Category Archives: Government

Foxx in the Glass House

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Ed Cone has a nice little post about my US Rep., Virginia Foxx, and points out that those who live in glass houses should be very careful of the rocks they throw.  Below is the video of Rep. Foxx deriding some of the bills she sees as a waste of Congress’ time and here’s the link to some of the resolutions that Rep. Foxx has sponsored, including a resolution to recognize the Christmas tree industry and my favorite, H.CON.RES.205: Recognizing the spirit of Jacob Mock Doub and his contribution to
encouraging youth to be physically active and fit and expressing the
sense of Congress that "National Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day" should
be established in Jacob Mock Doub’s honor.

In all fairness I should point out that I’m not a fan of Rep. Foxx and have made that clear.  I also think that she’s sponsored some good bills (Example: H.R.1499 :
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow members of the
Armed
Forces serving in a combat zone to make contributions to their
individual retirement plans even if the compensation on which such
contribution is based is excluded from gross income.)  That said, I also think Ed’s right that she’s being a little hypocritical in this case.

BTW, Rep. Foxx and another junior NC Rep., Patrick McHenry, are part of a Republican effort to get the Democrats to air the earmarks on the pending Homeland Security bill now, before it goes to conference with the Senate, and not after it goes to conference.  Basically they’re calling the Democrats out on campaign promises to make the legislative process more transparent.  Of course when their party was in power they were calling for no such thing, but I guess that’s neither here nor there.

What Does Niger’s Embassy in Rome Have to Do With Us?

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What does a petty robbery of Niger’s embassy in Rome in January, 2001 have to do with us?  Plenty it seems:

The case is a simple one: Thieves broke into the apartment-sized
embassy of Niger, located on the northern cusp of Rome’s historical
center, while the staff was away the day after New Year’s in 2001. The
intruders made off with a few seemingly unimportant items that included
a few sheets of stationary and a stamp with the country’s official seal.

More than two years later, the case for taking the US-named War on
Terror to Iraq was made based on forged documents made from those items
– the falsified information behind US President George W Bush’s now
famous 16-word State of the Union claim that "The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa."

That Iraq never sought uranium from Africa is now well known. But
the tale of how the claim came to be made still offers new and relevant
lessons.

The case is detailed in a new 250-page book – "Collusion:
International Espionage and the War on Terror" – written by Italian
investigative journalists Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D’Avanzo. The book
points a finger at disgraced former Italian secret agent Rocco Martino
who allegedly forged the documents and sold them for cash to his former
bosses with the Italian intelligence agency SISME, with no idea how
important they would become.

Also to blame is Silvio Berlusconi, who in 2001 was Italy’s newly
elected prime minister eager to curry favor with Washington and its
allies. Berlusconi’s government passed the information on to London and
from there it made it to the White House. It was not thoroughly checked
out at either stop.

Source: ISN

It seems the information wasn’t thoroughly checked out at its destination either.  You know, if this was a movie no one would believe it because they’d assume that there’s no way that three governments could bumble so badly.  I think one of the byproducts of growing up in Washington is that I absolutely find it believable. One rubber stamp, plus one moronic ex-spy, plus three western governments equals the death of tens of thousands?  If you’ve been in Washington for more than 10 minutes you know that it’s more than possible, it’s probable.

SB1006: Why it Matters

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Winston-Salem Journal managing editor Ken Otterbourg has a great post today on why SB1006 is important here in North Carolina:

I want to get on my soapbox for a few minutes and talk about SB1006,
which is making its way through the General Assembly. It’s another
example of the slow and steady erosion of North Carolina’s
public-records laws. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Tony Rand, of
Fayetteville, carves out an exemption in the public-records law for
public hospitals when they buy private medical practices.

These purchases have been going on for some time, and are part of
the general consolidation in the medical/health care industry, with
hospitals having primary care practices. Forsyth/Novant has these
arrangements. So does WFUBMC, the other 800 lb gorilla at the opposite
end of Hawthorne Road. These are both private, not-for-profit entities,
and, the argument goes, that public hospitals need the same sort of
privacy if they are going to be able to compete.

It’s a common-sense solution, supporters say. To me, the key word in
this debate is public. A hospital that is owned by taxpayers is a
different entity. The money, the assets, the reputation, it’s all owned
by us. If a private hospital wants to overpay for a clinical practice,
that’s OK. But taxpayers ought to know how public officials are
spending their money.

Yep.

So Who Prays for Forsyth County?

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After I vented my spleen yesterday I got to thinking that maybe I’d spouted off about the Forsyth County commissioners a little to rashly.  Specifically I said:

The Forsyth County commissioners and sectarian prayer supporters
consistently point out that the commissioners invite representatives of
different religions to open their meetings and so the current policy is
fair.  I’m left to wonder if they think that inviting Baptists,
Methodists, Catholics, Lutherans and Moravians qualifies as different
religions?  Exactly when was the last time a Pagan was invited to give
the opening prayer?  How about a Muslim or Buddhist?  Heck, what about
those Mormons that scare the crap out of your average Baptist?

I started thinking that maybe I should have checked before I wrote that, and I should probably look into it to be fair.  So I did.  I checked out the minutes for all the regular meetings held by the commissioners from 2000 to 2006 and the meeting summaries from meetings held in 2007.  That’s 175 meetings held from January 10, 2000 to April 9, 2007, each of which began with a call to order and then the attendees standing to hear the invocation and the pledge of allegiance.  Here’s who gave those 175 invocations:

  • 152 were delivered by representatives of Christian institutions (Churches, Salvation Army)
  • 16 were delivered by board members
  • 2 were delivered by a representative of a Unitarian Universalist congregation
  • 2 were delivered by a representative of Forsyth Jail Prison Ministry (both in 06)
  • 1 by a Rabbi (November of 06)
  • 1 by a representative of Carolina Dianetics (Scientologists) (1/22/07)
  • 1 (3/12/07) the notes only say "invocation" and do not indicate who delivered it

I guess I was safe in my spouting off.  Although I did see the occassional Seventh Day Adventist included I didn’t see any Mormons, Muslims or Buddhists.  I find it interesting that the Dianetics person was invited last month since that occured after the commissioners received the letter from the ACLU.  Another interesting point is that the board member who most often gave the invocation was Dave Plyler who lost his seat in a close election last year to Ted Kaplan.  Kaplan is one of the three commissioners to oppose proceeding with the court battle that the commissioners voted yesterday to pursue.

I wonder if we’ll see more diversification of invocators as we move forward thanks to the attention from the lawsuit?

Free Lawn Edging from the City!

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RoadcrewedgingAs you may recall the road in front of our house has been worked on for the past few days (I first wrote about it here).  I’m pleased to report that the road crew did re-plant our mailbox, although they didn’t put it in concrete as it was before so now it’s a tad wobbly.  An added bonus is that they edged my lawn for me with an industrial sized grader.  I don’t usually remove 18 inches of lawn when I edge it myself but beggars can’t be choosers.  Aw, who am I kidding?  I never edge the thing myself so they kind of did me a favor.

On a completely different tangent can someone please explain to me why my dog, Arthur, prefers to poop right next to the road?  My theory is he’s an exhibitionist of the strangest order and in addition he likes to feel the cool breeze of passing cars as he takes care of business.  Here’s a pic for those of you who don’t believe me:
Arthurtakingcareofbusiness

It’s Called Communication People

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MailboxroadexpansionWe woke up this morning to find that the road crews who have been working diligently to add a narrow shoulder to the road that runs in front of our house (Concord Church Road) had reached our block.  We also found that our mailbox, as well as some of our neighbors’ mailboxes, were in the way so they were removed.  That’s our mailbox in the foreground of the picture to the left.  I don’t have any complaints about the removal, yet, since they didn’t break it, yet, but they could have let us know they needed it removed and given us the option of doing it ourselves.

It’ll be interesting to see if they re-plant it, and even if they do I doubt they’ll give it a concrete footer like we had before.  They’ll likely just stick it in the ground which means that if we don’t add the concrete ourselves it’ll literally tilt over in a stiff wind.  Ack.

Keeping Track of Congress Just Got a Lot Easier

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One of the frustrations I’ve had in keeping tabs on what my Congress-critters were doing was that I was pretty much dependant on news outlets to keep me abreast of the action in Washington.  For one thing I didn’t know anyone who had the time to wade through all the information unless their job pays them to do so.  For another, until the advent of the web you had to subscribe to the Federal Register to access all of the info, and even after the web came along it was a tedious process to go and browse the online information.

Now thanks to a project called OpenCongress you can subscribe to RSS feeds dedicated to any Representative or Senator and have their every action sent to you as it’s updated.  I just added the feed for Virginia Foxx to my Netvibes page and now I can see how she’s been voting recently, and in the future I’ll be able to see her votes as soon as they happen.  Even better, OpenCongress has pages that pull together information, including descriptions of the bills, articles about the bills and other data on each bill in one easy to read page.  So here’s one of the recent feeds for Madame Foxx:

Rep. Virginia Foxx [R, NC-5] voted ‘Nay’ on the question: On Passage: H R 1362 Accountability in Contracting Act regarding H.R.1362 Accountability in Contracting Act

If you click on the link to the Act you can read all about it which makes it easy to see how my representative voted and to determine if I agree with her.  Since I think she’s a dingbat I doubt I’ll agree with her much, but at least with this tool I’ll be able to make my judgements based as much on her votes as for her less than appealing public appearances.

The Education Lottery

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Here in North Carolina we finally got ourselves a lottery last year.  After years of trying the powers-that-be finally got it through by calling it an "Education Lottery" and saying that proceeds would go to funding public education.  The lottery is a reality now and it will probably be so for many years.

Personally I don’t care whether or not we have a lottery.  I’ve never played the NC lottery, but I used to play scratch-off games in Virginia every once in a while on a lark.  Some folks call lotteries a regressive tax on the poor, but I don’t buy the argument that it’s a tax since you don’t have to play it.  What I will mind is if the legislature decides to divert the money to something besides education, because then they’ll have pulled a bait and switch on the fine citizens of North Carolina.

That’s why I read with great interest this post about lotteries at  Freakonomics.  Even more interesting are some of the comments, especially the one about Montana that says that the education system used to be the beneficiary of the lottery but is no longer.  Honestly does anyone think it’s really a question of if, not when, the state legislature will eventually divert lottery money to the general fund?

North Carolina’s lottery has been marked with scandal from the beginning, which was nicely outlined in this Washington Post article. In fact a lot of what happened with the lottery led to the recent resignation of our soon-to-be-convicted-felon former House Speaker Jim Black.  Despite the attention all of this has brought to the lottery it will only be a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before North Carolina’s crooked-as-an-elbow leadership figures we’re not paying attention and diverts the money to something like tobacco subsidies or hog farm enrichment programs. The money that the lottery generates is just too big a cookie jar for our leaders to resist dipping into it.  It’s happened elsewhere already and it’s going to happen here.

No Child Left Behind

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NochildletterToday we received a letter from the North Carolina State Board of Education, Office of Curriculum and School Reform Services (click on the image at left to see it).  From the letter:

"Although great gains have been made in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System (WS/FCS), the district did not make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in Reading (for four years in a row) or Math (for two years in a row) in grade spans 3-5, 6-8, and at the high school level, based on 2005-2006 test results. According to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the district is entering Corrective Action Phase of District Improvement. This identification means several things for the school district.

First, the district will continue to identify steps to improve student achievement by revising the school district’s Title I District Improvement Plan. This plan describes what the school district will do to help low-achieving children meet challenging academic achievement standards. In revising the plan, the district will consult with parents, school staff and others…

Second, in revising its Title I plan, WS/FCS is required to focus on the professional development needs of its instructional staff. This must be done by directly addressing the academic achievement problem(s) that caused the school district to be identified for improvement. (Emphasis mine)"

While I’m sure there are teachers that need improvement, and there are some that are incompetent, I don’t think you can lay the blame at their feet.  The problem is probably much deeper and I suspect that we parents are as responsible for the kids’ failures as the teachers, if not more so.  I’m also sure that there are plenty of kids who are themselves responsible; raise your hand if you know a bright, lazy kid.  So why mandate professional development for teachers and yet not mandate some sort of participation by parents of underachieving kids?  Why not mandate that underachieving kids have to stay after school for tutoring?

The larger questions about whether No Child Left Behind is worth a damn, or if evaluating schools based solely on standardized tests is a good idea are too sticky to get into here.  But simply by looking at the current educational context and accepting the goal of a minimum number of children passing the tests we should ask ourselves if addressing one part of the equation, teachers, is adequate.  I dare say it’s not, and I hope that the consultation with parents and school staff will result in at least some discussion of the expectations for parents and students in the process since the law doesn’t mandate it. I don’t care how much training a teacher gets; if they aren’t supported by the parents the kids are lost, and if the kids aren’t held accountable then they’re going to continue to fail.

**Update:  Esbee has a great post on homeschooling that I think is relevant to this piece.**