California Department of Education's solution to the budget crisis? - Offer less education!

100,000 teachers nationwide face layoffs

By Nick Anderson - Washington Post

"California is ground zero for the school budget crisis. The most populous state, with a budget deficit of $19 billion, is shedding summer school, music and art classes, bus routes, days from the school year, and yet-uncounted thousands of teachers. The proposed aid could give the state $2.8 billion in relief."

Independent analysts say the state has one of the leanest education budgets in the nation. Its Department of Education estimates that state and local funding per student is down 15 percent over three years. To reduce layoffs, Los Angeles cut five days from the school year; San Francisco cut four.

Senior congressional Democrats and the Obama administration scrambled Wednesday to line up support for $23 billion in federal aid to avert an estimated 100,000 or more school layoffs in a brutal year for education budgets coast to coast.

As early as Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee expects to take up a bill that couples the school funding with spending for the Afghanistan war -- a measure that has bipartisan support. But a parallel push in the Senate stalled this week after a leading proponent concluded that he couldn't muster enough votes to surmount Republican opposition.

"We desperately need Congress to act -- to recognize the emergency for what it is," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "We have to keep hundreds of thousands of teachers teaching."

Republicans and some Democrats say the government can't afford an extension of last year's economic stimulus that would add to the federal deficit. The stimulus law kept many school budgets afloat with $49 billion in direct aid to states and billions of dollars more for various programs. But the stimulus funding is trailing off before state and local tax revenue can recover from the recession.

Skeptics of a new education jobs fund point out that the teaching force in recent years has grown faster than enrollment, with schools adding instructional coaches and reducing class sizes.

"Giving states another $23 billion in federal education money simply throws more money into taxpayer-funded bailouts when we should be discussing why we aren't seeing the results we need from the billions in federal dollars that are already being spent," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

How many of the estimated 3.3 million public school teachers nationwide will lose their jobs remains unknown. Duncan often says 100,000 to 300,000 education jobs are at risk, including support staff. Teachers unions have put the layoff threat in the range of 160,000 -- including 9,000 in New Jersey, 16,000 in New York and 36,000 in California.

Most Washington area school systems plan relatively few layoffs but are squeezing costs, with Fairfax County scrapping most summer school, for example, and Montgomery County increasing class sizes in elementary grades.

The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, said Wednesday that it is funding TV ads in markets that are home to potential swing votes among House Democrats. The ad features children dressed in business suits pleading for a school bailout similar to what bankers received.

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There was a time when the USA was a happier and safer place. We lost a part of that era today.

This is an obituary you should read all the way through.

Art Linkletter, who hosted the popular TV shows "People Are Funny" and "House Party" in the 1950s and 1960s, has died. He was 97.

His son-in-law Art Hershey says Linkletter died Wednesday at his home in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles.

"Art Linkletter's House Party," one of television's longest-running variety shows, debuted on radio in 1944 and was seen on CBS-TV from 1952 to 1969.

Though it had many features, the best known was the daily interviews with schoolchildren.

"On 'House Party' I would talk to you and bring out the fact that you had been letting your boss beat you at golf over a period of months as part of your campaign to get a raise," Linkletter wrote.

"All the while, without your knowledge, your boss would be sitting a few feet away listening, and at the appropriate moment, I would bring you together," he said. "Now, that's funny, because the laugh arises out of a real situation."

Linkletter collected sayings from the children into "Kids Say The Darndest Things," and it sold in the millions. The book "70 Years of Best Sellers 1895-1965" ranked "Kids Say the Darndest Things" as the 15th top seller among nonfiction books in that period.

The primetime "People Are Funny," which began on radio in 1942 and ran on TV from 1954 to 1961, emphasized slapstick humor and audience participation -- things like throwing a pie in the face of a contestant who couldn't tell his Social Security number in five seconds, or asking him to go out and cash a check written on the side of a watermelon.

The down-to-earth charm of Linkletter's broadcast persona seemed to be mirrored by his private life with his wife of more than a half-century, Lois. They had five children, whom he wrote about in his books and called the "Links."

But in 1969, his 20-year-old daughter, Diane, jumped to her death from her sixth-floor Hollywood apartment. He blamed her death on LSD use, but toxicology tests found no LSD in her body after she died.

Still, the tragedy prompted him to become a crusader against drugs. A son, Robert, died in a car accident in 1980. Another son, Jack Linkletter, was 70 when he died of lymphoma in 2007.

Art Linkletter got his first taste of broadcasting with a part-time job while attending San Diego State College in the early 1930s. He graduated in 1934.

"I was studying to be an English professor," Linkletter once said. "But as they say, life is what happens to you while you're making other plans."

He held a series of radio and promotion jobs in California and Texas, experimenting with audience participation and remote broadcasts, before forming his own production company in the 1940s and striking it big with "People Are Funny" and "House Party."

Linkletter was born Arthur Gordon Kelly on July 17, 1912, in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. His unwed mother put him up for adoption when he was a baby; when he was about 7, he and his adoptive parents moved to the United States, eventually settling in San Diego.

He recalled his preacher-father forced him to take odd jobs to help the family. So Linkletter left and became a hobo, hopping trains across the West, working where he could. He recalled later that he felt the religious faith instilled by his father had been a great gift.

Hollywood is already planning Lifetime Network movie on the life of Elena Kagan

I believe that the Internets should offer suggestions for a thespian or celebrity to portray the Supreme Court nominee. Any names come to mind?

Don't look at this!

This picture is of an early Renaissance fresco in Bologna's Church of San Petronio, created by Giovanni da Modena and depicting Mohammed being tortured in Hell.

(Hat tip: Zombietime.com.)

Isn't it amazing how certain images remind you of God's gifts to mankind?

Trololo Man Sings: "The Rationale for Arlen Specter's Candidacy" (with subtitles)

Yet another Liberal hero declares our republic inconvenient

Woody Allen says President Obama should be granted dictatorial powers (seriously)

Woody Allen has a strange take on the democracy that allowed him to become rich and famous.

The "Scoop" director said it would be a cool idea for President Barack Obama to be dictator for for a few years.

Why?

So he could get things done without all the hassle of opposing views getting in the way.

In an interview published by Spanish language newspaper La Vanguardia (that we translated), Allen says “I am pleased with Obama. I think he’s brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.”

But wait - there's more!

The director said "it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly."

Of course, Allen has a famously strange relationship with reality. The director took nude photos of his lover Mia Farrow's teen-age adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, and then ended up marrying her after separating from Farrow.

Farrow also said he molested their seven-year-old adopted daugther, Dylan. A judge refused to act on the charges, but called his relationship with Soon-Yi "grossly inappropriate."

Perhaps that judge has an opinion on Allen's "dictator" comments?

Do you wanna see a political Slam Dunk? Wait for Allen West on this video!

Chris Christie for President 2012

Let's draft this guy!!

Gov Christie calls S-L columnist thin-skinned for inquiring about his 'confrontational tone'

New York Democrats tackle the big issues

Transgenders win discrimination tiff with American Eagle Outfitters, AG Andrew Cuomo forces changes

BY ERICA PEARSON
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

It just got a little easier for a transgender person to work at American Eagle Outfitters - at least on paper.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has forced the flannel and khaki outpost to make some changes, including nixing a rule about employee "personal appearance" that banned men from wearing women's clothing and ladies from dressing as guys.

"This shows me that there's faith and hope. There might be a domino effect, that's what I'm hoping for," said Joi-elle White, 35, a transgender member of Make the Road New York.

The community group complained to Cuomo's office about what it called a pattern of discrimination against transgender job hunters. A probe confirmed the complaints, officials said.

The retailer - which employs more than 2,000 people in its 61 New York stores - signed a settlement deal promising to change its policies and employee handbook.

"To avoid further expense and the distraction of a prolonged argument, [we have] agreed to a compromise settlement in this case, with the understanding that AEO is not admitting to the findings," a company spokeswoman said.

"We wholeheartedly believe that transgender individuals should be treated equally," she added in a statement.

The chain store also has agreed to train its staff on transgender issues - like which pronouns to use when referring to workers and customers.

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Just because I love Puccini

Pelosi: It’s Cheaper to Treat Teens for Drug Use Than Interdict Drugs at Border

By Edwin Mora at Cybercast News Service

(CNSNews.com) - While pointing out that it is the responsibility of the federal government to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) said Thursday it is cheaper to treat teens for drug use than it is to interdict drugs being smuggled across the border.

CNSNews.com pointed out to the speaker at her weekly press briefing that a recent Justice Department report indicated that one in five U.S. teenagers used drugs last year, and then asked: “Are you committed to sealing the border against the influx of illegal drugs from Mexico and, if so, do you have a target date in mind for getting that done?”

“Well if your question is about drugs, I’m for reducing demand in the United States,” said Pelosi. “That is what our responsibility is on this subject. The RAND Corporation a few years ago did a report that said it would be much less expensive for us to, through prevention first and foremost, but through treatment on demand to reduce demand in our country, is the cheapest way to solve this problem.

“Incarceration is the next cheapest,” Pelosi continued. “It costs seven times more to incarcerate than to have treatment on demand. It costs 15 times more to interdict at the border. And it costs 25 times more with eradication of the cocoa leaf. This is an issue that it is very important to our country because of what it’s doing to our teenagers. That is the problem, what it is doing to our people.”



The RAND Corporation is a non-partisan, non-profit institution aimed at helping to “improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis.”

According to the Justice Department’s National Drug Threat Assessment for 2010, “Nineteen percent of youth aged 12 to 17 report past year illicit drug use.” The assessment said that Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) are now the predominant supplier of illegal drugs in the United States. “Law enforcement reporting and case initiation data show that Mexican DTOs control most of the wholesale cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine distribution in the United States, as well as much of the marijuana distribution,” said the assessment.

Pelosi did say it was the responsibility of the federal government to control the border, although she did not believe that would prevent illicit drug use by teens in the United States.

“Controlling our border is our responsibility,” she said. “So, whether you’re talking about stopping drugs from coming in or having a well-managed migration policy, we have a responsibility to secure our border. But I don’t know what you meant by ‘seal’ and I think sealing the border doesn’t do a whole lot to reduce demand in the United States. As I travel the country, I know that kids are on meth and they can make it in their bath tub.”

To solve the drug problem, she said, requires reducing demand. “Let’s secure our border for every reason that we have responsibility to do so,” she said, “but if it’s talk, if our purpose is to solve that problem, we must reduce demand and the best way to do that is through prevention and through treatment on demand.”

Last week, CNSNews.com similarly asked Rep. Raul Grijalva (D.-Ariz.), who represents a district that covers 300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, if he was committed to sealing the border against the inflow of illegal drugs. Rather than answer the question, Grijalva turned and walked away, eventually shouting back at the reporter that it was “punkish” to ask the question.

Transcript of Speaker Pelosi’s answer to CNSNews.com's question on stopping illicit drug traffic across U.S.-Mexico border:

CNSNews.com: Madame Speaker, the Justice Department has reported that one in five teenagers used illicit drugs last year and that most of those drugs came across the border from Mexico. Are you committed to sealing the border against the influx of illegal drugs from Mexico and, if so, do you have a target date in mind for getting that done?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.): "Well if your question is about drugs, I’m for reducing demand in the United States. That is what our responsibility is on this subject. The RAND Corporation a few years ago did a report that said it would be much less expensive for us to, through prevention first and foremost, but through treatment on demand to reduce demand in our country, is the cheapest way to solve this problem.

"Incarceration is the next cheapest. It costs seven times more to incarcerate than to have treatment on demand. It costs 15 times more to interdict at the border. And it costs 25 times more with eradication of the cocoa leaf. This is an issue that it is very important to our country because of what it’s doing to our teenagers. That is the problem, what it is doing to our people.

"Controlling our border is our responsibility. So, whether you’re talking about stopping drugs from coming in or having a well-managed migration policy, we have a responsibility to secure our border. But I don’t know what you meant by ‘seal’ and I think sealing the border doesn’t do a whole lot to reduce demand in the United States. As I travel the country, I know that kids are on meth and they can make it in their bath tub. So, again if the issue is predicated on your first premise, which is one in five teenagers in America has used drugs, is that the point?

CNSNews.com: "Yes."

Pelosi: "Okay, so let’s, you know, let’s secure our border for every reason that we have responsibility to do so, but if it’s talk, if our purpose is to solve that problem, we must reduce demand and the best way to do that is through prevention and through treatment on demand."

GOP playing the Prevent defense?

Republicans: Playing Not to Lose Doesn't Cut It

By Arnold Ahlert

I'd like to have a nickel for every football team who lost a game they were winning because they switched to a "prevent defense," at the end. There is a huge difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. Too bad the Republican Party can't make the distinction.

2010 is looking like a wipeout for Democrats — one completely of their own making. Four years of a Democratically-controlled Congress, coupled with two years of the most radically leftist administration in the history of the republic have scared the hell out of Americans who now know what unbridled progressivism looks like. That many predicted the level of arrogance and contempt progressives would inflict on the country were they elected was of little consequence. Too many Americans who voted in 2008 never lived through the Carter years, and unfortunate as it is, some people never believe anything until they experience it first-hand.

Now they have, and one would think that the general level of revulsion — despite every effort by the media and Democrats to underplay it — would galvanize a Republican party which had been left for dead as recently as two years ago. One would think now is precisely the time to present the American public with game-winning, principled positions on issues. One would think this is a grand opportunity for Republicans to play to win — big.

One would be wrong. By every indication, Republicans prefer "prevent defense." They prefer playing not to lose.
Such a strategy is beyond Republicans' traditional spinelessness. It is the unprincipled cynicism of a party whose "core values" can be reduced to "vote for us because we suck less than Democrats." That may get them through 2010, but it's no strategy for long-term health. Once again, here's some thoughts from an American sick and tired of being forced to choose between really bad and stunningly awful...

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Obama Stormtroopers stamp out racist violence in Quincy, Illinois

MARK STEYN: Bigotry label for thee, not me - Washington Times

As I write, I have my papers on me - and not just because I'm in Arizona. I'm an immigrant, and it is a condition of my admission to this great land that I carry documentary proof of my residency status with me at all times and be prepared to produce it to law enforcement officials, whether on a business trip to Tucson or taking a 20-minute stroll in the woods back at my pad in New Hampshire.

Who would impose such an outrageous Nazi fascist discriminatory law?

Er, well, that would be Franklin D. Roosevelt.

But don't let the fine print of the New Deal prevent you from going into full-scale meltdown. "Boycott Arizona-stan!" urges MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, surely a trifle Islamophobically: What has some blameless Central Asian basket case done to deserve being compared with a hellhole like Phoenix?

Boycott Arizona Iced Tea, jests Travis Nichols of Chicago. It is "the drink of fascists." Just as regular tea is the drink of racists, according to Newsweek's in-depth and apparently nonsatirical poll analysis of anti-Obama protests. At San Francisco's City Hall, where bottled water is banned as the drink of climate denialists, Mayor Gavin Newsom is boycotting for real: All official visits to Arizona have been canceled indefinitely. You couldn't get sanctions like these imposed at the U.N. Security Council, but then, unlike Arizona, Iran is not a universally reviled pariah.

Will a full-scale economic embargo devastate the Copper State? Who knows? It's not clear to me what San Francisco imports from Arizona. Chaps? But, at any rate, like the bottled-water ban, it sends a strong signal that this kind of hate will not be tolerated.

The same day that Mr. Newsom took his bold stand, I saw a phalanx of police officers doing the full Robocop - black body armor, helmets and visors - as they marched down the street. Goosestepping? No, it's actually quite hard to goosestep in those steel-reinforced kneepads. So just regular marching. Naturally, I assumed they were Arizona state troopers performing a routine traffic stop. In fact, they were the police department of Quincy, Ill., facing down a group of genial Tea Party grandmas in sun hats and American-flag T-shirts. They were acting at the behest of President Obama's Secret Service, which rightly recognized a polite knot of citizens singing "God Bless America" as a clear and present danger to the republic.

If I were a member of the Quincy PD, I'd wear a full-face visor, too, because I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror. It's a tough job making yourself a paramilitary laughingstock. Yet the coastal frothers denouncing Arizona as the Third Reich or, at best, apartheid South Africa, seem entirely relaxed about the ludicrous and embarrassing sight of peaceful protesters being menaced by camp storm troopers from either a dinner-theater space opera or uniforms night at Mr. Newsom's re-election campaign.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the flailing Prime Minister Gordon Brown was on the stump in northern England and met an actual voter, one Gillian Duffy. Alas, she made the mistake of expressing very mild misgivings about immigration. Not the black, brown and yellow kind, but only the faintly swarthy Balkan blokes from Eastern Europe. And actually all she said about immigrants was that "you can't say anything about the immigrants." The prime minister brushed it aside blandly, made some chitchat about her grandkids and got back in his limo, forgetting that he was still miked. "That was a disaster," he sighed. "Should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? ... She's just a sort of bigoted woman."

After the broadcast of his "gaffe" and the sight of Mr. Brown slumped with his head in his hands as a radio interviewer replayed the remarks to him, the prime minister found himself going round to Mrs. Duffy's home to abase himself before her. Most of the initial commentary focused on what the incident revealed about Mr. Brown's character, but the larger point is what it says about the governing elites and their own voters. Mrs. Duffy is a lifelong supporter of Mr. Brown's Labor Party, but she represents the old working class the party no longer has much time for. Travis Nichols may be joking about "the drink of fascists," but, in the same way as Gavin Newsom and Keith Olbermann, Gordon Brown genuinely believes Gillian Duffy has drunk deeply from the drink of bigots for so much as raising the subject of immigration. How dare she, ungrateful bigot!

Mrs. Duffy lives in the world Mr. Brown has created. He, on the other hand, gets into his chauffeured limo and is whisked far away from it.

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"You guys sign the checks. Seig Heil. Ann Frank is upstairs, third door to the right, the room behind the bookcase."

Jon Stewart Flunks His Spartacus Test

By Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator

"I am Spartacus."

It is one of the iconic lines from an iconic film.

Remember Spartacus? The 1960 Stanley Kubrick film based on a Howard Fast novel about a slave rebellion back in the glory days of Rome? Kirk Douglas -- father of Michael -- played the heroic slave leader Spartacus, his good friend Antonius played by Tony Curtis. In the signal moment from the film (said to be a slap at McCarthyism by the film's blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo), re-captured slaves, back in chains, are offered leniency. They will not face crucifixion if they will but give up Spartacus, who sits in their midst unrecognizable to the Romans. Waiting for the answer is Spartacus's foe, the Roman General Crassus, played by Laurence Olivier. After a moment of silence, as Spartacus is about to give himself up to be crucified, one by one the slaves stand and announce "I am Spartacus!" -- signaling their willingness to share their compatriot's fate. The scene epitomizes courage, a willingness to take a stand when the all-too-easy thing to do would be to simply say nothing and get off the hook.

One of the grim facts of war is that one never knows where and when these moments will present themselves. The question always is: when presented with this moment, what would you do?

Most probably, you will never know until the moment arrives.

The passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 were presented with just such a moment on the opening day of this war. One minute they were average Americans flying peacefully from Newark to San Francisco on a beautiful late summer day. The next they found themselves shockingly confronted with their Spartacus moment. Four hijackers had taken over their plane during what the Americans quickly learned from family cell phone calls was an all out attack on their country. The World Trade Center towers were in flames, soon to collapse. The Pentagon had just had a jet ram into it. The plane they were on -- United 93 -- was clearly headed back East to Washington -- on target to destroy either the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

The fact that the story is history now doesn't make it any easier to recall. The passengers, doubtless scared witless, decided to rebel. They would not be passive participants in the destruction of their country. One by one they stood up and said, in effect, "I am Spartacus." Or, in the words of passenger Todd Beamer, "Let's roll." A horrific struggle raged, the plane went down in a farmer's field in Pennsylvania. Every single passenger and hijacker died. The White House and the United States Capitol, not to mention an unimagined number of lives on the ground, were spared.

"I am Spartacus," these people were saying to the rest of us. "I am Spartacus."


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