I find it really odd that almost of the nations in this world do not have a majority of their people supporting the war on Iraq. I have heard a few bigotted responses that say basically oh well the entire world is wrong and that America is the only nation in the world that can trully see the light. Or other responses that everyone is just not supporting war on Iraq because they hate America. What ever your opinion on the issue is it doesn't really matter because it doesn't change the fact that Bush has almost no support. His three major allies (only two that might contribute troops) are Spain and Britian. First off Britian's parliament doesn't support war and am not totally sure but I believe that because of how the government is structured Britian could not contribute troops. Then Spain's people are in a large majority opposed the war in Iraq, whether or not this is affecting the government, it should be a sign to Bush that people of the world do not want this war to take place. Then Israel will probably support this war and go invade Iraq. And on this issue I have a slightly differing stance . . . the Israelis should go and fuck up Saddam for the cruise missles that he lodged up Israel's ass in the Gulf War. Israel has a lot more stack and right in this war than I believe America does . . . (I hope the Jews get their sweet and deserved revenge on Saddam). The final response that I get when I ask people the question of why the other countries aren't supproting a war against Iraq, they say something to the extent that their leaders are incompotent. I am sorry but the leaders of the rest of the world are at the very least no more incompotent that President Bush and for the most part are more intelligent than Bush. In no way is America's government any more knowledgeable about worldy affairs than the rest of the world.
Last night during Bush's speech he began pleading with Iraqi troops (that he sympathizes with so much) asking them not to blow up their oil fields . . . Oh come on that had to seem a little unsettling to everyone that watched that speech no matter your opinions concerning Bush. The fact that he spent a good 20 seconds on the topic and about 1 minutes leading up to it in a 15 minute speech is pretty important. It is obvious to at least me that we might not only being going into Iraq to remove/disarm Saddamm, but could it be possilbe that America has some devious purposes?!?!? It couldn't be (sarcasm!). Actually the thing that really draws my attention to this statement is that I have heard it about 5 times in the last 3 weeks from Bush advisors who have been concerned with Iraq destroying their oil fields. And obviosly the oil fields could allow Iraqi economic recovery after the war, but most likely the oil will only benefit the richest people in Iraq who are subsequentally the "democraticatically elected" and "not tyranical" leaders that would take control over Iraq after Saddam is out of power, and I am sure that oil will just by chance end up helping out the Americans a whee bit too . . . Maybe!
I am getting really fucking sick of the fact that every God damn operation or bill or whatever the fuck it is is called some bull shit name like operation freedom, liberty shield, American acts. Opps I forgot America would never practice in any form of propoganda ever, so obviosly these names must be just name like this out of sheer coinincedence that all of the other names were taken! I believe that every time Bush names a policy something freedom or something to that extent, he is admitting the reluctance he has to that particular policy and is trying to make people not disagree with his policies and so on. And yes this is propoganda . . . it isn't obviosly as bad as some of the propoganda from Hitler, Stalin, Hussien, or many other Eastern nations, but it really is propoganda.
Dan, I'm relatively sure that the word "French" is firmly planted in front of fries and toast. Personally, any country that cloaks a desire to protect its share of oil contracts with the existing Iraqi government (for France its near 80%, and France stands to lose all of it when Sadam's regime is removed) under a flag of peace, should keep its place in front of two - more or less infamous - icons of the fast-food industry.
wow, i just found about that people are trying to change the name of french fries to freedom fries. this is possibly the dumbest idea i have ever heard. i guess the intended point of this would be to piss off the french. as we all know, im sure they think we're going to attack and are preparing they're national flag (or just a white towel or shirt or something else white). personally, i don't plan on changing the preceding word in front of fries. this is perhaps the silliest thing i've ever heard. cause im sure people are going to support the war since the name of fries isn't french anymore.
Yes, paul, you're right about the school not being legally allowed to shift funds around. But why let laws get in the way of our future? Are you just gonna sit there and take this? And honestly... do you know ANYbody of actual importance/power who would object to blurring the line between the two funds? I sure don't. It may be illegal... but that doesn't make it wrong.
Ok, Paul and Gross, you guys see what I'm getting at with my speech. Our school, as well as the state, has its priorities way out of whack with how we can and do spend our tax $. While the things we get are all fine and dandy, they would be put to much better use if we were allowed to spend it on things such as school-subsidized AP testing, security of Orchestra, extra strength chains for the special ed students, etc. And yes, I knew about our max spending, despite not hearing it from Paul and/or Rex. I wrote that article to infer how screwed up our school, and state is currently with regards to it's budget. If our community is willing to put more into our education, why stop them??? This isn't some communist controlled regime, it's capitalism. Money is power. Our parents pay exorbant taxes, so let them, and us see the benefits of it in more than super (with a gay lisp) new construction projects! Hey, this is the Anarchy times, right? Down with the current state status quo!
-Erik Greene
Whether or not I used rex?s information is irrelevant, it happens explain a great number of the myths and inaccurate statements that revolve around school spending, and deserves to be heard. As for your solutions, god willing we may someday have an administration competent enough to follow them through on them. Right now, school spending seems to be closed to ideas like yours, regardless of how logical they may be (the average processor speed on the new dells is around 2 Ghz). We need to change the way that we go about spending money. With regards to the proceeds that high school sports generates, its true that little to none of any fees collected will ever find its way back into the sports programs that earned it. For years Hopkins was able to get away with using a bottomless pool of referendum/property tax money with minimal concern for how effectively that money is being used. With shrinking budgets, school districts a like Hopkins are shooting themselves in the foot with decades old spending practices that breed poor use of resources and beaucratic waste. In regards to AP, everyone is going to feel the pinch. I?m all for using that "bricks and mortar" money to subsidize tests, but right now the law doesn?t allow for that, and the school through a combo of shrinking funds and ineffective spending doesn't have the money to fill the void the state legislature created. Spending practices need to change as the tax payers who have unselfishly donated so much of their money to our education deserve nothing less than effective and well thought out spending.
Paul, you just regurgitated Rexroth's spiel from a few weeks ago, almost to the letter. I got your psychovomit all over my keyboard. Ick. Sure, it has a lot of good points, but you/Rex are missing some things:
While Hopkins does have limitations to the amount of money we can use, it's more or less up to us to decide where to put said money. Like Erik said, a lot of it right now is being sent to the football program. Fiscally, that's understandable, because football (theoretically) makes money for the school district. But as far as I know, the little profit football actually makes is being funneled directly back into the program. Our operations money is being spent on football, the profits from which are shuttled into the "Bricks and Mortar" pot used to build new fields and such. It's almost like laundering money within the institution. I don't think the administration necessarily wants it this way, but it's how things are working now.
The result: an imbalanced spending routine. While AP tests lose subsidization, teachers have to scrounge for materials, the orchestra program's termination looms on the horizon, and art teachers have to charge students to take their classes, the school finds themselves with a lump of cash to spend only on renovations and technology. What do they do? They go out and buy two-score flat-panel iMacs. Now, as much as I love Macs, this from-the-hip purchase was completely unnecessary. The tech rooms get all these pretty computers, so that kids who take slacker classes in this wing of the building can check their email. Maybe 10% of the time (at most) they are being used to run Photoshop or iMovie - gasp! How processor-intensive! The school does not need these computers, especially when all they did was replace a bunch of still fairly adequate systems (but they weren't flat screened! flat screened!!!).
It's a similar story with the football field, auditorium, and cafeteria. While I'll be paying $450 to take my AP tests this year (and I know others who will be spending even more), I'm happy to know that the football team (that I never watch) will be able to play on their pro field (which I'll never use). Because of some glitch in the budget somewhere, the administration's priorities are being skirted.
So I propose a solution. Let's reverse the process. Instead of pumping funds into athletic and other non-educational budgets, lets take "Bricks and Mortar" dough and feed it into operations. Examples:
-All those computers combined are a complete waste of processing cycles. I would estimate that about 5% of their processing power is used by the half-retarded shop/tech kids. The school could run all of these computers as parallel processing nodes (there's even an OSX utility that allows this on Mac) and sell the processor cycles in this giant beowulf supercomputer to the highest bidder. Private companies, research institutions, even the US Government are always looking for cheap ways to crunch a lot of numbers. This technique has been tested in the marketplace and found successful.
-The auditorium and cafeteria about to be built can be rented out. People are always looking for large spaces in which to host trade shows, concerts, meetings, parties, lectures, seminars, etc. Why not capitalize on space that we don't use 100% of the time?
-Let's start trying to make profit with our "operations" resources. The bands, orchestra, and choirs charge for their concerts, but that money isn't given back to the programs, it's sent to a large lump fund. Each program should benefit from its own profits. This is only one small example; there must be other ways to make money on the "education" part of our educational institution. Ideas, anyone?
So it's not just a matter of adjusting priorities. The priorities are there: no teacher wants his/her program cut, the school's administrators (the majority of them, at least) must care about education first and foremost. The real problem is that there hasn't been enough motivation to change. As Paul said, we're still one of the most funded schools in the state; the administration hasn't yet seen what diminished operations will result in. There haven't been any significant movements/voicings by students, either, and barely any by members of the community. I don't think anybody is responsible for the fiscal errors that abound at Hopkins, but somebody needs to speak out loud enough in order to draw attention to their effects.
And in addition to that . . . will people stop bitching about the fireplace, it is only going to cost $5000 and if you know anything about how much stuff costs you would realize that that isn't very expensive. That $5000 can't be saved because of government laws and it can't be spent on anything productive because there isn't enough of it . . . so what the fuck lets just spend the money on a fire place. It will be fun to try and throw shit in there. Plus it might warm that fucking frozen tundra known as our school up a little!
