Does Advertising Work?
We’ve all seen those auto insurance commercials where a
guy chases his runaway car down a hill, a door is sideswiped off of a parked
car, a window air conditioner drops onto a parked car,
a
tree limb is sawed off and drops on a neighbor’s car or a distracted driver
drives into his garage with a pair of bikes on his car’s roof, damaging his
garage!
Advertising is supposed to pay
off. Does it? Without cheating, or asking anyone,
do you know which insurance company runs these TV ads which many of you may have seen hundreds of times? Add your answer to the Quiz Box at the top of the column to the right. Is that Company wasting its money?
JL
More on Wealth
Redistribution
My
comments in the previous blog posting about the amassing of wealth in the world
have been echoed by numerous columnists and TV programs. All of this is apparently based on French
economist Thomas Piketty’s recent book (translated from the French), “Capital,” which everyone seems to be reviewing.
Piketty Wealth has been “redistributed” throughout history. Sometimes it is taken by force (Robin Hood, French Revolution, Russian Revolution) and distributed to the “have-nots.” Sometimes this same aim is accomplished by taxation and laws regarding inheritance, and this can happen the other way around as well, redistributing wealth upwardly, as pointed out in the lyrics from the old song Ain’t We Got Fun: ‘The rich get rich and the poor get children.’ Success in business and investing can result in such upward wealth redistribution as well.
As this graph suggests, this is a very complicated subject.
Picketty’s book deals with inequities in wealth as opposed to inequities in income. As I have said, this is not a new problem. The Bible ordains that it be dealt with every half century in terms of a “jubilee” as explained in Leviticus 25:8-13. I have not yet read Piketty’s book but I have read some of Leviticus.
Jack Lippman
Butterfly Report
As
Spring progresses, my Butterfly Garden is starting to get active. Monarchs have found my milkweed, deposited
eggs there, producing caterpillars which after devouring much of the milkweed,
have molted into cocoons out of which more Monarch butterflies have emerged. If
you want to start a butterfly garden, just plant some milkweed tp attract Monarchs and for their
caterpillars to eat. Although it will go
to seed and eventually propagate more milkweed, your hungry caterpillars may force
you to purchase some new plants, as I might be doing, but
you WILL have butterflies!
The caterpillar at the center is attached to a passiflora leaf, and as it hangs there, it is molting into a cocoon (the green appendage at its bottom) which will eventually replace its body and finally open up to reveal a Monarch butterfly.
Moving
on, I have spotted a Gold Rimmed Swallowtail on my Dutchman’s Pipe vine and
expect that species’ caterpillars to appear there shortly, after she (?) gets
around to laying some eggs. Over on my
Passiflora Suberosa vines, caterpillars are busily chomping leaves and will
soon turn into, if I have identified them correctly, Gulf Frittilary and
Broadwing Zebra Butterflies. My
remaining Passiflora vines, while producing pretty blooms, haven’t been home to
any caterpillars as of yet. But the year
is still young.
JL
JL
Common
Core
When
the individual Superintendents of Education of all of our states, with the
support of their Governors, get together and decide that schools all over the
country ought to be working in more or less the same direction to prepare
students for higher education and careers, it’s obviously a good thing. They are not dictating the “how and what”
that should be taught in our schools but they are suggesting that common
standards be applied throughout the country, so that a third grader in Spokane will
be working on approximately the same things as a third grader in Atlanta is
working on. This is a good idea, even if it just serves to make it easier for children of parents who move because of job changes.
This
is the program known as “Common Core.”
It is not a Federal program. It is not aimed at the instituting of one
nationwide curriculum for all schools.
Subject matter and methodology to meet “Common Core’s” standards will
still remain in the hands of local and state school administrators. It’s about as local an approach as is
possible.
Nevertheless,
it has been viciously attacked by right wing zealots such as Rush Limbaugh as
some sort of “ObamaCORE” plan aimed at Washington taking over local schools. Otherwise intelligent candidates for office
may be coerced into opposing “Common
Core” because of these right wing lies which are believed by millions of
gullible Americans. Support “Common
Core.” It will be good for our schools,
nationwide.
JL
School Choice and
Charter Schools
Here
are some more thoughts of mine on charter schools, based upon information in Frank
Cerebino’s incisive column dealing with “school choice” which appeared in the Palm Beach Post on April 18.
In
Florida, there is something known as Public Education Capital Outlay (PECO)
funding which is supposed to pay for repairs and building improvements for the
state’s colleges, universities and public schools, the source of which are
taxes on TV, phone, gas and electricity services. Because of the governor’s and the legislature’s
infatuation with “school choice,” during
the first three years of Governor Scott’s administration, only $6,000,000 of
PECO money went to the state’s 67 school districts. Charter schools, on the
other hand, got $201,000,000, based on the rationale that public school
districts can always raise property taxes to pay for these needs while Charter
schools cannot.
Think about this for a
minute: Public PECO money is used to pay
for capital improvements for charter schools that are privately owned, and
operated for a profit, and which already divert a big chunk of tax money from traditional public schools for each student who enrolls in one of these private Charter schools. This is legalized
misfeasance at best and possibly something worse. All this is done under the banner of
providing “school choice.”
Another
rip-off of taxpayer money under the guise of “school choice” is the
availability of tax dollars through the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program
for vouchers whereby poor students can attend religious-based schools, where
teachers sometimes need not even have a bachelor’s degree, at public expense.
Two cartoons illustrating both points of view on School Choice.
Historically, “school choice” meant parents paying for their children to attend a private or parochial school rather than a public school. Wasn't it that way back when you were going to school? When this idea is extended into the concept of tax dollars paying for such education outside of the supervision of a school district, or within the supervision of a school district as is the case with private for-profit “charter” schools, it’s time to take a long, hard look at what is happening to our educational system.
And that look won’t take place until there are massive changes in the make-up of the State Legislature and in the governorship of Florida, and in any other states where “school choice” and for-profit “charter schools” are emasculating the traditional democratic (small "D") basis of American public education.
Historically, “school choice” meant parents paying for their children to attend a private or parochial school rather than a public school. Wasn't it that way back when you were going to school? When this idea is extended into the concept of tax dollars paying for such education outside of the supervision of a school district, or within the supervision of a school district as is the case with private for-profit “charter” schools, it’s time to take a long, hard look at what is happening to our educational system.
And that look won’t take place until there are massive changes in the make-up of the State Legislature and in the governorship of Florida, and in any other states where “school choice” and for-profit “charter schools” are emasculating the traditional democratic (small "D") basis of American public education.
JL
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