It’s my birthday today too Barbara. So Happy Birthday!

My husband set the clocks ahead by 2 hours, and so I was ready for work 2 hours early.  I was headed out the door and noticed that it was still pitch black - and he caught me just in time.  Of course, this was before we had kids so we made good use of the extra time. 

Rest of the article from Above:  (The quotes above should have been around all those paragraphs except my comments at the end)

 Douglass High School teachers and staff appeared to be concerned and caring people, but the poor quality educational outcomes demonstrate that concern and caring is not enough. The virtually empty classrooms, filmed on back-to-school night, suggested little parental interest in their children’s education. School day behavior demonstrated little student interest. Some students spent class time laughing, joking and tussling with one another. Others had their heads lying on their desks or appeared uninterested in the teacher’s discussion. Many of those engaged in student-teacher exchange on academic topics showed very limited reasoning ability.

Frederick Douglass was founded in 1883 as the Colored High and Training School before it was renamed. It is one of the nation’s oldest historically black high schools. It was a draw for Baltimore’s brightest black students. Success stories among its alumni include Thurgood Marshall, Cab Calloway, as well as several judges, congressmen and civil rights leaders. I guarantee you that if Douglass High student test scores of that earlier era were available, they wouldn’t show today’s achievement gap. Also, a 1940s or ’50s Douglass High graduate would find no comparison between student behavior during their school years and that shown in the documentary.

Politicians and the teaching establishment say more money, smaller classes and newer buildings are necessary for black academic excellence. At Frederick Douglass’ founding, it didn’t have the resources available today. If blacks can achieve at a time when there was far greater poverty, gross discrimination and fewer opportunities, what says blacks cannot achieve today? Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.

 Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

http://economics.gmu.edu/wew/articles/08/Black%20Education.htm 

Is it cheaper to have criminals on the streets victimizing people and property?  How do you calculate the true cost of the murder of innocent fathers and mothers who leave behind devastated families, loss of income to those families, and the irreparable loss of their talent and productivity to the community?

As expensive as prisons are, the alternative of leaving dangerous corrupt people on the street is even more expensive.

 "Hard Times at Douglass High," is an HBO documentary that aired last June. It captured much of the 2004-2005 school year at Baltimore’s predominantly black Frederick Douglass High School. The tragedy is that what is seen in the documentary is typical of most predominantly black urban schools.

Douglass’ students are four to five years below grade level. Most of its ninth-graders read at the third-, fourth- or fifth-grade levels. In 2006, only 24 percent of its students tested proficient in reading, in math just 11 percent, and that’s an improvement over previous years. Only one student managed to score above 1,000 on the SAT and another student scored 440 out of 1,600. You get 400 points for just writing in your name. Out of its 1,100 students, 200 to 300 are absent each day. Many of those who do show up don’t do so on time; they roam the hallways and leave the school during the day. Only one-half of the school’s 500 incoming freshmen ninth-graders return for their sophomore year and far fewer remain for graduation

Sixty-six percent of the teachers are uncertified. Even if there were no certified teacher shortage, I doubt whether many teachers with attractive alternatives would want to teach at the school. Douglass High School is not a place for teachers with high expectations for their students. English teacher Mr. McDermott resigned in the middle of the school year saying, "Teaching becomes secondary, and discipline is the main thing that goes on. I don’t feel like I’m making a difference anymore."

Cameras followed then-principal Isabelle Grant on her visit to the home of a chronically absent student. The student who reads at the fifth- or sixth-grade level is promised that if she attends school regularly she’ll be promoted to the 11th grade. It is impossible to eliminate such a reading deficit in a semester. Teachers are pressured into passing failing students. The documentary showed that within a few days of graduation time the school went from having 138 eligible graduates to 200. Promoting and graduating students who haven’t made the grade is nothing short of academic fraud.   con’t….

http://economics.gmu.edu/wew/articles/08/Black%20Education.htm 

I believe that much of the root cause of crimes lies in in the terrible schools and neighborhoods and housing projects that resemble prisons themselves.  We spend more on education than any other country, but because we have a monopoly system run by politicians, it is no surprise that the monopoly is  dysfunctional.  It is child abuse in the extreme to turn a young child over to a chaotic system with a 35-50% graduation rate.  

Driving throught the Pine Barrens near my home in South Jersey, I looked up to see an enormous golden eagle flying very low over the road headed my direction.  It had a 6-7 foot wingspan.  Shockingly large.

Another time I had to stop the car and wait while two very small black bear cubs crossed the road.  They were adorable, rolly-polly, but we never did see mama bear - thank goodness. 

I found this book to have excellent insights into Addictive thinking and Addictive Behaviors:

by Abraham J. Twerski  

What’s sad is that the Biden’s didn’t see the signs to the degree that they could intervene,   People who live life in the fast lane, like politicians and their children, are often prey to predators who know they have the money to indulge themselves.  As conservatives we take no pleasure in the addictions of our adversaries or their children.

Why would she want to sink herself into the California cesspool? 

California, my home state, has skyrocketing taxes, skyrocketing welfare dockets, and businesses fleeing the state, along with the most productive people.  We personally know 8 couples who have left the state after their employer moved or they got sick of the traffic, and taxes.

My husband was staying with a friend in Santa Monica last week.  At 2am he heard fire from an AK-47 from the direction of the public golf course.  His host reassurred him that it happens almost every night, and the cops don’t even bother to come out anymore it’s so prevalent.   

The state has gone the way of DC, Detroit, Philly, and NYC in the 70’s: dangerous, over-taxed, hostile to business, with dirty failing schools. 

Actually Rudy was able to turn NYC around, but I think California is hopeless because too many people want the government to be Santa Claus. 

My favorite artist is my daughter who is inspired to create artistic pieces representing horse anatomy:  horse musculature interpreted through wood and wire to scale.

For her senior art show, she designed a piece, which she said she envisioned in a dream, using hundreds of pieces of bundled wire to represent the horse’s muscle groups - to scale.  I’ve never seen anything like it. And her art professor, who has painted ceilings at the Louvre, said it was the best work of the show.

Her goal is to learn welding so she can continue expanding her repertoire.   

1. I would cut taxes on capital gains, (and income taxes, even on the wealthiest), so that investors are willing to take the risk to invest in businesses here.  Obama has scared investors with his "now is not the time for profit" talk.  Investors see the Democrats in Congress willing to change rules mid-stream, hiking taxes on businesses, energy and on private bonuses that were contracted to be paid.  Obama is creating a War on Productivity and Profitability.  The exploding deficits means that taxes will have to be raised, along with interest rates.  Reagan and JFK both urged congress to cut taxes (only congress can raise or cut taxes) and they had years of  increased prosperity to show for it afterwards.  People are more efficient than government in spending money and getting quality in return.  

2.  I would NOT pursue green technologies during a recession because they are unprofitable, companies lose money and people lose jobs.  Spain tried this same experiment with government funding on green energy and here’s what happened:

The premiums paid for solar, biomass, wave and wind power - - which are charged to consumers in their bills — translated into a $774,000 cost for each Spanish “green job” created since 2000, said Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at the university and author of the report.

“The loss of jobs could be greater if you account for the amount of lost industry that moves out of the country due to higher energy prices,” he said in an interview.

Bloomberg news:  http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a2PHwqAs7BS0

3. I would de-monopolize public education so that we can have a chance at world class education.  We spend more per pupil that any other country, and we get dismal results.  No monopoly ever provides the best services or products, and we need to be the best to compete. 

4. Greater choices in health care, more insurance options will drive down the cost of health care.  Another government monopoly will eventually raise prices, decrease efficiency, and force us all into rationed care with government boards deciding our fate - just like Canada, the UK and Italy.  Who wants the headaches of doctors on strike like these other countries? 

Patti Davis has always impressed me as a rude ungrateful brat, self absorbed and narcissistic.  Maybe’s she’s changed.

Has anyone heard from Chelsea Clinton lately? Is she still working for that hedge fund?  Any word on Amy Carter after she was expelled from Brown University?  Did Jenna Bush go back to teaching disadvantaged youth? How did her book on AIDs do nationally?  

What’s the scoop on Joe Biden’s daughter and her cocaine use caught on video tape?

I read that her Natasha’s was completely unnecessary as they did not have a helicopter in the province, and it took them 2.5 hours to get her to a hospital after she complained of severe pain. 

The province of Quebec lacks a medical helicopter system, common in the United States and other parts of Canada, to airlift stricken patients to major trauma centers. Montreal’s top head trauma doctor said Friday that may have played a role in Richardson’s death.

"It’s impossible for me to comment specifically about her case, but what I could say is … driving to Mont Tremblant from the city (Montreal) is a 2 1/2-hour trip, and the closest trauma center is in the city. Our system isn’t set up for traumas and doesn’t match what’s available in other Canadian cities, let alone in the States," said Tarek Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre, which represents six of Montreal’s hospitals.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090321/ap_on_en_mo/natasha_richardson 

Oh, and oil prices are rising because the Fed is damaging the dollar printing trillions in inflationary notes so it takes more dollars to buy the same amount of oil overseas.  This is another reason we need to drill, drill drill.

And for those who say we are addicted to oil and need alternative energy sources, note that Sen. Feinstein is fighting a solar project in the desert because the environmentalists say it will ruin the aesthetic.   

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123810805612252481.html

Democrats Oppose Solar Project in Mojave

 Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, thinks he has a partial solution to America’s dependence on foreign oil. But he says liberals and environmentalists are rejecting his plan to make it easier to build solar and wind power stations. California’s Mohave Desert is an inhospitable place, he notes, but 19 companies think it’s perfect for siting solar or wind facilities on 500,000 acres owned by the federal government there.

But Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who used to be San Francisco’s mayor, is having none of it. She is pushing legislation to turn the land into a national monument, which would prevent such development.

Mr. Rohrabacher — who notes 130 pending applications for solar power projects on federal land administered by the Bureau of Land Management — is appalled that environmentalists are blocking such plants by demanding time-consuming environmental-impact studies. He tells me that though the BLM has lifted a moratorium on new solar projects on public land that it imposed in 2005, applications are still being clogged up in a bureaucratic pipeline and no new permits have been issued to date. "We need solutions on many levels, and freeing up bottlenecks to alternative energy is one of them," he says.

Things are already starting to turn around and without a penny of stimulus because interest rates have fallen and people are refinancing, and buying new homes when they were priced out of the market before, but interest rates are on their way back up to 8-10% by 2010 because our debt is so massive that it will take a higher interest rate to get people to buy our treasuries.

 We have just increased our money supply by something like 250% and that will cause massive inflation which destroys wealth.  When I hear Obama say that P/E means Profit/Earning ratio, and yesterday when he said that we can create millions of green jobs making solar panels but we don’t have the electricians to lay the lines - I want to scream.