American’s Aren’t Buying Teacher Union Thuggery Anymore…

The Teacher’s unions in Wisconsin are showing the union agenda again to the American people and the American people are not buying. Public School Teachers are well paid in this country. People talk about how they are underpaid but when you compare wages with the people that pay the teachers through taxes, the benefit packages, and the number of hours worked in a year, teachers are well paid. It is not a job for everyone but neither is being a computer programmer.


The reality is that the way education is structured, teachers work for the taxpayers and parents. They don’t work for “greedy corporations” that are trying to “screw” them while management takes home hefty profits on the backs of those teachers. That argument doesn’t work because the people have only one agenda for their kid’s education; they want the best they can get for a fair price. The reality is the teachers in Wisconsin as well as many other teachers across the country don’t pay into health care or pension funds. Those tend to be outside the salary cost. Some areas have started to implement small changes but overall the public sector is way out of balance from the people that pay the bills in the private sector.

There is a financial reality with most public careers; an inherent salary cap based on what taxpayers are willing to pay. If you think you are going to get rich working in the public sector you will not. Most public sector employees have moved beyond what most taxpayers believe to be fair wages and benefits. Public employees in most sectors make more than their private sector counterparts and that causes resentment. It is especially concerning when teachers complain and strike based on the very small concessions they are being asked to make. Teachers aren’t the most important people in a kid’s education, parents and family is. Teachers come in a close second but if we lost every teacher in the country tomorrow there are millions of well qualified individuals that could pick up and make sure our kids learn what they need to know to be productive citizens in society. To act as if public education is the Holy Grail is to be utopian. Just look at any inner city public school system and tell me that we need those schools?

There are great teachers in many schools around the country but the system is broken and we need to address the systemic problems. And one of the biggest problems is teacher unions. Teacher unions could care less about the kids. Unions are political arms that buy politicians to get more money for teachers and unions. The kids are just an excuse to take your money. Teachers unions take our hard earned tax money that is supposed to go to hard working teachers to pay Union bosses huge wages to distribute money to politicians to maintain mediocrity. Every dollar that goes to unions is a dollar that could have gone toward our kid’s education. Parents are done paying into this antiquated and failing system.

As the teachers and union members walk the streets of Wisconsin when they should be in school teaching, parents are taking it all in and are coming to the same conclusion; get back to work and get rid of these unions. Unions are political organizations that have no place in our classrooms. Good teachers will be rewarded and bad teachers fired fairly without unions. The taxpayer is tired of paying for useless political thugs that impede great education and creativity. The taxpayer wants to pay a fair wage and benefit package to good teachers. The taxpayers also want results for their investment.

The taxpayers aren’t greedy corporate executives. We are parents making sure our kids get the best education for the money we are investing. We are on to the Union thuggery and we are done paying for it…

Inner City Education is Paramount…

Education is the absolute key to success so why do we entrust it to politicians and teachers unions? Why would we place our most precious assets and source of future entrepreneurial creativity in the hands of people that are deep in the syrup of bureaucracy? It is not an argument about public and private but simply an argument about competence.


Have the unions that control the public schools in our inner cities acted competently? Have they found ways to educate our kids from difficult circumstances? The only answer we hear coming from the education bureaucracy in more money. More money has been tried and failed. Why? The consequences of failure have been neutralized by social welfare programs that incentivize a life style that has become acceptable for an entire generation of individuals. It is a crime against humanity. The people responsible for the education system in inner cities should be prosecuted for child abuse. Not because they have failed but because they have failed to adjust and innovate while accepting another generation of under educated inner city youth.

When the few do get through to the college level they end up needing remedial programs that are the result of the failures at the high school level. Education at the college level has become an overpriced extension of high school for too many individuals. Colleges and Universities are not focused on preparing kids for the work force they are simply milking a cash cow. The private colleges that focus on nursing, computer programming, business, accounting, etc…, are the only institutions living up to the promise an education offers.

What is needed is a fresh perspective on education at all levels that rejects the current structure and starts to transform using the new technologies available to today’s families. Home schooling should be expanded into community schools that offer incentives for small groups and families to work together in smaller settings in conjunction with technology centers and social hubs. One of the biggest stumbling blocks to changes is this propensity to hang on to the traditional High School experience that many parents remember as the “glory days”.

The glory days are gone for the kids in the inner city, and the cost of managing huge complexes of brick and mortar in a day when any building can be outfitted with the equipment to educate, needs to be cast off. A new day and way has to be adopted. Bringing together kids in the inner city to schools that attract drug dealers and criminals is no longer a model that works. We need to focus on learning, not buildings and sports teams. The sports, band, and other activities can be offered outside the traditional HS experience.

These are just a few ideas for our education bureaucrats. They will fight them tooth and nail but if we expect to end the bigotry of low expectations for our inner city kids we need a new approach. The one they keep dishing out is not working. Just walk through any inner city in this country and you will find kids being left behind for another generation of lost hopes and dreams.

Can we just try something new?

A Perfect Example…

I recently learned the High School I graduated from in 1977; John F Kennedy in the Bronx has finally closed its doors. I say finally because it has taken an ugly journey all too common with government run programs.

I was in the second graduating class of JFK. I was one of only a few in my neighborhood that attended a public High School. Most of my friend’s parents paid for their kids to go to Catholic High Schools known for teaching and discipline that graduated students competent enough to get a job or go to college. Most public High Schools in NYC were incubators of failure. But JFK did not start that way. That is one of the reasons my parents risked sending their oldest son to the school.

The school was approved for funding based on promises made to the neighborhood residents that surrounded the campus. Our families were told that JFK would be different; if the school was built the neighborhood would be guaranteed a good education, and would not suffer the fate of most of the other public schools in the city. The school was built, and for the four years I attended, many of the promises were realized.

The first principal of JFK High School was impressive and he took a no nonsense approach to education. Show up or get thrown out. Teachers were encouraged to teach and supported in their efforts to do so. Security was heavy to ensure “kids” with ill intent were kept out of classrooms and not allowed on the school grounds. He kept some sense of order.

The kids from the neighborhood came from decent family backgrounds not typical of most students in the inner city. The advantage of having interested and engaged families that supported the principal’s goals was a good foundation for the school’s academic success. For a little while the school operated with relative success for a public High School in the Bronx.

Over the years the school exploded to house over 6000 students. It was built for approximately 4000. The neighborhood changed and the parental engagement was replaced with gang activity. Eventually this activity resulted in a student being murdered at the school. The school achieved the ranking of being the worst High School in New York City. An achievement that I am truly sad to report being an Alumnus. An attempt was made to take the school and divide it into 6 different schools with a focus on different disciplines. The attempt to salvage the school with this effort failed.

So the inner city is left with a building built with hope and promise sitting empty. The public school system has failed another generation of inner city kids that will have less opportunity than their peers. It is heartbreaking to watch. It is really personal for me having seen it first hand and knowing that the answer is to allow private institutions to teach these kids. The answer is not to keep rewarding public schools with our tax dollars. The answer is more complex than just poor schools but if we don’t change the schools we will never break the chain of hopelessness for these inner city kids. We will pay tenfold for the failures of these schools and government dependency.

When will enough be enough? I’m not talking about money because NYC public schools spend in the vicinity of $15,000 a year per student, well over the countries average. When will we face reality that we need a solution that does not count on government bureaucracy? When will we let educational entrepreneurs take a shot at educating these kids? What have we got to lose?

Government run schools and programs always start with good intentions. Government programs always deliver the same results; failure. The government has no soul and cares nothing about the lives they destroy as long as politicians and bureaucrats get paid and keep their jobs. Government has proven test after test that they don’t understand the material and will continue to fail no matter how you mix up the questions on the test. Government does not deserve our trust or the trust of these victims within our cities. They are the most vulnerable because they can’t pick up and go to a better school in a better neighborhood. We need to bring better schools to them through private organizations with a passion to teach.

Trying something new is the least we can do for these kids. As public schools become havens for gangs, drugs, and danger these kids are left to the squalor of government and politics. They deserve a better effort on our part and what is the worst that can happen? These kids get an education that can save them from a life of dependency on a government that has failed them for generations…

The Tenth Amendment Rendered Meaningless…

If the governors of these United States don’t start stepping up to the plate in a more aggressive manner, the Tenth Amendment to the United States will be rendered meaningless. The constitution is already on life support, and the Tenth Amendment is the critical arguing point in this battle between centralized tyranny and local independence.


I shudder when I hear governors groveling at the altar of the federal government as Governor Elect Nikki Haley of South Carolina recently did when she asked the president to “allow South Carolina to opt out” of the healthcare bill. This is not constitutional leadership. We need our governors to start studying the history of this nation and start employing the same arguments that were made then, resulting in the Bill of Rights including the Tenth Amendment.


I get perplexed when I read our history and compare the political fights we are having today. It is appalling how weak our state governments have become compared to their domination at the founding of our country. Where did we go wrong? I believe the first fundamental principle we have allowed to slip is our understanding of history and our founding. Along the way politics, civics, and history have taken a back seat to pragmatism, and a casual undermining of our true history.


We have allowed big government advocates to paint big government as a compassionate institution that is there to help people. We have allowed the constitution and its fundamental principles to be undermined by tortured arguments by Supreme Court justices and power hungry presidents, as they mangled the original intent without a true debate of the ramifications these changes would have for future generations. We have allowed blind emotion to drive decisions that have destroyed millions of American lives with government dependency, and the only result; a few liberals feel good about themselves. We have forgotten how to argue on principle and have accepted short term gratification over standing on principle to achieve more difficult but sounder and moral results.


The Supreme Court has been allowed to become too powerful when the founders intent for the court was simply to determine the constitutionality of laws created by congress. It was never intended to be a body that created laws for the nation. It is an equal branch of government that has been used too often to provide cover for weak kneed politicians that don’t want to do the hard work they are constitutionally required to do. The states have become too complacent to bad federal law and have relegated their responsibility to provide for the states, rendering the Tenth Amendment meaningless.


When coal mine expansion in the state of West Virginia is being held up by a federal bureaucracy that is protecting bugs over jobs, and governors accept this as normal, the Tenth Amendment is rendered meaningless. When the federal government believes that a smelt is more important than the farmer in California, and the governor accepts this as normal, the Tenth Amendment is rendered meaningless. When our government is passing bills to force our kids to eat certain foods, and the governors accept this as normal, the Tenth Amendment is rendered meaningless. When the federal government continues to make decisions affecting state budgets beyond the scope of its constitutional authority, and governors accept this as normal, the Tenth Amendment is rendered meaningless.


History proves that the Tenth Amendment was critical in the passing of the United States Constitution, and without it the states would have never ratified the document. The arguments for and against ratification were passionate and revolved around a desperate fear that a central government would one day dominate and limit the freedoms that individuals had sacrificed their lives to ensure. Today we have a central government that people fear is stealing their individual liberty and ability to pursue happiness. The Tenth Amendment is not meaningless, it is the pivotal amendment to return the federal government to a limited role and to protect the liberties our founders fought so hard to achieve…

The War on Wealth…

The left in this country, including this president have waged a final battle against the creation of wealth in this country. Since our founding, the American spirit has been driven by opportunity to better one’s circumstance through industrious labors. The people that came to this great land were lured by only one thing; opportunity to improve their lives through hard work and limited government intrusion.

The world was a different place before America, and opportunity to create wealth for your own consumption was a “foreign” concept. Most citizens of the day worked to improve the standing of the ruling class. There was little opportunity for individuals to prosper in the pre-America world. The world’s economic output was often incentivized through fear, coercion, and force. Not until the new American Experiment did the world have the chance to see how much more effective economic growth could be when put into the hands of the individual and the rewards of that labor left in the hands that created it.

The creation of wealth in America became the fuel that lifted millions of people around the world out of the most despicable circumstances through the generosity and ability created by individual ingenuity and wealth. When individuals are incentivized through private property and keeping the fruits of labor it is no mystery as to why wealth explodes and raises the circumstances of all within a society. It is simply the harnessing of human nature. Our instinct to provide for ourselves actually fuels our instincts to help our neighbor. The problem we have seen in America is that for too long the wealthy have been fueling compassion, and the recipients have forgotten where this charity comes from.

The tax system has become a mechanism to take one man’s fruits and distribute them to another for no sensible reason. We have seen generations of low income Americans become locked in a system that breeds dependency and steals the incentive to make it on their own. This system has become an industry with the captains of that industry being politicians. These politicians have a self interest in perpetuating poverty and dependency. They fund their “industry” by demonizing the wealth creators, creating envy, punishing wealth, and redistributing the wealth through punitive taxation. This war on wealth has created a class of people that now believe they are entitled to the wealth that is created by these individuals.

We are becoming morally bankrupt as a nation when we believe a person’s success should be a source of scorn and disgust. The question is never “when is enough, enough for the individual wealth creators”. The reality is the more wealth they create the more goes back into society in the form of jobs, investment, and charity. It is not the government’s role in America to decide that question. The government has become over reaching and must be returned to its constitutional role once again. These wealth creators should be celebrated as they were at the founding of this great republic. Without the incentives of individuals to keep the fruits of their labor we harvest less fruit. As the fruit diminishes the dependent class gets restless and demands more from the captains of their industry. The captains demand more from the wealth creators and we find ourselves back in a system where wealth creation is driven by fear, coercion, and force. The engine sputters to a halt and collapses on itself.

We are not far from this point right now. Our tax system must be utilized to provide only the services necessary to conduct a law abiding society. Individuals again must be incentivized through the rewards of their labor. Right now the wealth creators are slowing down their activity because they are being punished and demonized. The wealth creators have not received their rewards through any special circumstance but the industrious spirit they pursue. The envy, jealousy, and demonization of the wealthy is going to destroy the American Spirit. Wealth distribution has already destroyed the people dependent on others. If we don’t stop demonizing wealth we will have nothing to demonize in the very near future…

Freedom of the Press VS. Subsidizing Newspapers…

The founders knew the best check on government was the ability of the people and press to speak out against the government and its representatives freely. At the time of our founding, the press (newspapers, pamphlets, letters, etc…) were the only organized vehicles to speak through at the time. Without the “press” of the time, the general public’s ability to get information about issues would have been crippled if not for the traditional means of communications was not protected.

Subsidizing the “business” of the press was not their intention. The only consideration for the founders was protecting liberty by protecting the ability of individuals and organizations like the press to speak out against an oppressive government, and by limiting the power of the government to control the speech against the same government. To suggest that the government should have any role in ensuring a media company’s success in the market place is a total distortion of original intent.

Today, we have the internet, radio, TV, all what the founders would have labeled as the press. Every one of the new medium unknown to the founders at the time, is a support for the original intent which was protecting speech and limiting the power of government. Because the traditional press has squandered their prestige by becoming political arms of party politics is the reason they are failing. They have greater competition, yes, but the real reason for their failure is their drifting from truth and facts to opinion and advocacy. Once you take a side you limit your audience. A very simple concept to understand.

So for the tax payer to subsidize a press that is no longer objective and separate from the government it is supposed to “protect” us from is in absolute contradiction to the original intent of our founders. We don’t need the traditional press, although I believe they still have an opportunity to reform themselves, we have what the founders were trying to truly protect which was the ability to speak out against our government through the expanded mediums we have today. Today’s technology has made speech safer from the perspective of holding government accountable. That is why the argument has shifted to protecting the internet from government control. Because the internet is more like the original press our founders wanted protected. A free interchange of ideas without government influence.

Let the traditional press models fail if they can’t compete, we have an outlet to speak against our government. Once the government is subsidizing the traditional press, we no longer have an independent advocate protecting our liberties. They will become an arm of the government, and that is definitely not what the founders intended when protecting the press in our constitution.

Divided We Fall…

The two parties are at it again. The Republican Governors Association is running an ad against Mayor Hickenlooper, the democratic candidate for governor, trying to link him with the unpopular Bill Ritter, but do we really need this? What is the purpose of the ad? What will be the result of the ad in the end?

The purpose of the ad is simple, to paint candidate Hickenlopper in such a negative light that people will vote against him, therefore helping the republican candidate to win the election. But the democrats are going to respond, most likely creating an ad that will attempt to demonize the republican candidate. And so it will go, on and on, ad after ad, the good people of Colorado will be inundated with negative ad after negative ad, and they will be left to wonder; which candidate is the lesser of two evils.

That is our two party system in a nutshell. Demonize the other party’s candidate to the point that your candidate looks less evil than the other party’s candidate. All in the name of “winning”. I ask; what do we win in the end? No matter which candidate wins in the end, the people in both parties are left with the perceptions from the campaign pounding each has received. So we end up with a dysfunctional ability to govern. Democrats won’t listen or be open to anything a republican winner has to say, and the Republicans will not listen to or be open to anything a democratic winner has to say.

People are so disillusioned with the political process, and yet we are told that negative ads are an effective campaign strategy. These ads may be effective for the party that wins, but not for the people, and the ability to govern. Negative ads are an excuse and an easy way to campaign. The most effective way to win a campaign is to convince people through argument and debate that your positions are right for the direction of the state. Topic by topic, vetted in a forum, not bound by commercial time restraints, but real open and elongated debate. Where people have the opportunity to hear every issue discussed ad-nauseam to the point of conclusion. So why don’t politicians do that?

Simple; the people are not willing to sit and listen to it, and the media does everything in bits and bytes. We the people are partly responsible because we don’t do our homework and are not willing to invest in vetting candidates or protecting our freedom. The media is responsible because they play into the two party horse race, and never give anyone else a chance to be heard. They limit the debate instead of nurturing it.

So how does it change? I don’t know but the first step is for people to do more homework. My campaign is an example. I receive dozens of notes encouraging me and saying they respect and admire what I’m doing. But when it comes down to brass tax, people are not willing to take the effort to support alternative campaigns. We are lazy as an electorate and have been duped into believing what the two parties dish out. There are many alternatives to the two parties but the effort to make the change seems too much for most.

The two parties have been losing members for years and there are more people that find themselves unaffiliated than ever before. That’s a good thing, but leaving the party system is not enough. If you want to end the negative ads that divide us as a people, you need to punish the people that are doing it and support alternatives. Maybe I’m not the right candidate but there will be no change to this divisiveness unless we all get involved to change it...