The "Immigration Problem"?... 10.02.2010: What to do? What to do?

Available at YouTube

Instant Runoff Elections... 08.29.2010

Available at YouTube and Jason Kelly and here. [Note: 5+ MB video file .flv]

Fixing Congress... 08.25.2010

Congressional Reform Act of 2010

1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

2. No Tenure / No Pension:

3. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security:

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 01/01/2011.

Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

If you agree with the above, pass it on to all in your address list.

How to solve the "Term Limits" dilemma.. .. 07.26.2010

I suggested the one-term limit idea to a VERY bright guy I met at my money manager's investors' dinner. His reply was that single-term limits won't work either!

He said they do that in India now, where he's originally from, and what the Indian politicians discovered is that, with only one term in which to skim, graft, screw, rob, and otherwise rip off the citizens, they've got it down to an art form. So in their ONE term, they still do as much damage to everyone around them in order to maximize their take-home loot.

I don't think the morals and ethics are any better over here in that way. I abandoned a LOT of hope about the effectiveness of term limits after that chat...

But: give each a retirement package of a about two million dollars: enough to live very comfortably on at a 5% yearly withdrawal, but the money has to be their ONLY source of income... no other pensions, speaking engagements, lecture tours or ANY paying jobs... then when their own policies and laws that they'd enacted while in office fail, they'd get just as screwed as the rest of us. THAT might make 'em a BIT more thoughtful or hesitant to run for those powerful positions...

What do you think of that kind of idea?

Teaching Capitalism to Congress and the Presidents...

If anyone's going to teach our kids Capitalism, it's going to be through Home Schooling.

The public schools don't wallow in capitalism or competition, the mass media don't care to touch critical thinking, and most blogsites are knee-deep in anti-capitalists, despite the fact that capitalism has given them just about every "good" thing they have today.

We can try to teach critical thinking and capitalism, but my prediction is that if it's not one-on-one at home, there ain't nobody else gonna do it...

Look at every capitalist or free-market think tank or commentator, from Friedman to Stossel to Cato to any others..... LOTS of great ideas; TONS of things you and i might agree on, and in the end, TOTAL FAILURE to move the needle on what "joe the plumber" thinks is the right direction to go.

And with morons like Reid, Pelosi and a few others who keep dragging the needle into negative-learning territory every day.

Maybe the right "retirement plan" for everyone in congress and the presidency should be: Upon retirement, each and every one is given a small company to run, where their entire food, clothing, shelter and retirement funds would come ONLY from the profits of their own little company.

From Jim S., and a big thank you to him! "This is a FASCINATING presentation. I wonder what organizations today are willing to try it??," he asks...

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us... Video: 10:48.

I forwarded the link to most of the people in my email directory. Here are some of the replies from them...

• I think that Bill and Dave got all that. HP just lost it without them. --- ted
• Fascinating! thanks. --- John P.
• Let us know when you hear back from Mark Hurd! That was very interesting...self-direction, mastery, purpose. That was my life at HP Asia Pacific. No wonder I loved the job! :) --- Nancy E.
• This is the most amazing email you have ever sent! It is excellent! --- Deborah S.
• That was absolutely EXCELLENT! It explains why I thrived in fast growing companies with sales less than $1B (HP and then Intel). In companies that size you were pretty much left unbridled and free to get your job done the way you saw fit, unencumbered by the bureaucracy that always seems to set in when a company crosses the billion-dollar mark. Success was measured in terms of results rather than style and how well you played political games, something I wasn't all that adept at. --- Bill G.
• I found 10 minutes to watch this during my lunch break. Interesting indeed… --- Mike D.
• This is a FANTASTIC video! I have been noticing a lot of articles in a similar vein recently. I shared this with my entire team here. Thanks SO much for passing this along. --- Bob P.
• I wholly agree. This has become more and more evident to me since reading "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut in April. --- Pat G.
• Quite interesting! --- Ed C.
• That's really cool!
  It crystallizes for me why I'm no longer interested in the technology industry or business in general and so incredibly excited about becoming a middle school or high school math teacher. Primarily, I want to make a difference in our world. Mastery of the subject matter - I LOVE math and enjoy seeing others "get it". I'd love to give it away - in fact, I do that whenever the opportunity arises. I'm also taking my skills and applying them to volunteer organizations where I have fun - Pop Warner Football & Cheer, the Boy Scouts of America and PONY Baseball. I really enjoy the autonomy of doing what I think is best in these volunteer organizations - if it works - great, if it doesn't I learn from the situation and try again. The best part is no one is looking over my shoulder telling me how to do it - people simply don't have the time.
  However, when I ask for assistance, it is readily available.
  This video also reminds me of what I saw my Dad experience at Hewlett Packard Company. He says often that his favorite time was when he was teaching - autonomous, master of the subject and making a difference.
  Thank you for sharing. If we could have many, many more than the one company in the video give the time and space to innovate in a way that the individual thinks best - our technology industry would take off once again.
  Hope things are well for you in North Carolina... Warmest Regards from California, --- Bob C.
• Very interesting. --- George J.
• Wish I could draw like that! New corporate "incentive", you do it, do it now, do it this way or I'll pick one of the 3,000 resumes I have on my desk and can your ass! Let me know what Hurd says, if anything. --- Larry R.

04.19.2010: Re-designing the United States' Educational System: an Engineering Approach.

Is our education system designed to impart knowledge or "teach to grade level"?

Proposal:

Re-design the US middle- and high-school education systems so that students are graded for proficiency in every subject from gym to math at the end of every year, independent of their age or traditional "grade or class level."

Based on each student's proficiency test results, they become eligible to move to the next level of "proficiency learning" in any given subject.

A student who's gifted in math, for example, could advance to even the highest level of proficiency long before they're "of age" to be graduated from high school. Students who, for whatever reason are slower to learn any or several subjects, do not advance to the next level until they're ready to. The concepts of "skipping grades," being "held back" for academic or social development reasons would vanish. All students would be able to advance at their own pace. Gifted students whose parents decide that they don't want them to enter college yet, for personal reasons, could get "extra credits" by becoming mentors for students not yet operating at the highest levels.

If a student has high proficiency achievement levels in eight subjects that would qualify them for acceptance to higher education institutions, the choice is for the student, their parents and the higher education institution, not the award of any "all encompassing and averaging" high school "diploma."

A student who's ranked "12th grade" in math, physics, language, speaking, reading and chemistry might be accepted into a technological university if the university agrees, even if their "civics" and "gym" achievement levels are only that of 10th or 11th "grade."

If a student exceeds "level 12" learning on all of the required disciplines, they could also become eligible for independent study at the university level in some or all of the subjects, no matter what their age was, or define their own study plan to get proficiency-ranked in areas outside the "basics" but including anything they're interested in.

For students who, for any reason, are considered "slow learners," special instruction classes would, just as today, give them the special attention they may need in order to advance. This is done today; it would continue to be implemented. They would not be shoe horned into "regular classes" where they might be disruptive or distracting to other students, or as is often suggested, "slow the rest of the class down."

In many socio-economic situations, key encouragement for learning and advancement may not exist. To manage this kind of situation, the concept of "Education Villages" could evolve to provide a strong "parental influence environment" for students who'd otherwise not get that due to lack of parental interest, capability or involvement, and for any number of reasons. It very well might "take a Village" to educate a child, too.

To determine "readiness to advance to the next teaching level," standardized national tests would be needed. Much like Scholastic Aptitude Tests or Regents Exams, these tests would need to have certain inherent designs:

1. The tests must be created for each level of every area of education.
2. Tests must be created "outside the schools' educational community in order to ensure uniformity and equality.
3. Point (2) would ensure that "teaching to the final exam" would not be possible.
4. Proficiency would be measured by general measures related to each and every discipline, such as grammar, math, science, etc., not by rote-learning or ability to answer "standard questions."
5. Multiple versions of tests in each discipline would be required.
• Versions would be randomized to the state, county or even individual levels.
• Randomization eliminates "answer key theft" or "selling copies of last year's tests."
• Randomization could extend down to the individual level, so that "looking at your neighbor's test answers" would be of no help at all. The questions would be different, or in a different order, or written to have different answers. Cheating is defeated.
• Due to the complexity of the randomization, scoring would be done centrally by the creators of the tests, to avoid any local influences of any kind. Only "final grades" would be reported back to schools and individuals.

Schools might not change very much, as viewed from the outside. Similar numbers of teachers, instructors and assistants would be needed, but a child who, for example, is socially immature and "bullied" could simply drop the field of study where the bad environment exists and pick it up some months or a year later, after the bad elements had "moved on" or left the program altogether.

In this way, every student would be able to advance as quickly as they are able, to the highest levels they're capable of, in any and all disciplines. In doing so, the best and brightest will never again be slowed down by any environmental limitations in the classroom and all students will be able to progress at a rate that is comfortable to them and their parents. Pushing students too hard as well as social stigma of being "held back" would disappear. Every student would have their own rating of proficiency, reflecting their individual needs and capabilities, enabling each one to get the best possible match of themselves to their potential achievement.

Students who, for whatever reason, can not achieve certain levels or don't want to can be tracked to many different educational or vocational directions. Job requirements at all levels of most industries could match up students to the real job requirements.

I am offering this concept up for debate and development; feedback and critical analysis. Questions and challenges are invited. Out-of-hand rejection is discouraged or ignored. If the concept needs tuning, please help tune it. If key issues not listed here need to be addressed, please write me and I'll include them, or write your own and make them public.

Thank you all for your interest and attention and feedback to   .

This proposal, I believe, deserves merit. I "figured it out" just a few months ago, and as far as I know, this kind of concept has never been published anywhere other than here and as a comment at Linked-In.com .

• See http://www.usaedustat.com

Picture this: it's about three inches wide, six or eight inches long, and maybe three-fourths of an inch thick.

Cell phone, am/fm radio, full clock radio alarm features, You've programmed it's alarm clock feature (synchronized to the National Standards Clock every day), GPS receiver/locator, GPS mapping display, integrated into automobile systems for recharging, GPS, phone and auto security functions, as well as personal/custom setting for auto functions like mirror, steering wheel and seat positions. [Without your phone, your car can't be unlocked or stolen],

Opening the clamshell package switches to the large internal display above the full keyboard, and you have access to your email, spreadsheets, database and word processing software. Of course, your contacts' names, addresses and phone numbers are synchronized automatically to your address book and relevant databases you've created.

Basic underlying vision: Why can't my phone talk to my house and my car?