Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Big Brother a step at a time

Tracking system for colleges would violate privacy
By Katherine Haley Will

"Does the federal government need to know whether you aced Aristotelian ethics but had to repeat introductory biology? Does it need to know your family's financial profile, how much aid you received and whether you took off a semester to help out at home?"
"Whether you call it a ``national unit records database'' (the first name) or a ``consumer-friendly information database'' (the second), it is in fact a mandatory federal registry of all American students throughout their collegiate careers -- every course, every step, every misstep. Once established, it could easily be linked to existing K-12 and workforce databases to create unprecedented cradle-to-grave tracking of American citizens. All under the watchful eye of the federal government."
"This proposal is a violation of the right to privacy that Americans hold dear. It is against the law. Moreover, there is a mountain of data already out there that can help us understand higher education and its efficacy. And, finally, implementation of such a database, which at its inception would hold ``unit'' record data on 17 million students, would be an unfunded mandate on institutions and add greatly to the expense of education."

Monday, July 24, 2006

Coming soon to a country near you!

Evidently the The Daily Mail thinks that a child is never too young to be brain washed. The following is a from the U.K. the Daily Mail:
"Children as young as three should be taught about same-sex relationships in a bid to stamp out homophobia in schools, it was claimed yesterday.

The National Union of Teachers, the country's largest teaching union, sparked outrage by demanding that nursery staff help to educate children about gay families.

It claims it is too late to wait until youngsters arrive at primary school to learn about the subject because some three-year-olds are already using homophobic language.

"It is too late to wait until primary school to challenge prejudice and intolerant abusive language.

The proposal was made yesterday when the NUT published its response to the Department for Education and Skills' Early Years Foundation Stage consultation document.

If you ever wonder where the outcry for school vouchers and private schools comes from this is an example of the Progressive agenda that is taking over the leaders of national education unions in Europe and soon America.
Tip goes out to Orbusmax for this heads-up.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

FORD, DO THEY REALLY HAVE A BETTER IDEA?

If Ford really had a better idea maybe they wouldn't have to lay off 30,000 workers.
Maybe if they spend more of their money on engineering cars instead of social engineering our country we all would be better off.
The following are exerpts from FrontPageMagazine.com | January 9, 2004 by Charles Sykes and K. L. Billingsley:
One of the largest and most dangerous concentrations of unchecked power in the United States is the Ford Foundation with discretionary spending power that rivals that of government. It is spending power moreover, for the political left and often the hard left.

Robert Steele, a Professor of Psychology at Wesleyan, noted that his group was aware that coercion would be required to change the university: "People will not be quietly assimilated to multiculturalism by truth through dialogue." They will have to be bought off as well as brought along.

The final speaker was Eve Grossman, a Princeton dean, who said that her group had worried about tenure: "If we want to restructure the university, tenure stands in the way." She said that her group was aware that promotion and tenure were predicated on "discipline-based" research.

From its founding in 1936 through 1991 Ford has doled out more than $7 billion to over 9,000 organizations and 100,000 individuals across America and overseas.

For the Ford Foundation, you can get apiece of the six-billion-dollar pie, as long as you sign onto the multicultural agenda.

The ultimate target of all this energetic social transformation, however, is America's educational system, particularly its system of higher education. By the early 80s, Ford, whose activist staff was networked not just into the nerve centers of "progressive" politics but into the ganglia as well, saw that the university would be (that is, could be made to be) the battleground for an apocalyptic effort to force multiculturalism into the intellectual life of this country.

In the next two years, Ford has earmarked $79.2 million for "Education and Culture." That is the division currently planning and bankrolling PC on campus.
Ford clearly got the most qualified people for the job. Brodie, Shalala, Fergusson, and Kennedy had all fought the PC wars on their own campuses, instituting "speech codes," bashing Western civilization courses, and creating race-based admissions and hiring programs. According to Edgar Beckham, the 59-year-old officer in charge of Ford's Education and Culture Program, this group "worked with the president of the foundation to develop the conceptual framework" of the "diversity" program. Ford uses unnamed "additional advisers" on an ad hoc basis, and Beckham adds that "our own grantees advise us."

"Reaping the full dividends of diversity may require an institution to rethink certain aspects of the curriculum and other traditional commitments of the academic community. Diversity also brings changes outside the classroom affecting residential life, campus services, cultural events, and student activities...

If you are wondering 20 million illegal immigrants found their way into our country and no one seems to see any problem with that, consider how the Ford Foundation has taken it upon itself to grease the way.


At the Ford Foundation ethnicity is always job 1

By Craig L. Hymowitz

As William Hawkins describes in Importing Revolution: Open Borders and the Radical Agenda, Ford's "bankrolling of 'open border' advocacy policy is sharply one-sided, and often extremist... playing the leading role in founding, and building, what are now the major Hispanic-based organizations. "

Henry Santiestevan, former head of the Southwest Council of La Raza, has written:"It can be said that without the Ford Foundation's commitment to a strategy of national and local institution-building, the Chicano movement would have withered away in many areas."

Ford would create the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the most influential Hispanic group in the country--and Ford's largest Hispanic policy recipient.
Modeled after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, MALDEF, with an initial $2.2-million grant, was formed with the mandate "to assist Hispanics (legal or otherwise) in using legal means to secure their rights." A second grant was made to establish the National Council of La Raza "to coordinate efforts to achieve civil rights and equal opportunity" through support of Community Development Corporations.

To date, Ford has given more than $18.9 million to MALDEF, and $12.9 million to the National Council of La Raza.
MALDEF was guided from the onset by the principle that its job was to strengthen the "ethnic identity" of newly arrived immigrants, legal and illegal, rather than aid their assimilation into their American mainstream.
MALDEF-sponsored amendments to the Voting Rights Act authorized multilingual ballots on demand whenever "language minorities" made up 5 percent of a given jurisdiction's residents (legal or otherwise) where there had been less than 50 percent voter turnout in the last presidential election.

As Vilma Martinez said, "Our definition of Mexican-American had expanded to encompass not only the citizen, but also the permanent resident At the Ford Foundation ethnicity is always job 1

By Craig L. Hymowitz

As William Hawkins describes in Importing Revolution: Open Borders and the Radical Agenda, Ford's "bankrolling of 'open border' advocacy policy is sharply one-sided, and often extremist... playing the leading role in founding, and building, what are now the major Hispanic-based organizations. "

Henry Santiestevan, former head of the Southwest Council of La Raza, has written:"It can be said that without the Ford Foundation's commitment to a strategy of national and local institution-building, the Chicano movement would have withered away in many areas."

Ford would create the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the most influential Hispanic group in the country--and Ford's largest Hispanic policy recipient.
Modeled after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, MALDEF, with an initial $2.2-million grant, was formed with the mandate "to assist Hispanics (legal or otherwise) in using legal means to secure their rights." A second grant was made to establish the National Council of La Raza "to coordinate efforts to achieve civil rights and equal opportunity" through support of Community Development Corporations.

To date, Ford has given more than $18.9 million to MALDEF, and $12.9 million to the National Council of La Raza.
MALDEF was guided from the onset by the principle that its job was to strengthen the "ethnic identity" of newly arrived immigrants, legal and illegal, rather than aid their assimilation into their American mainstream.
MALDEF-sponsored amendments to the Voting Rights Act authorized multilingual ballots on demand whenever "language minorities" made up 5 percent of a given jurisdiction's residents (legal or otherwise) where there had been less than 50 percent voter turnout in the last presidential election.

As Vilma Martinez said, "Our definition of Mexican-American had expanded to encompass not only the citizen, but also the permanent resident At the Ford Foundation ethnicity is always job 1

By Craig L. Hymowitz

As William Hawkins describes in Importing Revolution: Open Borders and the Radical Agenda, Ford's "bankrolling of 'open border' advocacy policy is sharply one-sided, and often extremist... playing the leading role in founding, and building, what are now the major Hispanic-based organizations. "

Henry Santiestevan, former head of the Southwest Council of La Raza, has written:"It can be said that without the Ford Foundation's commitment to a strategy of national and local institution-building, the Chicano movement would have withered away in many areas."

Ford would create the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the most influential Hispanic group in the country--and Ford's largest Hispanic policy recipient.
Modeled after the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, MALDEF, with an initial $2.2-million grant, was formed with the mandate "to assist Hispanics (legal or otherwise) in using legal means to secure their rights." A second grant was made to establish the National Council of La Raza "to coordinate efforts to achieve civil rights and equal opportunity" through support of Community Development Corporations.

To date, Ford has given more than $18.9 million to MALDEF, and $12.9 million to the National Council of La Raza.
MALDEF was guided from the onset by the principle that its job was to strengthen the "ethnic identity" of newly arrived immigrants, legal and illegal, rather than aid their assimilation into their American mainstream.
MALDEF-sponsored amendments to the Voting Rights Act authorized multilingual ballots on demand whenever "language minorities" made up 5 percent of a given jurisdiction's residents (legal or otherwise) where there had been less than 50 percent voter turnout in the last presidential election.

As Vilma Martinez said, "Our definition of Mexican-American had expanded to encompass not only the citizen, but also the permanent resident alien, and the undocumented alien." In effect, MALDEF and NCLR, according to Chavez, sought to "erase the distinction between aliens and citizens, legal and illegal, and to pretend the border doesn't exist."

Beginning in 1985, the Lawyer's Guild began to receive the first of its $416,000 in Ford Foundation grants for "refugee and migrant rights."

MALDEF's efforts on behalf of illegal aliens were not limited to education. In other litigation, they prevented Los Angeles County from forcing illegals to apply for Medi-Cal to receive non-emergency health services, because, for this to happen, they would have to be referred to the INS.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

EDUCATION FOR THE EDUCATORS

Marin Independant Journal.com
Bill Evers and Paul Clopton

If we throw more money at the problem it will go away. Not really.
Quote from the Marinij.com
"THE SAUSALITO Marin City School District spends more than $22,000 per pupil and pays teachers an average of $71,000 a year. Based on 2004-05 figures, per-pupil spending is three times the state average, and teachers are the highest paid in Marin. Sausalito is the top-funded urban school district in the state.
But according to 2004-2005 California test scores, only 25 percent of Sausalito sixth-grade students are proficient or advanced in English and 13 percent are proficient or advanced in mathematics. Out of 1,025 districts in California, Sausalito is ranked 724th, which is at the 29.4th percentile. Why aren't students succeeding academically in a school district whose wealth makes almost every other district in California green with envy?

Decades of a different curriculum in every classroom, ineffective and unevaluated teaching practices and teacher training, overemphasis on student self-esteem and low academic expectations created an academic deficit that has been hard to repair.

District leaders have recently improved the coherence of the curriculum and adopted a high-performance reading program that emphasizes phonics first, rather than the district's previous whole-language instruction. District leaders also reduced the proportion of children designated as learning disabled. Much of the students' learning problems had been the result of the district's poor teaching of reading, and over-designation of students as disabled had contributed to the alienation of parents from the district. These recent changes have led to some gains in student test scores - principally in the lower grades whose students have benefited from recent changes.

Despite these improvements, the district is still being held back by a legacy of Progressive Education and a reliance on inadequate and misleading districtwide tests. Sausalito has a long history of using Progressive methods of project-based learning and student self-discovery in mathematics and other subjects. Teaching in the district's regular schools and, in particular, in its charter school is heavily influenced by ineffective Progressive methods."

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Lifes little ironies

From the Washington Post.com
Story by David Montgomery.

If it wasn't so serious of a subject, this could be just filed under a cute little human interest story. However, the story is not in what is printed, but what is not printed. The story begins by describing how a wayward mother duck and three ducklings wandered on to the beltway in Washington D.C. Passerby Pat Getter shot into the street after the ducks, yelling at cars "Stop! Stop! Stop!" She threw up her hands as though she were facing down tanks. On I Street, another woman Helburn threw herself in front of a Metro bus, which halted.
"Oh, they are so traumatized," fretted another one of the humans, Jennifer Helburn.
Now comes the irony. Helburn's job is communications director for the National Abortion Federation trade assocciation for abortion providers in the U. S. and Canada.
Quoting Geller, "'I realize you can't save all of them all the time,' she said, 'but when you're in a position to try, then you owe it to them to try.'" So true, So true

Monday, July 10, 2006

Bobkatt's movie of the month club


While Al Gore captures the nations attention with his diatribe on Global Warming, I watched a movie that really hits close to home. It is called American Jobs by Greg Spotts. This is a documentary that explores the dicotomy of the "jobless recovery".
During the first six months of 2004, spotts visited nineteen cities and towns during the production of this self-funded film. He managed to put a face on the families effected by multinational corporations that take advantage of "global sourcing" to hire the lowest wage labor.
What I gleened from this movie:
  • 85-90% of the apparrel on our shelves is made off-shore.
  • If Walmart was a country it would be one of China's top ten trading partners.
  • On 9/11 2001 airlines laid off 50,000 workers and cancelled dozens of Boeing orders. Boeing laid off half its work force while airlines got $5 billion in bailout from congress.
  • Northwest Airlines gets $400,000,000 from U.S. and buys 26 jets from Airbus in Europe.
  • New Boeing 7e7 for the first time outsources the wing and other major components to global suppliers. 35% of the work goes to Japan and 35% stays here.
  • Robert Scott, economist at EPI estimates that Nafta eliminated 879,000 jobs from 1993-2002.
  • Marine 1, presidential helicopters made in Connecticut since 1958 now outsourced.
  • Military beret worn by our soldiers are made in China.
  • Homeland Security ordered uniforms for the border patrol from Mexico.
  • Food stamp call centers in 40 states serviced by India.
If you are curious about what is happening to this country while multinational corporations chase after the lowest available labor force please watch this movie. I was able to locate it in my public library.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Another reason we need term limits

Here is a good example of why we need term limits. Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska has been in the senate for 38 years. He is most famous for his $223 million for the "bridge to nowhere" to serve 50 people. He threatened to resign from the senate if they reallocated any of his pork to the victims of Katrina.
If you have any doubts on his ability to serve the people please check out his latest comments on net neutrality, it's worth listening to. He is head of the senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
http://media.publicknowledge.org/stevens-on-nn.mp3
This speech will help explain why we never seem to get answers to our nations complex problems.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. "

No truer words were ever written. The time is coming soon. The government has never been so disconnected from the people as it is now.