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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Magnatizer who wrote (38074)	10/29/2009 9:48:13 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 71588

I am so far behind

To: Magnatizer who wrote (38074)	10/30/2009 9:00:44 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

It all starts with education as one must know our nation's history in order to want to defend liberty. If we do no know our true history and never hear of the results of socialism/fascism/communism have on other countries, our children are left to wander aimlessly looking for answers. One problem is that history texts now have more feel good stuff about non historically significant people as they do about actual important players. Lewis and Clarke yeah, but with Sacagwea they never could have made it. BS. There are lots of other examples tat are similar. History texts are written for the California market and then sent around to everyone else. Liberals in California don't want their students to read how great Ronald Reagan was. When the "we're all equal" commies come knocking it must sound like a utopia. We can never be all equal. When someone is asking for sacrifices it stand to reason that someone else is collecting those offerings. Communist societies resemble dictatorships. There are the leaders who live like kings and then there is abject squalor and everyone else lives in it. Yet this is the path that Obama and his army of Alinsky followers have in mind for America. One area I strongly disagree with him is that he lays the blame on our current situation on younger generations. I tend to lay the blame on the boomers. The regression we've experienced (educationally and standing as a beacon of freedom) has occurred while their great force has moved through time. Not a lot the X'ers and Y's can do politically until the boomers stop voting. You make a good point. It is with either the leadership of the older generation or its acquiescence that the education system has degraded. I was on a school board for several years. We had an outstanding Superintendent. Even so, the school board has to lead and not just be a rubber stamp. Our teachers were not quite as liberal as many other districts. As a result they often taught things that had been excluded from the texts because of liberal bias. I agree with most of what Savage says. He's an interesting delivery and I do enjoy his off politic talk. I will have to pay closer attention to him on the occasions I am able to listen. Thanks for pointing it out to me.

To: Magnatizer who wrote (38074)	11/25/2009 11:40:15 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Race to the Top in Education We can get real reform if the president resists pressure to dilute standards. NOVEMBER 24, 2009, 9:39 P.M. ET. By HAROLD E. FORD JR., LOUIS V. GERSTNER JR. AND ELI BROAD For decades, policy makers have talked about significantly improving public education. The problem has been clear: one-third of public school children fail to graduate, there are embarrassing achievement gaps between middle-class children and poor and minority children, and the gap between our students and those in other countries threatens to undermine our economic competitiveness. Yet for the better part of a quarter century, urgent calls for change have seldom translated into improved public schools. Now, however, President Barack Obama has launched "Race to the Top," a competition that is parceling out $4.35 billion in new education funding to states that are committed to real reform. This program offers us an opportunity to finally move the ball forward. To that end Mr. Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are pushing states toward meaningful change. Mr. Duncan has even stumped for reform alongside former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Yet the administration must continue to hang tough on two critical issues: performance standards and competition. Already the administration is being pressured to dilute the program's requirement that states adopt performance pay for teachers and to weaken its support for charter schools. If the president does not remain firm on standards, the whole endeavor will be just another example of great rhetoric and poor reform. Competition among the states is also vital to reform. The administration is resisting the temptation to award funds to as many states as possible. And that's good. To be effective, Race to the Top funds cannot become a democratic handout. Competition brings out the best performance. That's true in athletics and in business, and it's true in education. Race to the Top funds will not serve their purpose if they are awarded based on good intentions and promises. Instead, the administration is right to look at results. Has a state embraced rigorous standards? Has it welcomed charter schools? Has it turned around low-performing schools and held teachers accountable? Grants from the National Institutes of Health are awarded to scientists who have advanced their research to a stage where there are promising returns. By setting a high qualifying bar and requiring a record of past performance, the president is instituting a similar system for allocating education dollars. The first wave of education stimulus funding, allocated earlier this year, was intended to tide over states facing budget shortfalls. This next tranche of dollars have a different purpose—to be a stimulus for positive change. If the administration were to simply spread the funds around, Race to the Top would end up supporting incremental, not transformational, change. The time is right for bold, comprehensive reform—even if only in a handful of states. This is why it is important to consider a state's record. Is the governor a true change agent, someone who is willing to withstand pressure in order to implement difficult reforms? If so, it may be right to award funding to his state. The old way of doing business would be to spread around the money so no one could be held accountable. The new approach is to give governors authority and responsibility, and then hold them accountable for results. For decades, adult interests have been at the forefront of public education. Reform has been derailed by adults who wanted to protect the status quo and enjoy lifelong benefits. This time the focus will be on learning in the classroom. What's important is that the administration is demanding that every child receive an education that prepares him or her for college or for work. Without that we will continue to be sidetracked by insignificant issues. States that have the track record and leadership in place to implement Mr. Obama's aggressive reform menu—of enforcing rigorous academic standards, creating data systems that track individual student performance, ensuring teacher quality and effectiveness, and turning around failing schools—deserve the funds to show that our public schools can again lead the world. We have yet to prove, on a systemic basis, that we can dramatically improve America's public schools. Race to the Top is a chance to start small, hold states accountable, and expand proven reforms to the rest of the country. Mr. Ford is chairman of the Democratic National Leadership Council. Mr. Gerstner is former chairman of IBM and former chairman of the Teaching Commission. Mr. Broad is founder of The Broad Foundations. online.wsj.com

To: Magnatizer who wrote (38074)	2/5/2010 9:18:11 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Why Antagonize China? The revitalization of Asian capitalism is the most important positive event in the world in the last 30 years. FEBRUARY 4, 2010, 11:50 P.M. ET. By GEORGE GILDER While attempting to appease a long list of utterly unappeasable foes—Iran, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah, and even Hugo Chávez—today the U.S. treats China, perhaps our most crucial economic partner, as an adversary because it defies us on global warming, dollar devaluation, and Internet policy. It started last June in Beijing when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner lectured Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who recoiled like a man cornered by a crank at a cocktail party. Mr. Geithner was haranguing the Chinese on two highly questionable themes, neither arguably in the interests of either country: the need to suppress energy output in the name of global warming—a subject on which Mr. Geithner has no expertise—and the need for a Chinese dollar devaluation, on which one can scarcely imagine that he can persuade Chinese holders of a trillion dollars of reserves. This week in a meeting with Senate Democrats, President Obama continued to fret about the dollar being too strong against the yuan at a time when most of the world's investors fear that the Chinese will act on his words and crash the dollar. View Full Image Associated Press U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao .Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president's friends at Google are hectoring China on Internet policy. Although commanding twice as many Internet users as we do, China originates fewer viruses and scams than does the U.S. and with Taiwan produces comparable amounts of Internet gear. As an authoritarian regime, it obviously will not be amenable to an open and anonymous net regime. Protecting information on the Internet is a responsibility of U.S. corporations and their security tools, not the State Department. Yes, the Chinese are needlessly aggressive in missile deployments against Taiwan, but there is absolutely no prospect of a successful U.S. defense of that country. Sending them $6 billion of new weapons is a needless provocation against China that does nothing valuable for the defense of the U.S. or Taiwan. Yes, the Chinese have also spurned America's quixotic effort to herd the gangs of anti-Semitic, anti-American oil-dependent felines at the United Nations to undertake an effective program of economic sanctions against Iran. A foreign policy of serious people at a time of crisis will recognize that the current Chinese regime is the best we can expect from that country. The Chinese revitalization of Asian capitalism remains the most important positive event in the world in the last 30 years. Not only did it release a billion people from penury and oppression but it transformed China from a communist enemy of the U.S. into a now indispensable capitalist partner. It is ironic that liberals who once welcomed appeasement of the monstrous regime of Mao Zedong now become openly bellicose at various murky incidents of Internet hacking. Nonetheless, with millions of Islamists on its borders and within them, China is nearly as threatened by radical Islam as we are. China has a huge stake in the global capitalist economy that Islamic terrorists aim to overthrow. And China, like the U.S., is so heavily dependent on Taiwanese manufacturing skills and so intertwined with Taiwan's industry that China's military threat to the island is mostly theater. Although some Taiwanese politicians still dream of permanent independence, Taiwan's world-beating entrepreneurs have long since laid their bets on links to the mainland. Two thirds of Taiwanese companies, some 10,000, have made significant investments in China over the last five years, totaling some $200 billion. Three quarters of a million Taiwanese reside in China for more than 180 days a year. With Taiwan, greater China is the world's leading actual manufacturer and assembler of microchips, computers and network equipment on which the Internet subsists. Virtually all U.S. advanced electronics, as eminent chemist Arthur Robinson reported last month in his newsletter Access to Energy, are dependent on rare earth elements used to enhance the performance of microchips and held in a near global monopoly by the Chinese firm Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company in Mongolia. The U.S. is as dependent on China for its economic and military health and economic growth as China is dependent on the U.S. for its key markets, reserve finance, and global capitalist trading regime. It is self-destructive folly to sacrifice this core synergy at the heart of global capitalism in order to gain concessions on global warming, dollar weakening, or Internet politics. How many enemies do we need? Mr. Gilder is a founder of the Discovery Institute and author of "The Israel Test" (Richard Vigilante Books, 2009). online.wsj.com