Congressional Reform and Other People’s Money

I have to share this with who ever passes this way:

IT is HIGH TIME THIS WAS DONE

I originally wanted to say something today about this Occupy Wall Street thing.

I have not really followed it, just caught the same bits about it on the news I was not watching, but in the same room with.

I am quite up set about hearing that anyone America wants to

Redistribute the Wealth

I believe this was an idea tried by the communists, who found it did not work well.

I also would like, at least the newscasters, to phrase this more accurately

They are talking about:

Distributing money that other people made to people who did not earn it.

Which I understand to be theft & / or what often happens with taxes.

Not knowing more about this movement than what I had overheard, I did check them out a bit, on what I take to be their official web site http://occupywallst.org/, and was at least relieved to find they are actually, or also (?), protesting corruption.

It is still not all right with me.
On the one hand, I do not have the time to check them out, because I am either working or doing chores all the time. I kept tract of this one day this week and found.
In a typical 24-hour day, which is what we all have, I spend 5.5 hours sleeping or resting and 1 hour for breakfast and a leisurely read.
The rest of the time, I am either working, a job I created, because I had to, or doing chores.

Hey, maybe I am just protesting people who have all the time in the world, compared to me, to occupy space?

If they are just about wanting to redistribute other people’s money, it does not appear to be the whole story, they are being misrepresented in the news.

Free E-Cigarettes for Military personal, Discounted for the rest of us

Down in the new Smoker’s section here to your lower right I will put links for the smokeless cigarettes, free for military personal and discounted, with free shipping for the rest of us!

You will find my updated experience with smokeless cigarettes so far in the Smokers! Section, in the right column.

When I saw the Free for military personal, I just had to share that.




Currently, between the other 2 offers, the South Beach offer below is the less expensive.
Join South Beach Smoke as we Celebrate our 1st Year Anniversary with 10% Off E-Cigarette Starter Kits
Enter Code: YEAR


I do not know how long any of these offers will last though…

My ongoing review of E Cigs

I invite any smoker out there with experience with e cigs to comment, share your experiences!

I got my, same week I ordered them, using the banner, and its discount, in this page’s right column, it came to $19.99 total. I choose the cheap, disposable pack, which I have used for 2 weeks. It is just one cigarette, which comes in a normal hard pack. The pack is set up to hold the e Cig and its battery, which is part of the cigarette. This one e cig is suppose to be the “equivalent of more than one pack of cigarettes” per esmoke’s description.

HOWEVER:

So far I have only used it for when I run out of actual cigarettes, and am too busy / lazy to go out and get some. THIS PACK IS GREAT FOR THAT!

My Goal

Why am I doing this?
I want to save money!

Do I like e smokes?

So far, as a back up, YES!

For normal usage, rather than cigarettes…
I am not quite ready to try that yet, but will let you know, as I go along!

Aiming to pay less taxes while Christie Aims to make better of the taxes I’ll still pay!

I am a New Jersey smoker, who a couple of weeks ago wrote that I will try the new e cigarettes. I ordered the cheapest version, the $20 disposable ones, using the 10% off coupon code.

You will find in their banner in the right column here.

I found this order comes with a $30 off coupon should I choose to use them regular and go with the rechargeable style later!

I just did this yesterday and today in my email I found this Christie: Make Cities’ Aid Hinge on Cuts, Performance article!

I love it when just as I am putting my plan into action to pay less taxes, the current powers that be will be working on making the taxes that we, here in NJ, do pay do more for us!

Are you a Smoker?

I am. If you have been less amused about the price of cigarettes, and have seen these e Cigarettes on TV and thought:
If this works, I could save a heck of a lot of $!
Well I have, Now I have found a way for us to try this, for less! Note this discount code in the link to e Cigs below!
Then click on the banner and you will find, you can try e cigs for $20, no shipping fee in the USA!


I am going to try this real soon, and post a smaller version of this discount banner here in the right column for all to enjoy. Unless I find them revolting. In which case I will remove it.

I am holding out hope that this will be a pleasant substitute for some of the cigarettes I smoke, may be even all, and will cost less!

We shall see.

If you have tried e Cigs, please post me a comment here!
I am intrigued!

Is you child’s education being curtailed?

Or supplied by other students, rather than the teachers? Three disturbing issues came to my attention of late, and I cannot decide which is worse!

When asking my daughter’s, 4th grade, teacher if they had to sit in groups? Is it part of the curriculum?

The teacher replied that it is part of the curriculum, because the students can then teach each other in that language only children have together.

I am not making this up! She really said that!

I was extremely surprised that this teacher was willing to tell me this, now, in New Jersey, when the teacher’s union and the state’s budget are having a bit of a face off. There again, she does not cover current events in her class…

Silly me, I would think teachers would be trying to justify their existence at this point, or at least teach rather than shunting that responsibility on to the 8 to 10 year old students.

I though this was very Rousseauian. No wonder they seem to have a problem teaching analytical thought! I wondered if this is a reason Rousseau gave to his mistress to put their children to foundling hospitals.

I would expect Lord of the Flies type results. In part because:

This is the same teacher who told me earlier in the year that they rely on peer group pressure to raise the students grades, and make each child more organized and efficient.

Now I also realize that this teacher must go with the curriculum, it is not exactly her choice. It is more of a board of ed thing I guess, but will have to find out, in short time, no doubt.

It no surprise to me that my daughter offers that perhaps she is failing because she wants her school to fail. Why? They will not stop the bullies. The school maintains she is mistaking criticisms from her group mates as bulling. She maintains that she is being disrespected, (verbally abused actually, from what she tells me), every school day. Clearly, she is used to a more polite society, where respect and manners matter, and I am now compelled to look into home schooling…

It gets worse. What about the answer to non-white and non-Asian students at a Berkley high school getting bad grades in science is to pull, (East Bay Express, Berkley High May Cut Out Science Labs, & Berkeleyside, Endangered Science Labs at BHS), or curtail the science courses and labs. How does that work to anyone’s advantage? What good will come of that?

Now I have just read about Women and Science by Christina Hoff Sommers:

The National Review’s review of this book mentions the possibility of the number of men admitted to science courses might have to be reduced, owing to political correctness, and gender disparity, (with regards to title IX of the 1972 civil rights legislation).

Education?

When I first confronted why 4th graders were still sitting in groups
Why schools were teaching groups rather than individual children
I figured if you followed the money
You’d find someone with a real financial interest in Ritalin or some other attention deficit drug
Prompting having children arranged to pay attention to each other
rather than the teacher and their studies.
Now it seems a whole lot more sinister than someone just trying to make a huge buck!

What Our Children’s Homework is Doing, & Not

PARENTS and EDUCATORS! PLEASE READ At Least the First Section of This!

For all the problems with education today, Homework may be a big part of them. Children today are getting much more than any of us older folks had in elementary school, and to no good end. Stop Homework was good enough to provide us with this The Case Against Homework: A Fact Sheet.

I found out about Stop Homework and why by reading


And Alfie Kohn’s


These books also point out that, other academically higher achieving countries, give less homework. Pages 12 – 13 of The Case Against Homework states that Japan, Denmark and the Czech Republic have teachers who assign little homework, whereas Greece, Thailand and Iran have some of the worst scores and the teachers assign the highest quantities of homework.
I wish educators would read these books, especially the Does Homework Improve Learning chapter in The Homework Myth.

What led me to reading about homework these days

For some year, since my daughter began public school, she and I have had the homework wars. Though she rarely did not finish it, her grades began to sink. Part of the reason is no doubt, what I mentioned last week: Her primary school, and now elementary school did not challenge her. Another is in recent years; she does not care to apply herself.

The homework increased each year, as the school warned us it would. I talked to other parents over the years. I found, some lie about the reading their child has done, to make the required minutes per night. Some actually do the child’s homework, if they are sure the child knows the material.

During the school year, all of the children we know have little, if any, time to socialize, exercise or enjoy extra curriculum activities, outside of church or synagogue ones.

We even had a packet of schoolwork for summer “vacation”, which was given to us, at a special conference. It was presented to us as if only my daughter had to do this. About mid summer, on a play date with three friends in her school, one’s mother asked another mother and me, “Has your child started on the “vacation homework” yet?” No. Neither had either of theirs.

As this school year progressed, my daughter’s rather pleasant teacher added new punishments for not doing one’s homework. Our school’s standard, it seems, is miss a homework assignment, no recess the next day. That means even less exercise and socializing.

Then she added, miss a homework assignment, no snack. Well the fourth graders in our elementary school have very little time to eat lunch, once they get it. A friend of mine who works in the school and sees this daily says she figures less than 15minutes, if that. So now they have to go without what ever nutrition you manage to pack them off with for snack. This for me, was the last straw. Or so I thought.

Then came the added HOMEWORK AS PUNISHMENT. Oh yeah that will make lifetime learners out of our children!

Whatever math facts my daughter gets wrong on her timed test of 100, she has to write, first 10xs each, next week 15xs and so on. When I explained to the teacher that she did much better practicing timed tests last year, because that is what improved her test scores, last year, she did not seem to care It’s repetition hell for my child, and that is that.

Trying to talk to the teacher principal about this I got nowhere. Actually, with the principal, I got a very strong reaction, quite comical, which I may get to in the next post. Will my take on his reaction do a thing for our children’s plight? No.