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In the year since I evicted CJ & Justina, they have made a dramatic 180 turnaround in their lives.
I had taken both of them into my home over this past summer. Justina was pregnant but with complications, so I offered them space here with the understanding that they would help here in my house and compensate me for the prior expenses accrued from the eviction. They did just that.
Since I run a dry house, the opportunity to clean up the "party all day" lifestyle, was also possible. They are now both clean & sober I'm happy to say!
Living at another place now, they continue to contribute to that home, work and pay rent like everyone else. For their sake and the kids, we all hope their sober lifestyle continues. It seems my taking a chance by giving them another chance, may have worked out for everyone.
As you can see, the two unfunded wars by the last administration were actually a bargain compared to the stab in the back they gave Americans from the Tax Cuts.
Why we refuse to put some of these people in jail is beyond me.
Funding and political opposition to any upgrade in test results have always been in the way of fixing our educational system in New York. So long as we underfund our public schools, we can assure that the resulting graduates, if they even graduate, will be ready to perpetuate the service industry limitations that big business conservatives advocate. How else do you explain away the constant denial of school funding across the country?
Governor Cuomo's Education Reform Commission has come out with a report that just may help. That is, unless political foes resume their tired old stance that we shouldnt fund our struggling school systems.
Not all of the ideas are necessarily perfect or desirable, but it's such a better starting point when addressing the very issue that keeps this country's education levels below most developed countries annually.
Longer teaching days and a longer schooling year is something we can all agree on. Just keeping students occupied during the idle afternoon hours that parents are usually still at work will certainly change the mischief factor at home.
Teacher competency exams makes perfect sense as well. Even the teacher's union endorses this one. If you have no ability to convey standard concepts and encourage individual growth within your students, you have no business being a teacher.
In addition, I love the idea of School District consolidations. Administration costs at the top of every district adds a tremendous drain on the limited funding we have. Imagine cutting out most of the administration at the top and merging this group (large enough to occupy a small village) into one administration to handle a county wide school district?
Picture it: Ulster County Central School System
The school buildings we are closing down today could be developed into senior housing. Actually whatever the private sector wishes to do with them so long as we sell off the property and get that property beck on the tax rolls.
The Commission's Chairman, Richard Parsons, wrote to Cuomo in the introduction of the report that “The problem New York confronts,
we concluded, is how to replicate these examples of excellence in every
school district in New York; how do we create a statewide system of
public education that ensures that every child will have the opportunity
to get an education that will enable them to achieve their true
potential?”
Although I'm not so sure limiting our teacher hirings to high end scholars would be the best idea. There are terrific teachers out there who are fairly educated in their field who more than match education skills through the pure passion of teaching. You may lose that if you restrict hirings to just the elite professors out there.
In closing; Governor Cuomo is expected to elaborate where he wants our school system to address these issues in his State of the State. If there is enough political will and we find the funding through consolidation and property sales, we may actually see some movement on an issue that has plagued New York State for decades.
I have been asked to provide any indication that one of the awarded contractors in the program I used to manage at City Hall had given permission to re award a project to another contractor should I need to.
Is a text message enough?
The folks in DC actually deny making any effort to promote the production of hemp as a textile for any reason. I thought everyone would enjoy this classic.
There's a Mormon Cult Bishop running for President and most people don't know what his church actually dictates. What the cartoon doesn't address is what family members endure when they try to leave the Mormon community or anything about the odd rituals that occur in their windowless church in Utah.
I have known a few recovering Mormons in my time. As a landlord, I have had the pleasure of meeting many families. When the two issues meet, you can get an enlightening crash course in what painstaking measures these people have to prepare before making their escape. More so when there are younger children in the troop.
Americans should know about any Presidential candidate before voting. We all know what a tough vetting process Obama and Clinton put us through during the primary four years ago. We still chose Obama over McCain in the General.
Obama has been a gentleman through the three and a half years he's served considering the crazy, hurtful and slanderous crap that's been hurled his way. That alone should indicate how right we were to elect him the first time. Who else could maintain their equanimity under such an endless assault?
Since I am in New York, the urgency to get out and vote for Obama is less intense, here we GOTV for the down ticket candidates trying to unseat the few Tea Party fruitcakes that made it in two years ago.
Enjoy the informative cartoon and think about how nice it must be on planet Kolob this time of year.
To finish out the last days in Ohio making shit up about the car companies that provide much of the employment and state pride within that very state, takes balls. Willard is delusional if he thinks this will help.
If you follow me on twitter you may remember when I suggested keeping a live mic around this guy at all times until the 6th. Now, I realize, the mic doesn't have to be stealthily placed to catch Romney saying stupid comments. He's actually offering these words in speeches.
I am astonished each and every day that there are people around us cheering this guy on as a Presidential candidate.
Even in New York where I tend to assume people are more educated, there are still the desperate Tea Party souls towing the Koch Brothers astroturf lines and waving "Don't Tread On Me" flags along Rt 9W in Ulster, N.Y.
May I suggest taking your prescribed dosage of Klonopin and call me in the morning.
This is well worth your time watching.
FRANK SCHAEFFER, New York Times best-selling author, posed this question in the Huffington Post last week:
According to polls 73 percent of WHITE evangelicals will be voting for Mitt Romney.
If the polls are correct here's the question I'd like to ask evangelicals using their own style of language/concerns/theological thinking as applied to their choice:
What's the explanation for
the fact that WHITE American evangelicals made the allegedly philandering lying ignorant braggart lapsed Roman Catholic Dinesh D'Souza
their anti-Obama hero, embrace a pro-choice Mormon bishop who promoted
abortion and Planned Parenthood in MA, are working to elect a
job-destroying tax-avoiding lying flip-flopping-tell-anyone-anything-they-want-to-hear Swiss bank account collecting draft dodger
running with a disciple of the God-hating, Jesus-mocking
hater-of-the-poor Ayn Rand, for their presidential candidate and look
the other way as a crazed ultra-Zionist many Israeli Jews fear billionaire casino owner who is being investigated for allegedly making billions off the dirtiest Chinese gambling Communist Party-controlled
outfit in the world funds the enterprise, at the very same time as
Franklin Graham sold his ailing father Billy's soul and denied core
evangelical theology by taking Mormonism off the Billy Graham
organization's list of cultsTrinity-denying, casino-money-grubbing billionaire-coddling, earth-destroying global-warming denying Mormon bishop win respectability for his dead-Jews-baptizing-polygamy-rooted-reality-denying-interplanetary Masonic lodge-embracing faith
in an election against an exemplary modest faithful husband good father
compassionate smart BLACK evangelical Christian President who's major
accomplishments include saving the economy, ending a war, killing our
greatest enemy, giving health care to children and the poor and the
"least of these" and who has tried to reduce the number of abortions by helping women escape poverty in a reenactment of the lesson of the parable of the Good Samaritan?
Go figure.
Frank is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood, an acclaimed novelist of 4 novels including Portofino who overcame severe dyslexia, a home-schooled and self-taught
documentary movie director, a feature film director and producer of four
low budget Hollywood features Frank has described as "pretty terrible."
Frank's nonfiction includes "Keeping Faith-A Father-Son Story About
Love and the United States Marine Corps" and AWOL-The Unexcused Absence
of America's Upper Classes From Military Service and How It Hurts Our
Country."
I saw this posted on JoeMyGodBlog earlier and I had to repost it here.
Could someone tell me how it is that this attracts people to their flock?
Could this be any better than the rest of the cults? They should be wearing helmets.
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