Month: August 2014

       There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch- Wrong

In Baton Rouge it was announced that 42,000 students in the East Baton Rouge Parish will be provided with free lunch for the school year. The district will take advantage of a new federal initiative that will allow schools in high poverty areas to receive a free meal without the parents filling out forms.

Known as the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, it will begin to expand across the nation this year and will be under the direction of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The East Baton Rouge Parish school system will be providing free lunch to its almost 42,000 students, including thousands who in the past had to pay for their meals.

For more on the article go to: Baton Rouge The Advocate

How do schools qualify for this program? If 40% of your students participate in the food stamp program or if they are living in foster care or in the Head Start program then that number counts to the 40 percent mark.

Some school districts across the country have held off pursuing community eligibility because of concerns about losing funds from the federal anti-poverty Title I program, which relies on income surveys parents traditionally fill out to qualify for subsidized meals, and other programs that rely on such information.

To overcome that problem, East Baton Rouge is shifting the questions on its meal survey, called “Application for Meal Benefits,” to a new form known as the “Title 1 Data Form.” In Baton Rouge, only students who don’t receive food stamps, or are otherwise not identified, will have to fill out these new data forms.

The opinions in this blog belong to Tom Knuppel

Today, I am not giving my opinion in this blog except to say I agree with Mark Cuban on colleges, college debt and consolidation of universities and colleges. I will add some numbers I found at the bottom of the blog.

Is a four-year college a good investment today?

That question was asked to businessman Mark Cuban in an interview with CNN and he had this to say:

If you pick the right one, yes. Kids should go to school. But you should only pick a school that you can graduate from with little or no debt. You don’t need a boat anchor of college debt killing your ability to reach your goals. The biggest drain on our economy today is student debt.

Student debt is a big deal. So how do we reduce it?

Cuban had an idea on that issue, too.

We should put a limit on the amount of federal guarantees available for student loans. If we started a program that put a limit at $50,000 per year next year, then $40,000 in three years, then $30,000 in six years, down to $10,000 in 10 years, you would see the price of education drop like a rock.

Student loan guarantees are like the easy money that led to the real estate and financial crash six years ago.

On Merging Colleges:

Universities and colleges would merge and find themselves forced to be far more effective. The best analogy I can give you is that student loan guarantees are like the easy money that led to the real estate and financial crash six years ago. Schools raise tuition because they know the money is there.

What the (Obama) administration is doing now to try to slow tuition increases will have a minuscule impact. Put a cap on student loans, and you will find college affordable for everyone very quickly. There may be fewer, more efficient and more targeted schools, but it will be more than supplemented by customized education.

One anecdote: I was speaking to a large group of political supporters. People who had donated a ton to campaigns. I asked them who thought tuitions were too high. Hands went up. I asked which of them had put their name on anything at a college campus. Hands stayed up.

Then I made them realize they were part of the problem. If you donate money to build a building, you aren’t helping; you are hurting. Buildings cost money to maintain. Forever. And ever. They drain resources and don’t create any. Other than special lab environments, a desk or seat for a sociology, business, psychology or writing class works the same in every building.

We don’t need new buildings, new cafeterias, new fitness centers on the campus. Let the local markets take care of those.

What we need is a reasonable cost of education that doesn’t require students to go into debt. When that happens, not only will more kids go to college, but the economy will explode from all the money moving from debt to spending.

Editor’s Note- I have always admired the way Mark Cuban has handled business. In fact, I like his methods much better than Donald Trump. Here are some numbers I found through searching the internet on the number of colleges and universities per state.

STATE                    # INSTITUTIONS

• Alaska                   AK          35
• Alabama              AL           129
• Arkansas              AR          108
• Arizona                AZ           156
• California             CA          1246
• Colorado              CO          171
• Connecticut        CT           115
• District of Columbia         DC          33
• Delaware             DE           23
• Florida                  FL            439
• Georgia                                GA          210
• Guam                    GU         2
• Hawaii                   HI            43
• Iowa                      IA            107
• Idaho                    ID            33
• Illinois                   IL             392
• Indiana                IN           175
• Kansas                  KS           99
• Kentucky             KY           165
• Louisiana             LA           174
• Massachusetts  MA         261
• Maryland             MD         148
• Maine                   ME         60
• Michigan              MI          302
• Minnesota          MN        169
• Missouri               MO        242
• Mississippi          MS         69
• Montana             MT         54
• North Carolina   NC          188
• North Dakota     ND          30
• Nebraska             NE          68
• New Hampshire               NH          43
• New Jersey        NJ           207
• New Mexico      NM        61
• Nevada                                NV          77
• New York            NY          633
• Ohio                      OH          386
• Oklahoma           OK          158
• Oregon                OR          125
• Pennsylvania     PA          544
• Puerto Rico         PR           161
• Rhode Island      RI            37
• South Carolina   SC           97
• South Dakota     SD           33
• Tennessee          TN          191
• Texas                    TX           506
• Utah                      UT          60
• Virginia                VA          222
• Virgin Islands     VI            2
• Vermont              VT           32
• Washington        WA         164
• Wisconsin            WI          132
• West Virginia     WV         99
• Wyoming             WY         17

That is just staggering. Look at all that duplication of services and costs.

“What’s for Dinner?” Even a simple question like that can tip the scales for a person that has been dealing with decision after decision in a non-stop fashion. It is called Decision Fatigue.

It turns out that making decisions is actually very stressful.  As we make hundreds of decisions each day on matters big and small, the cumulative stress adds up.  It’s called decision fatigue, and it can often lead us to shut down and do nothing. With our instant communication and constant information overload, we feel decision fatigue now more than ever. You know it’s gotten bad when deciding whether to “like” something, actually hurts your brain.

There are many factors that lead to this condition. Many refer to some kind of fear. What if I make the wrong decision? What if I want to do something else late? Decisions can be changed and people are allowed to change their choices.

Some fears are based on a person’s lack of abilities or perceived abilities. What if it is too hard and I can do it? People will help. The decision I make could look foolish to other people. So what? Let people take care of themselves first. Failure happens.

Probably the biggest fear may be commitment. What am I getting myself into? Will I ever get out of it? People will step up to the plate if it is too much for you.

We make decisions every day; everything we say and do is the result of a decision, whether we make it consciously or not. For every choice, big or small, there’s no easy formula for making the right decision. The best you can do is to approach it from as many perspectives as possible and then choose a course of action that seems reasonable and balanced at that time.

“Waiting hurts. Forgetting hurts. But not knowing which decision to take can sometimes be the most painful…”  ― José N. Harris

The opinions in this blog are those of Tom Knuppel

Is Google Justified in Reading Emails?

I asked that question because last week Google informed the Houston police that a man has a database of illegal and pornographic images of children. Now we can all agree that one child predator is off the streets. But are they a friend or foe in going further?

However, what makes us believe they stop there? Nothing. Most people understand that Google will use software to scan email and images in order for them to feed its advertising needs. But many people likely don’t know or were unaware, that the company is also scanning users’ accounts with the purpose of identifying illegal activity.

According to this article in the Washington Post:

While it’s hard to argue with the outcome of this particular case, the news did raise some alarm bells among researchers at the security firm Sophos, who questioned whether Google was stepping outside its place as a company and into the role of a pseudo law enforcement agency. Chester Wisniewski, a senior security researcher at Sophos, said that Google’s “proactive” decision to tip off law enforcement makes “some of us wonder if they’re crossing the line.”

Many security firms, including Sophos, occasionally find themselves in a situation where they come across child pornography among the files they scan for clients, and in those cases, those companies report those images to the police. But the difference is that Sophos and other companies don’t actively go looking for these images in their routine scans, as Google appears to have done with the software it uses on customers’ e-mails in the course of routine scanning for ad keywords and malicious software.

I think they have overstepped on this one. What do you think?

Friend or Foe?

The opinions in this blog belong to Tom Knuppel