How to Send the World a Message With a Flag

Why is it that at the drop of a hat, many people run pennants up flagpoles to celebrate their successes, or the homecoming of someone much loved? Well, it could be said that this is a perfect visual way to show people either that the person or people coming home are valued. Or, it shows a sense of belonging to one cause or another. Flag stores are usually inundated with requests for family oriented flags or such and most offer a custom flag service.

Everyone will know of the identifying pennants that will be flown from sea going vessels etc. But what they may not know is that the naval service has meanings for each and every pennant it flies. When a ship is coming into port, decoration is not the only reason to fly these delightful strings of pretty colored pennants. They may spell out the name of the home port, or even a message to the country that they are visiting saying something like 'our company is honored to be in your country'.

At other times these pennants, or bunting as it is commonly called, may just be celebrating an anniversary of the monarch of that particular country. In England, the Royal Nave will always celebrate the birthday of Nelson who is considered to be one of the most beloved and respected seafarers of all times.

Cargo ships will use these pennants to show where they are registered. Very often it is not the country where the ship comes from. This is a 'convenience' pennant and is done in this way to take advantage of tax laws in that particular country. So any ships that look like they come from Panama, a favorite 'convenience' country, is normally from somewhere quite different.

Before the days of electronic communications, small pennants were used to signal from ship to ship. Each position adopted by the sailor given the task of sending the message meant a different word or letter and other ships in the area could clearly see what the message was meant to convey.

Today many companies will have a pennant designed to denote what the company does. It may be the company logo, or perhaps show something on the pennant that is relevant to the business concerned. These are usually made bigger than normal to be flown from either the top of the building or from the car park to attract attention of people driving by. Just notice how much bunting car sales lots have all around the place to attract the attention of shoppers.

Finally, for family members it is sometimes good to have a kind of crest designed to denote what the family is comprised of. For example, in many European countries in days gone by, each family would have a family crest to show who the family was. This was used to identify that particular family in times of feuds etc. Anyone not showing the family crest was promptly thrown in a dungeon or hung, drawn and quartered, whichever came first!

Connor Sullivan bought some Custom Flags for the local high school booster club. The booster president ordered custom flags from an internet flag store for the local high school fall sports.

Educational Innovation and Economic Stimulus

The U.S. Department of Education's 2010 fiscal year budget of $47.6 billion includes an allocation of $517 million dedicated to the Teacher Incentive Fund which rewards principals, teachers, and other school personnel who raise student achievement, close achievement gaps and work hard to staff schools.

School districts across the country will be competing for the billions of dollars on the line. They will showcase their great schools, exemplary teachers and innovative ideas. There's no doubt that the stimulus money will be a boon for school reform. For years, school districts have shown that they have innovative ideas, but without proper funding those ideas never come to fruition.

Innovation and change should be energized with both an incentive and reward to replenish resources of ingenuity, commitment, and creativity. Only in public education is going the extra mile a donation expected of the dedicated few.

It is empowering to be recognized for turning gang infested schools from the strong hold of the socially impaired to havens where students can remediate themselves to academic achievement. Yes, placards and pats on the back feel good; but, they don't buy anything. Why are educators the only missionaries who trek the roadways of the under-achievers --prodding them to the higher places with maybe a brief notation in the annual assessment of their deeds and misdeeds in the educational workplace?

When an inspired teacher or administrator makes the difference in average yearly attainment a reward is more than appropriate. It is fully earned for having the tools to enable the struggling student to complete a toolkit that is in ill repair.

Based on the state funding tables issued by the U.S. Department of Education, Colorado is expected to receive $33,845,209 in Recovery Act funding for schools identified for improvement, corrective action and restructuring under Title I. This money is expected to come into play this fall.

If past history is any indicator the incentive program will be a success. Programs such as the Absence Addiction Approach recognized by the National Interagency Drug Institute and the U.S. Department of Education helped an academically impaired high school move from low attendance and floundering graduation rates to turn around status celebrated by its principal winning recognition as Outstanding Individual In School and feted by the state's governor. This turn around scenario was incentivized by outside funding. This shows what dynamic effects special funding can have.

The rewards reaped from the Teacher Incentive Fund will provide a tremendous opportunity for improving schools with hard work and innovation. The real winners though, will be the children.

Busby is a former Colorado Springs high school principal and school board member and an educational consultant with the Women's Workplace and Educational Initiative.

Delia Armstrong Busby is an award winning educator and former school board member. Contact at rubusy1@comcast.net

I Want Free Health Care, But I Don't Want to Pay For It, and Other Pearls of Wisdom

With the news today coming out that the most recent Gallup poll stunningly uncovered the fact that Americans want the best health care but don't want to pay for it, came shock and disbelief albeit only from people that were stranded on a desert.

"The poll of 3,026 adults, surveyed Friday through Sunday, has a margin of error of +/-2 percentage points. Some questions, asked of half the sample, have an error margin of +/-3 points. By 56%-33%, those surveyed endorse the idea of enacting major health care changes this year. Just one in four say it's not important to them. When it comes to financing the costs, six of 10 favor the idea of requiring employers to provide health insurance for their workers or pay a fee instead." from the USA Today Gallup poll.

The fact that this survey was actually paid for by a public company was more shocking to me," said Captain Obvious of I knew it, Florida. Perhaps the greatest idea came from the Gallup poll writers themselves when they decided to go home for the day and stop asking silly questions.

While considering my abnormal viewpoints with a colleague recently, I was reminded of a terrific book I read called the "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein, a truly thought provoking book, quite the opposite of a Gallup poll. Her book is based on historical facts and statistics that were used by the Chicago School of Economics to shock nations into globalization. This allowed US companies to go into these poor, often battered companies and buy everything from the workers to their public utilities. The reason why many of these countries were so poor was because they were often "spoiled" by social programs they couldn't afford. The IMF and the large corporations would then only loan money to remake the countries if the politicians would agree to open up global trade (which allowed the international companies to go in and buy everything that was attached) and repeal any and all social programs. Largely, these countries of course suffered immensely worse then before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had gone into the countries and after 5-10 years the local currency etc. would start to gain traction and the economy were modernized into a model of capitalism.

The parallel between these countries (mostly Latin American and Middle Eastern) and our country today is that we are on the precipice of a truly awful economic decline and polls like the one by Gallup confirm that we as Americans want everything but won't sacrifice anything to get it. Of course the politicians will still promise and deliver these programs to us without regard to cost or anything else as long as they are elected time and again. And the ugly truth of the book (which is pointedly liberal) is that we going to need to be shocked out of these habits in order to "reset" the economy. All social programs and anything else that causes deficits and debt will have to be abandoned and then started all over again.

As the most productive nation on earth, this future can certainly be avoided by making good decisions like Universal Health Care but cuts will have to be made elsewhere! But just like after all the recessions that Greenspan avoided by messing with the interest rates (which is causing a larger, more impending crash which will combine all the past recessions as bills from these prior mistakes have never been absorbed, just deferred) and like we are doing again, now by avoiding the current recession and spending money that just doesn't even exist, this final bill is going to come due. And it is coming due. And when other countries wake up and stop financing our debts, as they wake up to the notion that is impossible for us to pay them back. When? I have no idea. But the first part of it is happening already as the dollar continues to decline and China is slowing its ridiculous purchase of our treasuries. I am willing to give up my cushy health insurance brokerage for the good of this country and if we all do something painful it can help defray some of the pain that is coming, what are you willing to do?

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