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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (372111)	2/28/2008 1:42:29 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1577883

MM, I wanted to give you some first hand experience of the consequences of illegals living in this country as it pertains to one aspect of our society......education. I am student teaching at a high school located in a culturally diverse community. The population includes a fair number of children whose parents are in this country illegally.....mostly but not all from Mexico and Central America. In addition, there are children who speak a number of other languages including Mong, Chinese, and Arabic, as a first language. The cost to the district and the Feds is significant. Language teachers in each of the languages spoken at the school have to be hired to teach the kids English. At first the kids mostly learn English and do little else. Once they reach intermediate English proficiency they are put into classes with kids who are often younger but still experience difficulty in communication. Many become trouble makers putting additional pressure on teachers and hurting the performance of the classroom. Others become withdrawn and painfully shy because they don't feel they communicate as well as their younger classmates. Still others dropout by the ninth grade, joining gangs, doing drugs etc. Additional costs are free lunches, school supplies, text books etc. But the worst cost to our schools is what happens to the students who are proficient English speakers. They are held back....sure teachers give them harder work but that's not a true substitute for the day to day interacting with their peers who operate at the same level. For the very bright, there are the AP classes but there are kids who don't qualify for AP who are still bright and capable of moving ahead. They are hungry to communicate at a level higher than what they are experiencing. Because they can't, they often sit in the classroom bored and frustrated. American schools can handle a certain number of foreign students.....after all, this country has been doing it for many decades. But now the public school system in many locations is overwhelmed with the number of foreign language speakers and the special treatment they require and special costs they generate. Often the poorest districts have the biggest load. As a consequence, children born in this country are not always getting the best education. For that reason and others, I can not accept that the only solution to the illegal problem is to allow it to continue as well as provide amnesty to the illegals who already reside in this country. Its just not fair to our own native population.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (372111)	3/3/2008 7:25:05 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1577883

Editorial The Senate Shills for Big Oil One of the major shortcomings in last year’s admirable energy bill was its failure to extend vital tax credits to producers of wind, solar and other renewable fuels. This was entirely the doing of the Senate, which caved in to the oil companies and their White House friends. The House had approved the credits but insisted — under the Democrats’ pay-as-you-go rules — that they be paid for by eliminating the same amount in tax credits for oil and gas producers. Industry (which is rolling in cash these days) howled, President Bush lofted veto threats, and the Senate caved. The damage was immediately apparent. New investment in clean, non-fossil-fuel energy sources — which need the help until they become competitive with older, dirtier energy sources — began to shrivel. The Senate now has a chance to redeem itself. Last week, the House approved a new $17 billion package of credits, spread over 10 years, to encourage the development of renewable energy sources and to promote energy-efficient buildings and appliances. As before, the House insisted that the credits be paid for by terminating an equivalent $17 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for oil and gas companies. And right on schedule, Senate Republicans began complaining that increasing industry’s taxes would discourage investment in domestic oil and gas production. What will it take to wake the Senate up? It should be clear to even the most obtuse members that a country that consumes one-fifth of the world’s oil but has only 3 percent of its reserves cannot possibly drill its way to energy independence. It should be equally clear that an industry whose five biggest producers generated $145 billion in profits last year can easily sacrifice $1.7 billion in annual tax breaks it does not need to help develop the cleaner fuels the country does need. If those arguments aren’t enough, we offer the Senate some words from President Bush. In a 2005 address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Mr. Bush spoke forcefully of the need for an energy strategy that looked to the long term and emphasized conservation and renewable fuels. Of the oil and gas industry, he said pointedly: “I will tell you with $55 oil we don’t need incentives to the oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent.” The question for Mr. Bush and the Senate is clear: If that was true at $55 a barrel, why isn’t it even more valid and urgent at $100 a barrel? Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company