Someone else posted a great blog about education, and it helped me to find a GREAT blog titled, Children Are More Than Test Scores.

Within the blog, I found an article titled:

What if? What if the education reformers had to send their children to public school?

What if only elected officials who send their children to public schools were allowed to vote on education issues?

What if only Ed Reformers who send their children to public schools could talk about education reform?

What if only education policy makers who send their children to public schools could be appointed Commissioners of Education?

What if Ed Reformers had to be public school graduates themselves?

Something makes me think things would be different.

if that were the case, then the issues we would be talking about now would be:

Equity,

Class sizes,

An army of reading and math tutors,

More art teachers,

More music teachers,

More school field trips,

More after school programs,

More play time for young children,

Inquiry,

Innovative, creative, imaginative Saturday and summer school programs,

Our school would stay open in the evenings for family activities, and adult education program,

If only these Public School Education Reformers had public schools education.

http://childrenaremorethantestscores.blogspot.com/2014/04/what-if-what-if-ed-reformers-had-to.html


Instead, the ones deciding what shall happen to public schools, are the graduates of private schools, the graduates of ivy league "legacy" schools, and the members of the 1% or their lackeys. And the only damned thing they've come up with is: TEST THE KIDS MORE!

Over the past year, I've been reading and reviewing Ayn Rand's massive paean to capitalism, Atlas Shrugged. If you're not familiar with the novel, it depicts a world where corporate CEOs and one-percenters are the selfless heroes upon which our society depends, and basically everyone else — journalists, legislators, government employees, the poor — are the villains trying to drag the rich down out of spite, when we should be kissing their rings in gratitude that they allow us to exist.

Atlas Shrugged is a work of fiction, but as far as many prominent conservatives are concerned, it's sacred scripture. Alan Greenspan was a member of Rand's inner circle, and opposed regulation of financial markets because he believed her dictum that the greed of businessmen was always the public's best protection. Paul Ryan said that he required his campaign staffers to read the book, while Glenn Beck has announced grandiose plans to build his own real-life "Galt's Gulch," the hidden refuge where the book's capitalist heroes go to watch civilization collapse without them.

(The article is 4 pages long, so you'll have to click to read the whole article)

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/top-10-lessons-strange-mirror-universe-ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged

Flip on Daystar television at any hour of the day and you'll likely see the elements of modern televangelism: a stylish set, an emotional spiritual message and a phone number on the screen soliciting donations.

Based in a studio complex between Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas, and broadcasting to a potential audience of 2 billion people around the globe, Daystar calls itself the fastest growing Christian television network in the world.

The Internal Revenue Service considers Daystar something else: a church.

Televangelists have a choice when they deal with the IRS. Some, like Pat Robertson and Billy Graham, register as religious organizations. They're exempt from most taxes but still must file disclosure reports showing how they make and spend their money.

Daystar and dozens of others call themselves churches, which enjoy the greatest protection and privacy of all nonprofit organizations in America.

Churches avoid not only taxes, but any requirement to disclose their finances. And, as NPR has learned, for the last five years churches have avoided virtually any scrutiny whatsoever from the federal government's tax authority.

Today, television evangelists are larger, more numerous, more complex, richer, with bigger audiences than ever before and yet they are the least transparent of all nonprofits.

The top three religious broadcasters — Christian Broadcast Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network and Daystar Television — are worth more than a quarter of a billion dollars combined, according to available records.

With $233 million in assets, Daystar is the largest religious TV network in America that calls itself a church. As such, there's no objective way for viewers — who annually give an average of $35 million to Daystar — to be certain how their money is spent.

But NPR found hundreds of pages of court records filed as part of a 2011 employee lawsuit in Texas that has since been dismissed. In them were six years of audited financial statements from Daystar, including balance sheets, income and expense records and detailed accounting of donations.

Those records offer a deep and unprecedented look at the inner workings of a modern religious empire, and they raise issues as basic as the definition of "church" and as a grand as the role of government in religion.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/04/01/43211/can-a-television-network-be-a-church-the-irs-says/

"I said the President was my longtime friend and then he said, 'Your friend is an a--hole,'" he continued. "At that point I told Steve that HE was an a--hole and I wasn't going to sit at his table while he was being such a jacka--. And I walked out."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/george-clooney-storms-dinner-obama-called-a-hole-article-1.1766406#ixzz2zkmLKOdd

Steve Wynn *IS* a jackass - an aged jackass with frizzy, excessively-dyed corrosion-colored hair and a doofus fake-tooth smile, who thinks only of money and acquisition.

However, I do love George Clooney. That man has got it all, heart, soul, intelligence, and beauty.

Increased numbers of jail and prison inmates with severe mental illness have been inversely associated with public hospital bed numbers since the initiation of deinstitutionalization.

The proportion of mentally ill individuals within the homeless population is typically estimated at roughly one-third of all males and two-thirds of all females.

Staff in emergency departments in some states complain that psychiatric patients can be boarded in EDs for 24 to 48 hours. As remarkably long as that may sound, ED workers in other states scoff at this figure, reporting that they have psychiatric patients stuck in emergency departments as long as four weeks

....mental illness-related calls outnumbered calls for routine larceny, traffic accidents and domestic disputes.

http://tacreports.org/consequences

ALSO:

http://tacreports.org/tables <-- this allows you to see where your state ranks. Also, look at beds per 100,000

LOURDES TORRES-MANTEUFEL
vs.
DOUGLAS PHILLIPS
VISION FORUM, INC., AND §
VISION FORUM MINISTRIES, INC

http://www.wnd.com/files/2014/04/TorresComplaintFinalwithCoverSheet.pdf

How evil can right wingers be?

This is the same religion to which the family in the 19 Kids and Counting reality show (The Duggars) belong.

Of course, The Duggars are now claiming they are not associated with this group, and that's a full-blown lie. They are completely associated with it.

Here's more information on it:

Religious Right Leader Sued For Sexual Battery, Treating Young Follower Like A 'Personal Sex Object'
SUBMITTED BY Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 4/15/2014 12:15 pm
Warning: this post includes sexually graphic language.

In a bombshell lawsuit that exposes the shocking ways women are treated in the Quiverfull movement — the patriarchal program popularized by the Duggar family and its TLC reality show 19 Kids and Counting — attorneys representing Lourdes Torres have revealed details of the abuse she received from Doug Phillips of Vision Forum.

The lawsuit [PDF], which includes counts of sexual battery and assault, details the “inappropriate, unwanted, and immoral sexual acts committed by Douglas Phillips against Ms. Torres,” noting that Phillips “methodically groomed Ms. Torres” since she was 15 years old “so that she would eventually participate in illicit sexual rendezvous with him promising that she could one day marry him” and “repeatedly told Torres that this was possible because his wife, Beall Phillips, was going to die soon.”

Phillips, one of the most prominent leaders of the Quiverfull movement, last year admitted to having “a lengthy, inappropriate relationship with a woman.” Phillips is extremely close to the Duggar family. In 2010, Torres was featured at the end of a video message at Phillips’ “Baby Conference” thanking Michelle Duggar, to whom Phillips had presented a “Mother of the Year” award.

.....Phillips then began to masturbate and ejaculated on her. Ms. Torres asked Phillips to stop and broke down crying. Despite Ms. Torres’s repeated requests for Phillips to stop masturbating and ejaculating on her......

- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/religious-right-leader-sued-sexual-battery-treating-young-follower-personal-sex-object#sthash.ozd1rIgq.dpuf