Education Follies

A couple of nuggets indicating more foibles of our education establishment:

First, from the Paper of Record, the New York Post, a story on the education establishment as Big Brother, spying on and monitoring overweight kids:

http://m.nypost.com/p/news/local/schools_spy_on_fat_kids_HpPAgsKXPYjt1EWFfaNp9K?CMP=OTC-rss&FEEDNAME=

Parental consent or notification seem to be a casualty of this brave new frontier.

Next, from Walter Russell Mead, a story which I long suspected: Head Start, whose success has long been and educational and political shibboleth, is quite likely the scam that I have long suspected.

From Mead:

” “Head Start” has been the poster child of federal aid to education ever since the Lyndon Johnson administration introduced it as part of the Great Society. And for decades liberals have pointed to it as one of the great advances that the federal government has brought to education, and as evidence that creative social engineering by smart professional interventionists can change the world.

But a long-suppressed government report finally released by the Obama administration report is shaking the foundations of Head Start, and the news isn’t coming from right wing conservatives but from Joe Klein at Time magazine. As Klein reports,

We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program’s effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.”

Read the Whole thing.

Six Part Harmony/Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and God’s blessings to one and all.

One “can’t miss” website for me is Pyromaniacs, teampyro.blogspot.com. The three contributors (besides a weekly dose of Spurgeon) are provocative and wise, along with being excellent writers.

This http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2010/12/6-part-harmony.html was posted last year, but was composed 4 years earlier, as a a harmony of the Scriptures which speak to the birth of Christ.
was posted last year, but was composed 4 years earlier, as a a harmony of the Scriptures which speak to the birth of Christ.

Hope that you find this as much of a blessing as I did.

God Bless and Stay Well.

Romney, the Pretzel Candidate

From George Will, in yesterday’s Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-pretzel-candidate/2011/10/28/gIQAPEQ8PM_print.html
Money quotes:
<span style="font-size:medium
“Every day, 10,000 baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, from which they will receive, on average, $1 million of benefits ($550,000 from the former, $450,000 from the latter). Who expects difficult reforms from Romney, whose twists on ethanol make a policy pretzel?
” A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one. It is what Romney did when he said that using Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts “was the wrong source for that funding.” Oh, so the source was the bailouts’ defect.

“… His campaign called his refusal principled: “Citizens of states should be able to make decisions . . . on their own.” Got it? People cannot make “their own” decisions if Romney expresses an opinion. His flinch from leadership looks ludicrous after his endorsement three months ago of a right-to-work bill that the New Hampshire legislature was considering. So, the rule in New England expires across the Appalachian Mountains?

“A day after refusing to oppose repeal of Kasich’s measure, Romney waffled about his straddle, saying he opposed repeal “110 percent.” He did not, however, endorse the anti-mandate measure, remaining semi-faithful to the trans-Appalachian codicil pertaining to principles, thereby seeming to lack the courage of his absence of convictions.
Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.

“Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this? “

Of course, he didn’t need much to convince me…

Small Business/Venture Capital Discussion on NPR

I heard this interview on Morning Edition today: http://m.npr.org/programs/all/3/141033128
The guest was is reasonable And made so much sense that every elected official should pay heed.

Businesses don’t have responsibilities to “put people to work”, the Administration’s and Congress’ claims notwithstanding.

No Regrets on Solyndra??

From The National Review: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279064/obama-solyndra-no-regrets-andrew-stiles

“President Obama weighs in on the Solyndra loan scandal in an exclusive interview with ABC News:
President Obama told ABC News Monday that he does not regret touting the solar company Solyndra as a model of his jobs program, or loaning $535 million in taxpayer money to the company before it declared bankruptcy.”

NO regrets? None? Not even a, “Gee, it’s a shame that we just flushed $535 Million down the drain”?

It might well be that that’s the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to some of our efforts at playing Venture Capitalist in the Alternative Energy realm:

In this story, which I found in Kausfiles,
“What’s terrifying is that after looking at some of the ones that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better,” another OMB e-mail exchange said of Solyndra. “Bad days are coming.”

I take that to mean that there will be another shoe or two to drop before we’ve heard the last of this.

Fouad Ajami on the History of Palestine at the UN

Fouad Ajami is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a frequent OpEd writer for the Wall Street Journal and other publications, and is/was a frequent commentator on the Talking Head TV shows, such as Charlie Rose.

He had an OpEd today in the Wall Street Journal, also available on the Hoover Institution Website: http://www.hoover.org/news/daily-report/93926

Today’s column has a rich history of the first time that the question of Palestine as a nation came before the UN, in 1947. According to Ajami’s account, both Israel and Palestine were were to live side-by-side in a partitioned Palestine. It took some heavy lobbying, but they secured the necessary 2/3 vote for statehood.

Israel became the 58th state, while Palestine refused the 59th state, figuring that their Arab brethren would vanquish Israel.

Beyond Ajami’s vivid writing style, the history and the backstory behind those UN machinations many years ago are compelling.

A small sample of a short but worthwhile read:
“Arab diplomacy had sought the defeat of the resolution, and the Palestinians had waited for deliverance at the hands of their would-be Arab backers. The threat of war offered the Palestinians a false promise; there was no felt need for compromise. The influential secretary-general of the Arab League, the Egyptian Azzam Pasha (by an exquisite twist of fate a maternal grandfather of al Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri), was to tell a talented, young Zionist diplomat, Abba Eban, that the Arab world was not in a compromising mood. “The Arab world regards the Jews as invaders. It is going to fight you,” he said. “War is absolutely inevitable.”

…

“The partition line shall be nothing but a line of fire and blood,” Azzam Pasha warned. And history would vindicate him. Six months later, with Britain quitting Palestine without even a ceremonial handover of responsibility, war would break out.
But the scenarios of doom for the new Jewish state were not to be fulfilled. Israel held its own. And the Palestinians who had bet on the Arab cavalry riding to the rescue were to know defeat and dispossession.”

More Trouble in Minneapolis

Troubling column by Ruben Rosario in the SPPP the other day, concerning the street mayhem that takes place downtown, and the apparent ennui on the part of the Minneapolis Police:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_18913782?source=most_viewed

According to Rosario’s column, the five suburbanites were attacked by a gang of ne’er-do-wells no further than 30 feet from the Precinct Headquarters downtown. When one of the attacked sought assistance from the officer inside the precinct, the officer responded by a shrug of the shoulders.

The story continues by reporting when the victim tried to enter the precinct, he was told to get out. A couple of Mounted officers came to the scene, but couldn’t bring themselves to write a report on the incident.

When the victim returned to file a report later that day, once again he was stonewalled by the city, receiving nothing more than a form letter stating, “We regret that this case does not meet our threshold for investigative assignment at the present time”.

In the meantime, the city with the Boy Mayor made it an imperative to hire a Bike Coordinator.

I certainly hope that the voters in Minneapolis keep this in mind the next time they elect their Mayor/City Council. It’s another reminder to all of us that elections have consequences.

Obesity: The New Global Warming?

Just in time for the Global Warming alarmists to be discredited, both by questionable science, worse politics, and misguided evangelistic zeal, here’s the latest crusade: Obesity is the new global warming.

From the Weekly Standard:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/new-global-warming_593059.html?nopager=1

The stated goal of the fat fighters is to fashion “integrated interventions throughout society—individuals, families, local, national, and international,” as well as “interventions across the life course for all demographic groups to reinforce and sustain long-term behavioral change.” Notice that’s all demographic groups, whether overweight or not.

A job so huge and important can’t be left to free individuals making personal choices. It’s a job for the international community. Thus, obesity prevention “should be considered in relevant trade, economic, agricultural, environmental, food, and health agreements and policies.” The paper urges that the U.N. “coordinate policies and funding to prevent obesity … across its agencies” (maybe through a body like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?). The World Health Organization “should develop global standards, particularly for food and beverage marketing to children and for nutrient profiling.”
Just when you think it can’t be more Orwellian, consider this:
“Anti-obesity ideology holds that people are getting fatter because corporate villains wield undue influence in their greedy quest for profits, so all parties are urged to “limit the influence of commercial interests in policy making.” “

Here’s the Money ‘graph:
“With the coming anti-obesity campaign so similar to the global-warming juggernaut, it seems clear that modern liberalism has devised a new strategy for imposing policies that it can’t attain through ordinary politicking. First, identify a crisis ostensibly caused by modern lifestyles and/or capitalism. Next, launch a multifaceted international response to prevent allegedly looming catastrophe. Third, act as if the desired policies are objective, scientific solutions. Fund it all by imposing onerous taxes on an expanding list of villainous enterprises, et voilà: Liberalism rides to the rescue. And if the strategy fails on one front, as it appears to have with global warming, find another crisis and start again. “

The Perfect Green Unicorn

What a phrase that pays…

Walter Russell Mead, the author of such a memorable phrase, has the bonus of being a deep thinker. In a Post today
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/09/wishful-thinking-on-solar-power/ he writes that while the ideas behind funding of some of the solar initiatives may be appealing, the concept seems to be political, rather than economic.

“This looks like the perfect green unicorn: an heirloom variety, organically raised, grass fed, free range, locally sourced.”

If Walter Russell Mead isn’t part of your reading rotation, he should be.

Please Pray for This Weekend’s Bible Bee.

Please be in prayer for the Bible Bee http://www.biblebee.org, which is taking place this Saturday at 128 locations across the country. There will be more than 5000 children working on Bible knowledge and memory. These kids have spent their summer in study for this day.

We pray that the participants (and their parents and the spectators and those supporting those efforts) will be blessed. I know that our Youth have been working diligently this summer. No matter how they do on Saturday, I’m exceedingly proud of them.

As for me, once again I’ll be toiling away in the Nerdery at our local Bee. Oh, the Bible Bee will call it Command Central, or the Operations Center, or whatever name they come up with. It’ll always be the Nerdery to me.

May I suggest that your family be similarly blessed by partipating in next year’s Bible Bee.