Author: Tom Knuppel

Time for Free College Tuition- Don’t be a Cash Cow

Tom Knuppel Society
Time for Free College Tuition- Don’t be a Cash Cow

Let’s not base our education system in this country on whether the parents can or can’t afford to send their child. Let’s make it for everyone. Let’s not make our college tuition a means to make money for the college. Let’s follow Germany and make higher education free.

Sixty-two percent of students are unable to afford college in the U.S. today, according to a Huffington Post poll. An annual 8 percent increase in tuition costs makes matters worse, meaning college education costs double every nine years.

“For a baby born today, this means that college costs will be more than three times current rates when the child matriculates in college,” according to the Smart Student Guide to Financial Aid, a website that helps students with financial aid information.

 On Oct. 4, Germany’s higher education officially went tuition free, according to Forbes’ website. German Senator Dorothee Stapelfeldt said in a September interview with the European Times tuition fees are unfair because students deserve to be able to study at an excellent university without charge.

“Tuition fees are unjust. They discourage young people who do not have a traditional academic family background from taking up study,” Stapelfeldt said. “It is a core task of politics to ensure that young women and men can study with a high quality standard free of charge in Germany.”

“We got rid of tuition fees because we do not want higher education which depends on the wealth of the parents,” said Gabrielle Heinen-Kjajic, the minister for the science and culture in Lower Saxony, Germany.

Germany is the most recent nation to hop on the free tuition bandwagon, others include Malta, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Cyprus and Norway. Many countries have out-of-country tuition for foreign exchange students as well, lowering hopes of free foreign exchange for American students. Germany announced on Oct. 9 it would extend free tuition to American students. American exchange students only need to pay their home tuition.

 

America does not care for its students as it should, and students are instead treated as cash cows.

America treats colleges as an institution to make money instead of institution for higher education. They charge outlandish prices for tuition and for books that they get very cheaply. If America were to treat their students and colleges like the European nations treat theirs, we would have a higher rate of educated population and, as a result, a lower rate of poverty and crime.

So when will America follow this free tuition trend? Likely answer:  “Never.”

“To-Do” Lists- The Right and Wrong Ways to Make a List

Tom Knuppel Other
“To-Do” Lists- The Right and Wrong Ways to Make a List

 

 

For me, having a plan has always helped, and every good plan comes with a list. A to-do list of things you hope to accomplish, or a list of work that needs to get done.

 

There is a right way and a wrong way to make a to-do list according to Forbes. They will tell you that a big mistake is making the list of poor quality. Afterall, if you get everything done, even if menial, you have accomplished something. Many times the harder chores are at the bottom of the list and we add things to the top just to avoid that longer and longer. Forbes’s suggestion is to find a way to eliminate many of the little tasks by combining them. When that happens, a person will feel more accomplished and will ultimately become more successful over time when it comes to completing tasks.

 

Another problem is the list is torturous. That means the list is long and mostly never ends and we become stressed in life and believe we are not accomplishing anything. Focus on the task at hand and quit all the worrying about the end result of accomplishment. By doing this, the probability is higher that the tasks will get done, and you will be more productive when completing the tasks.

 

I searched around for secrets to creating a successful list and didn’t find anything very concrete. Forbes suggest to keep the list small with maybe no more than three things on it. Do a “mind dump” and write down everything you need to do to clear your head but don’t create the list just yet. Now divide them into separate lists that may be done by days of the week to keep from overwhelming yourself. One thing to remember is to also create a schedule of when things are due in order to make your to-do include items in order of the highest priority level to the lowest.

 

Another idea is to make the list just prior to when you plan to work on it. Maybe just the night before. Then when you get up and are ready the items are fresh in your mind and you have a plan to get things done. Then you can spend your time getting the tasks done instead of wasting time and energy of thinking about what tasks need to be completed.

The first thing you should do in the morning is to tackle the first item on your list. The morning is the time of the day when you are the most fresh, so having a harder task at the top of your list is a benefit not only to you, but also to the item that you need to accomplish.

Ok, that about covers it. Now I am going to make a to-do blog list of upcoming blogs.

 

I might wait until tomorrow. Ah, procrastination might be good topic.

Politeness Shouldn’t be Selective

Tom Knuppel Family
Politeness Shouldn’t be Selective

 

Manners are something that just comes natural with some people. Sometimes it amazes me to see it in some people and not others in the same family. I was expected to be nice and say no sir and no ma’am and thank you along with excuse me. I always said please and thank you, and didn’t find it odd that these simple adages were expected of me; it was part of how I was raised, and it went a long way to showing mutual respect for another person by being polite to them.

The amazing part is some people are downright offensive to you using manners. They freak out, they cuss you out, they demean you for doing something your parents told you was the right thing to do. Elderly ladies don’t like to be call ma’am for many reasons and one of them it makes them sound old. Hmm. Politeness shouldn’t be selective, it should be given to everybody regardless of age, position in society or skin color. It shows you want to show respect.

 

I just don’t understand the reasoning behind becoming offended by, or being opposed to, being called ma’am or sir. I understand that in our society, which constantly struggles for progress, some people may see it as archaic in nature, an unnecessary representation of inferiority to another person or some other such intellectual nonsense that makes everybody’s head hurt. However, it’s insulting that the respect you show somebody is thrown right back at you, like he or she rejects your show of politeness just because his or her idea of what being polite means differs from yours. You’re left wondering how to respond to them while foregoing everything you have been taught to do when addressing another person. It’s offensive to be told that your show of respect isn’t accepted, and makes you feel as if it isn’t returned, either.

I once opened the door for two ladies going into a department store and one of them stopped and told me she could open her own d___ door. I just looked and her and said, ” I’m sorry for trying to be polite.” She didn’t respond.

I’m not going to stop practicing politeness because people may no longer expect it.

Weather Reporting Should Not be a Ratings Grab

Tom Knuppel Society
Weather Reporting Should Not be a Ratings Grab

 

 

Sensationalism. IS that what it truly has become? Such a simple thing a few years ago as people want to know the weather forecast so they can make plans. Now it has become an event. It really isn’t the fact that the storms are more violent or more frequent.

It seems that, much like the rest of the news and media, that weather has become as sensationalized as anything else. And it’s really becoming pretty annoying, and I think could have a detrimental effect on how people perceive the warnings given out by weather outlets.

 

You’ve heard it. It isn’t the weather report, it is STORM TRACKER NEWS.  Doesn’t matter whether the sun is out or not. Think about this. Go online or the television weather and they are touting a strong storm for Saturday and it is Wednesday. Really is that necessary?

 

According to the National Weather service, forecasters have reduced the tornado death rate by 95 percent, almost completely reduced plane crashes caused by micro-burst downdrafts and have saved ten of thousands of lives from hurricanes. All thanks to technology. Without the Doppler radar we couldn’t see what was going on inside the thunderstorm. Before the invention of the Doppler radar people only had between five and 10 minutes to prepare for approaching severe weather.

I get that, I really do.

Look back at recent forecasts and now the tornado tracking has appeared to basically eliminate the tornado watches and they use the tornado warning so much more. They are relying on storm chasers that see some rotation and it is report first here at the station. They want to be first.

Of course I think that people need to be warned of bad weather coming…it’s the only reason the death rate from severe storms has dropped so much in the last century. But if you keep making apocalyptic claims for every storm that blows through, people will stop listening after a while. And then we are right back where we started.

 

Weather reporting should not be a ratings grab.

 

This blog is the opinion of Tom Knuppel

Why is Buying a Car a Horrible Experience?

Tom Knuppel Society
Why is Buying a Car a Horrible Experience?

 

 

Why is Buying a Car A Horrible Experience?

 

Let me get one thing out first. Not everyone has a bad experience. But research states that buying a car is one of the top horrible experiences that happen to people. Even worse than cellphone companies.

 

We are deluged with car ads on TV and in the print media. They show people walking up to a car and saying things like “I’ll take it.” Seriously? Nobody does that. But let’s go back a bit and try to fix the car buying experience instead of the bombardment of advertising. Fix it.

 

Researchers have stated that according to advertising dollars in the U.S., there will be over $20 billion spent on ads for vehicles.

 

Dealerships need to adhere to the old adage that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Use it, don’t abuse it. Oh and a side note, if you find tackier chairs and furniture somewhere other than a dealership, you have made a discovery.

 

When you walk into a dealership it is an unfriendly looking place. Most the salespeople we encountered were sitting around looking dour when we arrived and, I’m sad to say, our arrival didn’t seem to cheer them up. One’s enthusiasm soon falls by the wayside in the presence of people with low energy, negative affect, and few conversational skills.

I have a thought for the sales department. Why not treat customers with respect and it wouldn’t hurt to flatter their intelligence instead of telling them what they don’t know or care about. While you are at it, let’s get new sales techniques.

 

Why do they have to make the visit longer. They prolong it by asking un-needed questions and look at things were are not interested in. According to research, if we are there a longer period of time we are more likely to buy from the dealer as we have invested time and they are escalating our commitment and now we feel vested to buy there. This is known as “establishing control”.

Hello. Customers tend to rebel against this attempt to limit their behavior. It is a real battle and the dealerships are digging in.

Simple fat….the more the salespeople tried to get us to do what they wanted, the more we got irritated and started to leave.

 

According to an article written in CBS News:

A better approach would be to use the influence tactics of liking and reciprocity, nicely described in social psychologist Robert Cialdini’s book on Influence. Reciprocity entails doing a favor for someone so they will reciprocate — which, in the car buying experience, involves more than just offering coffee or water, but also trying to accommodate customers’ schedules and requests. People are more likely to comply with requests from someone they like, and people tend to like people who flatter them, smile, and are pleasant — not people who try to bully and intimidate.

 

Car dealers do seem to have one thing going for them — in our many visits to dealers of various makes and models, we had virtually uniformly horrible experiences. I guess the companies figure if you’re going to buy a car and the dealers are all equally bad, one of them will get your business.

 

It would be interesting to know if a better car buying experience might help perk up car sales. Meanwhile, fixing these problems wouldn’t take much. And it would be a lot less expensive than the massive advertising designed to get you to go to a car dealer only to soon wish you hadn’t.

 

Let me share a few of mine over the years.

 

Many years ago I went to a dealer without my wife as an exploratory mission to look for a new vehicle. I was going to rule out certain makes and models which included their price tag. A salesman dogged me around the lot trying to get information from me as to “what is your price?” and how many miles and things like that… and of course my address and phone number.

Then I found a car I was interested in and asked him for a price. He was stunned. He gave me a ballpark figure and I asked for something concrete. He stammered and asked me “who else has to share in this decision?”. I told him it would be my wife and I and the price would be discussed by both of us. He shook his head and said that he couldn’t give me a price without my wife. Then I told him she was busy and couldn’t he proceeded in re-stating he wouldn’t give me a price in that case. I countered with just give me a price. His line was “I won’t give you a price without your wife seeing it” to which I replied she can’t. He just shook his head and said”she has to see it and be here with you.” Then I dropped the false line that ws said in a raised voice…..  “look buddy, she can’t see it. My wife is blind.” My brother was with me and he just about lost it as the salesperson said… “Oh.”

I walked out.

 

Another time my wife and I were together and found one we liked and inquired to price. Here is what the salesman said, “ Just sign these papers and I will bring back the best price I can.” Uh, no.

 

I have heard of salesmen getting your keys to drive your trade in and then refusing to give them back until they have had you there for hours in an attempt to sell a car.

 

Just a few weeks ago I drove through a car lot real slow looking at pickups and lo and behold a sales guy steps out in the center of the lane with both hands up to stop me. I thought about not seeing him but I stopped and he asked me questions and wanted my phone number. No thanks.

 

Why can’t this experience get better?

This blog written by Tom Knuppel

Do Political Candidates Just Flat-Out Lie?

Tom Knuppel Other
Do Political Candidates Just Flat-Out Lie?

 

 

Truth. Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as time goes by, what is true is revealed, and what is fake fades away.

When an election is here, the truth becomes elusive.

There are some places you can look at that checks the facts but more on that later. When a political campaign is in full swing, candidates begin stretching their thoughts which in turn stretches the facts and distorts things. Numbers seem to grow or shrink depending on if it makes the person look good.

Don’t you just love political mailers? We, the voters, get way too many things in the mail about their views or even a chance to write negative things about their opponents. It is a fact that you can believe what you want in the political year as psychologists have research that shows people tend to have a strong connection to accepting anything near what they believe without question. In other words, if it is close to their views, they accept it as fact and the line is not blurred. It confirms their position.

 

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. ~Richard Armour

 

Where can you find unbiased political information? Here are some sites that check the facts. They vet the information.

 

  • FactCheck.org – This is from the University of Pennsylvania and they use former journalists to research and offer analysis on the things being said and written by candidates. Recent articles included a look at Republican claims that the new healthcare law is a job-killer, as well as an analysis of President Obama’s accuracy in the State of the Union address. The site addresses individual claims, searching for original source material and relying on statistics from reputable entities, such as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
  • PolitiFacts.org – they have a truth-o-meter and rate claims made and track whether campaign promises are fulfilled. This site has 35 editors and reporters devoting time to the cause. It was founded by the Tampa Bay Times.
  • The Fact Checker – this offers analysis of political claims and is the brainchild of The Washington Post and Glenn Kessler.
  • VoteSmart.org – This site offers checking in six area which include financing, voting records and position on issues among other things. They don’t look into promises or statements.

 

Some things you can do to understand the process is to ask questions. When you go to a website look at it and read who is actually producing it. This will help you decide if they lean in one direction or the other. Sometimes claims of nonpartisan-ism is not valid. Another thing is to follow the money involved and evaluate who is funding this endeavor. Then analyze the site. Is it leaning too far one way or another and what sort of balance to they bring to the political process.

 

Doing your own due diligence will help you make a more informed decision when you step into a polling place.

 

Has Sports Become Too Big?

Tom Knuppel Other
Has Sports Become Too Big?

 

“Over the past two weeks, two of the most historically successful [college basketball] programs have been in the news for all the wrong reasons.” – Bill Littlefield

 

Let’s consider the impact sports has on the average American family. This time of year kids and their families are spending 4-6 nights per week on the ball diamonds or soccer fields and to some extent summer basketball and camps galore. There is a cost to all of this but I am not really talking about the financial cost but the wear-and-tear it has on the kids and the families. It is tremendous how many parents “get into” the game and look for chances to make their child better and better. The financial cost is no object. After all, is he/she makes it big into professional sports they are set, as in the moms and dads involved, for the rest of their life.

But the whole moral compass to keep athletics on the straight and narrow is going down the tubes. It is a dog-eat-dog world that will stop at nothing to succeed in sports. Look around, look at the news makers in sports in the past year or so.

I am not saying anyone is guilty here, I am saying it made news.

In the high school and junior high ranks we find coaches attempting to put together summer teams, like AAU basketball, in hopes they can influence college coaches and garner money for the kids that they may share with their old AAU coach and he can buy more influence. Many times they are not doing it for the “love of the kids” but for the love of notoriety for themselves and influence pedaling.

In college, UNC and Texas, we have allegations that they have participated in academic cheating. Why would they do that, aren’t they a place of higher learning? Yes they are but that is not what people are interested in. It is having the local college succeed in athletics. It makes the university a lot of money and the athletes get noticed from the levels higher and money flows. Make the athletes eligible at any cost. They must play. As for the coaches, their salaries are in the millions of dollars to coach for one year. They are signing 5-10 year multi-million dollar contracts because they are successful. It behooves them to win.

The pros have issues too. We have the football scandals that involves finding a way to help your team win. It is all about the money now and in the future. The deflate-gate is spot on for that. Right now, the Cardinals are being investigated for computer hacking into the database of another team. Maybe to gain a competitive advantage? We shall see how that turns out.

Players are using performance enhancing drugs to help them have great seasons. The list is far from exhaustive.

Look at the World Cup resignations this past month. That was about pay-offs for countries to host the Cup and bring in large sums of millions.

 

What can we do? It has gotten so large it will be hard to ever return to ground zero. It only is going to grow and have more and more and larger and larger issues with athletics. This is a sad time.

 

Any thoughts?

 

 

 

 

This is Why President’s Make News Announcements During the Holidays

Tom Knuppel Other
This is Why President’s Make News Announcements During the Holidays

 

Have you looked at the news today for any reaction to the resignation of the Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagle? There is not much there and that was by design.

No press releases, no statements on Facebook or twitter from anyone in Iowa’s current Congressional delegation or newly-elected delegation.

Does that strike anyone else as odd? I would have thought the defense secretary resigning after less than two years on the job, probably under pressure from the president, possibly over disagreement with the administration’s approach to Iraq and Syria, would be big news. Just look around Hagle’s home state of Iowa and there is virtually nothing in the news. Representative Dave Loebsack sits on the House Armed Services Committee. Senator-elect Joni Ernst has claimed to have a strong interest in our country’s Middle East policy, since her “boots were on that ground” now controlled by ISIS. Senator Chuck Grassley served with Hagel for years and will have a vote on confirming his successor at the Pentagon. Newly-elected Republicans Rod Blum (IA-01) and David Young (IA-03) both criticized the Obama administration’s policy in Iraq during this year’s campaign.

This is why presidents bury big news during holiday weeks, when elected representatives and their staffers are out of the office.

Civil Disobedience is the Key, not Civil Unrest

Tom Knuppel Society
Civil Disobedience is the Key, not Civil Unrest

 

 

With the things that are currently going on across America we have discovered an ugly side to our society. People are not willing to wait for peaceful talk, elections to initiate change or other avenues that lead to non-violence. They turn to the streets and face the police head on with rocks, bottles and guns. They march their home turf with baseball bats and clubs to smash the windows of the businesses of their neighbors in the attempt to solidify their point.

It doesn’t appear civil disobedience is the trendy thing

 

The United States has a long history of civil disobedience as a means to protest injustice. Sometimes civil disobedience takes the form of a peaceful protest. Other times, it takes the form of disobeying an unjust law. The right to civil disobedience has been acknowledged by prominent thinkers in every generation:

 

  • “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

  • “It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.”
    • Aristotle

 

  • “Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.”
    • Albert Einstein

 

  • “It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
    • Voltaire

 

One of the earliest and most iconic acts of civil disobedience in America was the Boston Tea Party. On 16 Dec. 1773, “a group of Massachusetts Patriots, protesting the monopoly on American tea importation recently granted by Parliament to the East India Company, seized 342 chests of tea in a midnight raid on three tea ships and threw them into the harbor.”  The action was illegal, but essentially peaceful. It was a protest of unjust taxes and of restrictions on commerce imposed on the colonies by the British government.

Change isn’t change if they have to get it done through force and violence. It is breaking the law.

The Political Middle is Gone -Which Means No Deals

Tom Knuppel Other
The Political Middle is Gone -Which Means No Deals

Right of Liberalism and left of Conservatism is the place where the majority of American electorate resides. It is the place where calm reasoned logic supersedes screaming, reactionary tomfoolery. It is where the typical politicians go running to after they have “secured” their base; and where they go running from when there are no more campaigns to wage. However, it is where the future of American politics resides.

 

Looking for the political middle in Congress? It’s gone.

In 1982, there were 344 Members whose voting records fell somewhere between the most conservative voting Democrat and the most liberal voting Republican in the House. Thirty years later, there were 11. That means that in 1982 the centrists — or at least those who by voting record were somewhere near the middle of their respective parties — comprised 79 percent of the House. In 2012 they made up 2.5 percent of the House. So, yeah.

There are any number of reasons for this disappearance — partisan gerrymandering and closed primaries being the two most obvious — but the numbers are unbelievably stark, particularly when you consider that roughly 30 percent of the electorate consider themselves political independents. (According to exit polling, 29 percent of people named themselves independents in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.)

This explains why there will be no grand or even big bargain on debt and spending — or much of anything else — anytime soon. The political incentive to make deals simply does not exist in the House and, in fact, there is almost always a disincentive for members to work across the aisle.The deal-makers — as we have seen from the last month in the House — are largely gone. The two people who do seem capable of crafting deals — Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — come from a different time in politics. (Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972, McConnell in 1984.) The middle’s voice in the House is so soft as to be almost non-existent. And it’s hard to see that changing — at least in the near term.

All of which means one thing: No deal(s)