[ale] Palladium/MS: ideas for retaliation - WAY OT now!!!

[James P. Kinney III]

On Thu, 2002-06-27 at 19:21, Greg wrote:

> As it would not change anything I refrain from any other comments, though I
> would like it if, considering I have no kids, not to be taxed mightily on my
> property for money to be spent on those who do have kids, though I suppose
> if I had a large family (family > 12)  it would be a bargain ... again,

<salty-wound, raw-nerve rant>

The kid who is educated today at the expense of every taxpayer,
childless or not, may be the genius who discovers the cure for
Alzheimer's, or AIDS, or cancer, or develops the perfect, non-polluting
energy source. 

The kid who is _not_ educated today has a great chance of becoming the
asshole who burglarizes your home, or shoots you for the $50 you just
pulled from the ATM.

I would gladly pay double my tax rate on my home to better fund the
education system of Dekalb  county. I absolutely seethe at the
discussions from people who want to cut taxes and in the next breath
bitch and moan about "how hard it is to get good help these days". 

I would gladly suffer a tripling of my property taxes if it was used to
hire people who had a college degree in something other than education
to replace those who took the easy route and majored in education. As I
have had the distinct pleasure of teaching education majors who were
working on a masters degree, I know now the decrepit state of affairs of
the education system in this country.  

I would vigorously support a $1-$5 per ticket additional surcharge on
sporting events tickets and movie tickets if the money was sent directly
to the ticket purchasers school district of choice. Far too many kids
(and parents) count on that athletic program or that beauty contest for
their future. 

In this country, we pay the lowest percentage of our per capita income
to taxes than any other industrialized country.

We have the worst rated K-12 school system of any industrialized
country. 

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan tried to have ketchup classified as a
VEGETABLE so serving a hamburger and french fries with ketchup would
count as a balanced meal on the federally funded school lunch program.

Congress didn't let him get away with that. The compromise was a 70%
reduction in federal funding to the public school systems across the
nation over the next 6 years.

Florida's geriatric population got pissed that they had to pay property
taxes to support the schools and their kids were grown. So they managed
to get the property taxes squashed to basically NADA. Oops! No money for
the schools. So they came up with the lottery. The voluntary tax for
PEOPLE TO STUPID TO DO MATH. 

Dekalb county just lowered it property taxes that support education.
They had to have a panicked special election to keep a local option
sales tax  running longer to keep funding the schools.

The brilliant people that run the county school system, even though they
know the schools are at the size limits and the population is growing,
haven't requested a budget increase from the county government in 12
years. 

Georgia had to start a lottery to provide support for the schools. The
people who really benefited the most from an intelligent, well educated
population, the business owners and corporate heads, had lobbied hard to
get, and keep, the taxes low in Georgia. Besides, they could always
recruit talent from other states who HAD spent the money for a top
quality education system. 

So how many people migrated to Georgia to take the brain-based jobs that
have cropped up here in the last 10 years? I don't have an exact number,
but the population of the metro-Atlanta area has nearly tripled in that
10 year period. And I really doubt they all moved here to take a
"Service Sector" position. 

In case you were wondering, "Service Sector" is the term used for a job
with no challenge, low pay, requiring little mental skills above 8th
grade. 

If our education system were better, maybe we wouldn't have cranked out
so many dim-witted corporate dweebs who can only think in dollars. The
American Physical Society is nearly panicked about the education
statistics they keep seeing. The numbers of people entering science and
engineering schools from the US is down. Not just a per capita amount,
but real people count. The brain talent is shrinking fast. Over 50% of
the graduate school population is foreign. But the numbers of people
entering business programs is exploding. We are, according the APS,
riding the economic benefit tide of the explosion in science enrollment
centered around WWII. But the future development will take place
elsewhere. When the engineers all retire in this country, what are all
the business dweebs going to sell? And to whom?

It's all a matter of priorities. Short range, we look good on paper.
Long range, we will never make to the stars unless we rethink some hard
choices.

</end salty-wound, raw-nerve rant>

-- 
James P. Kinney III   \Changing the mobile computing world/
President and CEO      \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244             \.___________________________./

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 




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