Cessna sued for skydiving accident.

Bertie, the professional literature in the 60s was forming a consensus
for global cooling.

Predictions change as observations and science improves.


And, by the way, it would be gentlemanly of you to share your Mx
bashing pleasure. Greed is so unbecoming of you.

So..., Cessna should then sue the parents for faulty parenting in not
properly teaching their son to make safe decisions such as choosing to
go flying with a pilot who ignores the operating limitations of the
aircraft, and thus harming the reputation of Cessna as the aircraft's
maker.

This lawsuit would make better sense to me than the parents' suit
against Cessna.

"kontiki" wrote

I've said enough about all of this. As I stated if you don't
see how all of this is connected today, in 2007 then there really
is no hope.

In other words, you don't know. If you did, it would be easy to state.

All mouth, no substance. Just like your hero, MX
--
Jim in NC

Lets have real school choice nationwide. Let parents have the money
they are paying in taxes so they can send their kids to private
schools if they want. That's step number one. Get rid of teacher's
lobbies like the NEA... if they are all so dedicated to education why
do they need to be spending so much money lobbying congress?
Wouldn't that money be better spent in the actual education process?
Or how about just higher salaries for the good teachers?

We have school choice here in Iowa City, to a degree. We may enroll
our kids in any school in the district, so long as we can figure out a
way to deliver them each morning. (Well, this year they curtailed
that practice between the high schools, because one side of town is
growing way faster than the other.)

This works okay, to a degree -- but one result is all the bad kids
(AKA: The ones without caring parents) end up in the same schools.
All the good parents move their kids OUT of the bad schools.

This, of course, leads to other problems. High teacher turnover/
burnout becomes a real problem. You would think more resources would
be poured into the bad schools, but because the student count drops,
they actually get LESS money, unless extraordinary efforts are made.

Because of the totally screwed up employer/employee relations between
administators and teachers, there is little hope of a solution coming
from that quarter. The teacher's union stands in the way of
innovation -- union contracts don't permit too much in the way of
experimentation with staffing -- and the administrators are just as
bad or worse.

"Administrator" is just a fancy name for "bureaucrat" -- and by their
nature bureacrats do not want anything to change, unless it means more
money and less work. These bureacrats, therefore, appointed by our
elected school boards and supposedly safeguarding the People's money
by working in their best interest, end up working in collusion with
the teachers unions to make sure that nothing actually changes. In
the end these two forces -- seemingly in conflict -- tend to work
together to ensure that no solutions are forthcoming.

Throwing private schools into the mix of "school choice" -- without
fixing the underlying conflicting interests in this employee-employer
relationship -- would be a disaster, IMHO. And that's just not going
to happen in today's political climate.

Which, of course, brings us back to where we started -- and are
stuck.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I still can't honestly
come up with something the government does well.... besides
spend other people's money.

Small-town local governments occasionally function well. Once a city
grows beyond ~25,000 people, everything gets dicey.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:


This works okay, to a degree -- but one result is all the bad kids
(AKA: The ones without caring parents) end up in the same schools.
All the good parents move their kids OUT of the bad schools.

Hmmm market forces at work? Perish the thought!

This, of course, leads to other problems. High teacher turnover/
burnout becomes a real problem. You would think more resources would
be poured into the bad schools, but because the student count drops,
they actually get LESS money, unless extraordinary efforts are made.

And there has been the solution... throw more money in a black hole.
Sigh... we can't save everyone. Try as we might (and it has been tried)
we can't make everyone equal... unless of course we just dumb everyone
down to the lowest common denominator. Not a plan for building a great
country (much less a great economy). I'm not being cruel, those are
simply the facts and submit human history as my evidence. Darwin's
theory can only be subverted for just so long... until the money
runs out.

Because of the totally screwed up employer/employee relations between
administators and teachers, there is little hope of a solution coming
from that quarter. The teacher's union stands in the way of
innovation -- union contracts don't permit too much in the way of
experimentation with staffing -- and the administrators are just as
bad or worse.


I'd fire 'em... get rid of the department of education. What business
is it of the FEDERAL government to get involved in education anyway?
Where in the Constitution is that function assigned? Sounds like
Communism to me. Same thing with 'Universal Health Care" (something
to look forward to I guess).


"Administrator" is just a fancy name for "bureaucrat" -- and by their
nature bureacrats do not want anything to change, unless it means more
money and less work. These bureacrats, therefore, appointed by our
elected school boards and supposedly safeguarding the People's money
by working in their best interest, end up working in collusion with
the teachers unions to make sure that nothing actually changes. In
the end these two forces -- seemingly in conflict -- tend to work
together to ensure that no solutions are forthcoming.

Agreed.

Throwing private schools into the mix of "school choice" -- without
fixing the underlying conflicting interests in this employee-employer
relationship -- would be a disaster, IMHO. And that's just not going
to happen in today's political climate.


Disagree. Sorry... the private sector will do a better job and
results prove it. Government schools are the disaster.

But you are right... it won't happen in todays political environment
because the average voter is too stupid. After all, they went to
government schools.

Jay Honeck wrote:
I still can't honestly
come up with something the government does well.... besides
spend other people's money.

Small-town local governments occasionally function well. Once a city
grows beyond ~25,000 people, everything gets dicey.

An excellent argument for smaller government.

"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Morgans wrote:
It is true. Another factor is that so many families today have
both parents working... just to make ends meet and to pay taxes
to support the government programs that are created or expanded
every year (to wit: no idiot left behind [as if better education
can be legislated into reality]). I still can't honestly
come up with something the government does well.... besides
spend other people's money.

I don't buy it. There are always exceptions, though.

Matt is constant, that is one fact. His story never changes away from a
very narrow stance.

Perhaps his story is based on principle. Principles don't
don't change with polls or political expedient.

And facts don't change.

The problems with public education are myriad, but mostly systematic and
epistemological.

Yes, many teachers are stupid. Perhaps the vast majority. Thomas Sowell, who
has been studying the problem for almost 40 years, found that over 75% of
teachers came from the bottom quartile of their graduating classes. We've
heard a few people talking about how dedicated many teachers are, but
dedication does not impart one bit of knowledge or ability. Odd, isn't it,
that teachers and make that distinction?

Morgan's story never changes and it's right out of the AFT playbook. He's a
shill and a damn ignorant one at that.

He's the idiot that didn't discern my quoting Alexis d'Touqueville's
"Democracy in America", and ignorantly shoved his foot in his mouth right up
to the knee. If he is in any way indicative of teachers, it makes no
difference how much money they get, or how attentive the parents are (his
typical juvenile brat excuse), a dozen electricians won't be able to fix
your plumbing. It debased at the fundamental level.

Note, too, how attentive the kids are when being force-fed environmental
propaganda, post-modernist drivel like "diversity" and the like, and leftist
political indoctrination. In fact, it's that post-modernist track that's
part and parcel of the public schools failure.

On the other side of the coin, the Montessori program (which were banned by
Hitler and Mussolini in their respective countries, for obvious reasons)
teach kids how to think, to conceptualize and abstract. Kids learn to teach
themselves new things and develop a proper adult maturity. If you notice
some people in the 30's, 40's and older that evidently have grey hair and
middle-age spreads around the belt, but think and carry on like teenagers,
it's a good bet they never had such instruction when young.

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 12:49:09 -0800 (PST), Jay Honeck
wrote:

This is a perfect example. Upon closer examination, the McDonalds case
does have merit. But people don't examine it more closely, because of
their jaundiced eye.

I've heard you say this before, Jose, but never understood it. In
your opinion, what merit was there in a woman winning a lawsuit
against McDonalds because she burned herself on hot coffee?


The woman was seriously injured and spent 8 days in hospital getting
skin grafts. That McD's had been selling super hot coffee for some time
and had previous warnings. This case did have merit and I believe the
woman did not get rich from it either.




randall g =%^) PPASEL+Night 1974 Cardinal RG
http://www.telemark.net/randallg
Lots of aerial photographs of British Columbia at:
http://www.telemark.net/randallg/photos.htm
Vancouver's famous Kat Kam: http://www.katkam.ca

"kontiki" wrote in message
...
Jay Honeck wrote:
I still can't honestly
come up with something the government does well.... besides
spend other people's money.

Small-town local governments occasionally function well. Once a city
grows beyond ~25,000 people, everything gets dicey.

An excellent argument for smaller government.

Perhaps.

But the large the population, the more likely there exists a subset that
thinks government should "do things for them", that they should be doing
themselves, like providing recreation, educating their kids...

A bigger city is just statistically more likely to have those folks.

I'm often amazed at how many people, out here in the west, moved here from
back east or California "..because the taxes were so high!", but within a
couple years are whining that "back in xxxxx, the city did this for us and
that for us...". They just can't figure it out. Normally, the original
locals find such dependence irritating, but eventually get voted down at
holding the line.


--
Matt Barrow
Performance Homes, LLC.
Cheyenne, WY