Testing. 1,2,3 Testing

Testing. 1,2,3 Testing. I've had a problem with Google's Blogger/Blogspot program for the last few days. Couldn't post. My apologies to regular readers. I'm still pissed about lots of things. For instance, why can Barack and The Dems pass a horrible, horrible law, then decide that they won't abide by it, and then act like they're in a snit because their opposition won't help them fix it? Testing. 1,2,3 Testing. Looks like we're good to ago. Regular programming will begin shortly.

I was wrong, wrong, wrong !!!

I found this old post while looking for something else, and found a terrible mistake. 
Look at prediction #4 on this link.
I apologize for the error. 

Apology

Sorry for the lack of posts for the last few days. 
We've not had many orders coming in at Jukt Micronics, and have cut staff accordingly this week.  The salaried folks are scrambling to keep everything covered. 
We'll probably do the same thing the week of Christmas. 

Elections have consequences.
If something can't last forever, it won't. 
The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. 

We're living it.  Good luck, everyblody. 

An apology for posting inaccurate information

I've probably posted this (inaccurate) chart a dozen times, and regret doing so. 
It shows public education spending going through the roof, while test scores remain flat. 

The cost of public education has indeed increased as shown. 
My mistake was in assuming that the miserable flatlined test scores were accurate.
Here's why I was wrong:

In the Atlanta Public School system, the administration held "cheating parties", in which they met at a teacher's home to change test scores. 

A similar thing happened in Pontiac, Michigan. 

Here's more on the Atlanta mess:

Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets.

Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.
Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.

....For teachers, a culture of fear ensured the deception would continue.

“APS is run like the mob,” one teacher told investigators, saying she cheated because she feared retaliation if she didn’t.
The voluminous report names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools they examined.

So.   I humbly repent of publishing that chart so many times.
The chart is inaccurate. 
Test scores have not remained flat despite the spending increases.  If Michigan and Georgia are any indication of what's going on in government schools, test scores have declined. 

My bad. 

Go here to read an outraged editorial about the pro-choice movement that wants to privatize the public schools and give students and parents some other options. 

I screwed up

I've screwed up. 
A couple of posts ago, I linked a video of Shirley Sherrod, an African-American employee of the Department Of Agriculture, speaking to an NAACP gathering. 
I usually don't worry about taking quotes out of context.  That's why they're called quotes.  By their very definition, they're out of context.  But in this case, Shirley Sherrod was explaining how she overcame anti-white bias.  The latter half of her story, the redemptive part, is not included in the video clip that I posted. 

The video, by not including the complete story, gives the wrong impression of Shirley Sherrod and the point that she was trying to make at the NAACP gathering. 
Talk radio has been pretty lively this morning, pointing out how Sherrod's audience was apparently delighted in her power over the white farmer, the Department of Agriculture shouldn't have forced her to resign, the White House shouldn't have pressured the Department of Kickpacks to force her to resign, Andrew Breitbart should have checked out the context before releasing the video, and on and on and on. 

But enough about them.   I screwed up by posting the video.  (And my post and commentary has already been linked by a couple of Big Deal blogs in Europe, BTW.) 

It's atonement time. 
I don't think Shirley Sherrod is going to put her mailing address online any time soon. 
I ain't about to write a "I'm sorry" check to the Department Of Agriculture. 
I might write a check to the NAACP, along with some kind of apology letter.
I'm open to suggestions. 

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa 

Another apology for using bad numbers

For the last few months I've been sending out apocalyptic messages about our Seven Trillion Dollar budget deficit, the amount I thought we were going to be short for the next 10 years.

My bad.

The true amount is $9 trillion. Whoever combined this Washington Post chart with the Obama logo wasted his time, for it's now inaccurate.

The nine-trillion dollar amount assumes that Obamacare will be "budget neutral", but that's the number I'm running with from now on.

Please stay tuned for future apologies.

Why I Am A Libertarian, Part 2

Because of reconnecting with old friends on Facebook, I'm doing a series of posts about what makes someone go from political near-apathy to rabid Libertarian.

If you hit the "why I'm a libertarian" tag at the bottom of this post, or read a random dozen of any others, you can tell that I've got some Father issues. Not in the godawful late 1980's men's movement sense, where grown men go into the woods and sit in a circle and hit drums and read the poetry of Robert Bly while crying that their fathers didn't love them.

My issues are more basic than that - my father left shoes that are too big for me to fill. I can honestly place my right hand on a copy of "The Revolution" by Ron Paul, and swear that my father was the best man I've ever known. A near saint.

Now that we have that background established.... sometime in the early 1960's, the government started giving a combination tax write-off/cash subsidy to farmers whose land was "terraced". Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, the book credited with starting the environmental movement, had just been released and conservation was in the air. The idea was that terraces - created by flattening sections of hillsides - would prevent soil erosion.

This is what terraces look like in Chinese rice fields. Flattening large section of the hillside prevents cultivated land from washing away during rains:

My father and uncle were among the first rice farmers in the Mississippi Delta. People predicted that the irrigation would poison the ground (false). People predicted that the water would produce mosquitoes that could carry off kittens (true). My family did well with it, despite the naysayers.

Then they learned about the terrace subsidy.

One of my little brother's students took these pics of the farm a few years ago. This is the view from the east:

See that ditch to the right of the road? By our standards that was The Grand Canyon.

Here's what we saw when we looked north:

See that slight ridge running from left to right in this picture, halfway between the cameraman and the treeline? That's what we called a hill.

Our farm needed terraces about as much as the center tennis court at Wimbledon needed terraces.

One day, my father and uncle contacted The County Agent (think Hank Kimball from the Green Acres TV show) about the 18-inch high levees that ran through their rice fields. These levees were used to keep water spread evenly over each field. Imagine a topographical map of the Nevada Salt Flats, with a levee representing each change in elevation. Not many levees were needed.

They asked the County Agent if the levees in their rice fields could be counted as terraces.

"Yep", the county agent said. "Those fields are terraced. Here's your paperwork to apply for some money."

The government money we received for our (ahem) terraced rice fields went a long way toward paying for the farm. We've never properly thanked the taxpayers for this gesture, and I'd like to do so now.

Thanks, suckers ! !

For the next twenty years, any time my father started ranting about gubmint giveaways, my mother would remind him of the terraces. He'd try to claim that counting levees as terraces was different, because he worked hard to grow all that rice.

My point is this: In order to get a huge amount of government money, the most saintly man I've ever known was willing to claim that his Mississippi Delta flatland had terraces. And the government's representative helped him do it.

Here's a summary of the problem, as stated by Dr. Thomas Sowell: "What counts in assessing a social or economic policy is not the stated intentions of promoters, but the incentives created and the actual end results produced."

Thanks again for all that money ! !

Picture of rice field irrigation from here, a site worth looking through whether you're interested in rice or not. Pics of the Guanxi rice field came from here.

An Apology

I apologize for the lack of posts for the last four days.
The comments on the previous post - plus the emails wondering if I'm alive - all of this has been gratifying. I had no idea how many people read this thing over breakfast !

I only have dial-up internet at home (soon to be remedied) but I also have a work-issued Sprint/Nextel wireless system.

Marvel Variants used the Sprint/Nextel antenna for a couple of weeks on some road trips. He didn't ASK for the antenna. He just sent someone from our I.T. department to collect it. This will cost him much Karma in his future lives (as an insect), and it will possibly cost him sales on his damn deformed funny books. God is not mocked. May the market be suddenly flooded with old variant comics. May thousands of them be discovered in every attic.

(Seriously, Marvel Variants is a great guy for someone who is going to hell.)

Anyway, I just couldn't get any mojo working on the dial-up system. Links and pics took forever. But now I'm back in bidness.

I owe Dr. Ralph several rebuttals, there's the Fort Worth gun show tomorrow (come by the Libertarian party booth !), Obama had a pointless press conference, Chrysler has gone bankrupt after borrowing a lot of your money, our Human Resources manager has objected to the coffee site in my Spiritual Advisors category, Bart Ehrmann has a new book out, Bob Dylan has a new CD, they didn't close my Starbucks, and I've offended some guy from an electric car website.

So much to do, so little time....

Damon's iPod, Part 4

An open letter to my daughter at Texas A&M:

Dear Mary,

Remember how I used to sing a harmony part to whatever song was on the radio or CD player? And you used to beg me not to, because you said it didn't sound good? And you would beg me to pull the truck over to the side of the road so you could get out and walk, instead of listening to me sing the harmony parts to songs by Tom Petty, or Willie Nelson, or (God Help Us All) Journey?

Damon and I have been singing harmony parts for 6 days now, through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and now we're on the return trip.

I now understand that singing harmony parts in a crowded vehicle can only be enjoyed by the person doing the singing.

Damon sings harmony PERFECTLY to the music on his iPod.

Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for doing that when you were a little girl, and to anyone else who has had to listen to me sing non-existent harmony parts to recorded music, regardless of the circumstances.

It's 1:00 a.m., and we're somewhere north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I'm ready to be home. I'm very sleepy, and little things inside this Ford F-250 are starting to bother me.

-The Daddy