Sure you need algebra, Ebonee!

According to the The Dallas Morning News, requiring a passing score on the TAKS test is cheating a lot of students out of a diploma. This is just so, like, unfair! Take Ebonee Manning for example, they say.

Ebonee has taken the TAKS test more than six times, and she has yet to get a passing score on the math portion of the test. Ebonee says she didn't have to work too hard in high school. She saved herself plenty of time for "cruising and clubs with her home girls." She started failing algebra in 9th grade, but she didn't worry about it. She just made it up in summer school where the classes were much easier to pass.

Just before she failed the test again in March 2009, she got a letter from her boyfriend who was in prison on a drug conviction. He had "a hunch" that she was pregnant. She took a pregnancy test and, gee whillikers, she was! That March test was the last chance she had before her class graduated. "I been to school all these years, and this is what I get? Going back every summer to take a test?" (It seems Ebonee has a bit of a problem in the birds and bees and grammar departments as well as the math department).

Anyway, Ebonee says, she doesn't understand why it's so important for her to know algebra. "I'm not going to use it ever again. I know I'm not." Of course you are, Ebonee. For instance, if the government pays you $250 a month for each baby you have, how many babies do you have to have to get $1000 a month? I'll just bet you can figure that out, and that, my dear, is algebra!

"Seeking the right formula." The Dallas Morning News; July 26, 2010; p. 1A.

It must be nice to be so much higher than everybody else.

Patrick Graham, the publisher of The Paris News thinks on a higher plain than the rest of us poor mortals. In an editorial recently, he talked about a double standard pertaining to the case of a local female high school teacher accused of having sex with several of her male students.

Graham says that society will hold her to a lesser standard than a male teacher in similar circumstances would be held. While that may be true, he then deigns to speak for the rest of us (himself excluded, of course). In a hypothetical, he offers the same circumstances as in the case at hand except he switches the genders of perpetrator and victims. "You can't tell me your initial reaction to the first scenario wasn't a lot different than your initial reaction to the second. Well you can, but I won't believe you." I got news for you, Mr. Graham, my reaction is the same. A sexual predator is a sexual predator, no matter what gender.

Then he says, "Personally, I don't make a distinction." Well, Mr. Graham, as a man who's a legend in his own mind once said, "Well you can [tell me that], but I won't believe you."

"Teacher case will be a study in a societal double standard." The Paris News; July 4, 2010; p. 4A.

It's working - Part II

Illegals are fleeing Arizona by the thousands if the news reports are to be believed. Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez, 37, said she is selling up and leaving for New Mexico with her husband, who is a legal resident, and two children born in Phoenix.

"Under the law, if you transport an illegal immigrant, you are committing a crime," she said as she sold children's clothes at a yard sale with three other families. "They could arrest him for driving me to the shops." Well, yeah! That's always been the law. It's just that Arizona will now enforce it. And you're illegal! Why are you headed to New Mexico?

Lunaly Bustillos, a legal resident from Mexico, hoped to sell some clothes, dumbbells and an ornamental statue on Sunday before her family heads for Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday.

"It makes me sad and angry too because I feel I have the right to be here," said Bustillos, 17, who recently graduated from high school in Phoenix.

If you're legal, Lunaly, what are you afraid of? All you have to do is not break the law. If you do break the law, and the authorities ask you for proof of citizenship, hand them your birth certificate, your drivers license, your green card -- any number of documents which will take care of the problem.

Wendi Villasenor, an illegal who lives in Phoenix says, "Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving. She is headed for Pennsylvania. "We have no alternative. They have us cornered." So why, Wendi, are you going north? Shouldn't you be headed south?

I don't really understand the panic. Even if they're illegal, they have to break some other law before they can be questioned about their status. All they have to do is keep their noses clean. I guess that tells us what kind of people these are.

Incidentally, Mr. Essie May and I have sent our donation to the Arizona defense fund. You can do it online at the state website. If you can afford it, this is a great way to show your support for the courage Arizona lawmakers have shown in assuming the responsibility of a derelict federal government.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/us_usa_immigration_arizona

And now they're running health care!

I still don't see why we should give people $8000 to buy a house they can't afford, but our generous-with-other people's-money government (headed by Obama) has decided that's a good idea. In fact, it's such a good idea, that at least 1300 prison inmates jumped on the opportunity and got their $8000 tax refund. Some of them even bought the same house -- over and over again. One house was used 67 times. But convicts weren't the only ones. Investigators also found that 87 IRS employees had cheated us taxpayers. And that doesn't count all the children who bought homes.

"This is very troubling," said J. Russell George, the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration. Gee, ya think?

"Living in the big house, not a new house." The Dallas Morning News; June 24, 2010; p. 4A.

The Value of an Education

In a letter to the editor, Angela Collins of Paris bemoans the fact that high school graduates can't seem to get jobs at the factories in Paris because they have no line experience. But I fear Angela's problem goes a bit deeper than that. Her letter demonstrates a woeful lack in our educational system.

I must assume that she is a graduate since that's how she begins her letter: "Why is it that when students who graduate from high school, who want to get a good paying job where we the pay is steady -- like some of our local industries -- in order to get an application we have to have six months line experience just to get the job." If her verbal skills are no better than her writing skills, the personnel department probably didn't understand that she was asking for an employment application.

"How are we suppose (sic) to get the experience," she asks. Well, your problem is stated in your run-on opening sentence. You want a "good paying" job. Those usually come later, dear. First, you usually have to take the cruddy jobs at the bottom of the ladder and prove your worth. Especially in this economy, a factory is not going to give a green 18-year-old high school graduate (especially one with such poor communication skills) a job of great responsibility. Those jobs must be earned.

"Experience needed." The Paris News; June 28, 2010; p. 4.

Did you know . . .

. . .in 2008, the government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims? And now they're running the whole shebang! Ya' think we're in trouble???

"Revised Medicare reporting casts a poor light." The Dallas Morning News; November 15, 2009; p. 8A.

Essie's hero of the Day!

Tawana Couch makes her living as a flight attendant, but her real job is rescuing dogs. She started and heads up Operation Transport and founded Society for Companion Animals.

Though it's kind of hard for us to grasp the concept, in the northwestern states there are waiting lists of people who want to adopt shelter dogs. So Tawana makes the rounds of the shelters here and takes dogs that are closest to being euthanized. She and Frontier Airlines transport them to the northwest where they are placed with new families. More than 50 dogs have been saved in this doggie airlift project.

Tawana has a cadre of volunteers who participate in the projects. The dogs must be delivered before 4 a.m. to the cargo planes, because it's too hot for them to fly later in the day. Frontier discounts the rate for shipping the dogs to $100 to $150 each.

So to Tawana and Frontier Airlines and all the volunteers -- you're my heroes! If you want to be one of Essie's heroes, too, you can visit Tawana's website at www.societyforcompanionanimals.com.

"Going where they're really wanted." The Dallas Morning News; June 29, 2010; p. 1B.