Vast Write Wing - June 2010

[lwoolley]

The Special Runoff Election between David Sibley and Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell for the unexpired term of Texas State Senator (District 22) will be June 22, 2010.

Our choice is Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell. If you would like for us to explain our reasons, please send an e-mail to wgarner1@hot.rr.com.

As you make your summer plans, please make sure that you vote either on election day (6.22.10), on early voting days (6.14.10 - 6.18.10), or with a mail-in ballot (must send in application by 6.15.10).

We must not allow ourselves to miss this very important election. Please do not wait until the last minute and realize that you are going to be out of town on voting day.

Here are the links to the McLennan County Elections Office:

Run-off election -- June 22, 2010 -- 7:00 A. M. - 7:00 P. M. -- Special Runoff Election for McLennan County to elect one person for the unexpired term for the position of State Senator, District 22. -- http://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/elections/ ... notice.pdf

Polling locations -- June 22, 2010 -- http://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/elections/ ... olling.pdf


Early voting (by personal appearance) -- June 14 - 18: http://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/elections/ ... evinfo.pdf


Applications to vote by mail: http://www.co.mclennan.tx.us/elections/bbmapp.pdf


Applications to vote by mail should be mailed to:

Kathy E. Van Wolfe
McLennan County Elections Administrator
P.O. Box 2450
Waco, Texas 76703-2450

Applications for ballot by mail must be received no later than the close of business on June 15 2010.



Donna Garner
wgarner1@hot.rr.com

[lwoolley]

Hey Lynn, I went to a private Christian school for a few years in my youth.

I guess if the school is big enough, then yes they can learn more than the public schools. The one I was going to did not though, and I was SEVERLY lacking in Math skills when I went back to public schools.

I'm not in favor of public schools by any means, but a lot of private ones aren't any good either.

Thanks Lynn.

S. C. B.

Steven Chad Burrow
Mathematics Professor
Central Texas College

[lwoolley]

Hi Lynn
I have been wanting to call in about this subject but I have not had the opportunity so I am sending n email.

My daughter is enrolled at Meadows on Ft Hood and she is in Kindergarten. She is is in the TAG class and reads at a 3rd grade level. The school counselor decided that next year they will do away with clusters so my daughter will be in a class with average learners and those who are below level. The teachers have to pay extra attention to the slower kids so the smart ones are neglected. My daughter is at a level higher than 1st grade. The idea is the smart kids will make the average and slow kids smarter. To me this is the same as being heldd back and pisses me off!

--
Thank you,
Wayne E. Johnson

[lwoolley]

Ah! You've discovered a new code word: "RADICAL!" It is backfiring on you.

Yeah, I remember radical. It was radical revolutionaries who went to war with Great Britain to found this nation. It was radical hippies whose protests help get us out of Viet Nam. It was radical engineers who got us to the moon.

Geez! We are a nation of radicals.

So, what does that make YOU? A WUSS?

LS

[lwoolley]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0610/glick060110.php3

Glick gets it right every time. She said several weeks ago that these ships were coming and that
Israel would be made the scapegoat no matter what happened!

Belinda

[lwoolley]

I wouldn't say it was botched, other than maybe those commandos didn't kill enough 'activists'.
This 'flotilla' or 'convoy' is as I see it, an attempt at an amphibious invasion of Israel.
Who knows what is on board those ships. Can damn sure bet you it ain't 'baby milk'.
I'm sick and tired of the Israelis being made to sit on their hands while rockets fall on their nation, while at the same time the filthy arab vermin call out Israel as 'the aggressor'.

Clifford in Odessa

[lwoolley]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... abe98.html

[Have I got a deal for you? Instead of school districts paying Don McAdams thousands of our taxpayers’ dollars to “brainwash” their school board members, why not encourage both the school board members and the public to read through Peyton Wolcott’s webpages.

Here is free school board training!

Peyton Wolcott explains exactly how school board members should function. She gives a sample pledge that they should sign, tells what school boards should and should not do, explains the best ways for the public to approach their school board members, gives advice about what to do if a school board member is rude, explains the ethics school board members should follow, and posts many other important suggestions that school board members and the general public should know. It is all here, and it is free-for-the-taking: http://www.peytonwolcott.com/ReaderQuestions.html

“Thank you, Peyton Wolcott, for your efforts to help our public schools operate in the best interests of the students and the public.” -- Donna Garner]

Split opinions greet Texas school board training sessions

06:46 AM CDT on Tuesday, June 1, 2010

By MATTHEW HAAG / The Dallas Morning News
mhaag@dallasnews.com

As the school year ends, school board members across Texas are heading to class.

Their lessons are board training sessions, some of which will teach them to put aside personal agendas, support their superintendents, and embrace the idea that board members and the superintendents make up a team. Their teachers are often education consultants, mostly former superintendents and trustees.

"You want to do everything you can to make your superintendent successful," one such consultant told the Plano school board recently. "Governance is hard work."

Though the class time is state-mandated, the content is not. So, it's unclear just how many Texas trustees will hear the message the Plano trustees got. But plenty will, former school board members say, and the results aren't always in the public's best interest.

They say the mind-set encouraged by the training can squelch public debate, hurt accountability, and discourage trustees from working for the voters in their geographic districts.

"The training is designed to help make it easier for the superintendents to function," said Fiona Sigalla, a former trustee in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district.

Ron Price, a former Dallas ISD trustee said: "It's a great program to train boards how to be a rubber stamp. But it's not a good program for board members to represent your constituents."

He said, "Many school board members across the country call it a brainwashing session."

Dallas trustee Carla Ranger said: "The training minimizes the board's legitimate authority over the school district. It renders them useless."

Ranger so disagreed with the training that she refused to go.

She said, "Why would I or any other trustee sign up for training that teaches me not to do what I was elected to do?"

'Police themselves'

Since the 1990s, Texas has required new and current school board members to complete several hours of training every year. That training ranges from a three-hour course on the state's education code for new members to others designed to build camaraderie between the board and the superintendent.

The idea behind the training has been that a well-informed trustee, who shares a working relationship with other trustees and the superintendent, will provide better governance.

The state mandates the hours, but Texas provides little oversight over who leads the training, what the trustees learn or even if the board members fulfill their requirements. More than 300 organizations in Texas are registered to provide board training.

"You have to hope that they police themselves," said Ron Rowell, the Texas Education Agency's director of governance and general inquiries.

On the line

Six days after three trustees joined the Plano school board this month, education consultant Don McAdams drove from Houston to lead the new board's first team-building workshop.

The board members and Superintendent Doug Otto sat at a table together, scribbling notes as McAdams blazed through a five-hour training session. McAdams, who was a Houston ISD board president in the 1990s, talked about the board's role, the importance for the members to "speak with one voice," and how the trustees should never attempt to micromanage the district.

That responsibility, he told them, belonged to Superintendent Otto.

McAdams also suggested that board member not "interrogate" staffers during board meetings. And he encouraged trustees to vote unanimously, if possible, on important issues, such as school closings and bond proposals. Doing so sends a message to the public and workforce that the issue is a done deal, he said.

Throughout the session, McAdams returned to his main theme about governance: There's an invisible line between the board members and the superintendent. The superintendent can cross over into policymaking and governance – the board's main responsibilities – but members should never meddle in their boss's job of managing.

"The superintendent operates both above and below the line," McAdams told them. "It's because of the superintendent's knowledge, and the superintendent has to see the whole picture."

Team?

McAdams has delivered that message dozens of times as a trainer for almost 10 years. Among the school boards that have heard it is the one in Dallas, where McAdams was brought in from 2007 to 2009 in an effort to foster better teamwork.

The impact of McAdams' training was soon evident, said Ranger, who noticed other trustees placing more items on the board's consent agenda, where they could be approved with one vote and often without discussion.

"There was even more of an unwillingness to discuss items, and there was unwillingness to hold the superintendent accountable," Ranger said. "There was more of desire to make everything private."

After going through several years of board training, Sigalla found herself an outsider on the Grapevine-Colleyville board. She had repeatedly asked for records about items from student fees on activities to consulting contracts Superintendent Kevin Singer had signed without board approval.

When she started asking for Singer's contracts with consultants, he declined to release them, she said. She filed open records requests for them, which she said showed he had signed contracts without the board's approval.

But the other board members apparently didn't support her. They approved a resolution in 2003 that didn't mention Sigalla's name but admonished a trustee for calling "into question the integrity and ability of the district's administration and staff." Singer left the district near the end of Sigalla's only term.

"When a board member asks questions or questions the information given to them, it's perceived as being disrespectful," she said. "It's the culture, and you get that from the training."

Ranger's former board colleague, Price, said he liked McAdams' idea of boards and superintendents working as a team. But the team exercises failed to take hold, Price said, because Dallas trustees represent geographic areas, not the school district as a whole.

"Unfortunately, we are all subject to what our members are telling us in our area," Price said. "People in South Dallas and Fair Park, they don't care what's happening in the Addison part of Dallas ISD."

Change unlikely

The TEA's Rowell said he occasionally hears criticism about board trainers. Some trustees have told him that their trainers favored the superintendent. But superintendents have also complained to him about the trainers supporting the boards.

But the criticism hasn't led to much change. He said that the state probably won't craft guidelines or outlines for trainers to follow. And state law provides minimal oversight of trainers, Rowell conceded. In the past decade, TEA has never revoked a trainer's license.

"It's sort of a self-policed," he said.

[lwoolley]

I have railed on the radio about this for years. By state law, school board members are brainwashed NOT to represent their constituents that elected them. This is what I mean by "a closed-loop system" in which the taxpayers are essentially screwed by the education system. Retired, double-dipping superintendents become consultants, and then train board members to love and cherish the current superintendent. Secrecy is encouraged. There is a lack of discussion. Boards are told they must have unanimous votes on everything. These retired superintendents also run most searches for superintendents, which explains why ALL superintendents are the same.

It's difficult to supports schools, bonds issues, and boards when everything is controlled and gamed just as it was in the novel "1984." This is the first time, outside my radio show, that I've seen this covered. Kudos to Matthew Haag and the News.

Lynn Woolley

[lwoolley]

FYI-
COPIED FROM STRATFOR VIA THEIR APP FOR IPHONE:
June 2, 2010 9:43:35 AM
Col. Moshe Levi, commander of the Israel Defense Forces Gaza Strip Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), said none of the equipment found on board the Gaza-bound flotilla was in short supply in Gaza, The Jerusalem Post reported June 2. This proves that the voyage was based on provocation and propaganda rather than humanitarian reasons, Levi said. While no guns or explosives were found, soldiers who searched the ship found construction equipment, bags of concrete and metal rods, all of which are prohibited in Gaza as they could be used for militant purposes. The equipment did not have proper transport manifests or any paperwork needed to legally carry cargo by sea, Defense Ministry International Transport Division chief Gidi Gofer said.

YOU ARE 100% RIGHT ON THE SUBJECT!


Mike Bandas
MGB & Company and
Renewal Medical
Lampasas, Texas

[lwoolley]

MAY 30, 2010
May's Big Selloff Could Be Just the Beginning

By BRETT ARENDS

Are you ready for a lot more turmoil?

You had better be -- because there's a good chance that's what you're going to get.

Nobody knows for certain, of course. All stock-market predictions need to be taken with a little salt. But there are reasons to suspect that the sudden plunges of the past few weeks may be unhappy omens of what's to come.


Like last week, with stocks lurching wildly with the headlines -- up by triple digits one day, down the next. For the month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 7.9% and is negative for the year. The Nasdaq Composite and the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index also are in the red for the year.

Some pretty smart people are cautious. Seth Klarman at Baupost Group is worried. John Hussman of the Hussman Funds says all sorts of warning lights have lit up across his screen. Even Ron Muhlenkamp of the Muhlenkamp Fund, who usually takes a sunnier view of things, says he has moved a big chunk of his mutual fund into cash in case there's a plunge.

How far will it go? Mr. Hussman says the technical indicators have only been this bad 19 times before in the last half century -- and on average the market plunged about 20% over the following 12 months. When markets were also high, like now, the picture's even worse.

Ugh.

Too many people have simply assumed that the last 14 months have been the start of the next boom. But it may have been a typical "bear-market rally" doomed to fall flat on its face.

That's what stock-market historian Russell Napier says. He thinks we're in a giant, generational slide that began in 2000 and has several years still to run.

We forget that the stock market moves in long, decadal swings. Slumps like those in the 1930s or the 1970s, or in Japan after 1990, weren't simple, straight-down affairs. They were punctuated by huge "sucker" rallies that eventually faded away. But, over all, the market bounced along sideways, or down, for a decade or two.

Two Decades?

The slide that began in 1969 didn't end until 1982. The slump after 1929 didn't give way until the late 1940s. Japan's gloom is still with us.

EDITOR"S NOTE: I sent this WALL STREET JOURNAL article to Jeff McClure, the Personal Wealth Coach. Here is his reply:



Lynn,

I certainly appreciate the warning. The only problem with it is that the market generally parallels the economy. In fact the Leading Economic Indicators are the prime way of forecasting the market. They are not capable of tell us exactly when something will happen but they are excellent at forecasting the direction the economy and the market will take over the next year or so.

The LEI are dramatically up. They have been rising since March of last year. Note that they started falling in mid 2007 and then fell at a fairly steady rate until March of last year. They are now back up to where they were back in 2007, and most notably have not in any way established any kind of down-trend.

Stocks do not operate in a vacuum. They reflect the earnings and present value of the corporations they represent. When industrial orders are up, industrial production is up and breaking records, and both housing and unemployment have stopped falling and started to rise consistently, things are not headed for gloom and doom. More, the S&P 500 forward price to earnings ratio based on next year’s (2011) estimated earnings is about 11. It’s historical average is between 17 and 20. That means that fair market value is about 50% higher than today, which equates to a Dow of 15000.

The folks that are predicting a massive market selloff are generally heavily invested in bonds and are hoping against hope that the bottom will fall out to rescue them from realizing some huge losses.

Mr. Hussman, for example. is the manager of Hussman Strategic Growth Fund. According to Morningstar his position against his peers (1=best, 100=worst) is 86 at five year, 22 at 3 years, and 100 at twelve months. Year to date his rank is 96. Yes, he did a good job of missing the 2000-2002 downturn. In the most recent downturn he managed to hold his losses to half that of the market. Unfortunately, he also missed almost all of the up market. The S&P 500 stood at 676 in March of last year. Today it is at 1072. Mr. Hussman seems to have missed a rise of about 58%. Yes he would absolutely love to see the market go back down to 676 so he could make up for his mistake and he will be talking the market down in hopes that he is right. Still, the market does not drive the economy, the economy drives the market. It is bonds that are in a bubble, not stocks. If you were to buy the S&P 500 today, your dividend income would be greater than you would get from a 10 year Treasury Note. That is a powerful indication that the stock market is dramatically underpriced and/or the bond market is extremely overpriced.

Note my opinion and his. Revisit them in about two years and see who was right.

Jeff

[lwoolley]

Flotilla:

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! THAT explains it! You've got the answer! Who would have thought that your deep and endless knowledge about international maritime law could analyze and the problem and come up with an instant solution? I am constantly amazed at your perception and --------- Uhhhhhhhhhhhh ... Okay -- wait a minute. I seeeeeeeeeeeeeeee -- you just repeated a "wight wing" talking point! Sorry. Never mind. For a second there I thought you'd had an original thought.

LS

[lwoolley]

The perfect game:

SOL,
I honestly feel compassion for the ump who made that incorrect call. Surely this was Bush's fault.
USL

[lwoolley]

yes homophobes can oppose equal rights for all people lynn, just as the right opposed equal rights for blacks a
few years ago. and eventually our country will treat all citizens fairly. and you suggested obama is somehow aligned with terrorists---wow, your thinking is definitely more "radical" than mine.
Sent from my iPhone

AN

[lwoolley]

Mark Surber <mark.surber@us.army.mil>

Hi Lynn,
FYI Neil Young, another big liberal musician, is playing at UT this weekend. While i dont agree with his politics, I have for 25 years loved the music. Young is a huge environmentalist. While i strongly disagree with Young's politics in general, i still found myself paying $250 for a ticket (He is the only performer i would ever consider paying that exorbiant amount for). Bottom line is one can love the music while not falling for the liberal hype. thanks and keep up the good work

[lwoolley]

Hey Lynn, your Great Instances of American Freedom were D-Day, Hyroshima, Battle of the Alamo, etc...

Very well said Lynn, I fully agree. Thanks for putting the Alamo in there, your a true Texan.

Hyroshima is also good, we shouldn't be afraid to use nukes if it comes down to it.

Thanks Lynn.

S. C. B.