Free Republic

Geithner wants to fast track financial regulatory reformCalcutta News.Net Saturday 25th July, 2009 Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has urged Congress to approve a financial package of regulatory system reform supported by President Barack Obama by the end of the year. Geithner and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke testified with other officials to the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee: House and Senate committees have worked for months to move financial system reform forward, including steps to intensify supervision of financial institutions, strengthen existing regulation, and create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Under the proposal the House Financial Services Committee...

President Obama wants health care reform this year. He said at a town hall meeting the other day that he won't tolerate "endless delay" and that we probably won't reform health care if we don't do it this year. Now why is that Mr. President? Will Congress be on vacation for the remaining three years of your term? Consider that it's not unusual to take a full session of congress -- two years -- to pass legislation a fraction of the size and consequence of health care reform. Yet our president is demanding that a bill to overhaul a $2.5...

In a procedural vote on April 1, 2009, fifteen Democratic Senators joined all of the Republicans in defeating, for now, a climate change bill that would have allowed fast-tracking of President Obama's cap-and-tax proposal so that it could be passed as part of the current Federal budget. (Click here to see how your Senator voted.) Senator Lamar Alexander called this "the biggest vote of the year." The bill that would have passed would probably have resembled the Waxman-Markey discussion draft of The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a bill proposal designed to combat global warming by encouraging...

A key Democratic senator said Tuesday that he's not ruling out a controversial budget procedure to speed passage of President Obama's health care and global warming legislation. "It could happen," said Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, despite his repeated concerns that doing so would damage bipartisan cooperation in the Senate. The fast-track procedure -- called "reconciliation" -- would prevent Republicans from filibustering the bills, which Baucus' committee helps write. At the confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius,Republican Sen. Mike Enzi said, "I'm afraid that if that reconciliation winds up in the budget bill, it'll be...

Early data for Roche Holding AG's drug Avastin shows enough promise in treating patients with a certain brain cancer to be considered for quick approval, a U.S. advisory panel said on Tuesday. The drugmaker is seeking accelerated approval to market the drug for patients diagnosed with a recurrence of the particularly deadly disease after trying other therapies first. The drug, made by its recently acquired Genentech unit, is already used to treat lung, colon and breast cancers. Data from two early studies showed enough of a response in patients whose disease did not advance and some whose tumors decreased in...

CAPping Off Failure by: Daniel Allen, March 23, 2009 Experts and pundits warn that if we do not improve our college graduation rate, our nation’s power and status may decline more quickly, in comparison to the rise of other powers in an increasingly multi-polar world. The Center for American Progress (CAP) hosted a panel on March 18th to discuss fast-track and early college programs among low-income and minority students, and how current legislation can help the country’s youth achieve their potential. CAP invited two sponsors of the Fast-Track to College Act, a bill that would increase federal spending directed at...

For example, Dr Eugenie Scott of the staunchly anticreationist National Center for Science Education (NCSE) revealed their agenda when she said: “ … I would describe myself as a humanist or a nontheist. I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day! … What we [such clergy and atheists] have in common is that we want to see evolution taught in the public schools … .”4

I’ve just given the draft bailout bill a first read (link here; there’s apparently a more recent draft posted at the House Financial Services cmte website, but it’s currently inaccessible). There’s a lot of b.s. stuffed in it (more to come), but let’s start with one section that warrants your attention– Section 115 (c). It appears that Hank Paulson and the cackling Democrats have written in a provision that codifies the short-circuiting of the democratic process: (c) FAST TRACK CONSIDERATION.— (1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, the Secretary may not exercise any authority to make purchases under...

A Republican effort to force a vote on opening up more land to drilling on Thursday threatened to bring the annual appropriations process in the U.S. House of Representatives to a halt. Democrats, who control the House, shut down Appropriations Committee work on two major federal funding bills after Republicans tried to force a vote on drilling. "I think we've probably had our last meeting of the year," Chairman David Obey heatedly told reporters after the bill-drafting session broke up. The meeting was called to work on Labor and Agriculture department bills. Republicans tried to attach the Interior Department bill...

Bush wins fast-track authority by a single vote By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - United States President George W Bush won "fast-track" trade negotiating authority on Thursday in an extremely close, mainly partisan vote in the House of Representatives. If the Senate also grants Bush what officially is termed "trade promotion authority", then the president will be able to negotiate far-reaching new trade pacts with other countries without fear of congressional amendment. The 215-214 vote, combined with last month's World Trade Organization (WTO) accord to launch a new round of global trade talks, is likely to re-energize the process of global ...

The Bush administration will be forced to address increasing congressional frustration over the growing trade deficit with China if the White House hopes to get Capitol Hill to back its trade agenda, members of Congress and business lobbyists said this week. Rep. Phil English (R-Pa.) called China a critical component in a deal to extend so-called fast-track authority for the president, which allows the administration to present trade deals to Congress for up-or-down votes. English added that it is “entirely possible” that legislation designed to toughen China trade policies could be wrapped into a bill extending fast track. Rep. Earl...

WASHINGTON - Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to fast-track efforts to boost the federal minimum wage and could seek to bring a bill directly to the House floor in January. The new Democrat-controlled 110th Congress convenes on Jan. 4 and Pelosi of California has made clear that raising the federal minimum wage is a top priority she wants the House to accomplish in its first 100 hours of legislative business. The legislation is likely to call for phased-in increase in the current federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour along the lines of a proposal...

The Pentagon has just issued its latest assessment of China's military strength, warning of Beijing's growing power. But China's primary challenge to the U.S. in East Asia today is economic. Thus, the best way to respond is through economic means. South Korea wants a free trade agreement with Washington, over which negotiations began this week. Unfortunately, this year is not a politically propitious time for further opening international markets -- the Doha round of the World Trade Organization talks has been a bust and nearly a dozen proposed bilateral accords are fighting for attention. But if the U.S. fails to...

The Harvard Civil Rights Project did Californians an enormous favor in March when it released a report establishing that high-school dropout rates in the state were more than double what school bureaucrats claimed. ... If anything made plain the insincerity of the teachers union-dominated education establishment in trying to help schools improve, it was this proof that the establishment fudged the numbers. That's why it's so dismaying to see the Harvard group throw its weight behind the educrats' continuing crusade to undermine the centerpiece of California school reforms: making passage of a comprehensive exit exam a condition for a high...

ROHNERT PARK, CA, August 17, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Students in a northern California city recently won the right to wear pro-marriage t-shirts after school officials were warned against restricting their free speech. Tired of the constant barrage of messages contrary to their beliefs, student members of the Conservative Club at a high school in Rohnert Park decided to express their own traditional values for a change. Working with staff attorneys at Pacific Justice Institute, as well as PJI affiliate attorney Bill Trask, the students selected a t-shirt message which clearly stated the students’ support for traditional marriage, including a quote...

Any other young FReepers out there? I know of a few, but I'm sure there are many others. So, if you fit the mold, speak up, there are probably more of us than we realize.

The biggest difficulty for defenders of the government’s school monopoly is the overwhelming consensus in the empirical research finding that school choice works. They deal with this little problem primarily by ignoring the evidence and changing the subject, but it also helps that they have a stable of professors ready to distort, confuse, and obfuscate the research. A new article in Perspectives on Politics, a prominent academic journal published by the American Political Science Association, shows how low they’ll sink. Written by Kevin Smith of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “Data Don't Matter? Academic Research and School Choice” is a warped...

Why Homeschooling Continues to Grow by Isabel Lyman — May 16, 2005 For evidence that the homeschooling movement is growing up, look no further than the crowd - and excitement - generated by the National Christian Homeschool Basketball Championships held in Oklahoma City. The 2004 athletic event - in its thirteenth year - drew 240 teams from 26 states, featured over 600 games, and attracted college coaches eager to scout players. In attendance was Texan Debbie Verwers, the mother of Stephen Verwers, a homeschool graduate, who currently plays for Colorado State University’s basketball team. Upshot? The extracurricular athletic activities that...

American public schools can be described in only one way: an unmitigated failure. The government has created an educational system free of the checks and balances that normally guide success and encourage innovation in the marketplace, namely, profit and loss in a setting of open competition. Instead, government schools shelter teachers through life-long tenure, virtually eliminating all accountability about what and how subjects are taught in the classroom. Furthermore, there are few incentives for cost-efficiency because this could result in budget reductions. Instead, whenever there seems to be a “learning problem,” the cry is for more of the taxpayers’ money....

BOW, N.H. - A decision to take Advanced Placement biology instead of gym will cost a Bow High School senior her diploma, but it won't keep her from going to college in the fall. Though Isabel Gottlieb is a good student, a trumpet player in the school band and holds varsity letters in three sports, she discovered last fall she was one gym class shy of having enough credits to graduate next month. She asked for a waiver, but the school wouldn't budge, telling her instead she had to drop a class to take gym. "Why would I drop an...

At first, it was a matter of obvious academic incompetence that compelled so many parents in America to seek alternatives (e.g., private schooling, homeschooling). The growing motivation today for dumping public education is no longer just about academics. It is now about something much more fundamental: safety. With public school educators occasionally pushing the latest waive of social engineering (e.g., promoting homosexuality), more and more parents have become alarmed. What once was an occasional leak in the dam has now become a gushing breach of parental trust. For example, the pro-homosexual-transsexual movement has successfully pushed the "Day of Silence" on...

Bill Gates has donated $52 million to a school system without classrooms, exams or formal lessons. John Preston investigates. Three decades ago school teacher Dennis Littky took himself off to a cabin in the forests of New Hampshire in the US north-east. There, he chopped wood and pondered his great passion: the future of education. As far as Littky was concerned, secondary education was in a state of meltdown. High schools were outmoded sausage factories turning out generation after generation of bored, disaffected students who failed to reach anything like their true potential. The big question, of course, was what...

In its mandatory "diversity training" classes, a school district has instructed students who believe homosexual behavior is wrong to keep their opinions to themselves, prompting a federal lawsuit. The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund filed a motion for preliminary injunction [PDF file] yesterday to immediately prohibit the Boyd County, Kentucky, Board of Education from restricting the free-speech rights of its students. "We are filing this motion because students are being forbidden from expressing their own viewpoint on this matter," said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Kevin Theriot. "That's unconstitutional, and it must stop." The motion was filed in a Feb. 15 lawsuit...

Bill Gates has declared American high schools "obsolete." In a Feb. 26 speech to the National Education Summit on High Schools, he said "our high schools — even when they're working exactly as designed — cannot teach our kids what they need to know today." These criticisms are not new, but the fact that America's most successful businessman is concerned about how America will survive in a world that requires educated workers should cause people to take notice. Mr. Gates went on to say he was "terrified for our work force of tomorrow."

East Lansing High School Censors Student Newspaper Distribution of independent publication prohibitted EAST LANSING, Mich. – East Lansing High School student Tyler Whitney denounced the censorship of the Right Way, an independent conservative newspaper that students were barred from distributing. “Our paper featured respectful opinions from well-informed and open-minded moderates, libertarians, and conservatives. It was not disruptive,” explained the Right Way’s editor Tyler Whitney. Whitney faced punishment for distributing a paper, which he considered to be a part of his constitution rights to free expression. Before the administration halted the distribution of their publication, the writers stood in the hallway...

On the 'sin' of sending kids to public school Author shares harsh campus realities, urges parents to pull children Posted: February 7, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com The man who helped push the issue of public education onto the national agenda of the Southern Baptist Convention has written a new book that blows the lid off government schools, showing parents the kind of worldview and values their children are influenced by 180 days a year. Bruce Shortt, author of "The Harsh Truth About Public Schools," presents myriad reasons why government institutions are failing America's children and thumbing their...

Some Pottsville Area High School students can forget about climbing the rope, dodging balls or getting sweaty altogether. Gym class may be a thing of the past for students when the district eliminates the mandatory physical education requirement next school year. The Pottsville Area School District is planning to scrap the four semesters of physical education required to graduate. It's a move that will help save the school district money and it also stems from tougher academic standards for school districts. Schools Superintendent James T. Gallagher said the district is trying to control costs. And without a sizable increase in...

There was nostalgia to spare for state Sen. David Hann on a recent visit to Cooper Elementary School in Minneapolis, where he spent his early school years. And a jarring message to be delivered. Raised in Minneapolis, the 52-year-old Eden Prairie Republican, Vietnam veteran, and former theology student noted that the polished hallway floors looked the same. So did the beige lath-and-plaster walls. He quickly identified his sixth-grade classroom. A pleasant surprise was meeting an old classmate, Jim Hovey, now a school maintenance man. Hann and Hovey tossed around names of old classmates for awhile. Then as they shook hands...

Jailhouse Middle School Rebecca Hagelin It felt more like a juvenile detention center during lockdown than lunchtime in my neighborhood public middle school. Teachers were strategically stationed throughout the cafeteria about 20 feet apart. One of the vice principals had taken her customary place at the microphone. Every few seconds the noisy room was punctuated with her constant commands: “You, in the green shirt, sit down.” “Students standing at the back table, find a seat quickly.” “Young man at the soda machine, move to a table.” Parents who had attended this upper-class suburban institution 20 years ago touted it as...

An American soldier overseas is fuming over letters he received from Brooklyn middle-school children accusing GIs of destroying mosques and killing civilians in Iraq. Pfc. Rob Jacobs of New Jersey said he was initially ecstatic to get a package of letters from sixth-graders at JHS 51 in Park Slope last month at his base 10 miles from the North Korea border. That changed when he opened the envelope and found missives strewn with politically charged rhetoric, vicious accusations and demoralizing predictions that only a handful of soldiers would leave the Iraq war alive. -snip- The letters were written as a...

  More Educational Liberal Bias  No all administrators are as open minded as East High Principal Sam Mirich. At Cheyenne's East High, gays have formed a club under his protection, and he is looking for any sign of opposition from would be gay bashers. I’m quite sure that Principal Mirich, would do the same for conservative clubs, aren’t you?One might expect that Cheyenne High students would be way above the national average, given such an enlighten staff.  According to Cheyenne’s website, the following is a list of achievements in which Cheyenne students are above the national average: Drove after drinking...

Dr. Sander Breiner, a member of NARTH's Scientific Advisory Committee, recently expanded upon a paper on "Adolescent Homosexuality" he presented at the November, 2004 NARTH conference in Washington, DC. (Dr. Breiner's paper is currently posted on the NARTH web site.) Sexually questioning youth are vulnerable to the derailment of their normal heterosexuality, Dr. Breiner asserted, when they are urged to consider the possibility of being same-sex attracted. Dr. Breiner's paper dealt with the current scientific knowledge on the development of the brain during pre-teen and teen years as it relates to hormones and emotional maturity. One of the sources for...

School Hosts "Mock Gay Marriage Ceremony" CRI has learned that a teacher-sponsored "mock gay marriage ceremony" is scheduled on the campus of Victorville's Silverado High School on Friday, February 11. California Senator George Runner (R-17) and Assemblywoman Sharon Runner (R-36) drafted a letter to the Victor Valley Union High School District that expresses outrage at the proposed event. The letter reads, "this is the promotion of an activity that is specifically precluded under state law and therefore amounts to the encouragement of illegal activity by students that are under your charge, and sponsored and promoted by your school. The fact...

I heard this at 6:25 PM yesterday (Saturday), on Handel's show. I'm not sure whether or not it was a replay. A female schoolteacher called in to find out if she had any legal recourse against her female school principal. The teacher, who was upset nearly to the point of tears, related the following: She had invited a veteran to speak to her class, and she had asked the children to write letters to soldiers in Iraq. The principal had approved of all of this. Subsequently, a miserable insect of a parent complained, and the principal then called the teacher...

It began innocently enough when a senior female student experiencing menstrual cramps asked a friend for a Tylenol or Advil. The classmate had none, but in an effort to be helpful, asked a third student, who supplied a generic form of Aleve. Aleve is a non-prescription strength form of Anaprox, sold over the counter as a fever reducer, and for temporary relief of minor aches and pains. The young woman took the Aleve, but continued experiencing discomfort and went to the nurse. When questioned, the student told the truth and admitted obtaining Aleve from another student. An assistant principal was...

Under mounting pressure from business and labor groups, New York is expected to become the first state in the nation to issue a "work readiness" credential to high school students who pass a voluntary test measuring their ability to succeed in entry-level jobs, state officials say. Employers have complained for years that too many students leave high school without such basic skills, despite the battery of exams - considered among the most stringent in the nation - that New York requires for graduation. The work-readiness credential, employers say, will make hiring decisions easier and cut employee turnover. The test would...

Hudson High School in Massachussettes isn't allowing the formation of a conservative political club founded by student Chris Bowler because the administration said the ideas involved are "objectionable". Here are some things that the school teaches that it doesn't find objectionable: # Hudson High School recently sponsored a "Blue Day" at the school which is a celebration and affirmation of the homosexual lifestyle. # Hudson High School didn't object to teachers distributing copies of the film Fahrenheit 911 to students to take home. It should be noted that Fahrenheit 911 contains scenes depicting mutilated bodies in Iraq and numerous uses...

Former Norfolk principal charged with laundering drug money By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot © January 25, 2005 Last updated: 6:18 PM NORFOLK — The former principal of Ruffner Middle School is one of 40 people charged in a massive drug conspiracy stretching back eight years. Pamela Hoffler-Riddick, an educator in Hampton Roads from 1984 to 2000, was placed on administrative leave from her job as an administrator with Prince George’s County, Md., schools, a district spokesman said today. Hoffler-Riddick appeared in court Monday and was released from custody pending arraignment on Feb. 2. She did not have an attorney in...

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another ... An education established and controlled by the state should only exist, if it exists at all, as one among many competing experiments." -- John Stuart MillNew Coke was a complete failure with consumers -- why is it no longer on store shelves? Studebaker's 1953 cars were disasters -- why aren't there any more Studebaker dealerships? You know the answer: competition. Markets don't allow anyone to maintain a record of failure. Here's another list of failures: cooperative learning, constructivist math, new math, portfolio...

The president of the National Association of Scholars, Stephen H. Balch, Ph.D., had this to say about the state of education in the U.S. today: "Trendy courses, bloated bureaucracies, and intolerance toward students and professors holding politically incorrect views have become the norm on the majority of our campuses. Grades are routinely inflated and curricula dumbed down, while truth and intellectual integrity are treated as forms of racial, sexual, and capitalist oppression." I'm sure most of us agree that religion has no place in our educational system, but neither do personal politics and ideologies. A Luntz poll of Ivy League...

Are taxpayer-subsidized infomercials and payoffs to friendly commentators the federal government's answer to education problems? The U.S. Education Department's secret million-dollar taxpayer-financed marketing campaign to sell the No Child Left Behind Act is only a symptom of what's wrong. Former President Ronald Reagan used to say that government is not the solution, it's the problem. But we are in the post-Clinton era, and in 1997 former President Bill Clinton told us in Northbrook, Ill., to get over "our love of local control of the schools." While national media are filled with pictures of horrors all over the world, the biggest...

It is a book with graphic sexual references and descriptions of male anatomy, and an 11-year-old girl checked it out from a school library in McAllen, Texas. The title: "Lady: My Life as a Bitch" In the book, Sandra (a.k.a. Lady) is dismayed at first, but quickly discovers the pure joys of unfettered freedom to do whatever she wants and have sex with whomever she pleases--a seemingly perfect scenario for a devil-may-care young woman who would "have shagged [Wayne] up against the wall for a bag of jelly beans a month ago." (Amazon.com) The librarian offered these quotes (off-camera) as...

There are lists that you cross fingers and hope your child shows up on. The honor roll, the sports team roster, the invitation to the cool kids' party. But when her daughter's name appeared on a "kill list" at school last week, Karen Zollman's heart was flash frozen. And what happened or rather what didn't happen next did not exactly melt her fear. Five years after Columbine you might expect school mechanisms for this kind of threat to click into place with steely precision. That parents would be informed. That students who saw such a list would have been grilled...

SUFFOLK — On paper, Lisa W. Rath’s ordeal ends Tuesday. A juvenile court judge will sentence one of her students, a girl who savagely beat her in a King’s Fork Middle School hallway last year. But not everything is in the court record. Not the nightmares. Not the panic attacks. Not the answers to the Big Question: Will she be able to put this behind her and stand in front of a classroom again? The weather on Friday, March 19, 2004, started out unusually mild. But the wind picked up during the day, and it would turn unseasonably cool. For...

Teachers who failA survey of certification-test scores yields alarming results More than half a million Florida students sat in classrooms last year in front of teachers who failed the state's basic skills tests for teachers. Many of those students got teachers who struggled to solve high school math problems or whose English skills were so poor, they flunked reading tests designed to measure the very same skills students must master before they can graduate. These aren't isolated instances of a few teachers whose test-taking skills don't match their expertise and training. A Herald-Tribune investigation has found that fully a third...

The Education Liberator, Vol. 3, No. 2, February/March 1997 Twenty-one ways "public schools" harm your children by R. C. Hoiles, c1957 R. C. Hoiles was the publisher of the Santa Ana Register, now the Orange County Register, the flagship of media giant, Freedom Communications. We are commemorating the 40th anniversary of Mr. Hoiles publication of his great vituperation against "gun-run schools." It has been edited for length, a process newspaperman Hoiles would understand. Now, what are the things that government schools dare not teach? They dare not teach the spirit of the Constitution as set forth in the first official...

Mention the Ethnic Studies class at Berkeley High School, and students tend to smirk or roll their eyes. Even many supporters of the perennially controversial ninth-grade requirement know it's a hot topic that, despite good intentions, has turned into a debacle. Past student complaints have ranged from the class being a total waste of time to allegations that it's racially offensive. So, when ethnic studies made it onto the school board's agenda last spring, many thought the class might finally bite the dust. Instead, it got a makeover. For the new school year, the board decided, the course would be...

It is interesting that muslim students in public schools can leave the classroom twice a day to pray. Christians can't pray in school by ruling of the supreme court. Another example of the strange state of liberal political correctness that we are forced to endure as conservative Americans.

TIM KERIGAN, Chicopee High: "In my personal experience, a lot of teenagers are well experienced in the news, especially in political issues. At least during the election in our American government class, pretty much everyone in the class had some opinion on it. Might not have been the right opinion, but they had an opinion! In general, most of the classes I have are very up-to-date on the news and stuff. MARY JO PHAM, Sabis International Charter School: At my school, the government is not a big interest. In one of my classes today, somebody asked, "What's a tsunami?" That...

DAVISON, MICH. - Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore has one more chance to be elected to the Hall of Fame at his alma mater, Davison High School. So far, his nomination has been rejected all four times that it has come up for consideration. This, despite directing the highest-grossing documentary in film history, last year's Fahrenheit 9/11, as well as the Oscar-winning Bowling For Columbine