Carl, MDanel talks the talk...he sounds like a teacher to me. I'd quibble with the "month" off as well, but only because many districts are allowed to make their own calendars (within certain parameters set by the state), and some schools prefer to have less time off during breaks in return for a later start to the year, an earlier end to it, or both.

This makes a world of sense in sweltering summer weather when air-conditioning is sometimes not present in the building(s), and if it is, is hideously expensive to run.(The so-called "balanced" calendar is another story, but it still has a lot in common with the traditional one.)

Thanks tgas. By the way, here's the 2011-12 winter break/spring break calendar for my district:

Last day of school (First semester): Friday, December 16
First day of school (Second semester): Wednesday, January 4
Spring Break: Monday, March 26 - Monday, April 2 (back to school April 3)

So yeah, about a month.

When I was in school it was 5 days for spring break and 8-10 days for Christmas.

So if I can perhaps steer us back on topic, Gov Christie develops his point a little more in this Interview for Bloomberg news.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-09...y-goldberg.html

I'm familiar with his work. He doesn't debate anyone. You either agree with him or you're an idiot. I have no time for ideologues. He's not going to "school" me on NJ nor anyone. I live here. My post was to set the record straight. That's all I care to do. You guys can call each other every name under the sun. I'm here to post vid clips.

So, boggie. Since you are so anti-union, are you also against the middle-class?



Unions are good for the middle-class.

Unions are not particularly good thing especially if the right to strike is given to those who work in the essential service sector such as transit workers, firefighters and police. This created all kinds of problems in my province in particular during the 70s and 80s especially with the public transportation where the public was constantly held hostage on an annual basis by 3 separate unions with the public transit workers particularly the militant mechanics union.

Also, up here certain sectors of the labour industry such as the construction sector you don't have any choice but to become a union member. Also political parties such as the separatist aspiring Parti Quebecois got much of its political strength from labour unions and thier soveriegnist-leaning union bosses such as Louis Leberge..

Lastly the auto industry's decline in the USA has largely been due to the greediness of UAW and Teamsters union leaders and thier supporters and thier unwillingness to make concessions for the good of the industry and its auto-workers and related trades.

Unions were originally created to protect workers from exploitation and inhumane working conditions of thier employers. We can safely say those days are pretty much long gone.The need for unions is no longer necessary.

That's why I'm not big fan of unions.

"Lastly the auto industry's decline in the USA has largely been due to the greediness of UAW and Teamsters union leaders and thier supporters and thier unwillingness to make concessions for the good of the industry and its auto-workers and related trades."

Surely not. It was not the labor unions fault that Detroit continued making low-quality, high-mileage vehicles for DECADES after the gas shortages of the 1970s and clearly better cars coming from Japan. They didn't respond to their competition for a very, very long time. The car makers grumbled about unions (instead of working with them), car-mileage standards from Washington (instead of seeing that as an opportunity), grumbled about low ratings from Consumer Reports (instead of making better cars), and tried to get quotas set up limits on Japanese-made cars being imported into the USA (instead of making cars more Americans wanted). The unions had nothing to do with the decline of American car makers. Management can claim 100% of those failures, not unions. Were you in the USA during the last 40 years? How could you have missed this?

There's the old story of an US auto executive looking out the window of his office out toward the parking lot, (US auto workers would not have dared to drive a Japanese-built car to work) saying to no one in particular, "Look, Americans still love American-made cars." Really funny.

I once visited an ex-American auto factory in California that had been taken over by a group of Japanese carmakers in partnership with GM. The same workers and the same labor unions worked there as before, management worked with the union, and the plant stayed open a long time until GM went bankrupt ruining the partnership, and demand for any type of car plummited. Unions work, if management is good.

Same story about steel makers in Pittsburg. The management said they couldn't work with the unions. They were right. Now those same mills are still open and doing just fine, with the same unions, just different (often foreign) management. And US Steel no longer exists. Lesson: bad management, not bad unions.

Cum hoc ergo propter hoc.

Of course since it doesn't fit with your current beliefs you don't believe it. How typical. Even cold data doesn't shake you from your rigid views.