Common Core: Public Education or Personal Enrichment?

Below is an excellent Op-Ed piece from Marianne Gasiecki of the Mansfield Tea Party on following the Common Core money trail that fuels the national push of a select few to control our children's minds through education. 

Highlighting Bill Gates & The Gates Foundation financial influence and corporate cronyism perverting education in our country, you will see Common Core has nothing to do with education of our children and everything to do with personal enrichment off of our children.

On a side note, this would be the same Bill Gates & Gates Foundation that has duped many conservatives into blindly supporting the nationwide push for Charter Schools - that fly under the Gates-funded Trojan Horse banner of "School Choice." 

From The Richland Source --

I have always been a firm believer of “follow the money.” Unfortunately, Common Core (CC) is no exception.

The state’s position has always been that every school district has the right to opt out of CC, but when considering that option, schools receive threatening letters from the Ohio Department of Education (ODE).

The latest threat is that schools will lose money if students opt out of the testing this fall. False. There is nothing in the Ohio Revised Code tying a child’s test to funding.

All this coercion makes sense when you learn that the ODE received $4.5 million, and the National Assoc. of State School Boards received $3.3 million from the Gates Foundation, for implementation of CC.

And that’s just a drop in the bucket. The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Assoc., two D.C. based private organizations, received over $65 million and over $3 million, respectively, from the Gates Foundation, along with their D.C. based Partner Achieve Inc., which received over $9 million, in exchange for aiding the Obama Administration in their efforts to implement a one-size-fits-all, nationalization of education. So much for being “state led.”

Struggling states accepted Race to the Top and stimulus money in exchange for implementing a set of standards, sight unseen. The standards had yet to be developed.

Now we’ve seen them. The two most qualified members of the CC Validation Committee refused to sign off on them, stating they would put us years behind other countries in mathematics alone. Parents and students are struggling to understand the convoluted math homework, and teachers are spending more time testing and being assessed than they are teaching. Bill Gates hopes his “education stuff works...but we won’t know for probably a decade”. That’s a generation lost to an experiment.

So why is Bill Gates supporting this experiment on our children? Money.

Schools (the taxpayer) using computer-based, Common Core-aligned tests will now need to spend “a bunch of money — on Microsoft products.” Click here to read more.

Textbook publishers, like McGraw Hill and Pearson, are also making a fortune as taxpayers are forced to fund all new textbooks to align with CC. Pearson has purchased a bio-behavioral testing company so they can do more behavioral testing in the schools. Why is a textbook company getting into the bio-behavioral testing business? Think about it.

Our children have been reduced to nothing more than “human capital” in the game of “workforce development,” as privacy is continually violated and 400+ data points are gathered through the excessive online assessing and mandated use of technology in instruction.

Who benefits from this data? Big business. In the era of online data collection, Bill Gates is clearly excited about how the sharing of this information will make it easier for companies to market their products to your children when he said, “When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well—and that will unleash powerful market forces…”

Who else benefits? Universities. The National Science Foundation (a federal agency) just awarded $4.8 million of our tax dollars to prominent research universities “aiming to build a massive repository for storing, sharing, and analyzing the information students generate when using digital learning tools.”

No one is opposed to standards, but CC has nothing to do with elevating the education of our children, and everything to do with elevating corporate cronyism off the backs of our children.

If people truly believe in putting our children first, then we should all be supporting the complete repeal of CC through Ohio House Bill 597.

Marianne Gasiecki, Mansfield

Regulations Could Kill Your Labor-Saving Home Appliances

From Ernest Istook --

Be prepared to work harder at home. The era of affordable labor-saving devices is threatened by rising appliance costs due to federal energy regulations.

Washing clothes by hand sounds Third World to Americans, but how else does a limited budget handle the sticker shock from such as washing machines and dryers commonly priced at $600 to $1,000? That’s for separate units, not both together.

Nobody saves money by buying more expensive products when the claimed energy savings don’t materialize. That’s because we commonly don’t keep appliances and electronics long enough to close the cost gap.

Even stricter federal energy regulations are in the pipeline not only for washers and dryers but also for refrigerators, freezers, all types of lamps and lights, dishwashers, ice makers, air conditioners, furnaces, space heaters, ovens, stoves and lots more, including chargers and power supplies for cellphones and other personal electronics.

Each product gets its own vast, dizzying array of proposed mind-numbing new standards on power consumption, design and labeling, with details for each variation in which they are sold.

How would you like being told that there’s even more “in Appendix Z to subpart B of 10 CFR Part 430,” as one edict says? Any time your appendices climb to Z, you’re way past being reasonable.

Manufacturers such as General Electric, Panasonic, Sub-Zero and others are petitioning the Department of Energy for relief from the tedious new power-use testing requirements that are the prelude to an avalanche of more regulations.

The mantra from the green energy crowd is that we should ignore higher purchase prices, because we’ll eventually get it back from savings on our electric bills.

But the feds often calculate supposed savings over a 30-year span (sometimes only 9 years) on products that we’re unlikely to keep that long. They wear out, break down or become obsolete. Even The New York Times published a report that the fuel savings from more miles per gallon won’t offset higher auto prices unless people start keeping their autos twice as long as we typically do.

The Consumer Electronics Association told regulators that it’s nonsense to project 30 years of supposed savings when consumers may use an item for only a few months. CEA proposes the industry develop its standards rather than be buried under government dictates. The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers touts the improvements already made, such as success in doubling energy efficiency of dishwashers since 1980.

Nothing is ever enough for the green crowd, however.

How about the most common personal appliance: the cellphone?

The common turnover rate for cellphones is every two years, which includes a new charger each time. Bureaucrats claim the industry should standardize chargers for the 200-million-plus cellphones they sell each year. Then people could keep their old chargers when they get a new phone. They have a point there. Lots of us wish that power supplies were standardized, just like electric outlets, regardless of the brand or the product. Industry steps toward that would be surefire winners.

The Department of Energy claims its regulation on power supplies would cost consumers $143 million a year but save us $293 million. Of course, their claimed “savings” include speculative benefits from reducing carbon footprints.

And the chargers are small stuff compared to the requirements for larger appliances like refrigerators and stoves.

Even states are getting in on the act. The Institute for Energy Research reports that 11 states already have appliance standards going even farther than the feds.

Creature comforts like coffee makers, CD and MP3 players, electric blankets and even electric foot massagers may not be as common in the near future, simply because so many people won’t be able to afford the little luxuries of life.

Pick which ones you want and do without the rest. Rediscover the manual toothbrush even though the electric version plus a Waterpik protect your teeth better. Pile up the quilts on your bed. Use a hand egg beater.

The extra costs being added to each item may seem minor, but they add up to a major impact on our quality of life.

It’s not the end of the world, but is this interference with our choices really what our government should be doing? No, it is not.

Be prepared for a possible future of solar-powered clothes dryers. We used to call them clotheslines.

Students to hold Repeal Common Core Rally in Westerville OH

On Saturday, October 18th from Noon to 2 PM, a "Repeal Common Core Rally" will be held in Westerville (Westerville American Legion - 393 E. College Ave.).

Date: Saturday October 18th
Time: Noon - 2pm
Address: 393 E. College Ave  Westerville, OH (Click for Map)

This event is being put on by HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS!

Speakers will include both Conservative and Liberal teachers and students, as well as community members, who believe that Common Core is damaging the education system.

Common Core is taking teaching, individualism, and creativity out of schools. These standards will be detrimental to both the education of our youth, and future of our nation.

Our goal is to make the District and State education boards realize the consequences of implementing Common Core, and to provide political pressure to repeal Common Core state wide.

To keep up with efforts to repeal Common Core in Ohio and how you can help please go to Ohioans Against Common Core website by clicking here.

To get started with efforts to repeal Common Core in your child's school district, make sure to check out their Take Action section by clicking here.

Tax Dollars Blowing in the Wind of Crony Capitalism

We recently posted an excellent article by former Congressman Ernest Istook highlighting the battle we face in the upcoming lame duck session of Congress over a proposed $18 billion extension of the wind-energy production tax credit being fueled by crony capitalism.

For the latest example of wind blown tax dollars and crony capitalism in Ohio we only need to look at the shores of Lake Erie and the Lake Erie Energy Development Corporation (LEEDCo).

LEEDCo was founded as a non-profit economic development corporation in 2009 as a result of a public/private funded feasibility study for the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force to put wind turbines in Lake Erie. Members of LEEDCo include the Cleveland Foundation, NorTech, the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain and Ashtabula counties.

The projected costs for the 6-9 wind turbines alone is approximately $92 - $100 million. This does not include any overruns of construction costs, the cost of installing the transmission lines to get the power from the turbines to the shore, reworking or updating of the existing power grid to accommodate the wind power and/or the estimated yearly maintenance costs of $5 million as outlined in the feasibility study.

After several failed bills in the U.S. Senate to promote funding for wind energy (Here & Here) by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and after his continued badgering, LEEDCo received an initial $4 million grant in 2012 to fund their Project Ice Breaker. Project Ice Breaker is for research & design engineering on the bases needed for the proposed wind turbines in Lake Erie.

This grant is through the first stage of a $180 million U.S. Dept of Energy sponsored offshore wind power competition.  Along with this, three other N/E Ohio companies with ties to LEEDCo received grants;

• Freshwater Wind LLC (LEEDCo's private developer) $500,000
• Nautica Windpower LLC (A LEEDCo Partner) $500,000
• Case Western Reserve (A LEEDCo Partner) $540,000

Failing to qualify for the full $47 million available for each project in the second round of the grant awards (tax dollar giveaways), LEEDCo was only awarded $2.8 million by the D.O.E. to complete engineering and other related studies on Project Ice Breaker.

But this setback is not about to stop LEEDCo. Lorry Wagner, president of LEEDCo, acknowledges the setback but reaffirms their dedication to forcing this project through.

In 2012 the left-leaning Brent Larkin of the Plain Dealer was surprisingly critical of the wind turbines in Lake Erie and again questioned the cost & sensibility of the turbine project....

There are 534,899 households in Cuyahoga County. Installing five or six wind turbines seven miles out would generate enough power to light a maximum of 6,100 of those households.

The cost is pegged at about $150 million. In Cleveland dollars, that means overruns would push the final figure past the $200 million mark. That doesn’t include annual maintenance costs of about $5 million.

Because businesses and manufacturers always use between 30 percent and 40 percent of the power produced, the wind turbine pilot project would produce about 0.5 percent of the county’s required electricity.

Nevertheless, windmill supporters haven’t given up the chase. Even as business leaders who know how to read a bottom line have quietly backed away, proponents – led by the Cleveland Foundation – have refused to follow the lead of other Great Lakes cities and scale back their grandiose plans. (Emphasis Added)

And this brings us to the wind-blown bile of crony capitalism we see in many of these wind turbine projects.

When speaking of crony capitalism in Cuyahoga County and/or Ohio, somewhere along the line you will find some sort of non-profit group being controlled or influenced by the cabal of corporate charlatan's at The Cleveland Foundation & the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP).

Taking a look at the original Great Lakes Energy Task Force and LEEDCo the non-profit economic development corporation specially created for wind turbine project, you will see it is nothing more than a shell game of incestuous relationships fleecing the public with our own tax dollars.

The Cleveland Foundation and Nortech, a non-profit front group for the GCP, both served on the Great Lakes Energy Task Force. The task force in turn hired JW Great Lakes Wind LLC to create a wind feasibility study for turbines in Lake Erie.  

In creating this wind feasibility study for the Task Force, JW Great Lakes Wind LLC had the "help" of the Great Lakes Wind Energy Center, a front group for the Cleveland Foundation pushing for turbines in Lake Erie. 

From this wind feasibility study for the Task Force, paid for partially with public money & created with the help of groups tied to the Task Force, the non-profit Lake Erie Energy Development Corp. (LEEDCo) was created by the Task Force to oversee the push for wind turbines in Lake Erie.  

With a quick click here, you will see many of the Board members of the Task Force that created LEEDCo, are now Board members for LEEDCo.

The non-profit LEEDCo hired Bechtel Development Company, Inc. (Bechtel), Cavallo Great Lakes Ohio Wind, LLC (Cavallo) and Great Lakes Wind Energy, LLC (GLWEnergy) to work on the project.

Bechtel, Cavallo and GLWEnergy have formed Great Lakes Ohio Wind, LLC (GLOW), the company that will own and develop the project.

With only the tip of the corporate cronyism pointed out in just this one "wind" project in Ohio, do you really need more reasons as to why Speaker Boehner & the upcoming lame duck Congress should reject extending the $18 billion Wind Energy Tax Production Credit?
 

Tax Dollars Blowing in the Wind Energy Production Tax Credit

It appears most of the 'green' energy being created by these tax-payer funded wind-energy production tax credits is the 'green' fueling up the pockets of a select few crony capitalists.

When done reading the below, please click here to read about the crony capitalism infecting the wind turbine efforts on Lake Erie.

From Ernest Istook --

Crony capitalism plans are so lucrative for a select few that they are hard to kill. Those who get rich make generous campaign contributions, hire lobbyists and run massive public relations propaganda campaigns, using the billions of our tax dollars that they receive.

One “temporary” measure — the wind-energy production tax credit (PTC) — has received eight “temporary” extensions since 1992 and now backers want to add several years more. After 20 years of soaking taxpayers for billions of dollars in subsidies and raising electric bills, it’s overdue for the PTC to end. It expired at the end of 2013, yet some lawmakers want to give it new life, plus an additional $18 billion, during the post election lame-duck session of Congress.

Typically, those getting the money boast of being job creators or “green energy” saviors who will save our planet from roasting owing to global warming. They omit that the job numbers are inflated, often temporary and often filled by overseas vendors.

They also omit that taxpayers are paying twice — through taxes and through higher electric bills. Green energy is not cheap and not affordable. If it were, green energy would not need subsidies.

To maximize chances of backroom deals and minimize public accountability, the fate of the PTC will be decided as part of a tax package in the lame-duck Congress, when wheeling, dealing and political horse-trading are at their worst. That’s because Congress will have two years before facing the voters again. Departing senators and House members won’t have to face voters at all.

Green energy sounds good and polls well — until people learn how much it costs them. The Congressional Research Service reports the annual cost to taxpayers of green grants and tax subsidies is $40 billion. That’s only part of the picture, however. It also raises your electric bill because wind simply is less efficient than generating power from fossil fuels. And less consistent.

The managing editor of Environment and Climate News, James M. Taylor, citing the U.S. Energy Information Administration, writes, “Data show nine of the 11 largest wind-power states are experiencing skyrocketing electricity prices, rising more than four times the national average.” Those states are: Colorado, up 14 percent; Idaho, up 33 percent; Iowa, up 17 percent; Kansas, up 29 percent; Minnesota, up 22 percent; North Dakota, up 24 percent; Oregon, up 15 percent; South Dakota, up 26 percent; and Wyoming, up 33 percent.

These increases come even after federal taxpayers absorb some of the higher costs of wind energy by giving producers a subsidy of 2.3 cents for each kilowatt-hour generated. They’ve had this benefit for 20 years, but still clamor to revive the PTC, which expired at the end of 2013. Sponsors not only want it restored, but to make that retroactive to 2013 and to extend it through 2017. That would carry an $18 billion price tag.

Since 1999, the PTC has been renewed eight times, and three times the extension was retroactive. It had expired but was resurrected. Three resurrections is more than the rest of us get. The PTC doesn’t deserve a fourth.

In the lame-duck Congress, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, is leading the push to revive the PTC. Fortunately, House members, such as Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, Michigan Republican, have been unwilling to include that in the tax package that will be considered. It’s vital for House members to hold the line.

But the cronyists haven’t gone away. Their position is illustrated by how billionaire Warren Buffett explained his investments in wind power, “We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

Congress should resist all the pressures and let the thing die. Wind power is fine — so long as its backers don’t seek special favors. If it’s so expensive that 20 years of subsidies aren’t enough to make it competitive, then the sponsors need to improve their technology. They also don’t deserve the state-level mandates that force utilities to buy wind-generated power from them.

It’s overdue that we embrace free enterprise and abandon crony capitalism. We’ll have less national debt, and consumers will benefit from more affordable energy.

• Ernest Istook is a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma. Get his free email newsletter by signing up at eepurl.com/JPojD.

Second Ebola patient in TX flew from Cleveland

Photo credit: wolhazmat.de

A second nurse has been diagnosed with the Ebola virus. Bryan Preston at PJ Media reports:

  

DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The CDC has announced that the second healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola traveled by air Oct. 13, the day before she first reported symptoms.

The CDC is now reaching out to all passengers who flew on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth. The flight landed at 8:16 p.m. CT.

The CDC is asking all 132 passengers on the flight to call 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636). Public health professionals will begin interviewing passengers about the flight after 1 p.m. ET.

Fox 8 News has more here.

And it gets scarier. PJ Media again: 

Dr. Betsy McCaughey appeared on Fox just after she had attend a CDC conference call with hospitals this afternoon.

Host Stuart Varney asked her what it would take to set up 50 hospitals to be ready for Ebola.

McCaughey’s answer is stunning.

According to her, after the CDC outlined its preparation strategy, one hospital administrator responded, “What you’re telling us would bankrupt my hospital!” She said that that administrator represents a Southern California hospital.

McCaughey noted that there was no word on the call of who would pay for hospitals to get themselves ready for Ebola patients.

And then she added: “Treating one Ebola patient requires, full time, 20 medical staff. Mostly ICU (intensive care unit) people. So that would wipe out an ICU in an average-sized hospital.”

In the case of Texas Presbyterian, McCaughey says that the hospital cordoned off its ICU to care for Thomas Eric Duncan and sent the rest of its ICU patients to other area hospitals. She added that many communities will not have multiple hospitals to choose from, so one Ebola case could cripple ICUs in small towns.

“But the most important thing,” McCaughey said, “is that doctors and nurses are not ready for the challenge of using this personal protective equipment even if you see them with the helmet, the respirator, the full suits, as the CDC said on the call today, even all that equipment is not enough to guarantee the safety of health care workers because it is so perilous to put it on and particularly to remove it once it’s become contaminated.”

McCaughey said many of those on the call were “daunted by the expectations, the separate laboratory next to the isolated patients, all kinds of — all kinds of adjustments, where to put the waste. Many states won’t even let you dispose of this waste from such a toxic disease.”

# # #

US Slips To 12th In Economic Freedom

Art credit: canwebelieveit.info

Not good news from Breitbart:

US Slips To 12th In Economic Freedom

A new report of "economic freedom" around the world finds the US ranked 12th among 152 countries, tied with the United Kingdom, and lower than neighbor Canada or Australia. The index, published by the Cato Institute and Canada's Fraser Institute, has been published since 1996. As recently as 2000, the US ranked 2nd in the world, in terms of boasting a free economy. The US's declining ranking will lower future economic growth. 

The index, built on decades of research by Nobel laureates and dozens of leading scholars,measures 5 broad factors that impact the economy: 1. Size of government; 2. Legal structure and security of property rights; 3. Access to sound money; 4. Freedom to trade internationally and; 5. Regulation of Credit, Labor and Business. Countries where citizens are freer to engage in business and trade and property and legal rights are protected by the rule of law will score higher on the index. According to economic research, though, these countries will also do better economically and create and generate more wealth. 

The 10 freest economies in the world are: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Mauritius, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Jordan, and Chile and Finland tied for 10th. 

America's descent down the ladder of economic freedom is unsettling, in itself. More troubling, however, is the chief factor behind the US decline. The biggest drop in US economic freedom has been in the country's legal structure. The report notes that, "increased use of eminent domain to transfer property to powerful political interests, the ramifications of the wars on terrorism and drugs, and the violation of the property rights of bondholders in the auto-bailout case have weakened the tradition of strong adherence to the rule of law in United States." 

The rule of law has long been the foundation of America's economic prosperity and liberty. The US ranking in this area has plummeted to a terrible 36th place in the world. This, combined with increased regulation is stifling US economic growth. The report observes, "[t]o a large degree, the United States has experienced a significant move away from rule of law and toward a highly regulated, politicized, and heavily policed state."

Read the rest here.