Recap and catching up

Saw an old "no child left behind" poster the other day. Made me think how we really have left children behind by trying to accommodate instead of challenging our children in education. We really hurt ourselves here as a nation. We constantly fail our future by not creating a great education system. One quick thought is why haven't we made child development one of the core pieces of curriculum development. Just one of the basics that we should use instead of using the same old tired system we have now.

The sequester is partially working. We had an opportunity to start a long term plan with tempering the original sequester. Now we have across the board cuts that will get diminished as time goes on. We still need to create a long term plan. It will take much work, but it actually isn't hard, common sense will take care of half the planning. We just need to start and find the political will. The political will definitely has to come from outside DC though.

Einstein once said something about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. We have over fifty years of always backing the wrong horse in other countries affairs. And what is funny if we would back the people we would probably get better results even for all the greedy bastards that run our foreign policy. A a stable well educated populace does more to promote democracy and a healthy economy than trying to keep some tyrant in charge that is self serving. And a strong economy leads to more benefits for all and yes that includes the large corporations who think they know what is best in all affairs. Market capitalism basically should rule by the simple fact that a better economy produces more people who can participate meaning they buy more, which means more goods are produced, which means more jobs are created which leads to people buying more etc and for all the large, medium, and small companies that is just good business. The more goods you sell, the more money you make. It is when you try to manipulate markets that you hurt capitalism. Oh, but we love to let greed run our foreign policy. Greed is not capitalism folks. And of course the people who make the best product, who are the most innovative, who build in the best efficiencies, should be the ones that succeed. Unfortunately we are stuck with crazed people who think only they should be successful. We need to find a way to severely punish those that inhibit true capitalism.

Retirement planning, now that really isn't an oxymoron, but think about it for a moment. We need a new word that describes blind trust like oxymoron works for a contradiction of terms. Do we really want to trust retirement planning to the same financial institutions that gave us the last economic disaster? Yes people give us your hard earned money so we can use it to make us a fortune. We need more market participation so the swings we take advantage of with arbitrage and hedging bets work better for us. Oh yes we give a few hard working sales people a nice commission, but the real money is in taking advantage of market movement, not long term growth. Or they just give us misrepresentation or flat out lies. Saw an ad the other day for a stock now selling for .60, but it will be "x" by July and "x" exponential in 36 months. Just think if we really held people accountable for their lies we really wouldn't need to have so much government regulation. Throw a few people in jail for life with hardened criminals and many shysters will get the message. So many scum are given a pass because well they make money so basically they are okay people, nice plush sentences from judges who treat them like the bad boys at the country club. Madoff wasn't enough.

And it wouldn't be one of my posts if I didn't bang on the energy situation. I don't care how much oil they say we have, in the long run we need to move on. The geopolitical crap we have put up with so a few people can make a fortune from oil has got to stop. And it is not them making money that bothers me, it is the manipulation of markets and foreign affairs that has caused so much crap on this planet that has got to stop. New energy creates new opportunities to hopefully move us forward.

Kind of goes back to the education point. The better educated we are the better things will be. Of course certain elements don't want us well educated. They wouldn't be able to get away with the crap that they do.

We were given the ability to think and create, like life this is a gift. We need to cherish and use these gifts. Our failure to use these abilities is our own fault. We need to quit being led away from what we were given to be successful and to do the right thing for ourselves and for all of us. There is beauty everywhere, just because we don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. By choosing to see only bad we are perpetuating it. Don't be afraid to open your eyes to the beauty given to us and to work hard to make it flourish.

But then, every now and then you get those creeping urges to listen to YES' Close to the Edge. Talk about being creative, that or Beethoven's 7th symphony 4th movement, and the joy of getting to hear it loud, oh what a wish for worn out ears.