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The principle statement supporting the implementation of Common Core, has always been that we need a better educated workforce to do tomorrow’s jobs….
Governor Markell said it in his state of the state address on the day the DOW fell 176 points….
This has been a reoccuring theme of his; “the education of today will not bring us the jobs of tomorrow..”
Although that sounds good in soundbyte form, it is not grounded too well in reality. In reality, the wages of jobs have declined as the demand for work rose to become greater than the supply. In other words, unemployment is too high… and that suppresses the cost of labor.
When one’s boss can hire one cheaper to do the same job, that is not the best time to ask your boss for a raise…..
Today, our minimum wage is being paid to college graduates and high school graduates. It used to be paid to those who were either still students, or never did graduate….
Image Courtesy of Economic Policy Institute
Today! Across the minimum workforce almost 5 out of every 10 have a college experience; and almost 8 out of 10 graduated high school or have a GED.
We are already educating our lowest level of workers far above what the job market requires… There are no jobs to be given to those who will soon emerge college or career ready (SAT score over 1550), unless they first fill in the minimum wage jobs these poor blokes working now, give up when they get bumped up into real jobs….
If you bump your newly trained graduates directly into those high paying jobs, then you will be freezing the current generation into these minimum wage level jobs at which they are currently stuck…
One cannot bootstrap a educational process into producing high quality job applicants, when there are no high quality jobs taking applications…
We already have a high quality educated work force; we call it our minimum wage crowd….
So Governor. What are you going to do?
As I see it here are your options….
You have to create an industry here in Delaware. Here is one: wind power infrastructure and solar power grid efficiency. You just make it up and go after it, hoping it doesn’t implode like Fisker and Bloom… The difference is that with Fisker and Bloom, you said “here is some money, do something”; you left it up to them. With this, you get Federal funding and we go government control all the way involving public-private partnerships. We have the land, we have the technical expertise, we have a scientifically educated work force; all we need are capital and someone to direct it.
Secondly, the government needs to create high labor-intensive industries. Areas where humans will not be replaced by robotics. Health care comes to mind. Personal care of senior citizen in their homes, is another. Food inspection is a third. Why can’t we have a public-private enterprise here in Delaware which performs the FDA food inspections for the entire East Coast? Environmental inspection industries is a fourth avenue of opportunity; testing and verification, done by the state to insure compliance of air, water, and soil standards…
As one can tell, these require more taxes. Those who have benefited from the bounce-back of the financial markets, should be the ones to carry the rest of us forward. That would be the 1%. There are two ways to fund our future growth… A) We can borrow and spread the cost over time by increasing our debt and pay it back later, or B) we can pay as we go by assessing more from those in real time, who can afford it without denting their lifestyle…. Being a fiscal conservative, I fall into taxing now, paying now, and keeping our debt levels low.(B).. It makes too much sense to do it any other way….since we currently have an abundance of cash in the hands of the 1% from which to draw.
The point being made through all these wishful plans, is that employment in the private sector is now full. It will not grow more jobs on its own. It is now required of government to prime the pump; we need it more than ever. Most of those currently unemployed will need government jobs to get back to work. There is much to be done to our infrastructure; we have cut government for so long, that many things are close to being broken….
We have an educated work force ready and able. It is our college and high school educated minimum wage earners.... We need to first give them the opportunity to move up into jobs for which they are qualified to do,.. in order to make them better citizens. Playing with education again and again to make more minimum wage workers who are overqualified, is not going to do anyone any good at all… it is just circling money around where it is not needed.
Courtesy of Frank Capra
Any investor knows you buy low and sell high. Buying high and selling low makes you a loser. The same goes with a business. Buying a business doing very well, will leave you no room for growth. Your pie can only get smaller, as more businesses arrive on your block and begin exploiting the fact you are so busy, by offering similar quality and prices with lower wait-times. Their profits grow; while both your market share and profitability decline.
This is why people like monopolies so much. One can consistently almost guarantee one’s income and profitability.
Now because of “math” it is easier to show great gains on low profitability options, more bang for the buck, than on high ones. The closer one is to zero the higher percent increase one can show their clients. If you have just one customer sale, it is easy to have a 100% increase by having 2 customer sales; someone just has to walk into your store. But if you have 1000 customer sales per day, then it is rather hard to jump up to 2000 customer sales per day. Where are you going to put them?
Understanding this is critical to growing the economy.
History lesson. In the summer of 2007 ARM’s started defaulting as the higher rates kicked in, starting a mushrooming effect up and down the securitized mortgage chain. In 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed, all hell broke loose. The world financial markets came within 20 minutes of collapsing entirely. But the US under George W. Bush restored confidence in the dollar, and people decided to leave their investments alone and let them ride. That is his most defining moment. That is one memoir I want to read.
Fortunately Ben Bernanke was an expert on the Great Depression. Bolster the banks, keep money solvent, coddle corporations, and keep the infrastructure intact. Knowing full well, if it totally collapsed (like a small town losing its factory) there would be no economic driver to hammer the economy back into shape.
For this reason, great pains were taken to assist big business on their bounce-back.
They bounced back very well. Only this time, they didn’t need as many people to work for them. Over the last decade, software had become smart enough to replace many jobs people had previously occupied.. Just that before the recession, it wasn’t that obvious, It was only after one let people go and ran well or better without them, that one realized how just how fat you were beforehand.
So this brings us to the point. We have invested in corporate bounce-backs as far as we can go. We have hit the ceiling as far as getting a return on our investment. On the other hand, now on the labor side, we have great opportunity. Every little investment over there into into putting people to work, will return great dividends very quickly.
We have to realize there as simply some jobs in society that cannot be performed by machines inside corporate establishments or a banks. Those jobs, simply put, are ones whose duty is to watch corporate giants and banks to insure that they comply within the law and prosecute them fully when they step out.
We need these jobs. We really need them now. After all, people do not work best without any accountability. In fact the opposite is mostly true. When you have to personally answer to a boss, you are more productive. Even when that demanding boss is oneself; they still answer to someone. Consider the opposite. If you could be paid whether you did work or not, would you be as productive as you are now, where if you don’t do work, you don’t get paid? Or would you take advantage of that opportunity, to heck with productivity, and seek to experience some of the quality of life you missed hereto? Our corporate entities and banks need to answer to a boss. That boss should be the American People via their proxies. the government watchdogs.
Those record breaking Corporate profits which are achieved by cheating society, are not really profits towards society’s benefit at all. Some one has to eventually pay for them. If you pump toxic chemicals into the ground to avoid paying for their disposal, at some future point when they hit a water table, society will have to pay to remove them and the damage they caused as well.
It is cheaper now to prevent that action while we have tons of money, than it will be to fix it when we simply do not.
The small business method to fix our economy, is to hire more government workers (invest in a brand new business) and pay for them out of the corporate earnings (our business already tapped out) because they can run with less people.
It is really no change from before. Except for the person writing the check. Prior to the recession these people worked for a corporation and got paid by their company. Where we need to go, is to have these people work watching over their former corporations, now getting their pay checks written by the government, which gets its extra funding to cover their pay, from taxing the excessive profits those corporations are making. Why are the making them? Because they aren’t working as many people….
This is quite sustainable when viewed from this perspective, as would be readily seen by the owner of a small business. If we were happy in the nineties, back when everyone was better off each year than they were before, then we can be happy again, just by keeping all portions similar, just moving labor from the private to the public, and increasing assessments on the private sector to pay for it.
There are those who will scream. They are selfish. They will be proven wrong.
As our planet becomes more crowded, we need more solutions. Some solutions are not very profitable and for that reason, we need a government capable to grow to meet them.
The old arguments of government being the problem, are long gone. They weren’t true ever, though a lot of people believed them back in the day. The opposite is certainly true now. As a society we need more watchdogs working to make our lives better. As a society we really don’t need more profits. We have too many of them now and really, what good are profits really doing for us? None. Instead, we need more people working and buying things.. Nice things that someone’s got to make…
It is time to pivot in how we view the entire American economy. Let’s hire us some watchdogs and cut the deficit while doing so, by increasing the rate of taxes on all those profits being sucked up in excess because a lot of workers got fired..
The tycoon wishes to remain anonymous because he is one of the most solid Republican monetary supporters.
But when asked how he reads this chart, here is his compelling answers….
“Aside from the obvious, that we have had 39 months of continuous private sector job growth, something not seen since the Clinton Era, I suppose the biggest question remains as to “why” the glitches. Why are there parts that drop down in the recovery and seem to go backwards?
Here, let’s just go through the time-line. Let’s start at the bottom of the inverted pyramid… The general climb out of the hole was due to TARP money which jump-started construction projects and the big infusions to banks which kept the economy from falling off the cliff into the pit of no return. It culminated with a big push of Census hiring in March of 2010. Most attention was on Obamacare at that time and with everyone’s lack of attention from the president, congress, and corporate, things languished for several months. Also one must remember that the Republicans looked like they would make big gains in 2010 and turn all Obama’s directives around. That would be very bad if it were so, and no one sank any money into investment until the election determined things.
Those who figured Obama would win, (Northeast and California) invested heavily in October only to be mistaken and with the Tea Party rattling their sabers upon their win, no one invested anything at all. We all thought the economy would crash and burn again. Up until the election we fully expected the Bush Tax Cuts to be eradicated, so our goals had been to move our funds over into areas where they would not be taxed, primarily investment into our own companies. As the tax laws became extended, many of us were not in the right zone at the right time to take advantage of the two year grace period that tends to better reward those investing in liquid assets as opposed to longer term job creating ones.
By 2011, in February we realized the Tea Party was nothing but a boil, a cyst, a sham, and things would hold current at a status quo. February, March, and April we made plans to go forward and grow. Then in May, the first debt crises occurred and shocked, we all pulled back. The Tea Party did not vote on its unceremonious raise and emergency measures were begun to be implemented by the Federal Treasury. In June, we rode our previous success fully betting that no one, not even the Tea Party would be foolish enough to destroy America’s credit rating for their own political gain. By July, we knew we were horribly wrong. We pulled back on every investment option we possibly could.
The Grand Design ($4 Trillion Budget Arrangement) never did come about. If it had we would have thrown everything into getting on the ground floor of the next boom. But by August 2011 we were confident enough to begin putting some of our extra money now trickling in over to self-investment and it continued straight through January 2012.
That was when Republicans began their Primary campaign in earnest and the Democrats were silent by having no primary or no opponent to which to reply; all bets were that the Democrats were very vulnerable. In fact, it looked like it could be a clean sweep of both Houses and the Executive. This would mean all new investment was futile. The Fed would raise interest rates according to all these Republicans against soft money, costing banks billions and overall investment would slow to a crawl. This slide lasted until the juxtaposition of the two party conventions back to back, which gave us all a clear idea of who would win. I mean who would you want behind the shoulder advising the policy of the next president: Bill Clinton or Clint Eastwood? The fruits of our investments through Sept and Oct. paid off through November and December. Although we too had quite a scare after the first debate.
Then came the Sequester. It is hard to remember now that we really thought we were going off a cliff back then. Once settled, January’s hiring was alread done but February received the spike of top money shifting from taxable investments over to job producing non-taxable investments. The stock market jumped as world money became content that America had finally finished with its infatuation that the top 1% carry the economy as a whole and should be taxed less, jumped back in. Problems in China and Europe made sure we were the world’s safest investment at the time.
Currently it appears that our entire economy has matured in 2013… if anyone looks at the chart, you see that the spike in February almost perfectly cancels out the dips in January and March, and that the average across all 6 months is very consistent, almost the same number.
In fact, we have plateaued. This is where our economy is right now, growing steadily with population growth and nothing more. There is nothing any more that anyone can do to increase private sector hiring.
Nothing will change I figure until the House of Representatives gets enough democrats and government hiring can begin anew.”
“Oh” I said, “so now you are a Democratic supporter?” lol.
“NEVER!” he responded. “However I’ll admit that Republicans are absolutely worthless when it comes to growing economies.”
And there, you have “the rest of the story….”
“All Rise and Raise Your Right Hand… Do You, solemnly swear to have no remorse, to allow those known to be extremely violent and mentally twisted, to possess all purchasable firearms and ammunition, and to have no restrictions upon their use? So Help You?
“WE DO. WE VOTED AGAINST Barbieri HB 88 w/HA 1, HA 1 to HA 1, HA 2 BECAUSE WE BELIEVE ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO OWN A GUN WITH NO RESTRICTIONS, EVEN IF THEY LOVE THE MALICIOUS KILLING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.
Ok then in order please state your name and affiliation… in the order you are listed above.
Sweeney Todd– Republican; Bruce Ennis– Democrat; James Holmes–Republican; Colin Bonini– Republican; Adam Lanza– Republican; Cathy Clouthier– Republican; Charles Manson– Republican; Brian Bushweller,–Democrat; Gerald Hocker– Republican; Greg Lavelle– Republican; Robert Marshall– Democrat; David McBride–Democrat; Gary Simpson–Republican; Robert Venables– Democrat; Charley Manson– Republican; Brian Pettyjohn– Republican; Jeffery Dahmer– Republican; Ernie Lopez– Republican; Sweeney Todd– Republican; David Lawson– Republican; Jeremy Loughner– Republican…..
Just got a ruling in from the Attorney General’s office. The working group that met secretly in the dungeon under Woodburn, was breaking the law….
I heard it from Transparent Christina and heard Nancy has it up too…
Here is the critical piece of the reply….
“…any prior meetings conducted without adequate public notice or compliance with other open meeting requirements may have been held in violation of the Act.” From: McConnel, Ian R (DOJ) Sent: Monday, June 10, 2013 3:45 PM
Even if it barely passes by the skin of its teeth, we now have basis for the filing of an injunction based on an illegal action resulting in this legislation coming forward, to stop it in its tracks.
Did a crime occur in the Republican caucus surrounding Darrell Issa.
ABSOLUTELY. Evidence was tampered…..
CBS News reported that at least two of the Benghazi e-mails that were leaked by Republicans last Friday were altered.
One of the altered e-mails was from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. The other altered e-mail was from U.S. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.
Here’s the Republican version of the Rhodes e-mail: We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.
Here’s the White House version of the Rhodes e-mail: We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.
Here’s the Republican version of the Nuland e-mail: The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.
Here’s the White House version of the Nuland e-mail: The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings.
Evidence was tampered to imply a crime. Under all state codes this can be either a misdemeanor or a felony. We need these investigated… The law was broken. Congressional Hearings are in place to get to the bottom of the truth. They are not intended to be kangeroo courts to make up evidence that doesn’t naturally exist….
The law was broken. Arrests need to be made… This is not about Democrats or Republicans… This is about the trust and truthfulness of the United States of America.
If Congress were run as were DC’s Schools? Darrell Issa would be thrown out of Congress…. From the DC school manual…….
Tier IV behaviors result in off-site Suspension.
(a) The following behaviors shall be considered Tier IV behaviors:
(1) Acts of vandalism, destruction of property, or graffiti (tagging);
(2) Documented theft of school or personal property without force;
(3) Interfering with school authorities or participating in a major
disruption of the school’s operation.
(4) Tampering with, changing, or altering an official record or
document of a school;
Here is the Texas’s definition of tampering. Darrell Issa would be in jail if this took place in Texas….
A person commits an offense if, knowing that an investigation or official proceeding is pending or in progress, he:
(1) alters, destroys, or conceals any record, document, or thing with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evidence in the investigation or official proceeding;
(2) makes, presents, or uses any record, document, or thing with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to affect the course or outcome of the investigation or official proceeding;
(3) knowing that an offense has been committed, alters, destroys, or conceals any record, document, or thing with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evidence in any subsequent investigation of or official proceeding related to the offense; or
(4) observes a human corpse under circumstances in which a reasonable person would believe that an offense had been committed, knows or reasonably should know that a law enforcement agency is not aware of the existence of or location of the corpse, and fails to report the existence of and location of the corpse to a law enforcement agency.
In Texas, this is a felony in the third degree.
The evidence brought forth a week ago that inflamed the nation, was a fabrication. “Directly it was an attempt to make, present and use a record, document, or thing with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to affect the course or outcome of the investigation or official proceeding….”
18 USC § 1001 – Statements or entries generally
shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years or, if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism (as defined in section 2331), imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, or section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years.
In their quest to call it terrorism –and it is– the republicans just opened themselves up to a crime.
I demand an immediate arrest of Darrell Issa for breaking the law…. Full Censure by the House of Representative of this common criminal is called for immediately…..
Jea Street says of school board elections::… “It’s the teachers! They have a lock on it! They control ALL the school districts. You gotta give the unions credit for being aggressive, assertive and effective. But on the other hand you can take the position that it is counter productive. If they control the board, is the board acting in the interests of the students, or the union?”
He then points to Christina School District. WHERE THE STATE WILL LIKELY REVOKE 2.3 MILLION IN RACE TO THE TOP MONEY because the administration and school board refuse to implement a teacher incentive program that matches state requirements. The state wants to promise the money and then find reasons not to give it; they can get results and pay nothing for them, whereas the Christina Board wants to break it down and give it to all the teachers inside those good schools meeting requirements and use it to improve the technology in struggling schools.
Jea Street was the character who wrote a letter demanding the superintendent and members of the school board resign, because they didn’t capitulate to his wishes…
The district responded with a letter of their own, to the parents of all district students, explaining how the boards use of money was infinitely superior to the use proposed by Markell and his toady, Jea Street.
Now I’m generally too busy to deal with the pomposity of those whose function in life is to be noticed… However, they are often used as was Samuel Jackson’s character in Django, to do the bidding of others. So they try to pretend they are independent actors, I find it very interesting to trace the strings back to their puppeteers, to see who is pulling them.
This was no mystery. It was rather easy… I’ll walk you through….
Notice how the tone is anti- union? That is your clue. Who hates unions? The Delaware State Chamber of Congress for one. Governor Markell and Alan Levine for two. Wall Street for three… i think it is safe to say, particularly in today’s economic climate, that if one is making under $60,000 a year, he or she is probably pro union…. The only people who hate unions, are those with money… Whether Jea Street does or doesn’t matters little.. He is obviously a toady for one who does….
Jea Street has sold out. He no longer represents the people in his town. He is looking for his golden ticket… The true golden ticket for Wilmington’s inner city children, is a good education. And if teachers didn’t have to test so damn much, those students could be getting a good education right now. If there were no “strings” attached to RTTT money, those kids in Christina’s city school, could be on broadband today.
I used to think Jea Street was misguided. With these words almost the exact parroting what one would hear around a Chamber of Commerce dinner, I know he is selling out. He no longer represents any school child in Wilmington. He is interested in his own survival. Good luck to him, but the children of Wilmington, as all of the Christina Board would attest, are far more valuable to Delaware, than whether Mr. Street hits or misses the “big time.”
Everybody knows that teachers are the front lines of education. No matter what tests RTTT funnels our way, without teachers nothing gets done. Education completely shuts down. There is nothing anyone can ever do to start it up, unless the teachers agree to be a part of it. Jea Street, Governor Markell, Secretary Murphy, and Rich Heffron of the Delaware Chamber of Commerce, are all working against teachers teaching. Which means, they are working against the only one thing that can make things better,
Not a very smart strategy.
What is a great strategy, is to put enough teachers giving us an 11 to 1 student teacher ratio. Then watch the results come in….
Not likely one would say today. But, hear me out. This session the corporate financial targets that got hit, all missed their revenue. That means people did not spend as was planned, but some fat on the corporate skeleton could be cut to compensate. That fat is not there for the next report…
The economy has taken a shock from $85 billion sequestered despite only $10 billion having been applied already. The $75 billion cuts are coming.
Even though the US market is the only safe place to put ones money today, the rest of the world is as unsafe as ever. Since there is no where else to go with one’s money if he US market dives,… panic will begin very quickly….
The possibility is rather good for a 30-50% correction in the US Stock market. I would still stay out and remain in Treasuries if I were you….
Courtesy of Obamarmy
Ok kids, Look at the graph…. and see who can be the first to tell me….. Why do we really need to ramp up the education of our black and brown kids now?!!!!
Tax the Rich. Hire teachers to reach an 11 to 1 ratio. Test beginning, mid, and end of cycle only to evaluate the student’s needs ( don’t use them to close schools, fire teachers, or divvy out bonuses to your friends and supporters)… and lets get it done….
Btw, it has to start with the first one.
Adolphus A. Busch IV, heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune, resigned his lifetime NRA membership last night in a blistering two-page letter that called the gun lobby nothing but a corporate shill!
Acknowledging the NRA is nothing but a overused scummy prostitute, Mr. Busch asks these questions….
A) Why did the NRA reverse its original position on background checks?
B) How can the NRA disregard the overwhelming will of its members?
C) How do assault weapons and large capacity magazines have any role in the original NRA vision?
D) The NRA I see today has completely, unequivocally, and undeniably undermined the values upon which it was established….
E) Your current strategic focus clearly places priority on the needs of gun and ammunition manufacturers while disregarding as irrelavent the opinions of your 4 million individual members.”
So for people like Dan Short, State Senator in favor of guns, as well as for those who sneak off to another state to shoot pigeons in boxes, here is the simple math….
Budweiser = real manly man.
Budweiser ≠ NRA
Real manly man ≠ NRA
Therefore NRA = sexless impotent men who wear Victoria Secrets finest under their pants.
Boo NRA people…. no one fears you anymore. You are just a concubine good for only one thing….
So bend over.
kavips 