Random Thoughts

First and foremost, happy new year everyone. As usual the holiday season was a bit of a bear, between installing new equipment at work and getting everything working (only to have something go out again yesterday … *sigh*), being ill, and just the general holiday season with it’s crowds and such.

The wife and I did get out some and caught some movies … unusual for us actually but we enjoyed it. For those that are curious I highly recommend Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and King Kong. They’re all long moves (Narnia I believe is the shortest of the 3 at 2 hours 10 minutes if I recall correctly) but worth the time.

Both the wife and I have also started our “Novel in a Month” marathon of writing. With 5 days of writing under my belt I am officially at 6,500 words … roughly 1,500 words off my mark (with another 1,613 words needed for tonight’s mark) but the story is coming along nicely and being that my writing time so far has pretty much only been from 10pm to midnight I don’t think that I’ll have too much trouble making up any deficit over the weekend.

In fact, in all honesty, you’re only getting this treat of a blog entry because I left my thumb drive at home and it has my novel on it, so I can’t work in this time I have available at work waiting for someone else to finish their job so I can start mine. Next week I plan to try and get my brain out of cotton sooner after waking up in the morning and try to get some blogging done in my ‘me’ time that I have in the early am. As I am not, exactly, a morning person … well, don’t expect any posts to be particularly elegant or thought out, until I’ve at least had a cup of coffee.

Judges … as I was driving into work I heard the story of a judge, I can’t recall where from at the moment, but I’ll see if I can find a link to the story somewhere. This particular judge has apparently decided that he doesn’t agree with punishing criminals and, rather, wants to make sure they get treatment. To this end he sentenced a man convicted of multiple counts of rape on a young girl (these occurred over 3 years when the girl was between the ages of 7 and 10) to 60 days in prison.

60 days …. So that he can get out sooner and get ‘treatment.’ Mind you studies show that even with extensive treatment sex offenders have a 90%+ relapse rate … with child molesters being somewhat closer to the 95%. Is it just me or is the ‘soft on crime’ liberal justice system getting out of hand here in the US? I mean jeaze.

I will grant you that punishment doesn’t always work in terms of treating and rehabilitating the offender, but that isn’t the only purpose of punishment … punishment is a deterrent as well. This is a ruling that sends entirely the WRONG message to other potential offenders that, hey, you’ll just get a slap on the wrist … 60 days is NOTHING. A harsher punishment is about preventing crime as much as it is about punishing the offender in the case. The easier you make the punishment, the more likely you are to have more occurrences of the crime because less people will be scared of the punishment.

This isn’t about mandatory sentencing, I don’t believe that tying a judge’s hands is the right answer either … I don’t generally like ‘absolute’ rules as I believe that while there is black and white in the world there are a lot of shades of grey in many situations and no single law can properly cover it. (Note – this is different from how I feel about mandatory minimum serving … requiring that a convicted criminal serve a minimum amount of their sentence before being eligible for parole/early release is not something that I have any problem with (the judgment and attention to the case is handled by the sentencing phase of the trial) and feel it should be in the 66-75% range … I mean a 20 year prison sentence doesn’t mean much if you’re eligible for parole after 90 days.)

[State's judicial system failed abused child]

From there we’ll go to the FL Supreme Court, who recently ruled that the Florida School Voucher program was unconstitutional. With one of the people opposing choice for parents saying "It's a great day for public education and children in Florida."

She should have stopped with ‘It’s a great day for public (read: government) education….’ Because it is a sad sad day for children.

The law in question allowed students that were enrolled in a school that was deemed to be ‘failing’ by a state certification board for 2 years to be enrolled at a private school by use of a voucher (the voucher could be turned in by the private school to the government to receive the tax money for the student that would normally have gone to the government school.)

The public school had to have received a failing grade two years in a row for the parents to be eligible for the voucher. Two years … this means that not only had the school failed the first year … but it had failed to get its performance up to standard the following year. The students NEED to be pulled out of schools like this and put somewhere where they can actually get an education (this would almost have to be a private school because government run schools just aren’t cutting it anymore) in my opinion if the school fails a third year in a row it should be shut down and every member of the teaching and administrative faculty fired or at least given a tough evaluation and those that can’t score high enough to be picked up by another school should be shown the door.

Teachers unions HATE the idea of voucher systems … why? Because it makes them somewhat responsible for the level of education that the students receive. Because if they don’t perform then the parents have a viable choice to pull their kid out and send him (and the money associated with him) to a school that DOES perform. This might lead to teachers jobs and pay somehow being tied to *gasp* their ability to actually teach students and get them to learn.

The Teach unions won this battle … they have forced the parents who care enough about their children to want to make sure that they are enrolled in a school that is capable of providing them the best education to pay twice for that education …. Once through a forced tax by the government and then again by the enrolment fee of the private institution.

Money isn’t the problem … the city of Atlanta has among the highest dollar/student amounts in the country … and some of the lowest rated schools in the country. In fact the $/student is so high in the city of Atlanta that in some cases the government schools get more tax money per student than private schools charge for tuition. In other words (in some cases) the government could SAVE money by sending the students to private schools that are out performing the public schools.

Much of it has absolutely NOTHING to do with class sizes and $/student ratios … some of it is teacher unions protecting poor teachers … and some of it is class sizes and the lack of public schools to adequately discipline students … a large part of the problem, however, is the parents.

The parent that is willing to shell out the $$ for tuition is probably the type of parent that is going to be concerned with how well their child is doing, what they are learning, etc. These are the parents more likely to be INVOLVED. This is also why some students seem to do very well and shine even in a poor public school.

Throwing more money at the schools, buying them the latest computers and flashy laptops, new gym gear, and giving all the teachers a 100% pay raise won’t help in most of the cases … because the problem isn’t that the schools are underfunded or underequiped … it’s that the parents just don’t give a damn.

That and government schools are top heavy with administration, as are ALL government agencies, so a lot of money is wasted on salaries of people that have little to nothing to do with the education of children.

[Voucher decision reaction mixed in Escambia County]

Ah well … government education is working … and as a result the government can collect even MORE money from people to ‘better the education system’ …..

I think I need to get my own island … this country is going down hill fast.