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American College of Pediatricians’ Letter To School Officials About Same-Sex Attraction

Posted on April 14, 2011 | Leave a comment

In a letter to public school officials, President of the American College of Pediatricians had this say about same-sex attraction and gender confusion:

Adolescence is a time of upheaval and impermanence. Adolescents experience confusion about many things, including sexual orientation and gender identity, and they are particularly vulnerable to environmental influences.

Rigorous studies demonstrate that most adolescents who initially experience same-sex attraction, or are sexually confused, no longer experience such attractions by age 25. In one study, as many as 26% of 12-year-olds reported being uncertain of their sexual orientation, yet only 2-3% of adults actually identify themselves as homosexual. Therefore, the majority of sexually questioning youth ultimately adopt a heterosexual identity.

Even children with Gender Identity Disorder (when a child desires to be the opposite sex) will typically lose this desire by puberty, if the behavior is not reinforced. Researchers, Zucker and Bradley, also maintain that when parents or others allow or encourage a child to behave and be treated as the opposite sex, the confusion is reinforced and the child is conditioned for a life of unnecessary pain and suffering. Even when motivated by noble intentions, schools can ironically play a detrimental role if they reinforce this disorder.

In dealing with adolescents experiencing same-sex attraction, it is essential to understand there is no scientific evidence that an individual is born “gay” or “transgender.” Instead, the best available research points to multiple factors – primarily social and familial – that predispose children and adolescents to homosexual attraction and/or gender confusion. It is also critical to understand that these conditions can respond well to therapy.

Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the Genome Project, has stated that while homosexuality may be genetically
influenced, it is “… not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not
predeterminations.” He also states [that] “…the prominent role[s] of individual free will choices [has] a profound effect on us.”

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) recently released a landmark survey and analysis of 125 years of scientific studies and clinical experience dealing with homosexuality. This report, What Research Shows, draws three major conclusions: (1) individuals with unwanted same sex attraction often can be successfully treated; (2) there is no undue risk to patients from embarking on such therapy and (3), as a group, homosexuals experience significantly higher levels of mental and physical health problems compared to heterosexuals. Among adolescents who claim a “gay” identity, the health risks include higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, alcoholism, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide. Encouragingly, the longer students delay self-labeling as “gay,” the less likely they are to experience these health risks. In fact, for each year an adolescent delays, the risk of suicide alone decreases by 20%.

In light of these facts, it is clear that when well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel encourage students to “come out as gay” and be “affirmed,” there is a serious risk of erroneously labeling students (who may merely be experiencing transient sexual confusion and/or engaging in sexual experimentation). Premature labeling may then lead some adolescents into harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue.

Optimal health and respect for all students will only be achieved by first respecting the rights of students and parents to accurate information and to self-determination. It is the school’s legitimate role to provide a safe environment for respectful self-expression for all students. It is not the school’s role to diagnose and attempt to treat any student’s medical condition, and certainly not a school’s role to “affirm” a student’s perceived personal sexual orientation.

But, why is letter being published here? Gay organizations and their politicians have created a school-based event called “Day of Silence.” While it is billed an an effort to promote tolerance to gay youth with the goal of preventing bullying, this event also has been used as a backboard to launch education and social policies in other states like Massachussetts. Those policies in effect engender hostility toward families who are morally or religiously opposed to gay behavior and legalizing efforts to indoctirnate children into accepting gay behavior as normative. Therefore, parents, grandparents, and others should be aware of such events and what medicial professionals other than APA have to say about the related issues of same-sex attraction and gender confusion.

To read the entire letter or for more information, please visit www.FactsAboutYouth.com

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Boehner-Obama Debt Reduction Deal In Perspective

Posted on April 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Boehner-Obama plan cuts the $14.3 trillion national debt by $38.5 billion, which is a little less than 3/10%. This is not a very impressive amount.

No wonder many conservatives are calling it a Republican sell-out.

Since fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2010, the national debt has increased by $653.4 billion. According to a CNS report, the federal debt increased $54.1 billion during the eight days preceeding the deal. Compare that to a $88.4 billion increase over the 58 days covering February and March; the only reasonable conclusion is the federal government went on a spending spree. Why? The mostly likely reason was to cover the losses to be incurred during April. Consequently, there was no reduction of the national debt because there was no a decrease in spending.

I heard one expert say the debt reduction deal was a miniscule amount when compared to the overall debt. No, there was not any reduction. It is like the inflationless great recession: the inflation came prior to the recession i.e, housing prices, fenergy prices, food prices, and devaluing of the dollar.

Let’s hope the next round of budget cuts are real reductions of government spending and debt.

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Nothing “Certain” About Taxes

Posted on April 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

by Cameron Smith

This time of year, flowers are blooming, birds are singing and most Americans are indoors putting together their tax returns. In 1789, Benjamin Franklin famously stated that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Unfortunately for many Americans, taxes are anything but certain. Yes, they must be paid, but how they are paid is a source of considerable heartburn for households across the nation.

In the 2010 fiscal year, the IRS processed just over 141 million individual income tax returns. At the same time, the IRS issued more than 119 million refunds with an average refund of over $3,000. In total, the Government held more than $358 billion of individual taxpayer money in 2010.

Before taxpayers rejoice at the refunds returning to their bank accounts, they should stop to consider the economic cost of the practice. Every dollar in overpayment held by the IRS is a dollar removed from the U.S. economy and job creation efforts. Consider that the national median household income in 2009 was $49,777. The money sitting on the economic sidelines because of the inefficiency in our tax code could have “funded” over 7.2 million households. Even though that money eventually makes its way back into the economy as refunds are issued, billions and billions of dollars of economic productivity are lost.

The economic inefficiency in the tax code comes in part from the code’s complexity and how taxes are collected. In 1943, Congress passed the Current Tax Payment Act which established the quarterly income tax withholding system that Americans experience today. Rather than suffering through the pain of writing the IRS a large check at the end of the year, most Americans make rough estimates of their tax liability through their payroll departments. The obvious benefit of this system is that it improves the federal government’s ability to collect taxes. The downside is that most Americans have little awareness of how much tax they are actually paying because they essentially estimate their tax liability. Often this estimation fails to include many of the credits, deductions, and other provisions contained in the tax code.

Not only do Americans make educated guesses at how much they owe the IRS, they are also fail to correctly interpret the code itself. This confusion leads to even more headaches in the form of dreaded IRS audits. In fiscal year 2010, the IRS conducted almost 1.6 million examinations, up from less than half that number a decade earlier.

The most recent major simplification of the tax code was the bipartisan Tax Reform Act of 1986. Almost 25 years later, the tax code has bloated into a patchwork of specialized provisions providing little encouragement or clarity to the average American simply trying to pay what he or she owes.

Regrettably, after the tax bill is paid and refunds are issued, the American taxpayer enters yet another uncertain area. Taxpayers are ill-informed about the effectiveness or direction of their tax dollars moving through the federal government.

Even the Department of the Treasury’s Resource Center recognizes the importance of tax clarity:

Government has become a dominant factor in our economy, absorbing significant resources for its purposes and redirecting many more resources through its regulatory policies and through a mixture of taxation and spending programs that remove resources from some areas to transfer those resources to other areas. It is critical, therefore, that citizens have as much information as possible regarding these diverse programs and regarding their aggregate totals so they may decide for themselves whether the government’s activities are appropriate. Taxes, and especially the paying of taxes, yield citizens a personal sense of the total price of those activities.

The federal government created by the American people also works for the American people. Americans slogging through their tax returns recognize the unnecessarily complex burden placed upon them and the subsequent drain on the economy. The challenge before them now is to decide whether that complexity and drain is necessary or justified by the way the federal government uses the resources it collects.

Most Americans know that we can do better funding our nation, and we must. The beauty of the American democracy is that the will of the people can reform something even as “certain” as taxes.

Cameron Smith is General Counsel and Legislative Liaison for the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.

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Government by the Rich: Is This the American Dream?

Posted on April 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

By John W. Whitehead

“It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”—George Carlin

As it now stands, the upper 1 percent of Americans control 40% of the nation’s wealth and take in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income. Included among these very rich and powerful are mega-corporations such as General Electric that manage to rake in obscene profits while paying little to nothing in taxes. For instance, despite pulling in more than $14 billion in 2010, GE not only paid no taxes, but they also managed to claim more than $3 billion in government tax credits. All the while, more and more Americans are struggling to find jobs, keep jobs and stop the banks from foreclosing on their homes.

It’s a grim state of affairs and one that Congress, itself comprised of those from the upper 1%, is doing little to improve. In fact, although America is supposed to be a representative republic, the numbers relating to wealth distribution among elected officials tell a far different tale. As Joseph Stiglitz writes for Vanity Fair:

Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

Indeed, one almost has to be rich in order to aspire to public service today. Whether it be the Oval Office or the halls of Congress, the road to the ballot box is an expensive one, and only the wealthy, or those supported by the wealthy, are even able to get to the starting line.

Not even public anger over fiscal overspending has done much to alter the status quo in Congress. In fact, there are actually more millionaires in this year’s freshman class in Congress, with 60% of Senate freshmen and 40% of new House lawmakers belonging to that rarefied group.

The unfortunate but simple fact is that the rich sit perched at the top of the government. As Stiglitz points out, “The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

The simple truth of the matter is that those who have, and have in abundance, do not have any connection with the working poor—those who live from paycheck to paycheck in the exhausting struggle to simply survive. Consequently, once in office, these already privileged wealthy bureaucrats enter into a life of even greater privilege and perks, at the expense of the American taxpayer. These perks range from generous six-figure salaries to even more generous allowances for multiple offices, staff salaries and related office expenses including travel, furniture and constituent mailings, as well as top-of-the-line health coverage and retirement plans and a three-day work week.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between the rich bureaucrats in Congress and the working-class Americans they are ill-equipped to represent. Nevertheless, the rich continue to get richer and get elected, while the average American remains blissfully unaware of the fact that the basic foundations of the country are being steadily eroded by a wealthy, largely corrupt overclass whose values are largely dictated by lobbyist dollars.

Indeed, with an estimated 26 lobbyists per congressman, it should come as no surprise that once elected, even those with the best of intentions seem to find it hard to resist the lure of lobbyist dollars, of which there are plenty to go around. Oil and gas companies alone spent $44.5 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies in the first quarter of 2009, more than a third of the $129 million they spent lobbying in 2008. As of 2010, mega-corporations have spent $3.49 billion on lobbying and campaign contributions.

What we are faced with is a government by oligarchy—in other words, one that is of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. Yet the Constitution’s Preamble states that it is “we the people” who are supposed to be running things. If our so-called “representative government” is to survive, we must first wrest control of our government from the wealthy elite who run it.

That is a problem with no easy solutions, and voting is the least of what we should be doing. However, comedian/social commentator George Carlin hints at the answer in his diatribe on the American Dream and the wealthy elite who have co-opted it for their own purposes:

You know what they want? They want obedient workers…people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.

“What they don’t want,” continued Carlin, is “a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking…That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.”

A population of citizens capable of critical thinking? That’s a good place to start, and it’s a sure-fire way to jumpstart a revolution.

To read Whitehead’s article by the same title, click here, or you can watch the video on YouTube.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about the Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Organic Groups, Farmers File Preemptive Lawsuit Against Monsanto

Posted on April 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Ethan A. Huff

In order to avoid completely losing their businesses and livelihoods to the predatory business model of Monsanto, 60 family farmers, seed businesses and organic agricultural organizations have collectively filed a preemptive lawsuit against the multinational biotechnology giant. Filed by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) on behalf of the plaintiffs, the suit seeks judicial protection against the inevitable lawsuits Monsanto will file against non-GM and organic farmers when its genetically-modified (GM) seeds and other materials contaminate their fields.

In the past, Monsanto has successfully sued farmers in both the US and Canada for allegedly violating patent protections. But the truth is that Monsanto’s seeds or other genetic materials have inadvertently trespassed on nearby crop fields, for which any rational person can see makes Monsanto the violator. But Monsanto has someone been able to twist this before the courts to claim that the owners of the contaminated fields were guilty of patent infringement — and shockingly, Monsanto has actually won numerous cases on this illegitimate platform (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.ph…).

With the recent deregulation of GM alfalfa — and many more GM crops soon on the way — organic farmers and the organizations that represent and fight for them can see the coming storm. If given free reign over agriculture, Monsanto and its “Frankenseeds” will eventually take over the whole of agriculture — and this is a fact. So the plaintiffs are doing the only thing they can, which is to take proactive steps now to protect non-GM and organic agriculture from being completely destroyed by Monsanto.

“Some say transgenic seed can coexist with organic seed, but history tells us that’s not possible, and it’s actually in Monsanto’s financial interest to eliminate organic seed so that they can have a total monopoly over our food supply,” said Dan Ravicher, Executive Director of PUBPAT. “Monsanto is the same chemical company that previously brought us Agent Orange, DDT, PCB’s and other toxins, which they said were safe, but we know are not. Now Monsanto says transgenic seed is safe, but evidence clearly shows it is not.”

Over 270,000 members are represented as plaintiffs in the case, and thousands of them are certified organic family farmers. The case, Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association, et al. v. Monsanto, has been assigned to Judge Naomi Buchwald in a Manhattan, NY, federal district court. You can read a full copy of the suit here:
http://www.pubpat.org/assets/files/…

“None of Monsanto’s original promises regarding genetically modified seeds have come true after 15 years of wide adoption by commodity farmers. Rather than increased yields or less chemical usage, farmers are facing more crop diseases, an onslaught of herbicide-resistant superweeds, and increased costs from additional herbicide application,” said David Murphy, founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now!

“Even more appalling is the fact that Monsanto’s patented genes can blow onto another farmer’s fields and that farmer not only loses significant revenue in the market but is frequently exposed to legal action against them by Monsanto’s team of belligerent lawyers. Crop biotechnology has been a miserable failure economically and biologically and now threatens to undermine the basic freedoms that farmers and consumers have enjoyed in our constitutional democracy.”

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031922_Monsanto_lawsuit.html

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Into the Darkness: Where Constitutional Illiteracy Is Leading Us

Posted on April 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

By John W. Whitehead

“Unless we teach the ideas that make America a miracle of government, it will go away in your kids’ lifetimes, and we will be a fable. You have to find the time and creativity to teach it in schools, and if you don’t, you will lose it. You will lose it to the darkness, and what this country represents is a tiny twinkle of light in a history of oppression and darkness and cruelty. If it lasts for more than our lifetime, for more than our kids’ lifetime, it is only because we put some effort into teaching what it is, the ideas of America: the idea of opportunity, mobility, freedom of thought, freedom of assembly.”—Richard Dreyfuss

When Newsweek recently asked 1,000 adult U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29% of respondents couldn’t name the current vice president of the United States. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why America fought the Cold War. More critically, 44% were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6% couldn’t even circle Independence Day (the Fourth of July) on a calendar.

Of course, civic and constitutional ignorance are nothing new with Americans. In fact, it is something that the public education system has been fostering for a long time. For example, a study in Arizona found that only 3.5% of public high school students would be able to pass the U.S. Immigration Services’ citizenship exam, a figure not significantly exceeded by the passing rates of charter and private school students, at 7% and 14%, respectively.

A survey of American adults by the American Civic Literacy Program resulted in some equally disheartening findings. Seventy-one percent failed the test. Moreover, having a college education does very little to increase civic knowledge, as demonstrated by the abysmal 32% pass rate of people holding not just a bachelor’s degree but some sort of graduate-level degree.

It is little wonder that a 2006 survey by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that fewer than one percent of adults who responded to a national poll could identify the five rights protected by the First Amendment—freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly and the right to petition the government. On the other hand, more than half (52%) of the respondents could name at least two of the characters in the animated Simpson television family, and 20% could name all five. And although half could name none of the freedoms in the First Amendment, a majority (54%) could name at least one of the three judges on the TV program American Idol, 41% could name two and one-fourth could name all three.

In a culture infatuated with celebrity and consumed with entertainment, it should come as no surprise that the American people know virtually nothing about their rights. They are constitutionally illiterate. “There was a depth of confusion that we weren’t expecting,” noted Dave Anderson, executive director of the museum. “I think people take their freedoms for granted. Bottom line.”

But it gets worse. Many who responded to the survey had a strange conception of what was in the First Amendment. For example, 21% said the “right to own a pet” was listed someplace between “Congress shall make no law” and “redress of grievances.” Some 17% said that the First Amendment contained the “right to drive a car,” and 38% believed that “taking the Fifth” was part of the First Amendment. Think about this for a moment. How could James Madison, who depended on horses for transportation in his day, have placed the “right to drive a car” in the First Amendment?

Educators do not fare much better in understanding and implementing the Constitution in the classroom. Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.

Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that all citizens had rights that no government could violate—such as the right to free speech, the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures by government agents, the right to an attorney, the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishments, etc. And if any of these rights were violated, the Founders believed that the American people had the right and the authority to resist government encroachment of their rights. Abraham Lincoln’s famous declaration in the Emancipation Proclamation that we are a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” means exactly what it says. The government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.

So what’s the solution?

Instead of forcing children to become part of the machinery of society by an excessive emphasis on math and science in the schools, they should be prepared to experience the beauty of becoming responsible citizens. This will mean teaching them their rights and urging them to exercise their freedoms to the fullest.

Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.

Anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.

If this constitutional illiteracy is not remedied and soon, I agree with Richard Dreyfuss that the miracle that was America will become a “fable.” And the darkness of an authoritarian government will be inevitable. In fact, we have already travelled far down that road.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about the Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Planned Parenthood CEO’s False Mammogram Claim Exposed

Posted on April 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

A series of new undercover phone calls reveals that contrary to the claims of Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards and other supporters of the nation’s largest abortion chain, the organization does not provide mammograms for women.

In the tapes, a Live Action actor calls 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, inquiring about mammograms at Planned Parenthood. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells her she will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure. “We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona. Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, KS explains to the caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”

Opponents of defunding Planned Parenthood have argued in Congress and elsewhere that the organization provides many vital health care services other than abortion, such as mammograms. Most prominently, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards recently appeared on The Joy Behar Show to oppose the Pence Amendment to end Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer subsidies, claiming, “If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are gonna lose their healthcare access–not to abortion services–to basic family planning, you know, mammograms.”

The calls were recorded by Live Action, the youth-led pro-life group responsible for recent undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood staff, from management on down, willing to aid and abet the sex trafficking of young girls at 7 clinics in 4 different states. Live Action president Lila Rose says the new recordings further confirm Planned Parenthood’s corruption: “Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion business, but Planned Parenthood and its allies will say almost anything to try and cover up that fact and preserve its taxpayer funding. It’s not surprising that an organization found concealing statutory rape and helping child sex traffickers would misrepresent its own services so brazenly, playing on women’s fears in order to protect their tax dollars.”

Former Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson notes that the recordings demonstrate Planned Parenthood is not a comprehensive health care provider. “For so long PP has touted that they are a provider of mammogram services. This is just one of the lies that PP uses to draw people into their clinics. PP is not able to provide quality services on their own, so they are forced to lie to the public about services they don’t provide–and mammograms are just one of those services.”

Both Rose and Johnson call on Congress to revoke all taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood. In the last reported year, Planned Parenthood received $363 million in government money.

The new undercover recordings are available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq0kBkUZbvQ

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An Ohio Budget Perspective

Posted on April 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Ohio’s new budget preserves $7 billion in tax breaks and keeps in place tax cuts exceeding $10,000 a year for the wealthiest 1% of Ohioans. It also cuts over $2 billion from schools and over $1 billion from local government, and slashes state spending for libraries, mental health and children’s services, while proposing selling the state liquor profits, five state prisons, expanding charter schools and vouchers, and proposing a semi-privatized state for higher education institutions called ‘charter’ universities. Weve heard it called a “slash and sell budget” and a “pass the buck budget” and both seem right, as it will certainly result in more unequal services across communities and higher local taxes. Here are (just some of) Policy Matters Ohio’s initial analyses:

Local Government Fund – The state seizes more than $440 million in local government funds, and more than $560 million in replacement funds for local government tax sources eliminated or reduced through state action. This will result in cuts to basic services delivered at the local level from policing, to fire protection, to snowplowing, to recreation. Expect longer waits, fewer hours, weaker services and higher local taxes as a result.

Education – The two-year budget slashes more than $2.3 billion from education compared to the 2010-11 budget while putting potentially hundreds of millions more into charters and vouchers. The proposal would drop state funding for schools below 2003 levels by 2013 and push more of the funding burden to local taxpayers.

$7 Billion in Breaks – While shredding schools and local governments in the above ways and more, the budget does not examine even one of the 128 tax breaks that cost the state more than $7 billion, preference some businesses over others, and continue crazy credits like the one to hire a lobbyist without paying a sales tax or to pay a pittance in tax when purchasing a timeshare for a private jet.

And Break some More – Amid disingenuous cries that “we’re broke”, is a continued push to add new breaks for the very wealthiest. Two new proposals would give special favors to those who need them least. The capital gains cut would save middle-income taxpayers $2 a year on average while the top 1% would pay more than $6,500 less. The estate tax grab would hurt local government and preference the wealthiest heirs more than 90% of Ohioans would never owe the estate tax after they die.

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Driving Job Away From Ohio

Posted on April 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Jeff Putman

Just when I was beginning to think that Gov Kasich might be not a RINO after all (supporting SB-5), he goes and appoints Jim Leftwich to head up the Ohio Department Of Development.

Leftwich is a leftist in more than just name only. As head of the Dayton Development Coalition, he maintained a policy of making the Dayton area economy COMPLETELY dependent on federal spending. Substantial amounts of DDC money have been spent on DC lobbyists. Read that again. Your Ohio tax dollars are being used to pay DC lobbyists!

A year ago, on WHIO radio, DDC said that they were surprised to learn that no other economic development agency in the country was doing anything like that. They had just always assumed that hiring lobbyists is the normal way
that everyone does business. It had never occurred to them that anyone might see anything questionable about it.

Leftwich populated DDC with mindless yes men who, with cult-like obedience, carried out a policy whose legality is questionable at best. Good managers hire people who think for themselves, who offer their insights and contribute
to everyone’s understanding. Leftwich, who before joining DDC, spent his career with the federal government being trained to systematically eliminate anyone who dares to think for himself. Such people are condemned as “not team
players.”

The “entrepreneurial development” side of DDC is also devoted to federal dependency. All of the entrepreneurs they assist are federal government contractors. Entrepreneurs that go to DDC with proposals to make products for
sale to the general public are ignored.

Where is this policy leading us? Where will the federal government get the money to pay all these contractors if there’s no civilian economy left? Where will the parasite get its food after it’s sucked its host dry?

DDC has ignored dozens of new products that could have been in production by now. Thousands of new jobs could have been created. And now it looks like this policy is going to be implemented statewide. If you’re an entrepreneur who wants to help build Ohio’s civilian economy, don’t expect any help from ODOD. Myself, I’m looking to other states.

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What to Expect From Consolidating Xenia Community Schools

Posted on March 29, 2011 | Leave a comment

By Daniel Downs

From the 1930s through 1970s, a national school consolidation movement occurred that was inspired by educational reformers like Ellwood Cubberley and James Conant. Thousands of small schools across the state and nation were closed. Larger school districts were created and larger school buildings were built to accommodate the new students in smaller classes. The sales pitch for school consolidation was cost saving efficiency, more curricular choice, higher wages for teachers, and, consequently, a higher quality of education resulting in higher student achievement.

The recent outcry of both politicians and businesses point to a failure to deliver the goods. Although more money is spent per capita on public education than any other nation, American youth are underachieving in science, math, and often failing in reading and writing. These were the same problems used to justify increased spending on schooling in the 1980s and in the 1960s. Moreover, the same problems of school drop out rates and the education gap remain the ballyhoo of professional educators, businesses, and politicians. The latter problem has been glaringly evident in big cities where school consolidation was supposed to show the greatest results.

Xenia Community School district is a by-product of that consolidation reform. Like neighboring school districts and others throughout the nation, inter-school district consolidation is the cost-saving reform movement of the 21st century. It is being funded by dirty “tobacco money” and will prove to produce in-kind results.

In previous articles, I presented education research demonstrating that small neighborhood schools enable the best learning environments in which quality education becomes possible. Smaller schools enable more interaction between administrators, teachers, and students. Parents are often more involved in their children’s schooling. Teachers enjoy teaching more and student achievement is greater in smaller schools. Because crime, vandalism, truancy, dropout, and other behavioral problems occur less in smaller schools, everyone is able to achieve more. As a result, a much higher percentage of students graduate and later obtain college degrees. These are common factors in the many studies and reports on small schools.

When reviewing the research literature again, I found the maximum school population was wrong. The studies I previously had used claimed the above benefits were consistent in schools up to 400 students, but new studies claim the upper limit should be less than 300 for elementary schools. For example, a 2003 University of Missouri study found that elementary aged students form low socio-economic households performed better in small schools. These findings are similar to many other studies as well. Students in Missouri schools with enrollments 200 and under achieved the highest SAT-9 test scores in reading, math, science, and social studies. Interestingly, the Cincinnati-based Knowledge Works Foundation funded a study titled “Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools.” In the study lead by educator Barbara Lawrence, an upper enrollment level of 150 for grades 1-6 and 200 for grades 1-8 were recommended based on a review of all relevant studies.

Because small schools benefit students from lower income households, one third or more of Xenia students can expect a poorer quality of education if forced to attend larger consolidated schools.

More important possibly than educational quality research are studies on the return of schooling. A return on schooling refers to the economic returns on an investment in schooling and in this case public schooling. While most studies focus on either the number of years of schooling or qualitative factors like academic achievement, a research study by Christopher Berry of Harvard University addresses economic impacts of school size. In his research paper titled “School Size and Returns to Education,” Berry finds the only consistent factor negatively impacting income levels is school size. That is men who had attended small schools earned more income later in life than those who had attended large schools. He analyzed teacher salary, class size, district size, and state funding finding only school size impacted future income. With an increase of 100 students, Berry calculated the average decrease of future income would be 3.7 percent. If the average income is $50,000 and school size is 300, then those who had attended schools with 400 students will likely earn only $48,150 or those of a lower socio-economic class whose members on average earn a yearly income of $25,000 can expect to make about $24,000.

Therefore, Xenia students can expect to earn less income during their careers because they attended larger consolidated schools.

The argument that larger schools cost less to operate is true. However, it is also true that smaller schools cost less per pupil because of higher graduation rates, higher attendance levels, and fewer behavioral problems, resulting in a higher quality of learning overall.

Whether or not it is too late to change the rebuilding plan–only lawyers would know, it is certainly not too late to force the state to change its enrollment policy and to make future plans for Xenia Schools. For example, instead of settling for five larger elementary schools, a new plan should include rebuilding or building small schools near Arrowwood, Spring Hill (without a basement), possibly Wright Cycle Estates, and elsewhere.

Sources: “Why Small School Are Best,” Xenia Daily Gazette, April 28, 2008 and “It’s All About the Money,” Xenia Daily Gazette, April 29, 2008. John Alspaugh and Rui Gao, “School Size as a Factor in Elementary School Achievement,” University of Missouri, April 28, 2003. CR Berry’s research has been republished in the book Beseiged: School Boards and the Future of Education Politics, 2006 and in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, April 2010.

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