Day: May 9, 2014

Wednesdays Wars | Tom Callaghan: Obama – We’re lucky to have him

Published on May 7, 2014

Yeah, I know his approval rating is only 44%, but that’s a damn sight better than Regan’s lowest of 35%, or Bush II at 25%.

I’m familiar with Obamacare, and the website. But remember, he passed it and he hit the numbers he had to hit, and he stuck with Kathleen Sebelius all the way. Good for him.

Congress can always amend and improve it, as they have with Social Security and Medicare over the years. The basic tenets of the Affordable Care Act are, however, here to stay. Good for us.

FOX likes to say he was deceptive when he said, “If you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it.”

Not so. If you had a plan with low lifetime limits that excluded preexisting conditions and had high deductibles and copays and the insurance company could cancel it on 30 day notice, you did not have a Health Insurance Plan. You had a Certificate Of Victimhood. Obama assumed people knew the difference.

I’m aware that the right wing and TEA Party types have been whining that the IRS has been unfair to them when it processed their applications for tax-exempt status under that part of the Internal Revenue Code that requires an applicant to engage “exclusively in social welfare activities.” Continue Reading……….

Jim Brown: Educational reform like pulling teeth

Thursday, May 8th, 2014
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

EDUCATIONAL REFORM LIKE PULLING TEETH!

Achievement in U.S. elementary schools lags behind many industrialized countries. The U.S. comes in16th in science and 23rd in math. Our major economic competitors — China, Japan, Canada, Germany and Korea — are far ahead. So why is it so hard for us to implement new approaches that will improve our kids’ performance?

In spite of a number of innovative proposals for reform put forth by concerned legislators, my home state of Louisiana ranks at or near the bottom in every national survey of educational achievement. House education committee chairman Steve Carter, from Baton Rouge, has been in the forefront of some of these proposals. In addition to other initiatives, he’s a major proponent of charter schools.

Charter schools are independent public schools that are not constrained by the statewide one-size-fits-all requirements often placed on local schools. Charter schools are able to be more innovative in developing curricula, hiring teachers, and structuring the school day.

A key benefit of charter schools is that parents have a choice. They pick the school and are not forced into making their kids attend a specific local school. In just about everything else you do, there’s a choice. But not in where your kid goes to school. Choice fosters competition. For many, the lack of competition is a key component in the weakness of the American educational system. To be successful, schools have to compete. That’s the key to charter schools. To be successful, they have to compete. And the students are the beneficiaries. Continue Reading…………….