[quote]T-Stag wrote:
First of all, how many times have we heard “Jesus W. Christ” taking the Almighty’s name in vain? He’s passing himself off to the people as God’s personal messenger. Check out these quotes:
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In the quotes you supplied, Bush is not taking the name of the Lord in vain. He is merely referring to God, or what he believes God has done or is doing. However, your use above would definitely fit into the category.
“For the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
If you want to know what someone who is “speaking for God” really sounds like, you’re going to have to read some Old Testament prophets. Your ignorance is glaring. I would be embarrassed. After you have read the bible once from cover to cover, come back to the discussion.
Yup, those damn Christians. What is the solution anyway? Have people thought of a “FINAL SOLUTION” to the little Christian problem?
–End Sarcastic Humor–
I am an atheist, but I find myself very embarrassed by atheists who hate religion, and blame religion for everything.
So you don’t want to be a Christian, does that give you the right to hate those that do? Are we supposed to hate people just for their beliefs? A famous guy named Adolph used such hate to become a very powerful man. Blind hate is blind ignorance.
Just think of all the times people make fun of Bush because he misspoke. I know of people saying that this is a reason not to vote for Bush. But is this anything other then being a snob?
People are so blinded by their hate, they are believing lies, and turning around and calling him a liar without any proof whatsoever.
Well lets look at one of these lies. That Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. To prove that he lied, you need to prove 2 things:
1-That Iraq did not have any WMD’s when Bush stated that they did. Not later, but at the time Bush made the statement.
2-That Bush knew at the time that they did not have those weapons of Mass destruction.
And everybody forgets it was not on us to prove he had them, but on Saddam to prove he didn’t. (I will let you tear apart this statement if you don’t really understand it.)
If I can move to theory here, I believe Saddam thought he had a little more time before the war was going to start, and was going to give in to Bush. Mostly because he had sent anything he had to Syria. (Strong evidence of this, but not proof. A large group of trucks moved something into Syria. We just don’t have any evidence of what it was.)
I don’t care who you vote for, or why. But it is wrong to destroy a person just to get your candidate into power. I will not support a party who’s platform is hate.
[quote]T-Stag wrote:
Well, in my opinion the facts are pretty well known as far as the religion stuff goes. First of all, how many times have we heard “Jesus W. Christ” taking the Almighty’s name in vain? He’s passing himself off to the people as God’s personal messenger. Check out these quotes:
“I could not be the governor if I did not believe in a devine plan that supercedes all human plans.”
“I believe God wants me to be the president.”
And this one is really cool:
“I feel the comfort and the power of knowing that literally millions of Americans I’m never going to meet… say my name to the Almighty every day and ask him to help me… My friend, Jiang Zemin in China, has about a billion and a half folks, and I don?t think he can say that. And my friend, Vladimir Putin, I like him, but he can’t say that.”
Geez, how does he know this? Does he have a 1-800-DIAL-GOD -hotline?
This guy keeps saying that he’s “acting on God’s behalf”. Bush Lite IS NOT SPEAKING FOR GOD NOR WAS HE SENT HERE BY GOD.
[/quote]
I don’t claim to know, as I don’t think I have a direct hotline to God to ask him…
Yet it would seem that Prof. Hanson hit the nail on the head, in that the President’s mentions of religion really seem to get under the skin of those most opposed to him.
Hate is a strong word. Off the top of my head I’ll go over why I don’t care for Bush.
He’s had everything handed to him. I worked my way through school while W was getting C’s at Yale. Do you think he worried about getting into Yale or was it all take care of? He was given jobs at Harken (spelling) and the Texas Rangers because of his dad.
My father went to Veitnam, he didn’t get the reserve option like W. And how did W get that option? Luck? Right place, right time? Amd I thought the right wing loved military guys? Yet all the right wing idols (Rush, Cheney of the 5 deferals, W) didn’t serve when given the chance.
Stem cell research. Bush’s comment on this was along the line of “once I’ve made up my mind, that’s that.” So no matter what the facts are I’m not changing my mind. I could go on endlessly about the times in history we’ve seen this attitude (heliocentric theory, segragation) but it’s not needed. Stem cell is something we should keep an open mind about. If spinal collums can be rebuilt, limbs regrown, and diseases erased, maybe we shouldn’t close the book on it yet, even if W makes up his mind and that’s that.
No Child Left Behind. I teach in an urban high school. I’m all for high standards, but it’s no secret that grades go up when class size gois down. In my system there were layoffs again this year. I had class sizes between 27 and 31. In one class I didn’t have enough desks. If W wants to have NCLB, he needs to fund it.
The economy is not going well. Attach this to the last one. I haven’t gotten a raise is 3 years and we’re losing teachers. How is the economy turning the corner? I know " a million and a half jobs created" (Fox news, last night) but what are those jobs? Real jobs with retirement and health insurance or Walmart? People are going to need two of those jobs to live in America.
I’m out, it’s time for breakfast. Let the venom begin.
The deferment issue is a non issue in terms of democrats (and it sounds like you are one). You cant yell at cheney or rush for getting one, when it was a non issue with clinton.
There is tons of funding for NCLB that is not being used. This is not Bush’s fault. Blame your local principal, his school adminstrators, and your state. Its a state run program funded by the federal government. Last year billions of dollars for NCLB that was appropriated by government was not used by states…thats not Bush’s fault.
I dont think you fully understand Bush’s stance on Stem cell research. He is not prohibiting private funding for new lines of stem cell research. In fact in recent weeks both he and his wife hae admitted that they hope private groups pursue this avenue. He has simply restricted funding to already existing stem cell lines. This is a hugely controversial issue to those who believe that this is life, and Bush has taken a very middle of the road, and very even handed approach on this issue. He is allowing public use of existing lines for research and he is encouraging private research on new lines. This should be acceptable to the stem cell proponent crowd, while at the same time placating the pro-life crowd who find it reprehensible that the federal government spend their tax payer dollars on what they view as the destruction of human life.
When I was in Poland last October for a travel agent familarization trip, one of the things the guide showed us was this monument, to remember the 74 concentration and labor camps, Joseph Stalin had set up. When the Communists took over power in Poland, in 1945, the very first thing Joseph Stalin did was go after the will and spirit of the Polish people. For if you break that will and spirit, you have the people right where you want them. SO Stalin went after the Catholic relgion. That is why he sent so many milliions of the Polish people, to these 74 camps. But the Polish people would not give up their faith. That will that faith, their inner spirit, Stalin could not defeat or break. And when the Communists realized they could not break this will, and it was so strong, they could not close the Churches. And through the yrs. this faith just continued to grow, and grow. ANd eventually was one of the major reasons why Communism was defeated in Poland.
What shocked me in Poland, was seeing people of all ages, from young children to older people, going to the CHurches, during all hours of the day, and evening. Seeing Church after Church, filled with people. Seeing young little children in the one CHurch, kneeling on the stone floors. Or seeing people walking up to the altar on their knees. ANd for Sunday Mass, people standing to the doors.
You come to the United States, you see very little or any of this. And it is so sad to say. In our Public Schools, very little morals and values one is taught. YOu look at the music, the TV, the movies, magazines, it is like hey do as you want. DO as you please.It is not wrong…Everyone is doing it!!! Once again. Like with the Clinton administariton, let the good times roll. You want to talk about sex? GO right ahead. It is not taboo anymore.
You had people like Madlayn O’ Hare who got prayer out of public schools. You have the movement to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Alligeince. Remove “In God we Trust” from our money. You have the attacks on the established religions. Also the sanctity of human life. And because of all of this, more and more the morals and values of this country, get eroded away. And feel hey we do not need God anymore. Or some higher being to believe in. And this then leads to the downfall of the country. Mean you do no thtink it could happen? Look what happened to Rome.
This is why religion is so important. And why people like George Bush, are reminding the people that religion in ones life is so important. To say like hey wake up America!!! See what you are doing to your country! Need to go back to the morals traditions and values, this country was founded upon. For the more you take God,etc. or some other higher being. out of ones’ life, and the more people push for a godless or established religion society, Or condemn anyone for mentioning religion, then, this country will be then we too would be a Communisitc society that Lenin had envisioned.
malonted…I agree with some of what you said in your response here…Some people are born into believing in Christ. Others like me look into the factual evidence of the Bible being true and the actuality of Christ’s life before becoming a follower of God/Christ Jesus…There is more evidence that convinces me of the truth of Jesus Christ than there is that Christopher Columbus discovered America and that dinosaurs lived on earth…even though I was not an eyewitness to either events. There is nothing BLIND about my faith and the faith of others…its based in evidence and fact. But belief of the evidence itself is just that…belief in the evidence. Satan believes in the evidence…but is no better for it. Acceptance is the key…
I just want to rebut a couple of these that aren’t opinions quickly:
[quote]dylan5150 wrote:
Hate is a strong word. Off the top of my head I’ll go over why I don’t care for Bush.
…
3) Stem cell research. Bush’s comment on this was along the line of “once I’ve made up my mind, that’s that.” So no matter what the facts are I’m not changing my mind. I could go on endlessly about the times in history we’ve seen this attitude (heliocentric theory, segragation) but it’s not needed. Stem cell is something we should keep an open mind about. If spinal collums can be rebuilt, limbs regrown, and diseases erased, maybe we shouldn’t close the book on it yet, even if W makes up his mind and that’s that.[/quote]
The only thing being restricted, to the best of my knowledge, is federal funding of fetal stem cell research on lines of stem cells other than a set of pre-existing lines. Not all stem-cell research. The government funds research on adult stem cells and gives restricted (see above) funding to fetal stem cell research.
They aren’t even restricting fetal stem-cell research. The administration is merely taking the position that the government won’t pay for fetal stem cell research outside of research on those pre-existing sets of stem cells (which can be cloned, reproduced, etc.)And not even all fetal stem-cell research.
If you have evidence of more restrictions than simply disallowing federal funds in the manner described, please feel free to share.
BTW, most of the money in venture capital biotech is flowing toward adult stem cells, which seem to be more promising at the moment.
In the fall of 1995, Dr. Reid Lyon, who directs research in the neuroscience of reading and learning disorders in children at the National Institutes of Health, got an unexpected call from first-year Texas governor George W. Bush. ?Look,? Bush said, getting right to the point. ?I have lots of kids who are not reading well. What?s the science on this that can guide us?? After that chat, Bush flew Lyon down to Texas several times to help redesign the state?s early-childhood reading programs so that they incorporated the latest NIH findings. ?We?ve had a great relationship ever since,? Bush recently noted.
Lyon now serves as President Bush?s informal advisor on reading pedagogy, and he helped craft parts of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, the ambitious federal education bill that Bush signed into law in January 2002. Thanks largely to his input, Washington for the first time is using its spending power to prod school districts across the nation to rely on scientific standards in selecting reading programs. ?There?s no need to throw good money into programs that don?t work,? Bush explains. ?We?ve tried that before.?
For NCLB?s reading initiative alone, Bush richly deserves the title ?education president.? But in addition, NCLB, though not perfect, is a powerful instrument of reform in other ways. What?s more, a new Bush-promoted school voucher program for Washington, D.C., may point the way toward further education reform in a second Bush term.
Not that the president?s opponents in the education establishment and the Democratic Party are likely to give him any credit for these accomplishments. With all of today?s harsh criticism of NCLB, it?s easy to forget that it passed Congress by overwhelming bipartisan majorities (87 to 10 in the Senate; 381 to 41 in the House) and that Ted Kennedy stood beaming with the president at the bill-signing ceremony (above). That era of good feelings lasted only a few months?about as long as it took for the public education industry to realize just how serious Bush was about no longer rewarding failure.
The educrats have ample reason to be upset. Before NCLB, the public schools? failure to educate poor minority kids resulted in ever-increasing streams of federal money to local districts?more than $200 billion over the last four decades, disbursed with no questions asked. Now along comes Bush, requiring state and local districts to prove that the programs that federal dollars pay for have a solid scientific basis and actually work. Once public educators started trashing NCLB, Democrats suddenly decided that they hated it, too. Senator Kennedy now claims that the president ?duped? him and that the act?s funding amounted to a ?tin cup budget,? despite a big hike in federal education spending under Bush.
In announcing his candidacy, Bush promised that education reform would be his Number One domestic policy priority. His plan, soon named No Child Left Behind, rested on three basic reforms, which states wanting federal education money would have to accept. First came a Lyon-influenced reading initiative. ?The findings of years of scientific research on reading are now available, and application of this research to the classroom is now possible for all schools in America,? Bush noted.
Second would be annual testing in basic reading and math skills for all kids in grades three through eight, with the results?broken down by race, sex, English-language proficiency, and socioeconomic status?made public. States would devise their own tests, subject to federal oversight. Mandatory testing had been key to Bush?s education reform success in Texas, where it worked to hold schools accountable.
Third was the creation of an escape hatch for disadvantaged kids stuck in awful schools. If such a student attended a school that failed to make ?adequate yearly progress in improving academic outcomes? for three years running, he would be able to use federal funds ?to transfer to a higher-performing public or private school??in other words, he?d get a voucher?or he could ?receive supplemental educational services? from an outside provider. The failing school would get some extra financial and technical help the first year, but if it continued to fail, it might have to close, as more and more students transferred out.
A key assumption behind the school choice provision was the idea that competition would make the public schools better. If lousy schools faced the prospect of losing students to other public or private schools, teachers and administrators would try harder to improve things. A profound moral imperative also drove Bush?s reform agenda: it was unacceptable for society to relegate poor black and Hispanic children to perennially failing public schools.
The president began putting the first part of his education reform package into place literally hours after he took the oath of office. The morning after the inauguration, he and Mrs. Bush listened carefully as Reid Lyon and other top education researchers presented their findings at a White House forum on reading pedagogy. The president made it clear that he wanted federal reading policy to go ?wherever the evidence leads.?
From his gubernatorial days, Bush already had a good idea that the evidence was leading straight to phonics. Following Lyon?s advice, he had pushed local districts in Texas to adopt phonics-based curricula and saw reading scores in the state shoot up, particularly for minority kids. The number of third-graders?52,000?who failed the reading test at the start of the Bush governorship declined to 36,000 when he left for the White House and has since dropped to 28,000, now that all his reforms are up and running. Since then, the evidence has become irrefutable. After reviewing dozens of studies?some using magnetic resonance imaging to measure differences in brain function between strong and weak readers and among children taught to read by various methods?the National Reading Panel, commissioned by Congress, concluded in 2000 that effective reading programs, especially for kids living in poverty, required phonics-based instruction.
Within a week of taking office, the Bush administration devised a strategy for getting a $6 billion ?Reading First? phonics initiative past the relevant House and Senate education committees. The administration was offering school systems a deal that went like this: ?The federal government will give you lots more money than ever before for early reading programs. Nothing obligates you to take the money. But if you do take it, the programs you choose must teach children using phonics.? Hardly a single legislator raised doubts about tying federal reading dollars to instructional approaches backed by a consensus of the nation?s scientific experts.
Extending his commitment to science-backed pedagogy even further, Bush asked Lyon to help find top scientists for key Department of Education posts formerly reserved for teachers? union and public school officials. Lyon recruited Grover Whitehurst, formerly chair of the psychology department and a professor of pediatrics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, to head the department?s Institute of Education Sciences, which has become the administration?s bully pulpit for encouraging science-backed teaching methods in all subject areas.
You?d think that educators would welcome the scientific turn in federal reading policy. After all, the racial gap in school performance that liberals as well as conservatives decry as the greatest obstacle to equal opportunity in America first shows up as a wide gap in reading. While 40 percent of all American kids don?t attain the ?basic? reading level by fourth grade, the rate of reading failure for inner-city black and Hispanic children is a catastrophic 70 percent. If we now have hard evidence on what methods will best bring these struggling kids up to speed, why wouldn?t educators support the government?s efforts to promote those methods?
The short answer is ideology and money. The nation?s leading teachers? colleges and professional teachers? organizations, such as the National Council of Teachers of English, hate phonics. Columbia University?s Teachers College, to take one prominent example, doesn?t have a single class in phonics instruction. In these precincts, ?whole language? reading instruction, in which children ostensibly learn to read ?naturally? by absorbing word clues from whole texts, is the politically correct pedagogy, even though its claims to success have no scientific backing. The educational establishment views President Bush, Reid Lyon, and all their works as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to regiment America?s children.
There?s also tons of money at stake. If the idea of science-backed reading instruction takes hold in the nation?s school districts, millions of dollars in fees currently paid to the ed schools for whole-language teacher training and curriculum development will vanish.
Small wonder that Teachers College president Arthur Levine recently penned a furious op-ed denouncing NCLB?s Reading First provision, after the Bush administration showed that it meant business and refused $39 million in funding for New York City?s ?balanced literacy? reading program (a euphemism for whole language) earlier this year. (The city subsequently switched over to a phonics program in 49 schools with mostly minority student populations in order to get the money.) Levine was flabbergasted that the federal Department of Education was actually enforcing the nation?s new education law. ?Reading First removed control from the mayor and placed crucial decisions about education in the hands of President Bush,? Levine complained. Apparently Levine forgot that one major purpose of presidential elections is to give the winner the right to make ?crucial decisions? about spending federal tax dollars, and that the city could keep ! all the control it wanted simply by not accepting the federal money.
So far, complaints from professional educators about Reading First don?t seem to be getting any traction with parents or the public, however. All 50 states have submitted proposals to the Department of Education requesting Reading First grants and vowing that they will use the funds only for science-backed phonics instruction, and they have already received more than $2 billion. Though it?s too early to say that the nation?s schools are ?hooked on phonics,? the schools are more aware than ever that scientific evidence, not ideology, should guide decisions about reading instruction.
But NCLB?s other components?testing and accountability?have proven far more vulnerable to the act?s critics, thanks to defects in the drafting of the law that resulted from concessions to congressional Democrats.
The contested 2000 election and an evenly divided Senate left President Bush with a weak hand as he tried to get Congress to adopt his education reform package. To get any education bill at all, he would need some Democratic votes, and for political reasons he and his advisors concluded that they needed not just a few Dems but a big, bipartisan majority behind this signature piece of domestic legislation.
During negotiations, the Bush team concluded that, while science-backed reading and state testing could win big majorities, the private school choice remedy for kids trapped in failing schools?vouchers?was a sure loser. ?Democratic opposition was just too strong,? one insider recalls. ?No amount of arm-twisting or cajoling could change that political reality.?
The result was a watered-down choice provision. Disadvantaged kids in schools that the state tests showed had failed to make ?adequate yearly progress? two years in a row would be able to transfer, but only into non-failing public schools within the same district, or in other districts, if school officials there agreed to accept the students. As in Bush?s original plan, the lousy school could face closure if it didn?t improve.
A second concession changed the definition of a failing school, since liberal Democrats wanted to include not just schools with consistently atrocious test results for all students, but also those in which a small racial or ethnic subgroup was doing poorly, even if most of their classmates were doing fine. ?Some of the Democrats on the other side didn?t want to say that it?s okay to have one group falling behind in a school,? recalls the administration?s point man in the negotiations, Sandy Kress, a former chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. ?In effect, they were telling us that if you really want to say, ?No Child Left Behind,? then let?s really leave no child behind.?
Though these changes won Bush his huge majority, they proved costly. Putting lots more schools on the failing list, while letting their students transfer only into non-failing public schools, created massive confusion. After all, in most inner-city districts, all of the public schools were failing; parents had no alternatives whatever. In New York City, for example, more than 300,000 families received notices that their kids were in schools not ?making adequate yearly progress? and that they now could apply to send their children to ?successful schools.? But since the few ?successful? public schools could accommodate only a tiny handful of those desperate kids, parents saw NCLB as a cruel joke, while the press branded it a fiasco. The chaos has prompted 14 states to seek exemptions from the law. Despite these setbacks, Bush education officials see a silver lining in public school choice: some urban school districts are opening new char! ter schools to accommodate students eligible to transfer.
Meanwhile, progressive education?s militant anti-testing wing had found a brand-new cause. Best-selling writers like Jonathan Kozol and Alfie Kohn have always maintained that ?testing kills??apparently meaning this metaphorically. But now, at least one of their progressive-ed allies believes that NCLB testing requirements literally will kill kids.
Margaret A. McKenna, a big Kozol fan and president of Massachusetts?s biggest teacher-training institution, Lesley University in Cambridge, writes that NCLB?s ?overwhelming focus on student achievement on annual standardized tests? will lead inexorably to more school violence like the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. After all, she argues, Columbine was a ?high-achieving school,? where students felt alienated by the pressure of high-stakes testing. Teachers, obsessed with test scores, didn?t have time to get to know the kids and create a ?real community.? That?s why they missed the telltale signs of student alienation and impending tragedy. Now, McKenna warns in a bizarre Washington Post op-ed, Columbine-like carnage is likely to explode in schools across the country as NCLB?s accountability requirements ?force communities to focus more on raising test scores than on raising kids.?
In fact, the NCLB testing requirement is a crucial accountability tool, and not just because it can deprive poorly performing schools of federal education dollars if they don?t shape up. In Texas, explains Kress, ?the shame factor of seeing your school on a list of schools that did poorly was itself positive?it created an incentive for change.?
The biggest falsehood that critics have promulgated against NCLB is that the bill represents an ?unfunded mandate,? in that it doesn?t provide enough money to bring kids up to the standards it imposes. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert is typically dismissive. ?It?s hard to believe the president ever intended to adequately fund the No Child Left Behind Act,? he writes, right after checking in with that objective source, Ted Kennedy. ?Mr. Bush fights ferociously for the things he really cares about: enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, for example, or launching a war against Iraq. He has never showed a similar passion for the public schools.? In fact, the Bush administration will spend a whopping 49 percent more on public education this year than the Clinton administration did in its last year in office. In just four years, the Bush team will quadruple what the Clinton administration spent on reading programs over eight years! .
In any case, the funding issue is a red herring. The schools? woes have nothing to do with lack of funds. State, local, and federal expenditures on K-12 public education have tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1960 and are nearing half a trillion dollars a year. The nation today spends from 30 to 80 percent more per pupil than other industrialized countries. Yet the U.S. usually comes in around 15th in international comparisons of student performance in math and reading.
When President Bush signed NCLB without private school vouchers, many education reformers feared that the bill was a big setback for the school choice cause. Yet a major advance for school choice did make it into the act: Supplemental Educational Services (SES). Largely unnoticed by most commentators at the time of NCLB?s signing, the SES provision has turned out to be the new law?s school choice sleeper.
In effect, SES gives disadvantaged students in schools that have failed for three straight years a voucher?worth up to $1,700 in some states?to buy tutoring services from licensed providers, both public and private, including religious institutions. The tutoring money comes out of the federal funds allocated to the failing school?s district. Providers must win approval from state education departments and must sign contracts with the relevant school districts.
Some public school systems, feeling threatened by outside competition and wanting to hold on to the federal money, have balked at implementing SES services?delaying the signing of contracts or not informing parents of the tutoring options open to them. Last year, for example, the Buffalo, New York, public schools spent only $1 million in federal funds to tutor 800 kids, even though there were 9,000 eligible students and up to $14 million available for tutoring. In the Albany school district, where all the schools made the failing list, only one student is receiving SES tutoring so far, prompting Albany?s mayor to call school officials on the carpet publicly. Still, more than 110,000 children across the nation received SES tutoring in 2002?03.
And that number will surely climb as reform organizations rush to get the word out. National school choice organizations like the Black Alliance for Educational Options and the Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options are leading the way, having received federal grants to run SES information campaigns. At the same time, more and more providers are signing on, including, in New York State, the Boys and Girls Club, the Urban League, Sylvan Learning, Kaplan, Princeton Review, and even the Youth and Families Department of the City of Albany. And they are starting to get results. ?I think we are beginning to see improvement with children who are way behind in reading skills,? says Angel Staples, a third-grade teacher from the Buffalo public schools, about her moonlighting job as a tutor in an SES program. ?It?s partly because we use a very scripted phonics program and partly because we can give the children a lot of individual attention in our smal! l classes.?
Tom Carroll, a seasoned school choice activist in upstate New York, thinks that over time SES will whet parents? appetite for more reforms. ?What parents are willing to accept from their public school districts will change when they see that there are private groups and churches that may be doing a better job of raising their kids? academic performance,? Carroll says. Further, though the Bush administration makes no such predictions, Carroll argues that parents will eventually start asking why the local church school that tutors their kids after school can?t teach them during the day, increasing support for publicly funded vouchers. Teachers College professor Henry Levin agrees, albeit ruefully. SES, he thinks, could be a Trojan horse, ultimately leading to vouchers. ?By 2014,? he predicted, ?we?re going to hear that public schools can?t do the job, but that private schools can.?
Though President Bush lost the fight to include vouchers in NCLB, he continued the battle on other fronts, with considerable success. Shortly after NCLB became law, for example, he sent solicitor general Ted Olson to the United States Supreme Court to argue for private school choice in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the historic case that tested the constitutionality of Cleveland?s taxpayer-funded voucher program, which includes parochial schools. No one can gauge how much the White House?s intervention swayed the justices? 5-4 decision to uphold the voucher program, but no one in the courtroom could miss that the prestige of the presidency stood firmly in the pro-voucher camp.
A more momentous school choice victory was Congress?s passage earlier this year of a five-year voucher test program for Washington, D.C. ?Had it not been for the administration, the voucher bill wouldn?t have passed,? says Department of Education official Nina S. Rees. ?It took a lot of backroom heavy lifting and hand-holding in Congress on our part.? This fall, more than 1,000 poor minority kids in the nation?s capital will get vouchers worth up to $7,500 to be used at any private or parochial school of their choice.
Of course, the fight for D.C. vouchers wasn?t the president?s alone. As in Milwaukee and Cleveland, vouchers came to D.C. thanks to an extraordinary grassroots effort in the city?s black community. Crucial was the backing of D.C.?s popular black Democratic mayor Anthony Williams, who justified his support bluntly: ?I got up one morning and decided there are a lot of kids getting a crappy education and we could do it better.? But the voucher campaign would not have succeeded without President Bush?s willingness to expend political capital. Under severe pressure from the two national teachers? unions five years earlier, President Clinton had vetoed a similar voucher bill.
Significantly, in passing the voucher bill, Congress began to grasp that the choice constraints they had placed upon NCLB undermined the act?s effectiveness. As part of the final version of the D.C. voucher legislation, Congress issued a ?finding? (as it does for many bills) describing the problem that the new law intends to deal with. In this case, the finding stated that the district needed a voucher program because NCLB?s ?public school choice? provisions are ?inadequate due to capacity constraints.?
So we?ve now come full circle since congressional Democrats forced President Bush to drop the private school choice option in NCLB. A majority of Congress now perceives that choice limited to the public schools is not a sufficient remedy for kids trapped in dysfunctional school systems like Washington?s. Therefore, the top education reform goal of a second Bush administration should be to revisit NCLB?s accountability and choice provisions when the act?s reauthorization comes due in 2006. Since the branding of so many schools as ?failing? has vexed public school officials around the country, President Bush, along with his education reform allies in Congress, could offer Democrats this deal: ?Let?s agree to limit the number of schools considered failing, but if we can?t find room in successful public schools for the kids from the really bad schools, then at least let?s give those children a chance a! t private schools.?
Even a limited number of vouchers financed with federal money would be a huge prize worth aiming for. But meanwhile, our education president is now in a position to change the national discourse about the nation?s public education system, explaining why it achieves so little, despite spending so much. Instead of merely rebutting his liberal foes? charge that his administration has ?underfunded? NCLB, the president needs to go on the offensive and teach the country the real lesson of American public education?that, if anything, we are overspending on the public schools and are not even close to getting our money?s worth.
Nothing would be a better classroom exhibit for the president?s lecture to the American people than a successful Washington, D.C., voucher program. As Bush education official Rees notes, it will be ?rigorously studied? by supporters and critics of choice alike?which is why, she says, ?I am spending 75 percent of my time on the D.C. program, making sure it is implemented well and sold to parents.? The Census Bureau has just released figures showing that the D.C. public school district spends a mind-boggling $13,400 per pupil?higher than any state in the union. Yet as everyone now knows, Washington has the worst schools in the country. When, as is likely, thousands of D.C. voucher recipients manage to find perfectly decent schools for $7,500 or less, even the most mathematically challenged taxpayers will comprehend just how much the public education system that President Bush has valiantly worked to reform has been ripping them off. And th! en, perhaps, the idea of school choice will begin to seem as sensible and commonplace as compulsory schooling itself.
[quote] 5) The economy is not going well. Attach this to the last one. I haven’t gotten a raise is 3 years and we’re losing teachers. How is the economy turning the corner? I know " a million and a half jobs created" (Fox news, last night) but what are those jobs? Real jobs with retirement and health insurance or Walmart? People are going to need two of those jobs to live in America.
I’m out, it’s time for breakfast. Let the venom begin. [/quote]
GREENSPAN SHOOTS DOWN KERRY JOBS ARGUMENT [07/20 04:51 PM]
SEN. DOLE: Recently, some have asserted that most of the new jobs being created in the last year are paying an average $1,500 to $9,000 less than those jobs lost over the past few years. Obviously, often an unemployed person finds a new job, they may be at a lower salary for a short time. But does your analysis show that the current jobs being created are basically lower-wage jobs with little or no benefits?
CHAIRMAN GREENSPAN: The answer is no. Are we essentially downgrading the types of jobs that are being created, say, over the past year? And the answer is: We find very little evidence of that.
[quote]jackzepplin wrote:
Wow. You obviously have no clue what you are talking about. Since you’ve given me no reason to backup anything I say with fact (you don’t oblige us, so why should we oblige you), I’ll say this. A horrific attack on American soil, Terrorism, and a failing budget from the Clinton administration drove up the deficit. According the the EPA, the environmental deterioration has increased at a rate the same and less than that of your precious Clinton administration. President Bush has no interest in Keneth Lay types. Lay is a criminal, and the President does not have time for that nonsense. While President Clinton gave pardon to multiple criminals before he left office.[/quote]
OK, you can argue forever about how much a president did or didn’t do for the economy, but a guy named Greenspan seemed to think that by cutting the deficit (actually putting us on pace to eliminate it), Clinton aided the ecnomony “immensely”. What has happened to the deficit since Bush gave Lay and friends their tax break? As far as the environment, do we now have more arsenic in our water or less? (Obviously, the same question could be repeated ad nauseum using CFC’s in the ozone, etc.) One more thing, if Bush has no time for Kenneth Lay, why did he let the Enron boys write us such an environmentally sound national energy policy? (Granted, they did a fantastic job in their private sector jobs).
As far as the environment, do we now have more arsenic in our water or less? (Obviously, the same question could be repeated ad nauseum using CFC’s in the ozone, etc.) One more thing, if Bush has no time for Kenneth Lay, why did he let the Enron boys write us such an environmentally sound national energy policy? (Granted, they did a fantastic job in their private sector jobs).[/quote]
Um, the only thing Bush did w/r/t arsenic standards was reimpose the standards Clinton’s EPA had in place for the 8 years of his administration, after Clinton signed an 11th hour executive order attempting to impose new standards before he left office. Irrespective of arguments concerning the soundness or necessity of the new standards, how is one to argue that Bush increased the arsenic in the water by maintaining the exact same standards Clinton had in place?
Eh, I guess it’s the same logic that allowed people to complain that Gingrich wanted “massive cuts” in social spending when, back in the mid-90s years of “The Gingrich Who Stole Christmas”, he actually proposed slowing the rate of increase on spending (still increasing the spending, but at slower rates = massive cuts).
Bush seemed invincible a year ago yes, until the idiots in hollywood and the music world started espousing their uninformed views upon us and put a fire in all of the liberals and liberal media again.
Mark my words. 4 more years. Bush will win.
Oh yeah, what happened to all of those bastard entertainers who said they would move out of the country if Bush won in 2000? They are still here making the American $. I hope all of those bastards actually leave this time. John Kerry and his bitch of a wife included. and take the attorney with him.
[quote]dylan5150 wrote:
Hate is a strong word. Off the top of my head I’ll go over why I don’t care for Bush.
Stem cell research. Bush’s comment on this was along the line of “once I’ve made up my mind, that’s that.” So no matter what the facts are I’m not changing my mind. I could go on endlessly about the times in history we’ve seen this attitude (heliocentric theory, segragation) but it’s not needed. Stem cell is something we should keep an open mind about. If spinal collums can be rebuilt, limbs regrown, and diseases erased, maybe we shouldn’t close the book on it yet, even if W makes up his mind and that’s that.
[/quote]
The phony attack on Bush’s stem cell research “ban” (8/17)
By Brendan Nyhan
In his response to President Bush’s radio address on August 7, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry drove home one talking point - that President Bush had banned embryonic stem cell research. He began by saying, “Three years ago, the President enacted a far-reaching ban on stem cell research” and later referred once to “the stem cell ban” and twice to “the ban on stem cell research.” He never clarified his use of the word, leaving listeners to believe that President Bush has banned all stem cell research. But that is simply not true.
The reality is that the President has actually allowed federal funding for research into embryonic stem cell lines that had already been created before August 9, 2001 (22 are currently available according to the National Institutes of Health Embryonic Stem Cell Registry). Furthermore, privately-funded research can be conducted without restrictions in the United States. The only “ban” is on federal funding for new stem cell lines that were not included in Bush’s original group - hardly the meaning that Kerry suggested in his address.
Unfortunately, this is part of a pattern, as Slate’s Will Saletan, the Washington Post and the Associated Press have all pointed out. The Kerry campaign has pounded the “ban” talking point over and over in the last few weeks.
For instance, on July 26, a Kerry press release referred to “the ban on stem cell research,” and an August 7 release on Kerry’s radio address also referred to the alleged “stem cell ban” in its title and uses the term “ban” four other times. Also, in an August 9 speech, vice presidential nominee John Edwards falsely claimed Bush had created a “ban” three years before. The press release promoting Edwards’ speech referred in its title to a “stem cell ban” and in its first sentence to “the three year anniversary of President George Bush’s ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research,” which is described as an “ideologically-driven ban.” Only later did it clarify the meaning of the “ban”.
When pushed on this issue, the campaign’s defense - given by a spokesperson to the Associated Press - rings hollow:
Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said Bush's restrictions apply to 99.9 percent of potential stem cell lines that could be studied. "If that's not a ban," he said, "we don't know what is."
But as stated previously, Bush’s restrictions apply only to federal funding, not to embryonic stem cell research itself. Nor does Singer’s figure even make sense. “99.9% of potential stem cell lines” is an exaggerated and meaningless figure - there an infinite number of “potential stem cell lines,” and it is not true that 99.9% of currently available lines are off-limits. In May 2004, a Boston Globe survey found 51 lines available that were not eligible for federally-funded research, a number the newspaper said could rise to “more than 100” by the end of the year. In any case, the percentage of available lines that are off-limits is substantially less from 99.9%.
Other Democrats have also joined in recently. In one prominent example, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) said during her address to the Democratic National Convention on July 26 that “We also need to lift the ban on stem cell research” without clarifying the meaning of the term “ban”. And in a July 13 press conference promoting the convention, New Mexico Bill Richardson, a Democrat, referred to “the need to deal with diabetes and many other diseases that are prevented from the President’s ban on stem cell research.”
In a free society, there are no bans on misleading spin, but it’s time for a moratorium on this deceptive attack.
[quote]PtrDR wrote:
Sorry for the longwindedness…peace bro![/quote]
No, please be longwinded. Like I said, I am just trying to understand where people come from on this issue, I am not trying to attack anyone’s faith or lack of.
If you don’t have a job, guess what, it might not be Bush’s fault. It is also not McDonald’s fault you are fat.
Check out this quote:
“Among workers age 25 and older, individuals possessing less than a high school diploma experienced an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent in April,” said Bird. “That compares with 5.7 percent for high school graduates with no college, 4.7 percent for individuals with some college or an associate degree, and 3.1 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.”
The trend favoring workers with a post-secondary education has been consistent since the onset of the recession in March of 2001, according to Bird. “Since March 2001, the employment of individuals with a high school only or lower educational attainment has seen a net decline of 696,000 jobs,” he said. “By comparison, employment of individuals with some college or an associate degree was 66,000 higher in April 2003 compared to March 2001. Employment of those with bachelor’s degrees or higher has shown a net increase of 1.8 million jobs during the same two year period.” www.pennlive.com/careerwise/index
.ssf?/careerwise/html/articles/
051920031237_lowercollegeunemploy
.html
(Note: this was written sometime after April 2003.)
The rate of unemployment has been low for those with more education for a long time. Most of the big swings in unemployment are with a high school education or less. So naturally when the economy improves, the jobs created are going to be the low paying jobs.
Until we get to 5% unemployment. (Hey, we are 0.5% away from that) That is when the fed gets worried about an “overheating” economy, and wants to cool it off by bumping up interest rates.
But regardless, the government deals with the big picture, the economy. The large generality. The specifics are up to the people, and the businesses.
And with a 5.5% unemployment rate, that means I have a 94.5% chance of having a job. If I don’t, I have a 94.5% chance of having a job next month. I like those odds. Actually it is higher for me, only because if I were to lose my job, I would do whatever it takes to get another. Unemployment requires people to apply for at least 2 jobs a week. But applying for 10 a day is no chore. 50 a week. 200 a month. Easy.
Now to point out a little history, does anybody remember that when congress went to the Republicans, they implemented a rule that the budget could not go up by any more then 3% each year. (What happened to that rule anyway?) Then they cut capitol gains taxes, which caused an increase in tax revenue. (The big bump was temporary, but it is still up.) This fueled the good economy of the 90’s, (along with low energy prices,) and the balanced budget.
If Clinton was responsible for the good years of the 90’s, explain exactly what he did that caused it.
And a final question. How exactly is Bush supposed to create high paying jobs over low paying jobs? How can a president allocate what types of jobs are created?
[quote]The Mage wrote:
You know, some people just don’t get it.
If you don’t have a job, guess what, it might not be Bush’s fault. It is also not McDonald’s fault you are fat.
Check out this quote:
“Among workers age 25 and older, individuals possessing less than a high school diploma experienced an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent in April,” said Bird. “That compares with 5.7 percent for high school graduates with no college, 4.7 percent for individuals with some college or an associate degree, and 3.1 percent for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.”
The trend favoring workers with a post-secondary education has been consistent since the onset of the recession in March of 2001, according to Bird. “Since March 2001, the employment of individuals with a high school only or lower educational attainment has seen a net decline of 696,000 jobs,” he said. “By comparison, employment of individuals with some college or an associate degree was 66,000 higher in April 2003 compared to March 2001. Employment of those with bachelor’s degrees or higher has shown a net increase of 1.8 million jobs during the same two year period.” www.pennlive.com/careerwise/index
.ssf?/careerwise/html/articles/
051920031237_lowercollegeunemploy
.html
(Note: this was written sometime after April 2003.)
The rate of unemployment has been low for those with more education for a long time. Most of the big swings in unemployment are with a high school education or less. So naturally when the economy improves, the jobs created are going to be the low paying jobs.
Until we get to 5% unemployment. (Hey, we are 0.5% away from that) That is when the fed gets worried about an “overheating” economy, and wants to cool it off by bumping up interest rates.
But regardless, the government deals with the big picture, the economy. The large generality. The specifics are up to the people, and the businesses.
And with a 5.5% unemployment rate, that means I have a 94.5% chance of having a job. If I don’t, I have a 94.5% chance of having a job next month. I like those odds. Actually it is higher for me, only because if I were to lose my job, I would do whatever it takes to get another. Unemployment requires people to apply for at least 2 jobs a week. But applying for 10 a day is no chore. 50 a week. 200 a month. Easy.
Now to point out a little history, does anybody remember that when congress went to the Republicans, they implemented a rule that the budget could not go up by any more then 3% each year. (What happened to that rule anyway?) Then they cut capitol gains taxes, which caused an increase in tax revenue. (The big bump was temporary, but it is still up.) This fueled the good economy of the 90’s, (along with low energy prices,) and the balanced budget.
If Clinton was responsible for the good years of the 90’s, explain exactly what he did that caused it.
And a final question. How exactly is Bush supposed to create high paying jobs over low paying jobs? How can a president allocate what types of jobs are created?
[/quote]
Mage:
Slightly off-topic, but do you know of any studies that track the effect of immigration on unemployment figures for those without a high-school education? It seems to me the large pool of immigrants with low skills/education competes directly with them for jobs, and would have a far greater effect on their unemployment than just about anything else.
Also, here’s something, which jibes with what you posted above, which says that there is actually a dearth of skilled labor in the U.S. manufacturing sector:
Turn of the Screw
In Tepid Job Scene,
Certain Workers
Are in Hot Demand
‘Swiss-Style’ Machinists
Doing Ultra-Precise Tasks
Typify Shortage of Skills
Mr. Schrader Gets Courted
By TIMOTHY AEPPEL
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 17, 2004; Page A1
HOLYOKE, Mass. – Two years ago, Robert Schrader got a call from a recruiter trying to lure him from his job in New Hampshire to opportunities as far away as Florida. He eventually took a new position in Massachusetts, after he had negotiated a raise, an expense-paid move and better health coverage. Since then, his old boss in New Hampshire has tried to woo him back.
Mr. Schrader isn’t a hotshot young executive with a Harvard MBA. He’s a factory worker.
That group in recent times has been associated more with unemployment lines than with the corporate recruiting circuit. But Mr. Schrader isn’t your average blue-collar worker. He is a “Swiss style” machinist, a specialty developed more than a century ago to make tiny, very precise gears and shafts for the European watch industry.
More recently, Swiss-style machining has been married with advanced computer technology to become essential in the precision manufacture of a wide range of products, from bone screws to roller balls for Bic pens. Mr. Schrader’s employer in Holyoke, Marox Corp., makes medical implants and instruments.
It takes years of on-the-job training to become a skilled Swiss-style machinist, and few young people are entering the trade. The steady flow of skilled immigrants who once filled many top craftsman jobs has dried up. The result is that at a time when many U.S. industrial jobs have been lost to low-cost countries such as China, American factories have a shortage of certain highly skilled workers. Other hot factory skills include some types of specialty welding and workers adept at programming the latest computerized production machinery. Mr. Schrader and others like him are part of a new working-class elite in such demand that some employers are even offering signing bonuses of a few thousand dollars.
The shortage comes at a bad time for U.S. manufacturers, who are finally seeing an upswing in business. If they can’t find the skilled workers they need, many companies could ultimately find it tougher to remain players in globally competitive markets.
Since the latest machinery is increasingly available in many other parts of the world as well, “the only way to keep a competitive edge is by having the skilled people who know how to get the most out of those machines,” says Stephen Mandes, executive director of the National Institute of Metalworking Skills, a group that sets worker skill standards.
Some companies are already turning away business for lack of expert workers. Accu-Swiss Inc., which makes specialized metal parts for medical and defense industries, has turned down between 10% and 20% of potential business this year for lack of Swiss-style machinists to staff its factory, says Sohel Sareshwala, president of the Oakdale, Calif., company.
“It’s clear that a hot emerging issue for manufacturing is skilled-worker shortages,” says Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. He says the problem will worsen in coming years as baby boomers retire.
Boston Centerless Inc. in Woburn, Mass., a 106-employee maker of highly precise metal parts for other manufacturers, used recruiters to hire five Swiss-style machinists this year. It still needs at least two more. The company pays current workers bounties of up to $500 a head for referrals that lead to new hires. The most skilled new hires earn up to $25 an hour.
Evolving Demand
Throughout U.S. history, different groups of skilled workers have been in short supply at different times. In the last century, the auto industry recruited many tool-and-die makers from Europe to fill slots. Before that, there was a great need for electricians in U.S. factories as electric power spread through manufacturing.
Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard University who has studied the history of labor markets, says specialized technology often leads to bottlenecks in the labor market, increasing the earnings of skilled workers. If wages are high enough for long enough, more people come to those jobs, bringing supply and demand into equilibrium.
It isn’t clear just how many Swiss-style machinists there are in the U.S., because numbers in the specialty aren’t tracked separately. Of the nation’s estimated 380,000 machinists, fewer than half are considered highly skilled workers, says Richard Walker of the National Tooling and Machining Association. Swiss-style machinists are a subset of those.
For years, the machining business drew on European immigrants trained in an apprenticeship system that developed specialty factory workers. But in recent decades, the wage differential that made the U.S. so attractive has vanished.
Meanwhile, U.S. apprenticeship programs have dwindled as the large American companies that once provided the bulk of such training have cut back to save money and now outsource some of the work.
Swiss-style machinists typically start out learning basic machining skills, often at trade schools. After that, most of the training occurs on the job. Each of the many different types of Swiss machines takes time to master. Workers typically build up a repertoire on various machines over time, gradually becoming more valuable as they learn. It can take three years of experience to be considered competent in basic Swiss-style skills.
The increasingly computerized machines look like large enclosed booths, about the size of a car. They typically come with huge attachments, such as long automated devices that feed metal in from one end. Inside a door that workers can open, multiple cutting tools are moving, often simultaneously, to shape the final part. The most-skilled workers need to be able to understand and control complex combinations of movements – planning each action of the tools and preventing them from bumping into each other while they’re in motion.
Strong math ability is a given. One reason more young people don’t enter the field is that those with such advanced conceptual skills tend to go to college and become engineers, industry officials say.
Swiss-style machining can produce parts that are both very precise and exceedingly small. In some cases, a large machine’s entire daily production can fit in a coffee cup. At Marox, Mr. Schrader’s employer, a simple titanium bone screw for use inside the human body can cost a hefty $10. Depending on their complexity, such screws can take anywhere from two to seven minutes to produce in the machines.
Mr. Schrader, a 31-year-old husband and father of two, never imagined he’d be so sought-after. He was a strong math student in high school in Athens, Pa., but he dreamed of being a farmer. His parents objected, worried he wouldn’t be able to make a living.
His grandmother, who worked in the tool department of a factory, suggested he become a machinist. Mr. Schrader studied computer-controlled machining at a two-year technical college.
His first factory job paid $7 an hour – hardly enough, he says, to pay his student loans. But within a year, he moved into the better-paying specialty of Swiss-style machining when he landed a job making cable-television connectors at a factory in Horseheads, N.Y. It was sink or swim: His employer took him out on the floor and assigned him to four machines. “Anything you couldn’t fix, you had to find someone to help you,” he says.
Mr. Schrader was working at C&M Machine Products in Hudson, N.H., when a co-worker mentioned his name to recruiter Tom Medvec, who’d already found the colleague a better-paying job. Mr. Medvec describes Mr. Schrader as a “good solid bench player, not a superstar.” He needs more experience to be considered top-tier, Mr. Medvec says.
But still he was in demand. One prospective employer offered to fly Mr. Schrader to St. Petersburg, Fla., for an interview. He was tempted but knew he didn’t want to move that far away from family in Pennsylvania. Instead he went for Marox, whose plant is in the old mill town of Holyoke. Mr. Schrader and his wife, Amy, a nursing aide, were able to buy a modest two-family home in nearby Chicopee, Mass. They’re renovating the second unit to rent it. Mr. Schrader hopes to own 10 rental properties by the time he’s 40.
Mr. Schrader was also drawn to Marox’s state-of-the-art factory and attractive layout, something industry officials say is increasingly important in finding skilled workers. Nestled on a grassy slope on the outskirts of Holyoke, the plant is just four years old. The production floor is lined with big windows that allow workers to see into the offices in the front and feel less isolated.
Although the plant is kept clean with a floor-cleaning machine that resembles the Zamboni machines that recondition ice rinks, the work can still get dirty. “There are times I come home with oil up to my armpit,” he says.
Mr. Schrader says he earned about $50,000 last year at Marox, including considerable overtime. He doesn’t want to reveal his hourly wage, for fear of causing friction. He has already been taken aside once by his boss for talking about his earnings, though he denies he did so.
‘I’m Lucky’
Sliding onto his living room couch one recent evening, Mr. Schrader pulled his legs up under his beefy frame as his beagle, Sammy, clambered up onto the back of the couch behind him. He says most machinists keep an eye open for new opportunities, because jumping into new jobs and learning new skills is the way they manage to get ahead and earn more. “I just sort of fell into my jobs,” he says. “But it seems every job has moved me ahead. I’m lucky.”
Mr. Schrader says he has no intention of leaving his current job, though. He appreciates that Marox has already sent him to two different week-long seminars to improve his skills on newer machines.
His former employer, C&M, would like to hire him back and made an indirect overture, says its manufacturing manager, Robert Gillis.
C&M ran an ad on the Monster.com job-search Web site for six months seeking skilled machinists and didn’t get a single candidate, Mr. Gillis says. C&M recently lost two more of its Swiss-style machinists. One left for heart surgery, and the other, a Bosnian immigrant, wanted to take the summer off to relax.
Manfred Rosenkranz, Marox’s German-born chief executive, says Mr. Schrader’s age makes him more valuable: “The really young don’t have the experience, and the old-timers don’t know the new technology.” Even those familiar with the computerized machines must stay abreast of continual advances aimed at making the machines even more precise and versatile.
Marox recently hired two more Swiss-style machinists. It would add a half-dozen more if it could find them, Mr. Rosenkranz says. He once considered recruiting directly from Switzerland, but business friends in Europe told him nobody would move to work for a small company.
Mr. Rosenkranz recalls that several years ago he was looking at hiring a particular Swiss-style machinist and contacted a fellow businessman who knew the worker. The man gave a glowing evaluation – and then hired the machinist himself. In response, Mr. Rosenkranz hired one of the businessman’s top workers, who now oversees Marox’s Swiss-style machining.
Because they were made using mouse eggs, none of the stem cell lines that Bush has allowed to be federally funded is fit for use in humans due to cross species contamination risks. Without federal funding it’s going to take a lot longer to get anything useful from this very promising technology. Ron Reagan’s speech at the Democratic convention really summed it up well. Bush is pushing some extreme religious beliefs on us, because that is part of his base of support. It’s a sign of the times, our political parties have become very polarized and ideological.
[quote]ZEB wrote:
BB, excellent article, thanks for posting it!
While President Bush is hated more than Ronald Reagen was, I vivedly recall the hatred toward Reagen as being very real.
The left also called Reagen stupid and narrow minded as he would hold fast to his core beliefs. Does any of this sound familiar? They lost that election too!
One of the lefts favorite tools of war is hatred via name calling and denouncing the person, rather than the issue. It’s a shame as this is actually more of a recent phenomenon. Liberalism did not used to be like this. In fact, as far back as the late fifties the optimistic President Dwight Eisenhower described himself as a “progressive liberal.” Nothing wrong with that at the time. Now the word liberal is tainted and somehow dirty because of the negativity that is attatched to it.
Liberalism used to stand for an open mindedness. Most ideas, if not embraced, were at least entertained. Liberalism was all about ideas. It’s sad to see how low the liberals of sunk. Name calling, the Moore film, pure hatred. And you can never win with hatred. You lose elections this way. Oh you might make yourself feel good, but in the long run the majority of the people in this country still want optimism mixed with their politics!
In November the liberals will find this out, the hard way![/quote]
I have to agree, Liberalism has become somewhat tainted, of course the right’s constant strive toward money over people has tainted them too. Sadly I think its just a part of modern politics- that nobody can reall be believed in. Too many hidden agendas and ego’s exist. I know you all hate me talking about America so I’ll give a British example- Tony Blair comes to power as a progressive liberal in touch with the citizens, taking Thatchers idealogical desire for positive reform from the right and melding it with the compassion for people that only the left can really achieve. Now his ego has grown to the point where governmental transparency has all but disappeared and its up to institutions such as the BBC to question him as the citizens don’t even get the chance. He simply says ‘trust me’, smiles and does it. Is horrible, if you look at Kennedy, Lincoln, even Washington they all have these terrible aspects to their times in power. It seems part of the human condition that politics doesn’t attract the best people out there, that or that all people are bastards.