Toyota Again

Seems like this Toyota thing will not go away. It seems like you hear about another Toyota high speed runaway almost every day. It does appear that many were either frauds or caused by the "two foot" driving method where the little old lady has her right foot on the gas and the left foot on the brake and can't keep track of which one is being pushed. There other strange things about this whole problem that we should take a look at, so here goes.

Now if this is some kind of computer problem that might be caused by outside electrical noise, wouldn't you expect to see all kinds of malfunctions and not just the high speed run away? I don't think computers are all that smart in the first place. If something jams the program at some "random" place, you would think that the car would have other things going wrong too. The brakes are hooked to and controlled by the computer, but you don't hear people claiming that the car suddenly slammed on the brakes without the drivers foot being on the brake. Why not? You don't hear about the car going into neutral all of a sudden and the transmission is controlled by the computer too. The steering is controlled by the computer and you don't hear about the car suddenly deciding to do parallel parking do you? It is my feeling that the problem just might still be computer related, but I am very surprised that more unrelated computer problems are not also reported. How do the computer know to just fail in the "peddle to the metal mode"?

I told you that Toyota was going to give a a lot of material to Blog with. If you have an more ideas, post them.

What Would Vince Lombardi Do?

Most of us are old enough to remember Vince Lombardi. For those who don't, he was the famous coach who put Green Bay and the Green Bay Packers on the map. Vince was not himself a great football player, but he did know a few things about football and life. It was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started. If I can recall anything about Vince, it was that he never tried to do anything fancy. He was basic. He believed in the fundamentals. He never tried to fool or trick the other team, he just tried to meet them head on and beat them "one on one". Everyone of his guys had to be better at their jobs than the guys across from them on every play, then his guys would win. That is how Vince and he Green Bay Packers did it Sunday afternoon after Sunday afternoon. I think you understand the story. It was execution that was going to win the game. I am also a duck hunter and have hunted a lot with friends. Most guys wanted to see big flocks of duck come flying in so they could get one. I just looked for one duck at a time since I could only fire one shot at a time. Most of them had automatics, but I just had a single shot. I aimed at one duck and shot. I usually got the duck. The other guys with automatics seemed to just shot into the flock hoping to get several and usually did not get any. If you see where I am going, you know it is back to the fundamentals and that is exactly what we need now in this country, not throwing borrowed money at problems without hitting anything. It isn't how Vince Lombardi would do it.

It has been so long since we have visited the real fundamentals that I am sure many have forgotten exactly what they are. Do you what to try to make up your own list before I start? Most of you have read Michener and are familiar with his style. He goes back to the formation of the Earth and then builds from there. I'm not going back quite that far, but close. Even the stories in the Bible seem to start from the same place, and what is that? Family. That's right, the family. If the caveman did not have a strong supportive family he would never have survived and we would not be here today. Look around the world where humans have survived and flourished and tell me what you see? Where people have prospered, you will see strong families. Take a look right around the USA and turn the clock back a little and tell me what you see? You saw farmers and their families clearing land and making homes. You saw communities that supported each other. You saw families who worked together and took pride in their work. This pride assured that individuals in the family pulled their share of the load. In many cases these families were so poor by modern standards that pride was all they really had. No member of the family would think about doing anything to bring shame on the family. Bringing shame on the family is still a very big deal in poor families around the world today. The point is that strong supportive responsible families are at the base of what is fundamental. If you don't have the family first, all the rest is not going to compensate.

Let's look around and see where we still have strong families today. This is my list and I am sure I will leave some out. How about the Mormons? I think you will have to admit that with all the bad press they seem to be getting, you still have to admit they have some of the strongest families. Notice also that they have one of the highest literacy rate and per capita incomes. It is not an accident. How about farm families and rural families. How about the so called "Hill Billies"? Without them, we would not have an army. How about the Jewish community? They still require their kids to learn Hebrew after all these thousands of years. How about the Asians here in the USA? Their kids are almost twice as likely to go to college as the average American and to be in the top 5% income group. What ever these families seem to have, it appears to me that they got it on the basis of merit and a strong family. I have a real problem when I look at the families in our more urban areas. It seems to me that they are the weakest and I think it starts with "distractions" for the kids away from the family to outside activities and peers of their own age. I remember when kids wanted to wear hats like their fathers or mothers and smaller sized of he same types of cloths. It is not that way anymore. Kids want to wear cloths like other kids and like what they see on TV. Kids used to have to be seen and not heard in the presence of adults. This gave them access to mature discussions where they could learn important lessons of real life. Today it is not uncommon to have kids project themselves into adult conversation and feeling equal somehow. I feel this has been a general step backwards. I used to hear, "Spare the rod and spoil the child". I used to get spankings, but not for the same thing twice. Was it the Dr Spock book that started all of this down hill? I don't know, but it was about this time. Back to urban. The two groups in the USA who are the most urbanized are the Asians and the Blacks, but notice how different the two have responded? The Asians are on top and the Blacks are on bottom. They both look different, so you can't blame looks. What is it? Family. I am not going to go into families any further, but for starters, it requires "married" couple of opposite sexes and if you don't have that, you can't even get started. I think Vince would agree that family is the number one fundamental requirement and he treated his team like family with him as the father, period.

This was supposed to be about the USA and economics and the quality of life here so I will change pace. As before, I said that the number one fundamental rule of economics is to be the "low cost producer". A little story first. When I was the Corporate Manager of Manufacturing for Latin America for ITT, we had a program call, "SPCL". This meant "Single Product Cost Leadership". When we first started the program, I thought it was some Mikey Mouse thing, but as we got into it further I realized that it was one of those "Fundamental" concepts of economics. Here is what it was. Each plant had to select one product that the management would all team up on and do everything they could to cut the cost on just that one product. It would go so far as to develop a separate P&L and Balance Sheet for the product where only those costs associated with that single product would be assigned. If the GM was only spending 2% of his time with this single product then only 2% of the cost associated with him would be assigned to the product. What we found was that older mature products were being charged for all kinds of cost that should have been assigned somewhere else. Older mature products were the real money makers and many of the new products were losers without any prospects of becoming profitable. It really opened the eyes of management in a way that seminars and business school classes could never do. Hey, where is Vince? Fundamentals. The SPCL program got management back to thinking in terms of "Fundamentals". Now what are these for the USA?

Efficiency is key. Too broad though to be used directly. Take the so call "Jobs Bill" just passed by congress. If that were your money, what would you do with it? I think you would pay down your balance on your credit cards or other loans and tighten your belt a little. I don't think you would spend the money on a vacation or the latest style dress. What did our government do? They hired some more government employees to pass the money around to their pet projects. They claimed they could produce a new job for only $250,000 each. What if they gave any mother who worked and had kids under 7 years old $25,000 to stay home and take care of their kids and to teach them to read and write and do simple math? They could then fire half of the teachers for grades K-2 and save local governments from bankruptcy and strengthen the family and get kids better educated. Win Win. Efficiency is the absence of waste, so rather than examining efficiency, we should focus on preventing waste. Waste is waste no matter where it is or what it is called. You can waste time. You can waste money. You can waste day light. You can waste energy. Now you could do all this if you were dead too, but while preventing waste, we need to produce something at the same time. It is a proven fact that the responsible individual can direct his own money in a better direction for himself and the general economy than any governmental agency. That is a fact. If Vince Lombardi were here with his team, he would tell them that he can't go on the field with them and tell them what to do on every play, each player has to take what he has taught them and make the right decision "on the spot". Eventually Vince Lombardi got the actual game decisions down to each player deciding what was best for him and the team. It was Vince Lombardi's family and no player would dare bring "shame" on the family. Players, or members of the family would often play well beyond their abilities to support the team. We saw that again and again on Sunday afternoons. Vince Lombardi's teams were efficient, they did not waste time nor energy. They knew what they had to do and they did it. We need that today.

Now I said the Vince Lombardi players knew what to do and they did it when it counted. That means that someone in the family made sure that the players knew what to do and that was Vince Lombardi. He was the teacher. Here we are talking about our families and it is the head of the families responsibility to made sure all the individuals in the family are taught how to take care of themselves and in the process take care of the family. That means schools and colleges and no screwing around. Screwing around is "waste" and we already said that we needed to reduce waste. Vince Lombardi had to come from behind to win some games, but he knew in his heart that this was he hardest way to have to win. He wanted to come out swinging and scoring because he knew that if he ever got behind then he would have to score "extra" to win and that was not going to be easy. Vince Lombardi knew he did not have the best football players in the league, but he knew his players were good enough to win if they went all out and did not waste scoring chances. Isn't that what we are talking about here when it comes to public school and college? I think it is. I don't know why, but kids always feel that they can screw around and still catch up later by working a little harder, but it is just not true. If Vince caught even his best player screwing around and letting down the team, he would bench them in a minute. As a parent and head of the family, would you have done that? Maybe that is why Vince Lombardi was a winner and all the players who he bench say the same thing today. Parents wake up.

You need smart hard working efficient people and what else? Energy and raw materials. Compared to the rest of the world, we have more energy and raw materials than any other major player. If that is so, why are we in such bad shape? I think it is due to our people. We don't have the best and we had better face it. Not only don't we have the best, we are far down the list, but when you combine that with a caviar appetite, you can see where we are headed. We all want to drive fancy cars and have flat screen TV set. We import 100% of the flat screen TV sets and most of our really fancy cars. How about shoes and cloths. We want all those good things too, but again we import 98% of them. Who ever is head of the family has to show some "tough love" and make our kids tighten their belts and work harder. The free ride is over. The one thing that Vince Lombardi knew was that his team or family had to "produce". Vince did not have a special player on the team to just kick field goals and extra points, he used his halfback to do the job and saved a position. That is efficiency. Vince knew that his ends were not the fastest or fanciest in the league nor was his quarter back the best passer, but all the players knew that when the quarter back passed the ball into the end zone, it was the ends job to catch the ball and that was what was expected. There would be no "do overs". It had to be done right the first and only time. To Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers, that was the meaning of efficiency. So what has happen.

If I learned a lesson and it has take about 70 years from Vince Lombardi it is that this game is not all that complicated. It all comes down to individual and family execution. Simple. Just a lot of small building blocks stacked together with each knowing what to do and making sure it is done and done right.

Egg Insurance

I was talking with my 8 year old grandson and it became clear that he was being indoctrinated by his school teachers or someone else. It was strange hearing an 8 year condemned insurance companies as being the bad guys. That's just how far this thing has gone. If you don't think so, then talk to some kids under 10 years old and listen to what they have to say. Well, being a responsible grandparent I felt that I needed to set the record straight. Since the 8 year old really did not understand the function of insurance, I had to start from "scratch" and that meant "chickens". That's right "chickens". Here goes.

I set up the situation where this kid had a job within the family to collect the eggs from the chicken house every afternoon so the family would have eggs for cooking and for breakfast. Once he and a friend were collecting eggs and she made the grave mistake of putting all the 12 eggs in "one" basket and don't you know, on the way back to the house she fell and all the eggs broke. It was a total loss and the family had to go hungry because they did not have any eggs to eat. It was a very sad situation along with the hunger. My 8 year old grandson clearly understood the loss and how easy it would be to trip or something and crack all the eggs. They only had this one basket which made things even worse, but if he had two and one in each hand and fell, the results would basically be the same. Once he fully understood there serious risk associated with the job of collecting eggs, he was ready to buy insurance.

Now I set myself up as a friend in the area who was willing to help and sell him "insurance". What I proposed was that he give me "one" of his eggs every day and if he ever tripped and broke all the eggs, I would bring over 11 eggs so the family would have something to eat and he would not get in trouble for braking all the eggs. It sounded so good that he took the deal. I got my "one" egg each day and the family had food. This was a win win. As time went by my grandson got so confident with his insurance policy and the fact that he "never" got in trouble for braking the eggs that he would run from the hen house back to the house so that he could play with his video games. Every thing worked out for a while until he started running faster and tripping more often. As you might have expected, he had a "prior condition" of not being a good runner and I had to increase his insurance premium to "two" eggs per week. By this time my grandson had moved along in school and noticed that he had given me twice as many eggs as I had given him back for when he tripped and broke the eggs. He said that he did not feel this was fair. He expected that he would get more eggs from me over time than he had to give me for the insurance. He felt that he agreed to the insurance plan to end up saving eggs, but in the end his family actually had fewer eggs to eat. My grandson was a lot smarter than I thought so I had to come up with some kind of explanation or he was going to accuse his poor old grandfather of being some kind of egg "hustler" and I did not want that. What I did was to turn the table on him and show him that he was looking for some kind of "free lunch" with insurance policy I sold him. The problem was that as an 8 year old, he did not understand what a "free lunch" was. It took a while, but I showed him with various example that there really is not such a thing as a "free lunch". I'll tell you how smart my 8 year old grandson is. He immediately turned to me and said, "grandpa, you mean this Obama health care plan is not a free lunch?". I smiled and thought to myself, "there is still hope".

Well They Did It

As of right now we have a new law on the books, that is as soon as it is printed and issued in the Federal Register. That will take about 24 hours. We should all get a copy so we can start reading it. By the end of the month most of us should know what we and are children will be in for. I would hope that China is as glad about this as the Democrats so they will be kind enough to loan us the money needed to pay ourselves for this. There will be a lot of changes and I would like to analyse just a few.

First, preconditions. According to what I know so far, the insurance companies can "only" offer policies that include provisions determined by the government. This means that the cost for a 21 year old person will be the same as for a 61 year old person, even though the chance of a claim by each is very different. If this were auto insurance, it would mean that a driver who had many accidents would be charged the same as a safe driver. The claim is that our insurance rate would not change or would go down as a result of this legislation. If you understand 4th grade math, you know that this can not be true. If an insurance company is forced to accept people who they know in advance are going to have million dollar claims for the same fee as a healthy person, the insurance company is going to go out of business or have to increase rates for the healthy person. Like you and me. It is just that simple. I don't know what this is going to do to people and companies who are self insured. The only advantage that company self insurance plans have is that they only apply to their employees and their families. If you don't work for the company, then you are not covered. In many business health insurance plans the coverage of family members is optional or they have to pay extra. I think that you are going to see a lot of companies drop extended family health coverage or drop health coverage totally. In the case of self insured, it would seem to me that you could write any terms that you would want under this program and provide yourself 100% of those demanded by the new law. When you got sick, you could opt out of your self insurance plan and go buy health insurance from a regular insurance company. By law, they could not turn you down. See how screwed up this whole thing is? I don't know of any insurance company now who has enough reserves to cover preexistin conditions, so it the insurenace companies don't have adequate reserves, why should you as a self insured person have to have some kind of high reserves. Note also that insureance companies are under state law not federal law. This should be an interesting point to follow.

In a prior Blog, I explained how our government is the easiest place to "scam" or "game". If you think you have seen "gaming" of the government before, just wait. You ain't seem nothing yet. My prediction is that in the next couple of years you are going to see the innovation spirit swell in this country like you have never seen it before. In no time at all our government will have health care so screwed up that many of you will be thinking about going to Mexico for your medical treatments. The Mayo Clinic now has facilities in Mexico as do many other major medical providers. We may have to go to Mexico to get medical care that we can afford. You heard it here first. Some may go to India. Check out airline stock because they may be doing ambulance service to places like that in the not too distant future. Sad but true. I know I will have a lot of Blog meat with this one so stay tuned.

Monkey See--Monkey Wants

I noticed that in last night's final comments before the House, Pelosi quoted from the constitution that "....all men are created equal and have inalienable rights....". If I am not mistaken, that is "not" from the constitution, it is from the "Preamble" to the constitution and is thus "not" part of the law. How many of our public school graduates picked up on this point? Now what do I mean by, "Monkey See...Monkey Wants...". It is just a basic human trait that if someone else has it hen they want it too. The problem is that when this concept is taken to the limit all kinds of really bad things start to happen. Before I really get into this one, I want to tell a short story.

Any of you who are college graduates had to take Philosophy as a requirement. Most thought it was a waste of time and so do I, but it did allow me to learn a couple of new things. I was interested in the Philosophy of India and have had since, several good Indian friends and have traveled there extensively. The point, in a nut shell, is that in the Hindu Philosophy, they seemed to be occupied with contentment and the avoidance of anguish. Seems OK to me. What they say is that all sadness and unhappiness is the direct result of "desire". That is, the desire of something that you can not have. They also make a point of the fact that by getting the thing that you desire does "not" make you happy. From this whole concept, they propose that to be happy, you have to avoid having desires that can't be attained. One of the easiest ways to avoid excess desire is to not even know that the object exists. I think that is why many people growing up on a farm claim that they had a very happy childhood. Following me here? As a kid when your mother said that you could not have something and meant it, you went without the thing and were happy. On the other hand, if your parents were wishy washy when they said you could not have something, you might go on days or the rest of your life unhappy because you still felt that you deserved what ever. The world is full of different people who have different amounts of this or that and it won't change. If you have a problem with that, you are going to be an unhappy person. This is at the foundation of much of the Indian Philosophy and it is the main reason that such a poor country could be happy and passive in the face of all these differences. Now where is this leading?

Let's start with cars. Here in the USA we have all kinds and prices of cars. You can buy a used car for as little as $100 or as high as a million dollars. Now if you wanted a car that cost a million dollars and you couldn't afford it, then you might be unhappy. Do you think the guy with the million dollar car is happier than you because he has the million dollar car? I would not be so sure. I know that I owned a lot of $100 cars in my life and was glad at the time to have had them. I was happy. Many think that back in Henry Ford's time that all we had was the Model T to chose from, but at the time there were still cars that would have been worth an equivalent terms a million dollars. Anyone could build a car worth any amount and that act should not cause a social uprising should it? Well it has.

Now take medical care. I remember when the doctor in South Africa did the first heart transplant on a human. What did you think at the time? For most it was some kind of freak event that most thought should never have occurred. It was like a car company coming out with a V12 two million dollar car. I could not afford the two million dollar car and thus had no desire for it. Now the heart transplant. It was worth about two million dollars at the time and now do I want it? No, but many seem to "desire" one and are very unhappy when they find out that they can't afford it. When they were kids, their mother's told them that they could not have it and they went out happy to play. What has changed here? Is this a case of "Monkey see--Monkey Wants". I hear stories from the family where some aunt died because the family could not afford this or that operation. Those are not quite the facts. The fact is that with the operation, the aunt would most likely live another year with hospital care. Because the family had a house full of kids to feed, they could not as responsible parents take the food from their kids mouths and give it to the doctor for the operation. The aunt knew the rules before hand and died happy. Today it is just the opposite, if the aunt did not get the operation she would die very unhappy. She expected the sheriff to go over to the neighbor's home and take their money by force and use it to pay the doctor so that she could live in the hospital at great expense another year. What we seem to missing in the society today is the roll of the responsible parent who says and means it that, "you can't have it". If all parents were this responsible, us kids would all then be happy instead of winning around still wanting what we know we can't have.

Life with the car example, there are always going to be newer and better cars and we all know that all of us can't be driving around in the most expensive cars. It won't happen because it is "impossible". You could also apply this to homes. I have said for many years that the USA is "house poor". On the farm we used to look down on neighbors who were "horse poor". They had more horses than they either needed or could afford. We did the same thing with homes due to a combination of government policy and our own immaturity "Monkey See....Monkey Want". In the process we as a nation borrowed on the equity in our homes until we had no net worth. When home prices went down many found themselves "under water" and don't to this day understand why. Do you know any families who are "snowmobile poor"? I know a few and I don't plan on helping them dig themselves out.

Try education and college degrees. This is just the latest of the "Monkey See....Monkey Wants". Is the government helping to make this situation better or worse? I know I don't have to answer that one. You know. Look around and see how many people seem to be happy? I am not one to place blame on anyone except the individual who allows themselves to be unhappy or a victim which is about the same thing, but the efficiency of advertisers on the brains of many of us has turned us into Monkeys.

Monkey See....Monkey Wants

New Math--Call For Help

Most of my readers can remember when "New Math" came in about 1956 or 1957. It was supposed to revolutionize the teaching of math using "set theory". I think the results speak for themselves. The USA today has the "lowest" math scores in the world. I think it is clear to everyone that the so call "New Math" was a fraud from the start. I have talked to a few retired grade school teachers who are strong union people who still stick up for the so call "New Math". The fact that these people can't recognize a loser when they see it is testament to the quality of many of our teachers and union members. Rather than Blog on about my feelings toward the so call "New Math", I would like to see how many of you have an opinion on the subject. Send them in and I will publish them along with this Blog. How about some help here. You could say that "new Math", "did not have any cloths." Do you think Obama has "no cloths" too on this health care thing. Will it take us down the same road as "New Math" or the "Hole in the ozone layer". What % of the USA population even know what "ozone" is?

Simple Social Math

Many of us have forgotten what a powerful tool we have in "Simple Math". It is amazing how and where it can be used to better understand what is happening right around us. Let me show you how just a little "Simple Math" can reveal a lot about the present and allow us to look into the future. We'll start with a simple one where you already know a few of the numbers, education.

If you have not been watching, currently only 60% of our kids nationwide graduate from high school. It is hard to comprehend the impact. When you are walking down the street and see a bunch of young adults, the chances are that 4 out of 10 are high school drop outs. It is so bad that the Army is having problems finding enough qualified applicants. Over half of those who apply are rejected for lack of education or criminal backgrounds. Let' start with the 60% number. That is the total for all groups and states. If we look deeper into the numbers, we find that the rate of graduation varies from state to state and racial group to racial group. For this analysis I am only going to divide the groups into 3, Black, Hispanic and Other. both Black and Hispanic amount to about 15% of the USA population right now, but are the fastest growing groups. These two groups have the lowest graduation rates of only about 20%. Now with just these numbers, we can determine a lot. For the total graduation rate for the USA to be 60%, what does the graduation rate for "other" have to be? The "Other" group is now about 70% of the population and to make the total come out to 60%, they would have to have a graduation rate of 77%. That sounds about right doesn't it? A lot of schools do better than 77%, we know a lot more do worse because that is how we go the 60% number. Isn't simple math great?

Now how about looking into the future? Now I said that both Blacks and Hispanics are growing as a % of the population and in absolute numbers. This is due to their high birth rates (size of families) and the fact that the birth rate of "Other" has been going down. This is a double hit and it will have a significant impact. For this next calculation, let's assume the Blacks and Hispanics grow to 20% of the population and don't do any better in school. Let's also assume that "Other" keeps doing the same too. What will be the impact. This is simple math too. Well, it turns out that the new graduation rate for the USA is down to just 54%. If you think it is bad now, just wait. It will actually be worse because the teacher's unions are killing what little school quality that we have left. You could keep this type of simple math calculations up and see that it will not be long before the USA is done. Sad, but true.

If you look at a country like Switzerland that has very few resources and imports 100% of their oil, they have a higher per capita income and standard of living than the USA. Ever wonder why that is? They are 100% dependant on imported oil, so going green does not seem to have been the solution for Switzerland. When you think about the differences, I think you will see where the USA has been going wrong. In a prior Blog, I showed that doctors in Switzerland make 2.1 times the average income compared to almost 5 times here. Wonder why?

How about some simple math on economics? For this one, I am going to assume that 10% of the people pay 90% of the taxes here in the USA. I think that is close. I am also going to assume the average family income is $50,000, a good round figure. Now we know a few more things about our population and who earns what and pays what and who is filling up all our prisons and doing most of the crimes. Let's see how that impacts things economically. One of the main affects of crime and terrorists is that not only do they not contribute to the economy, they created friction and extra cost that is "stolen" from those who do contribute. Let's start with the same groupings of Black, Hispanic and Other. I have some data on what % of each of these groups are in the top 5%. These are the ones who pay the bills here in the USA. Check this:

* Other-------------6.1%
* Asian-------------8.8%
* Black-------------1.7%
* Hispanic----------2.1%

Now let me explain these numbers. These are the percentages out of each group that are in the top 5%. If you were to apply weighted averages to these numbers based on the population mix of the USA, they would add up to 5%. I don't think many of you are surprised that Asians do better than "Other" which is mostly White. The point is that given the $50,000 national family income average, it is clear that both the Blacks and the Hispanics are pulling down the average while at the same time eating up a lot of tax money in waste. If the % of Blacks and Hispanics were the same for the USA as they are for Switzerland, we would have a higher per capita income and a higher standard of living than Switzerland. This is simple math and has nothing to do with racism. The questions is, "Why are both the Black and Hispanic groups so unproductive and social destructive?" Answer that one. The only debate that I see is one that focuses on the two groups as "victims". No one makes you a victim, you make yourself a victim, because it is easier than admitting that you are in fact the problem. It is a cop out. Try fat people or smokers or drug users, they all claim that they are victim's. If I have heard it once, I have heard it a 1000 times from people who have not gone to college, they say the reason why was that they could not afford it. I have never seen a person who got very good grades in school who could not go to college. 99% of these people that I am talking about did "not" get good grades in school pure and simple. I have never heard one person say that their reason was that they were too dumb or too lazy or could not get good grades. They all had cop outs of some kind. So what is the cop out for why Blacks and Hispanics are doing so poorly here in the land of the free and home of the brave? I went to college for about 7 years and taught engineering for 4 years and I never had a single black kid in any one of my engineering classes. Based on simple math, I think that the chances of that happening by "chance" and not caused by something is about 1 in a billion, so for that reason, I reject "chance" as the cause, but what is the reason? Considering the numbers above, I think that Blacks and Hispanics should start hanging around with Asians to see exactly what they are doing to get ahead and stop blaming Whites whose ancestors have been dead 100 years. Any ideas?

PS, I found some data dated 2001 on graduation rates by state.
State Whites Blacks
Iowa 95% 57%
Wisconsin 92% 40%
Nebraska 90% 53%
Minnesota 87% 43%

This data is about 10 years old, but I think it makes the point very clearly. These are the "best" states in terms of graduation rates, quality of public schools and SAT scores, yet the Black population who attend these same schools do so poorly. I don't see how the problem can be blamed on quality of schools, how much is being spent or anything else. All these kids are going to the same schools and the teachers are graduating from the same colleges, plus all belong to the same union. The biggest difference in terms of % is in Wisconsin. How could it be more different? Someone has to wake up and I don't think it has anything to with a health care system that is going to bankrupt this country. Talk is cheap so what do you think we should do?

How about some more "Simple Math" regarding the 60% of Blacks who do not graduate High school in Wisconsin. By sex, it is about 70% of males that don't graduate and about 50% of females who don't graduate. Of the Black males who don't graduate between the ages of 20 and 35, the data shows that 1/3 are in prison. That's right. Also less than 1/3 of this same group have jobs. When you apply the "Simple Math", you find that at least 23.3% of Black males between 20 and 35 are in prison. This does not count those from the 30% who graduated who might also be in prison. If this good group had only 5% in prison, it would bring the total Black males between 20 and 35 who are in prison in Wisconsin to 24.8%. That is close enough to 1/4 for me so that I would say that 1/4 of Black males from 20 to 35 are in prison. The thing we also know about getting convicted of a crime is that over half of crimes go unsolved, so it is reasonable to conclude that much more than 1/4 of Black males from 20 to 35 should be in prison. Again, this is "Simple Math" and has nothing to do with racism. Now I think you can see how a country like Switzerland could have such a high standard of living and still import 100% of their oil. Don't be fooled. Keep your eye on the ball.

"Carbondioxide"

Seems that every school child these days is worried about "Carbondioxide", but very few know anything about exactly what it is. I had a little time on my hands today so I checked into "Carbondioxide" on the Internet to see what I could find. There is a lot of stuff out there if you know where to look and have some prior knowledge about chemistry. Here are some of the things that I found.

First off, your car makes carbondioxide when you burn gas or diesel. It might sound like a lot at first, but remember that carbondioxide is mostly oxygen from the air we breathe. If you figure the average car gets about 21mpg, then it produces about 19 pounds of carbondioxide per gallown or about a pound per mile. A gallon of gas only weights about 6.25 pounds and is made up of both carbon and hydrogen. The hydrogen burns and forms mostly water and the carbon burns and makes carbondioxide, the so called bad stuff. The molecular weight of carbon is 12 and oxygen is 16, so carbondioxide is only 27% carbon. As you can see, most of what goes out the exhaust pipe is not from the gas tank, but from what cames in thru the air cleaner for free.

Exactly where is all this bad carbon? It is not all bad since carbon is the second largest element in our bodies. On the surface of the Earth, carbons ranks 15th and in the universe, it ranks 4th. That means there is a lot more out there in space. Back here on the surface of the Earth, here is how carbons is distributed. These figures are in gigatons, however much that is.

* Atmosphere---------------------810 GT-----2%
* Water-----------------------36,000 GT----89%
* Oil & Coal-------------------1,900 GT-----5%
* Soil & Plants----------------1,500 GT-----4%

Notice that by far the most carbon is in the oceans and most of that is in the form of carbondioxide. If there was no carbondioxide in the oceans, there would be "no" life in the oceans. The carbondioxide is needed for plant life and thus fish and every thing else. The oceans are the largest source for fresh oxygen too as you might have guessed from the table above. From what I can see from the chart above, if we burn all the known oil and coal, we would still not have changed the amount of carbondioxide that is in the atmosphere by all that much. Seems to me that it is not something to get that all worked up about. Another note about the oceans in the carbondioxide cycle, as the % of carbondioxide in the atmosphere increases, the rate at which carbondioxide is dissolved in sea water "increases". It is a function of "partial pressures", a more complex subject. With the increase in carbondioxide in sea water, the faster plants in the sea will grow and free oxygen for us humans to breathe. Nice set up.


I have been a gardener for many years and have noticed when visiting green houses that there is often a flame burning in the green house. I asked about this one day and was told by the owner that the green house was "short" of carbondioxide that the plants needed and that by adding carbondioxide he "increased" the plant growth rate. For those of you who are into "feed back systems" this is right up your alley. If we assume that our old Earth here is in some kind of "Balance" without us humans screwing it up, then when we put out more carbondioxide from our cars and things, the Earth system counteracts the increase in carbondioxide by having plants grow faster and take the carbondioxide out of the atmosphere, just like in the green house. Great system or what. Why didn't Al Gore make a bigger point of the Earth's control system? Did you ever think of that? I just read that some university here in the USA did a research project on how trees respond to higher levels of carbondioxide. They found that as the percentage of carbondioxide is increased the trees grow faster. Amazing!!! At the current levels of carbondioxide in the atmosphere they found that the growth rate has leveled off. Sounds like the tree has come into balance with its environment. Amazing!!! We had to pay to find out what I had found out for free from the owner of the green house.

A couple of years ago, some college kids came to my place wanting to dig up some soil samples of soil that had "not" been cultivated for many years and some from areas that had been cultivated. They were doing a research project on the "loss" of carbon from the soil due to farming. To my surprise, I found out that there is much more carbon stored in the soil than in the atmosphere and that farming, not cars has been the main source of modern day carbondioxide into the atmosphere. Now let's go back to basics and ask, "what is the purpose of all this farming?" It is to feed us humans. When you consider the Earth's population doubles every 33 years, you can see why we needed all this farming. I guess if you want to cut down on the farming, then you will have to cut down on the human birth rate. So far only China has really done anything about birth rates. I guess that is just one more item of proof that they are smarter than us. It is just amazing how all of this stuff starts to fit together isn't it? All the solutions seem to come back to the same point. Food for thought.

"Forty Two Up"

Most of you will never have heard of this one. Just what is "Forty Two Up"? It is one of the most memorable documentaries that I have ever seen. It is about a group of kids in England all born in 1957. Some guy got the idea of following these kids from age 7 on and checking in on them every 7 years. He has been documenting this group of kids as they have grown up with pictures and detailed interviews of them that he has documented over the past 42 years. It all started from an old saying. "that if you give me your child to age 7, I will give you the man". That is to say that you are who you are by the age of about 7. That, it is claimed, is about the time you have determined what kind of person you will be. In the documentary this point is made very clear. The only variable has to do with education. Those who progressed further thru the educational system clearly did better in most measures of quality of life. This is what you would have expected, but here he makes the point very clear. Look at your own past and tell me about yourself and what type of person you were at age 7 compared to today? If you are honest about yourself and your past, I think you will tend to agree with the documentary producer. Now you may ask, what is the purpose of all this? Well, it is very significant and I will tell you the reason why.

Our President Obama was raised by his hippy mother and her second Muslim husband mostly in Indonesia until Obama was age 8 when he came to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. Based on the "Forty Two Up" documentary, who Obama was and would be was set by this time. If you are skeptical, I suggest that you watch the "Forty Two Up" documentary and then decide. Now during the 8 years prior to going to live with his grandparents, Obama did not lead a normal American kid's life. It was different and strange by every measure. The result in my opinion is that it produced a person of whom I have a total zero of understanding. When he is confronted with a decision, he comes at it from angles that are completely foreign to me and everyone that I have ever known. That is the reason he appears to act so strange and illogical. He may wear modern American cloths and look like the average Black person, but he is different and don't forget it. Once you have watched the documentary above, the picture will look a lot clearer and a lot scarier. I said scarier and that is what I mean. Every time that he does something strange and he has done plenty, there is a tendency to spin it some way that "he can't be that bad" or "that stupid" because he looks and talks very normal, but deep inside he is "different" and "different" in big ways from most of us.

Had I not watched the documentary and relied on the materials that I have read or seen about how people can change and remake themselves, I would have believed the best about Obama. When you look into his life and understand how important those early years are in forming who a person is, you will think differently. I know that as the oldest son in a family of 3 boys, what happened early in my life has clearly formed who I am today. Through out most of my life I have been a very serious person who was, to some degree, driven. One event that stands out from my young life was when my father went into the Navy Sea Bee's during WWII. I had just turned 4 years old and it was the last meal at our dinner table before he left. He told the whole family that he was going away to fight in the war and that he would be gone a long time. He turned to me at age 4 and told me that while he was gone he wanted me to sit in his chair at the head of the table until he got back and be the man of the house. I recall looking him straight in the eye with the understanding that I would do exactly that. Now why would a father ask that of a 4 year old? Would he expect it to go in one ear and out the other or would he expect the 4 year old to totally understand the meaning and the responsibility? This is what happened and I think that our Obama was just like me when he was 4. Up to age 8 he was pounded on daily by his hippy mother and Muslim step father plus their peer group to form who he was to be and who he still is. See the problem more clearly now? As in the Bible, we have a "snake" within our midst. You may think this whole Blog is a bunch of bull, but you think about what I have had to say here and ask yourself if we have a "snake" in amongst us or not. Further, what are we or can we do about it?

PS, There is all kinds of info on "Forty Two Up" on the internet and a portion of it was once shown on PBS.

PS-----Forty Two Up is not mispelled. There are several sites on the internet with a lot of interesting information. Search "forty two up" on google.

"Do No Harm"

Isn't one of the key medical principle to, "Do No Harm"? The reason that doctors the world over adhere to this concept is that deep down they know that their power and knowledge is "limited" and for that reason are aware that they do and can make mistakes. It could be due to their lack of knowledge or any one of a million other reasons. When they look into the mirror, they know that they are not perfect and all powerful. It is a humbling concept that has served both doctors and patients well for many thousands of years. This might sound like a slow start and it is. The reason for the slow start is that the point I want to make is that much more important. Here goes.

We have in Washington DC a very unique collection of people. They are very much different from the doctors who I have described above. When these people look into the mirror they see "Power" and "Perfection". They know deep in their hearts that they are of superior intellect to the people who elected them. They know that someone far in the reaches of the universe called just them to come to the aid and service of the poor souls who elected them. This uniform mind set of the individuals in Washington DC accounts for the way they act and conduct them selves. Think for a moment, this will take some thinking to get into the right mood since you by virtue of the fact you are reading this Blog that you are not "Perfect in Intellect" and "All Powerful". Now that you are in the right state, think how you would deal with the Obama Socialized Medical bill. Since you know already that every thing that matters in this world has originated in Washington DC and was the direct result of your vote or signature that if you "Do Nothing", then nothing will get done or happen. If on the other hand you did not consider yourself "Perfect" and "All Powerful" by your doing nothing, the prospects still existed that something could happen without your vote or signature. See how it works? For those of us who are not "Perfect" and "All Powerful" when we don't act it doesn't mean nothing will happen. Imagine if one of these guys from Washington DC were in a deer stand and big deer came by, if they did not shoot the deer, the deer would go on forever without ever being shot. Now you and I know that if we don't shoot the deer, some other deer hunter will probably shoot it. See how this works? In the case of the economy, these guys in Washington DC think that if they don't create jobs by their "Will", then jobs will not be produced. Think about it. How could a job be produced by some one without "Perfection of Intellect" and "Power". Notice that since they hold "All Power", by definition, there is not any other power, so we are all powerless. See how it all fits together?

Now back to the doctor thing. The first rule is to "Do No Harm". In the case of the doctor it would be a simple decision, but for the guys in Washington DC, it is a very difficult situation. That is because they know that by "Doing Nothing", they will be doing and even bigger harm to all of us poor stupid voters. They feel sorry for us and feel a burning responsibility to take care of us no mater how much of our money and our children's money they have to spend right now. I think that all of you must know that I am not a religious person, but there are many good lessons that are a part of most religions and one of the most important is the teaching as to just how "Unimportant" we are in the scheme of things. By religious definition our knowledge is limited as is our power over the world. Notice how different the guys in Washington DC see them selves? The last thing that they are in terms of this big and complex world is "Unimportant". If you look at the Democrats as a group, most don't buy into the Religious teachings regarding their importance. Now take a look at the whole Global Warming thing and tell me if I don't have it right about this group now controlling Washington DC. If they see themselves as "All Powerful", then saving the world should be child's play for them. Given their superior "Intellect", why should they need ideas or opinions from anyone else. It would just be a waste of their time. Am I right here?

The problem is that this bunch of morons are going to cause a lot of trouble for everyone of us and it is going to take a very long time for our children to dig out of this. We won't be able to do it in our life times. It takes a lot less time to burn down a barn than it does to build a new one. Something cause Rome, Egypt and Russia to burn down and in most cases they did not build back. China is building back, but how many years has it been since they were on top? If this sound dark, it is and it happened right under our noses.

PS, A little after thought.

I think that many of you have read biographies of George Washington and know that he was not seeking either the Generalship of the Revolutionary Army nor the Presidency of the new United States. He took the job because he was "asked" my his peers. Now look what has happened since. No one asks these guys in Washington DC to take time from their "real" jobs and serve in Washington DC. They are basically self chosen and are good enough con men to get money out of people like us to finance their "calling" for the ultimate "do gooder" public service and get paid well for the effort. They are not doing the job because we asked. They feel they "own" the job. They fought for it and won it fair and square. It is theirs to do with what they want. They had some idea when they "chose themselves" and it has not changed along the way by anyone who voted for them. You did not give them your vote, they won it just like playing the slots. Now the office belongs to them. Washington was asked to serve a third term, but he declined the request. He felt that others should have to "do" the job. Today, our elected officials don't feel they have a job to "do", they own the job and can define it anyway they want. It is theirs. Now do you see why these morons are even talking about things like Medical Reform and Global Warming? Most don't have "real" jobs. They just go around feeling smart and powerful doing what "they" feel needs to be done. It is over for the voter. They don't need us anymore. They own the job and that it.

What's The Score?

Most of us play baseball as kids and know how to keep score. Now as adults, have we forgotten our lessons of youth? Keeping score used to be a big deal. I knew kids who had great difficulty with math and long division, but who could calculate batting averages to 4 significant figures. So what happened to us? We have this new President and we don't seem to be keeping score anymore. I know that as a kid, we always had the guy with the best batting average batting number 4 in the line up. Now I ask you, if you are keeping score, would you want Obama in the clean up spot? We always had the guy we could really trust in that spot. We always had someone there who had a proven batting average. We had the guy who could hit the ball better than anyone else. Well, let's check the batting average.

I am going to go down a list that I have in my head and I may leave out a few points and I just might get something wrong, but here goes.
(1) Our man Obama spent 20 years attending the church of Rev. Wright and not one time did he feel the guy was some kind of black radical who hated white people. On this one, I made the correct judgement on Rev Wright after hearing him speak for just 60 seconds.
(2) Our man Obama lived down the street from a radical with the Weather Men who blew up Federal buildings and tried to kill innocent Americans and did not recognize him as a radical wanting to destroy the USA. I was in college when this guy was trying to kill people and would have shot him as a public service. Score one more for me.
(3) Our man Obama decided to close our military prison in Cuba and bring the war criminals to the USA for trials in regular courts. No one in the history of the USA has ever proposed to do such a thing. In the wars that I am familiar with, we held solders in military prisons until the war was over. We never tried them here in courts in the USA and let them go back to the fight again.
(4) Our man Obama decided to allow queers to come out in the open in the military and over ride the prior rule that if you were a queer and did not act or admit that you were a queer no one would question your conduct. I don't like queers and I would not like to have to sleep next to one if I knew it. If I did not know the guy was a queer, I guess that I would just not know I was sleeping next to a queer.
(5) Our man Obama got a hair up his ass on this global warming thing and is now trying to bring the whole USA economy down attempting to hold back global warming even though we are a small player. Many of our good friends seem smart enough not to commit economic suicide and do not seem to be going along with Obama. For me, even if global warming is true, all it means is that there is 50% chance the earth will be able to support more people and a 50% chance it will be able to support less. Either way, it is not a big deal since in 99 years there will be 8 times as many people on Earth if something is not done before then anyway.
(6) Our man Obama went to Denmark to sign some kind of economic suicide pack regarding global warming, but came up empty handed. When the chips were down and the bull shit stopped, he seemed to be the only one standing. If it were me, I would never have gone in the first place. I would have taken my kids out target shooting at the local gun range.
(7) Our man Obama must be some kind of athlete because he went to Europe to meet with the Olympic committee about bring the games to the USA. I used to be a big fan of the Olympic games when they were all amateurs, but when it pro they lost me. I guess our boy was not as hot as he thought because the committee gave him a cool hello and good bye. Seems fair to me.
(8) Our man Obama arrested the Christmas airplane terrorist and gave him the same rights that my grandfathers fought to give his kids from 1771 at Alamance, NC up to today without a drop of blood being spilt to earn that right. This act shamed me and everyone who came before me. It is my responsibility to carry the banner that started in 1771 in Alamance, NC and I know for a fact that Obama is ignorant of that responsibility.
(9) Our man Obama now wants to turn our medical system upside down and then let him put it back together the way that he wants. I know he just might have the power to tear it down, but I am positive that he is not smart enough to put it back together again. He does not have a batting average high enough to trust him at the end of the line up, much less in the clean up position. I am 70 years old and recall when Truman defeated Dewey. During that time I have seen good and bad, but never have I seen a President who could do more damage in such a short period of time. The fact that he is about 35% black seems to be his biggest asset. That is about the same % as Tiger Woods and Tiger does not consider himself black. Strange.

The bottom line is that our man Obama did not come into the office of President with a very good batting average. My guess is that out of 300 million people in the USA and about 150 million who are 35 years or older and not criminals 90% would be better qualified than our man Obama. That would be about 135 million better choices. If that is the case, this country just had a very big case of bad luck or 1 in 135 million. Sounds to me that we would have been better off using the lottery. Next time, let's look for someone with a better batting average. At this point, I would be happy with someone with a 400 batting average.

Toyota--You Asked What????

As an engineer, I have been watching the Toyota developments and have noticed that no one seems to be asking the right questions. Down deep, I think this is because all of the people asking the questions are totally incompetent in anything technical. Have you heard any questions related to the specific computer chip that is used in their computers? Have they revealed the chip manufacturer? Has anyone asked what programing language they have been using? Has anyone asked what kind of logic system they are using? Has anyone asked whether they are using ladder logic or Boolean logic? How about fuzzy logic? How about "if-then" rule logic? What kind of I/O's are they using? How do they define zero energy states? Who makes their sensors? Where do they use normally open and normally closed logic? Seems to me that that until someone starts asking the right questions and getting answers to them, we are going to be on dead center with respect to these claimed Toyota problems. Has anyone asked about drivers who keep their left foot on the brake and their right foot on the gas? Is there a safety law against driving this way? Does the Toyota computer program sound an alarm if both the gas and the brake are pushed at the same time? Is there a logic rule on which one has priority? Does pushing on the brake disable the gas peddle?

I have just run off a group of questions that in my mind would start to get at the bottom of the problem. If I were Toyota, I would add to my computer program some kind of data collection system on the performance of the driver so that they would be able to prove whether or not the driver was at fault. It would be easy to do. I for one think that preventing the practice on left foot on the brake and right foot on the gas should exempt the car manufacturer from fault in all these claimed gas peddle problems. There are times when you need to hold the brake and push the gas at the same time, such when starting from a stop on a hill. Under these conditions the driver could push an over-ride button. My Mercedes has a similar feature that allows you to over-ride the automatic brakes when you are slipping on ice so that you can get moving. Otherwise the system will stop "all" wheels and you can't move.

I would like to get some comments from some of you engineers out there on what you think about the incompetent questions that are being asked and what design changes that Toyota should be considering. I think that the Toyota problem will continue to provide a lot of good Blog material and will point up in the end that the technical incompetence of the USA population will be made very clear. If this were the big problem claimed, why don't we see it in Japan or any place else?

Rationalization And Henry Ford

How about this title? Have to keep you interested, but also a little off balance. Exactly what do I mean by "Rationalization"? Seems like it is something that is wrong with our kids. The term was coined back at the turn of the last century, not 2000, but 1900. That shows how old I am. When I talk about the turn of the century, I am talking about the transition out of the 1800's. How does Henry Ford figure into this? I think you know that Henry Ford was the one who really put the assembly line concept on the map, but he had some help. A man named Fredrick Taylor was a little ahead of old Henry on the concept. He is the one who coined the term "Rationalization" in the context of dividing all the jobs necessary to build a car into small specialized jobs that did not require the person to be all that skilled or smart. He "Rationalized" the jobs along the assembly line so that each person just did a very small part and could thus get very good and fast at it. It also meant that the workers did not have to be highly skilled since they only had to do one simple job over and over. As you might have expected they could now hire people who were poorly educated and in some cases could not even speak English to do these very simple repetitive jobs on the assembly line. Henry Ford picked up on this concept and you know the story from there on. This was back in about 1906. After this short story, you must be wondering why I have spun this little yarn? As you might expect, I have my reasons, so here goes.

I was checking on the Internet, how much doctors make according to their specific specialty. As you might have expected the specialist make as much as twice that of doctors who do general medicine. I have some numbers that I will show later. Notice in the case of Henry Ford and Fredrick Taylor they made "specialist" out of the workers on the assembly line and reduced the skill required and also the cost and in the bargain, the assembly line workers got very good at their small job and thus were much more efficient. The net result was that Henry thought that he could make good cars so cheap that everyone could afford one in their garages. He was right. Most Americans are to this day very proud of what Henry and Fredrick accomplished for the quality of life for everyone here in America. Now my point here is that I thought that the medical profession was doing this same thing. I assumed they were "Rationalizing" the jobs within the medical care community just like Ford and Taylor did over a 100 years ago, but I was very wrong. What they have done is to "pervert" the whole concept. They have actually found a way to charge "more" for "less and less". Is that the American way or what? It must be some kind of out growth from our educational community that believes that education should progress until the individual, "knows more and more about less and less until in the limit, he know everything about nothing". It is more like this than you might think. In the end, the individual must be worth more by virtue of what he has learned vs actually what he does. To my way of thinking, you get paid for what you "do" not who you are or how much you know. Why would you pay a person more for mowing your lawn if he had a PhD than if he was a high school drop out? Hey, that seems to be what we are doing. We have been doing it with teachers and see what has happened. We are doing it with doctors and see what has happened. I know a doctor who just works on hands. That is all he does. No person ever died as a result of a carpal tunnel operation, but he is paid as much as a heart surgeon. He can do the procedure in his office with very low overhead. Is this logical? The "fix" must be in or I would have expected that old fashion free competition would have corrected this situation by now. One reason that it has not is the perverted systems used by our medical schools. After the person has spent half of their lives in school and have degrees as regular doctors, they then specialize in hand surgery. When they start their specialty, they can forget 99% of what they learned in the past 25 years. Oh! wait. They still need to be paid back for all this 99% of education that they did not need and is of no value in treating your hand. It is this a screw job or what? We do almost the same thing with our school teachers. They start out teaching 2nd grade and over time take all kinds of extra classes that have zero impact on teaching 2nd grade, but are now "worth more". Figure that one out. I thought that we got paid for what we do, so if after 30 years, you are still teaching a 2nd grade class of 25 kids, why do I have to pay you more? What we need is to get Henry Ford and Fredrick Taylor back so they can put "Rationalization" back into teaching and medicine. Isn't it interesting that both of these groups are killing the economy of the USA and they are both doing it in exactly the same way. When will we all wake up?

Wait, maybe its me who doesn't understand what is going on. The doctors and the teachers are "rationalizing" that since they have gone to school all this time they are "worth more" rather than how us unwashed "rationalize" that you get paid for what you do and any extra skill or education not needed for the job is your problem. A little side fact. Did you know that at the University of Wisconsin Madison the greatest number of Masters Degrees are issued for "Social Worker". You want to know why? 99% of these people have undergraduate degrees in worthless things like Sociology, Psychology, Political Science and Communications, but by getting a Masters degree in Social Work that has no prerequisite expect that you have to have a heart beat and an undergraduate degree of some kind can now qualify for good paying jobs where the pay is based on your degree rather than what you do. It is just like the teachers and doctors. I just thought you ought to know this. It is clear to me that we our universities are training people on how to game the system and who are they gaming? The government or us tax payers. Is this a great country or what? Our kids are being educated to be gamers of the tax payers with the tax payers own money. What a system. I rest my case and hope that someone like Henry Ford or Fredrick Taylor appears to save us from ourselves, but I don't think it is Obama.

PS, The average annual compensation for a hand surgeon in the west is $692,374 while the average for family practice is just $197,655. Check the numbers at
cejkasearch.com

Compared To What?

Years ago I worked with a guy in Argentina who when ever I made a statement came back to me with, "compared to what?" His attitude really got on my nerves. It seemed like every time I said anything he would come back with his, "compared to what?". As time went by over these many years later, I have grown to appreciate his comment that I thought was rude at the time. I have adopted what must have been his thinking even if I don't actually blurt out, "compared to what?" every time I hear some kind of not too well thought our remark from someone. When you start to analyse some of the things that we say, they seem to stand alone as "right" or "wrong", but without any real basis for these positions. Let's see, if I said that a Mercedes is expensive and let the statement stand on it own, what would be the true meaning? You would have to accept or reject may statement that a Mercedes was expensive. Now we know that expensive is not a finite item, value or point on some scale. At best, it is a ratio of at least two variables and then it does not totally define expensive. Now the ratio, on the top could be the price in dollars and on the bottom how much money you have to spend on a car. If the ratio is greater that, say 1, then we could assume the Mercedes to be expensive. If, on the other hand, the ratio were less than 1, we could assume that the Mercedes was inexpensive. Does that make any logic with you? You could come up with all kinds of examples and ratios to test various ideas about exactly what expensive means. It seems that we never look at things very logically, but if we use the expression, "compared to what?" more often, maybe we would start to understand things of value better and thus make better decisions. Where is all this going? I am not sure, but you know that I have been Blogging about current politics related to health care, so you have a hint.

We keep hearing every day from both left and right that our health care is too expensive and getting more so. To understand this whole think, we at least have to agree on the definition of exactly what "expensive" means, or "compared to what?" See, I had a plan. In a prior Blog, I pointed out that Sweden had a "better" ratio of per capita GDP as a function of doctor compensation than the USA. Switzerland also has a better ratio than us. Does this mean that medical costs in Sweden and Switzerland are less than here? Not necessarily. Remember that we have defined expensive as a ratio and cost is "not" a ratio. We have to consider per capita GDP. In both Sweden and Switzerland, they have a higher per capita income than the USA. That means even if their doctors get paid more than ours, they could still have a lower ratio and thus less expensive medical service. Notice how I did not use the word "cost". As you can now see, using "cost" as the basis of comparison, we totally miss the whole concept of what is "expensive" and what is not. See what a great tool, "compared to what?" is?

If you check the figures out, you will find that not only does the USA have the most "expensive" medical service, but the highest cost. See, I said it. This is just a little side point, but I think you will follow it. What do you think will be the impact on the "expensivness" of medical care in the USA if we allow more immigrants from Mexico and Latin America to come in? Have you thought about it? Well, let's go back to the ratio of cost over per capita GDP. The addition of low productivity immigrants to our economy will drive down the per capita GDP. Do you agree with that? It is just one of the reason that Switzerland and Sweden have higher per capita GDP's than the USA they keep these types of people out. If we drive down the per capita GDP here while the cost of doctors stays the same, the ratio will go up! Right! If the ratio goes up then medical care in the USA also goes up resulting in medical care being more "expensive". Are you starting to get a better handle on the problem? Hey, if all of us were able to pay our own medical bills, our medical care would not be "expensive". Starting to see the problem? We don't earn enough to deserve the medial system that we have created here. Have you actually heard any thing out of Obama's frequently open mouth that addresses anything about how we become more productive and thus earn more in the world? I haven't. Is it that he is stupid or is he speaking to a bunch of stupid people? I think you might need a little joke here to understand my point. When I was a kid, my grandfather told me a story that I still remember. "If you are walking along and come upon a person talking to his mule, it is almost impossible to tell which one is the mule." Do you think we are to that point regarding Obama and health care?

Next time you hear what you think is BS or a person speaking before their brain is engaged blurt out, "compared to what?" and see what happens. I think you will be surprised.

"God Helps Those Who Help Themselves"

I did not invent this title, but I do think it is a good one. If I have heard this saying once in my life time, I have heard it a thousand times. I am not a religious person, but this appears to me to be perfectly true. I would also add that most people seem to agree with this concept. If so, then whey do so many have the concept "wrong" when it comes to "Government"? How about, "The Government Helps Those Who Help Themselves"? Doesn't seem to have the same true sound. What do you think? In a prior Blog, I mentioned that as an economic rule, "It is always better to put your money on a winner". If you look at the track records of "do gooder" groups since the beginning of time, their efforts to, "Help Those Who Won't Help Themselves" is not very good. I know that many of you have personal example within your own families that no matter what good you tried to do for someone, it, in the end, did not help. Your efforts were a total waste except for your own ego that you tried. If we seem to agree in the futility of trying to help "Those Who Won't Help Themselves", why are we still doing it? Maybe it is a habit that is hard to get over. If that is the case and we understand it is not working, why don't we just slowly turn down the money faucet to a trickle rather than the flood that Obama seems to want? Do you have any ideas? Well, I do.

Given our understanding of the concept above, we need to scale back all this "do gooding" done by the government. Do gooding by individuals or private groups is a personal right that the government has to protect, but for the government to take your money and property by force of law and then try to give it to those "Who Won't Help Themselves" is patently wrong. We need to stop this whole concept since we know that it, in the end, is a total waste. Look at the city of Detroit. It is a real mess and we can all agree with that and feel somewhere inside that something needs to be done. Like, "do something". How about do nothing? Why don't we hear cries to "do nothing"? It seems that people just don't understand that, "doing nothing" is actually doing something. Do you follow that? If you do, then you are an exception because most people don't. I may have visited this before, but it is worth going over again. If two people were equally sick and needed some type of medicine that would keep them alive and you only have enough for just one person who would you give the medicine too? One is a high school drop out who raped a local girl and spent 20 years in prison, but has severed the 20 years and is out of prison. The other is a school teacher who has worked their whole life teaching our kids and during that time raised 3 kids who are high school graduates and have good job in the community. Now you only have enough medicine for one person. Do you flip a coin and give it to the winner? How do you pick the one that gets the medicine? They both have an equal chances of living, given they get the medicine. Many of you would think, why don't we just get more medicine and save both of them? Well we can't get more medicine. There is a limited amount. It could have been a kidney or something else. Anyway, there is only enough for one person and you have to make the call. What are you going to do? This is where we are with regard to the government right now. We don't have the money. We are borrowing from China right now every "extra" dollar that Obama spends. We can only do this so long and you know it. So back to the two sick people, it comes down to fish or cut bate time. Who is it going to be and why?

For me this is an easy call and it should be for you too. We should give the medicine to the old teacher and let the other person die. That is the only logical choice and you have to admit it. You can wish, hope and pray all you want, but those are the alternatives period. Both these two people are going to die in the end anyway just like you and me. All we really can do is delay the point for the teacher and let nature take its natural course with the other person. In other words, we did not interfere with Mother Nature with respect to the former rapist. See a problem with that? Notice that there are two elements to the above problem. The first comes form out bloated vision of our personal ego that we can change things that we can't change or can influence very little and if so only at great expense compared to the value of the change. Think about Global Warming. Isn't his what is driving this whole thing? Us humans are a very strange lot. The second factor is that we think we have unlimited resources at zero cost at our disposal to address this "do gooder" drive that seems to reside in each of us. I have it. You have it. We all have it, but that does not mean that we must go out and side track the government and direct it toward our personal "do gooder" visions. I will repeat, the primary function of the government that we mutually agreed to maintain is "not" to go around being the "big do gooder". "Do gooding" is a personal decision not a collective government decision. Does that make sense?

In my example, I used a couple of sick people. We have situations like this all over the place. They are unlimited and would require unlimited amounts of resources to change or correct. If anything is unlimited, it means by definition that you can "never" resolve the problem. You will "never" have enough resources. Is Obama a "do gooder" in his policies toward unions? Well, yes. Is he a "do gooder" toward his black brothers in Chicago and Detroit? Yes, again. As I see it Obama is the biggest "do gooder" that this country has ever had. The problem is that he is killing the goose that layed the golden eggs in his efforts to satisfy his deep seated concepts as a "do gooder". Obama wants to cover 100% of the USA population with the best quality health service in the world. That is the ultimate "do good", but it is also the ultimate economic killer. Hey, he forgot about the "free lunch". I might go along with the free lunch. That might not have an unlimited cost.

Given that there are "limits" to what a society can afford in the way of "do gooding" there must be some kind of limits on "who" gets to enjoys them. That is the rub. If we all earned or produced enough, we could afford to take care of 100% of own needs and there would not be a problem. In a way, we have a responsibility to "Help Ourselves", not the government or our neighbor. People who for their own personal reasons make life choices "not" to help themselves, thus should have to go to the end of the line when it comes to help from the state. Tough love here. Kids who drop out of school or spend time in jail should not be allowed the same rights to a seat at the tax supported table as those who have conducted themselves responsibly. This is what I think pure and simple. We might see some beggars on the streets, but I submit that is just a part of life and we need to get used to it. If you want to be a "do gooder" that is OK, but not with my tax money. Think about it.

Spring Is For Brewing, Chapter #2

Well, on to Chapter #2. It is starting to look more like beer now. We left off with mashing or making mush and draining off the sticky stuff called wort. Sounds like something I had when I was kid that my mother took off with battery acid. Even though we have some sweet stuff that looks like beer, we don't have beer yet. Next we have to boil it. I mean really boil it for at least a full hour at a rolling boil. This must be what makes beer so expensive. In the middle ages beer was drunk by everyone because it was the only thing they had that was not polluted. They couldn't drink plain water for fear of getting something. Once the wort is up and boiling, it is time to dump in the hops. I know you were wondering when I would get around to hops. Well, now is the time. The boiling of the hops in with the wort extracts the flavor and resins from the hops. We only use the little flowers on the hops. That is where the bitter flavor comes from. If you have not seen a real hop flower, they look a little like small pine cones. When I first saw them on the label of a beer bottle, I actually thought they were little pine cones. You will see hops in all kinds of German wood carvings looking like little pine cones. Some amatur brewers sometimes add plain sugar to the wort to produce more alcohol, but true brewers never do that. The big guys like Miller and Bud add corn syrup to their beer to save on malt. When you go by a big brewer, look at the rail cars in back of the brewery and notice they are all full of corn syrup. That is one of the reason that Miller and Bud taste like water. Well, it has been at least an hour so we can go to the next step.

I don't think you thought beer making was this complicated. How did people years ago figure all this out? They were driven by the same thrust that we still have today. The purpose of all the boiling is not only to extract the flavor from the hops and sterilize the wort, but to get rid of protein. It is the protein in beer that can make it cloudy. Wheat beer is cloudy because wheat has a lot more protein than barley. See, now you know why brewers use barley instead of grains like wheat.
If you are into Maple syrup which is just starting to flow here then you must have heard of "sugar sand" in the syrup pan. What is called sand is really small particles of coagulated protein that was in the Maple sap that precipitated due to the boiling. It is the same with making beer. The bottom line is that the wort has been boiled and ready to cool. Depending on the weather this can take a few hours. When the boiled wort is cooled down to about 75 degrees F, it is ready for the yeast. Yeast is not really a germ nor is it a plant, but what ever it is it is what produces the alcohol in the beer. There are a lot of different breeds of yeast just like there are a lot of breeds of dogs and each one creates a little different tasting beer. The yeast used is a guarded secret for big brewers and small, but I don't think it is really that big of a deal. The exception is between top and bottom fermenting yeast. Ale is made form top fermenting years and lager is made from bottom fermenting yeast. Top fermenting is faster and works at a higher temperature and imparts more flavor to the beer. Bottom fermenting needs cooler conditions and is slower and produces a milder tasting beer. Now you are a beer expert. I make Ale and thus use top fermenting yeast. It takes about 5 days for the yeast to do its deal on the wort. During this time you will see a lot of stuff settle to the bottom of the kettle. After 5 or 6 days, the beer is transferred to "conditioning" containers that have caps that prevent air from getting in. During this time the yeast works much slower and eats up all the remaining maltose thus making a "dry" beer. Dry has nothing to do with water. Beer is just like wine. Dry means the absence of sugar or maltose, thus dry means "not sweet". A little reverse logic to mix you up. After about another 5 or 6 days in these simisealed containers the beer is ready to bottle. As I stated in Chapter #1, it takes a lot of 12 oz beer bottles to hold 10 gallons of beer. For that reason, I use 5 gal kegs. I next put the beer into the 5 gal stainless steel kegs and put it into my tapper. Hey, wait a minute, "where do all the bubbles come from?" I use compressed CO2 to carbonate the beer. It takes about 2 or 3 days for the CO2 to dissolve into the beer enough to give it a good head. How about "natural" carbonation. CO2 is CO2, there is not such thing as "natural", it is all the same so give it up if you are a closet Greenie.

We have waited the 2 or 3 days and now it is time for a brew. Sorry that I have to cut this off at this point, but my glass is empty and I need a refill.

Spring Is For Brewing, Chapter #1

Well, it is starting to look a lot like spring and what happens in spring? Brewing, that's right, it is time to brew some homebrew. I would not call myself the Brewmaster if I did not really brew beer once in a while. To keep this whole process in perspective, I have to admit that I did not brew my first batch of beer until 1954. That is not as old as some famous breweries, but it makes me older than any Microbrewery in the USA by about 25 or 30 years, so I do know a little about the sudsey stuff. In the old days, you could go down to Safeway and buy those big cans of malt extract right off the shelf. The popular brand in those days was Blue Ribbon Malt. It is still around and now made in Canada, but it is no longer carried by your grocery stores. The problem that I ran into with my first batch is still with us today and that is, what to put it in. I way underestimated how many 12oz beer bottles that I would need to bottle 10 gallons of homebrew. I had to round up every pop bottle for 5 miles around to bottle all the stuff. I was lucky in that my parents did not think that I knew what I was doing and that there was no way that I could really make beer that had any alcohol in it so they let me go. When it was all bottled, it was a different story. My mother kept after me to get it out of the house before it blew up. She claimed that her father used to make rootbeer and it was always blowing up, so she wanted it out of the house. As a kid, what are you going to do? I took it out to the barn, but on the way a bottle did blow up after being shaken on a warm day and I got a little cut on my neck that I still have. "See, see", she said, I told you it would blow up. That is how it all started.

I just about got into the microbrewery business back in 1979 with an option on the building in Hopeland that is now the Mendicino Brewing Company. As I analysed the business, it started to look more and more like milking cows than anything I had been involved in since leaving the farm and as a result of an earlier promise to myself not to ever do anything that looked or smelled like milking cows, I rejected the whole idea. In hind sight, good thinking. Homebrewing should be fun, not a business and that is what its been since 1954.

To keep brewing fun, you have to put more effort into it than if you were actually in business. That's the way fun is. I grow my own hops just to make things a little more difficult and complex. I malt my own barley for the same reason. If you have ever questioned exactly what malt is, you are not alone. For most people malt is some kind of mystery. If you have ever been to a Chinese restaurant, you know a little about malt. The bean sprouts are really malted beans. That's right. Malted beans. Plants are really strange things. They store starch in their seeds and roots, but actually live on sugar. So how does starch figure into all this? In the case of barley, it has one of the highest percentages of starch vs protein of any common grain and for that reason is favored for making beer. Mother nature is very smart. Starch does not dissolve in water, but sugar does. If you are a cook and make gravy, great stuff, you will notice that when you mix corn starch in cold water the corn starch all sinks to the bottom leaving the water clear. This proves that starch does not want to dissolve in water. This allows nature to thus store the starch in a plant and not risk having it all dissolve away before it is needed. Smart. So where does the sugar come from? Back to the bean sprout. When a seed, in this case barley, is soaked in water it starts to germinate. That means it starts to grow and sprout. When this happens there is an awakening within the seed in the germ that releases enzymes that start to convert the stored starch in the seed into sugar. I forgot to mention that yeast doesn't eat starch either. It only eats sugar. Mother nature is smart again since if yeast could eat starch the stored starch in the seed would be subject to spoilage before it was ready to sprout. Smart again. So to convert regular barley to malt, we soak the seeds in water and make them sprout, but us smart humans who really like beer stop the sprouting process very soon after it starts. By this time much of the enzymes have been released and ready to convert the starch to sugar for the future growing plant. The sprouting process can be stopped by a little heat or by fast drying the seeds. Now that the malt is dry, it can be stored for later use in making beer. All we will have to do is to restart the process and get the enzymes to work on the starch to convert it to sugar-----and beer.

We are not thru yet. We still have to convert the starch in the seeds to sugar. From here on we will call this stuff maltose. You probably used to eat Maltomeal cereal as a kid. It was made in Northfield, Min, same place where Jesse James met his Waterloo. Remember how it did not need sugar because it was already a little sweet? As it turns out when the crushed seeds are mixed with warm water at about 150degrees F, the enzymes convert the starch to a sweet sticky syrup. This is the stuff that yeast likes. We are talking about beer here. This whole process is call "mashing" by us homebrewers. It looks like a mess and it is. You are talking about a big kettle full of hot mush or "mash". We next drain off this sweet liquid call "wort". I don't have any idea where brewers came up with some of these names. They must have some kind of special meaning, but I don't know what it is. Once we have this sweet sticky liquid wort, we are still a long way from beer. At this point we are just where I was back in 1954 after I opened the big can of Blue Ribbon Malt syrup and dumped it into the crock.

We'll call this chapter #1 on homebrewing. It gets better.

Medical Reform-Malpractice Insurance

Obama and his Democrat coolaid drinkers seem bent on passing some kind of Medical Reform and punishing insurance companies. One of the main problems with Obama from the start is how he uses statements that have ambiguous meanings like "reform" and "change". These have a different meaning in every mind they enter. Obama thinks he has a mandate for change based on what is in his mind only. So far I have not seen one item in his bill that reduces medical cost in the USA. Unless he is totally stupid and he might be, he must understand that malpractice costs are one of the big drivers of medical costs. Even though the companies who write malpractice insurance are different from those who insure individuals the costs are the same. The cost of a doctor visit has built into it the cost of malpractice insurance. You didn't think the doctor paid that out of his own money did you? He passes it along to you and your insurance company. He then does all kinds of extra tests just to be sure that if he is sued that he will have covered his ass. Who do you think pays for all this? Most of you don't think much about how much lawyers cost because you do not deal with lawyers directly. Did you ever notice that lawyers seem to drive bigger cars and have better homes than doctors? It is true. When you watch TV do you see individual doctors paying for advertisements? No, but you do see your friendly lawyer pounding on you hour after hour. I think it is clear who is getting the most out of our medical dollars pot and it is not the doctors. I have shown you a little on why the doctors "have to" charge so much. Let's just stay on malpractice for this one. Here goes.

Two of my kids are doctors so I know a little about this subject first hand. I already went over the cost of becoming a doctor and why the doctor has to charge so much to pay back the cost of their education. Reduce the cost of education and the time required for a degree and you will have a corresponding reduction in doctor fees. That, however, leaves medical malpractice insurance. First, I am going to tell you a little story about a doctor in my area. During his whole career, he was a member of a large group practice and was a very well respected surgeon. He served the public well and due to advancing age decided to retire. He had never had any charges of malpractice in his whole career. When he retired, he let his malpractice insurance lapse. A while later he got a call that his expertise was needed on someones foot. He went in and helped out. Wouldn't you know, this was the one where he was personally sued for malpractice. It went before a jury of 12 average people right off the street and they not only convicted him, but gave the lawyer and the defendant a very large settlement. The judgement bankrupted the retired doctor. He was so depressed that he committed suicide. This is a true story of why we need some kind of malpractice legal reform. So here is "one" of my proposals.

Given that the Obama is hell bent on passing some kind of health reform, I suggest that the government start writing malpractice insurance for "free" for doctors. The direct cost of medical services will go down immediately. They will go down not only because the doctors will not have to buy malpractice insurance, but will stop doing defensive medicine. Since the Obama administration is in bed with the Trial Lawyers Association, they can pay the lawyers directly and keep the rest of us out of the picture. If the above were done, the cost of regular medical insurance would go down. Many more people might even chose not to buy health insurance, but be self insured. That is the way it was done until after WWII. I never knew anyone as a kid who had any kind of health insurance. They all paid their own medical bills directly out of their own pockets. That was, in fact, the cheapest way to handle medical costs. No middle man and the person watching the cash register was, you.

I don't think it would be very long before we would start to appreciate the negative impact of lawyers and malpractice insurance cost on us tax payers. I think that would provide the incentive for our government to see if they could make the whole process of malpractice claims more fair and efficient. From tine to time I hear claims about the importance of getting a real good lawyer if you have some kind of malpractice claim. I ask, why do you need a real good lawyer. Is justice a function of the quality of your lawyer? Justice is supposed to be "blind" and that everyone is equal under the law. That must not be right. The better your lawyer, the more equal you become. There is something very wrong with all this. Can you just imagine a group of average 12 people right off the street listening to a slick lawyer and then have them make a correct judgement? What if we did this sort of thing for "Global Warming" to determine if it is real or not? Do you think we would get a "hung" jury? I think the way we are handling malpractice is just as bad. In the case of lawyers, they only take you case on a contingent fee basis if they think they can win. Most cases are settled without a trial and the lawyer pockets some quick money for doing very little. Before they take their 33% to 55% cut, they first take out all their expenses. This can be over 50% of the settlement. This means the damaged person may get as little as 22% of the total settlement. That means the insurance company paid as much as 78% to the lawyers. How about the cost of lawyers to the insurance company? It can cost them as much as the plaintiff's lawyer. This means the insurance companies are out as much as 150% of the actual judgement and all that is figured into the insurance premiums. So you can see how lawyers on both sides get the biggest cut from the medical cost pie. I mentioned before how some doctors have found that they can turn on their doctor friends as expert witnesses and actually make more money than they can being a doctor. If Obama has his way, it is my guess that many more doctors are going to opt out of being a medical doctor being paid only 50% on the dollar for their bills to the government to being an expert witness that pays more. I mentioned "gaming" in another Blog and this is exactly what we have going on here. We have a large group of our smartest people out "gaming" the medical system and I predict that if Obama gets his way the "gaming" will increase. There is no better group or thing to "game" than some group that is spending large amount of someone Else's money, and who is that? Our government. Our government is hands down the easiest place to "game". It has been going on since the beginning of time and continues to grow. Why do think the Russian mafia is such a big problem? They have almost 75 years of experience "gaming" the Russian communist government. They are the pro's, but we are catching up. You just wait. Our government can't even put the decimal point in the right place when they are spending money.

If Obama gets into the malpractice insurance game, it will get even worse. That just might be what we need. Make it worse to get support for making it better. Tell me if you agree.

Tutors

How many of you ever had a "Tudor" or how many of you have been a "Tutor"? I think we are all familiar with "Tudors". Webster defines them as, "private teachers". According to Webster, they are "Teachers". The fact that he calls them "Private" would seem to mean, "they are not public teachers". I think we just might have some thing here with "Tutors". If you had a tutor at one time or another, what did you think of the experience? Do you think you learned more or at a faster rate? Someone must have thought it was economical or they would not have sprung for the cost. Do you think it was worth it? Now from the other side. If you were a "Tutor", do you feel you were qualified to get paid for the tutoring that you did? Aside from helping your student learn, do you feel there was any benefit to you other than the pay? If so, do you think it helped you to better understand the material you were teaching as well? I think you can see where I am going with this. Tutoring is a bigger subject than most people think. That's my point.

You would think that our public schools would be more efficient in teaching a subject than a "Tutor" and that the main reason for public schools is that many people could not afford the cost of an expensive "Tutor". Right? Well, let's check a few numbers and see if we still agree. In a prior analysis we all agreed that it costs on average about $11,000 per year per student here in the USA. Washington DC is $15,000, but the deserve much better schools than the rest of us. When I was in school, we had 25 to 30 kids in a grammar school class and we ended up with better SAT scores than kids today, so I am going to use 28 kids for my average class size. The most days in a school year that I have ever heard of for any school district is 180. The teacher only teaches for a maximum of 7 hours and has the extra 1 hour to take care of overhead. Seems reasonable. So with these numbers, how much does it cost to teach an average class per hour including the overhead $213.89. Don't believe my numbers? You do the calculations. Now there were 28 kids in that class, right? So the cost per kid per hour is $7.64/hr. The average family size in the USA is about 3 kids. Do you think you could come up with a qualified "Tutor" for $22.92/hr? I say, "yes" and they would do a much better job than what we are getting now. There is an other kicker in here that I have not yet figured out how to fold into the numbers and that is the "unfunded" liability that most school districts have. That means these teachers who are now costing us $11,000 per student per year have a whole lot of hidden costs that will come due in the future when they are "not" teaching our kids. I don't have the exact numbers, but there are estimates that it would, if included, add at least 50% to all of our school costs. Sorry to have to remind you of that. On that basis, the cost per hour of our class above would not be $213.89/hr, it would be $320.84. I am just an old farm boy who went to a two room school house and that seem like a lot to me. I think you could have purchase my whole school for less than half that amount.

I think we can all agree that more competition within our educational system would be good, but how can we do that? Earlier, I proposed that every tax payer in the community be part of the official bargaining unit so everyone had skin in the game. That doesn't really add any competition to the picture. We need competition. Tutors might be one way to provide competition. Right now when kids need some kind of "Special Ed", the teachers union jumps in and grabs the jobs for their members no matter how much it cost the tax payers. I know for a fact that union school teachers don't want anything to do with "Tutors". Right there I think I have the proof that it is a good idea. In many school districts, it is against union contract rules for both a teacher and a student to stay after school hours. Earlier I covered home schoolers and how they do a better job than public schools and do not get a dime of tax money, yet they have to pay for the public schools. The angle that I like is one that happened by accident in the two room school that I went to and that is where the older kids help the younger kids. In one room we had grades 1 thru 4 and when the teacher was working with the 3rd graders, us 4th graders would "Tutor" the 1st and 2nd graders. It was just natural. In a way, we had an advantage in that we, as kids too, knew how we finally figured out something the was a kid would. The teacher might have thought she could think like a kid, but adults really can't. See what I mean. We had real credibility too. We had been just a couple of years before just where these kids were now. No teacher could claim that. If something was difficult to grasp, we could tell the younger kids how difficult it was for us too. The teacher would simply say, "if you will study a little harder, you'll get it". The kid was already studying hard, so he was confused and could have easily given up. If he were in a room with all 2nd graders and non of them were getting it, he could excuse his performance by claiming that, "no one could get". but when the 4th graders said that he finally figured it out, lights went on and the kid got it. You see what I mean? When I was a teenager and on the school track team, no one could high jump 7 feet nor run the mile under 4 minutes, but just a few years later some one was able to do it. It just took someone doing it one time for everyone else to "believe" it could be done and like lightning several athletes were jumping higher than 7 feet and running the mile under 4 minutes. That is just what "Tutoring" kids a few years younger than you can do.

Now I have layed this out, but how do we get there from here? That is the problem. One idea that I have is to use a free location like the public library or a Church basement for tutoring sessions. Don't try to get some kind of grant to test the concept since what we are trying to do is reduce the cost and increase the quality of our education. Most communities could come up with some seed money. How my system would work is that it would be a "relay" type system where all the players had to "both" be tutored and tutor others. Sounds a little strange, but here is how it might work. We give $5/hr seed money to a 4th grader to buy tutoring from a 6th grader. The 6th grader takes the $5 he made tutoring and hires a 10th grader to tutor them. The 10th grader takes his earnings and hires a 12th grader to tutor him, right up the line. The 12th grader can keep his earnings of donate a percentage back to the seed money pot. The net results is that for an initial investment of $5 seed money we got how many hours of teaching? 3 hours, right? "No", we got 6 hours. Is there some thing wrong with my math? "No". Remember that the tutoring helps "both" the tutor er and the student. We got 1 hour for the 4th grader and 2 hours for the 6th grader because they were both tutored the 4th grader and was themselves tutored by the 10th grader. See what I mean.

The other benefit of tutoring is that for the 12th grader, he might be able to challenge certain college courses and not have to take them and thus save money and time. But wait, the current system screws the smart kid by making him take some more advanced class so that the teacher in the union with be able to keep their jobs and the kids parents will be screwed out of tax money even though they paid a tutor to teach all the same material when the kid was in high school for less money. As you can see there really is not advantage of doing well in high school, colleges are going to screw the money out of you one way or another. Great system or what? I think you can see another Blog coming up. Think about tutoring and how we can do more. Home schoolers would be great candidates for this tutoring concept too.