Patriot Act

If you are truly a patriot and American Citizen, then you should fight with every ounce of your energy to eliminate this obscene degradation of our constitutional rights. There are other ways to fight terrorism, and if our government did not ignore intelligence reports about the 9/11 incident, the tragedy could have been avoided. Don't buy the snow-job.

Patriot Act II

Who will be the first government official to charge our American troops with terroristic thoughts and undermining morale of the troops?

According to a recent Zogby poll, 72% of our troops on the ground in Iraq, say we should leave within the year – and nearly 22% say we should pack-up and leave immediately.

Troops Thanked for their Service

Former Army Lt. William Redbrook, was told that he had to pay back the Army $700 for the destroyed body armor he wore when he was seriously injured by a roadside bomb.

"They said that I owed them $700. It was like, 'Thank you for your service, now here's the bill.' I had to pay for it if I wanted to get on with my life."

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Three Billion Dollars Later

Plan Columbia, which was supposed to stop the flow of cocaine into the United States, has failed to work. In fact, studies have shown that quantities have failed to diminish since its implementation. Now, our government wants to extend the plan for another five years. I think we need a new plan, don't you?

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How Government can save Money

Cutting the following positions will save millions of dollars:

* Deputy to the Deputy Undersecretary
* Assistant Chief of Staff to the Assistant Administrator
* Principal Associate Deputy Undersecretary
* Deputy Associate Deputy Undersecretary
* Associate Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary
* Assistant to the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary

By the way, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, Elizabeth, is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the state for Near Eastern affairs.

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Misguided Feminism Killing Boys

By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes. High-school boys are losing ground to girls on standardized writing tests. The number of boys who said they didn't like school rose 71 percent between 1980 and 2001, according to a University of Michigan study. Nowhere is the shift more evident than on college campuses. Thirty years ago men represented 58 percent of the undergraduate student body. Now they're a minority at 44 percent. This widening achievement gap, says Margaret Spellings, U.S. secretary of Education, "has profound implications for the economy, society, families and democracy."

The problem won't be solved overnight. In the last two decades, the education system has become obsessed with a quantifiable and narrowly defined kind of academic success, these experts say, and that myopic view is harming boys. Boys are biologically, developmentally and psychologically different from girls—and teachers need to learn how to bring out the best in every one.

Some scholars, notably Christina Hoff Sommers, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, charge that misguided feminism is what's been hurting boys. In the 1990s, she says, girls were making strong, steady progress toward parity in schools, but feminist educators portrayed them as disadvantaged and lavished them with support and attention. Boys, meanwhile, whose rates of achievement had begun to falter, were ignored and their problems allowed to fester.

Boys have always been boys, but the expectations for how they're supposed to act and learn in school have changed. In the last 10 years, thanks in part to activist parents concerned about their children's success, school performance has been measured in two simple ways: how many students are enrolled in accelerated courses and whether test scores stay high. Standardized assessments have become commonplace for kids as young as 6. Curricula have become more rigid. Instead of allowing teachers to instruct kids in the manner and pace that suit each class, some states now tell teachers what, when and how to teach. Physical education and sports programs have been cut and recess is a distant memory. These new pressures are undermining the strengths and underscoring the limitations of what psychologists call the "boy brain"—the kinetic, disorganized, maddening, and sometimes brilliant behaviors that scientists now believe are not learned but hard-wired.

Thirty years ago feminists argued that classic "boy" behaviors were a result of socialization, but these days scientists believe they are an expression of male brain chemistry. Sometime in the first trimester, a boy fetus begins producing male sex hormones that bathe his brain in testosterone for the rest of his gestation. "That exposure wires the male brain differently," says Arthur Arnold, professor of physiological science at UCLA. How? Scientists aren't exactly sure. New studies show that prenatal exposure to male sex hormones directly affects the way children play. Girls whose mothers have high levels of testosterone during pregnancy are more likely to prefer playing with trucks to playing with dolls. There are also clues that hormones influence the way we learn all through life. In a Dutch study published in 1994, doctors found that when males were given female hormones, their spatial skills dropped but their verbal skills improved.

In elementary-school classrooms—where teachers increasingly put an emphasis on language and a premium on sitting quietly and speaking in turn—the mismatch between boys and school can become painfully obvious. "Girl behavior becomes the gold standard," says "Raising Cain" coauthor Thompson. "Boys are treated like defective girls."

"Boys measure everything they do or say by a single yardstick: does this make me look weak?" says Thompson. "And if it does, he isn't going to do it." That's part of the reason that videogames have such a powerful hold on boys: the action is constant, they can calibrate just how hard the challenges will be and, when they lose, the defeat is private.

If our education standards and systems do not change quickly, boys will left to eat dirt.

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Shedding light on Referendums
Chris Bailey

If the endless gray days haven’t already sent folks into a mid-winter funk, they should have no fear. Despair is just around the corner. The darkest hour for any taxpayer — referendum time — is upon us.

For the most part, the primary election on March 21 will be ignored by all but the most party-oriented or habitual voters, of which there are very few. The exceptions, of course, will be where voters are being asked to approve tax hike or bond sale requests for their school, fire, park or library districts.

That’s because most voters know they’re being asked to give more money to public servants who, by and large, already have it better than they do in terms of pay, pensions and health care benefits. And those who pay any attention to the numbers also recognize that such requests are coming from people proposing budgets and long-range plans that are not financially sustainable — unless taxpayers ante up again later.

If you think this is “all about the kids” or “all about public safety,” ask yourself who benefits from passage. And then ask who will be paying if the tax hike rejected.
The answer to the first question is “public servants.” The answer to the second is “students” or “consumers.” None of these proposed tax hikes will be accompanied by plans that freeze or control wages in any significant way or bring to an end the belief that the expense side of the ledger can grow forever without consequence. Few will be accompanied by serious attempts to control the growing health care or pension costs that are bankrupting governments everywhere. Some will actually ask to put more people on the government pension dole.
You will hear many heartfelt arguments about the need to remain “competitive” in the employment marketplace, but no one will be able to explain why community colleges require more and more students who come from those so-called competitive marketplaces to take remedial classes.

And then look at the consequences for non-approval of referendums. I am not among those who consider those explanations “threats,” but they do tell me who is serious and who isn’t. Athletics and extracurricular activities and gifted programs are drops in school budget buckets, for example. If they are at the top of the cut list, attempts to rein in spending aren’t serious, but simply dabbling in emotion.

Without wage controls, any serious attempt to restrain school expenditures must look seriously at the big, often bloated programs like special and bilingual education. Because of parental and political pressure, they are often far out of line with expenditures on other students and legal requirements. I’m guessing most upcoming referendums will fail for one of three reasons. Taxpayers will feel they can’t afford them. Taxpayers won’t trust those who’ve said one thing and done another. Or they will resent that increasing the revenue side of the ledger remains the first resort while little serious effort is expended to reduce the cost side. Anyone expecting the sun to be shining March 22 had better be prepared to address all three. http://www.dailyherald.com/search/searchstory.asp?id=143447


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Stupid Educators in America

Some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it. Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School said their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."

At Woodrow Wilson High, one of the best schools in America, one teacher didn't have control over the kids, another videotaped a boy dancing wildly with his shirt off, in front of his teacher.
A Gallup Poll survey showed 76 percent of Americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school. Education reformers have a message for these parents: If you only knew.

Many education professionals say Americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren't that good. Because without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had, and while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement. Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved … We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better." He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.

Schools do not need more money, people! Regardless of how much they scream, or how many threats they hurl at you, more money will not help your children.
Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., and spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools' complaints about money. "That is the biggest lie in America. They waste money," he said.

How do U.S. students perform compared with their European counterparts?
Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid." We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.

Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us." The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better.

American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids — it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education — at many different kinds of schools — but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel said she works hard to impress parents. She said, "If we don't offer parents what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the parents will know, and won't come to you again."
Statistics show that the longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea. This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Too bad. The school is terrible? So what. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their citizens. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.

Across the nation, it's virtually impossible to fire a bad teacher. Said one school executive, "We tolerate teacher mediocrity, because people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average or way below average." The executive also stated – "he employs dozens of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids," so he has them sit in what are called rubber rooms. This year he will spend $20 million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them.

Many people say education tax vouchers are a terrible idea, that they'll drain money from public schools and give it to private ones. In fact, a Florida court ruled against vouchers after teacher Ruth Holmes Cameron and union sponsored advocacy groups brought a suit to block the program. She argued that, "To say that competition is going to improve education? It's just not gonna work. You know competition is not for children. It's not for human beings. It's not for public education. It never has been, it never will be," Holmes said.

Now, ask yourself these very simple questions - Would you keep going back to a restaurant that served you a bad meal? Or a hair stylist that gave you a bad haircut? Or a Cell Phone provider that dropped 30% of your calls? What if the government assigned you to "your" grocery store. The store wouldn't have to compete for your business, and it would soon sell spoiled milk or stock only high profit items. Real estate agencies would sell houses advertising "neighborhood with a good grocery store." That's insane, and yet that's what America does with public schools.
Chavous, who has worked to get more school choice in Washington, D.C., said, "Choice to me is the only way. I believe that we can force the system from an external vantage point to change itself. It will never change itself from within. … Unless there is some competition infused in the equation, unless that occurs, then they know they have a captive monopoly that they can continue to dominate." Competition inspires people to do what we didn't think we could do.

If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, science schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows what else. If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338

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Iraq Money

How are your tax dollars being spent in a war far far away?

Luxury cars, a $20,000 Harley Davidson motorcycle, $10,000 Breitling watches and mountains of cash were all part of an elaborate corruption scheme in Iraq that involves at least seven Americans, including five Army reserve officers.

Who is watching these folks?

A former Iraq reconstruction official, Robert Stein, a convicted felon who was inexplicably put in charge of $82 million in contracts, pleaded guilty Thursday to corruption, bribery, and weapons charges.

Who put this person in charge?

"He essentially funneled contracts to his cronies and received bribes," said Stuart W. Bowen, Jr., the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, in an interview with NBC News.

Who were his cronies?

"It shows the brazenness of the people who were around those sums of money and what they thought they could get away with," says Frank Willis, a former official with the Coalition Provisional Authority who has criticized the way the CPA handled cash.
E-mails cited in court records indicate that some unnamed U.S. officials even demanded specific cars: a white SUV and an electric blue sports car.

Who are these officials?

And what about the projects that were supposed to be built or refurbished in Iraq? A series of audits by Bowen's office found major problems. "There were millions of dollars in grants and contracts," he says, "that simply went for no work at all."
Bowen says cash was sloppily handled.

(This may be the understatement of the year)

"The management of cash was haphazard at best. We found that it was kept in footlockers of the trailers that people that lived there," he says. "There was a safe that wasn't locked in the bathroom of the office."

Some of the work that was done was shoddy, according to one audit. For example, a recently repaired elevator at Hilla General Hospital collapsed, killing three Iraqis.

The end result of it all on the ground in Iraq?

"The reconstruction efforts in the South Central Region, around Hilla, failed," says Bowen. "It failed because we had a person of significant responsibility, the person in charge of that money simply committed repeated criminal wrongdoing."
To place all this blame on one person is ludicrous. There is obviously going to be a major cover-up and the true culprits who enjoyed all the benefits will walk away without a blemish, and with some very nice parting gifts…

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I WANT MY PERKS

(MSNBC 2/3/06) Just two weeks after House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) pledged to pass far-reaching changes to the rules of lobbying on Capitol Hill, House Republican members pushed back hard against those proposals yesterday, charging that their leaders are overreacting to a growing corruption scandal. In a tense, 3 1/2 -hour closed-door session, many Republicans challenged virtually every element of the proposal, from a blanket ban on privately funded travel to stricter limits on gifts to an end to gym privileges for lawmakers-turned-lobbyists.

Says Pesce, President of UCAnation.org “I’m a business professional and have been for over 23 years. I have managed many vendor/company relationships, and if you let vendors act like lobbyists, they will buy you all kinds of special things to get you to sign a deal with them. After all, paying $10,000 for a family trip for four to an exotic Island getaway is nothing if you as a vendor/lobbyist get that $15 million dollar deal. In the real world of business, any gift in excess of $25 dollars is unethical and frowned upon, and in most cases, grounds for immediate employment termination. It is time to start holding our elected officials to these same standards.”

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Rich vs. Poor

Two new studies find the rich are getting richer at a faster pace.A study released in late January, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, found that the gap between the highest- and lowest-income families is significantly wider than it was 25 years ago.An employee working full-time at the federal minimum wage makes $10,712 a year. About 7% (13.3 million people) of the workforce earns a minimum wage.“Growing income inequality harms this nation in a number of ways,” stated Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and co-author of the income report. “When income growth is concentrated at the top of the income scale, the people at the bottom have a much harder time lifting themselves out of poverty and giving their children a decent start in life.”

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Fox Guarding the Hen House

Boehner, elected majority leader by his Republican colleagues last week, is involved in GOP efforts to reform lobbying rules.

House Majority Leader John Boehner rents a basement apartment from a lobbyist whose clients had an interest in legislation overseen or sponsored by Boehner, according to lobbying records.
Boehner, R-Ohio, pays $1,600 a month rent for the apartment owned by lobbyist John Milne and his wife, Debra Anderson, Boehner spokesman Don Seymour Jr. said.

“It is conceivable that John Milne may have lobbied Boehner on a few occasions over the years, but we are not aware of any specific instances of it, and we are certain no lobbying has taken place during the time in which John Boehner has been renting the property,” Seymour said.

Yeah, right!

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September 11

Terrorists funneled money through Dubai, and two terrorists came from the United Arab Emirates. Let them have our ports! This is an obscene abuse of political power.