Zachary Taylor was our 12th President and from the looks of him (left) he was a pretty tough customer. He had various nicknames—“Old Rough and Ready” and “Old Buena Vista” since he was the hero of the Battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican-American War. It was at this battle that he wisecracked to his men “Trust in God and keep your powder dry” (although apparently Oliver Cromwell had said it first).
Taylor was pretty upset when President James K. Polk sent Gen. Winfield Scott to capture Mexico City instead of him. He said “the battle of Buena Vista opened the road to the city of Mexico and the halls of Montezuma, that others might revel in them.” (in case you were wondering where the phrase in The Marines’ Hymn came from).
When running for President his campaign slogan was “a President for the People”.
He was born in Orange County, Virginia, on September 24, 1784.
Why do so many government programs fail? We’ve seen it time and time again. A need is identified, a program is formulated and put into place, everything starts out well enough, and then, perhaps over time, something happens. The program doesn’t achieve its goals. Or the amount of resources needed for it to achieve its goals are vastly more than expected.
We’ve seen this in Social Security, Medicare, the Great Society programs, and the public school system. Is it waste, fraud, and abuse (those favorite whipping-boys of legislators)? Welfare cheats? Incompetence? Just needs a little fine tuning? We’re not spending enough (no matter how much we seem to be spending)? [continue reading…]
William Holmes McGuffey, author and compiler of the McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers series, was born on September 23, 1800. He wrote his first readers in 1836. By the time he died in 1873 his books were being used all over the United States.
In addition to reading the McGuffey Readers taught the moral and intellectual virtues of integrity, honesty, kindness, temperance, true patriotism, courage, and politeness. Forgive me but I think we could use a lot more of all of these.
In accordance with his contract, Mr. McGuffey received only $1,000 for his work. If he had received one penny for each book sold, he would have received $1,220,000. He wasn’t interested in money. He wanted to educate kids. And that’s what he did. [continue reading…]
This is my post on education in response to Jeff Jarvis’s call for input on the issues in his Issues 2004 series. If you’re looking for background information on the educational system in the United States, here are a few good places to start:
The public educational system in the United States is overwhelmingly locally financed just as it is locally administered and this is appropriate. Wage levels, the labor pool, the needs of the populace, and prevailing cultural standards vary from place to place in the country. The federal government should not be seen by states or local school systems as an alternative to local financing and, therefore, I don’t believe in increasing the level of federal funding for education except in certain specific areas.
But the federal government definitely has a role to play. [continue reading…]
There’s a nice succinct state-of-the-health-care industry quote on The Health Care Blog:
For the perfect Adam Smith market to appear in health care, information and expertise has to appear on the consumer side, and monopolies have to be broken on the producer side.
As I suggested in this post, I don’t think you can get there from here. Even a little freer market would be a move in the right direction but the producers won’t abandon their monopolies without help.
Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball has a thorough rundown of where things stand in the presidential, Congressional, Senatorial, and gubernatorial races. Must read for political junkies!
As a warm-up for the upcoming presidential debates between George W. Bush and John Kerry, I went back and read James Fallows’s brilliant analysis of Mssrs. Bush’s and Kerry’s debating styles from a few months ago in The Atlantic Monthly, “When George Meets John”. If you haven’t read the article you should go there now and read it. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Fallows really did his homework and I believe that his analysis is spot-on.
I expect both candidates to be in their element in these debates. Bush is simply the best there is at staying “on message”. He will quickly turn every question from whatever source on whatever subject back to his core message. That has been his debate style since his debates with Ann Richards in Texas. And Kerry has been practicing thinking quickly on his feet in debates since he was in prep school.
Anyone who expects a blowout or rout in one direction or another simply hasn’t been paying attention. So what can we expect in the presidential debates? [continue reading…]
Joe Katzman of Winds of Change points out that jinnderella, frequent commenter on WoC, has a blog of her own now: Hot Needles of Inquiry. Several of her posts involve mythic imagery especially as it relates to the War on Terror. Interesting, imaginative stuff.
This post, for example, relates the myth of Cupid and Psyche to the War on Terror. jinnderella, I think there’s another myth you should consider: the myth of Antaeus [continue reading…]
Along with Jeff, I believe that we need to be taking homeland security more seriously. Here in my home state of Illinois there was an incident (registration required) yesterday that showed that the folks in Springfield weren’t taking security seriously. A man walked into the State Capitol and shot an unarmed security guard dead. The security guard was unarmed. There were no metal detectors in the Capitol. What are the state legislators waiting for? Permission from the Department of Homeland Security? They don’t need it.
This guy could have been a terrorist armed with an automatic weapon, an RPG, or rigged as a suicide bomber for all they knew. That’s not taking the situation seriously. [continue reading…]
Zachary Taylor was our 12th President and from the looks of him (left) he was a pretty tough customer. He had various nicknames—“Old Rough and Ready” and “Old Buena Vista” since he was the hero of the Battle of Buena Vista in the Mexican-American War. It was at this battle that he wisecracked to his men “Trust in God and keep your powder dry” (although apparently Oliver Cromwell had said it first).
