Education Should Be Converted to a Total Voucher System in the USA.

  Freedom of choice in education at all levels would improve the lives of all children and their parents.  A total voucher system for educational choices would help to achieve free choice in education for most people.  Obviously, any voucher system would require some type of regulation to insure that teachers receive good compensation and that all types of students receive an acceptable education.  Additional funding per voucher would be needed for special education students and students on an IEP.  Competition for voucher dollars should have a positive effect on the service provided by schools to students and parents.  Religious schools would be able to equally financially compete with state schools which would increase diversity of thought and quality of education in my opinion.

Many European nations have given full or partial government payments to various types of private schools chosen by parents so a total voucher system in the USA would not be that unique.  South Korea and Australia also have some programs of this nature.  These countries are first world industrial class nations so maybe they might have a good idea or two we could copy and improve upon.

I suspect that a full voucher system would eventually cause a heavy increase in attendance at religious schools and a decrease in attendance at state schools because parents want children to develop good values.  This potential shift away from state schools scares many state educators today because they would lose students and the money associated with them attending a state school.  These state educators are probably right to be concerned because it directly affects their jobs.  Some state schools may not be able to compete in a voucher system because parents don’t want to send their children to a school that may be perceived as less than some type of private school.

I remember when one of my children needed some specific services that could only be provided by a particular private school.  The public school officials didn’t want to pay for this service from the private school and they fought us every step of the way until it became painfully obvious things just were not working for our child at that public school.  No one likes to admit that they can’t do something especially when money is involved and it might set a precedent for others to follow.  This experience diminished my sympathy for the administrators of public schools but not all public schools may  have this type of situation.  The school district did finally agree to pay for the services from the private school.

I remember my first class in college called Engineering 101.  Our first assignment was an individual oral presentation to the class and an associated paper.  I was shocked when one of the students started giving his oral presentation because you could clearly tell his large public school system from another state had let him down by the manner in which he was speaking.  I don’t think he had any disability other than that no teacher had ever forced him to speak coherently.  After speaking, he ripped his paper from a spiral wire notebook and attempted to hand it to the professor.  The professor didn’t accept the handwritten report and asked to see him after class.

I never saw the other student again even though MSOE is not that big.  He must have been able to qualify to get into college by having good grades, good test scores and enough money to pay tuition.  MSOE gets a lot of foreign students from non-English speaking countries but he was from America.  I felt sad for this person because he had made such an effort to be there and was really being defeated by a prior educational system experience that had not prepared him adequately for simple things.  I suspect that if this person had received the same opportunity that I had growing up attending good schools he would have had no problem.

The best student I ever met at MSOE was a Vietnamese girl with a 4.0 grade point average.  She had good grades in spite of English not being her native language.  She was certainly smart but the real reason she had good grades seemed to be that she just worked harder than anyone I had ever met previously.  I suspect her family taught her that trait and reinforced it during her prior education.  Parents should have the ability to choose the education their children get although I think her parents did an exceptional job under difficult circumstances.

Isn’t the freedom to choose what America is really all about?  Vouchers would allow less wealthy families to have a choice to send their child where they want.  Why would anyone be opposed to free choice?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Russian bombers fly near Alaska; Air Force scrambles jets | Fox News.

<Do you think Putin is afraid of U.S. rhetoric ?  ghs>   bombers fly near Alaska; Air Force scrambles jets | Fox News.

Somehow I don’t believe Putin is afraid of the U.S. in spite of Obama threatening Russia with a cyber war a few months ago and even with our new President Trump now in office. Putin used to run the KGB and he still kills people that give him problems. Our last President was a community organizer and our current one was a game show host.  Putin is an experienced cold blooded killer with a real world military and he is beyond our capability to put in prison, execute or control. We have a military also but we are constrained by morality. Putin does not have a morality based on mere words that constrain his actions.

Our leaders need to learn to not insult Russia because it serves no good purpose. The only thing Putin respects is what we do in the real world to contain him. It was inappropriate of Obama to threaten Russia with cyber warfare when he was President. Why tell your opponent what you intend to do unless you think Putin has no guts and a few lines of computer code scare him. Putin probably looks at a little open cyber war as a political opportunity and he doesn’t care about what type of turmoil it causes. Hopefully, Trump will not repeat these types of foolish statements because stupid talk could just lead to blood being spilled in the real world.

We should use all cyber warfare resources at our disposal to contain any amoral actions by Russia but Trump should smile and shake Putin’s hand at the same time. It is unproductive to offend Putin’s pride. Offended pride usually makes killers do bad things that require corrective action. We need to contain Russian military and political power expansion for the common good but we should minimize any type of body count.  It is better to use a quiet computer keyboard rather than a loud bloody bullet whenever possible.

Our military needs to be capable of defeating any country in any type of fight and I believe it can do that job if our political leadership stops giving public hints about our actions to our enemies. Hopefully we won’t be put to the test. At the same time, we should always make an attempt to convert adversaries into allies even if the chances are bleak. Our enemies may be persuaded that it is easier to be our friend rather than our enemy.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/18/russian-bombers-fly-near-alaska-air-force-scrambles-jets.html

How High Should the Great Wall Be ?

I am not a cheer leader for everything that President Trump does but I don’t believe that everything he does is totally wrong either.  My father used to say that “Even a blind chicken picks up a piece of corn once in a while”.  Is President Trump as lucky as a blind chicken?  We will see.  No one can be wrong 100% of the time unless they really work at it.  He is clearly not as smooth as an experienced politician like Mike Pence but he is smart enough to win an election against Hillary Clinton.  He understands what motivates his voters.

Our country has a duty to regulate its border in order to protect its citizens from anything or anyone harmful.  The exact details of how we do that are open to legitimate debate but the basic principle seems reasonable to me.  Is it even possible to build a giant wall across our southern border?  Of course its possible, the Chinese finished their first great wall in 206 BC under the orders of the first Emperor of China without the aid of modern equipment.  Do we really need to build another great wall here in the United States or could we come up with a more cost effective solution?

Wouldn’t it be cheaper and more humane to allow more legal hard working immigrants that will contribute to our economy into this country.  If it were up to me I would give existing illegal immigrants amnesty and give them a path to citizenship provided they do not commit any crimes.  I would require legal immigrants to have a United States citizen sponsor who would be legally and financially responsible for them for a significant period of time such as 10 years before they could become a citizen.  There does need to be a real vetting process to prevent criminals/terrorists from entering this country along with significant monitoring time even after a person is allowed to immigrate to this country.  Other countries should also be able to share the burden of caring for refuges from oppression.  The United States is not the only country in the world and other developed countries need encouragement to take care of refugees also.

Building a giant wall across isolated areas of our border would not necessarily stop all illegal crossing of the border.  Monitoring by the border patrol is still required because drug traffickers will soon find a way to cross the great wall and this will open a method for others to cross.  We need to dry up the market for illegal drugs the same way we did by ending alcohol prohibition.  Alcohol is just as bad as other drugs and yet we do not have  illegal border traffic with alcohol as the cargo because we make legal alcohol here.  We need to legalize and regulate drugs like Marijuana.  Produce some less dangerous drugs similar to alcohol in the United States to improve our economy and prescribe them to be monitored by a physician.  This would cut down illegal border traffic activity and allow greater concentration on important border problems.

We still have a need for an effective method of stopping illegal border crossings in large isolated areas.  A wall may be cost effective in some crowded areas but it would not seem to be cost effective over very long runs of land consisting of empty desert.  We should develop drone aircraft for the border patrol capable of monitoring large areas of empty land from the air and destroying any type of dangerous cargo such as nuclear bombs, chemical weapons or biological weapons from the air using standard guns, missiles or lasers.  The capability to generate an electromagnetic pulse capable of disabling any unhardened vehicle or  aircraft in a targeted area should be included on a drone of this type.  I believe the new joint strike fighter being developed has such an EMP capability so it is not impossible.  Combine these armed drones with satellites and regular armed helicopters to prevent any unauthorized border crossings in isolated areas.

I also thought it should be possible to make a missile with an inexpensive non-lethal chemical warhead that could disable vehicles by releasing a cloud of some type of chemical or other agent that would foul the engines of any vehicle within range.  The ash from volcanoes has this  effect on aircraft so we should be able to come up with something just as effective mounted on a missile fired from a drone. Someone else has probably had this idea before but I haven’t seen it in print yet.  The non-lethal chemical warhead could also contain some type of UV glowing sticky paint that would mark people and make them easy to see and recover without hurting them.  This is currently done by police with ransom money.

We need non-lethal methods of stopping illegal border crossings in large isolated areas.  A simple wall or fence can always be breached unless it has an active defense so why not save the money spent on Trumps useless great walls and give the border patrol the tools and skilled manpower it needs to get the job done without risking the lives of Border Patrol agents or illegal immigrants.  An armed drone with sensors constituents a higher and more cost effective wall than the proposed “great wall” of President Trump and I believe it would be less politically offensive to Mexico and other countries.  A drone is essentially invisible until it is used so it would not be necessary to damage our diplomatic ties with our closest neighbors. Simple border walls would still be needed for some limited applications in urban areas and at points of allowed entry but these already exist for the most part.

I admire Hispanics and others that have enough guts to enter this country and risk their lives just so they can get a job and their children can have a better life.  That’s the type of people this country needs.  I am not worried about them hurting me or my family.  I am concerned that terrorists and criminals of any race/religion will use our lax border security to enter our country and kill us exactly like they did on 9/11 at the twin towers in New York city.  We should increase legal  immigration of people that will be good citizens and shut down any future unregulated illegal immigration.  The 9/11 attack or worse will happen again if we don’t control entry of dangerous people into this country.

 

 

 

No Automatic WordPress to Facebook tranfer

I stopped the automatic transfer function from my WordPress blog to Facebook.  Facebook is probably not a good place for some of my opinions and is more of a general audience.  On the other hand, if you want to see a little extra controversy just head over to my blog Glenn’s Way for more mature content that some people may find offensive.  I still transfer some things to facebook and I kept the automatic transfer to twitter because I get most of my followers from twitter.  Eventually I would like to advertise my bottle art on the blog so I like to build up a big audience.

Your TV is watching you

My wife was right.  She has been saying for years that the government can use our TV to spy on us.  We have been putting on quite a show for the government people listening and watching us so I think we should get paid for our past entertainment services.  I used to get paid about $50 per hour for my time 20 years ago and I think I should get the same back pay hourly compensation for both my wife and myself.  We should also be compensated for our cat’s time.  I may be easy going but my services are not cheap.

Wikileaks leaked some secret documents that show how the intelligence agencies get this nefarious job done.  Smart phones, TV’s and other internet connected devices can be used to spy on a person in their home. I would like to think that a search warrant would be needed first but there are no guarantees in my opinion. If the government can do it then I suspect that hackers and other criminals will also use this capability for illegal purposes.  Even Mark Zuckerberg was caught putting masking tape over the camera on his computer and you would think that he might know more about the situation than the average person.

My policy is that I’m good with all that.  In fact, I feel kind of valuable just knowing that someone considers my life worth spying on.  It might be pretty boring watching me so I don’t know why someone would want to do it. It doesn’t really do any good to hide anything about yourself because everything always becomes public eventually anyways if someone wants to make it public using the internet. It is difficult to threaten a person with public ridicule if they just don’t care what anybody thinks. I do care a little what people think about me just not that much.  Rich people with something to hide may have a different view of the situation.Politicians would really need to live in fear.  So if you can’t stop it you might as well look at the positive aspects.

 

 

 

 

Blogger is dead !

My black cat Engels 2017

Blogger is dead !  Long live WordPress !  I have stopped making additions to my old blog at Glenn’s Way on blogger (old blog) but I will keep it online for reference. I will now blog exclusively on WordPress. The new WordPress blog is a work in progress.