Posted 1:51 AM by Steve
For all the liars and simpletons out there here are some facts about the sanctions against Iraq. Since August, 1990, when it invaded Kuwait, there have been blanket economic sanctions against Iraq, EXCEPT FOR FOOD AND MEDICAL SUPPLIES. This means that Saddam Hussein and his corrupt regime is responsible for ANY AND ALL starvation in Iraq or any babies without medicine.

In 1996, after 5 years of non-cooperation, Iraq agreed to implement the U.N.-proposed "oil-for-food" programme, which allows it use its oil revenues to purchase humanitarian goods.

Although Iraq can now sell as much oil as it wants, the proceeds are put into a United Nations escrow account. Baghdad can purchase goods with the escrow money, provided those goods are approved by the U.N. sanctions committee.

Posted 12:08 AM by Steve
The latest supposed audio tape of Osama Bin Laden will turn out to be another phony. The fact is Bin Laden didn't die a martyr. Bin Laden likely died cringing and sobbing like a child. As he soiled himself in fear, abandoned in his selfish perversion of religion by a just God, his last breaths were of cold dirt and rubble in the perdition of a demolished Afghan cave. Unwept and unsung, the suffocating weight of shattered earth was his last remaining companion before his pathetic life was snuffed out by the superior forces and will of the United States of America. His body, like his philosophy, will forever remain in an unmarked grave.

Posted 11:08 PM by Steve
Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal. What he meant was that they were basically born equal and were to be given an equal opportunity to remain so. We are perpetuating a public education system that, even with adequate funding, does not provide equal opportunities to the young Americans who attend school.

In the late 19th century, the U.S. educational system was the envy of the world. At that time British industrialists sailed to America to find out why America was second only to Great Britain in industry and catching up fast. They determined that it was in large part due to America’s highly educated workforce. 90% of free Americans were literate in contrast to only two-thirds of the workforce in Great Britain.

So what happened? How did our education system go from being the best to one of the worst? Simple. We didn’t use competition and innovation in education as we did in all the other successful areas of our nation. The universal trait among successful entrepreneurs is the belief that there is a better way out there, and that by finding and using it they can reap great financial rewards.

Education, like any other field, will stagnate if it operates outside the process of innovation and competition. This strength of this process is the strength of capitalism and free market forces. To compete, a business must improve its goods and services, or a competitor will come along and take their business away.

Today there is little correlation between the amount of money spent on public education and the quality of the results. New Jersey spends 2.9 times as much per student per year as Utah but the high school graduation rate in Utah is higher than it is in New Jersey and the composite average SAT scores are 1034 in Utah while they are 893 in New Jersey.

This isn’t to pick on New Jersey, but it’s just a glaring example of the “no competition-no innovation” approach to public education in America.

Since 1960, spending per child in U.S. public schools has risen 300 percent, but standardized test results have plummeted. SAT scores have dropped by approximately 100 points. Yet, despite this documented low correlation between money spent and improvement in the quality of public education, the reform of public education has focused almost exclusively on the financial issue.

The reason that there has been little or no competition in education is because the current system is a government-subsidized monopoly. If the government purchased computers for every citizen with the a Pentium chip and Windows XP do you think Intel and Microsoft would spend more innovating and developing new competitive chips and operating systems or keeping elected officials in their pocket?

Almost all the competition comes from private and parochial schools. Jesuit High School, a private Catholic high school, spends less per pupil per year than Beaverton High School which is right down the street, while providing a superior education that leads to higher SAT scores and higher college acceptance rates for their students.

The present school year, with classes ending in mid-afternoon and a long summer recess, was designed for nineteenth century agrarian economy where children were needed at home to help with the chores and harvesting. We have a totally different lifestyle today, yet we haven’t even altered something as simple as the school schedule! think about how archaic other aspects of our system are.

The public education industry has approximately 4.3 million highly dedicated employees who sincerely care about the welfare of their students. Each year these professionals put in longer and longer hours for less and less pay (relative to other professions) Like the mythical Greek, Sisyphus, who was condemned to forever push a rock up a hill only to have it roll down each time it almost reaches the top, teachers are trapped in this perpetual failure machine that has become our education system.

Here’s how we should restructure the public education industry to implement the process and benefits of innovation and competition. The approximately $5000 per-pupil per year that we currently spend on public education would be given to the parent of each child in the form of a tuition certificate. The certificate could be presented to an accredited public or private school selected by the parents to educate their child. The school would be able to redeem the tuition certificate for an amount between $2,500 and $7,500, depending on how much the student learned that year relative to the average learned by all the students in the system (that is, the total cost would still average $5,000 per student per year).

The authorities currently responsible for overseeing the educational process would remain “in business” but would function in a regulatory role analogous to that of public health officials. For example, a restaurant, in order to stay in business, must periodically qualify for a certificate from the local board of health; Similarly, each school, in order to meet the minimum standards of federal, state and local authorities.

During the first year of such a system it is likely that the existing public schools would still be the major providers of educational services. But the innovation and competition that would ensue would revolutionize education in America.

The best teachers and principals would band together and form new schools, perhaps led by businesspeople and other professionals seeking to make their fortune by doing a better job educating America’s youth. This new $292 billion dollar industry would clearly attract our best and brightest.
Local authorities would be able to maintain publicly operated and owned schools, but only if these schools could successfully compete with the new private and public schools in their area. If a school was closed because it couldn’t compete, entrepreneurs would flock to lease or purchase the building and open a new school in it’s place. As education became a profitable business, entrepreneurs would also design and build new innovative school facilities.

Public and private companies would work with schools and municipalities to provide transportation for each student over and the widest possible area, thereby expanding the number of schools available to each student.

All parents would have the opportunity that wealthy Americans have always enjoyed- the ability to choose the best school for their child regardless of their income. Now for the first time in history, all 45.7 million U.S. schoolchildren, not just the 5.7 million privileged ones in private schools today, would be given the equal opportunity envisioned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

The real excitement would be provided by the variable redemption value of the tuition certificate. Students would be tested at the beginning of each school year to determine what they already knew. The testing would be conducted by public authorities or by a private firm hired to perform this important service. Then the students would be retested at the end of the school year and the school would be paid an amount, ranging from $2,500 to $7,500 per student, based on how much the individual students had learned.

Special certificates, probably paying considerably higher amounts, would be available for students with learning disabilities or with demographic profiles suggesting that they learned at a slower pace than others. These special certificates, paying above-average amounts, would provide an economic incentive for private entrepreneurs to accept students with special needs into their schools, or to develop separate schools or programs tailored to meet their special needs.

Competition would be intense among the best and brightest individuals both inside and outside of schools, to develop innovative methods for teaching every subject. Top corporations such as General Electric and IBM which can afford to commit massive sums to researching and developing new educational methods, would emerge as service providers to, and managers of, entrepreneur operated schools. Outstanding teachers would be recruited, in the same manner as top corporate executives, to teach students as well as potential teachers. Writers of the best textbooks and designers of the best teaching methods would come to be regarded as top inventors as each school, and each service provider to the schools, sough to be on the cutting edge of new technological advances.

Education would become what it used to be-the most respected of professions-only now for the first time teachers would have the opportunity to be compensated according to their performance.

Although this concept may seem radical, our current educational system is so bad that we have very little to lose. We can and must develop a new system that will attract and reward those who successfully create and implement innovation in our schools.