Virginia Libertarian

Reason: Where Did India’s Skilled Labor Come From?: The surprising role of private education

Furthermore, unlike government colleges, the private schools have a vested interest in delivering graduates with skills suited for the industry. “Otherwise,” Prahlad notes, “they can’t justify their hefty capitation fees.”General education in southern India has become much more job-relevant because private, autonomous colleges play a bigger role there than they do in the north, says Progeon’s Menon. For instance, his wife, a professor of English literature, teaches at a college that offers bachelor’s degrees not in English but in communications and English, a field with more direct relevance to the growing public affairs departments of large companies. Today the I.T. industry is working ever more closely with colleges to develop new programs, something that will ensure jobs for their graduates and reduce the training expenditures of companies.

I think (and hope) that the U.S. is starting to head in this direction as well, we already have some success in this area with schools like ITT and ECPI.  I hope that people start to realize that any state funded “school” is going to have an interest in indoctrinating it’s students to be pro-government, and really doesn’t have any incentive to produce the results that people want (i.e. an education they can use to get a job).  With a private institute, all their funding comes from their students, so it’s in their best interest to keep said students happy, so they will be more likely to keep up with the times and be more concerned with their students outcome, because how those students fair in the real world directly impacts how many people are going to go to that school in the future, and thus how much funding they get.

Keene Free Press - Property Taxes are Communism

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Some “authority”, in this case the “Department of Assessment”, assigns a value to your property.  The “Revenue Collector” then applies a tax rate of X mils to your property and sends you a bill.  Providing you do not want a band of armed thugs (the police) coming to throw you off the property that YOU paid for, you pay the outrageously expensive bill.  So does everyone else.  All these payments are sent to the Revenue Collector (the central controller) who then sends portions of your money off to other centrally controlled bureaucracies like the School Board and Police Department.

Most people would agree that schools and police are important things to have around. However, has anyone ever asked themselves why these bureaucracies cannot be funded on a voluntary basis? If they are truly providing a valuable service, surely people will step up to the plate and buy their services just like we buy services from Panera Bread or Walmart on a voluntary basis.

“How will voluntary funding make police and schools better?”

Simple, because if they aren’t doing their jobs, they won’t get the funding. With today’s property tax scam, it doesn’t matter how bad or inefficient the police, schools, and other government services are, they keep getting bigger budgets year after year. There’s no accountability and not much that we can do about it. If we were to set a date, say Jan 1st 2007 and tell these bureaucracies that they will no longer get tax funding after that date, they’d either figure out how to voluntarily fund themselves, or they would die from uselessness. Inefficent bureaucracies would have to turn into efficient businesses to survive. None of the rest of us in business get a guaranteed fat funding check every 6 months, neither should the government.

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Doesn’t that first paragraph sound just a bit like paying some Mob for “protection”?  How did we get to the point that government is a legal incarnation of organized crime?

at least partially.  Immigration has been the life-blood of this country for as long as it has been around, and will continue to be for as long as we exist.  I don’t think that the solution to the welfare problem is to bring in more young people though.  The solution to that is to do away with welfare (that includes social security).

The Blog | Dr. Peter Rost: How to Predict the Future | The Huffington Post

So in the end, our illegal immigration, will continue to give us the strength to remain a superpower, while Europe ages and withers.I’m not saying we should simply continue on this path. I believe in legal and regulated immigration. I don’t believe that the one who can afford to pay a coyote to run across the border, or the one who can endure the grueling trek through arid deserts to get into the U.S. should be the one we favor, because that’s what we essentially do today.

I’m saying we should be fair to all countries, stop the current illegal immigration, but open up our borders to legal, prescreened immigrants, and we should rejoice that they want to come here, because, they are the ones through their youth and their children, who will help pay for aging Americans.

The Huffington Post

Maximum proposed fine for broadcasting indecency, under the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, expected to be passed by the House of Representatives today: $325,000.Maximum fine for “serious” violations of occupational safety and health laws: $7,000. A “serious” violation is one where there is substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result and that the employer knew, or should have known, of the hazard.

Maximum fine for “willful” violations of occupational safety and health laws: $70,000. A “willful” violation occurs when “the employer intentionally and knowingly commits” a violation.

Is this not absolute insanity?  I mean, come on, if the broadcasters put on something you don’t want to watch, CHANGE THE FUCKING CHANNEL!  I don’t need people regulating what I can and can’t watch.  Maybe I want to see tits and ass on TV, maybe I don’t, but I should be able to make that choice myself, not have some do-gooder in DC make it for me.  Stick to the important issues please (I’m not trying to imply that those OSHA laws are important either, because they shouldn’t be federally regulated either).

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Revisiting affirmative action by Linda Chavez - Jun 7, 2006

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Judging someone by the color of his skin is wrong, period. You can’t undo past wrongs by perpetrating new ones, even on a temporary basis, as the Court tried to do in the Michigan cases by suggesting affirmative action was needed for another 25 years.

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I thought everyones Mom taught them that two wrongs don’t make a right.  When are we going to learn that reverse discrimination (”affirmative action”) is no better (actually it is the same) as discrimination?  This goes back to the stupid social engineering game we try to play with many of our federal laws.  The feds have no business in passing laws on things like this, that is up to the states.  We need to get back to the place where the feds job is to uphold the Constitution, and only to uphold the Constitution, but I won’t be holding my breath for that to happen.