Re: Property tax haul climbs as values fall
USA TODAY, Dec. 4, 2008 front page

As if beleaguered homeowners don't have enough problems with making mortgage payments in the face of sinking property values, adjustable rate interest inflation, irresponsible government and unscrupulous lenders, they still have to pay rising property taxes.

The reason for this is that the majority of property taxes go to fund public education, plus school bond measure payments. With taxpayers being forced to bail out all the failing financial institutions, mortgage lenders, insurance companies and automakers, why does the biggest, most costly failure of them all -- the public education system -- go unattended? Because they are a monopoly, they don't have to answer to anyone, they have guaranteed funding, and they don't need a bailout. What the public needs is a bailout from public education. Privatize education and get two or three times the quality of education at less than half the cost.

Dan Jeffs
Apple Valley, CA

Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008
Obama and Education
By Amanda Ripley / Washington

Michelle Rhee is a Democrat, but she came very close to voting for John McCain in November. She chose Barack Obama because one of her closest friends had begged her to give him a chance. "It was a very hard decision," she says. "I'm somewhat terrified of what the Democrats are going to do on education."

Don't forget the public education bailout
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
November 26, 2008

Trillions of taxpayer dollars are being spent and scheduled to bailout mismanaged financial institutions and the auto industry, but the greatest drain on our economy is being overlooked. The poor producing, grossly mismanaged, budget-busting public education systems throughout the country. President-elect Barack Obama ought to make education a top priority.

However, instead of throwing more money into a bad deal, now is the time to break up the government monopoly on failed education and privatize it. Excellence in education through competition would be the result, and at half the cost. Indeed, the bonus would a steady economic stimulus of jobs for skilled and qualified workers and a boon to business, rather than exporting jobs and importing qualified workers.

Public education is a national disgrace
By Daniel B. Jeffs, founder DDC
November 26, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle chose to place their children in a private Washington D.C. school, which is understandable considering security issues and the failed D.C. public schools. The important question is, what will the new president do to reform the public education system, which has been a national disgrace for a very long time?

Mandatory, public-funded education of our children became a gross failure of good intentions. Particularly, when the academic social and political Left (progressives, reformers, socialists, or whatever you want to call them) infected the education establishment and unionized, with tenure.

Daily Press
March 18, 2007

Privatization, not more money, will fix public education

The state of public education in California is unconscionable. Indeed, little or no progress has been made in the quality of education in our entire country since the scathing 1983 report, "A Nation at Risk."

UCLA Alumni Group Is Tracking 'Radical' Faculty

By Stuart Silverstein and Peter Y. Hong
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
January 18 2006

A fledgling alumni group headed by a former campus Republican leader is offering students payments of up to $100 per class to provide information on instructors who are "abusive, one-sided or off-topic" in advocating political ideologies.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucla18jan18,1,3718216.story

Ed Schools vs. Education
Prospective teachers are expected to have the correct 'disposition,' proof of which is espousing 'progressive' political beliefs.
By George F. Will
The Last Word
Newsweek January 16, 2006 issue
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10753446/site/newsweek/

Why Professor Johnny can't spell
by Mike S. Adams 11/21

Rebecca Beach is a freshman at Warren County Community College (WCCC) in Washington, New Jersey. Recently, she sent an email to the faculty at her school announcing the appearance of a decorated Iraq war hero named Lt. Colonel Scott Rutter.

The simple email announcement was met with the following blistering response from part-time English Professor John Daly (jpdalyca@yahoo.com):

I am asking my students to boycott your event. I am also going to ask others to boycott it. Your literature and signs in the entrance lobby look like fascist propaganda and is [sic] extremely offensive. Your main poster "Communism killed 100,000,000" is not only untrue, but ignores the fact that CAPITALISM has killed many more....

It's time to privatize education

Though the federal "No Child Left Behind" program is a worthy effort to improve our education system, the nation's report card is riddled with mixed results and little to no progress. However, there are deeply entrenched historical reasons for the difficulties experienced by students, teachers, parents and the education establishment in general, which cannot be easily overcome or corrected.

Spending controls or tax increases?
California
August 5, 2005

Spending $45 million demonizing Governor Schwarzenegger and the Proposition 76 Live Within Our Means Act by the teachers union comes as no surprise. Particularly with the union's militant, selfish interest track record of going all out against any ballot measure that threatens them (such as school vouchers). And campaigning for education bond measures, including a measure that put taxpayers more easily on the hook by lowering the passage of school bonds from two-thirds to 55 percent of the vote.

ONE SIDE FITS ALL

On-campus ideologues smother academic freedom by choking off critical thinking
By Leila Beckwith
professor emeritus of pediatrics at UCLA
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-academicfreedom28aug28,0,4908691,print.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

Published in the Los Angeles Times
April 9, 2005 - lead letter of three letters

Re: "Cheapskate Conservatives Cheat Students"
By Richard Rothstein
L.A. Times Opinion April 3, 2005

EXIT EXAMS
Founder's letter
Published in the Daily Press March 18, 2005

Exit exams no place for timed essays