You read correctly. It has now deteriorated to having this generation of parents and school officials’ approve grade-buying, instead of baked goods and the like, in order to raise extra school funds.
Rosewood Middle School price list
♦A $20 donation buys 10-point credits to be used on two tests of the student’s choice.
♦A $30 donation buys the test points and admission to a 5th-period dance.
♦A $60 donation buys students test points, the dance invitation, and a “special 30-minute lunch period with pizza, drink and the choice to invite one friend to join them.”
♦Photo ops with Rosewood principal Susie Shepherd, the vice principal, and a home room teacher go for $75. The photos will be posted on a school bulletin board and on the school’s Web site.
Wow. What buys! When criticized for peddling grades for cash, the principle responded coyly.
Extra points on two tests won’t make a difference in a student’s final grade.
Thus went the concept completely above the involved parents and school officials, that grades are a reflection of the work performed, and a measure of the knowledge obtained. School and grades is not about how much cash is on hand at the moment.
The lesson instilled of trying to buy your way out of everything in life is not a good one. Youngsters may want to practice it one day when the policeman pulls them over. They will then find out if that grade school lesson was worthwhile.
The county school administrators quickly snuffed out the pay-for-grades fundraiser notion. The voice of reason descended to guide the wayward, who are responsible for cultivating the next generation who will be your doctors, bankers, engineeers, and the like.
Can the U.S. government secretly subpoena the IP address of every visitor to a political website?
No, but that didn’t stop it from trying.
The report describes how, earlier this year, U.S. attorneys issued a federal grand jury subpoena to Indymedia.us administrator Kristina Clair demanding “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” for a particular date, potentially identifying every person who visited any news story on the Indymedia site. As the report explains, this overbroad demand for internet records not only violated federal privacy law but also violated Clair’s First Amendment rights, by ordering her not to disclose the existence of the subpoena without a U.S. attorney’s permission.
Charles Krauthammer comes in with the voice of reason to point out the multitude of oversights, warning signs, and inaction by various government officials at different levels, which tacitly facilitated the ability of U.S. Army major psychiatrist Nidal Hasan to methodically gun down and kill 12 of his own fellow soldiers, one civilian, and injure 31 more, while shouting “Allahu akbar.” The subsequent inability of the liberal media to point out the seeds from which the Muslim major’s actions at Fort Hood, Texas were borne, was clearly sidestepped by a U.S. president as well. All in the name of political correctness.
Krauthammer is right. When political correctness becomes a danger, it is a problem. And perhaps those policies that foster that require changes. Imaginary retaliation is what appears to be the guiding hand.
Is the president going to step out and say that this is an abomination? This should never have happened? We have been overlooking all of this in the name of political correctness, and we are going to change our policies? Or is he going to adopt the Casey line which is the real issue here is the safety of our Muslim soldiers?
Meanwhile, the media try to turn Hasan into a victim. A sickening (and amateurish) Washington Post article portrayed him as a poor, impoverished minority living in a $320-a-month rathole apartment and driving a down-market car — as if the squalor made him a terrorist.
Squalor he chose to live in, by the way: As a major drawing added professional pay for his medical credentials, plus his benefits, Hasan made a six-figure income. And he was single, without college loans or medical bills. Has anybody asked where the money went? I’ll bet a chunk of it disappeared in cash donations to hard-core Islamist causes. Will a single journalist track the missing bucks?
It gets worse: On Sunday evening, a ranking officer in Hasan’s medical chain of command raced to cover her butt. Asked why the killer was promoted to major after receiving career-killer performance reviews at Walter Reed, the officer claimed that Hasan faced the same promotion board requirements as everyone else.
Liar, liar, uniform on fire: A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few lawmakers willing to whisper the word “terrorism,” needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan’s promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.
This corrupt (and now deadly) affirmative-action system does a severe disservice to the bulk of minority officers, who make the grade on quality and professionalism. It leaves other officers wondering if the new guy who just showed up in the unit is a “real” officer or an affirmative-action baby.
Ditto for our government’s unwillingness to take on Muslim extremists on US soil. Blathering about freedom of religion, we foster hate speech. By protecting the fanatics, we betray the peaceful majority of our Muslim citizens, leaving them afraid to speak out, since the feds shield the fanatics in charge of their mosques and communities.
Update. Reader Mockazine correct in suggesting killing the bill is the best solution, as correcting it would be grossly inadequate. Stigma attached is an understatement.
The bill is instead a breathtaking display of illiberal ambition, intended to make the middle class more dependent on government through the umbilical cord of “universal health care.” It creates a vast new entitlement, financed by European levels of taxation on business and individuals. The 20% corner of Medicare open to private competition is slashed, while fiscally strapped states are saddled with new Medicaid burdens. The insurance industry will have to vet every policy with Washington, which will regulate who it must cover, what it can offer, and how much it can charge.
The reality.
Insurers will thus have to cover more sick people with fewer dollars, as healthy folk opt out of coverage until they are sick.
…their customers, most of whom will pay more for insurance as the new mandates raise costs.
…as subsidized costs soar, government will have no choice but to ration medical care, starting with the aged and grievously ill. Is pre-natal life more valuable than the elderly?
Every decision of what to insure or not… will become subject to political intervention over moral disputes or budget constraints. Heretofore, these decisions have largely been made between a doctor and patient.
