Thursday, March 4, 2010
USE STATES AS HEALTH CARE REFORM LABS
It's worth recapping how many of the policies Democrats want have already failed in the states:
- In 1994, Tennessee started a massive Medicaid expansion (eventually covering 500,000 additional residents).
- A decade later, the state abandoned the experiment after costs more than tripled from $2.5 billion in 1995 to $8 billion in 2004, consuming one-third of the state budget.
- When the experiment unraveled in 2005, 170,000 enrollees were dropped.
- Starting in April 1993, New York state imposed two new regulations, intended to make insurance more affordable for older and sicker residents.
- Instead, community rating (which forces insurers to charge one price regardless of age or health status) and guaranteed issue (which forces insurere to offer policies to all applicants) nearly obliterated the market for individual insurance.
- The regulations drove up prices for young and healthy applicants, pushing them out of the market; today New York's individual insurance market is 4 percent of its size in 1994.
- In 2003, Maine launched an ambitious plan to cover all its uninsured, in part by creating a government-run, "public option" insurance plan with taxpayer-subsidized premiums.
- An expensive train wreck, less than 10,000 residents have enrolled since it started in 2005 -- at a cost of $155 million.
- Today, enrollment is capped, due to budget constraints.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS "MODEL" MOVES TO PRICE CONTROLS
Subject: txt hcare -
Natural experiments are rare in politics, but few are as instructive as the prototype for ObamaCare that Massachusetts set in motion in 2006. The bills for "universal coverage" are now coming due, and it appears the state political class is prepared to do lasting damage to one of America's top-flight health care systems, says the Wall Street Journal.
Last month, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick proposed hard price controls across almost all Massachusetts health care: [snip]
Ironically, former Governor Mitt Romney (like President Obama) sold this plan as a way to control spending. As with all new entitlements, the rolling cost crisis began almost immediately, says the Journal:
- For fiscal 2010 taxpayer costs are $47 million over budget, in part due to the recession, and while the $913 million Patrick requested for 2011 is a 5 percent increase over 2010, spending has grown on average 6.7 percent per year.
- Meanwhile, average Massachusetts insurance premiums are now the highest in the nation; since 2006, they've climbed at an annual rate of 30 percent in the individual market.
- Small business costs have increased by 5.8 percent.
- Per capita health spending in Massachusetts is now 27 percent higher than the national average... [snip]
All of this is merely a preview of what the entire country will face if Democrats succeed with their plan to pound ObamaCare into law in anything like its current form. Massachusetts is teaching the country a valuable lesson in how not to reform health care, if only anyone would pay attention...READ MORE
HOOSIERS AND HEALTH SAVINGS ACCOUNTS
Subject: txt hcare -
Five years ago, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) of Indiana requested that a consumer-directed health insurance option, or Health Savings Account (HSA). In the first year some 4 percent signed up for it; this year, over 70 percent of Indiana's 30,000 state workers chose it, by far the highest in public-sector America.
What Indiana and independent health care experts at Mercer Consulting have found, says Daniels, is that individually owned and directed health care coverage has a startlingly positive effect on costs for both employees and the state. In Indiana, for example:
- State employees enrolled in the consumer-driven plan will save more than $8 million in 2010 compared to their coworkers in the old-fashioned preferred provider organization (PPO) alternative.
- In the second straight year in which state employees have been forced to skip salary increases, workers switching to the HSA are adding thousands of dollars to their take-home pay (even if an employee had health issues and incurred the maximum out-of-pocket expenses, he would still be hundreds of dollars ahead).
The state is saving, too, says Daniels:
- In a time of severe budgetary stress, Indiana will save at least $20 million in 2010 because of high HSA enrollment.
- Mercer calculates the state's total costs are being reduced by 11 percent due solely to the HSA option.
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POLL: 58% Say Economy Causing More Family Stress
Subject: txt hcare mny -
[No no, all wrong: everyone's worried about their health care - that's job 1...]
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Who Lost Iran?
Subject: txt gwot intl iran nsec -
"Who lost China?" was the Republican slogan in the 1950s, after Mao Zedong conquered China and turned it into a Communist tyranny. Jozef Stalin was in power in the Soviet Union at the time and controlled half of Europe. China and Russia were both nuclear-armed tyrannies, and democracy was in retreat all over the world.
The Western Left constantly lied about Communist Imperialism -- to the point where they redefined the very word "imperialism" to exclude any Communist regime. Even today, the Left won't admit that the Soviets and Chinese were running a classic imperialist enterprise. The Western Left enabled Fidel Castro to establish a Communist prison colony in Cuba, and he promptly lobbied Nikita Khrushchev to place nuclear missiles off the coast of Florida.
That slogan"Who lost China?" reminded American voters to elect Ike Eisenhower. As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he had unsurpassed experience in national security and international politics. He was a wise and reassuring presence, the right president for the First Nuclear Age.
We are once again threatened by a fast-rising rogue state, run by a totalitarian, suicidal cult soon to be armed with nuclear weapons. The life-or-death question for the coming elections should therefore be: Who lost Iran?
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Where's the accountability?
Subject: txt nsec iran msm libs -
Two years ago, the Democrats and their friends in the liberal media were patting themselves on the back because of a National Intelligence Estimate that baldly stated, "Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003."
This was thought to make President George Bush look bad because he was insisting that Iran was a rogue nation that presented a growing threat in the Mideast and throughout the world.
Since it made George Bush look bad, it was therefore considered of major significance. As I noted in a December 2007 column, the mainstream media had been "doing a major blitz of the airwaves with the claim that Bush and Cheney had misled the American people and the world by saying that Iran was a nuclear threat."
But the liberal media - apparently endeared with the idea that 2009 was some far distant future beyond our need for concern - just told the public what it wanted the public to know -
"Bush is bad; Iran not so much."
The only problem was that the sum total of evidence in the National Intelligence Estimate that supported the proposal that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 was the sentence that declared it so.
Indeed, throughout the report there were red flags as big as the nose on Pinocchio's face. Even in the very same sentence that declared Iran had "halted" its nuclear weapons program, it was also acknowledged that Iran "still may be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015."Well, welcome to 2010...
[Among the most glaring double standards in our liberal MSM: accountability of the Left's past misdeeds - frequently their own...]
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Brazil rebuffs US pressure for Iran sanctions
Subject: txt gwot nsec intl - iran -
Brazil will not bow to pressure from the US to support further sanctions against Iran over its nuclear work, the country's foreign minister has said. Celso Amorim told US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Brazil wanted to see further negotiations on the issue before it would support sanctions. Mrs Clinton said that sanctions had to be passed first in order to persuade Iran to ''negotiate in good faith''.
[America alone.]
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Rebirth of a Nation
Subject: txt gwot heroes hstry msm -
Newsweek's cover this week is a double-taker.
So is the accompanying story, which includes:
Bush's rhetoric about democracy came to sound as bitterly ironic as his pumped-up appearance on an aircraft carrier a few months earlier, in front of an enormous banner that declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
And yet it has to be said and it should be understood — now, almost seven hellish years later — that something that looks mighty like democracy is emerging in Iraq. And while it may not be a beacon of inspiration to the region, it most certainly is a watershed event that could come to represent a whole new era in the history of the massively undemocratic Middle East.
Independent journalist Michael Yon remembers writing something along these lines in the summer of 2008. He e-mails from Afghanistan:
"As per normal, MSM is lagging behind the obvious . . . . You might recall that in 2008 I said the war is over, and we won. (I remember because like with all such statements, people throw stones and only later does it bear out.)"
Yon's not looking for credit there. He explains:
"This isn't rocket science, Kathryn. It's just a matter of paying attention and disregarding what others think about your report, and waiting patiently for history to vindicate."
He adds: "Newsweek might consider renaming itself to Historyweek."
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MSNBC Crops President Bush Out of Newsweek Cover
Subject: txt msm bias gwot nsec -
On Wednesday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough pointed out the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek magazine, which proclaimed "Victory At Last; The Emergence of A Democratic Iraq" and featured a picture of President George W. Bush walking the deck of an aircraft carrier. However, the image of Newsweek that appeared on screen cropped out President Bush's face entirely...
One of Scarborough's guests, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, reacted to Newsweek's declaration of victory in Iraq: "Too positive....For sure. We're going to take months to see a new government formed and we don't know how well the new government's going to operate....Too soon to take out the champagne, if ever." Show co-host Mika Brzezinski added: "Still a lot of controversy as to why we went in."
[What bias?]
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No Where Safe from Leftist Bombast: TV Mom Frets GOP House Guests 'Denying Global Warming'
Subject: txt grn msm libs fnn -
Demonstrating how Hollywood writers aren't reticent about inserting gratuitous political points into prime time dramas, on last Sunday night's (February 21) episode of ABC's Brothers and Sisters, “Nora Walker,” played by liberal actress Sally Field, walked into her kitchen during a kick-off party for her daughter's Republican senatorial campaign, and complained to another daughter, a son and his husband:
I can't believe the three of you are in here drinking while the GOP is out there denying global warming.
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Abuse of Power
Subject: txt 1st hcare -
A string of electoral defeats and the great unpopularity of ObamaCare can't stop Democrats from their self-appointed rendezvous with liberal destiny—ramming a bill through Congress on a narrow partisan vote.
What we are about to witness is an extraordinary abuse of traditional Senate rules to pass a bill merely because they think it's good for the rest of us, and because they fear their chance to build a European welfare state may never come again.
The vehicle is "reconciliation," a parliamentary process that fast-tracks budget measures and was created in 1974 as a deficit-reduction tool. Limited to 20 hours of debate, reconciliation bills need a mere 50 votes in the Senate, with the Vice President as tie-breaker, thus circumventing the filibuster. Both Democrats and Republicans have frequently used reconciliation on budget bills, so Democrats are now claiming that using it to pass ObamaCare is no big deal.
Yet this shortcut has never been used for anything approaching the enormity of a national health-care entitlement. Democrats are only resorting to it now because they've failed to make their case through persuasion.
Reconciliation is the last mathematical gasp for ObamaCare because Democrats can't sell their policy to the people. This raw exercise of political power is of a piece with the copious corruption and bribery—such as the Cornhusker kickbacks and special tax benefits for union members—that liberals had to use to get even this far.
The goal is to permanently expand the American entitlement state with a vast apparatus of subsidies and regulations while the political window is still (barely) open, regardless of the consequences or the overwhelming popular condemnation.
This is an unprecedented act of partisan arrogance that further marks Democrats as the party of liberal extremism, all so Obama can claim an LBJ-level legacy like the Great Society that will be nearly impossible to repeal...
READ MORE
[THEN (yes, again)...
"OPPOSE OBAMACARE and 'RECONCILIATION' "
Senate-Reid: http://reid.senate.gov/contact/index.cfm
YOUR Senator: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Californians:or: Speed Message them with your personal distribution list...
Barbara Boxer web mail http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm
Dianne Feinstein webmail
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe
and as always, pass it on...
..
NBC: Rangel Giving Up Gavel.Salon: No He's Not. ABC: Yes He Is.The Hill: No He's Not
,
[They're all right {or wrong}]
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Justices signal they're ready to make gun ownership a national right
Subject: txt gdd 1st lbrty guns othr vals othr - bbro -
Washington- Most of the Supreme Court justices who two years ago said the 2nd Amendment protects individual gun rights signaled during arguments Tuesday that they are ready to extend this right nationwide and to use it to strike down some state and local gun regulations.
Since 1982, Chicago has outlawed handguns in the city, even for law-abiding residents who sought to keep one at home. That ordinance was challenged by several city residents who said it violated their right "to keep and bear arms" under the 2nd Amendment.
The case forced the high court to confront a simple question it had never answered: Does the 2nd Amendment limit only the federal government's authority over guns and state militias, or does it also give citizens nationwide a right to challenge their local and state gun laws?
The justices will meet behind closed doors to vote this week on the case of McDonald vs. Chicago. It may be late June before they issue a written ruling.
READ MORE
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'Pelosi Says She Has Much In Common With The Tea Party'
Subject: txt msm fnn lbrty 2010 -
So began an article published by ABCNews.com Sunday about Pelosi's interview with Elizabeth Vargas on "This Week."
"The speaker now says she shares views with movement she dismissed last summer as being 'Astroturf,'"
And that wasn't CLOSE to being the most preposterous part of the story.
More absurd was how Vargas during this 'interview' actually allowed Pelosi to get away with such a ridiculous comment (video embedded below the fold with transcript and commentary):
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Attorney General Eric Holder Defends Defense Lawyer at Justice Department
Subject: txt gwot nsec -
In an escalating war of words with Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Republicans are raising "serious concerns" about political appointees at the Justice Department who previously worked on behalf of terror suspects. The Republicans told Holder in a letter obtained by ABC News that "unanswered questions" about these political appointees "raise serious concerns about who is providing advice on detainee matters"...
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DOJ: Department of Jihad?
Subject: txt gwot islm - nsec -
War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on?
From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser.
We may now have a clue as to why...
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Newsweek Asserts 'Terror Begins At Home' -- With the Republicans
[Meanwhile in our professional media...]
Newsweek’s latest issue features an article by managing editor Daniel Klaidman that blatantly associates Republican criticism of the Obama administration with terrorism. Its title in the table of contents is "Terror Begins at Home: The GOP’s Scare Tactics." Inside the magazine, the headline is "Terror Begins at Home: Fearmongering Politicians Are Scoring Cheap Political Points at the Expense of the American People."
In the magazine, the article is illustrated with a blurry drawing of male underwear. Online, its lead image is a finger-pointing photo of Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.).
Is there an article in Newsweek that isn’t an editorial?
Klaidman was firing rhetorical salvos at Republicans and their "ritualistic hazing" of liberals from the very first sentence..''
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Prosecuted for Saving A Girl's Life
Subject: txt islm bbro -
A girl flees from her home in fear for her life -- and law enforcement goes after the people who helped her. That's the situation in the Rifqa Bary case. The Columbus Dispatch reported this about Rifqa's friend Brian Williams:
"An Ohio minister accused of driving a teenage runaway to a bus station last year has retained a lawyer as police say they're investigating whether anyone broke the law in helping the Christian convert leave home for Florida."
And why did she flee to Florida?
What wonderful news, that as he is prosecuted Brian Williams will be defended by legal counsel who understand that this is enforcement of sharia and are unafraid to fight the oppression and intimidation of the Islamic machine. This is in contrast to Rifqa's lawyers, who naively made numerous back door deals with her parents' CAIR-appointed attorney. Every underhanded dirty deal that Rifqa's lawyers made with the attorney for her parents was broken.
Why should CAIR be able to use our judicial system to send a message to non-Muslims that they will be punished for helping a Christian? Brian Williams, and Rifqa Bary, must prevail. If the Islamic machine succeeds in making an example of them, we are all in trouble.READ MORE
Panel of former Muslims says U.S. needs to "wake up"; overtolerance could pave the way for shari'a in America
Subject: txt islm - gdd -
Apostasy killing of former Muslims could become widespread in the United States if the U.S. government and Americans don't "wake up," a panel of three former Muslims said on Capitol Hill Thursday. The panel told the audience that ingrained American religious and ethnic tolerance and myths about Islam are combining to gravely threaten the West.
"Shi'a radical Islam and Wahhabism is coming to this country," Imani said. "There are 6,000 mosques in the United States now. All the money [we] put into gasoline comes back here and is used in the teaching of hate, violence"
Sultan, who said she regularly gets death threats and emails from people saying they will cut off her fingers and rape her daughters because she left Islam, said it is merely a myth that Islamic terrorists misinterpret 'true' Islam for nefarious purposes.
Westerners "don't want to judge anybody based on their [religion]," Sultan said, "[But] Islam is not a religion. Islam is a very dangerous political ideology. ... There is no such thing as radical Islam and regular Islam or spiritual Islam. ...There is only one Islam."
In the fall of 2009 FMU sent a pledge to 111 Muslim organizations in the United States affirming the right of Muslims to leave Islam and not be punished or killed. (Shari'a, Muslim law, calls on Muslims to kill those who convert or otherwise leave the faith.) The document asked recipients to sign and return the pledge to FMU. Just two groups did.
The response is proof of a silent, creeping tolerance in the West for radical ideology, a development that augurs very badly for a free society, panel members said.
Western governments seem oblivious to the apathy of supposedly legitimate organizations about apostasy killings and the growing ubiquity of fatwa (death warrant) issuances, the panel said.
"Fatwas are issued on Arab T.V. on a regular basis. ... And these fatwas are following us right here in America. Why we are sleeping and not making a big deal about that is beyond me."
Darwish said if free reign for such practices continues, they "will change the culture in America. (They've) already changed the culture in Europe."
READ MORE
>> VIEW VIDEO HERE
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Iran Sneaking in Nuclear Equipment
Subject: txt nsec intl china -
Early last year, a Chinese company placed an order with a Taiwanese agent for 108 nuclear-related pressure gauges. But something happened along the way. Paperwork was backdated. Plans were rerouted, orders reconfigured, shipping redirected.
And the gauges ended up in a very different place: Iran.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said he was unaware of the pressure gauge deal.
In Shanghai, Roc-Master official Liu Xiaofeng initially said he didn't recall the transaction. But when pressed, he replied,
"It's our company's secret information, so I don't think we need to tell the media anything about it."
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China warming up to be an Arctic player
Subject: txt intl china -
Beijing - China doesn't own a single centimetre of Arctic coastline, nor does it belong to the Arctic Council, of which Canada is a member, that addresses Arctic issues. But that's not expected to keep China from becoming a player in Arctic affairs.
A groundbreaking study released Monday says China will seek a say in setting rules and regulations governing activities in the Arctic, to protect its national interests...
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POLL: 50% See China As Long-Term Threat To U.S.
Subject: txt intl china nsec -
Just 21% do not believe China is a long-term threat, but another 29% are undecided.
Eighty six percent (86%) of voters are at least somewhat concerned about the level of U.S. debt now owned by China, including 62% who are very concerned. Just 11% voters are not very or not at all concerned about how much U.S. debt China now owns.
Seventy-three percent (73%) believe it is at least somewhat likely China will use this debt against the United States in some fashion within the next five years. That number includes 45% who believe it is very likely. Only 16% say China is unlikely to use the debt against America, but that finding includes just two percent (2%) who say it's not at all likely. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.READ MORE
White House Land Grab
Subject: txt bbro sclm lbrty engry -
You'd think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they're planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.
A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, in a move toward halting job-creating activities involving mining and energy development. 
At a time when our national unemployment rate is 9.7 percent, it is unbelievable anyone would be looking to stop job-creating energy enterprises, yet that's exactly what's happening...
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The West and the 10th
Subject: txt bbro sclm lbrty -
In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt got the Antiquities Act (AA) passed in Congress, legislation designed to protect archeological sites, and giving presidents executive power for preservation purposes.
But the ever-shrewd TR knew that the new law would be useful to do more than just preserve ancient Indian settlement sites or shards of pottery. For good or ill, the only Republican president who is admired by modern Greens used it to close off vast tracts of the American West to economic "exploitation."
All this begs the question as to the constitutionality of legislation such as the Antiquities Act.
How can a president by executive fiat create national monuments in some states, but in others -- such as Wyoming, Alaska, and maybe in the future, Utah -- has powers limited by Congressional legislation?
Are any of the legal nuances involved here in violation of the 10th Amendment? I don't know, I'm not a constitutional scholar. Chief Justice Roberts?
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Al Gore's weird, disconnected op-ed on climate change
Subject: txt grn fnn -
Reading this New York Times op-ed by Al Gore gives you the distinct impression that he has been off somewhere communing with the global warming gods and hasn't been paying attention to the collapse of his "overwhelming consensus" on climate change...
A "criminal generation?" This from a Democrat whose global warming "fixes" would bankrupt the western world?
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A Blizzard Of Lies From Al Gore
Subject: txt grn -
Climate Fraud: Al Gore resurfaces in an op-ed to say that nobody's perfect, everybody makes mistakes and climate change is still real. And he has some oceanfront property in the Himalayas to sell you. If hyperbole and chutzpah had a child, it would be the opening paragraph of Gore's op-ed...
"Looking at the United States of America, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) clearly warned that unchecked global warming will lead to reduced snowpack in the western mountains, critically reducing access to water, which is our lifeblood."
So global warming simultaneously causes mountain snow to vanish and Himalayan glaciers to recede while blanketing the northeastern United States with snowfalls breaking 100 year records.
Clearly, this is an untenable position. One phenomenon cannot simultaneously produce two different results...
[HT:LDot: "One day he will write an op-ed and no one will publish it."
We can hope.]
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Al Gore Mocked At Apple Meeting: He's 'Become A Laughingstock'
Subject: txt grn msm fnn -
Nobel Laureate Al Gore was mocked Thursday at the Apple shareholders meeting in Cupertino, California.
As the subject of whether or not he should be reelected to the tech giant's board of directors surfaced, one longtime shareholder stood up saying, "[Gore] has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted."
According to CNET, the gentleman then wisely said,
"If his advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected"
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How Bad Is the Indoctrination in Our Colleges?
Subject: txt edu -
Let me begin by stating what I believe indoctrination to be and what it is not. Indoctrination is presenting opinion to students as though it were scientific fact or as though no rational, decent, and moral person could have any other view. It is the equivalent of presenting students with ready-made conclusions which they cannot realistically feel free to challenge. There are entire fields of study that are in fact programs of indoctrination.
For example, all Women’s Studies programs with which I am familiar are programs to train students to be radical feminists and specifically to instill in them the doctrine that gender differences are “socially constructed” – that they are artificially created by male elites to subordinate and oppress women.
The social construction of gender is not taught as a theory that students in Women’s Studies courses are free to adopt or reject. It is taught in the same way university courses in physics teach Newton’s laws of motion. When, at a recent academic conference, I confronted the president of the American Association of University Professors over this very issue, he replied that he did indeed teach the social construction of gender as a scientific fact...
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OUT: Upward Bound -- IN: The Radical Sexual Indoctrination of our Kids
Subject: txt bdd vals edu -
Radical Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings will get a fat raise in funding this year
Recently the Obama Administration cut funding to Upward Bound, a successful educational program with a proven track record. Upward Bound provides support to participating students in their preparation for college entrance. Upward Bound serves high school students from low-income families and high school students from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor’s degree. 95% of Upward Bound graduates have entered post-secondary education and are four times more likely to earn a college degree than students from similar back-grounds who do not participate in the program.
At the same time, despite the runaway federal spending and record budget deficits, Barack Obama is including $410 million in the 2011 budget for his “safe schools” czar Kevin Jennings. This is an increase of $45 million over last year’s budget. These additional funds ought to buy a more child porn books and the sexual indoctrination of teens and pre-teens...
[Parents; do you know what your children are being 'taught'?]
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