Posted on 07/30/2012 10:57:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Is it just me, or do certain Democrats seem to have difficulty distinguishing the difference between “education” and “teachers’ unions”? Anyone?
Speaking to the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, Vice President Joe Biden accused Mitt Romney of awarding education with something less than priority-status. Oh, the humanity:
Biden addressed 2,500 delegates at the American Federation of Teachers national convention in Detroit on Sunday.
Biden painted Romney as planning to gut education funding to finance tax breaks for the wealthy.
From what Romney and his GOP rivals said during the primary debates, “it looks like they don’t think public education is worth the investment,” Biden said.
A spokesman for Romney’s campaign accused Biden — and President Barack Obama — of kowtowing to teachers unions. “Instead of putting students first, this administration has put the union bosses that fund their political campaigns ahead of what’s best for our children,” said spokesman Sean Fitzpatrick.
“Mitt Romney has the plan and record to put students first and make sure that they have a job waiting for them when they graduate,” Fitzpatrick said. …
Biden said Romney backs Republican budget plans to slash spending on the Head Start preschool program, as well as grants and loans for college students.
First of all, how is it that everything Republicans want to cut from the federal government is somehow meant to finance “tax breaks for the wealthy”? Isn’t Biden perhaps forgetting about — oh, I don’t know — our trillion dollar federal deficits? Higher taxes on the wealthy will barely make a dent in our national deficit. We need real, substantive, major spending cuts to the national budget to accomplish that, but President Obama & Friends are conveniently forgetting to mention how the federal government’s metastasized size and scope of recent years is what’s burning through all of our money. Apparently, Republicans’ desire to stop economically damaging tax hikes on the wealthy is to be blamed for educations cuts, defense cuts, and who knows what else.
Secondly, good for Mitt Romney for proposing federal cuts to public education — and I don’t think he goes nearly far enough. I’m with erstwhile presidential candidate Rick Perry on this one; if I had my way, the federal Department of Education would go the way of the dodo. Education is an institution best managed by the efficiencies of federalism. When states compete, students win. Monolithic, top-down education policy and the auspices of teachers’ unions — not so much, as evidenced by the our many “investments” resulting in the current state of our flailing public school system. And if college students are looking for someone to blame for the ridiculous inflation of higher-education tuition, look no further than the federal government interfering with incentives and flooding the market with relatively inexpensive student loans.
America’s education system needs a serious examination — and bankrupting ourselves by throwing more money at it, only to reinforce the terrible status quo, is not a solution, Mr. Vice President.
Since we started homeschooling, very few of our current circle of friends are not homeschoolers.
> Biden: Romney doesn’t “think public education is worth the
> investment”
If Romney said this, then he is absolutely correct.
No matter how much money you give the “public school”, it will never, ever, NEVER be enough.
The “public school”, including the “charter school”, is BY FAR, the largest, most expensive, most subversive, and most destructive entitlement program in the country.
The “public school” is better understood as the “government school collective”.
It is silly to imagine that you can fix the public schools, because the very concept itself is collectivist.
Any child that comes out of the government school collective with their moral compass and common sense intact does so in spite of the government school indoctrination, not because of it.
If you want to win the culture war, have lots of children (see my tagline) and homeschool them or form your own school cooperative with your church or synagogue and like-minded friends and relatives.
Nobody loves your children more than you do.
Nobody can teach your children better than you can.
Nobody knows your children better than you do.
Your children would love nothing better than to be taught by you, if you start doing so before they are corrupted by the government school collective.
It is hypocritical for you to submit your children to an authority with whom you fundamentally disagree. And your children will know it.
If you have children, make whatever sacrifices you must to get them out of the public schools.
DO NOT FEED THE BEAST!
Especially not with your own children.
And DO NOT TAKE GOVERNMENT “EDUCATION” MONEY!
He that pays the piper calls the tune, and that’s especially true for any government entitlement program.
Biden Was Accused of Plagiarism in Law School
By E. J. DIONNE Jr., Special to the New York Times
Published: September 17, 1987
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Democratic Presidential candidate, was accused of plagiarism while in his first year at Syracuse University Law School, academic officials familiar with Mr. Biden’s record said today.
Mr. Biden, who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is presiding over the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork, has called a news conference for 9 A.M. Thursday to discuss this charge and reports that he has lifted material from speeches by other politicians to use in his public addresses.
A Biden aide, who asked not to be identified, declined to comment on the plagiarism charge, saying Mr. Biden wanted to discuss it himself. ‘’It’s his life,’’ the aide said.
According to the people familiar with the record of the 44-year-old Senator from Delaware, he was called before the disciplinary body at the law school during his first year because of charges that he had committed plagiarism on a paper. Mr. Biden entered the school in 1965 and graduated in 1968.
CBS News tonight quoted an aide to Mr. Biden as saying he had been exonerated. However, an academic official said Mr. Biden had been found guilty, ‘’threw himself on the mercy of the board’’ and promised not to repeat the offense. This, according to the official, persuaded the board to drop the matter and allow Mr. Biden to remain in law school. Mr. Biden’s office declined to clarify the circumstances surrounding the case, saying the Senator had insisted on handling the matter himself at the news conference.
One academic official said Mr. Biden asked for and obtained his law school records several weeks ago and requested then that the school not distribute them until he had had a chance to examine their contents. Biden and Aides Meet
Mr. Biden and his aides were meeting late tonight to discuss the apparent crisis confronting him.
For a time this afternoon, on the second day of hearings on the Bork nomination, Mr. Biden left the hearing room. It was not immediately clear whether his departure was precipitated by reports swirling around the Capitol about his record at Syracuse.
However, Dan Forbush, vice president for public relations at the university, said Mr. Biden was ‘’in touch with the law school today.’’
Mr. Forbush said he could not discuss the nature of the call. Nor would he confirm or deny the reports of plagiarism charges, saying it was not ‘’possible to release information on it without the permission of Senator Biden.’’
Travis Lewin, the interim dean of the law school, also declined comment. Recollections of Professors
But two of Mr. Biden’s law school professors, reached tonight, said they had no recollection of any such charges. Asked about Mr. Biden’s record as a student, one of the professors, Robert M. Anderson, said, ‘’He wasn’t setting the law school on fire, but he was a competent student and a nice young man.’’
The other professor, Samuel J. Donnelly, said Mr. Biden had been one of his ‘’more favorite students’’ because he was ‘’bright’’ and ‘’broad intellectually.’’
The controversy surrounding Mr. Biden began after The New York Times reported last Saturday that he had appropriated, without attribution, the language of Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader, to close a debate in Iowa last month.
In a television commercial during the British election campaign last spring, Mr. Kinnock asked, ‘’Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?’’ Pointing to his wife, he asked, ‘’Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?’’
In closing remarks at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 23, Mr. Biden asked,’’Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?’’ Further, he asked, ‘’Why is it that my wife, who is sitting out there in the audience, is the first in her family to ever go to college?’’ Quotations From Kennedys
This week politicians from both parties - some of them partisans of other candidates in the Democvratic Presidential race - told members of the press of additional instances in which Mr. Biden had used the language and syntax of others, including John F. and Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey. The information provided to The New York Times today about Mr. Biden’s academic record, however, did not come from any rival Presidential campaign.
Some of the similarities in speeches were noted by The San Jose Mercury News and by The Des Moines Register in their Tuesday editions, and by The New York Times today. CBS News and ABC News broadcast reports on the subject this evening.
Mr. Biden and his aides have argued that the charges concerning his speeches are unfair, saying he used Mr. Kinnock’s remarks often and usually attributed them to the British leader. The instance in which he did not, his aides said, was a lapse. Mr. Biden’s campaign also argues that public officials frequently use material from the speeches of politicians of earlier generations. Division Over Impact
Political professionals, including those working for rival Democratic campaigns, were divided over the impact of the reports of speech-lifting.
Some said it would be particularly damaging because Mr. Biden’s campaign had emphasized his oratorical skills and capacity for ‘’inspirational leadership.’’
‘’He, in one sense, created the standard by which he was to be judged,’’ said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic poll taker. ‘’He has said consistently that the next President must be the one who can motivate the American public. And if you’re going to make that argument, it seems a fair test to ask whether Joe Biden is a visionary or is Joe Biden a good speaker.’’
Geoffrey Garin, another poll taker, said, ‘’This controversy plays into the case his opponents would like to make against him: that he is a person of style rather than substance.’’
Other professionals said that in a campaign in which character was already an issue, dating from Gary Hart’s withdrawal in May, incidents like those that have dogged Mr. Biden in recent days were certain to be damaging.
As for the latest charge, that of plagiarism, one Democratic political consultant not associated with any of the campaigns said one factor in the way Mr. Biden would be judged was to what extent, if any, he had been exonerated by the law school.
‘’There are exonerations and there are exonerations,’’ this consultant said, noting that Mr. Biden might have been spared punishment without actually being cleared of the charge. Announced on June 9
Mr. Biden, a passionate orator, entered the Presidential race on June 9. He cast himself as the candidate who understood the aspirations of the generation of Americans from the post-war baby boom, and also as a political leader who understood the anxieties and aspirations of the American middle class. Mr. Biden’s aides have said that it was Mr. Kinnock’s evocation of the struggles of working people that drew Mr. Biden to the British leader’s speech.
Although he has gained considerable ground in the polls in Iowa, whose caucuses are only five months away, Mr. Biden has not succeeded in sparking the broad enthusiasm that he thought his candidacy would provoke.
Mr. Biden and his aides hoped that the Bork hearings would raise his visibility and stature, casting him as an intelligent and articulate critic of Judge Bork’s conservative judicial philosophy. Instead, the weekend before the hearings was dominated by stories of Mr. Biden’s lifting of Mr. Kinnock’s rhetoric.
Also, look into the “family integrated church movement”.
Find one in your area, join in.
Our church has about 50 families... and over 300 children... almost all are homeschooled.
Clearly, Romney doesn’t expect an endorsement from the teachers union. This is a very good sign that Romney’s people are starting to realize that this campaign might actually require a stand on the issues and a willingness to box in the squishy positions of the Failed Obama Administration.
It will be a great day when all children attend private schools and the money wasted on public education goes to building bombers.
Romney certainly has a sense of the obvious.
Actually, Joe’s right.
For the four decades I’ve been paying taxes (More State than Fed). Lotteries and supermarket chain give-aways to schools.
WE SHOULD BE CRANKING OUT FREAKIN’ EINSTEINS!!!!
Guess the Teachers Unions screwed that up. It’s hard for Union Reps and Shop Stewards to teach what they don’t know!!!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2663382/posts
Our government already spends more per capita on education than any other of the 34 wealthiest countries in the world except for Switzerland, according to recent analysis of data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Overall inflation-adjusted K-12 spending has tripled over the past 40 years, the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy points out. Yet American test scores and graduation rates are stagnant. One in 10 high schools is a dropout factory. And our students' performance in one of the most prestigious global math competitions has been so abysmal that the U.S. simply withdrew altogether.
Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget already represents "one of the largest increases" in federal education spending history, and hikes total discretionary spending to nearly $51 billion. Toss in another $35 billion for mandatory Pell grants. And add another $4 billion for the illusory "Race to the Top" charade to improve academic standards.
We are lifetime members.
> http://www.heritagedefense.org/
Need to look into that one.
Family Integrated church pretty much defines at least three area churches close to us - two Fundamental Independent Baptist and one Kingdom Christian Bible Chapel. No public school kids in any of those that I know of.
Yes, the church can be a dangerous place if the public school attends it.
The historical record compiled by the Department of Education itself shows that increased government spending on education does not improve the academic performance of government schools.
“From 1989-90 to 2006-07, total expenditures per student in public elementary and secondary schools rose from $8,748 to $11,839 (a 35 percent increase in 2008-09 constant dollars), with most of the increase occurring after 1997-98,” says the Education Department’s The Condition of Education 2010.
In 1980, 17-year-old students in public schools earned an average score of 284 out of 500 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. In 2008, they still scored 284. Despite increased per pupil spending, the needle did not move.
In 1999, 17-year-old students in American public schools earned an average score of 307 out of 500 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math test. In 2008, they scored 305. The needle moved in the wrong direction.
Every community in America should give all parents a voucher equal to what it now pays per-pupil for its public schools, allowing those parents to use those vouchers at any school they choose. Let the market decide if government-run schools survive.
http://townhall.com/columnists/TerryJeffrey/2010/09/29/abolish_public_schools
This is on par with Bam-Bam’s inane “scary time to be a woman” TV spot ... makes R0mney look good.
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