CA, of all places, builds $578M school - personally I would have drawn the line at the talking benches

Money quote (literally):
"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50 percent dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education.

LA unveils $578M school, costliest in the nation

At RFK, the features include fine art murals and a marble memorial depicting the complex's namesake, a manicured public park, a state-of-the-art swimming pool and preservation of pieces of the original hotel.

Not to mention "an ornate auditorium suitable for hosting the Oscars, and a faculty dining room that the superintendent says is 'better than most restaurants.'" 

The pricey schools have come during a sensitive period for the nation's second-largest school system: Nearly 3,000 teachers have been laid off over the past two years, the academic year and programs have been slashed. The district also faces a $640 million shortfall and some schools persistently rank among the nation's lowest performing.

Shhhhh, talking about over-spending, cash-strapped, union-run schools wasting even more taxpayer money is a "sensitive" issue!

The extravagance has led some to wonder where the line should be drawn and whether more money should be spent on teachers.

 Yeah, maybe it would have been better if they had focused on improving education for children.

donations should have been sought to fund the RFK project's talking benches commemorating the site's history

I think I would have drawn the line at the talking benches ...

skyrocketing material and land prices, rigorous seismic codes and unionized labor.

WHAT? Regulations and unions have driven up costs?!  NO WAY!

Read more at news.yahoo.com

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Socialized Health Care: Grand Failure

Peakes woman loses her baby, dignity while awaiting hospital treatment - Isn’t Canada’s health care grand?

Jonas, 32, sewed up his own leg after ER wait - Sweden’s health care is grand, too!

Obamacare Only Looks Worse Upon Further Review - Won’t US health care under Obama be grand!

It's not plagiarism, it's "trying on a persona"

Originality and uniqueness are on the wane?!?!?! I WEEP for the future! My generation is so shallow and superficial, no wonder they loved Obama! Just a generation of followers who are lazy and don't care about doing anything right - or perhaps anything at all.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

“Our notion of authorship and originality was born, it flourished, and it may be waning,” Ms. Blum said.

She contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity — as their 1960s counterparts were — than in trying on many different personas, which the Web enables with social networking.

“If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it’s O.K. if you say other people’s words, it’s O.K. if you say things you don’t believe, it’s O.K. if you write papers you couldn’t care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade,” Ms. Blum said, voicing student attitudes. “And it’s O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit.” Read more at www.nytimes.com

 

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Told ya so! Adult stem cells are actually successful while embryonic is all "hope" and "change" and no substance. What is it about people fixating on promoting scientific research that kills a unique human life and has no evidence of curing anyone? Why has this been a cause celeb?

Is the culture of death that entrenched? Are they doing it just because it is unethical and want to push boundaries? That they want to debase human life to protect their "logic" for abortion, among other agendas?

Kudos to this article for actually talking about adult stem cells - most people don't realize there is such a thing, that they are actually successful in the real world, and think ALL stem cells are embryonic. They also think Bush made their research illegal when in fact he just banned federal funds (like those from people who are morally opposed to the practice) from paying for it.

Embryonic stem cells have thus far been a failure, cruelly inflating the hopes of people with truly tragic ailments and diseases while activists use their pain and hope to further their own agenda.

This issue has been on the back burner for a while (maybe because there have been no results to crow about) it's high time the truth is revealed.

Amplify’d from www.boston.com

Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic

example of many innovative therapies doctors are studying with adult stem cells. Those are stem cells typically taken from bone marrow and blood -- not embryos. For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today.

"That's really one of the great success stories of stem cell biology that gives us all hope

"That gives adult stem cells really a very interesting and potent quality that embryonic stem cells don't have," Read more at www.boston.com

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Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Federal judge blocks key parts of Arizona immigration law | would "interfere" with feds ignoring law

Well if the feds' policies and objectives are to NOT enforce our country's laws and borders (which unfortunately we know is true), then YES Arizona's enforcement of the laws the feds are ignoring DOES interfere! BUT THAT'S A GREAT THING!

Amplify’d from www.latimes.com

"The federal government's ability to enforce its policies and achieve its objectives will be undermined by the state's enforcement of statutes that interfere with federal law," she wrote.Read more at www.latimes.com

 

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Forget Christie's comments on immigration - I'm upset he doesn't like Jersey Shore!

URL:  http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/110767...

The Hill: Christie: 'Jersey Shore' is insulting

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Politico: Obama, student lefty | WHAT-Obama wasn't a dazzling writer & MSM missed an item from his past?! #tcot

Gee, maybe the books Obama published that the MSM and media fawn over were heavily edited or ghost written? Maybe that's why Obama was never forthcoming about sharing his student papers and writings. Maybe he's not as amazing as advertised!



And, journalists overlooking items from Obama's past? Imagine that! Hilarious.

Amplify’d from www.politico.com

Written just months before Obama graduated, this is not exactly his best work, but it offers a new glimpse of his very conventional campus liberalism of the time.

awful prose from a guy who can clearly write suggests he didn't exactly put heart and soul into this one

It's pretty funny that a bunch of journalists hunting through the Columbiana archives didn't find this gemRead more at www.politico.com

 

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Politico: W.H. sends 2012 rescue team to Fla. | Dems aren't happy w/ gulf response

Amplify’d from dyn.politico.com

presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee, even characterized Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the state as “a screw-up,” saying she was “embarrassed” by his speech.

“It was just so off target and out of touch with the reality of what’s going on over there,” Sink said in an interview at the Florida Democratic Party headquarters in Tallahassee.

“Sometimes, it’s just how you communicate, and when you go to Maine instead of coming down here it kind of sends a message,” said state Rep. Bill Heller, a DemocratRead more at dyn.politico.com

 

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Politico: W.H. sends 2012 rescue team to Fla. | Dems aren't happy w/ gulf response

Amplify’d from dyn.politico.com

presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee, even characterized Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the state as “a screw-up,” saying she was “embarrassed” by his speech.

“It was just so off target and out of touch with the reality of what’s going on over there,” Sink said in an interview at the Florida Democratic Party headquarters in Tallahassee.

“Sometimes, it’s just how you communicate, and when you go to Maine instead of coming down here it kind of sends a message,” said state Rep. Bill Heller, a DemocratRead more at dyn.politico.com

 

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Some economic sense compared to Obama's lunacy

Favorite lines:

"unfortunate when extreme exaggeration emanates from the White House"

"That's nonsense"

"classic example of what not to do during bad economic times"

"serious viewpoints are defined as only those that support his position"

"surprising how many numerically challenged pronouncements come from this most scripted and political of White Houses"

"revoking the laws of arithmetic"

Amplify’d from www.wallstreetjournal.com

A president's most valuable asset—with voters, Congress, allies and enemies—is credibility. So it is unfortunate when extreme exaggeration emanates from the White House.

President Obama says "every economist who's looked at it says that the Recovery Act has done its job"—i.e., the stimulus bill has turned the economy around. That's nonsense. Opinions differ widely and many leading economists believe that its impact has been small. Why? The expectation of future spending and future tax hikes to pay for the stimulus and Mr. Obama's vast expansion of government are offsetting the direct short-run expansionary effect. That is standard in all macroeconomic theories.

So, as I and others warned in 2008, the permanent government expansion and higher tax rate agenda is a classic example of what not to do during bad economic times. Worse yet, all the subsidies, bailouts, regulations and mandates are forcing noncommercial decisions on the economy, which now awaits literally thousands of new diktats as a result of things like ObamaCare and the financial reform bill. The uncertainty is impeding investment and hiring.

The president does not say that economists agree that the high future taxes to finance the stimulus will hurt the economy. (The University of Chicago's Harald Uhlig estimates $3.40 of lost output for every dollar of government spending.) Either the president is not being told of serious alternative viewpoints, or serious viewpoints are defined as only those that support his position. In either case, he is being ill-served by his staff.

It is surprising how many numerically challenged pronouncements come from this most scripted and political of White Houses. One slip is eventually forgiven, but when a pattern emerges, no one believes it is an accident.

The stimulus bill has assumed certain mystic powers in administration discourse, but revoking the laws of arithmetic shouldn't be one of them.

his staff needs to avoid putting these exaggerations on the teleprompter. It undermines confidence and raises concerns about competence. It's doing nobody any good—not the economy and certainly not Mr. Obama.Read more at www.wallstreetjournal.com

 

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