Their ancestors made the journey on a streamer carrying what they could.

Now their childrens’ children are once again picking up and moving.

In search of a better life.

These are proud and independent people. Never seeking government assistance, always searching out work, putting in a honest day and only expecting a living wage in return and the opportunity to live life and raise their children. They can’t do it in Connecticut any more and they are leaving.

I find this story strangely uplifting and an affirmation of life. Above all life finds a way. They are resilient, they are strong and they are meeting life head on and not giving up. Asking for a handout probably never occurred to them.

They are Connecticut’s daughters, they are leaving and we are diminished for their loss. When we lose them we lose a part of our history and illustrate a diminished future.

At what point do we call Connecticut a failure? Or at least failing to thrive?

When we force the stuff that America was made of to leave to thrive elsewhere? When we lose more of our children than any other state in the country?

At what point do we call Connecticut’s grand experiment a failure?

When the engines of wealth, the businesses that pay for our society leave in record numbers, making us the only state with fewer businesses than 20 years earlier?

At what point do we say, “this is not working”. What will our cities and towns look like when populated only with the poor and the rich and the much smaller barely getting by?

Qui Transtulit Sustinet it’s not just our motto it’s our curse.

.

Obama keeps talking about how he was against the war from the start, well, he was not asked and he did not vote, he was not in the Senate and they didn’t even share the Intelligence Data that Great Britain, Germany, and France had with State Senator Obama. When you don’t have a history you can write it any way you want.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

1. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

2. There is no such thing as a good tax.

3. Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.

4. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

5. We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

6. An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.

7. The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

8. From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.

9. A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. (Ok, Obama gets a pass on this one!)

10. Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.”
Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”

11. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

12. Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.

13. If you are going to go through hell, keep going.

14. It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

15. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

16. If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

17. You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.

18. History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

19. The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

20. I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

21. The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

22. A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

23. To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

24. Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of earthmoving equipment, said second-quarter earnings climbed 34 percent, exceeding analysts’ estimates, on demand for backhoes and mining equipment in Asia and the Middle East. Caterpillar rose in early U.S. trading.

Net income increased to $1.11 billion, or $1.74 a share, from $823 million, or $1.24, a year earlier, the Peoria, Illinois-based company said today in a statement. Sales increased 20 percent to $13.6 billion.

Caterpillar said developing markets may grow more than six times as fast as in North America, where in the U.S. it may be “difficult for the economy to avoid a recession” amid job cuts. Projects to build roadways and power grids increased demand for construction equipment in Asia and the Middle East, and rising prices for oil and coal spurred sales of mining machinery.

From Bloomberg.com

Key phrases:

“developing markets may grow more than six times as fast as in North America”

and

“rising prices for oil and coal spurred sales of mining machinery”

and

“exceeding analysts’ estimates, on demand for backhoes and mining equipment in Asia and the Middle East”

So, according to Obama that deep deep economic thinker, the 3 term state senator, the author of a book about himself, the man who voted “present”. Caterpillar and all the people that work for it must be thrown under the bus (we need more buses!). So that GM/Ford/Chrysler can throw up the walls of protectionism and sell us cars we don’t want.

Restriction of choice! Increased cost of consumer goods! Reduced employment!

Now that’s CHANGE that is sickening. Jimmy Carter part II.

The Students Meeting Goal is the percent of students meeting the Connecticut Goal which is tougher than the Federal No Child Left Behind Goal which is called Students Meeting Proficiency.

The Hartford Courant publishes the CT Goals and does not publish the Federal NCLB Goals. So your town did better against and maybe even met the Federal Goals.

Kinda of funny, the CMT results came out during the dog days of summer and on a Friday. Anybody home?

The goals went up 11% this year over last year and is scheduled to increase in 3 years.

School districts are judged independently on various segments within the school population, for example the Free and Reduced Lunch demographic is looked at independently, so not only does your school have to meet goals for the overall school population, the Free and Reduced Lunch group must meet goal as a separate group. This is the group school districts sweat.

Why? Because the FR group is a lower income group and kids from lower incomes do not score as well, that is a fact. One reason is they tend to move more from district to district, lower income people tend to move, a lot. Yes, there are other reasons that contribute but I don’t feel like poking that hornet’s nest right now.

One school district I know of has approximately 1/3 of the students that move out within 2 years, 1/3 that moves out within 3 to 4 years and 1/3 of kids from stable homes that don’t move. So if your district is supposed to meet a goal of 77% and 1/3 of your students are new to the district, it’s tough. You are being held accountable for the academic performance of kids who just moved in!

Some districts have as many as 90% of their kids in the Free and Reduced Lunch group.

Students not in district by Oct 1st are not included in determining if the district made goal, but the scores in the Courant included those students. So your school probably will score better with the State and Feds goals than the Courant would have you believe, after the post Oct 1st students are removed from the statistics, especially if your town has a large rental community.

Typically in this district the stable 1/3 meets goal.

So the Glastonbury’s, Avon’s, Simsbury’s or Farmington’s have a vastly different transitory student populations than the Hartford’s, Bridgeport’s etc. For these towns making goal is not dependent on the lottery of who is moving in to district or moving out.

Generally speaking if the teachers can get their hands on students and track them for a couple of years they can get them to goal. I’ve done the stats, there is a relationship between time in district and meeting goal.

Just thought you’d like to know some of the story behind the story. Is transitory kids the whole story? No just part of it. A part that I thought most people didn’t know.

Did you know some states allow the tests to be given in Spanish? CT does not.

ERG: Each town in CT is placed in an Economic Resource Group or ERG. A through I. It is purely a ranking by median income in that town. Therefore Gold Coast towns tend to be A’s and the Hartford’s tend to be I’s.

ERG ranking is a very good indication of what student performance will be. The I’s occupy the lower rankings with the A’s and B’s up top. Yes, student performance can be predicted by how much dear old Dad and Mom bring home. Successful parents (money = success) have successful kids or successful parents can give their kids all the advantages and resources?

Kinda a chicken or the egg problem. Non-fair, but through progressive socialist policies we could correct this unfair inequity in ERGs. Better yet, we should ban the concept of ERGs all together and therefore the problem would truly go away. Or better yet, let us ban all testing and then the problem would really truly go away. Or even better yet, let’s re-define success into non-monetary parameters. Oh, wait a minute wasn’t that the sixties curriculum?

Presidents must work within the political realities of within America and without to achieve the best American centric outcome. Those who had the pragmatic wisdom and experience fared the best for America.

McCain carries the scars and pains of his experience. Obama is wide eyed with grandeur unleavened by experience.

I borrow from the everydayrepublican:

Columnist Charles Krauthaumer put it best today when summing up who Barack Obama really is:
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone.

Furniture in great shape that cost $10,000’s is going for 10 cents or less on the dollar, that is IF you can get someone to come out and even look at it. Much is going in the dumpster. This is quality name brand stuff.

I’ve heard of the cardboard index, where economists track how much cardboard is being sold as a measure of the economy as a whole. And the Empty Office space index is another popular metric.

I propose a new index, The Used Cubicle index. And possibly the Dumpster Index, as businesses trash out as they close and leave.

So now in the only State of the Grand Union that has LESS businesses now than 20 years ago, what proposals have we heard from elected officials to reverse the trend?

Silence from the Capitol. Come November we need to ROAR!