And the D96 school board has the audacity to rob us little folks of money that we may or may not have to give it to Lamberson-. The very same people who gave the FIFTH GRADERS $170 thousand dollars worth of laptop computers. Can a school board member tell me why?
The D208 school board isn't looking very good, either, giving the teachers a 25% tax increase. Hands----who lost a job this year? Who is worried about losing theirs in the near future?
anonymous, I think if you want your D96 concerns addressed by the board, you should direct them there. They cannot participate as board members here.
http://www.district96.org/school-board/
And the $170K in laptops that were purchased was already budgeted for computer purchases, so there was no increased cost there.
Item 18 in this FAQ:
http://www.district96.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/faq-update-5-6-09.pdf
We might also want to redirect this discussion to one of the education/funding topics instead of Don's "signs of the times" topic.
http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/the-600000-gift-real-cost-of-20-pay-bump
http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/open-letter-to-d96-board-of-education
http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/d-96-dollars-and-sense-1
http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/sun-times-top-100-schools
Sign of the times: Inappropriate and outrageous government spending on all levels.
It has to stop--because we are finding that more banks are failing, more retail stores are closing, more jobs are being lost, and more homes are in foreclosure. Have I left anything out?
The school members may not respond to this blog, but I bet that they read it. They need to be aware of the sentiment of the community. They need to read what spatny has posted.
Isn't RB broke? I thought I read that they are $600,000 in the hole, and about one million for next year. D96 is flush with cash with a surplus because they over-tax us.
We can't keep up with the salaries and pensions. We received our tax bill last week. I don't know how I will pay my taxes. Hands, everyone, if you are worried about the same thing. But most government employees don't have to worry. They have a nice guaranteed salary with an even nicer guaranteed pensions---and that is a sign of the times.
also, I think this last two posts could go in the following thread.
http://www.riversideinfo.org/forum/topic/your-5th-grader-needs-his-own-laptop/page/5#post-11331
In this thread there is a discussion of the FAQ that chrishajer referred to above. THe last I checked in that thread there were open unanswered questions about the cost of the program that were not adequately answered in that faq. For example, a one-to-one coordinator needed to be hired.
and yes, anonymous should bring his or her concerns to the d96 boe. HOwever, this space is good to vent, and to vette, as well as reality test issues in a 'rough draft ' form before bringing them to the almighty OZ, the d96 boe/superintendant industrial complex :)
Don, while its an interesting read, the bullionbulls of canada obviously have a bias were by the tanking of the stock market and housing market would cause a flight to ???? precious metals!! The touting and dire predictions almost smack of lunatic conspiracy theory sites I go look at to get a good chuckle.
Well, gold is very high so it must be working. The point is, if you look at MERS, the courts are starting to recognize the situation with defining true ownership of the mortgages they are holding. All this came from Goldman Sachs and their ilk, and guess who was in charge when it happened - Paulson. The lenders and the brokers loved this because they pushed the risk on to someone else, and were able to leverage their funds to impossible numbers - that's fact, not fiction. If credit default swaps had been labeled what they are - insurance- the big banks would have had to keep much higher reserves. When these were allowed to go unregulated, that was the go-ahead for the boom - and the bust. Look where you like - there is no place where CDSs are registered, so no one knows who stands to gain or how big the risk is now. But it will have to be dealt with. It won't go away on its own.
Here's a sign of the times: criminals too poor to afford masks, so they used permanent marker to color their faces.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33519617/ns/us_news-weird_news/
Here's a really interesting short story from the BBC - about two small midwest towns and immigration... a seemingly insoluble problem.
And the beat goes on... Former NYC Police Chief and blowhard pleads guilty to all kind of stuff. He's looking at some serious time... a tough way to get job security in a bad economy. Hope he likes wearing a jumpsuit and eating from a tray...
The DOW closes over 10,000. Before you open the bubbly...
(Stock and commodity prices are soaring as speculators pour cheap US dollars into red-hot markets. Policymakers are plotting how to contain the damage.
[Related content: financial crisis, interest rates, recession, investing strategy, Federal Reserve]
By The Wall Street Journal
Concerns are mounting that efforts by governments and central banks to stoke a recovery will create a nasty side effect: asset bubbles in real-estate, stock and currency markets, especially in Asia.
Cheap money and asset bubbles
The World Bank warned on Nov. 3 that the sudden reappearance of billions of dollars in investment capital in East Asia is "raising concerns about asset price bubbles" in equity markets across Asia and in real estate in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam.
On the same day, the International Monetary Fund cited "a risk" that surging Hong Kong asset prices are being driven by a flood of capital "divorced from fundamental forces of supply and demand."
Behind the trend are measures such as cutting interest rates and pumping money into the financial system, which have left parts of the world awash in cash and at risk of bubbles, or run-ups in asset prices beyond what economic fundamentals suggest are reasonable.
Prices are surging across a host of markets. Gold, up about 44% this year, soared to a record high Nov. 3. Copper is up about 50% in the past year. In the United States, risky assets are rising rapidly in price: The risk spreads, or interest-rate premiums, on low-rated junk bonds have narrowed to about where they were in February 2008, before Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. fell, according to Barclays Capital.
Policymakers from Beijing to London, seared by the fallout from burst housing and credit bubbles, are searching for ways to head off new ones. How to handle a bubble "is one of the big two or three unanswered questions at the end of this crisis," says Adair Turner, chairman of the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority. Bank of Korea Governor Lee Seong-tae hinted last month he would raise interest rates, if necessary, to prevent Seoul's housing market from lurching out of control.
"This is the beginning of another big and excessive run-up in asset prices," said Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist.)
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