January 25, 2013

I don't know that they hate America. Lots of US citizens go there pretty often,

like the Google folks recently and many others through the years. I think they probably hate our government threatening them, and then putting an embargo on them, and then criticizing them because they have little to do with other countries.

See, bullies, tear your shirt and then laugh because you have holes in your clothes. Figure out who has the holes and who's laughing, and you'll find the bullies.

Letting people starve? Thank goodness in the USA, the richest country in the world, no child goes to sleep hungry at night.

Brutally crushing dissent? Thank goodness Kent State never happened, nor COINTELPRO, nor arresting Bradley Manning, right?

Threatening their neighbors? Thank goodness we don't do that - after all, North Korea is too far away to be our neighbor, although the Russians were right across the Bering Strait all the while we had MAD.

Thumbing their nose at other groups of countries? Thank goodness the good old USA never rejected the power of the international community to end extraordinary rendition, just to start at one place.

Weird Stalinist view of socialism? Thank goodness the top 2% of people in this country don't own 70% of all assets in some weird Randian version of capitalism!

Better get a mirror.

January 20, 2013

Yes, a niche business. While teaching full-time, we have built up a furniture repair

business which has turned into an antique restoration business. My spouse and I work 12-16 hours per week on 2 pieces per week, and this very part-time job now equals my teaching salary. I grew up in a family of painters and carpenters, so I had some skills, although I had to develop specifics for furniture - for example, all repairs are glue and clamp, never a mechanical fastener.

When I retire in 2 years, my pension will pay 46% of my teaching salary, but the antiques will continue at the same rate or get bigger with more time. It's mostly a brain exercise, the physical aspect is minimal, and so we can continue it.

We haven't advertised in 20 years - after the first five, word got around, and we have regular customers from Dallas and San Antonio, both 300 miles away, as well as lots closer.

Investment was minimal as far as materials - some lacquer thinner, various stains and finishes, clamps, most of them developed homemade over time for specifics, sandpapers, and some space - we used one side of the two car garage for years, and finally built a 20x20 shed in the backyard (those skills are the ones I've had since a teenager.) We read and looked and reasoned and never proceeded until we were sure of the outcome, and that worked.

Ethan Allen and a couple of other better furniture stores also bring us pieces with slight scratches and other flaws from store traffic or shipping damage, and that amounts to a couple of hundred dollars a week for very little time - the new finishes are still very fresh and easy to match, so that's just a nice sideline to the rest.

Use your best asset - YOU and your existing knowledge about anything. Work in tiny fashion at home. Spend little and work more at your newly selected enterprise. The Internet is full of free information as well from generous people giving the benefit of their experience and knowledge.

January 19, 2013

My point is that gun owners ONLY value privacy about their guns.

Not their marriages or divorces or property taxes or arrests or convictions.

Their guns are their obvious A#1 priority to the exclusion of all else.

I don't have to worry about privacy. I teach. My name, what I teach, where I teach, the hours I teach, the amount I'm paid, what my certifications and degrees are and from where, are all public information available in a link from the school district, the Texas Education Agency, and my local paper, all without spending a dime.

I don't have to worry about privacy, I'm a citizen. My voter registration is public, like all other voters, the address, value and taxes due and paid on every piece of real property I own are public information online through the appraisal district here. My marriage, the births of my children including where, how much they weigh, and the hospital where they were born with the time right down to the minute they were born. Any campaign contribution I give is publicly available in amount and to whom and what date.

There's more, and all citizens face the same information available, and YET, YET, gun owners are ONLY worried about their guns. If they were worried about anything else, they'd have included those in the new NY law restricting info on gun owners.

So no use pretending that it's just a casual thing, or the only privacy issue around, except to gun owners. To then, it is the ONLY issue around. I'm sure the DSMV has some description for that, but I've made the point I want to make.

And BTW, those kids at Sandy Hook were killed and not with a stolen weapon, but with weapons purchased legally and openly and freely given the use of to the killer. And hey, if gun owners were so responsible, they'd put them where they couldn't get stolen. But as it is, daily, some elementary kid shows up at school with a gun that belongs to mom or dad.

But we cannot discuss negligence of owners, liability through negligence, the simple act of doing a background check on all buyers, even individual to individual, or even reinstating an old ban on weaponry that's ONLY good for killing people. That's all off limits, while 900+ more people have been killed with guns in the US since Sandy Hook. Make you feel better to know that? That's a fact, not a hypothetical.

January 9, 2013

Happy to find out that civil engineering is so perfected that we no longer have

auto or pedestrian fatalities because everyone's driving behavior and walking behaviors are so well controlled.

Woops.

I have no idea why you think teachers do not use database management. I use Eduphoria daily. It breaks down my students, the school's students, and the district's students by age, test scores, both state and local, including the exact topics and answers gotten right and wrong, income level, at-risk factors for failure, language ability, including written, verbal, and listening, special programs of any type, and lots more.

Let's suppose that I give a unit exam to my senior economics students. I can find exactly which topics (described in the TEKS standards for each subject) that my students did well in, or need help in, not only from my class, but how they did on the same topic in their US History course, or World History course, or any other social studies course. I can track that the group of students who attended Ms. Womack's World History class at Ector Junior High 3 years ago did poorly on the concept of out-migration processes then, and still are now, if they had Mr. White's US History class last year, while those who had Ms. Griggs last year for the same course have mastered the concept. I know who needs remediation, where, and have a flag for other students as well.

I meet weekly with two different PLC groups - my fellow economics instructors and my fellow US government instructors. We write common lesson plans detailing exactly which SEs are covered, what we will do if some students do not master them, what we will do if some students do master them, how are we differentiating our instruction for the various groups identified in Eduphoria, what assessment tools we will use for which students, and what standard will be satisfactory to move to the next set, and what we will do to remediate and/or reteach those who are not ready to move on.

We use every instructional method and material under the sun. I use a projector, a Smartboard, a TV and DVD player, student computers, lecture, foldables and other manipulatives, peer tutoring, pair-sharing, a sign-language aide for my deaf children (we are the regional school for the deaf for 22 districts), a special education teacher full time in my classroom, an online component for some lessons, before and after school one on one tutoring, interactive notebooks, and anything we can find in order that our students who are 85% eligible for free and reduced lunches, 20% special ed, 5% homeless, 25% English Language Learners of various abilities, can succeed.

You go right ahead and get the two advanced degrees that I have in education (forget my double major bachelor in English and Economics), pass the 4 exams required at more than $3,000 out of your pocket, do the free semester of student teaching, and then, after three decades in the classroom, feel free to think that some little Show and Tell presentation for 1/8 of 1 day of a 180 day school year is some type of educational experience that made a damn to anybody at all.

Education is an organic, cooperative experience that is not an assembly line, deals with all comers, and is the most exhausting, most tiring, most challenging and most exhilarating career anyone can choose. I've taught more than 7,000 students over the years, and I hear from hundreds of them annually, in person, through letters, email, and yep, even Facebook. I live in the neighborhood where I teach, and I am teaching many children of my former students now. In no case did even on thank me for any particular content of instruction, but instead, have encouraged me and thanked me for showing them ways to process and use critical thinking and evaluation in order to get the things they want, and most of all, personal satisfaction and happiness with themselves.

January 7, 2013

Well, Google is your friend. Nonetheless,

http://seekingalpha.com/article/775821-are-corporate-profits-a-bubble-waiting-to-go-bust


will show quarterly profits at $1.671 trillion. Even 3 quarters of that is $5 trillion, so 6 for the year is no problem.


You really are young, aren't you? The taxable income they pay on is far less than their actual profits reported to stockholders, because of the games they get to play.

Here's a simple graphic that will show that corporations have paid about 10% of all federal income taxes so far this year:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/


They have actually paid about $240 billion this year in taxes - their profits are $6 trillion, maybe more, that's a net rate of 4% of real income, not the hocus-pocus of accounting for tax purposes.

You are aware that many large companies pay NO tax at all, right?

http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/CorporateTaxDodgersReport.pdf


And if you can't see the absurdity of claiming that $4 trillion is a larger number than $16 trillion, I cannot help you.

Now I have spent enough time on this - I can't tell if you're trolling me, attempting to aggravate me, or just like giving me a poke, but it's time for you to follow the clues about the tax system: real people pay the taxes, while artificial people get a huge walk.

See you around DU.

January 7, 2013

Please don't get hysterical. It serves you ill.

You seem unaware that the highest bracket was 50% as late as 1987, and that was after the tax cuts of JFK and Ronald Reagan. Quite normal for those who receive huge amounts of service from the government to pay huge amounts of tax as well. Otherwise, it's theft, which it has been for decades now.


Check your population figures again for the 1950s. I was alive then, but someone as young as you apparently doesn't realize that we were the wealthiest country on earth then as well as now, with quite a few wealthy individuals, as well as a growing and healthy middle class with real upward mobility, not like now.

This is not a theoretical discussion - I'm basing it on historical fact. When a country grows, as we are now and always have, you need more expense from the government, not less, unless you think less education, worse roads, bad air, and sick people are good things to be embraced.


Please show me in arithmetic that an economy of $16 trillion in size cannot raise $4 trillion in taxes with a rate of 100%. See how silly that claim is? Of COURSE there is a taxing level that will allow the federal government to spend 25% of the nation's economy, because 25% is less than 100%.

And somewhere in your argument is some sort of idea that the economy is static, with just the same actual money in it year after year and that somehow taxes reduce the size of an economy, both simply wrong by any economic analysis.

We DO tax everybody in some way now. For example, here in Texas, the poorest person still pays the 8-3/4% state sales tax. So do three year olds if they are buying something with grandpaw's gift money. Renters pay their landlord's property taxes, even if it's awful housing. And on and on.

Of course, the tax segment getting the best treatment is the artificial person catergory - corporations. They pay nearly nothing, about 1/10 of all federal taxes, even though their profits this year of about $6 trillion are nearly half of the total economy. In fact, by simply charging a net effective rate of 16% on corporate profits alone, without adding to any other tax group at all, would raise the $1.1 trillion deficit and close it. 35% would allow us to pay the debt off completely in 10 years and accumulate large surpluses in excess of $2 trillion per year after that.

That would be my personal preference, but hey, I'm not running things, obviously. And we didn't even discuss new tax possibilities, like a transaction tax on every stock trade. There's money everywhere in this richest of all countries that ever existed. There's just lots of people who don't want to pay the government some of it.

January 1, 2013

You must never have sought an advanced degree.

I teach in a large urban high school (3600+ enrollment) with 68% Hispanic, 7% Black, 24% White, and a smattering of Polynesian and Asian students. 85% qualify for free or reduced lunches.

158 are homeless. 200+ are HIV Positive. 1000+ work 40 hours a week outside of school. We spend about $9000 per student per year total budget, somewhat below the national average.

I have a double BA in English and Economics, and a MAEd in Adult and Distance Education. I went to high school here in the late 60s when it was still 100% White segregated.

Okay, now:
All research shows that all students benefit from heterogeneous grouping, what you call inclusion classes. All of my classes are remedial and inclusion. I have a special education teacher, not an aide, every period, as well as a sign language translator for my class with 9 deaf students. We follow the IEP, and I design instruction to deliver the state content standards. I have a lifetime average of 98% of my students passing state accountability tests, which are NOT modified, except for oral administration for some.

My classes are lively, and my students learn the value of additional training after high school, whether academic or vocational. I live in the same neighborhood in which I teach, and I see dozens of my more than 7000 former students all the time. All treat me well, and not one has ever thanked me for teaching any particular content. What they thanked me for was allowing them true success, a desire to do more, and the method to do it.

Students fail if they are absent more than 10 times in a class. Period. They can start the class over again in an online environment. It is against the law in Texas to give a grade not earned, so no one will ask you to do that - it could cost them their credential. I have a pass rate of about 85% in the course, 98% on state tests, which makes sense, because the state tests are really quite minimal in their expectations.

We teach and learn using every tool in the box - reading, writing, listening, student presentations, foldables, flash cards, games, interactive notebooks, plays, movies, outside reading, the whole gamut, because that's what it takes to reach every student.

I open every year with the value of doing things right. If a heart surgeon opens up your chest and fixes the damage there, and closes you up, and the janitor did a poor job of cleaning the suite, and you get an infection and die, what was the value of the surgeon's work? Zero. Society is teamwork, hardly perfect, and I believe janitors are underpaid and underappreciated, but anything we do only has value in the context of everyone benefiting from it.

I teach from 7:15 to 3:15, I never take home anything to grade, nor do I spend family time planning my lessons or doing other things related to school. If you give assignments that are incredibly complex and time-consuming to grade, that's your fault, and you've missed the benefits of immediate feedback. If you need to prepare materials for tomorrow, the students are happy to help - they LIKE being a part of things, and it gives them an appreciation and understanding of how things work, which is not wishing magically for them to happen.

In short, I enjoy my job and my students, and I believe they enjoy the class and learn something, content being the least important of all. Sorry you had a bad time. That's why I'm not retiring - I'm having fun.