Think of the United States like a home owner’s association. Over time the home owners agree to more debt paid for by a credit card that gets max-ed out. And interest on the debt grows. Seventy three times the debt limit has been raised.
Since Obama has been President the U.S. has taken on enormous debt. The solution is not to raise the debt ceiling and spend even more. We have to pay our debts and importantly reduce the debt.
The video below by Ask Heritage shows why we as citizens must say NO more debt and tell Congress that its time to REDUCE debt.
Don’t let the government kick the ball down the street. Understand the issues and speak up.
Batman needed to clean up Gotham City –aka Californai —
Gov. Jerry Brown ordered state agencies on Wednesday to do a better job collecting money after an audit discovered that 11 state agencies had failed to gather $13.3 million in debts, mostly from employees who received cash advances.
In California the gift of public funds is a felony.
Oh and is this a surprise? At the top of the violator list were the Highway patrol and the Franchise tax board. FirenzeSage48@gmail.com
The shock of a video of a Transportation Security Administration screener patting down a 6-year-old child has drawn anger.
But the TSA’s actions were not improper, says Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Napolitano described the rationale behind such screening – saying everyone must be screened, because otherwise an exempted group could be exploited for a potential terrorist attack.I wonder.
Remember the Homeland Security,FBI, and Captain Marvel showing up at the home of the person who dared video maintenance crews entering secure areas with a key card.
Perhaps we can exempt 6yr olds in exchange for frisking the janitorial crew.
written by FirenzieSage48@gmail.com
Man really bites dog after dog captured him for theft. Man sues saying dog violated his civil rights. Man in prison for 8 years.
Man really bites dog & gets 8 years
A 33-year-old man who bit back after he was caught by a Phoenix police dog is suing the police.
Erin Sullivan alleges the dog violated his civil rights and used excessive force to capture him after he ran from officers in Glendale during a burglary investigation last year.
Police say Sullivan bit the dog back, injuring it. Poor ole Sully is Quarantined for 8 years.
A mother of child with special needs (Asperger’s Disorder) emailed me asking for help. She lives in Redlands, CA. Her child has an Autistic Spectrum Disorder, is hearing impaired and has epilepsy. The child is in elementary school.
Parenting a child with these kinds of problems can be overwhelming. As there are many parents who face these difficulties, perhaps a general post may be helpful both for this one mother and for other families. Most importantly, know that there is help, there are resources and you don’t have to do this job alone.
The mother wants an advocate to assist her in the IEP process. She asks for immediate help.
She — and anyone in California — can call me for a free 15 minute consultation concerning psychological issues. Call 831 688-6002. Leave name, number and brief information as to situation. I will e-mail back a time to call me.
Before calling, find the most recent three year psycho-educational assessment done for the child. Every three years in California the school psychologist, Resource teacher and other professionals write reports summarizing progress. Those reports typically contain invaluable information. I will ask questions about those reports and may ask you to FAX it to me.
For more information about me, Dr. Cameron Jackson, go to Monterey Bay Forum, www.freedomok.net look at the top where it says Autism. Also look under the Categories for Autistic Spectrum Disorders. I wrote those posts.
I have 5+ years experience as a school psychologist in California and I am a licensed psychologist who specializes in assessment of children and adults. I am particularly interested in Autistic Spectrum Disorders.
Here is some general information that may be helpful to this mother and other parents with children with special needs, developmental disorders and autistic spectrum disorders:
1) The parent has the right to call an IEP meeting, again and again. This parent should find out what the IEP coming up is about and get an agenda ahead of time. Let the school know in writing that you as parent plan to request a series of meeting until all issues get resolved. Send the letter to Special Education Director, Principal, School Psychologist. Keep a copy for your file. Do not sign any IEP unless completely satisfied.
2) This child with some form of autism, epilepsy and hearing impaired is probably best served with an IEP under Other Health Impaired. And not served well under Specific Learning Disability (SLD). Autistic-Like is an education category that might be appropriate IF the therapy component is in place. From what the mother told me there is no appropriate therapy going on to address social deficits.
So this parent needs to know what Category the child receives services under and to request that the Category be changed to Other Health Impaired. All the mother needs is a brief letter from her doctor.
3) By California law, this child is entitled to a Free and Appropriate Public Education — called FAPE. It is not appropriate to put a fifth grade student into a first grade class for example. And, if the school district does not have appropriate public school classes then the district may be on the hook to provide a non-public school placement. Yes the schools and every public agency has budget woes. So, this parent needs to get some self education via the Internet as to what FAPE means.
From the tone of the email this mother sent, it appears that she feels lost in the system. Perhaps this mother can connect with the school psychologist for assistance. Also, there are a number of non-profit organizations that focus on assisting families with special needs. This mom might do well to explore which ones are in the Redland’s CA area. Up in the Santa Cruz-San Jose area for example there are two organizations: SPIN and PHP.
One possible advocate in Redlands, CA: When I Googled Redlands, CA Special Education an article popped up about a school counselor who wants to improved the IEP process. Her name is Yurida Nava and information about her is in the article below. I do not know anything more about this person than what is written below.
Student Encourages Advocacy for Special Education Students
November 23, 2009While working as a school district translator, Redlands School of Education counseling student Yuridia “Yuri†Nava says she became concerned some special education students were not being well served by their school counselors.She says the counselors often attended Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings with students, but did not always advocate for the students during discussions about which services they should receive, what education goals should be set and how their day-to-day school life should function.
“The counselors were there, but I felt they were not really a voice for the students – the IEPs were sometimes finalized in ways that were not in the best interest of the students,†Nava said.
Now, Nava is working to change those shortcomings by calling attention to the problem. One step in that effort came in November, when she presented her research during the California Association of School Counselors conference in Temecula.During the conference, she shared her research exploring the preparation levels of counselors working with special education students. As part of her study, counselors in two school districts were surveyed about their knowledge of the IEP process and whether they were prepared to help special education students and families.
She said she found that most counselors did not recognize their role in advocating for special education students. Some counselors also did not fully understand the IEP process and the role that they should play, she said. Nava – an aspiring counselor who would eventually like to get her doctorate – said she credits assistant professor Janee Both-Gragg with encouraging her to conduct and present the research.
“The professors, including Dr. Both-Gragg, are like fuel – they fuel the passion that you brought when you came here. They prepare you and encourage you to do more than you ever imagined,†she said. “I’m so excited and thankful to be presenting at the conference and I know I wouldn’t have made it to this point without their support and belief in me.â€
Kindle owners can borrow from public libraries via Amazon connecting with OverDrive Inc coming soon. Can Kindle owners already borrow from their local library?
Borrow E-books on Kindle
Think about the revolution in communication that the cell phone has created world wide.
Just as revolutionary, E-Books can likewise put books in the hands of children and adults in Africa, India and world-wide.
And now, increasingly people can borrow electronic books from public libraries rather than buy them. What a boon for education. Sometime later this year owners of a Kindle can borrow digital books from public libraries. Amazon is working with Overdrive Inc which has access to 300,00 books.
Many major public libraries including New York, Chicato and San Francisco offer free digital-book lending. Library card holders can download books from library websites. Each has its own policy with typical lending policies 14-21 days.
Free Kindle books are some of the hottest items on the Internet these days. One of the best things about the Kindle is that it comes with a built-in wireless system so you can access the Internet and download books for your Kindle right on the device.
Despite Amazon’s efforts to offer over 350,000 ebooks on Amazon’s Kindle Store, a lot of people still opt to search for free sources of ebooks rather than pay for their Kindle books.
Thus, a lot of websites came to the rescue. A lot of websites these days offer free ebooks. Several others offer free ebooks in general. These websites offering free ebooks can really make your Kindle library grow and at the same time help you save a lot.
Sources for free Kindle books.
Freekindlebooks.org – Freekindlebooks.org offers more than a thousand titles for your Amazon Kindle. The website, however, focuses only on classic titles, so you won’t find the newest best sellers there. For classic lovers, the site is a great source for free Kindle books. Ebooks are already supported in MOBI or PRC formats, which are supported by both Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.
Munsey’s – Munsey’s may not offer the Internet’s largest free Kindle books database, but it offers some really good titles in Kindle-ready formats.
Fictionwise – Fictionwise also offers more than 15,000 free ebooks, all of which are already in Kindle formats. Its collection is also continuously growing.
Manybooks.net – Manybooks.net is a popular resource for free ebooks provided in several formats, including Kindle formats. The books are mostly classics and general fiction titles. The newer titles, however, are not usually found on the site.
Baen.com – Baen.com also offers Kindle books for download. Some are for sale, while some are also offered for free.
Authors give Away Freebies
The top 25 authors and the top 10 publishers on Amazon also sometimes give away free Kindle books to Kindle users. Keep an eye open for such promotions on Amazon’s Kindle Store.
Need More Free Ebooks?
Project Gutenberg – Project Gutenberg is created by Michael Hart, who started his collection in 1971. The website offers more than 20,000 books. Project Gutenberg also releases lists such as Newest or Top 100 to help you find the best or the most popular books.
Freetechbooks.com – Check out Freetechbooks.com for specialized technical subject books such as engineering, computer science, and so on. These books are offered for free but not in Kindle format. You can, however, convert them into free Kindle books in the appropriate format.
Librivox.org – A great source of audiobooks if you prefer to have books read to you instead of reading them. Kindle 2 and Kindle DX supports some audio formats so you may also want to check out some audiobooks.
Kindle-Ready vs. Non Kindle-Ready Books
Most of the time, free non-Kindle ebooks are provided in DOC or PDF format. Unfortunately, the PDF format is supported on the Kindle DX, but not on the Kindle 1st generation or Kindle 2. To use PDF formats on the original Kindle devices, you can use a converter to turn it into a format readable by the device.
Should the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco be fenced in so people cannot jump off it? The debate goes on….
Golden Gate Bridge
A 16-year-old girl jumped or fell off the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday and survived.
In March a 17-year-old boy from Windsor jumped as an apparent boast and also survived.
The debate has gone on for years whether to suicide proof the Bridge. Another part of the question about how much society should interfere in the personal lives (or deaths) of its citizens.
Margo Hendricks, Univ. of CA at Santa Cruz professor in Literature for 20 years, says that racism is alive and well on the campus during her tenure. Statistics on Ratemyprofessors.com show that retiring UCSC professor Hendricks is viewed as unorganized, self centered and fails to listen.
Racism at Univ. of CA at Santa Cruz?
“The fact that racism has been alive and well on the campus during my tenure at UCSC has never escaped me,” she [Margo Hendricks] wrote. “Students, staff and faculty of African American descent (regardless of color) experience subtle and not so subtle attacks in the classroom, in evaluations, and personnel actions.”
Thus spake Margo Hendricks who provides no evidence to support her rant, but expects millions or billions to be spent to alleviate her complaint.
Of note the website “Ratemyprofessors.com” is almost universal in the view that she is unorganized, self centered, and fails to listen.
A recent rally at UCSC demanded a more diversified student body so that ethnic groups at the school reflect the same percentage as the population as a whole.
This is the same campus, UCSC, that awarded Black Panther Huey Newton a PhD, [cop killer tried several times for murder and later convicted of embezzling money from programs he created for black children] and employs in positions of authority Stalinist thinking Angela Davis and sister Bettina Aptheker.
Racist graffiti is unfortunate but hardly cataclysmic. Some paint remover would solve more problems than a giant new affirmative action plan.
by FirenzieSage48@gmail.com
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For persons who do not know who Huey Newton is, here is some info:
Huey Newton proved to be as violent as the party he helped to create when he was thrust into the national limelight in October 1967; accused of murdering Oakland police officer John Frey. In September 1968 Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. In May 1970 the California Appellate Court reversed Newton’s conviction and ordered a new trial. After two more trials the State of California dropped its case against Newton, citing technicalities including the judge’s failure to relay proper instructions to the jury.
After his release from prison Newton overhauled the Black Panther Party, revised its program, and changed its rhetoric. While he had been imprisoned, party membership had decreased significantly in several cities, and the FBI had started a campaign to disrupt and eventually bring down the Black Panthers. Abandoning its Marxist-Leninist ideology, Newton now concentrated on community survival programs. The Black Panthers sponsored a free breakfast program for children, sickle-cell anemia tests, free food and shoes, and a school, the Samuel Napier Intercommunal Youth Institute. However, as before, the Black Panthers were not without controversy. Funding for several of their programs were raised as the result of the co-operation of drug dealers and prostitution rings.
Newton tried to shed his image as a firebreathing revolutionary, but he continued to have difficulty with the police. In 1974 several assault charges were filed against him, and he was also accused of murdering a 17-year-old prostitute, Kathleen Smith. Newton failed to make his court appearance. His bail was revoked, a bench warrant issued, and his name added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list. Newton had jumped bail and escaped to Cuba, where he spent three years in exile. In Cuba he worked as a machinist and teacher. He returned home in 1977 to face murder charges because, he said, the climate in the United States had changed and he believed he could get a fair trial. He was acquitted of the murder of Kathleen Smith after two juries were deadlocked.
In addition to organizing the Black Panther Party and serving as its minister of defense, Newton unsuccessfully ran for Congress as a candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. In 1971, between his second and third trials for the murder of John Frey, he visited China for ten days, where he met with Premier Chou En-lai and Chiang Ch’ing, the wife of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. While there he was offered political asylum. Newton studied for a Ph.D. in the history of social consciousness at the University of California in 1978. In 1985 the 43-year-old Newton was arrested for embezzling state and federal funds from the Black Panthers’ community education and nutrition programs. In 1989 he was convicted of embezzling funds from a school run by the Black Panthers, supposedly to support his alcohol and drug addictions. By this time the Panthers had turned to less violent activism. On August 22, 1989, Newton was gunned down by a drug dealer, ironically in the same city streets of Oakland that saw the rise of the Black Panthers 23 years ago. Bill Turque in Newsweek described a sad but appropriate farewell: “A small florist’s card, resting with bouquets of red gladiolus’s and white dahlias on a chain-link fence near the shooting scene, summed it up: ‘Huey: for the early years.'”
Obama refers to current $105 billion spent for ObamaCare as nickels and dimes. No, this is not chump change.
$105 billion Trojan Horse ObamaCare
It’s not chump change — the $105 BILLION Trojan Horse of ObamaCare already loosed on the American public. Like the 30 men hidden in the Greek Trojan Horse who opened the gates that the Greeks could enter & conquer the city of Troy, the $105 billion Obama-Care Trojan Horse seeks victory through stealth.
On open microphone 4-15-2011 Obama referred to ObamaCare expenditures now going on as nickels and dimes.
Mr. President, you are wrong. And very importantly your priorities are wrong. Mr. President, during your first year in office you did not focus on the financial crises, the economy or jobs. All you Mr. President focused on was selling your health care bill to the American public.
President Obama on open microphone 4-15-2011 said: “You wanna repeal health care? Go at it. Wh’ll have that debate. But you’re not going to be able to nickel and dinning me in the budget. You think we’re stupid?
Untouchable. That’s the treatment being given to the $23.6 billion being spent right now to implement Obama-care.
This $23.6 billion is part of the $105.5 billion appropriated by the last Congress to fund Obamacare. The remainder (Think of it as post-dated checks for the other $81.9 billion.) automatically becomes available between now and FY2019.
What says the public — is $105 BILLION for ObamaCare chump change?
For your information: The Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War, as told in Virgil’s Latin epic poem The Aeneid, also by Dionysius, Apollodorus and Quintus of Smyrna. The events in this story from the Bronze Age took place after Homer’s Iliad, and before his Odyssey. It was the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict.
In one version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of 30 men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away, and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the horse and opened the gates for the rest of the Greek army, which had sailed back under cover of night. The Greek army entered and destroyed the city of Troy, decisively ending the war.
In the Greek tradition, the horse is called ΔοÏÏειος Ἵππος, Doúreios HÃppos, the “Wooden Horse”, in the Homeric Ionic dialect. Metaphorically a “Trojan Horse” has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes a target to invite a foe into a securely protected bastion or space. It is now often associated with “malware” computer programmes presented as useful or harmless to induce the user to install and run them.
Response to Obama’s budget speech from a parent of autistic child: Better to cancel got “help” programs that pay for respite time as highly paper intensive, onorous regulations, too many people paid their share before any services received. Parent discusses all the persons who get a “cut” before any benefit is received by the family. Cut these programs is his message.
DrCameronJackson@gmail.com
How “helpful” are the respite services provided to families with a disabled child?
In California, children with autism are assisted by the regional centers. There are non-profits and operate individually though connected loosely together. A child made eligible by one regional center is usually accepted by other regional centers though the case may be reviewed.
Due to CA budget issues typically families are offered 24 hours of respite a month though the number may be considerably increased depending on the individual’s particular circumstances. “Respite” is supposed to be time away from the disabled child and someone else takes care of the child so that parents get a real break.
In the Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Clara Counties parents can receive respite hours away from their diabled child through varous agencies. The agencies take care of the paper work issues which negatively impact the overall helpfulness.
Below is from the parent of an autistic child that finds government “help” not helpful. And why not helpful.
We’re From the Government, and We’re Here to Help
Presient Obama’s recent budget speech
Reader Gordon Calkins writes in with his perspective on President Obama’s ghastly budget speech:
“I am the primary care-giver to my autistic and developmentally delayed son. I must admit that we accept from our state Division of Services for People with Disabilities some monitory support. The state gives us a small grant with federal matching money that allows us to hire extra support workers and care givers which gives us a few hours a month to run errands and have a little time out of the house.
“The program has been a benefit to us. But to put this into perspective, in order to be eligible for the support, we work with a state-contracted support coordinator, a state-approved fiscal agent that handles the payroll, and we have to keep logs of what we are doing to meet the state-approved training goals. We have several hours of doing paperwork each time we hire a new person. Our current employees are the adult kids of some of our friends, but they are still required to get background checks, fingerprinting and annual reviews.
“I’ve known people who have opted out of this system because the hassle of dealing with the state is too much.
“Although, as I said, I believe that this support is a net positive for us, the benefit we receive is much less than I pay in federal taxes each year.
“I would be even better off if the federal government would cancel programs like this and just let me keep more of my money, and there wouldn’t be nearly so many people making money off the support we get.
So, the purpose of government is to take my money, filter it through a bunch of agencies and contractors, each taking their cut, and then give a small fraction of it back to me to spend on “approved” services. Gives new meaning to the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” I wish they would stop helping
