Discrimination in schools.

We have all heard of NCLB - No Child Left Behind - a commendable effort to improve the education of children who are not as "bright" as others. The discrimination that I am concerned about is to the "bright" students. I have a grandson who is extremely intelligent. He has a very high IQ, but he has to be held back to learn at the rate of the child with the lowest IQ.
I was educated in England in the UK. We had levels in our school. For example the 4th grade would have a 4A, 4B, 4C and 4D. The way it worked was this - the smartest most intelligent were in the A stream, and so on. At the end of each year there were exams. The 10% of students who tested highest moved up to the next grade and the 10% of students who tested lowest went down. For example if you were in 4C and were in the top 10% you went into 5B. If you were in the lowest 10% you moved down to 5D. And so on. This way you were always with students with approximately the same intelligence. So you didn't have to wait until the guy with an IQ of 80 understood. He would be in the D stream and be taught with other students of the same intelligence. makes sense to me.
My grandson has to sit around doing nothing while the teacher spends all his/her time on the students with the lowest IQ's. He could, and should, be pushed to achieve. Perhaps he would be able to do something to find out why some people are of lower IQ's than others. Perhaps he would be able to develop ways to teach these students. We will never know, because he has to be held back, "To be fair to the others with a low IQ." How dumb can we be?

The Invasion of the Cormorants.

We have seen the odd Cormorant or two on The Lake over the last 2 or 3 weeks, but when I looked out today I was amazed to see a large group of birds swimming way out on The Lake. A quick look with the binoculars confirmed them to be Cormorants - about 40 of them!
Oh no, they are going to eat all MY fish!
Boy is it windy here today. A big snowstorm was forecast but so far all we have seen is a lot of rain and wind. It is extremely windy, absolutely roaring, with huge waves out on the Bay. The waves are rolling in and if I were a surfer I might be out there enjoying them if it weren't so cold and rainy and windy.

Sanctions.

I cannot remember any time that sanctions have worked. Think about it, if someone said to you, "I will not xxx unless you don't xxx" What would you, or anyone do? Give in? Almost certainly not.
On the other hand if that same person said to you, "Can I help you xxx".

Just saying.

Subsidies

We are still paying subsidies to the oil and gas industries. In 2011 they made PROFITS of $137 BILLION - more than 1 1/2 times the cuts that we have to make to our teachers, our government employees, our schools, and hundreds or thousands of programs affecting millions of people.

So we can cut help to our poorest, hurt our workers, but we cannot touch huge subsidies to huge companies that make BILLlONS in profits.

We cannot touch people who make obscene amounts of money, but we can cut 20% off of the paychecks of people who work to keep the country afloat and those who manage the workings of the country. That is fine, but do not touch the three million people who make more than a million dollars a year - and pay tax at a rate of half or less than half of what the average American pays!

And you can be sure that Congress will not be losing 20% of their income.

One percent of Americans are millionaires, but 44% of congressmen are millionaires.

Just saying.