Obama's First Legislation Exposes Triple Cross

In 2006, George W. Bush signed Obama's first piece of legislation into law and it allows citizens to see where the tax money is being spent. The University of Illinois newspaper, The DailyIlli.com in Bush signs Obama's first bill into law 'Google for Government' bill creates database of government spending by Riley Roberts, Staff Writer gives us some details:

When President Bush signed the bill into law last Tuesday, the freshman lawmaker scored his first solo victory in his longtime campaign to increase government accountability.

It was a big day for Obama, D-Ill., who has partnered with other senators on previous acts but never authored successful legislation himself.

"I finally got a bill passed," he told The Associated Press.

The legislation, proposed in conjunction with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., will create a Web site designed to allow Americans to search a comprehensive database of government grants, contracts, insurance, loans and financial assistance. The act is slated to go into effect by no later than January 1, 2008.

"He's thrilled that it passed," said Tommy Vietor, Obama's press secretary, in an interview with The Daily Illini. "It represents a bipartisan effort to make government spending more transparent for everyday Americans as well as the media."

The public's reaction to the provisions of the act has been positive.

"I think (the law) sounds like a good idea," said Erinn Mitchell, sophomore in LAS and a registered voter in Illinois. "It's a mystery where the money is. Especially given the history of Illinois, it's understandable why he's proposing it. People want to know where their money is going."

Despite Obama's collaboration with his Republican colleagues and widespread public support, several lawmakers anonymously threatened to pigeonhole the legislation before it ever reached the Senate floor.

"The opposition held the bill up for awhile, but thanks to the support of bloggers on both the left and the right, (Obama) was finally able to get it passed," Vietor said.

So the question for Connecticut taxpayers is, "Where does the money go?"

A site made possible by Obama's bill called USSpending.gov gives us a breakdown.

Connecticut is one of the original thirteen states (one of the stripes on the flag) so you and I are wondering where we rank, say, one through fifty in terms of federal "assistance" (a euphemism for getting tax money back). Well, you'll notice that nothing in CT ranks in the top fifty, nor in the top 100.

But you will notice almost a billion dollars to Air India Limited, STAPLCOTN a cotton subsidy gets approx. $700M, AIR CANADA gets a cool half billion as does PUERTO RICO DEPT OF EDUCATION and JET AIRWAYS (INDIA) PVT. LTD. and oil rich assets in the Gulf States such as EMIRATES AIRLINE get approx 270M per year.

Now you might be thinking that high-rollers like Christopher Dodd and Joe Lieberman would ensure that Connecticut - whose population is larger than Alaska (whose citizens pay ZERO state taxes), with some of America's poorest cities, whose schools need infrastructure funds, special education funding, and whose overburdened taxpayers need tax relief - would get a fair share of what they've put in for education.

Well, they obviously don't and it is inexplicable and inexcusable.

When Puerto Rico's (not a state) Department of Education is subsidized more heavily than an actual state then there's something seriously askew in Washington.

When foreign airlines are subsidized to import cheap labor to take American's worker's jobs with American tax payer's dollars the term of betrayal is a Washington double-cross.

And when American public education is used as a scapegoat to obfuscate the funneling of tax dollars to undermine American student's ability to compete on a fair playing field, that level of betrayal is the triple-cross.

Washington's neo-Molochs

Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.

- Germaine Greer

The freedom to share one’s insights and judgments verbally or in writing is, just like the freedom to think, a holy and inalienable right of humanity that, as a universal human right, is above all the rights of princes.

- Carl Friedrich Bahrdt

Education in America has become an exercise in political indoctrination. The Orwellian, pretzel-logic of slogans such as "No Child Left Behind" mask much darker political agendas. America has turned schools into torture chambers - cabinets for the Dr. Caligari's of the political right to experiment on our children as though they were nothing more than lab rats.

Would any adult submit themselves to an employer who regularly raised the bar on their production or efforts? Or maybe the employer is unsatisfied with your last review - you'll need to be watched and cajoled and given special attention. Yes, we have ways of dealing with you - all in the name of goodness.

Why do our military come back time and time again for hundreds of billions of funding to 'win' wars that don't exist? The bar for them is never raised. Congress never says, "We expect more with less!" No, that's not what happens.

Has corruption, mismanagement, and ubiquitous political sleaze drained last year's budget? Poor things. Here's another half trillion to tide you over until you get it right.

Meanwhile, to our schools...

I attend school board budget meetings that would make any caring citizen cry. The schools fall further and further behind technologically, educationally, and psychologically. Nowhere are state or fedreral tax dollars to be found for the sake of our children - Alaska needs another sleazy tax windfall. And Rob Simmons is all for GOOD THINGS - "You go, eastern Connecticut! I'm [RIGHT] behind you! [except when the vote counts]"

How can schools improve education when there is no desire to improve education. The LAW MANDATES UBIQUITOUS, WORTHLESS, TESTING and failure to comply, to pass, to coerce, to deface each student into a uniform widget may cost administrators, teachers, others their jobs.

And it is all a FOOL's errand. Wealthy communities always are nearly perfect, less wealthy communities are always on the cusp, poor communities are always on a treadmill to catch-up. This is worse than a wasteland. This is factory of broken souls. A treadmill for school officials and teachers commanded to give Sysiphus a coffee break.

The wealthy communities believe their children are perfect, that their schools are the best, that their Stepford Lives are predictably predictable and eternally right.

The less wealthy are in constant stress and distress. Here a circular firing squad of elderly voters, parents, administrators, budget committees, political hacks, malicious lunatics, petty tyrants, and interested parties, good-willed citizens, anti-tax lobbyists, retro-luddites, and a cacophony of citizens holding their bags of broken political promises apply lipstick to a starving pig and pass it off as a healthy speciment. And in their spare time they wound each other with friendly fire.

Worse, in the urban centers, where children are shot at in their daily lives, minorities plead with their children to conform - don't make noise, sit up, don't make the oligarchy mad, pretend you don't exist and maybe, just maybe, we'll get through this day. The dementia of relentless violence and hard drugs precludes education. This is social triage that is ineffective and politcally unconscionable.

Children have inalienable selves [rights to become] to whom inalienable political rights are systematically being ripped away without the benefit of an anesthesia. "Kindness" and "mercy" are words long absent from the religious vernaculars that have delivered us TO this evil state of affairs.

When do we rid ourselves of this criminal legislation and begin to reclaim our children as unique individuals, schools as places to learn as best students can learn?

When?

BOE meeting topics

Last Tuesday was the first BOE meeting I attended since election to the Board. Despite the election of new officers and a fairly clean slate, we addressed many issues.

1. Dianne Kaplan deVries, Ed. D represented the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding and outlined who the organization was (a 501(c)3 nonprofit) and their goal of reforming educational funding in Connecticut. The Board chose to continue the dialogue rather than take an immediate position on aligning with this group.
   
   While her presentation was certainly spirited, my primary concern with the concept is that the State's richest communities already receive the lowest state education funding and our perennially poorest communities get the greatest funding. Given this already 'unequal' funding the schools academically perform in inverse proportion to state funding (the big city schools routinely struggle and southwest Connecticut schools do well).
   
   The paradox is inescapable. If fairness is re-legislated as averaging out funding across the state, wealthy communities will get more funding despite no crying need for it and cities who have the crying need will likely lose funds. That is, unless educational funding is suddenly increased dramatically, small town Connecticut will still not receive any relief - (let's not kid ourselves here - in New York such 'reform' resulted in massive cuts in educational funding - see; here).
   
   Personally, I also didn't like the obfuscation of the word 'Justice' - tax reform is tax reform but this is a minor thing compared to an issue such as segregated schools.
   
   

   Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States. Hypersegregated inner-city schools--in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000--are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
   - Jonathan Kozol

   (We'll come back to this issue soon.)
   
   
2. We also discussed improving reading comprehension and aptitude. I had been thinking about an idea for some time that was warming received as a suggestion that should be tried. That is, the development and digital warehousing of podcasts of reading material and study guides used here in Region 19. Advanced students with good voices can read aloud and record MP3 study guides that students can use to help them read their assigned work. This will help those needing help without looking like they're studying and the digital tutor volunteers can get community service credits for their goodwill efforts.
   
   
3. EO Smith's Principal, Mr. DeLoreto presented a number of topics, one of which was the fact that the school library was reducing its dependence on hardbound material and increasingly leveraging online digital resources - a great idea that broadens the pool of resources while reduces the cost of purchase and storage of temporal materials. [After the meeting, Mr. Silva noted that many school librarians are already [in]formally meeting to proliferate this idea across the district.]
   
   
4. Mr. DeLoreto also took some pride in the fact that our class sizes are reasonable.
   I happen to think this is important information for parents for two reasons; 1. smaller class sizes are usually a metric indicating a better learning environment and 2. it means our teaching staff is not overwhelmed (and there's still way too much paperwork and nonsense coming from the outside for my taste).
   
   
5. The cost of busing jumped out as quite an expense. [We'll revisit this as well].
   

An issue that I'll return to soon will be the rethinking of compulsory education, the re-invention of the high school curriculum as a stream of consciousness rather than a series of inoculations, and the integration of educational activity into our communities.