market.
I think piracy has become more acute with ebooks, not because ebooks are easily pirated but because ebooks are easily visible. So, for example, if I’m living in South Africa and I speak English, but I want to read Nora Roberts, and Nora Roberts is only published in North America, I might have to wait through a four-year cycle to get her latest book. That lead time made sense when it was about ink on paper. But if it’s an ebook, as a reader, I want to read it today — I love Nora Roberts, and I’d pay for her latest book, but I can’t get it here because there’s no service that will sell me an ebook in South Africa. That’s when piracy starts to occur. Readers say: “I would have paid for it, but they wouldn’t give it to me. They frustrated my demand.”


There is more at the website. It’s interesting. Piracy is an indication of demand unfilled.