Executive Order 6102 was officially repealed, allowing US citizens to own gold.

Everybody likes the sound of higher standards, except for the parents who have just been told their china cup hasn’t met the standard. This was in my Sunday paper, no 0’s allowed:
http://hamptonroads.com/2014/01/virginia-beach-schools-pressured-scrap-zeros
I’m a former teacher that got much pressure about the same thing.

I’m going with Brad’s answer. I just downloaded the podcast and am in sixth place in commenting 🙁 I need a faster feed.

Chris in NW Ga
I live in NW Ga and would like to talk about helping with your project. Email me and I would like to talk.
Rstenney@gmail.com
Hope you read this
Scott

I have been told that when you purchase property that has AG exemptions currently that you have to start over because it won’t transfer to purchaser…what has been your research on that? Is that determined by state or county?

Hey Jack! I loved your rant on the public school issue! You should look into getting Brett Veinotte of schoolsucksproject.com on for an interview. Check out his first podcast from 2009 “The ‘Business’ Plan.” His stuff is entertaining but also breaks down the history of compulsory education and how it is so damaging.

Hey, Jack:

Was just thinking on loans to buy AG Exempt property. I am not sure on this but the USDA might have loans for this. I know they do the USDA does loans for regular houses in “rural” areas. Their definition of “rural” is fairly stretched as most smaller counties qualified last I checked. I am more in gas and oil work now than mortgages so I am not up on the latest but might be worth a shot if someone has no other way.

AZD

I’m a recently retired teacher, and I’m in agreement that there are a myriad of problems with the current system. I taught high school level math and science classes and also some university classes at night.

Several years ago I was in a meeting in which we were preparing a flowchart to illustrate the various sequences of classes as student could enroll for as they moved through the school. If a student were in math class “X” we’d look at where they might go next if they did well, or if they struggled, etc. Well, after some time listening to the discussion, I suggested that for each class in the flowchart we needed an arrow back to that class itself. If a student didn’t do well, and if they needed the information from that class, re-taking the class seemed like one obvious pathway. I was astonished at the resistance this encountered. At the meeting I’m referring to I could not get that flow chart line added, although it was added later. No one wants a student to fail, and teachers should give help, encouragement, inspiration, cajoling, threats (not bad threats), but try everything in their repertoire of teaching to help, but if it doesn’t work, one outcome is to simply try again.

There is a duality inherent to life that seems bound up with every choice we make; think about success vs failure, richness vs poverty, life vs death itself. By removing the possibility of failure we somehow lessen the chance of success.

The Senile Senator.

The really scary thing to me about him, is that he IS a membership of the leadership (or lack there of) of our country. He has been given a say in what happens, or doesn’t. And the people who put him their accept that.

I was reminded of Mad MAx; That sign outside the shop that says “Speed is just a matter of money. How fast do you want to go?”

It just reinforces your “Ignore these guys” philosophy. They are doomed, and so are you if you even bother to pay attention to them.

He probably dozed off and woke up after 5pm and thought the internet closed for the day so he had to wait for tomorrow for his email.

This is what happens when government becomes a job/career and not just a brief moment of representation. If the USPS had started building the internet infrastructure 20 years ago and handing out Your.Name.123@Citizen.US.Gov they would OWN personal internet communication. Instead, they waited until the US already had a thriving free market of internet providers and then said “Hey, maybe we should get into email service?” FAIL. If private enterprise can do it, stay out of it.

Just finished the show. I still say overall awesome.

I have to call you out on the top 20 though. Did I mention I measure things? One of my professional activities is Benchmarking. This is where companies go and seek out the best practices of other organizations to adopt, or get data to compare themselves. I find some of the top things in America a bit questionable….The point is apples to apples.

Rape and Murder: Consider that in the US, Rape and Murder are illegal. People (mostly men) get pursued, prosecuted, and punished for both of those things.

vs

A country where Rape is not considered a crime, rarely ever punished (if reported) and then – you can kill the victim of the rape for shame, and that isn’t a crime!

Same with mental illness. How many people really appear to suffer with depression that are NOT being treated in say India? I see pics of a lot of sad people along the Ganges….

A nice Rate/100,000 vs countries with comparable laws might be more accurate. You sounded a bit like the .Gov fear mongers you rally against! But at least you were “mongering” for get off your @$$ go do something instead of do something stupid because of fear or do nothing because of false pride.

That said – I again generally agree. When you tell me as a Performance excellence lead examiner that your organization, I say “Show me the data and the methodology by which it was gathered.” The criteria are tough.

I have had to tell a bunch of people that they have no idea how good they are and further give some examples of people kicking @$$ and taking names that are way better at the very same things.

1st in Military: A major part of the US Military purpose is to protect worldwide commerce. This is great when you are the world’s reserve currency and make money from trade amounst nations. If the US loses the reserve currency will the US Navy still protect shipping routes?

I would not neccessarily jump on teachers so fast, not saying they are angels or anything either. I do

completely agree however that the US educational system is based on the Prussian system and if teachers

are against home schooling I would not be on their side of the debate. On the other hand, Bill Gates

seems to me an elitest. After all he spends millions promoting GMO crops in Africa, vaccines, and even

mosquitoes that carry vaccines. If you think he is completely a self made man, my take is that it was

no mistake that IBM convienently forgot to copyright the operating system that became windows, no Gates

was selected to be a member of the elite and returns the favor in various ways we may only be dimmly

aware of. Just because Gates wants to pump money into the public school system, I am not sure what it

really means to teachers ? I do not understand what Gates real aims are either. You have to get more training .. Does that mean you have to spend all your evenings in a training class or where does that lead to ? Do you get better pay because of that money ?

That is not clear to me. Why are teachers different than soldiers who join up with the military for

various benifits some of which may be generous ? Exactly how is Bill Gates going to improve education ?

None of that is clear to me and I would need alot more information to figure out how I felt about it.

I did find an article that tries to put this in a different light:

http://onthecommons.org/magazine/what’s-good-bill-gates-turns-out-be-bad-public-schools

“Needless to say, the whole process of what has come to be called “high stakes testing” of both

students and teachers has proven devastatingly dispiriting. According to the 2012 MetLife Survey of the

American Teacher, over half of public school teachers say they experience great stress several days a

week and are so demoralized that their level of satisfaction has plummeted from 62 percent in 2008 to

39 percent last year – See more at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/what’s-good-bill-gates-turns-out-

be-bad-public-schools#sthash.StbfXr7O.dpuf

And now, just as public school systems have widely adopted the Microsoft model in order to win the Race

to the Top, it turns out that Microsoft now realizes that this model has pushed Microsoft itself into a

Race to the Bottom. – See more at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/what’s-good-bill-gates-turns-out-

be-bad-public-schools#sthash.StbfXr7O.dpuf

In a widely circulated 2012 article in Vanity Fair, award-winning reporter Fair Kurt Eichenwald

concluded that stacked ranking “effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate.” “Every current

and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive

process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes.

“It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other

companies.” – See more at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/what’s-good-bill-gates-turns-out-be-bad-

public-schools#sthash.StbfXr7O.dpuf “

Regarding citizenship, another consideration is that if you have children and you are still a British citizen, then they would have the ability to work anywhere in the EU. That opens a lot of doors as it is very hard for US citizens to get a work permit anywhere within the EU.

I too have lived abroad and a lot of people think the US is a wonderful country and are envious of Americans but I think the reality is that they believe it because of what the see in movies or on TV. It is marketing by Hollywood and not real life.

There is an interesting book by Pico Iyer entitled Video Night in Kathmandu that I thought was great at making it clear in a really eloquent way how much people around the world are influenced by Hollywood.

fantastic episode, and even though i was in sad agreement with your response to the question about american citizenship, i can’t disagree. but also: yes.. bitcoin. i have to reiterate this link from the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast. This gentleman’s sole income is in Bitcoin, and he does a great job of explaining it. skip ahead to 10:50 to skip the ads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cexawnOlR8

Jack,
Regarding applying for US citizenship, my wife recently became a citizen for pretty much only two reasons: 1) the US passport offers a lot more visa-free travel options than her home country passport, and 2) she wants the flexibility to be able to be overseas for more than a year without losing the ability to be let back in (as one other poster alluded to). The second reason was the biggie, as we are increasingly looking to spend more time travelling overseas and possibly pursuing career and/or business opportunities outside the US. So as funny as it sounds, she became a US citizen so she can be “allowed” (ugh) to spend more time outside the US and still return to spend time with her family here (frickin’ ridiculous, I know). She did say that if the US had required her to relinquish her birth country’s citizenship, she would have said no deal. But as it is, the US government doesn’t force new citizens to give up their old citizenship… dual citizenship in the US government’s eyes is as someone said “frowned upon, but grudgingly permitted”.
As for tax implications, technically speaking a US permanent resident is under the same obligations for income earned overseas as a US citizen is… the only real difference I can see is that it may be faster or easier to sever your US ties by giving up your green card than compared to relinquishing or renouncing one’s citizenship. The limitations on banking overseas is technically the same for permanent residents too, though US permanent residents (or US dual citizens) can always open an foreign bank account using their non-US passport and just not mention their US residency (though some foreign banks are now specifically asking new clients if they happen to have citizenship or residency in the US because of growing apprehension about FATCA). So really citizenship didn’t change these things for us. And whether citizen or not, she’s still obligated no matter what to report foreign bank accounts to the IRS, so citizenship was still a net benefit for her.
Personally, I’m a little envious of her’s and our son’s dual-citizenship. There’s a certain amount of flexibility and resiliency in travel it offers.
Great show, Jack, keep it up!

Hey Jack,

I feel/felt the same way about teacher incentives and pay for performance until a while back I was talking to my friend’s mom who is a teacher. I don’t remember how we got on the subject but she mentioned pay for performance and said it as if it were a bad thing. I asked her why it didn’t make sense for teachers, that I was paid for performance and evaluated quarterly, and why shouldn’t she be expected to do the same.

She said that it used to be that way and nobody had any problem with it. But then “No Child Left Behind” and standardized testing came into the picture and changed everything. “They tell me what to teach, what to say, what not to say, how long to spend on each bullet point, how long to spend answering questions. If there’s a disruptive student, I’m not allowed to discipline them and the kids all know it. And if I send someone down to the principal and he misses something important, it shows up on his test and they come down on me for it. Basically, all I do all day is exactly what and how I’m told to do it, then they want to come threaten my pay and pension based on performance? Sorry, you can’t have it both ways. Let me teach my class and I’m fine with it. But with things the way they are now? No way.”

She’s only a couple of years away from retirement so she can’t very well walk away.

I still agree that employees should be paid for performance. I think the answer is that we need 99% less government in our schools and performance would improve a lot.

I agreed with everything you said about the Pittsburgh/Bill Gates situation. My story is just to point out something I’m not sure many people realize about the sorry state of affairs inside that mess called government education.

Hey Jack,

Earlier in this podcast you mentioned that the Fed was undermining foreign currencies and that you would say it later on in the podcast but I think you didn’t cover it later on. Could you please elaborate a little here? Thanks