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Showing posts from March, 2009

The Housing Buble and Utah Education funding

The other day, someone asked me if I thought property taxes were still an appropriate way to fund education. Although I have an opinion on this question, I didn't respond. But the question started me thinking about how the current economic situation will affect education funding. About the only folks that haven't heard about the collapse of a housing bubble nationwide are folks living in caves in the Himalayas. Housing prices are falling in every market in the country, and the big question is how far will they fall. Some analysts believe the bubble started just after 2000-2001. One analyst I read recently says the "bubble" has been building since the Johnson administration, another says it started in the 40's. Here in Utah, prices have fallen at least 20%. Looking at the US Census Bureau's housing price data, it isn't hard to make a case that the numbers will fall quite a ways. Inflation adjusted median home price, nationwide, in 1940 was $30,600 (2000 dol

Ten Differences Between Current Recession & Great Depression

The other day I was helping a friend with a school assignment. Sarah needed to find ten differences between the current economic situation and the Great Depression of the 1930's. It seems that questions like this one are cropping up a lot lately, and basicly ask, "Are we in, or are we headed for, another Great Depression?" As one poster put it, "When I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, I get scared. When I listen to President Obama, I feel elated." We can chalk both the fright and the elation up to public speakers doing their jobs well. Limbaugh and O'Reilly are in the business of selling air time, and it just wouldn't work if they didn't provoke an emotional response. The President is in the business of leading the country; making people feel elated when the chips are down is a great skill to have. But can we rely on either source as an acurate indicator of where the economy is or where it is headed? I don't think so. It is much b

Ostara

Today at noon, Amy and I took five of our youngest children to an Ostara ritual at the South Valley Universal Unitarian Church in Cottonwood Heights. The festival and ritual of Ostara is a neoPagan ritual of Spring; it is a time of rebirth and rededication . The name ' Ostara ' comes from the high German, and is a cognate of the English word Eostre , which is the old and middle English origin of the word Easter. Ostara is anthroproporphized as a goddess. She is the goddes of dawn, the east, air, and of course Spring. In the early Anglo-Saxon calendars, the month we now call April was called Eostre - monath . It is from Ostara that the Christian Spring holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus derives its name. And it is Ostara that gives us Easter eggs and the Easter bunny... All ancient Pagan traditions related to the rebirth of Spring. The ritual of Ostara that we observed consisted of a ceremony of planting. All of the participants joined in a large circle. Ou

Youth Groups, Socialization, and Religion

The other day I was puttering around on Yahoo Answers Homeschool section. Someone had asked the perennial question "what are the disadvantages of homeschool?" As usually, the responses fell into two groups: the pro-homeschool group that could see no disadvantages in homeschool, and the anti-homeschool crowd (who generally haven't a clue what they are talking about) who could see no good. Naturally I had to post a response . I mean, hey, this is easy pickin's for best answer points. Then yesterday, I was reading a friend's blog, Jann's post discussed her conflict with the LDS Church's Young Men's and Young Women's programs. With the justaposition of the two, I felt it was time to write a blog entry about something that has gnawed at me for several years. Several years ago, I was asked to take the Young Women from our ward and their leaders to a Young Women's conference in the LDS Conference Center. Being neither young nor a woman, I was denied