Tag: education

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Do I have this right?

Do I have this right?

  • We are not going to extend unemployment payments…
  • We are going to raise the retirement age…
  • We are going to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction…
  • We are going to freeze Federal salaries…
  • We have made it tougher for individuals to file bankruptcy…
  • We are not funding schools to the point where we are no longer providing quality education.  Our children are falling behind the rest of the industrialized word…
  • We are thinking about cutting Social Security benefits…
  • The Republicans are trying to repeal the new health care law, weak though it was…

Yet the Republicans are going to hold our legislative process hostage until their rich benefactors get the tax break none of them need…

Do I have this right?

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Just Imagine — No Taxes

There is personal wealth and then there is community wealth.  I read this a while back in a discussion of the growing wealth gap in this country.  One measure of wealth that has a lot to with the general happiness of a population is community wealth. This includes such things as parks, good roads, support of the arts, community buildings, education, etc.

I started thinking about this again as I have just come back from the Shelby County Clerks Office where I was registering my vehicle.   It is not an awful government building, I’ve been in a lot worse, but neither is it grand.  I still remember where they housed the County Sanitarians in Pulaski County, Arkansas.  It was an old hospital that had long been past its prime when the medicos abandoned it.  Now the County was trying to use it for office space.   It does seem to me that many government buildings get short shrift. Continue reading “Just Imagine — No Taxes”

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A Sane Suggestion for Afghanistan

This has got to be one of the sanest commentaries I have ever read on the subject of our involvement in Afghanistan.

“Aid can be done anywhere, including where Taliban are,” Mr. Mortenson said. “But it’s imperative the elders are consulted, and that the development staff is all local, with no foreigners.”

Put yourself in their shoes.  Would you want some outsider telling you how to run your town?

“Mr. Mortenson says that $243 million is needed to fund all higher education in Afghanistan this year. He suggests that America hold a press conference here in Kabul and put just 243 of our 100,000 soldiers (each costing $1 million per year) on planes home. Then the U.S. could take the savings and hand over a check to pay for Afghanistan’s universities.”

Sounds like it would be money well spent to me.

Nicholas Kristof’s article in the New York Times can be found at the following link.

Dr. Greg and Afghanistan

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Sacrifice is for the little people

Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece for Monday, September 20, 2010.  The Angry Rich

This is why I have become so discouraged in our political system.  It may have never been about the majority of the folks in this country, but I feel it is even more skewed towards the elite today.   A quote from the op-ed piece:

“And among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it. “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes — but that was a long time ago.”

It is amazing how many middle class folks agree with this feeling of the very rich that the rich are entitled.  The wealth gap continues to grow in the United States, the people living in poverty is rising, unemployment remains high, our infrastructure continues to crumble, our children’s education is falling behind most of the rest of the industrialized world and deficits continue to grow. 

These folks have no real loyalty beyond their pocket books.  I would be angry, but the energy would be wasted. It saddens and discourages me beyond measure that an elite few control the political agenda of this country. 

What was it Spock said, “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one.”  Apparently not in America in 2010.

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Undereducated / Uneducated Americans

I have taken a more circuitous educational path than most folks.  My career road has perhaps been even more tortured.  Now factor in that I have lived in ten states and one foreign country.  One of the advantages of such meanderings is that I have studied in several different fields, seen many types of jobs and industries, and I have been exposed to a wide range of people.  

I do not see myself as atypical, but sometimes I wonder.  I work in a technical field, computer programming.  Most of the folks I work with are college educated, and many are very smart.   What does surprise me is the narrowness of their knowledge and world view.  The folks discussed below are smart and successful in their fields, but the following anecdotes do illustrate my point. 

I have an Indian co-worker that related to me a story about his birthday which is on the same day as Mohandas Gandhi.  Continue reading “Undereducated / Uneducated Americans”

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Education, Education, Education

A quote from a Washington Post article:

Second, welcome foreign innovators. Harvard research fellow Vivek Wadhwa reports that immigrants have founded more than half of all Silicon Valley start-ups in the past decade. These immigrant-led, American tech companies employed more than 450,000 workers and grossed $52 billion in 2005. For U.S. companies to employ a highly specialized foreign worker, the employee must hold an H-1B visa, but current law allows for the issuing of only 65,000 H-1B visas per year.

The H-1B cap was established to prevent foreigners from taking American jobs, but, in fact, an education gap frequently leaves American candidates less qualified for these positions. Lawmakers could improve the situation all around by removing the cap on H-1B visas while imposing a 10 percent payroll tax above and beyond the benchmark salary for any position being filled by holders of such visas. The proceeds of the payroll tax could be channeled into U.S. reeducation programs. This compromise would bring the best innovators to work here while subsidizing the continued education of American talent.

Click here for full article

First Mr. Wadhwa or is it Ms. Wadhwa scares us by saying that there will be no new innovation in the USA without immigrants, specifically H-1B workers. Continue reading “Education, Education, Education”

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Four Indian Firms Hogged 10,000 H1B Visas

Original article at IndianExpress.com is no longer on Da ‘Net

I am not wild about the H-1B program, but if it were about individual Indians I would be a fan.  Admittedly it is a selected subset that I meet here, but they are generally intelligent, hard working, friendly folks.  If I have a complaint about them it is that they tend to be too compliant to the korporate overlords.  That and they undercut wages tremedously. This just adds to decreasing concern American korporations have for their employees.

However the program is about korporate greed here and in India.   It is about American korporations not investing in American workers or the American education system.  I read an article a while back about how American korporations were shifting their education dollars from American universities to those in China and India.  They did this because they felt they were getting more bang for their buck.

I do not know for a fact  how these firms that are hogging the H-1B visas treat their folks.  I do know that Indian work conditions, even for professionals, are Dickinsonian compared to American standards.

This whole paradigm of profit at any cost has got to stop.

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Obama gives me hope

I just watched Mr. Obama’s speech to Congress.  What a refreshing change to have a leader lead, to have a leader concerned about the run of mill citizen, to have a leader paint a picture of a shared future.

Obama gives me hope.

The 4 things that concern me most are health care, the deficit, energy, and education, seem to the the things that concern this president most.

Obama gives me hope.

It is time we  forgot short term gains, and made long range plans.  It is time we quit ignoring the problems.  It is time we started attacking the problems.

Obama gives me hope.

I believe that our government should govern scientifically.  We do this by identifying the problem. Gather whatever information, experts, etc we need to come up with a solution, implement that solution, and most importantly put it on a feedback loop.  If the solution does not work, then we go back to step 2, but we keep working on it.  And we do this until the problem is solved.  I believe this President will do that.

Obama gives me hope.

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Quote for the Day – Charles R. Swindol

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”

~Charles R. Swindol

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Quote for the Day — A Writing Quote Just for Jeanne

“Having burned my ship, I plunged into writing. I am afraid I always was an extremist. Early and late I was at it—writing, typing, studying grammar, studying writing and all the forms of writing, and studying the writers who succeeded in order to find out how they succeeded. I managed on five hours’ sleep in the twenty-four, and came pretty close to working the nineteen waking hours left to me. My light burned till two and three in the morning, which led a good neighbour woman into a bit of sentimental Sherlock-Holmes deduction. Never seeing me in the day-time, she concluded that I was a gambler, and that the light in my window was placed there by my mother to guide her erring son home.

The trouble with the beginner at the writing game is the long, dry spells, Continue reading “Quote for the Day — A Writing Quote Just for Jeanne”