Chicago Education

To pay more money for education is like giving more whiskey to an alcoholic. If the City of Chicago, for example, paid each teacher a million dollars a year, the quality of education would not improve. Purchasing all the latest technology would not make the students learn more, better, or faster. It's about the PARENTS! Their involvement - and their enforcement of time devoted to study and school work to be done. In every culture this is true. Without exception - except the United States? Pay parents a million dollars for each of their kids getting straight A's under a revamped and tougher academic curriculum and you will see miracles.

A President

A president is a citizen, first and last. As a result, as a president, the citizen receives what is due any citizen: social courtesy and contempt if contempt is earned or respect if respect is earned. This isn't the Middle Ages where nobility no matter the rank was given respect worthy or not. A president is a citizen among citizen peers elected into office to perform the role's responsibilities described in the Constitution, and when the term of that role concludes to resume whatever role performed before or any role to be chosen. The president is just a citizen and is always just a citizen. 

Treachery

We are being sold with our own money. 

Left Darwin

There you have it. Liberal gender governance and management by social statistics. Imagine applying this to areas of talent. Let's say sports. Gender integrated basketball teams where everyone makes the same amount of money. And the arts! There would be the same number of potters, for instance, for each gender with equal gallery showings and, of course, sales and earnings (the public be damned). Ah, and scientists are a gender ratio problem, too. Equal gender distribution with equal pay. No deviation!

What's very queer about Liberal thinking is that it fawns so much over Darwin then rudely ignores him in public practice.

Voters

The problem isn't that a rat runs for public office telling voters it's a gerbil. Voters see it's a rat, agree it's a gerbil, and vote it into office to eventually discover to their horror it's a rat.

Two Types of Good People

If gardeners behaved like many good people do, gardens would be mostly weeds. Thank God there's another type of good people.

Voting

Voting has two attributes. One is that its a free action, the other is that it's non-retractable. The performance of a vote is an individual's life (what ever the array of motives, values, assessments, judgments and prejudices (all humans have prejudices), etc) for an individual to represent them. 

Liberalism

Liberalism: a state of mind liberated from reason and memory.

A Betting Vote

Money is the first vote in politics.

Pretty Colors

If only people were like flowers, colors would take the place of strife.

Ideologues Don't Reason

Ideologues perform thinking and action based on an ideological template they rarely, if ever, deviate from. Not only their thinking is performed via ideology, but it's often their reason d'être. All too frequently an ideology has an object for hatred - on a small scale or large, it must hurt, punish or more, subtly or conspicuously. Most ideologies have no shame or guilt. The ideology justifies the ideologue. Notwithstanding all these characteristics, the most bizarre is ideologues believing themselves intellectually superior to others.

Socialism

Socialism: Where your neighbor is rankled you own something he or she does not own and reports you to a government official who is rankled you enjoy owning something he or she owns and enjoys, too.

'I Want Your Money'

Paychecks represent our lives, for most of us, 8 or more hours of it a day. The percentage of our paychecks paid in Taxes represents a portion of our lives that we trade for the cost of law and order. We trade a percentage of our lives for this, and gladly.

When the government wants to Tax us more, it is wanting us to trade a bigger percent of our lives, a greater percentage of our existence that we trade in hard work, for the government's ideas, plans, programs, pet projects, paying off political IOUs, etc.

Lately, government doesn't propose, it requires, it compels, it threatens us or through subterfuge ruses us into agreeing to trade a greater and greater percentage of our paycheck, those precious hours of our lives, and in turn will not account for every penny it spends - every penny it spends from every minute of our existence we worked to earn them.

Think about it.

And they want more.

The Science of Science

I love science. It fascinates me, continually pointing to truths tho never illuminating. The spiritual does this. And because I have such regard for the derivative understandings of existence science provides, I have little regard for those who close its books and make it their religion of hostility to everything science isn't. In a way, their belief system is a sacrilege to the pure motives of science. Take a look at all the science news; it is a cavalcade of discoveries, a process of learning, not just 'knowing'. And in its fabulous discoveries are discoveries of its errors. In deed, the history of science is rife with mistakes and its landscape littered with the bones of martyrs for its corrections. It would be well to see its landscape littered with the bones of those who continually attempt to make science an iconoclastic ideology.

Modern Democracy

I was asked, 'What is modern democracy?' I replied, 'It is people voting for their dictators.'

In The Chilling Shade

I was asked, 'What is totalitarianism?' I replied, 'All the plants in the woods and fields living in the chilling shade of one big tree.'

the ruler and the saw

If you can't measure the wood, it doesn't matter how sharp the saw.

PostScript The tyranny of the ruler can put the saw to bad use; the tyranny of the saw can do a very bad job.

statement of powers

I was asked 'What is the difference between a government and a state?' I replied, 'By compact, a government serves and is answerable to me. In a state, I am its chattel, born into political ownership, and must do what it demands.'

Buford’s Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I think the wellbein’ of any upright person is made from the sweat of the brow an' the time to enjoy life to boot. Look at me. I work hard at Sam’s warehouse from 6 in the mornin’, then play checkers with Jethro after work, follow' by'a watermelon seed spittin' contest for a pack of gum with Billy-Bob, then play the ocarina to my sweetheart Lilly, follow' by suppin' with ma an' pa, then go on this ol' hand-me-down ‘puter to scratch my head an' think of somethin' to do with it, then so tuckered out I go to bed an' sleep it all off. Y'all do the same, I reckon. Excep' play the ocarina to my sweetheart Lilly, acourse.

Then lately, I get to thinkin’ bout politics. These politicians, they promise alot, an’ make ya feel like ya rootin’ for a football team in the playoffs, but I know government ain’t a sport an' it sure ain't a legal business so the money for all these ideas would have to be comin’ from outa the wallets of folks like me an' my neighbors. Then I get steamin’.

Now there’s talk they want to take care bout folks’ health. I didn’t see that care after a storm came in an’ blowed granny’s house down like the big bad wolf. They can put a few men on the moon with the help of some of granny’s hard earned wages but won't help her with some wood and a few men to fix an ol’ house. Somethin' strangely unbalanced about politicians.

What does granny get instead? After church, gets to watch well paid politicians on Sunday morning TV at Martha’s trailer sassing each other with polite impoliteness an' some lookin’ to granny like they havin’ sissy fits.

I think I’d rather be free an' die young than to have Washington politicians take more of my life's labor in cash an’ manage my life at 'no cost' till the day I die. I don’t like their deal. They all made a mess of everything else they manage, anyway.

So, horsefeathers. I ain't their huckleberry.

Sincerely,
Buford

never-ending competition

A young lady in the back row stood up and asked the professor, 'What types of doctrines do you think currently effect the situation in this country?'

The professor paused for a few seconds then said, 'Let me make what may sound like a poetically naive remark and then, elaborating, answer your question more specifically. There are two types of doctrines that continually compete for influence in human affairs: those that tear and rend, and those that unite and blend.'
. . . . .