Shovel Ready Jobs are stupid

When I hear the term, shovel ready job, I blow a gasket.  Working for the sake of work is the dumbest thing I have ever heard.  Well maybe not the dumbest, but it's up there at the top.  If people are going to invest time and money into something, they should take the time to find something worth working on.  I know shovel ready jobs is a term associated with the national government, but it applies to Texas just as much if we call it government investment in jobs.

There are several things that need to be considered when we talk about the government investing its capital into jobs.  These considerations are job creation, area to direct funds, and most long term impact on society by those investments.

We live in a mostly capitalist society.  Because of this, each person having an opportunity to work is essential for them to be able to provide for themselves and their families.  That is why the number of unemployed people in the country is such an important indicator of how healthy the country's economy is.  Because this is so important, the government gets a little panicky when unemployment rates go up.  Legislators try everything they can to get people back to work.  This normally means throwing money at the problem.  In this last round of stimulus spending, the government put a great deal of their effort into repairing highway infrastructure and building new highways.  To me, this is a waste of money.  Why throw money at technology from the 1950's when there are better investments to be had.  I have a few ideas on better places to spend stimulus money and put people back to work.

In World War II, the allied forces realized they could not fight the entire global war at once.  They took on a strategy of taking beaches in Europe or island hopping in the Pacific.  By taking on the larger problem of the axis forces one piece at a time and solidifying their victories with reinforcements, the allies were eventually able to win the war.  For the state of Texas, the place for biggest impact in the state is the Rio Grande Valley.  This area has the highest crime, lowest education level and most people living in poverty.  There are many contributing factors but we could focus on a few and make a serious impact on the standard of living for those most in need. 

First of all, we have to stop illegal immigration into that section of the state.  Illegal immigrants poring over the border in an uncontrolled fashion is taxing that society beyond is ability to cope.  Using another metaphor, if you are in a boat that is sinking in the middle of an ocean filled with drowning people, the first reaction of any compassionate person would be to start hauling people into the boat.  But if those people only compound the problem, you will all parish.  However, if you first fix the boat, then begin pulling people into the boat and getting them healthy enough to help pull more people in, you will benefit the most people.  The same holds true for immigration, before we can help people that want to come to America for opportunity, we have to solidify the area in which they will find themselves when they first come to America.  If we as a nation and state can hold off immigration to a controlled level, we can fix the Valley.

As illegal immigration comes under control, the problems of poverty, crime and education need to be addressed.  The first thing to do is making higher education palatable to the people of the valley and giving them a place to work after they receive their education.  The question to ask is, which services are most needed in the valley?  Health care is a big problem for the indigent in the valley.  Providing education in health care in schools located in the valley would provide an immediate healthcare workforce for an immediate need that has a long term benefit to society. 

So, here is my plan for spending stimulus money.  Step one; build new learning institutes in the valley.  Going away to school is a daunting idea for many people in the valley, by putting the schools in that area, that problem is overcome.  This also puts construction crews to work immediately.  Step two; give full scholarships with future requirements to anyone who is willing to attend.  Scholarships should include a standard of living allowance depending on the level of support needed.  Many of the brightest people in the valley are providers for a larger family.  They cannot afford to go to school and not earn an income if their family is depending on them to provide an income.  A short term investment in supporting their families while they are educated raises the standards for the best and brightest in the community.  Step three, build health care facilities. Building the facilities puts construction workers back to work, gives the community a place to go for services and provides the newly educated a place in their area to work and apply what they have learned.  Step four; call in your favors for the education provided.  This is where the future requirements I mentioned above comes into play.  People receiving their new degrees courtesy of the government will have an option of paying back what they have borrowed either with cash from their new jobs, enabling the next set of students to come into the pool, or by serving for a set amount of time in the newly built health care facilities in their home area.  This combination of investments should lead to higher education levels, better health care and less poverty in the area.

The real hope of these investments is to change the culture of the area.  By building success stories in the community, the government will be able to change people's long term thinking.  Nothing works as well as a real life example with someone you know to motivate people to change their ways.  Not only does this approach put people to work and provide better healthcare for the neediest Texans, it also provides hope for a different kind of future.

This is just an example of how I think the government should change its spending habits when it comes to stimulus.  I know politicians are trying to get elected by a fickle electorate.  But, if they focus on doing the right thing and spending the people's money with the greatest long term affect in mind, my hope is that eventually the Texas voters will catch on and start backing these types of programs.  Unfortunately, this would take a significant number of brave politicians which are in short supply in Austin lately.

Review of Jeremy's commentary on the hopes of the Democratic Party

In his blog “Hope for the Democratic Party of Texas”, Jeremy Schmidt asks if there is a chance of the Democratic Party of Texas to regain its former glory.  I have to agree with Jeremy’s assessment.  The Democratic Party of Texas is in dire straits now and for some time to come.  It isn’t that they couldn’t easily take back their former position, or at least even things up a bit, it is that they aren’t willing to make the compromises necessary.  Jeremy does a great job of pointing out how the infighting of the Democratic Party is keeping it from lining up on key issues.  He also confronts the fact that the Democratic Party has no real organization which will lead to less likelihood of ever getting the funding and communication to the public necessary to mount a comeback.

Jeremy’s final hope for the party is a win by default.  Maybe Perry will get caught up in a scandal or the voters will backlash from the recent republican cuts to services and education.  Although a funny thought, it isn’t far from the truth.  Unless the Democratic can come in from the far left and get on the same page, they will be sitting in the back row watching legislation being made with no hope of representing their constituents.

How to fix Texas Education System

One of the most active debates in Texas today revolves around the state of our current education system.  Voters want to know why spending more money on education isn’t fixing the problem.  This is not just a Texas problem but one that is being considered nationwide.  The University of Southern California has done an outstanding job creating a graphical representation of per student spending and performance in the United States versus twelve other countries.  It is clear from the statistics that we do have a problem with our education system, but spending is not it.  In an article, “School funding equity doesn’t lead to better schools” in Empower Texans, Robert Pratt takes a swing at the Robin Hood act.  The Robin Hood act is used to allocate funds from districts with higher revenue streams to those with less ability to raise funds.  I disagree with Mr. Pratt’s assessment that the act is ineffective. Funding is one of the issues both currently and historically that have affected education in lower income areas where performance is the worst.  As a society, we are only now starting to make a dent in the sins or our past.  Anyone who would argue that the “white race” did not oppress all other races to their own benefit and the great detriment of the other races, is not willing to admit an undeniable reality of America’s past.  Keeping minorities poor is one of the ways white Americans kept their dominant position in society.  However it is not the only way.  As I dive into this issue, I will outline some of the problems with education outside of financing.

One thing I think we as a society have to confront is that we are wasting money on education.  I know people think that cash is the answer to all questions, but it is not.  In my work, we analyze an environment and use cost benefit and impact analysis when we choose what we will do to make the environment stronger.  By analyzing an environment, limited resources such as time and capital can be pointed at the most concerning issues and yield the largest result.  The way it works is to focus first on the biggest problems you have and put as much effort into solving that problem as you can.  It is common in the IT industry to buy a tool to try to solve a process problem.  If you have a process problem and you try to solve it with a tool, you will have limited success at best.  Why do IT people try to solve process problems with tools?  Because they are more comfortable using tools than improving processes.  This is what I mean when I say we are wasting money by using it on the wrong problems.

There are two major issues that need to be addressed to fix education not only in Texas but in the United States.   The problems are very controversial and poison to any politician who would speak of them.   A few brave statisticians, economists and social scientist have tried to broach the subjects.  Often these attempts are met with ad homonym attacks on the presenter to avoid addressing the real issue.

I will tackle the most controversial topic first.  Poor American cultures do not value education.  I have been a passive observer of both failing schools in poorer areas and successful schools in affluent upper class neighborhoods.  Note that this is not a race issue but rather a culture issue.  There are plenty of minority children in affluent schools with parents who have professional level jobs who do quite well.  One race does not have an IQ advantage over another.  Rather, the degree to which affluent people emphasize education is higher than in poor cultures.  In these cultures seeking an education can even be seen as trying to be better than everyone else.  I am not going to give a list of research, although I could probably dig some up, instead I will focus on my experience.  My step sons both went to Pierce Middle School and Reagan High School.  Both schools are on the razors edge of being shut down for their ineffectiveness.  Both schools failed to provide a proper education to the boys.  What I noticed over the years was a total lack of parental involvement.  My wife and I would go to plays and sporting events and the stands and seats were practically empty.  There was absolutely no parental involvement.  When the schools are ready to be shut down, people come out of the woodwork.  But when the hard work of making a better school for the kids, day in and day out is at hand, you can hear the crickets chirping. It isn’t because the school hasn’t tried.  The administrators and educators in those schools are actually in my opinion, better and more dedicated than the staff at the prize winning school my daughter attended.   The problem is that the parents and moreover the culture places a low value on education.  This in turn, leads to low expectations of the students.  Pedro A. Noguera and Antwi Akom have done an outstanding job describing this dilemma.  In their article, “The Significance of Race in the Racial Gap in Academic Achievement” they outline this cultural flaw.  Unfortunately, this issue will take generations to fix.  Cultures do not change overnight especially those who have been so oppressed for so long.  It is unrealistic to think that all people will value education.  However, as more people from poor families are lifted up in society with education as their path to success, more children will begin to admire and emulate them and the society will see a permanent change.  To make this happen, the parents must be incented to be involved in their children’s schools and dedicated to their educational success.  The students must see themselves as future achievers and success stories.  There are programs here and there working towards this goal, my opinion is that this is a key variable and resources should be dedicated to it.

The second sacred cow that has to be thrown on the chopping block is the antiquated teaching methods used in todays elementary and high schools.  The same field trips, duplicate worksheets, and weekly readers are being used today that I used when I was in elementary over thirty years ago.  Time is wasted as children are herded from one specials class to another.  We have to face the facts that educators have lost their ability to adapt.  My daughter is a 504 student.  Basically what that means is she can’t learn the same way as other children.  It isn’t that she isn’t smart; she has actually been tested and has a very high IQ.  She has behavioral issues that take away from her ability to learn.  It wasn’t until after we started weighing our options of public school versus home schooling that I became enlightened.  After working with our “exceptional” school for two years and being very flexible, we decided to home school.  We compared curriculum and schedules with homeschooling versus standard schools and were shocked at the results.  Today’s curriculum in traditional schools is designed to leave no child behind.  In other words, the least intelligent student in the room has to fully comprehend the material before the teacher is considered successful.  Sure there are advanced placement (AP) programs but when you only have two slots available in a classroom full of children whose parents are all fighting for those slots, the majority of the students will not be able to participate no matter what their ability.  Because the system has to be fair, an equal amount of AP slots will go to all schools no matter what the ability of the students in those schools.  This means the next to smartest kids in the best schools may be able to understand the material on the first or second try, but must sit by and be quiet while the rest of the students work it out.  How disheartening must it be to understand the material but be labeled a failure because you can’t sit still and be quite while the rest of the class comes up to speed?  Ask my daughter, she can tell you.  Our first home school curriculum was a computer based program that taught my daughter at her own pace.  We were able to set and adjust learning times to meet our family schedule and dedicate less than five hours per day to teaching.  We have also joined local home schooler organizations that take use to ice cream factories, museums, farms and many other interesting places.  The training on the computer is outstanding.  The videos and games help keep the interest of the student while providing them with the education they need.  Imagine your favorite teacher teaching two or three of the subjects they most like to teach and sharing that with every student in the state.  In college, we go to UTube videos and online resources created by other colleges.  We use Wiki and Google to do our research.  I do a great deal of my online reading for this class on my iPhone in the car during my lunch break.  Good teachers are innovators and there are a lot of them out there.  We have to take the shackles of school bureaucracy and teachers unions off of our best teachers and set them free.  There will always be a place for the drone process that is our current education system, but unless we set our teachers free to bring forth the next ideas in education; we will never be as successful as we could be.

If we do not face the real problems of our education system and channel our resources in that direction, we will continue to receive the same results we have for years.  The potential for real change is there, but the tough decisions have to be made.  It is up to each parent and teacher to push this forward and make the change.  You as a voter need to recognize when these parents need help and teachers need freedom.  With the combined power of our independent thinking voters and innovative educators, we can once again become the best educational state in the best educational country in the world.

Cooper's "Oh, To Be Poor in America" is spot on

In his article, “Oh, To Be Poor in America”, Robbie Cooper contrasts what Americans consider to be impoverished to the reality of what poor means in rest of the world.  The first thing that caught my eye was the picture of a woman sitting in front of a big screen television.  The quote under the picture reads, “"I might be poor but I don't like to live poor. I thank God for a place to live, but it's pitiful what people give you."  This reminds me of the time people from my wife’s workplace were complaining they didn’t get a refund check after they paid $0 in taxes that year.  To them, it wasn’t fair that we were receiving $600 back from our $20K in taxes, and they were not getting anything back from their $0 payment.  Logic just doesn't work with some people.

The next thing that stands out in this article is a large chart showing the amenities owned by American households.  At least 75% of American households own a refrigerator, television, stove, air conditioner, microwave, clothes washer, cable or satellite TV, DVD, clothes dryer, more than one TV, Cordless phone and of course a cellular phone.  Cooper uses this example of what people living below the poverty line as defined by the Census Bureau have in contrast to truly impoverished countries like Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Mexico.  The author states that he has been to places where children beg for food and truly have nothing.  Given his biography as a former military member, I can relate to this type of past experience.  Cooper does go on to speak about people who truly are in need of the basic necessities of life.  But the article’s main focus is on America’s current overstated definition of poverty.

Overall, the article is well supported by facts and does a good job of giving the reader another perspective on the entitlement problem the poor in America have.  This is something the nation and each state will need to tackle in the near future.  Although we need to put a price on the resources that made rich people rich in our country by raising taxes on the extremely rich and corporations, we also need to get a grip on what people truly need to survive versus what we want to give lazy people who don’t want to work.  I agree with Mr. Cooper and hope that more people will educate themselves about the plight of the lazy poor in America.

Fiscal Security Texas Style

I just took a great class at my church called “Financial Peace University”.  It is supposed to help you get your fiscal life together.  One of the first things you are supposed to do is make a budget for yourself.  I thought it would be a great idea to just go copy the experts in making budgets and save myself a lot of time.  But then I had to find out who the experts at making budgets are?  The Texas Legislature of course!! They have been making budgets balance on a large scale for years and years.  Wow, now I nearly have this thing licked.

The next step in the process would be to do a little research.  How do these guys at the legislature get together and get these massive budgets to balance?  The Dallas Morning News has always been a good place for me to do a little research on recent events.  I put in a couple searches on this last session’s budget process and found this article, “We have a Budget, but not a prayer”.  According to House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, this is a budget that "is disciplined, fiscally conservative and that lives within our means."  This is just what I am looking for in my own life.  But wait, according to this article even after making cuts to the number of teachers, police pay and a lot of other areas, costs are still $99 Billion and revenues are $80.6 Billion.  According to my class, the amount of money going into my budget has to be at least as much as the amount going out.

I thought that maybe I didn’t understand the article well enough.  So, I went to another source and found this article in The Texas Observer: “The Next Budget Crisis”.   This article has a little more meat to it.  It explains the basic concept the Republicans used when making their budget.  The budget is largely based on two premises.  The first is that the economy will recover soon and bring in more tax revenue.  The second is that the federal government is sending funds to bail out healthcare.

So, if I try to apply what the legislature did to the state budget to my own budget it would look a little like this.  I put myself down for a big pay raise for the next couple years, not because I have a record of getting big raises, but more because I really need them to make my budget balance.  Then I go in and reduce my payments to my water, sewer, cable and electric.  I thought one of them is bound to go down over the next two years, so I am going to come out a winner there.  Now, I have a balanced budget the same way the experts did it.

I took my new budget to my wife who is much better at this type of thing than I am.  After looking it over for a few minutes, she took my wallet away, changed the password on all our accounts and handed me $20.  She told me to come back when that was gone and stop looking at the budget.  Maybe we should do the same thing to our representatives.

Wendy Davis - A Name to Remember

It is hard to argue against the fact that Texas Democrats have had a bad couple of decades.  Most of the high powered Democratic up and comers saw the impending doom of their party and jumped to the people's current love affair with the Republican Party.  People like Carol Keaton Rylander and Rick Perry, both former Democrats, are now high powered movers in the Republican Party.  The Texas legislature, executive branch and judiciary are dominated by the Republican party super majority.

Currently in the Texas legislature, liberals have virtually no voice.  But out of the BLUE, a new voice is standing up to be heard.  Wendy Davis (D - District 10) stepped up and took one for the team.  With the threat of exposing the Democratic Party’s key issue of Sanctuary Cities to a special session, the party wanted nothing more than to get out of session with as few lumps as possible.  But despite party politics, Wendy Davis launched a filibuster to block the passage of a school funding plan that was underfunded by $4 Billion.  Senator Davis’ bold move has brought her new state wide notoriety.  It has also put just a touch of wind back into the sails of Texas Democrats.  She seems to have brought a new, if we're going to lose, we're going down fighting, attitude.  We will have to stand by to see how it turns out.  Dare we dream of a legislature where liberals and conservatives argue the merit of controversial topics and work out a compromise that is beneficial to the constituents they serve?

For more details on Wendy Davis’ big move in the 82^nd legislative session, take a look at the article in Texas Tribune titled, “Filibuster Propels Wendy Davis Into Spotlight”.

Ramshaw, Emily (2011, June 6). Filibuster Propels Wendy Davis Into Spotlight.  Texas Tribune.  Retrieved from http://www.texastribune.org/