[Phys-l] Porcupine quills, sit still and shut up, a request, and the US, a semi Fascist state. Was: Re: porcupine vs state-mandated high-stakes trivia tests

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

On 2011, May 27, , at 13:34, John Denker wrote:

> Once upon a time I found a porcupine quill.  I observed that one quill, 
> all by itself, is not very scary. 

I differ slightly.   They are very sharp and relatively hard.  Those not residing (or having camped) in the boondocks may send an SAE for a couple.  I  collected them from a road kill in Utah near the Colorado boarder on the way to the Advanced Labs. Conference in Ann Arbour. 

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bc


p.s. (Next one more on the original subject")


Obama wants your five year old to sit still and shut up

 
CNS News - Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNS News that the administration's new $500 million early learning initiative is designed to deal with children from birth onward to prevent such problems as 5-year olds who "can't sit still" in a kindergarten classroom.

“You really need to look at the range of issues, because if a 5-year-old can’t sit still, it is unlikely that they can do well in a kindergarten class, and it has to be the whole range of issues that go into healthy child development,” Sebelius said during a telephone news conference on Wednesday to announce the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge. 

Sebelius and Education Secretary Arne Duncan jointly announced the $500-million program, which will provide competitive grants to states to address issues affecting educational outcomes for children from birth to age 5. 

On the conference call, CNS News asked: “What were the current problems that were found with the health, social and emotional development for children ages birth to 5?” 

Sebelius, adding on to comments from Asst. Education Secretary Joan Lombardi, pointed to studies done in her home state of Kansas, where she served as governor. “When we looked at 5-year olds--and we tested about half the 5-year-olds in a relatively homogeneous state like Kansas -- and found that about half of them were not ready for kindergarten at age 5," Sebelius said. 

"And some of those skills were missing: readiness for their math or reading," she said. "A number of children were missing the social and developmental skills which would allow them to sit in a classroom or play with others or listen to a teacher for any period of time. So I think it was an indicator that you couldn’t just test curriculum readiness.”

According to the U.S. Department of Education, awards in Race to the Top will go to “states that are leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive early learning education reform.”
 

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The request (see cc in the header)

Help the editor

I recently suggested that one way to help get the idea of climate change across was to emphasize local climate change. Liberals tend to think in terms of abstractions and global concepts, but most people do better with anecdotes and facts they can directly relate to.  Which is why health and food publications do so well.

Further, we live in a country with a high degree of mobility and a huge number of Americans have little idea of what the climate of their town or state was before they arrived there.

To illustrate the point, I searched for information on historical climate change in my state, Maine, and was stunned to see how little was easily available.  Stuff as simple as this:

[Deleted, as is an attachment.]


Do any readers know good sources of information on local historical climate change? Either national data collections or good examples of state and local histories would be helpful. You can use the comments section or write directly - Sam 

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And finally, my political comment of the day:

Alternet - Reagan-appointed federal Judge James Cacheris just ruled that corporations have a constitutional right to contribute money directly to political candidates.

Today’s decision extends beyond the egregious Citizen United decision because Citizens United only permits corporations to run their own ads supporting a candidate or otherwise act independently of a candidate’s campaign. Cacheris’ opinion would also allow the Chamber of Commerce and Koch Industries, for instance, to contribute directly to political campaigns.

If today’s decision is upheld on appeal, it could be the end of any meaningful restrictions on campaign finance  including limits on the amount of money wealthy individuals and corporations can give to a candidate. In most states, all that is necessary to form a new corporation is to file the right paperwork in the appropriate government office. Moreover, nothing prevents one corporation from owning another corporation. Thus, under Cacheris’ decision, a cap on overall contributions becomes meaningless, because corporate donors can simply create a series of shell corporations for the purpose of evading such caps.

 
 Although the corporate media will deny this, assuming the Supreme Court backs this decision, it will be absolutely accurate to describe America now as a semi-fascist state. 

 Sam Smith, 1990  -  The S&L solution has the hidden goal of moving America towards increasing financial oligopoly. The government is prepared to guide, assist, regulate and tax to accomplish this goal. This sort of economic policy has been seen before in fully developed form and it has a name: fascism, described by Mussolini biographer Adrian Lyttelton as "the product of the transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the organized capitalism of the oligopoly." As Italian fascist economic theorist Alfredo Rocco put it, such an economy "is organized by the producers themselves, under the supreme direction and control of the state."