Bring the troops home

1.Bring all the troops home from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
2.Close all golf courses on all overseas airbases and cut the Airforce budget
3.Transfer all medical personnel (who do not wish to retire) to VA hospitals and hospitals in under-served communities.
4.Transfer all other Naval personnel to the heavily undermanned Coast Guard
5.Transfer all engineering personnel to rebuild America's decaying roadways,sewer lines, bridges and water towers.
6.Transfer remaining service personnel to serve in support of the heavily undermanned Border Patrol
And/OR
7.Provide retraining for remaining service personnel to assist in Step 5.

P.S. Return all Cuban land to Cuba.

Tips for Seniors: I. Health Care

The Proposed Health Care Bill promises many changes in how and how much seniors will have to pay for health care. Here are some tips on how to avoid these changes:


1. Seniors can circumvent the proposed upper limit on co-payments to physicians by simply tipping the physician the amount of your customary co-payment once that limit is reached. To be fair, 50% tip should be given directly to your physician and 50% sent to your insurance company.

2. To continue the gap in prescription coverage once your former life-time limit in coverage is reached, simply send the full cost of your prescriptions to the pharmaceutical company. (In some States it may be possible for you to give the extra dollars directly to the pharmacy.)

3. Opt out of Medicare. $35 a month for insurance is a ridiculously low amount. Insist on paying for private health insurance.

We Can Reduce Classroom Size and the Cost of Secondary Education

With California’s economy in disarray, it appears our State has no alternative than to cut back on expenditures for education. We will need to increase the number of students per class, lay-off well-qualified teachers, and delay the purchase of new equipment and texts indefinitely. Or will we?

What if we were to eliminate one year of high school? Long ago in a distant land, my classmates and I completed our elementary and secondary education in eleven, not twelve years.

Despite the seemingly foreshortened duration of our education, the breadth of our knowledge far exceeded that of the typical graduate of a California High School. We studied 17th Century European History and understood the reasons underlying the amendments to the United States Constitution. We were aware that Columbus already knew the Earth was round and had studied the economic factors underlying the American Revolution. (We also knew the names of many now forgotten cour de bois along with those of the scoring leaders in the NHL.)

We took shop with the result that I am still able to do electrical installations in my home, can change a flat tire, and can even change my rotor and condenser (if only there were such things). Alas, though our nation is in desperate need of mechanics of all sorts, California schools have abandoned their shop programs.

I must admit that in high school I was a B student at best. I spent much of my classroom time indulging in fantasy, counting the minutes till recess, barely enduing the moments that elapsed between lunch and the hour classes were over for the day. If I’d had to attend High School for yet another year, I’d of dropped out for sure. Decades later, in a year spent as a substitute teacher in California schools, I became aware of how many students already have mentally departed.

The 12th year of high school serves no useful purpose or California’s Community Colleges would not demand that all entering students complete a year of general educational requirements. Eliminating the 12th year would free up many teachers for service in the lower grades. It would permit sexually-active and would-be sexually-active young adults to live as the adults they were meant and want to be and not as the kids they no longer are.

But are all students equally ready to progress to adulthood? To facilitate the transition to the 11-year system, I propose we continue with a 12th year for a short period. A High-School Leaving examination will be given at the end of the 11th year. If students pass, they can bid their childhood farewell. If they fail, they must undergo yet another year of incarceration.

The result? When studying can yield freedom, those students who today sit sullen and apathetic (if not stoned) in high school classrooms, will bury their noses in books..

Will there be jobs for the increased numbers of departing students, openings at Community Colleges or the government sponsored trade schools we need so desperately? I have some solutions, but these form the basis of quite another column.

Bush destroys America in Just 8 years

The problem with http://www.truthout.org/video/011809Z is that with so much to report on the destruction of America (its principles and its economy) during Bush Lite's reign of ignorance, we tend to forget that he deliberately ignored for months the advance notice of 9/11 he received from the intelligence agencies of 16 countries including his own.

A radical proposal for Mid-East Peace

Moslems everywhere should stop sending the Palestineans weapons and help them to set up an industrial base instead.

Protocologists downcast

With the advent of the new year, protocologists everywhere are downcast as they no longer have a leader of the free world they can look up at.