Stage 8 Critique

I wrote my stage 8 critique on Chris’ Blog “To Pay or Not to Pay—That is the Question”. This title caught my attention and could not pass this up.  It caught my eye and this article did as well.  The average NON -Degreed employee with the State of Texas, men and women that get up and actually work everyday earn on average less than $45,000 a year. Many of them are worried that their jobs will not be here in another year but we are going to pay previously convicted criminals money that only someone with a college education would earn, sheer generous. I understand that they should be compensated for being wrongly convicted but why not what an average worker would earn, these guys had 3 hots and a cot, free medical plus the opportunity for an education and vocational training while inside. They deserve something but not $80,000 per year.

More Using Food Stamps

According to the article there are 163,000 people on food stamps in El Paso that has a population of a little over 700,000 or around 23% of El Pasons are on the food stamp program. They also state that there is a growth in this program of 9.2% in two years. If those numbers stay true, the number of food stamp recipients will double in a mere 15 years. We have more on food stamps this year than last, we will have more on food stamps next year than this year. That has been the trend.

Budgets at every level of government today are being squeezed due to lack of funds and I am not sure most folks cannot afford any tax increases. Something has to give.

Our nation declared a war on poverty 45 years ago and has literally spent trillions on it and the net result is we have more living in poverty than ever before and it is increasing. It begs the question, If we are spending records on anti poverty programs, why are they not working? At what point are we going to try something different than merely more entitlements?

And ironically the federal government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar spent on programs like these which means future generations will be burdened with this debt. We are already limiting what future generations will be able to do due to increasing deficits. In less than 10 years, we will be spending more on the interest on our debt than we do on military, meaning there are less tax monies for such important things as infrastructure, defense and social security (which is already running a deficit 8 years earlier than anticipated).

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

Benjamin Franklin

Abdallah's Law

A classmate of mine, George Aguillon, recently posted about a DWI incident that involved a 2 year old boy to suffer and live in a vegetable like state. Prohibition didn't work the first time, and it won't work again. What has to happen is make it irreparably bad to get a DWI. Something like 7 years in a farm/prison where the guilty must provide for themselves at their own expense, IE, grow their own food, make their own clothes, build their own housing, etc. Any additional income goes to victims of DWI's. I bet after 7 years of back breaking labor like that, they will never drink again. as to those that say punish the providers, what happens when someone buys from a liquor store in January, and gets sloshed in Feb. How is that liquor store guilty? This all starts with personal responsibility. If you can't drink responsibly, then you do not need to be a part of civilized society.

            What is very misleading about tougher DWI laws is that you are not effectively helping the problem. It is rare that a Drunk Driving Fatality is caused by a serial habitual offender. It is the once in a while stories that make the news. If these politicians would do a little research they would see that time effective change is how we treat the disease. We would produce better results if we take a treatment approach early on as opposed to the adversarial, Probation and then "lock them all up" approach. Politicians keep talking and the problem keeps growing. No change and no differences made. Hot air and lost lives and yet the drunks are still drunks and the problem is still alcoholism.

Clean-Coal Power Plant Set for Texas

http://www.texasobserver.org/forrestforthetrees/perry-shills-for-big-coal

"Selling carbon dioxide to oil and gas operators should boost the Penwell plant's revenues by about 50 percent. Miller says those sales will cover one-third of the revenues Summit will need to service the [debt]". So the enhanced revenues (r+.5r = 1.5r) are just enough to service the debt (3*.5r)? When does the plant start to make money?

Also, there seems to be some double-accounting here. If the capturing of the CO2 from burning the coal is counted as making the coal plant carbon-neutral, you shouldn't also count it as offsetting the emissions from burning the EOR oil.

When the farmers want a market for corn, the government spends billions to subsidize ethanol. When the oil industry wants a market for hydrogen (a byproduct of its current means to produce CO2), the government spends billions to reseach and hype the "hydrogen economy". Now, the oil industry wants to secure CO2 from coal-fired power plants and needs billions of government bucks to do that. Of course, carbon sequestration is a pipe dream like the overstated potential of ethanol or the impossible dreams of a hydrogen economy.

These government decisions are ERRORS, meaning the results will not be anything meaningful or useful. We need to stop corporate control of our government and slam the coffers shut. Energy policy should not be made based on the greed of agriculture or the oil industry or ill-fated, cost-prohibitive attempts to sequester carbon dioxide.

Dialing For Dollars

 By way of background, with their prospects for November quickly deteriorating, Congressional Democrats are scrambling to assemble the financial resources they hope can stave off their electoral Armageddon. Speaker Pelosi and her leadership team are putting a lot of pressure on Democrat members to pony up campaign contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The pressure is especially strong on members from “safe” districts, who need little campaign money of their own to win reelection. The catch, though, is that many of these members haven’t amassed vast campaign war chests, for the simple reason that they haven’t needed them. So, they are scrambling to meet their Pelosi-imposed obligations. Holmes Norton is from one such “safe” district–the District of Columbia. In the following voicemail recording, Holmes Norton seeks a campaign contribution from the lobbyist and even mentions that she hadn’t previously asked for a donation. Such is the pressure Speaker Pelosi has placed on the members. But, it is the content of Holmes Norton’s message that is interesting. Most people think contributors call the tune, but in fact the far bigger risk is on display here -- pressure on contributors from entrenched incumbents. Is the Norton case one of extortion? Not quite, but the moral hazards of that sort are clear-cut. Safe-seat incumbents (which is to say, in most years, most incumbents) know they are likely to win with or without a given contributor's dash. That's probably still true even this year, although anxieties about re-election are clearly running higher than normal. A contributor who demands a quid pro quo on anything other than a very small scale doesn't have as much leverage as most people think. By contrast, the incumbent who tells a possible contributor that "the train is leaving the station" on this or that issue (or who uses other clichés to that effect) can exert a great deal of pressure and may well get a contribution. (Challengers, obviously, can't do that...). Maybe this is a case that cries out for campaign finance reform, but I'd suggest that such reforms should focus less on clamping down on contributors than on providing resources, perhaps public as well as private, in ways that will increase competition for seats










http://texasrainmaker.com/

A Lingering Question

The authors cited no clear review of literature, however; the authors used appropriate reference in the introduction. The authors stated, “Existing literature on the impact of athletics on student performance has concentrated on individual-level analysis.” The research is shallow if because it did not state the academic performance of nonathletic students.

The authors cited “a considerable body of research indicates that student participation in extracurricular activities as athletics minimizes delinquency (Landers & Landers, 1978)” to support the positive impact of athletics on students (p. 799, introduction, para.2). This is strong evidence, however; this reference is very old, and activities of 1978 are different from those of 2004 (p. 799, introduction, para.1). The evidence “a person might be excused if, upon visiting a school, he or she concluded that the primary objective of the school system was to field an athletic team (Coleman, 1961)” is weak to support the many athletic programs in public schools (p. 799, introduction, para.1). The authors stated, “Institutionalizing athletics may signal students that
athletics are as important as or more important that academic performance” (p. 800 introduction, para.6) and no supporting evidence.

The data came from Texas school districts covering form 1997 to 1998. The authors used “Texas is well known as a state that is fanatical about athletics in general and football in particular (Bissinger, 1991; Gent, 1973; Jenkins, 1972)”, to support the choice of Texas school districts as a source of data (p. 800, data and method, para.1). The authors did not mention sampling procedure, sample size, power, precision, and research
design. Thus, it is difficult for the audience to analyze the research. Dependent variables and the independent variables were not concisely stated. The research methodology is not clear to an average audience like an athletic player. The primary audience is educational policy makers, because the authors published it in the Review of Policy Research journal.

There is some limitation of bias. In referring to subjects, the authors stated “black and Latino students” (p.802 data and method, iv. para.3). The authors capitalized Latino, but not ‘black’. According to American Psychological Association (2010, p. 75), when referring to racial and ethnic groups, use capitalized proper noun. The authors used color for the Black race, and region for Latino Race and this is not consistency. The
authors used minority without a modifier-racial or ethnic before the noun (American Psychological Association, 2010, p. 75).

The authors mentioned control variables. The dependent variables were students’ attendants, basic skills, and average SAT and ACTS scores. Independent variables include the per student athletics budget of the district, and percentage of African American and Latino students in Texas district schools. Poverty and total per student expenditures were controlled. Hypothesis 1 is the relationship between athletic expenditures and student performance, which agreed with the research topic. The authors used the T-Score to analyze the data, but not full discussion about the distributed mentioned.

The authors presented the data in table form and explained with a short narrative. The authors did not begin by relating findings back to the overall purpose of the study.

Findings

• Hypothesis 1 is positive, but not statistically significant. The authors stated that the results are most consistent with the null hypothesis, but did not go further to show the consistency.

• Athletics can influence student performance on basic exam performance. Table 2 results show a negative Texas Assessment of Academic Kills [TAAS] relationship between athletic expenditures and student performance.

• Strong negative relationship exists between athletic budgets and student performance on SAT and ACT examinations. From the article, “the athletic budgets can have a can have a maximum impact of 45 points on SAT or 1.2 points on the ACT” (p. 803, findings, para.3).

• School districts with larger athletic budgets have student bodies that are less likely to participate in college admission tests and less likely to score highly on these tests.

 In conclusion, the authors stated that existing literature shows a positive relationship between athletics and student performance, but when the analyses is moved to a district level, different results are obtained. In addition, the authors mentioned that when school district spends money on athletics, academic performance is low. Furthermore, the authors suggested that additional research merits the impact of athletic expenditures on the overall academic performance. The authors based the conclusions on logical findings. The recommendation for future studies was adequately stated. This article was well organized, but not in-depth. The sampling procedure and size were not clearly stated. Overall, the not meet the quality of a scholarly article.

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3566508/A-lingering-question-of-priorities.html

References

(American Psychological Association 2009 Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association)American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author

(Meier K J Eller W S Marchbanks Iii M P Robinson S Polinard S Wrinkle R D 2004 Lingering Question ofPriorities: athletic Budgets and Academic Performance Revisited)Meier, K. J., Eller, W. S., MarchbanksIII, M. P., Robinson, S., Polinard, S., & Wrinkle, R. D. (2004). A Lingering Question of Priorities:athletic Budgets and Academic Performance Revisited. Review of Policy Research, 21(6), 799-807. doi:10.1111/j.1541-1338.2004.00109.x

My friend received an email from John Boehner last week which is some kind of project to get input from the citizens. People have submitted some good ideas for Congress to implement that will reduce the size of government and cut spending. Whether it goes any place remains to be seen. Being somewhat of a cynic when it comes to the government I have a feeling it might just be so much election rhetoric. Seems like Reagan had a blue ribbon panel that came up with several hundred ideas for cutting government waste but I don’t recall any being implemented. “Bout Them Tea Parties, last night texpat said; “Organization might just be the death of them.” To which the Squawkster said; “Tea Parties are organized enough. The last thing they need is some “identifiable” spokesmen for the dart board.” I agree totally, the Tea Party is really not a Party as we know with the Republicrates they’re actually y the very thing the Framers had in mind when they started this great country. A group of ORDINARY CITIZENS from every walk of live that has ONE thing in common respect, for this Great Country and they are trying to elect people that will go back to the Constitution and just do what is right.  The CATO graphs and linkie that Texpat posted above are very telling. In addition to illustrating the massive spending increases that are a result of Obama’s “spend our way to prosperity” nonsense, they depict the steady growth of spending regardless of which party is driving the train wreck. Expansion of government power and size, as measured by how much of our money they spend, benefits the politicians and the ruling class, not the people, and that is precisely why they spend it. The two parties may work hard to establish their respective “brand images” of conservative or liberal, but in reality both are authoritarian corporatists, parasitically living off of the fruits of our labor. They are not as different as they would have you believe. I also agree with many of the opinions from last night about TPs becoming more “organized.” Forget about it. Let the heards of cats continue wander where they will. They keep the establishment guessing, and so far the parasites have been largely unable to predict their motions or co-opt their structure for their own gain. At the tea parties I’ve attended, I’ve been encouraged about the de-emphasis of social conservatism. It’s still there of course, and at a palpable level (just as with the Ron Paul revolution.) I find this encouraging because social conservatism is what drove me and others away from the republican party almost 10 years ago. Yet, that party has relied on focusing on such things to swindle your vote and money, and once elected returns to their true feathers of big government corporatism. Stick to the basics of good government–protecting our liberty, and behaving fiscally responsible. Forget about the litmus test issues, especially at the federal level. Sometimes, folks are gonna get abortions, whether you like it or not. Cindy and Tracie are gonna be gay whether you like it or not, and btw, them being that way isn’t the end of the world (as some would have you believe.) And of course, Tommy Chong is gonna sell his bongs. He ain’t hurting nobody and of all the incredibly stupid things government has done, a forty year war on drugs with a multi-billion dollar annual budget is simply insane. Call me an optimist. But I’m of the mind that in the presence of individual liberty and economic freedom, for the most part, folks tend to make the right decisions for themselves and their families. We don’t need big brother breathing down our necks, protecting us from our own mis-steps, or sticking their hands in our pants and purses.

 

DownSizingGoverment