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leaves me to simply deduce that in Ohio you are 10 times more likely to be on food stamps than to be locked up.
Gotsta love them odds.
No wonder so many are moving to North Carolina...
Soldiers at Risk: Military Personnel Vulnerable to Payday Loans
snip:
Evidence of targeting includes use of business names that imply a military connection (such as Armed Forces Loans and Military Financial, Inc.), employment of former military personnel to solicit soldiers as borrowers, and the clustering of payday lending stores around military bases. The Center for Responsible Lending is documenting this clustering in North Carolina. Similar studies are underway in Florida and California, according to a recent article in the New York Times.
And there just aren't that many jobs in NC, either. This area (textile & furniture mfg) is reeling from job losses, and there is stiff competition from illegal immigrants in construction and other areas.
But, that would be too easy...hey?
I actually like the idea mostly cuzz I stress over my own kids attending school with all the ugly elements that can be magnified within the hallowed halls. I'd like to see teachers trained in managing online courses and a move towards a public education beyond elementary offered if only as an alternative option to reduce class sizes for those who opted to continue to enroll in on site classes. Perhaps only offering online courses to the students who perform above grade level as an incentive.
Sheesh what time in the am is it that we tend to return to on topic? Hopes I am not completely out of line.
I still may not be as clear as I wish to be. This is where that preview option is nice.
This why I never understood this whole welfare queen thing etc. People on welfare are not eating steak & lobster by any means.
I wonder myself why it is ok to bail out corporations/banks & not this countries everyday citizens. We make America run, I guess the objective is to shut America down & engulf it in domestic chaos.
It's so bad that anyone who dare criticize the current regime & its minions have been chastised, threatened & I suspect put in prison too.
now American?? This is what is enshrined in the constitution?? An all powerful executive branch of government running rough shod over America & with a flippant of SO!! when the consequences have to be carried or suffered by someone other than those who designed the disastrous policies.
Where is Senator Kucinich lately?? They must have gotten to him too.
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We're not working enough to ensure our own citizens are getting the opportunities they need and deserve, and haven't done so for the past 25 years, including the Clinton years. (Yeah, a lot of people got rich from 92 to 2000, but at what cost to others?)
And we're feeling the backlash in crime, domestic strife, etc. If you want more Rethuglicon rule, just go ahead and pay attention to the "business leaders" like Gates who absolutely no idea what is really going on in the US.
Perhaps those courses, now offered online by many community colleges, etc. are fine for adults who need them for their jobs or a supplemental degree. Has the Socratic method been totally removed from schools? Kids need interaction with teachers and other students intimately, not remotely.
Relying too much on technology takes the soul from the teaching/learning experience. It should only be seen as a tool for learning, not replacing teaching. We need smaller classes, more attention to individual students, and a higher level of participation in physical classrooms, not less.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080324/lf_afp/lif...
But that's okay, same folks that claim folk who never had much chance didn't deserve any help, think that greedheads that WERE making top dollar, but found a scam to make it even more money (based on pyramid scheme style logic) THEY deserve help, eh?
And as long as teachers are having sex with students and school administrations are expelling kids for having mohawks and dyed hair in colors other than *natural* and bullying is leading to mall shootings.... I think I know enough to say sending kids to school is extremely troublesome for parents. If I was to even send them to half days or 3 day school weeks I'd be that much less stressed. I'd do homeschooling if I felt I was capable.
How is a 5th-grade child who can has a 9th-grade reading level, 5th-grade math skills, 12th-grade art skills, 3rd-grade history knowledge, and 2nd-grade sports performance being served by taking all of their classes at a 5th-grade level? How is a teacher supposed to give attention to any given student to meet their needs, when that teacher has 20+ more students than they should have in their classroom? How are schools supposed to improve themselves when No Child Left Behind CUTS their funding if the school underperform, instead of INCREASING their funding to correct their weaknesses rather than exacerbate them? How are we supposed to encourage folks to become teachers, when we treat teachers like crap, and pay them pathetic salaries one can barely live on? Why would our best and brightest want to become teachers if doing so required them to struggle to survive economically on a daily basis? Why would our best teachers CONTINUE to teach, if they are given no authority over their charges, and are spit upon by society, while lawyers and businessmen are allowed to game the system daily with little-to-no repercussions?
Our public education system is fundamentally broken at the moment. School is there mostly for socializing with friends, not learning. Schools teach to tests, rather than teaching the basics of critical thinking, questioning assertions without evidence, the backbones of future learning such as studying skills and the fundamentals of mathematics, language, history, and the arts.
It's pretty damned pathetic.
When CEOs are being paid $200 million to LEAVE a company due to incompetence, yet labor cannot afford to eat without aid, it is quite obvious who has all of the power, and how they are exerting said power. When organized capital is being bailed out by the government due to incompetence, negligence, corruption, or all of the above, yet organized labor is being pushed out, broken up, left with no real say, and is forced to watch good jobs leave the country to cut overhead for the sake of profits, it is quite obvious who has all of the power, and how they choose to exert it.
Corporations DESERVE welfare, yet We the People do not? What a load of crap. Free markets require government to bailout failed corporations instead of allowing the market to speak, the businesses to go under, and the people involved in the mistakes to pay for those errors? What a blatant, fundamental LIE...and a load of crap. We the People are having the Dream stolen from us. Stolen by charlatans and snake-oil salesmen, backed up by armies of paid lobbyists bribing our politicians to enact legislation that undermines We the People. Stolen in plain sight, if only the fourth estate would do their job and report the facts, "fair and balanced" be damned. Oh, wait...the fourth estate has been converted to a for-profit entertainment venture. I wonder whose interests would be served by a press beholden to the $$$, as opposed to the truth. Hmmmmmmm.
Get the friggin' money and the revolving doors out of politics. Cut off the hands of the lobbyists, strip them of ALL of their monetary power and influence. Lobbyists should ONLY be dealing with political capital (the number of VOTERS that lobbyist represents), not economic capital. It is friggin' ludicrous. Anyone trying to give money, or favors, or future careers to politicians in exchange for legislation should be thrown in to JAIL. Money =/= free speech. Money =/= votes. Corporations =/= people. Corporations should NOT have the rights of a citizen.