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The Senate Finance Committee voted against the Government-Run Public Option Insurance Plan by a vote of 15-8.
Five of the committee’s Democrats, including Chairman Max Baucus, voted with all 10 committee Republicans to defeat the measure.
You can read more information about the vote and the measure here:
Key Senate Committee Votes Against Government-Run Health Insurance Plan
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The Federal Government should not be involved in the education of our children. Liberty’s Army predicts that this will not be the last time that the Federal Government tries to involve itself in the education of our children. It certainly is not the first nor the most recent. Remember President Bush and “No Child Left Behind”?
Fox News reports that President Obama would like to do away with summer vacation. This is a trial balloon, the tip of the iceberg for the Obama Administration’s involvement in the education of our nation’s children.
Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.
“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.
“Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll.
But she doesn’t want a longer school day. “I would walk straight out the door,” she said.
Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston’s Clarence R. Edwards Middle School.
“I was like, `Wow, are you serious?”‘ she said. “That’s three more hours I won’t be able to chill with my friends after school.”
Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. “I’ve learned a lot,” she said.
Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.
“Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,” Duncan told the AP. “I want to just level the playing field.”
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it’s not true they all spend more time in school.
Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
Regardless, there is a strong case for adding time to the school day.
Researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution looked at math scores in countries that added math instruction time. Scores rose significantly, especially in countries that added minutes to the day, rather than days to the year.
“Ten minutes sounds trivial to a school day, but don’t forget, these math periods in the U.S. average 45 minutes,” Loveless said. “Percentage-wise, that’s a pretty healthy increase.”
In the U.S., there are many examples of gains when time is added to the school day.
Charter schools are known for having longer school days or weeks or years. For example, kids in the KIPP network of 82 charter schools across the country go to school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than three hours longer than the typical day. They go to school every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. KIPP eighth-grade classes exceed their school district averages on state tests.
In Massachusetts’ expanded learning time initiative, early results indicate that kids in some schools do better on state tests than do kids at regular public schools. The extra time, which schools can add as hours or days, is for three things: core academics — kids struggling in English, for example, get an extra English class; more time for teachers; and enrichment time for kids.
Regular public schools are adding time, too, though it is optional and not usually part of the regular school day. Their calendar is pretty much set in stone. Most states set the minimum number of school days at 180 days, though a few require 175 to 179 days.
Several schools are going year-round by shortening summer vacation and lengthening other breaks.
Many schools are going beyond the traditional summer school model, in which schools give remedial help to kids who flunked or fell behind.
Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents.
That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.
Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams.
“If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it’s hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be,” Alexander said.
Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year.
The Montgomery County, Md., summer program, which includes Brookhaven, received $1.6 million in federal stimulus dollars to operate this year and next, but it runs for only 20 days.
Aside from improving academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the heart of the community. Duncan, who was Chicago’s schools chief, grew up studying alongside poor kids on the city’s South Side as part of the tutoring program his mother still runs.
“Those hours from 3 o’clock to 7 o’clock are times of high anxiety for parents,” Duncan said. “They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table.”
Source:
Obama Proposes Longer School Day, Shorter Summer Vacation
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Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the
telegraph.co.uk reports that, “The sun is setting on the US dollar as the ultra-loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve forces China and the vibrant economies of the emerging world to forge a new global currency order, according to a new report by HSBC.”
“The dollar looks awfully like sterling after the First World War,” said David Bloom, the bank’s currency chief.
“The whole picture of risk-reward for emerging market currencies has changed. It is not so much that they have risen to our standards, it is that we have fallen to theirs. It used to be that sovereign risk was mainly an emerging market issue but the events of the last year have shown that this is no longer the case. Look at the UK – debt is racing up to 100pc of GDP,” he said
Crucially, China and rising Asia have reached the point where they can no longer keep holding down their currencies to boost exports because this is causing mayhem to their own economies, stoking asset bubbles. Asia’s “mercantilist mindset” of recent decades is about to be broken by the spectre of an inflation spiral.
The policy headache was already becoming clear in the final phase of the global credit boom but the financial crisis temporarily masked the effect. The pressures will return with a vengeance as these countries roar back to life, leaving the US and other laggards of the old world far behind.
A monetary policy of near zero rates – further juiced by quantitative easing – is completely incompatible with circumstances in most of Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Divorce is inevitable. The US is expected to hold rates near zero through 2010 to tackle its own crisis.
What is occurring is an epochal loss in the relative wealth and economic power of the old G10 bloc of rich countries compared to rising regions of the world. The euro, yen, sterling, Swiss franc and other mature currencies will be relegated along with the dollar in this great process of rebalancing, but the Greenback will bear the brunt.
The Fed’s super-loose policy is turning the dollar into the key funding currency for the next phase of the global “carry trade”, taking over the role of Japan during its period of emergency stimulus.
Mr Bloom said regional currencies would emerge as the anchor for their smaller trading partners, with China, Brazil, or South Africa substituting the role of the US. Australia is already linking its fortunes to China through commodity ties.
Please read the original article here:
HSBC bids farewell to dollar supremacy
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Trish Turner of foxnews.com reports the following:
Fox has learned, the White House has urged Senate Democrats not to support an amendment that would impose congressional oversight on “czars.”
I recently posted a blog about Sen. GOP moderate Susan Collins’ effort, via amendment to the Interior spending bill, to reign in the Obama Administration’s use of these positions. There are more than 18 czars, and they are not Senate-confirmed.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, who is managing the spending bill on the Senate floor, told Collins earlier this week that she was prepared to accept the amendment, but that one Democrat had an objection. Both senators confirmed this to me directly.
Collins told me she knew who objected and that she thought it was “just a misunderstanding,” that it could all be worked out.
What a difference a couple of days makes.
Now, Feinstein says the White House has indicated to her that she should back away from this effort.
“It’s a huge separation of powers issue. I had no idea,” Feinstein said. I asked if this was the message from the White House, and she said, “Exactly.” She would not say who she had spoken to in the Administration.
You can find Ms. Turner’s article here:
Administration Pushes Dems to Oppose Reining in Czars
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hotair.com’s Ed Morrissey reports that CBO Director, Douglas contradicted President Barack Obama’s claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under his health care reform bill.
The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans could see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.
The bill would cut payments to the Medicare Advantage plans by more than $100 billion over 10 years.
Elmendorf said the changes “would reduce the extra benefits that would be made available to beneficiaries through Medicare Advantage plans.”
Additionally, On Tuesday, September 22, 2009 Senate Finance Committee staffer Shawn Bishop testified regarding this issue before the Senate Finance Committee. Says Bishop,
The $113 billion dollars is a reduction in the extra benefits, the added, additional benefits that Medicare Advantage enrollees have available to them. And those benefits come in the form of vision, dental, reduced hospital deductible. It’s unstatutory, it’s unlawful for any Medicare Advantage plan to reduce the AB covered benefit that they provide. That’s by statute. They have to provide that. They are going to have a reduction in the added benefits that they have in Medicare Advantage. So there’s a reduction in benefits but its additional extra benefits that they have above what they’re entitled to by law on the fee for service side.”
Please read the entire article here:
CBO: Medicare cuts mean benefit cuts
You can track the healthcare bill here: H.R.3200: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
More Health care Coverage on Liberty’s Army
Contact Your U.S. Representative
No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right and keeps on a-comin’. Bill McDonald
In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
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foxnews.com reports that “ACORN, in response to an undercover expose of potential wrongdoing by some employees, pledged Wednesday to follow through on plans to conduct a thorough internal review of its practices — on the same day that the organization filed a lawsuit against the filmmakers whose hidden-camera sting brought the community organization to its knees.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Baltimore court, stems from an undercover video showing ACORN employees Shera Williams and Tonja Thompson providing advice to two filmmakers posing as a pimp and prostitute on how to skirt tax laws.
The filmmakers, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, are named as defendants in the lawsuit, along with Breitbart.com, a Web site managed by conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, which posted the videos. Breitbart released five similar videos that O’Keefe and Giles recorded in ACORN offices in Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; San Bernadino, Calif., and San Diego, as well as the Baltimore office.
The videos prompted the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to launch a criminal investigation, the U.S. Census Bureau to several ties with ACORN and ACORN to fire four of the employees shown in the videos. And on Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service announced it also was severing ties with the organization.
The IRS said it would no longer include ACORN in its volunteer tax assistance program. The program offered free tax advice to about 3 million low- and moderate-income tax filers this spring. ACORN provided help on about 25,000 returns, the IRS said.
But ACORN says no tax returns were actually prepared at the Baltimore office, and that the audio portion of the video recorded there was obtained illegally, since Maryland requires two-party consent for sound recordings. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit cites “extreme emotional distress” on behalf of two workers who were fired after the video was posted online.
The videos were “clear violations of Maryland law that were intended to inflict maximum damage to the reputation of ACORN, the nation’s largest grassroots organizer of low-income and minority Americans,” said ACORN attorney Arthur Schwartz. “Unfortunately they succeeded.”
At the same time, ACORN is moving forward with its pledge to review its operations. The Boston attorney hired by ACORN to conduct an independent probe of the group vowed a “no holds barred” investigation on Wednesday.
Please read the entire article here:
ACORN Vows ‘Serious’ Internal Probe, Sues Filmmakers
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Karen Travers of abcnews.com reports that, “Vice President Joe Biden said today that if Democrats were to lose 35 House seats they currently hold in traditionally Republican districts, it would mean doomsday for President Obama’s agenda.”
Biden said Republicans are pinning their political strategy on flipping these seats.
“If they take them back, this the end of the road for what Barack and I are trying to do,” the vice president said at a fundraiser for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) today in Greenville, Delaware.
Thanks for the great advice Mr. Vice President!
When will every politician, democrat or republican, realize that no one voted for the type of change that President Obama and Democrats are trying to cram down our throats now. The American people have clearly stated their opinion of their health care plan and their cap and trade plan.
Wake up and smell the reality.
You can read the entire article here:
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foxnews.com reports that “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened on Tuesday to use a procedural maneuver to steamroll opponents of health care reform, even as a Senate panel began delicate negotiations over a package that could have the best chance at passing.”
The Nevada Democrat, who has issued similar threats before, spoke as the Senate Finance Committee began debate over Chairman Max Baucus’ reform plan. Reid threatened to use a budgetary tool called reconciliation — also known as the “nuclear option” — that would allow Democrats to pass key parts of the legislation with a simple majority, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to avoid a Republican filibuster.
“If we can’t work this out to do something within the committee structure, then we’ll be forced to do the reconciliation,” Reid said, adding that he views that as a “last resort.”
“It remains to be seen as to whether we will have to do reconciliation. I am confident and hopeful we won’t have to do that, but time will only tell,” Reid said.
Republican Sen. Richard Burr, N.C., said reconciliation would be a “grave mistake,” and that Reid underestimates the public concerns over the bill.
“I don’t think it’s a threat. I think that’s what Harry Reid intends to do,” Burr told FOX News.
But the Senate Finance Committee pushed through tense and intensive talks Tuesday to reach common ground on the Baucus plan. Senators have filed 564 amendments, and on Tuesday afternoon Baucus released a slew of changes.
Among them, Baucus agreed to cut in half the penalty attached to a government-mandated requirement to buy health insurance. Under the changes, families could be charged a maximum of $1,900 for failing to meet the requirement — as opposed to $3,800.
Baucus also agreed to raise the threshold for insurance plans that would be subject to an excise tax. Under the revisions, plans worth $8,750 for individuals and $23,000 for families would be subject to the tax — the thresholds were previously $8,000 for individual plans and $21,000 for family plans.
And he agreed to increase the value of tax credits low- and middle-income people would receive toward insurance. Officials said Baucus decided to commit an additional $50 billion over a decade toward making insurance more affordable for working class families.
The Finance Committee is the last of five panels to have a say before the full Senate debates legislation.
Please read the entire Fox article here:
Reid Threatens ‘Nuclear Option’ to Pass Health Care Reform as Panel Starts Work
You can track the healthcare bill here: H.R.3200: America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
More Health care Coverage on Liberty’s Army
Contact Your U.S. Representative
Contact Harry Reid:
Bruce R. Thompson
Courthouse & Federal Bldg
400 S. Virginia St, Suite 902
Reno, NV 89501
Phone: 775-686-5750
Fax: 775-686-5757
Washington DC
522 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-3542
Fax: 202-224-7327
Toll Free for Nevadans:
1-866-SEN-REID (736-7343)
Carson City
600 East William St, #302
Carson City, NV 89701
Phone: 775-882-REID (7343)
Fax: 775-883-1980
Las Vegas
Lloyd D. George Building
333 Las Vegas Boulevard
South, Suite 8016
Las Vegas, NV 89101
Phone: 702-388-5020
Fax: 702-388-5030
In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
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cnsnews.com reports that, “House Minority Leader John Boehner (R.-Ohio) said today that the health-care plan that President Barack Obama is pushing in Congress is now dead and will not pass.”
Boehner made the observation in an interview this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he appeared after President Obama.
“There’s been no bipartisan conversation on Capitol Hill about health care,” Boehner said in an interview with “Meet the Press” host David Gregory. “At some point when these big government plans fail—and they will, the Congress will not pass this—it’s really time for the president to hit the reset button, just stop all of this and let’s sit down and start over in a bipartisan way to build a plan that Americans will support.”
“So you think the plan is dead?” asked Gregory.
“I think it is,” said Boehner.
Earlier in the program, President Obama had said that news coverage of the health care debate over the past week had been dominated not by “the sensible people” but by people stoking controversy.
In his own appearance, Boehner rejected the contention that the “tone” of the debate over health-care reform had gotten out of control, saying instead that it has been a “spirited” debate and that more Americans had been engaged in debating health-care reform than had been engaged in debating any issue in decades.
Please read the entire article here:
Boehner Says Democrat Health Care Plan is Dead
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Learn more about the U.S. Constitution Here:
National Center for Constitutional Studies
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