What should we think about the tired war of words on the economy that is going on between Obama and McCain? The never missing game of trying to accuse the other guy of wanting to raise taxes is once again being spewed. We don’t know what the outcome of either candidate’s plan will have on the future so let’s look at the past for the truth. The truth is that the gap between the rich and the rest of us continues to widen. Warren buffet, who I think qualifies to be included in the rich group, thinks that the tax structure as it exists is just plain wrong and people like him should pay more taxes, not less. I agree with Warren.
Another thing politicians always say is they will cut waste and fraud to make up for tax cuts. Every election someone or everyone says that but it never happens because there is not that much easy hanging fraud fruit to pick off.
Have you heard candidates say big government is bad, even if they have been part of it for decades? Give me a bucket so I can puke and then put it on my head so as not to hear such crap. Is government regulation bad? It would have been nice to have more regulation of the mortgage industry lately don’t you think? What about the slew of major drugs that ultimately were found to be ineffective or dangerous after being taken my millions of Americans for years. The truth is that we benefit from government regulation everyday. The parents in China who lost children to sub standard building of schools recently would have benefited from some building regulation. There is a point of diminishing returns with regulation and government involvement but to simply say it’s bad is just plain ignorant.
For my part I wish the general election would focus on what was and wasn’t accomplished in congress the last 8 to 16 years. We know we want major improvements to health care, immigration reform, education and national security etc. It has not happened. Why were laws not passed in Congress to further these objectives? If we don’t know why we have not succeeded and make the changes to clear those road blocks than all the talk in the word will get us no where.

This is a follow up to a post I did June 1st 2007 about Jim Cramer.  I got interested in following the Mad Money pick for the year when Cramer’s pick for 2006 did very well.  For the first show of 2007 Cramer picked 9 stocks which I have attached.  I set up the portfolio with ten thousand in each of the nine stocks at the price when Cramer recomended them.  MO split off Kraft and when you add up the 10 stocks at year end you have a profit of $16,093.68.  or 17.88 percent.  Not bad but if you had cherry picked the bad stocks and left out Apple and SVNT you would have lost a lot of money.

Click Pic to enlarge.

I purchased a Nano for my wife today as a present.  My wife and I share our e-mail and as an aside I think it is weird for married couples to have separate e-mail accounts and bank accounts etc.  Well I check my e-mail and Apple has sent me an e-mail receipt for the Nano which my wife would have seen if she had checked our e-mail first.  The strange thing is I never gave the sales people my e-mail so how did they have it.  Why do I need an e-mail receipt when I have a paper one from the store?  Has any one at Apple ever found out that these e-mails can blow the surprise that their customers were hoping for? 

I hate to be the one to break the news but this troubling photograph of Vice president Al gore shows the latest results of GLOBAL WARMING.  It seems a new kind of Vortex named a Gortex has opened in the north east sky.  As you can see it is exerting a sucking force on the upper right portion of the Vice Presidents head.  It’s Kind of ironic since Democrats are left of center or maybe it makes perfect sense.  Stay tuned for further developments

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/12/10/christmas.lights/

The above article is the last straw and I need to type in loud words

“GET THE LEAD OUT”.  Recently some group tested a bunch of toys at the toy store and a third was found to have lead which can cause permanent brain damage in children.  What next, sippy cups with high levels of lead?  I think CDC or some agency should start testing a few of our children at random to see what the exposure to lead is.  I have let my kids handle Christmas lights and now we find out the manufacturers knew about this lead coating and of course they also knew some children would handle the lights. 

Oh, I am fortune’s fool for now is the winter of my discontent.  I did a little post which includes a somewhat critical view of putting too much emphasis on studying Shakespeare and guess who see’s my post!  I had no idea you were still alive great barb and I am so sorry so please don’t sling a thousand arrows upon me for though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.

Who decides that Shakespeare is a required and desirable part of the curriculum in high school and college?  A lot of universities have realized they were far too centered on western culture and history but I think the self examination needs to go much deeper.  There is a large influential block of people who think if you have not read certain western classics you are somewhat of a barbarian not fit for decent dinner party conversation.   So generation after generation marches along and it goes like this.  Here, read this because it will make you a well rounded individual of more value to society and yourself.  Sure it was written hundreds of years ago and is filled with words no longer in use and cultural reverences that make perfect sense only to people who were alive when it was written.  I had to read it and every generation before me had to read it so guess what, you have to read it.  Since you had no say in choosing to read it and you can’t relate to it what so ever, you won’t get much out of it but here is a test to see if you did read it.  No cliff notes please.  Congratulations you now fit the definition of what some people consider well read and cultured.  This kind of education is like the math I talked about previously and is more about regurgitative gymnastics than anything else.  I have an alternative method of teaching literature which would have dramatically superior results but first I would like to recount an experience of mine.      Right in the middle of a typical literature class in college we were asked to write something that could be about anything we wanted and it would not be graded and marked up with a red pen.  I sat down and wrote twelve typed pages in two hours of non-stop fun.  I wrote a fictional story of people who thought nuclear Armageddon was imminent and all the silly things they did in reaction.  I flew through it because the spelling and grammar were not going to be graded.  I turned it in and the associate professor was surprised at the number of pages I turned in.  In the big auditorium my story was selected as one of the stories the professor read out loud to the class.  He later came to see me and thanked me for writing the story and asked if he could use it in a book he was writing about student writing.  I had used some of the writing techniques used by some of our assigned authors he had pointed out in his lecture.   Even though I was a business major, this experience in literature class was the most rewarding of my college classes.  What I took away from that experience is that school should not be just about memorization or even getting a grade.     If I had my say on how reading and writhing were taught in school I would let the students have a far greater say in what it is they read and write about.  I would offer a long list of recommended books which would include Shakespeare for the older grades.  Students would be allowed to choose to read works not on the list as long as they weren’t offensive etc.  They could recommend works to each other to read and discuss what they read in class.  Students would be empowered and using the natural learning abilities we all have. Instead of pushing students, teachers would be more of a guide rail and a helping hand as their charges zoom forward on their own power.  On the writing side I would not make the process so arduous and stifling but one of gradual improvement through encouragement.  I would have the students read hundreds of books and write volumes in between Kindergarten and twelve grades.  I think reading and writing can best be learned by doing a lot of both.   As far as grades go I would give credit for each book read and each written paper along with points for class discussion on what you read.  No this approach won’t weed out and crush the enthusiasm of students who dangle a participle.  School should not be obsessed with ranking people.  Use more resources on kids that lag behind but don’t stigmatize them which only compound their issues. The fact is all kids can’t be above average and it is normal and expected that there would be a range of skill and enthusiasm in a large and varied population.  Everyone must be able to read and write as that is the basis for most learning in other subjects.  After that we should lighten up and let kids discover and enjoy reading and writing.  Reading builds vocabulary etc. but it can also be a great way for young people to discover the world, form opinions and even help build self identity.

Do you remember the Quadratic formula from math class?  For some reason the name has stuck in my mind; if not the exact make up of the formula itself or what it calculates.  There are a lot of people who champion the process of trying to teach so called higher math and even making it part of an exit exam for High School.  I am not one of those people.  I was greatly discouraged with all the math associated with a basic business degree and it caused me to drop out of college before eventfully suffering through it to get a degree in Accounting.  If there is one course in Pre-K through twelve grade that causes more students to fail and drop out than Algebra, I don’t know what it is.  I remember the Algebra class at the university where two thirds of the class had dropped by the end of the drop due date.  All along the way students say “we won’t ever use this stuff” and we are told yes we will need it.  As it turns out I have never needed to know Algebra to function in life or at work, have you?   I know some people use math in their jobs and I appreciate that some engineers used math to calculate how to build a bridge I drive over every day.  Does that mean that every student regardless of aptitude or interest has to be tortured and in many cases weeded out of the student body?  Even the engineer who builds the bridge does not have to memorize any formulas and he or she probably uses software that has the math built in.  The Math classes I had were more about the skill of memorization than anything else.  If you could keep that formula in your memory until Tuesday and know which problem it applied to, you could be a math wizard.  I don’t know about your workplace but mine allows me to make notes and I don’t have to memorize a whole bunch of formulas that all look very similar.  The mantra of education should be “To help get young people ready for adult life”.  That is a very broad definition but that is what you want so you don’t limit yourself.  I say “help” because the parents and society at large also should have the same goal and do the things they are best suited for them to do.  Math education could and should be fun and apply to the real world.  I would not make Math about memorization but about application.  Bring in real world examples and give the formulas to students so they can practice working them.  What was the formula used to calculate the stress loads on parts of the Golden Gate bridge.  Bring in real world examples used in the automobile, space exploration, and pharmaceutical industries.  It would be great if students could be exposed to snippets of software that is being used today and uses math to solve problems in industry.  How does the McDonald’s restaurant corporation calculate how many cups to order next month and where to ship and store them?  Using this educational approach gives students a feeling like they are learning things that they may use some day.  I am a firm believer that business must work with our schools to help develop a curriculum that applies to the mantra “To help get young people ready for adult life”.  You might be wondering how a teacher would test the students in this kind of class and that is what I want to talk about next.

I have wanted to write about something in depth as apposed to the usual crap I put out so here is my first post on education which is an area I find very interesting and screwed up.   What qualities and attributes would we as a nation, employer, parent, & student like to see in our young men and women entering adulthood?  Here are some things I would like to see.  As an employer I would like to see employees have a strong work ethic, a practiced ability to learn new information and skills especially how to use computers and unfamiliar software and an ingrained set of ethics and the ability to work well with others.  I think the focus is often too focused on SAT scores etc. when what we should be thinking about is the whole person.   In order to be a happy healthy productive member of society a person must be of sound mind body and spirit.  So when you talk about education you can’t just think in terms of what goes on at the elementary school down the block.  The school district, the parents and society at large should each do what they can to achieve that mind body and spirit we desire.  It is common to think that there should be no overlap on what these stake holders’ focus on and their area of responsibility.  That is probably where my thinking diverges most because I think if the school and the parent reinforce each other; their combined effort has much greater results.  Here is an example of what I mean.  If a six year old is caught in an obvious lie a parent may inform the child that lying is wrong and they get in more trouble if they lie.  Hearing that same advice from a teacher reinforces what the child hears at home.  Hearing it once from two different sources has much greater effect than hearing it twice from one source.  Children are often influenced more by teachers and piers than they are by their parents.  I know some people would say that is not the responsibility of teachers to teach morals and character like they would do a hundred years ago.  Don’t think in terms of responsibility, think in terms of opportunity.   A lot of business schools have discovered they needed to teach ethics and social responsibility because it turns out too many people in high places didn’t posses those traits.  Let’s move that thinking all the down to pre-K where it can be absorbed more readily.     Let’s take another example and think about nutrition.   Do our schools have an opportunity when it comes to our children’s nutrition?  Not only do they have an opportunity but they have often been part of the problem of our dramatically declining health.  When a kid has pepperoni pizza and a coke for lunch or Frito pie or a bag of chips and a candy bar most days, is it any surprise we have childhood diabetes for the first time in history?  The truth is that many school districts are in bed with the food industry conglomerates who pay the districts to have their vending machines in the schools or a mini Pizza Hut right on campus.  Saying that the kids won’t eat the healthy stuff is a cop out.  The food industry is coming after our kids to get the considerable dollars they spend on food.  Not only do they want that money your kid has in his pocket today, but they want to train the tastes of young people so they continue to eat they way in the future.  They go right around mom and market right to kids like McDonalds does and all they care about is the money.  Only a concerted effort by the government, the schools and parents will have any hope of turning things around.  Again, this is not just a school, parent, or society issue but something that can best be addressed from all angles.   You can’t just look at an obese child and say the parents are at fault when it is much more complex than that.     The one point I want to make in this post is that we should not draw circles around the home or the school yard when in reality the best time to teach and mold our kids is when they are awake.  We start with a general set of qualities and abilities we would like our kids to have and look for every opportunity to steer them in that direction.  That would mean parents and teachers working together as a team on a level never attempted. Up next, teach a man to fish and you get a fisherman, teach a man how to learn and you get the universe.