October 31, 2005
PROP 74 - Teacher Tenure
Oh m'gosh, is this outrageous or what? Did you know that "Prop 74" will increase the time it takes a teacher to get TENURE! It goes from 2 years to 5 years. It gets worse, in this period the employee could actually be fired if they can't do their job.
Well, boo-hoo, I don't think any of them ought to have tenure! When did YOU get tenure on YOUR job? Perhaps miraculously, but I've survived 30 plus years in the work place without tenure.
If tenure was so wonderful why do California schools rank among the worst in the nation? Why are high school graduation rates at 70% for the last decade?
Many that do graduate can barely read and write. And this is sadly not uncommon for the 12 years of public education. Meanwhile, private schools have been turning out stellar students for less than half the per student cost of the public side. And for this bad performance, the California Teachers Union wants us to keep it status quo. Now that is outrageous and the CTA is operating strictly for what's in the best interest of their membership, not your students, not the future of California or the nation!
Posted by Post Scripts at 10:04 AM | Comments (2)
Alito Appointment
New Supreme Court appointment, Samual Alito, Jr., appears to just the right blend of jurist and experience. He must be well known too, because it took Dems about 2 minutes to call him "Scalito" in honor of his decisions that mirror the track record of Conservative Justice, Joseph Scalia.
Bush hail's him as the most experienced nominee in 60 years. Speaking of Bush, please don't misunderstand my previous comments with his Miers appointment. I felt conservatives reacted properly. But, if conservatives did something good by openly expressing concerns over Miers, it does not mean Miers was necessarily a bad choice. It just means conservatives reacted with healthy skepticism and such reasonable due dilligence leads "inquiring minds" to a good base of knowlege.
Well, we wanted to be informed about the jurist nominee and now we have it. Alito is an open book and has present over a dozen cases before the Supreme Court. Check out his bio (short form): He has been a judge for the federal appeals court for 15 years. Former U.S. attorney - District of New Jersey from 1987 to 1990. Deputy assistant attorney general 1985 to 1987. Assistant to the solicitor general from 1981 to 1985. Alito is graduate of Yale, the son of an Italian immigrant born in Trenton, N.J. He attended Princeton University prior to Yale.
Don't you feel better knowing Chucky Schummer hasn't endorsed him and Harry Reid has concerns he might be too radical? Using the term "radical" for a conservative jurist like Alito is rediculous, but just the kind of irresponsible labeling what we've come to expect from Harry Reid.
I'd say we're off to a much better start with this nominee.
Posted by Post Scripts at 08:22 AM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2005
Miers take a Stumble
John Drzal writes, "Your doing a nice job with your blog. Looks good and reads well. But, that doesn't mean you won't stumble from time to time, like on your take on Miers."
Thanks for your kind words John, but me..."stumble on my assessment of the Miers situation?" Nay, I think I got it right, but your opinion is duly noted.
Fact is, this Miers nomination/withdrawl wasn't a big deal, bout the only people still trying to capitalize on it is Harry Reid and Howard Dean. Speaking of Dean, didn't he once say, he would kill for a Nobel Peace Prize? Or maybe it was Kennedy... I forget, but then I digress. So, if there was a real story here, it was for the first time in a very long time, Republicans broke ranks with our President for good cause. Although the Republicans concerns were many, I believe they did it because of one overriding factor; it was in the best interest of the nation. So good on em! Your party ought to try that sometime.
I'm sure we're all looking forward to a new jurist nominee and that may come very soon, some are saying Monday or Tuesday. So stay tuned John, a new nominee is almost at hand.
Posted by Post Scripts at 06:58 PM | Comments (0)
October 28, 2005
Comments on Good Government
From the comments section by Harold Ey...this one was especially good, so I wanted to re-post it here so you wouldn't miss it:
"Voters in the City of Chico have no one to blame for the aimless and welfare dependant people that seem to take our resources and offer nothing back but themselves. I don't see how with a current voter’s registration of over 38,000 that it only takes about 6000 to elect a City councilor with little or no real concern for the community as a whole. Currently we have 4 liberal council members who are spending money on every social program that help elect them and directing little or nothing back to the actual tax payers. I do think they are growing more powerful due in part to our voting apathy. Voting in a city government official should not be decided in the same manor as a high school popularity contest for class president. Once in office they use tax money for little more than keeping those core voters with pet projects happy and none for the basic services that help keep our community safe. We need a city council that can abide by the ‘Budget Basics’ (Police, Fire, Schools, Roads and Parks) first and foremost. My opinion is we need to start demanding more in return from our elected and staff people in city government. If the people on city payrolls (read your tax money) are not capable of resolving city problems effectively with fiscal responsibility, then we need new staff members." Harold Ey
Posted by Post Scripts at 11:03 AM | Comments (3)
Libs Attack over Miers
Libs are trying to capitalize on the Miers departure with attack ads?! Well, knock me over with a feather...who would have guessed that?
Seriously folks, most of us are almost numb to this sort propaganda that is designed to destroy Bush by any means. That's why the radical liberal's tactic of "hate, scare and exaggerate" keep Dems poll numbers even lower than Bush's. And the DNC wonders why they can't make any polical headway against Bush? Well, look who is at their helm, Howard Dean, head radical! Oh, he represents quite well the minority fringe element of his party, but the vast majority of Dems are without a voice and that is taking it's toll. Meanwhile, these leftist radicals take their cheap shots, shooting at Bush, shooting at the GOP, shooting themselves, shooting, shooting, shooting... like the loose cannons they are.
So, contrary to this current propaganda campaign, it was not right-wing nut jobs that forced Miers out. These people do exist, I admit, but they are only a tiny minority and they don't run the GOP agenda! Rather, this nominee's problem came from a growing number mainstream types with very sensible concerns about her qualifications. There was also a very real conflict of interest she had to hurdle. In the end, this was her undoing.
Perhaps the next nominee will be better known with better overall qualifications, like a Janice Rogers Brown, the daughter of a sharecropper who rose to become a justice on the Supreme Court of California.
Conservatives only want the best possible candidate. Someone with an established track record on the bench and with the highest judicial qualifications; So we can feel confident they won't legislate from the bench and will deliver decisions that will serve America as our founders intended. That's fair, that's reasonable and that's very typical of what most Americans want in a Supreme Court Justice.
Posted by Post Scripts at 08:50 AM | Comments (2)
Deceptive Internet Ads - Spyware
Beware net users: There are many pop-up ads and net sites offering you "100% free" services like a free virus scan, a free registry scan, one that was reported to me even had a free comprehensive medical evaluation with over 300 questions, but the hook is at the end of loading these scanning programs or filling out many pages of some questionaire the very last page has a little surprise. You can view the medical results or make the needed fix with the registry or software, but only if you pay and usually it's around $40 bucks. It's a gotcha ad!
Sometimes these companies will have placed an invasive spyware program in your computer for their marketing purposes, so even if you remove the orignal program, they still have you on their radar.
My suggestion is, be very suspicious of anything for "free" unless its from a trusted, certificated "shareware" site, even then I've found some problems.
Posted by Post Scripts at 08:21 AM | Comments (5)
October 27, 2005
Abusing Freedom v Using Freedom Wisely
Regarding flying enemy flags and other acts of societal disrespect...(taken from the reader comments section) Jordan wonders when common sense and the First Amendment took leave of each other?
I wonder that same thing from time to time, especially now when we're in a war with Islamofacists and some misguided Americans are behaving in ways that can only be helpful to our enemies. It's truly bizarre. I wish I could recall who said this, but it's definitely right on...
"Freedom works best when you have the good sense to know when not to use it."
Next, Jordan takes aim at those disrespectful drivers blasting you with their "systems" cranked up to deafening levels, playing obscene ghetto rap. That's an unsafe distraction and it's against the law. "California Vehicle Code Section 27007 says, "No driver of a vehicle shall operate, or permit the operation of, any sound amplification system which can be heard outside the vehicle from 50 or more feet when the vehicle is being operated upon a highway..."
Maybe a few calls from concerned citizens such as yourself to the Chief of Police in Chico might get some cites issued? You know the "squeaky wheel" theory... his number is 897-4950. And that would be the "using freedom" wisely part of this story.
Posted by Post Scripts at 06:06 PM | Comments (1)
Blogging Class, ER-101
How to submit your work for publication to PS:
(1) Go to the bottom of the article - see "comments"
(2) Click on that highlighted word.
(3) Now you are at the registration form. (a) You can enter an anonymous screen name or your name, and your email address. Thats it! You are ready to post your comment. (b) If you have a website you want to refer to, you can post that as well. (c) If you are going to be a repeat offender, er writer, then click "remember me" and that will save on log time by using a "cookie".
Posted by Post Scripts at 02:45 PM | Comments (1)
October 26, 2005
Prisoners for Chad...wha?
California currently spends over 1.5 billion tax dollars to jail 43,000 "3rd strike" offenders. A DOJ analysis shows that each prisoner committed well over 40 major felonies in his life of crime, prior to that 3rd strike that gets him life. So just remember, only 3 felonies actually made it to a conviction and a prison sentence and that's what you see in the news, his rap is likely pages and pages long and filled dozens of strikes!!!
So please spare me this “liberal baloney� that so many 3rd strikers are in only for a few crimes and even minor ones at that, it's just NOT true! These guys are hardcore and 99.5% of them should never be let loose again, but that won’t stop some from pointing out that 1 example out of 10,000 that might be questionable, as if it’s the norm.
Even at the cost of $1.5 billion, it's far cheaper to keep these career criminals locked up than to suffer the consequences if they were set free. Speaking of economic costs, if there was ever a dire situation that calls for "out sourcing" to save money this is it. I bet somewhere in this world there is a nation that would be only too happy to hold these prisoners for life and for a good deal less than it costs us in California. Mexico was my first choice, but because of the corruption and this porous Southern border, I'm afraid we would have too many prisoners finding their way right back into America.
The bottom line here is we don't need them and the cycle of violence these career criminals breed and all the associates costs from welfare to Medicare is more than we can handle. We ought to get them out of California and out of America; revoke their citizenship and place them in prisons overseas that can manage their keep for far less than the $35,000 a year it costs us. This would break that cycle of influence they hold over us through their friends, family members and crime partners. Can you imagine all the associated costs from a ruthless criminal that creates yet another dysfunctional family?
I think this is a great plan and we ought to at least try it. Maybe we could start with 1000 of the worst of the worst inmates. Let's give them a one-way ticket to Sudan, Chad, China or Slovenia, anywhere else! I don't care, so long as it's far away from here.
I suspect that once this deportation policy is known, well, we might not have to even get to deport number 1001 before we have much improved behavior in the prison population!
Posted by Post Scripts at 12:59 PM | Comments (0)
Protesting...
How do you win support by flying enemy flags? This is a question for Wendy Oshima who recently hosted a benefit at her home for the “Peace and Justice Center.� It was an auspicious day marking the deaths of over 3000 American's on 9/11, but for Mrs. Oshima it was the perfect time to show her solidarity with nations unfriendly to America. She raised the Cuban flag, Iraq's old flag under Saddam Hussein and a Palestinian flag as her guests arrived and railed on Bush, American foreign policy and all our ills.
Those flags were still up when her bottled-water deliveryman arrived on Oct 4th to make his normal delivery. He paused for a moment, standing in front of her house, looking at this flag display and found himself so upset that he couldn't make his delivery. His son was a soldier in Iraq and it was this family’s belief that anti-American protests only make his son’s job that much more dangerous and difficult.
He left and called Mrs. Oshima later seeking some sort of understanding. Unfortunately, it was Mrs. O’s dinner time so she cut him short, but she was able to explain that a defaced American flag tacked to a tree nearby was done by her 9 year old daughter and it was not actually intended to be part of her enemy flag display. That was only slight consolation to this man, as Mrs. O chose to leave her daughter's flag up with hers anyway, she called the big peace sign and happy faces on the US flag, a form of “art�!
Wendy Oshima has the right to have her display and I would defend that right anytime, this part is not in question. What is in question is her lack of community sensitivity, something liberals are supposed to be so well versed in. But, she gave little consideration for whom she might offend when she raised those flags! She had to know it was going to offend many people; she's not a dumb person, just a little lacking in judgment.
Sure, she had a right to do it, just like a jack booted thug has the right to fly a Nazi flag in front of a Jewish Synagogue or the NAACP, but having a "right" and being "right" are two different things. And when the message is so offensive, as it was to this man and many others in our community, there are usually consequences. In this case, Mrs. O has lost her delivery of bottle water and she’s furious and went to media to vent her anger!
Well, there's a lesson here for the Wendy Oshima’s of this world and that includes her colleagues at the Peace and Justice Center. When you do something that is so absurd and offensive for a political stunt, you lose a certain amount of credibility and there are usually some consequences that follow. In her case this bottle water company chose not to do business with her anymore, as is their right.
There is a huge difference between meaningful, persuasive, political dissent and something that is only repugnant. And apparently Mrs. O just doesn’t get it, nor do her friends at the P & J Ctr. However, if those folks ever wake up and learn this lesson in good judgment, they might also recognize what a wonderful country they live in that provides them the choice to abuse or use their freedoms.
It is indeed ironic that Wendy Oshima, the big political protestor, is now protesting her deliveryman for his political action? It’s even more ironic that the 3 3rd world countries Wendy Oshima holds in such high esteem would likely have her jailed or shot, if she so criticized them on their own soil! Fortunately for her and her band of libs, they are free spout whatever they want and fly enemy flags all day long if that makes them happy, this is still America, not some despotic country like Cuba!
By the way, Oshima is considering suing the bottle water company. It figures, doesn’t it? OK, now it's your turn, any comments on this or anything else is fair game!
Posted by Post Scripts at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)