Thinkin' Outloud

The article, "The New Segregation" in the Chico News and Review on Aug 12 , contains the implicit solution to the author's contention that charter schools are causing public school children to have a less valuable education and this disproportionately affects non-whites.

Given that charter school teachers' salaries, according to the article, are $20,000 less, retirement and benefits are less, and job performance determines continued employment rather than tenure, the obvious answer is to make all schools charter schools.

Do we owe the teachers' union members the right to overcharge for their services and "dumb down" our youth in order to meet their personal income desires? Obviously, the free market wages are reflected by the salaries paid by the charter schools and any more is unnecessary waste, especially if these schools are higher performing.

Also, it is ridiculous to spend such a disproportionate amount of our scarce education budget on the disabled population. Some is ok but crippling our country's future by over doing it hurts our entire economy and our country's future, including our ability to provide needed future care to the disabled.

Lastly, we need to preserve our scarce resources for legal residents of our country only.

Hard decisions my friends, but the hey-day is over. We are broke and we will now learn to make such crucial decisions sans the "money grows on trees" mentality.

In Response to Marilyn Friedman's letter to the editor of the Enterprise Record in Chico and the other two writers angry at my statement about welfare mothers facing the reality of their situation, I have the following to say.

I feel sure that the first two whining writers were surely either those living on free money or involved in the single mom welfare industry in some way.

But, with Friedman, I am positive that she has to get a paycheck from the welfare industry as she so eloquently states her specious argument in support of her "money grows on trees" attitude. She is biting at the bit to tax us all more and totally ignorant of our country's financial situation and real economics.

Friedman, and the other writers missed my point and read much more into my letter than what was stated due to her biases.

First, I certainly do credit the fathers for being just as responsible, but they weren't the ones there at the rally I wrote about.

Second, "Devastation", as mentioned by Friedman, didn't happen before welfare and I think the devastation she refers to is to her bureaucracy and her paycheck. But, more importantly is the fact that these mothers and their families must prepare for the reality facing them in the future as the gravy train is over, like it or not, as our government is broke.

Yes, there is waste everywhere by our politicians and it all must end. We are at the beginning of the economic downturn, my friends, mark my words.

A recent report pegs the average California state government worker at $92,000 and that, with the average $48,000 salaries of California's workers, that it takes twenty five taxpaying workers to pay for the salary of one state worker. Is that fair and sustainable?

How about the fact that this year the number of government workers represented by unions surpassed those represented by unions in the private (taxpaying) sector of our economy.

Do you remember when U.S. Forest Service workers actually worked in forestry instead of driving around in pickups with red lights and "law enforcement" labeled on their vehicles, worrying more about giving a "no-helmet" ticket to a four wheeler enjoying the great outdoors or haranguing people in campgrounds for parking violations? How about they reduce this bloated bureaucracy by two thirds and do us all a favor? We'll take care of enjoying the outdoors with reckless abandon, as it was meant to be, thank you.

Remember the Forest Service Nazi that raided the home of the poor sick guy and handcuffed him for arrest for illegally posting an "I'll fix your cross country skis" sign in the dead of winter on a billboard in Butte Meadows? Do we need or want to pay taxes for this manure?

If we cut the forest service budget by 75%, we wouldn't even notice it except for being able to enjoy the outdoors free from a bunch of anally retentive Gestapo freaks that have chips on their shoulders from obvious shortcomings elsewhere on their bodies!

Garry Cooper
PO Box 784
Durham, Ca 95938

891-4433

The recent article about the single mothers and elderly protesting against cuts to their welfare benefits for child care and in home care brings up a couple of thoughts.

First, my heart goes out to the children that must suffer from the realities of our nation's economic disaster that had no choice in their mother's irresponsible behavior. Our society can neither afford, or is obligated, to provide anything but an education to these children so that one day they may become productive citizens. Mothers, take turns or designate a caretaker, and produce something of value for your neighbors. Pick fruit, hoe weeds in fields, and replace the illegal workers' jobs that draw them here. Or, are you too good to participate productively in our society and think we all owe you something?

What is wrong with the above idea? Please, write to this forum and explain, if you can.

Now, the old folks. I know that most of these folks remember the depression or the war and the tough times that followed. I know that they are proud and good. I know they deserve to stay home as long as possible. They deserve ten times the help of the mothers mentioned above.

But, there is a reality. Our country is broke.

How about the mothers be employed full time ( except for the child caretaker) caring for them. School is a luxury and the mothers can fit it in on their own time, on-line instead of Facebook. Mother up women!

Garry Cooper
Po box 784
Durham, CA 95938 514-4559

We must stand firm against any amnesty program for illegal aliens and rally against all the immigrant transplants in southern California who want to open our borders.

Do you realize that there is a drug war among the Mexican gangs on our border that has killed more people in the last three years than we have lost in our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since the first George Bush Era and it is poised to move to the USA?

Do you realize that no country can exist, be protected against invaders, and expect to succeed economically unless it has defined and protected borders?

Do you realize that the incomes earned by illegal immigrants are below that of the 47% of legal Americans that don't have to pay taxes but their medical costs for emergency room visits, the costs to arrest and prosecute them for crimes, and the cost to educate their children are immense?

Do you realize that the babies born to illegals here overwhelmingly become wards of our welfare system as they have citizenship status and this leads to their families draining our system as well?

Go to Mexico City, Juarez, Tijuana or anywhere else in Mexico and ask yourselves if that is what you plan to leave for your children and grand children. I promise you that it is not.

Don't get me wrong, I would rather my daughters marry a good Mexican man than a scumbag American. I just ask that our nation be respected and protected.

Our economy may be very much worse off than most economists can fathom. Most, including myself, were not born since the end of the Great Depression of the 1930s to have much of a memory of truly hard economic times. I think we are getting ready to see even worse--much worse.

Our current paid economic "thinkers" and "experts" were schooled in how well our policy makers like the Federal Reserve and Congress can act to avert such "major economic cycles" as depressions are called in the business. One can only expect "minor business cycles" (recessions) and the only real question that seems to come to mind is whether it will be short term or somewhat longer before the turn around and the next boom times, they say.

For a simple economy such as we have had up until the recent globalization over the last couple of decades, this historical philosophy might be true. However, our world has changed and our leadership (the movers and shakers on Wall Street) have us jetting at hyper speed like the USS Enterprise on Star trek into an abyss that absolutely no one on this earth can foresee or predict.

We can imagine some possibilities though. That is what scares me. No one can argue that we have become one with the world in economic matters. Therefore, to survive, we must meet the new competitive challenges being placed before us. We have to use whatever competitive edge we have to secure a niche in supplying valuable goods to the world or become obsolete as a nation.

So'

Our natural resources are not abundant or cheap to get to, like in our industrial age, whereas China, Mexico, and other petrol nations are in their infancy. Our labor pool is spoiled with high wages and certainly cannot be competitive with China or India's few dollar a day salaries to produce the same goods. Our baby boomer retirees are coming to bloom along with their expected retirement pensions which add impossible costs to current autos and items that we produce and most of which are greatly under funded. Our health care costs are skyrocketing as the boomers age, which is a great drain on any economy. With NAFTA and our business leaders on Wall Street chasing profits, any meaningful industry has been outsourced to cheaper nations leaving our workers sitting with their proverbial thumbs in their you-know-wheres. We have taken on the police duties of the world with very little financial support for a mega-expensive task . We allow anchor babies and illegal immigration to tax our system uncontrollably.

All that has had us going this last decade is what I call our "Romanesque self indulgent, self consuming economy". We have eaten ourselves from within and dismantled our skeleton and vital organs---much like the Romans did prior to their fall. For instance, you build my house, I sell you property, you fix my teeth, I make your burger, I take out your appendix, you make my latte at the corner hangout. I cut the timber and you build my apartments. You drill for gas and heat my home. Where in this equation do you see any value being created by our country to our global customers. You don't. This is why our trade deficit is out of this world and very likely unfixable.

Unfixable. In a sense maybe from our perspective but albeit not from our global trading partners' views. The Saudis see one answer by not lending so much to us in bonds but actually buying hard assets such as our stock market, part of CNN, and what is left of our last profitable businesses and industries. They tried to buy our very ports and make moves daily on firms related to our defense industry.

We can secretly print money, which many think we are now doing. This may be why gold has tripled in the last few years and the dollar is plummeting world wide.

What I see is an absolute requirement that our country put its "factors of production" (labor, pensions, health care, and government expenses) in line with the world economy or we die on the vine. This housing boom is over and the chickens are coming home to roost. Think what I am saying here. The "sucking sound" is not just jobs being sucked overseas any longer, it is the sound of our country being sucked into third world status to survive. Its time for ideas and real change.

Our only hope is to dump our current politicians and find real leadership, get our kids off the couch and get them educated so they can innovate, nationalize philosophically to protect our freedom and be prepared to bite the bullet over the long term until the new Bill Gates' and Henry Fords can innovate us out of this mess. And don't even begin to think there is someone running for office right now that can fill the bill, I am talking a major overhaul here.

This "Economic Stimulus Package" being porkbarelled around by congress now is a joke and should embarrass any thinking economist. Its like dumping a teaspoon of water on the Great San Francisco Fire and expecting to put it out.

I have some more thoughts on this stuff folks so stay tuned!

The board members of CALPERS stated this week that they are going to take nearly $500,000,000 from the tax payers of California this year to fund their public employee retirement system due to their bad investments and mismanagement. This board, by law does not need legislative approval to boost the state's contribution rate, the AP reports.

This is the very abuse of the taxpayer that has spawned our budget problems and the rise of the tea parties.

Most taxpayers had their investments in mutual funds, stocks, real estate, and the like just like the public employees did when the market collapsed and there was no such golden parachute to rescue them. They lost their retirement.

Now these arrogant public employees, gleaning the fruits of their union's political bribes, are going to further assault the same unfortunate taxpayers' remaining finances for the blind-selfish reason of not wanting to suffer any of the effects of the economy or their manger's bad decisions. And, they just pick a number and throw it out there with no oversight. Much will come in the form of DMV increases and other fees that are raised normally with no oversight as well.

To hell with you arrogant bureaucrats! We need to put an initiative on the ballot to limit public exposure to these leeches and to make these employees live within our means. We also need to assure that NO public retiree get any more than a set amount, say $60,000, in retirement absolutely under any circumstances.

In response to Moneique Moralez's letter about her daughter being left behind in school, I have this feeling.
We are a nation crippled to its knees financially from decades of poor management and policies that make each individual person's needs the responsibility of the others in society. Sure, a little helping hand from time to time is reasonable but it has gone ludicrously beyond that.
Our schools are crippled right now and will be getting much worse with our bleak financial future. Yet, our country's very survival is dependent upon us educating our youth to lead us into the future as an economically viable country. Many school districts are required to spend a hugely disproportional amount to cater to special needs children and are constantly involve in fending off lawsuits brought by parents under the ADA laws. This is unfair to our children and truly damaging to our nation's future, including your daughter's. It is also not reasonably sustainable in the future.
If money grew on trees, I wouldn't say this, but it doesn't. Unfortunately Moneique, our economic times are such that times will change back to only the family bearing the responsibility for the less fortunate, the young, and the elderly in their mix. Our country is on its way to learning how to live within its means and this change is essential.
What is a pity, is that there are so many people claiming welfare and disability who are fit enough to work that the real needy suffer.

Jaime O'Neill's underlying motive in his recent article "the fear factory" is to promote further reckless spending by our government and to incite racism from his readers. He also calls for his liberal ilk to break their silence and raise their arguments on radio or where ever they can.
The problem is that his liberal peers have no sound logic that can withstand scrutiny by thinking and intelligent people that actually work for a living in the private sector. Liberal talk shows come and go like the tides. Just one academic idiot preaching to the other, who has nothing but hope that that they can extract more taxes from the actual producers to pay their exorbitant salaries and retirement benefits, and not catch on to them leeching off of society and promoting others to do so.
How about this Jaime --- We cut your and all of your fellow government retirees benefits to one quarter of what they are and we fund health care for all? No? Why not? Oh yeah, I forgot, money grows on grant and budget trees and no one needs to earn it. And, it slipped my mind that there is no need to waste money on anti-terrorism efforts as there is no threat. No need to reduce your benefits for that either.
You are in a dream world and your only savior is that you are old, uninformed, ignorant, selfish, and can care less about the financial realities that we are passing down to our children and the damage that your selfishness and ignorance that you speciously spew out does to our society. I hope you live to see the suffering that your ignorance has brought to fruition. Idiot!

Quentin, do you see the violence in russia, the Philipines, England, Somalia, Africa, and the many other nations including Iraq and other muslim nations being waged by radical Islamists? Are you blind or stupid?

Yes, we cannot afford out military. But you and your ilk think that we can just let down our guard, open the borders, and spend our money on illegal alien benefits and bloated pensions for government workers instead of protect our country.

We need and will, whether we like it or not, change our priorities. We are in for a twenty year depression that will shed us of our pension obligations, do away with government waste and change our nation's attitudes to survival and financial responsibility. We will cut our military drastically for certain. But we can't let us be taken by radical Islam or you and Jaime are in real trouble as your heads will certainly be rolling.