So much for compliance

I was coming out of my school’s driveway on Wednesday and stopped at the red light.  (My school is on a main road, so the exit has a stop light.)   When the light turned green, I was looking to the left and saw the car coming towards me come to a stop, so I proceeded through the light.  I glanced to the right and saw an SUV with yellow flashing lights coming towards the intersection.   I figured that since there was no audible siren, and the lights were not red and blue, that the vehicle was not an emergency vehicle so it would stop at the red light.  Imagine my surprise when it just sailed right through the intersection, forcing me into the middle lane to stomp on my brakes.  One block past the intersection they turned off their lights and proceeded like nothing was wrong.

Now, maybe I’m wrong, but I thought there was a reason certain public vehicles were not given the blue and red flashing light bars with loud, obnoxious sirens.  Yellow flashing lights are supposed to mean “Watch out for me, I’m here parked on the side of the road checking to make sure this sewer is not backing up.” and red (with or without blue) flashing lights mean “Get the hell out of my way, I’m trying to save someone’s life.”

I was even more surprised when I saw the tag on the back.

Guess they only need to make sure everyone else is in compliance, not themselves.

Just when you thought the Utah State Legislature wanted to do the will of the people they serve.

(Ok, I didn’t but…)

When Judge Shelby struck down Utah’s Amendment 3, banning same sex marriages, our legislature screamed “unfair”, this is going against the will of the people.  After all, in 2004 the people voted 2:1 in favor of the amendment, and no activist judge has the right to usurp the will of the people.

Yeah, activist judges, who are employed to interpret the U.S. Constitution, don’t, but seems that elected legislators do have the right to ignore what the people want.

Senate Bill 54 passed an initial vote in the senate with a 13:1 ratio in favor of it.

SB54 gives our caucus system of nominating candidates a slight facelift, but most importantly it directly voids any conclusion to the Count My Vote initiative that would completely eliminate state caucuses in favor of open primaries.

It boils down to this, like Rod Decker of Channel 2 news put it: if SB54 goes into law and the people vote to keep the caucus system, we get the caucus system.  If the people vote in favor of open primaries, we get the caucus system.

Thanks Utah State Legislature, way to do the people’s work!

Finally, the truth comes out.

For years, decades, the Utah State Legislature has been denying the “starve the beast” attitude towards public education in this state.  “Top Priority”, but can’t find the money, gotta keep the rainy-day fund for rainy days and don’t want to foist a tax increase upon the unwilling taxpayers have been their mantras.

In yesterday’s Tribune, House Speaker Becky Lockhart let the cat out of the bag.

In an article about putting iPads (or something technologically similar) in the hands of every student in the state and it’s $300M-$750M price tag, she was quoted as saying:

“Let’s not try to be so focused on the money.  If this is the vision we want to have for education, if this is where we know we are headed … then we’ll find the money.”

So, since we can in fact find the money for our vision for public education, then that means that our vision for over 20 years has been “lowest funding in the nation, largest class sizes and lowest pay.”  Nice vision.

Reader Beware

It is entirely possible that a few, if not many, expletives will creep into this post.  Anyone easily offended by coarse language should probably skip this post.

Woke up this morning, had a cup of coffee, grabbed today’s edition of the Salt Lake Tribune, took my place on the throne and made it to the front page of the Utah section before getting totally pissed off.

Utah Sen. Howard (the Duck) Stephenson is going to sponsor a bill that would privatize failing schools, firing the entire staff of the school.  This I’ve posted about before, but what boiled my blood was the quote by Stephenson they had in today’s article.

“It’s quite interesting that the members of the state school board who say, ‘We don’t want to punish schools’, are perfectly satisfied to keep punishing children by subjecting them to mediocre education.  I’m less concerned about the feelings of educators who run mediocre schools than I am about the future prospects of those children in the school.”

Bullshit, you duckin’ hypocrite.

If his holier-than-thou “won’t someone think of the children” almighty façade had any truth to it;

1. Utah students wouldn’t be crammed into the largest classrooms in the nation.
2. Utah wouldn’t be spending less than any other state in the US, by about $2,000 per student.
3. He would have freaked out when his peers passed a law that earmarked $30,000,000 of new tax revenue to roads rather than education.
4. He would be fighting tooth and nail to not only hold educators accountable, but also to provide them with the tools to do their job at the level he wants them to.

It’s the legislators of the State of Utah that don’t give a flying duck about the education of our children, not the majority of the teachers and administrators that work hard to do the best they can with what they are given.  The proof is in the funding, “starving the beast’, the ever decreasing investment in support of education, despite the 60% (or more, depending on your poll) of voters that would be willing to pay more taxes for increased education funding.  Even though we were last in per-pupil funding, Utah used to be #1 in the amount invested per $1,000 of personal income, we’re now down to 24^th.  Full day kindergarten, proven to help lower income and lower achieving students – denied.  Class-size reduction funding – dried up.

Rep. Howard Stephenson; you and your cronies are the ones punishing the students of this state.  Your quote would be better rewritten as “I’m less concerned about the feelings of state legislators who won’t even adequately fund schools, than I am about the future prospects of those children in the school.”

Finally, I can’t believe anyone, including Rep. Stephenson, really believes that private companies could better educate these same students with the same funding.

What the hell?

    I get most of my news from short soundbites on the morning news (when I'm still half asleep) or from letters to the editor in the Salt Lake Tribune.  So, this morning when I read that Rush Limbaugh said he hoped President Obama fails, I was surprised.  Enough that I had to check out it's authenticity.  Well most of the sites I got when I Googled "Want Obama to fail" were admittedly liberal sites, and I couldn't find the original quote on YouTube, but there I did find video of Rush himself discussing (and defending) the fact that he said that.  So, it's not just liberal media propaganda and now I can post this quote from thinkprogress.org:

So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.

   How many people out there wanted George Bush to fail?  No, not knew he would fail, but wanted?  Well, I wanted him to fail in both his bids for election, but as president I was hoping he would succeed.  I supported the responses immediately after 9-11, I wanted to see BinLaden caught and to feel the country was safe again.  I even, at that point, was glad that Gore was not president, because I honestly felt that the swift and strong response to 9-11 would not have happened under his presidency.  Even as I saw Bush's policies going awry, I wasn't hoping he would fail, because for a president to fail, as we can see now, is for our country to fail.

   To want Obama to fail, whether you agree with his policies or not, is to want this economic mess to continue, to want the unemployment rate to go higher than the 8.5% it's at now, to see more companies fail and the country fall further into the abyss.  Obama's goal is to get this country out of this recession or depression, and even if you disagree with his methods, you should be hoping that he gets us out of it.