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Leadership Vacuum
December 16, 2015
This press release from 2014 gubernatorial candidate, Joe Dorman, pretty much sums up how I feel about the deep budget abyss and the reasons it exists:
[Oklahoma City, OK, December 16, 2015] Joe Dorman, 2014 Democratic nominee for Governor, former State Representative of House District 65, and current Chair of Oklahoma’s Fourth Congressional District Democrats released the following statement today in response to news of Oklahoma’s revenue failure:
“The news received regarding the massive budget shortfall was tragic. The governor and legislature have gone so crazy with tax giveaways that they are jeopardizing Oklahoma’s future just to cater to a few huge corporate special interest campaign supporters.“The required cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year, along with the estimated $900.8 million fewer dollars the state will have to appropriate next year should be no surprise to anyone. This follows the $611 million reduction last year and the $188 million shortfall from the prior year. This crisis ties in with the implemented tax cuts which reduced collections even further.“We should not forget there is another income tax cut on the books which will set essential services back even more once signs of improvement are seen. Action needs to be taken this session to restore the fiscal responsibility we have not seen in recent years from our elected officials.“Our state desperately needs new, strong, smart leadership and needs it soon. Oklahomans will have the chance to correct that course in 2016 and 2018.”
I’ll just leave that there. I’ve probably already said enough this week.
Categories: Uncategorized
Education, Funding, Joe Dorman
okeducationtruths 
Amen!
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Since the onset of the Governor’s tax cuts, superintendents have been asking where the funding will come from to replace them and the budget shortfalls. Now, we find ourselves in the perfect storm between decreased oil and gas production, tax cuts and a system that shuts down collections when they do rebound.
The leadership of our State has placed education in a position of continued financial failure. The rhetoric of fund education has to stop at the Capitol because there is no possible way it will change. It is mathematically impossible. The cap on growth assures inadequate funding for years to come.
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Never let a good crisis go to waste, eh?
Time to clean house. Rid the state of the corruption and the criminals! Hold the official, anything but-leaders, accountable. All of them. Party lines do not matter when both our colluding against the tax paying people.
AND stop hiring (bending over for) unelected, unaccountable foundations, organizations, and others groups with private and personal agendas that do a tremendous amount of harm and cost everyone more in the long run!
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“Is it possible to have critical thinking in public education, an institution modernly defined by moral relativism and inclusivity? With the removal of all absolutes and the individual internal moral compass, to what (and to whose) standard is critical thinking held up to?”
You might be surprised by the number of educators who
1. can answer that question^,
2. understand the question,
3. have the courage to answer the question publicly.
(Hint: very few)
4. would prefer to avoid the question altogether versus being personally challenged or challenging the status quo.
(Hint: the majority)
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Dad? Is that you?
In all seriousness, I’m glad the local Tea Party has found its way here. I was starting to get lonely.
I’m sorry that you’re afraid to accept and enjoy people who don’t look, sound, act, and think exactly as you do. It’s your loss.
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Okeducationtruths? Is that the propaganda title you hide behind while spewing leftist (overtly Marxist) drivel from? You are a stunning success of the modern public education system. How sad. How pathetic.
In response to your profoundly statist comment and reduction of logic to pure ad hominem attacks-
Rahm Emanuel, Nov. 19, 2008: You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.
Rahm Emanuel, Jan. 11, 2015: First of all, what I said was, never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things that you had never considered, or that you didn’t think were possible.
What is a good crisis? Should a crisis (good or bad) be used as an opportunity to exploit any situation or anyone? Some might call that taking advantage of a tragedy. Others call it profiteering. A few well read individuals will recognize the Hegelian Principle or Hegelian Dialectic a.k.a.
Problem-Reaction-Solution
The Hegelian Principle in regards to public education-
The Hegelian principle is often seen at work in the downhill slide of education toward the goal of ensuring children grow up unable to be intelligent participants in their democracy.
Step One – The federal government wants to assert control over the educational system, previously the providence of the states. As a way of doing this, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is created as a tool to gain power by doling out money to the school districts if they would accept the strings attached. Slowly but surely the pot of federal dollars that could be had is increased, while state support is undermined. Under ESEA mandates, academic programs are replaced by social programs.
Step Two – As academic programs are displaced, test scores drop, and juvenile problems increase as children become more and more illiterate, and parental and public outcry becomes louder. Teachers are made the fall guys for the illiteracy of their students. Attempts at fixing the problems involve the creation of ever more social programs, and fail to address the issue of children’s failure to learn. Parents are blamed as schools make inroads into controlling the parent/child relationship by pitting parents against their own children over school issues.
Step Three – We are in step three now. Progressive socialist education is upon us. We are creating a generation of people incapable of thinking, reasoning, speaking and questioning. The individual will soon be extinct, having been stripped of his uniqueness and become no more than a commodity to be valued accordingly. With the loss of uniqueness goes the loss of independence and the ability to advocate for one’s self. The new generation emerges as a willing participant in its own enslavement.
Author: Barbara L. Minton
7/30/2008
Introduction: Why study Hegel?
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain…
“… the State ‘has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special priveleges.'” — Author/historian William Shirer, quoting Hegel in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959)
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a 19th century German philosopher and theologist who wrote The Science of Logic in 1812. For many historians, Hegel is “perhaps the greatest of the German idealist philosophers.”
In 1847 the London Communist League (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels) used Hegel’s theory of the dialectic to back up their economic theory of communism. Now, in the 21st century, Hegelian-Marxist thinking affects our entire social and political structure.
The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding our thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead us to a predetermined solution. If we do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes our perceptions of the world, then we do not know how we are helping to implement the vision for the future.
Hegel’s dialectic is the tool which manipulates us into a frenzied circular pattern of thought and action. Every time we fight for or defend against an ideology we are playing a necessary role in Marx and Engels’ grand design to advance humanity into a dictatorship of the proletariat. The synthetic Hegelian solution to all these conflicts can’t be introduced unless we all take a side that will advance the agenda.
The Marxist’s global agenda is moving along at breakneck speed. The only way to stop land grabs, privacy invasions, expanded domestic police powers, insane wars against inanimate objects (and transient verbs), covert actions, and outright assaults on individual liberty, is to step outside the dialectic. Only then can we be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.
Article cont. at-http://nord.twu.net/acl/dialectic.html
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I’m not hiding behind anything. I’m in plain sight.
Comparing anything about me to Rahm is a joke. That guy leads by intimidation – not my style at all.
As for your third point (the overall diatribe is too long and uninteresting), I disagree. I think we are doing a better job of producing critical thinking than ever before. High school students, more than ever, don’t accept everything they hear. They seek proof. They form their own conclusions. They look for application of the knowledge they’re gaining. Maybe it doesn’t fit your singular, archaic world view.
For that, I’ll thank the next teacher I see.
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In other words, your too lazy to read the material (the cited sourced evidence) put before you, much like the students you describe in your comment. Instead of reading, analyzing, further questioning, and pursuing additional information both supportive and contradictory (thinking in a critical nature), today’s students rely upon the interpretation of someone else instead of focusing on the material, increasing their knowledge base and understanding, and forming their own conclusions.
The fallacy of modern education.
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I’m not lazy. I can even use the correct homophone in a sentence.
I just don’t care to read the propaganda you’re [that one] calling sourced material. You’re [it’s a contraction, not a possessive] convinced our schools are full of Marxists. I don’t like your [that one’s possessive] baseless accusations about educators. I don’t know if you’ve been in a public school classroom lately. I have. I see teachers who care about kids and excel at teaching them.
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The Rahm Emmanuel reference was in response to your “Cut the crap, not the budget” article
“The fact that we find ourselves in this position is providing us with a tremendous opportunity,” Doerflinger pitched to a crowd of reporters. “I’ve been talking for years about the structural problems the state faces. Now, we find ourselves in a very challenging situation. Panicking about the situation is not productive. We need to use this as an opportunity to do the things we otherwise might not have the will to do.” [NonDoc]
The remainder of the comment applied to this article. I apologize for the confusion.
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You do know what an ad hominem attack is, right?
You resort to attacking my misspelling of your/you’re instead of responding logically and rationally to the argument.
YOU’RE killing me with your ineptitude!
Ad hominem (my turn)
Maybe you’d be better off writing for a tabloid paper than pretending to seriously debate something as important as the education of our country’s youth.
Are you part of the Clinton campaign or are you better suited as a talking head for Bernie Sanders?
Textbook leftist.
The content of the argument vs. the person making the argument-
These days, we see the escalation of the ad hominem argument: “Oh, he’s just saying that because he’s a Democrat (Republican).” “He’s just saying that because the oil companies are paying him off.” “He’s defending that position because he’s a racist.” “If he doesn’t agree with me, he must be a CIA agent.” “He’s a nut. He’s been discredited.”
Ad hominem=”toward/against the man,” rather than “against the argument the man is making.”
Understand this: In many cases, it is instructive to know why a person is making an argument. It’s instructive to know whether he is part of a group that has a particular political agenda. It’s instructive to know whether he is concealing his true reasons for making an argument. It’s instructive to know whether he is a propagandist.
But none of these factors is a substitute for investigating the substance of the argument itself, as well as the overall subject to which the argument is referring. If you don’t do that work, all the ad hominem attacks in the world won’t help you. You can go after this person and that person…but the truth remains unknown.
Unfortunately, the media landscape and the educational system being what they are now, most people aren’t equipped to analyze a major subject and separate truth from fiction. All they can do is accuse their opponents of base and ulterior motives. That’s the only card they can play. They latch on to Subject X, they favor Position A, and from that moment on anyone who favors Position B is a liar, a charlatan, a hired hand of Evil Forces. That’s the beginning and the end of their “investigation.”
The notion of ad hominem was understood at least as far back as ancient Rome. The Latin phrase, argumentum ad hominem (argument toward the man), indicated a flaw in reasoning, a piece of misdirection, a distraction from a thorough analysis of the argument itself.
But how can modern students really grasp the full impact of ad hominem, unless they carry out logical research of their own, and contrast that experience with simply making flip accusations against people they don’t agree with.
In an atmosphere where ad hominem prevails, things don’t improve. They get worse. Eventually, the dominant groups adopt a few stock attacks against everyone who doesn’t adore them. Rolled out with enough volume and ferocity, they can prevent a person with a different point of view from being heard at all in their controlled “safe space.”
So in support of “universal caring and the redress of injustice,” such dominant groups become totalitarian commissars.
Ad hominem is often deployed with another logical fallacy, the vague generality. In a political debate, for example, you’ll hear something like this: “So-and-so is campaigning on the basis of exclusion. He says he wants to lift up Americans, but he represents corporate interests.” Within that remark, “exclusion” and “corporate interests” are vague generalities. These ad hominem accusations are rarely spelled out and specified.
Many people, to one degree or another, engage in polemic and ad hominem. But when it comes to vital issues, the acid test is, do they also analyze the subject at hand and discover the truth, falsity, validity, and invalidity embedded in it? Can they separate the wheat from the chaff?
Just because other people can’t do it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to—unless the condition of your mind is a matter of indifference to you.
I’m talking about self-sufficiency of intellect here. Obviously, no one is going to able to dive down into every major issue of the day and discover what sits at the bottom of it. But if you can achieve this form of logical depth with several such issues, you know you can do it. And that confidence builds character and courage.
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Thank you for the enlightening lecture on ad hominem attacks. With all your references to leftists and Marxists, I wasn’t sure you understood the term.
I’m not sure what investigating you’ve done. I’ve spent 23 years working in public education. That’s time with kids, their families, and the people who teach them. Your arguments are full of falsehoods. You state yourself a contempt for diversity and inclusion. As such, I just don’t take you seriously.
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23 years advancing the state over the individual. Quite an accomplishment.
You are a teacher of government enslavement. Not a teacher of authentic freedom or equality.
It’s very sad that you do not understand liberty. Very sad indeed.
I pray that you see the error of your ways. God bless you and Merry Christmas
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