The Definition of Nickel and Diming people to death.

I woke up this morning to find the big news of the day is Obama’s continued expansion of the federal government this time into the Christmas tree industry (by the invitation of small business agriculture). That is right Obama (Federal Government under Obama's watch) has decided to declare war on Christians, manufactures of reusable Christmas trees and has singled out a special tax for those who like to buy live Christmas tree, added burden to Christmas tree vendors everywhere and caused a black market to make law abiding citizens criminals. Whatever happened to the separation of church as state, how soon until Christmas trees become holiday trees?

Ok I’m sure you are saying, come on Robert you are being extreme. I am being extreme, because that is the only way that you will listen. I decided to look into what the tax will be used for, not that the government ever uses our funds well, but maybe it is going to be for lowering our debt. Nope! It is going to be used to fund a new arm of the government whose purpose is to promote the sale of live Christmas (holiday) trees!

Now if I am going to go buy a Christmas tree, than why do I need to be advertised to? Do they think I’ll buy two Christmas trees? I’m already buying a tree! Now I’m going to have to pay more! A LOT MORE!

Now you say 15 cents isn’t much. Well the Christmas tree sellers are now going to have to hire an accountant who will have to file additional taxes. Accountants cost money! Do you think the low margin Christmas tree vendor is going to eat that cost? No he will pass it on to the consumer, raising the cost of Christmas trees!
So now the Federal government has created additional tax payer expenses to promote something they are already buying, but will not have to do so at a higher cost to cover the cost of the government expenses!

Now let us assume the Feds do a great job advertising these Christmas trees as they do with any program. Well there is a little thing called supply and demand. Christmas trees take years (5-15) to grow. So the supply is going to be very flat for the next 15 years. If more people want to buy Christmas tree because of the great job the Feds are doing at advertising for the Christmas tree vendors. Guess what happens to the price of Christmas trees? The price will go up.
What happens when the price goes up? The poor will not be able to afford the Christmas trees. The federal government will then need to subsidies the purchasing of live Christmas trees for the poor.

What else will happen? The thriving fake Christmas tree market will be hurt, causing the loss of jobs or at least a reduction in pay and expansion, which in turn cost jobs. So we will not be paying a tax that raises the cost of Christmas trees and chokes job creation.

Now some, formerly law abiding citizens, who sell Christmas trees, may not be able to handle the rising cost of selling the trees and go out of business or start selling them illegally to avoid paying an accountant to pay the taxes. This person was a surviving (not thriving) entrepreneur and the government has made his job harder! So this tax will inevitably cause some of them to start selling trees out of their “trunk” or go out of business.

Now some, formerly law abiding citizens, who recognize this intrusive maneuver by the Federal government into business that they have no business being in will start to cut down their own trees, likely from neighbors, federal and state forest and farms, some with and some without permission, a modern day Bostonian who will dump his beloved Tea into the bay to make a point.

Finally Christmas is a Christian holiday, named so after our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While other religions may buy tree during this time of year to fit in with the culture, those truly buying Christmas trees are Christians. So this is a tax against a specific religion. The only way to get around this is to change the name of Christmas trees to holiday trees, thus adding fuel to the fire in the fight against Christmas.

A nickle is 5 cents and a dime is 10, when you put them together you get 15. The amount of tax the Federal Government will now tax you to sell you something you already buy. This is the true definition of Nickle and Diming someone to death.

SOTU and Education

I just finished reading the SOTU speech and got to sit in on a whitehouse.com/live interview with Arne Duncan on Facebook, which it appeared to be mostly viewed by pro pot people and the unemployed – at least according to the comments. Secretary Duncan answered questions from a panel of concerned groups from Mother’s to MTV. While I do not agree with having a US department of education, if Secretary Duncan does “narrow its focus” I will admit to being content under our current political landscape.
For the SOTU I thought President Obama was on top of what needs done in education “It’s the family that first instills the love of learning in a child” and “Let’s remember AFTER (my emphasis) parents, the biggest impact on a child’s success comes from the man or woman at the front of the classroom.” He also talked about the need for success to come from “the work of local teachers and principals; school boards and communities.” This emphasis will get us on the right track. Unfortunately states are looking at using these comments to mandate parent involvement.
When the public modern school system started taking place the only group that really broke out of this mold was the Catholic school system. So unless you are Catholic and raised Catholic until recently you likely went to public school. Using this assumption, these parents that are currently not involved, must have learned sometime in their 12-16 years of public education that they aren’t needed. They had to learn that assumption somewhere. It took a few generations for our education system to degrade to the point where it is today, it will likely take generations to fix. So how do we speed up this reversal, how do we step back?
The obvious answer is to encourage home centered education. “Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done,” the President eloquently put it. Many parents don’t feel adequate helping their child. This is because the system they went through failed them. These same adults feel the need to put their child into the same system that failed them. Many of these Adults were raised in the time our public schools ranked #1 in the world (now #9 according to PISA). That would indicate even when we were #1 our population wasn’t getting the education they needed.
Our system is designed for job training. When in our fast paced technology changing world jobs change our adult population hasn’t been trained to switch careers with easy. The problem is they were educated with a certain job in mind, instead of educated to love learning and how to learn. The people who know how to learn will not be unemployed long because they can pick up a new skill quickly. If we can teach our children today how to learn instead of learning certain subjects we can turn our education system around faster.
The only education system that teaches you how to learn is the Classical model. It is the only method that is used now to train our elite athletes; it is the method that our most learned uses, even if they don’t know that is the method they are employing. First you must know the grammar of what you are doing, swinging a bat, manufacturing tires, and developing green technologies cannot begin until you can discuss it with others and that is having a common language. The next step is practice and applying that knowledge to the unknown. The final step is explaining what you now know to someone else. A good tip in college was studying in groups and if you could explain a question and answer to the group then you likely knew it. Can you think of anything you do well that did not follow these steps? If not, then why don’t we use them to teach?