Fast forward and our school systems continue to fail. When I was younger, some were not expected to take college prep but, instead, go into manufacturing. Unfortunately, most of those jobs have disappeared to other countries that pay far under any wage that would allow a person to live in this country.
At the recent Republican debate, Romney said we should allow engineers from other countries into ours so that the 30,000 jobs now needing to be filled could be filled; otherwise kick them all out. Why not give full college payments to students capable and willing but who otherwise might not be able to afford it -- from this country? Wouldn't that make more sense?
A national manufacturing representative was on the news last week. He said there were three million jobs unfilled in the U.S. -- welders, joiners, skilled positions of all kinds that used to get filled by graduates of trade schools. Then Bush I and Clinton made the big push for everyone to go to college, and the supply of new people dried up.
The rest of the iceberg is that he also said that for every one of those positions, there would be three jobs on average in support and downline as well. Do the math: that's three million jobs, and nine million more as a result -- twelve million jobs we don't have because of a misguided educational policy.
Romney's right about letting graduate students from other countries stay if they want -- a hefty minority of them actually start businesses here, creating jobs, but when their students visas run out, most of those businesses fail.
The differences in the two movements I think can be quickly boiled down to focus. The Tea Party focused like a laser on a particular issue and got their sound bites massaged by folks such as the Koch Brothers who threw tons of money behind the movement. They have been effective at lower the credit rating of this country, polarizing government, and not doing a damn thing about our ballooning debt. They continue to say that spending is a problem -- not revenues -- despite multiple bi-partisan panels studying the situation. All of the bi-partisan commissions have found you CANNOT cut your way out of the current budget mess. Without discussion of revenues, it is simply impossible unless you want to eliminate Medicare, Social Security, and/or defense.
That's why I say they're not conservatives -- conservatives would raise revenues and only cut fat. These morons are going for not just meat but the jugular. And they're doing it on purpose due to a remark by Reagan about starving the beast -- but Reagan also knew when you had to raise taxes anyway.
As for the EPA -- I remember all too well when rivers caught fire in this country. I remember the Grand River that ran through my city had no fish other than carp or "suckers." It was basically an open sewer running across Michigan and into Lake Michigan. I remember massive fish die offs at my aunt and uncles cottage on Jordan Lake -- caused by the septic tanks which overflowed into the lake and caused the plant life to explode. The "good ol' days" were not. I've also seen pictures of hundreds of chimneys in my hometown belching black soot and heard the stories of women hanging clothes on the line only to find them blackened by the time they dried. Really want to go back to that?
I remember visiting the Potomac, and seeing signs that said "Do Not Touch Water". I was horrified; where I came from, we drank from rivers and swam in them. There and then, people didn't even leave boats in the water, it was so toxic.
I remember when Oregon led the way on cleaning up, with a bill pushed by the governor (McCall?) that exacted heavy fines for dumping any of a whole list of toxins into any stream at all. The trick that gave it legs was simple: citizens supplying proof that a business was polluting got something like half the fine money. There was an article, I think in National Geographic, about a retired guy who was barely making it, but he had a canoe. He added a calendar and clock, and dug out his wife's huge store of baby food bottles, and he went canoeing. In just a year, he'd garnered enough to make his retirement quite, quite comfortable.
Once the article came out, thousands of people took to the waterways. When it had been just a few, factories would see someone on the water and turn off the effluent, replacing it with clear water. With hordes of determined citizens, they couldn't -- and they got caught.
And once the news got out that people could swim in the Willamette again, other states started following suit -- though I'm not aware of any that were so generous to those that caught polluters.
Now you can -- or so I've heard -- swim in the Potomac.
Because I deal with the federal government, I do believe that a reorganization would be far more beneficial and cost saving. If you want to find funding for EMS or to build a new communication system you think you would go to Homeland Security or FCC, right? Wrong. You'd find those in the Department of Transportation because of studies done decades ago that ultimately resulted in programs being set up to eliminate problems of that day. If you wnat to fix stormwater problems -- you can find funding in more than 60 areas of government!
Yeah. There's a very large sandspit here that use to have a half dozen federal agencies with authority over it, three state agencies, and the county. Over the years, determined county commissioners (with spotty help from the state) have successfully lobbied to whittle that down to one federal (Army Corps of Engineers) and one state (can't think of the name, but it's like Conservation and something), and of course the county.
Thanks to that, people who own property out there can actually use it. No development is permitted, but "natural" uses have been approved. Camping is apparently a "natural" use, if it's low-impact, so now landowners have cleared zones where they camp (and some hunt) -- one creative fellow has a half dozen goats out there, and moves the pen every several months -- one beautiful thing about that is they chomp all the invasive species, which are then easy to kill with just a tiny bit of home-mixed chemicals (sorry, only the state gets to use herbicides).
They're still working on a pea-gravel and wood chip bike path (amazingly durable and a fair surface to bike on -- and it doesn't sink into the sand for years), but there are now horses trails (and one club goes out to pull up invasive species periodically and hiking trails (maintained mostly by hikers who throw in a machete when they go).
Getting government out of the way was definitely a solution -- but if they'd gotten government totally out of the way, the place would be on its way to being destroyed, and I mean that literally -- development destroys dune stability, which destroys the integrity of the sand spit, which makes it vulnerable to being washed away by storms (it's happened before on the Oregon coast).
Oh -- and the commissioners are looking into something I suggested: allowing the landowners to have cabins in they're of all natural materials, with no electricity. Foundations would have to be beach rock with no concrete, etc. -- we're talking pioneer technology. One condition would be that they have to allow others to use the cabins when they aren't there (oops -- I forgot a state agency; Parks and Recreation has authority because of some obscure rule).
While I may not agree with everything of the Occupy movement, I find I do agree with their overarching concepts that the rich have bought government and power; you and I likely cannot make much difference anymore. Heck, I couldn't even make a run for Congress because of the costs (and I won't become a prostitute in order to achieve that goal which is largely what politicians now do--sorry to insult the good, hard-working prostitutes though).
Occupy has a right to protest -- it's in that document that the Tea Party likes to wave at 30 second news events. It does not limit the time to 8 to 5 or just during prime time news hour. I have a right to protest at 2 a.m. -- no matter how inconvenient that may be to others. If you are going to set limits on one, how long before we set limits and roll back all the other rights? If you look at what is happening in Russia today, it is exactly that with the masses going happily along wishing for "the good ol' days" to return....
If the Tea Party folks were actual patriots, they'd be cheering the rise of the Occupy movement -- it's a huge exercise of free speech, and we all know that rights not exercised atrophy.
