Flipper says, "Have you paid your taxes?  Remember, 12 million illegal aliens are depending on you!"....President Bush declared that the U.S. has the largest and most productive labor force in the industrial world, and that the real question is, 'How do we maintain it?'  No - the real question should be, 'Why do we have the poorest health care, combined with the highest homeless and poverty rates of the industrial world?'  Since 2001, the average American wage has increased .1%, while the average corporate profit has increased 46%.  People shop Wal-Mart because they can get the same products for much less than other corporations command!....More than 650 Arizona schools have been deemed failures, by Federal standards, and the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, insists that it is because Federal expectations are too high!  How about that - students pass AIMS because the the tests are dumbed-down, the passing score is lowered, and classroom participation is included - yet they cannot speak English(and not just the illegals), write anything besides their own name, and know more about illegal drugs than what they know about applying anything they should have learned, to the workforce - and Tom Horne is dissing the Feds!  Vote Slade Mead, to be the next public school Superintendent.  We may not know what he can do, but we already know what Horne has not accomplished.  I have been in Arizona since 1978, and we have not had ANYONE of ANY competency, in the State Superintendents' position, in all that time.  No wonder Arizona is always close to last, among the 50 States and Mexico!....And school bus drivers are in demand!  Hard to believe that there would be a shortage, considering the $10/hour starting wage, the fractured, part-time work-hours, and the lack of support for the drivers when faced with constant student discipline problems.  Sign me up for two shifts!....Nationally, SAT scores fell an average of 7 points, for the class of 2006 - the steepest drop in 31 years!  Excuses touched on every inane idea you can imagine, except:  lack of study, discipline and committment.  Students are working to pay for automobiles, so that they can go to work, out on dates, and purchase more electonic devices to distract them from their studies!....Dallas Public Schools want the City Council to pass an ordinance which would make it illegal for people to sag their pants below their butts.  While the saggers say it is their culture, school officials have proclaimed the offenders to be mentally unfit for society(really!)....Maricopa county residents are saving 78 seconds on their daily commutes, according to a recent study.  Just enough time to get out of the way of any stray bulletes, from the increasing number of road-rage perpetrators!....Phoenix is now the 5th largest populated city in the U.S., but lags well behind most of the much smaller cities in receiving much needed funds for social services.  John McCain and Jon Kyl have made it their point to emphasize how much they have done for national security, but other Senators have done as much, and more, for their constituencies.  We should have dumped McCain when we had the chance to elect Starky - and now we can dump Kyl and vote for Jim Pederson.  Again, the unknown cannot be any worse!....At age 52, now I'm retired - and everything's starting to click - my knees, my elbows, my neck....!