SOTU Response Part 6: Education: Take It Down, Start Again

The educational system is beyond broken in this country, and for some reason, liberals and democrats think that if we take a system that’s broken down, and just feed it more money, then eventually it will hit some kind of magic tipping point and everything will work.

That’s akin to taking a car with  sputtering engine, old oil, clogged air filters, bad sparkplugs, and filling up the gas tank. It won’t make any difference, but that’s what they do – they figure that once we hit the “right” amount of funding, everything will magically work. Well, you and I know that won’t happen.

We need to basically get the government out of the education business. We need to sell off all of the assets and return them to private companies. We need to take all of that money that we have stolen from parents and taxpayers everywhere and return it to them, so that those parents can pay for their kids education themselves.

There is nothing in the Constitution which states that the state needs to provide a level of public/free education. That was started way after our founding, by an administration who was alarmed by the level of basic education of the children. Nowadays, keeping the children in these schools is more dangerous than home schooling. I saw blow the system up, let the real stakeholders: the student, the parents and the teachers call the shots, NOT the government and the unions, who have been running things into the ground.

One more thing: Obama connects innovation to education, as in the more education you have, the more chance you will innovate. That’s hogwash. There is no connection between innovation, education and success. You can be a college dropout and be incredibly successful, or a Ivy League student and be broke and a failure. Look at Bill Gates, for one example.

This is Part 6 of my 6 Part Response to Obama's State of the Union Address. Read the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

SOTU Response Part 5: Illegal Immigration AKA Criminal Aliens

Obama, in the state of the union, continues to beat the drum of the DREAM act, granting thousands of illegal immigrants, or as I like to call them, criminal aliens, full on citizenship.

I don’t care how someone came to this country, or how bright you are. If you break the law, you are a criminal, plain and simple.

Once again, the government attempts to deal with a symptom, instead of dealing with the hard problem: that it is WAY too difficult to emigrate here legally. The entire legal immigration system needs a complete overhaul. In this day and age, we should be able to grant, at least a temporary citizenship, right at the border crossing or airport. We should be able to do background checks on the spot, and we should make it really easy for people to emigrate legally into this country.

This country was built by immigrants. Legal immigrants. It has never been so difficult to come here legally, which is one of the reasons why so many come here illegally.

Fix the system: make it easier for people to come here legally, then send everyone back through this new system. I didn’t hear one peep on that from the SOTU, but I did hear all sorts of rewards for those who break the law.

Hmm. Rewarding criminals and penalizing the innocent. Doesn’t seem like America to me.

This is Part 5 of my 6 Part Response to Obama's State of the Union Address. Read the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

900 - My Full SOTU Response - Undo, Not Do or Redo

[caption id="attachment_2758" align="alignright" width="193" caption="SOTU"][/caption]

On Today's Show:

• My full SOTU response, including stuff from my 4 blog posts:
  
  
  
  • Reduce, Not Replace
  
  
  • America Best Place To Do Business
  
  
  • The LIAR Moments
  
  
  • Government Of The Past
  
  
  
  


• Plus more: On ObamaCare (no joy there), how "reform" is a bad word, and how we should "Undo" as opposed to "Redo" or even, "Do"

Listen Now:

SOTU Response Part 4: Government Of The Past

Obama made one interesting quote that I did want to mention:

We shouldn’t just give our people a government that’s more affordable. We should give them a government that’s more competent and efficient. We cannot win the future with a government of the past

Affordable? Yes, I can agree that we need government to be more affordable. The new “pocket-size” government that I’ve been mentioning on my podcast comes to mind.

Competent? Hardly. I can’t think of one thing that any government can do more competently than private industry can. Not one thing. Competence, as far as I’m concerned, is completely impossible from government. There is no such thing as competency in government, this is a pipe dream.

Efficient? What does that mean, exactly? That it can more effectively separate us from our hard earned money? That it does an even better job of suppressing free speech and free markets. Is Obama’s ideas of a more efficient government one that does its job of holding back the progress of the American people even more than this one can?

Past? And interesting thought. Obama’s policies are the “failed policies of the past”, but not the failed policies of OUR past governments, but the failed policies of other socialist regimes, like Greece, Ireland, Spain, Russia, etc. The “government of the past”, at least the American “government of the past” is a much, much smaller entity, far less invasive to our lives and pocketbooks, than the government of Obama’s supposed future.

I for one would love to live under an American “government of the past”, if that government were the same kind of government our founding fathers created.

This is Part 4 of my 6 Part Response to Obama's State of the Union Address. Read the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

SOTU Response Part 3: The “Liar” Moments

I noticed at least 2 moments when someone in Congress should have shouted “LIAR” loud and clear. The first one was when he said:

We are not just handing out money.

Of course they are handing out money! They have been handing out money since practically the day he came into office. Except for a quick Exec order sealing all of his records so we couldn’t know anything about him, all he has ever done is spend, spend, spend.

The second “LIAR” moment came later, when he said on education

..instead of just pouring money into a system that’s not working…

That is literally exactly what he has been doing. It is a central tenet of the statist that the only solution for a broken system is MORE money. Instead of tearing down the system which is not working, they pump more money into it, in some blind insane hope that MAYBE the funding will reach some magic tipping point and suddenly this broken system will start up again. It’s like putting more fuel into a wrecked engine: no matter how much more fuel you put in, it won’t magically start working: the thing needs an overhaul.

Those are the only two blatant “LIAR” moments I could find. I’m sure there’s more…

This is Part 3 of my 6 Part Response to Obama's State of the Union Address. Read the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

SOTU Response Part 2: America Best Place To Do Business

This one is pretty galling. He says “We have to make America the best place on earth to do business”. Well, duh We WERE the best place on earth to do business, until your anti-business, high tax, high regulation attitude forced companies to locate overseas. We are not the best place to do business because of HIS actions.

He talks about fostering innovation, “investing” in innovation. The government does not need to spend any of our money on this: there are plenty of private businesses which would love to be able to spend money on fostering and bringing innovation to market. There are literally thousands of entrepreneurs who would LOVE to start businesses right now, to think of new and innovative ways to to things, the create new products and services. But who can create a new business in this environment of fear? He has literally come out against business so many times, how can he legitimately come out now and say that he supports it.

No savvy entrepreneur is going to create a new business in an environment where the government can step in at a moments notice and destroy it. That would be insanity. And expecting this tiger to change his stripes after more that 2 years of anti-business rhetoric is likely insane too.

This is Part 2 of my 6 Part Response to Obama's State of the Union Address. Read the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

SOTU Response Part 1: Reduce, Not Replace

Just finished reading the text of the SOTU. I could only stand to listen to a few minutes of it, plus I had much better things to do. I noticed a lot of talk about “reform”, but no talk about “reduce” at all.

There is no way we can continue the way we are going without severe reductions in the amount of spending of our money by this administration. It’s a non-starter. So any talk of reform, literally means nothing.

He talked about smaller government being effective. About restoring trust in the institutions of government. I think that the founders specifically did not trust in the institutions of government: a distrust for authority runs deep in the heart of most Americans. Unlike Obama and his ilk, there is no trust in government TO restore, we never had it and maybe we never should have. And why should government be “effective”? If you ask me, it is we the people who need to be effective. An effective government sounds like an activist government, and we definitely don’t need more of that.

He talked about “new laws will only be passed with support from Democrats and Republicans”: I say, why do we need any new laws at all? See the mindset here? New laws, new laws, new laws. He can’t even conceive of an America of less laws.

This is Part 1 of my 6 Part Response to Obama's State of the Union Address. Read the other parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

SOTU Preview Part 2–Stepping Up Our Game

Obama will probably talk a lot about competition. How we have to step up our game in order to compete against other countries. This is like a coach just yelling at you to do better instead of giving you the tools, techniques and guidance to help you do better. He’s taking away our padding and yelling as us to get onto the field.

How can we “do better” when everything he does hobbles us at every turn? Simple. He has this sense that the only reason that the economy hasn’t done better and things haven’t turned around is that WE haven’t tried hard enough. That WE haven’t stepped up our game in order to defeat the negativity.

He has no clue that the reason why we can’t defeat this negativity is that he has actively done everything in his power to make things worse for the business community. He has done nothing to support us, and actively drags us down at every turn. And then he expects us to turn around and “do better”. For some odd reason, I think he thinks that nothing the government does really affects how the economy works, and that’s just idiotic.

Like an abusive spouse who simply thinks that shouting their message even louder will drive the more submissive spouse “back in line” – Obama tries to strongarm us to “out-do” other countries, while at the same time enacting policies to keep us from doing it.

Too bad he doesn’t realize that we are the ones in control. Release us, and we will soar, chain us down and we will flounder. It’s up to us to throw off HIS chains.

SOTU Preview Part 1–“Investment”, A Weasel Word For Spending

[caption id="attachment_2367" align="alignright" width="240" caption=""Investment""][/caption]

More than likely, you will hear the words “invest” and “investment” a lot in today’s State Of The Union speech. It’s the same weasel word that Bill Clinton came up with back during his term to describe “spending” – as in government spending of the money it stole from us.

Don’t be fooled. The government never “invests” in anything. They don’t know how to invest. All they know is redistribution. Investment indicates putting your money into something expecting a return. The government does not care if it gets a return, since its not really their money that they are investing.

And a real investor expects a monetary return, whereas this government expects a societal return. Instead of actually “investing” most of the stimulus bill with small businesses, who could conceivably kickstart this economy, most of the money went to old, failing businesses which SHOULD have failed. Mostly Obama and Democrat cronies who helped propel him into office.

So when you hear him say “invest” think “spend”. It is unfettered, insane government spending which got us here in the first place. Everyone know that doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is one of the definitions of insanity, so how exactly is more spending going to solve anything? It’s not.