Just another reason for the application of School Choice was discussed by Doc Thompson as he addressed the issue of the woman from Akron, Ohio that got caught lying about her residence in order to send her children to an “excellent” school.
I have a nephew that is something of a genius; school comes very, very easy for him. When he was younger his parents moved a lot, but for a few years he went to Lakota, and at Lakota he thrived, naturally. He’s a man now, but some of his best memories were of Lakota.
One of his worst experiences were when his family moved to Detroit, and he had to go to a Detroit public school. And in that school, being “smart” wasn’t so cool, or tolerated. Needless to say, he had a very rough time, and violence came his way often.
If there had been a nationwide School Choice program, my nephew could have stayed with the teachers he liked while he moved all over the country with his parents, and he could have avoided the cultural difficulties involved in changing demographic regions. On the other hand, it would work the other way too.
For those of you reading this that aren’t so technically savvy to understand how modern teaching methods are possible to be able to replace the traditional teaching methods, let me bring some personal experience to the matter.
As I’ve talked about, my oldest Daughter is married now, but she has dated the same guy since she was 14 and she met him in England. About a year before she met this young man, she and I had a long discussion after coming off The Spaceship Earth exhibit at Epcot Center in Florida. That is a neat exhibit because they constantly change it to reflect the emerging technology, so it’s always leaning forward, technically.
One of the changes was a room that displayed with cleaver animatronics an English kid talking to a Japanese kid online. She said to me, “Dad, do you think that will be possible?” I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like science fiction even to me, who had been following the technology closely, this was in 2003. Internet carriers were still charging by the hour for many services, and international service seemed to be a technical and costly barrier that would never be overcome.
Yet, one year later a new PC game came out, which I knew was in the making, called Star Wars Galaxies. It is a MMO and allows anybody with a computer to play the game with thousands and even millions of other players in real time. I gave that game to both my daughters for their birthdays, which were only 5 days apart, along with computers to run them and both my kids jumped into the world of Star Wars for the next 4 years. Naturally they met friends and did activities online within the game. A lot of my family was concerned that so much online activity would lead to some sort of sexual promiscuity. But I watched my kids closely and the activity within the game kept their minds busy with things more exciting than sex.
My oldest daughter became good friends with a guy from their online group who lived in England, just outside of London. That friendship went on for a year, again online, and they eventually wanted to meet.
The kid came over to our house a few times a year for about 4 years and the relationship matured to my delight in a traditional way. Sex wasn’t an option, because they lived over 3500 miles apart. So they started the way couples should start, as friends. And that friendship endures to this day.
Now many people who criticized me about that relationship were concerned that my kids weren’t doing the “normal” things. That my daughter wasn’t “dating” in the traditional way, or running around at school events, and all the things that society believes are important. What I witnessed was that both my children had increased their processing abilities; they’d play that game while they did their homework, and maintained online friendships. Living with me, it was impossible for them to not get outside and do some physical exercise, so that wasn’t a problem, and they still maintained relationships at school, so they weren’t anti-social kids, quite the opposite.
But the computer allowed me to solve a growing problem that I had to unravel as a parent. It was becoming obvious when my kids turned 13 and 14 years old that they were going to look a lot like their mother, so there would be lots of boys wanting to clamor all over them. I did not want to deal with 17 and 18 year old boys desiring to come to my house and pick up my kids and take them someplace that I did not have control. So I hoped to put all that off for a while by keeping their minds interested in other things so their biological concerns could be put on the back-burner.
The result was, no trouble with boys trying to get my kids into their back-seats of cars, and my kids were able to develop healthy ideas of relationships by taking away the physical pressure of being in the company of a young boy. And because Star Wars is about big ideas and is good science fiction fun, my kids with other kids learned about the basic necessities of living, food, economics, science, and emerging technology.
As time went on, my kids had webcams and were able to speak real time to their friends and really didn’t care that they weren’t physically in the presence of other kids, because their reality had expanded beyond the conventions of society. And I am very proud of them and how they turned out. It was a good decision to buy my kids that game and set them in a direction that continues to this day, because such a thing takes away the barriers that hold kids back.
My daughters both had oversea relationships. One worked out, one didn’t, but what they learned was far more valuable than dozens of dates where the pressure for sex would have gotten in the way of really getting to know the boys they were dating. It also allowed my kids to tell their classmates in school that they had boyfriends from England, which seemed to put them on a different level with the other girls who suddenly didn’t have to worry that my girls would steal the boys they were interested in, and it dramatically improved the relationships they had with those little girls.
The reason I just told that whole story is because all it took was for me to think out of the box a bit and try something different in raising my girls. I used the technology to help me solve some tough cultural problems that would have been troublesome. And the same options are available for all aspects of education, and those options are available right now.
We should not live in a country where parents have to lie and spend time in jail because they want their kid to go to a nice school. And Schools should not be able to have monopolies that drive up costs. And kids should be learning in a way that will truly prepare them for the world they’re getting ready for. The traditional way of education is holding us back socially. It is obvious to me that the traditional institutions are not being kept intact because it’s what’s best for our children, they are being held together for the adults involved, jobs, political influence, property values and sports which can be a gateway for kids to get scholarships and save their parents money. If education was truly for the kids it would be adapting to the options that are in front of us, not clinging to an outdated infrastructure that is costly and inefficient.
If you want to see that world that kids want to be in, just visit your local Gamestop store. Technology is here to stay, and learning must occur much quicker than it has in the past. Kids today are just tuning out the adult world anyway because the world they’re really interested in is on Xbox, or Playstation and the friends that play online with them every day. The world we all grew up in is changing fast. Whether that change is good or bad will depend on how we adapt to that world.
It was bitter cold as I gazed across the windswept snowy tundra of several suburban Mason yards to the towering mass of the Big One’s radio tower looming in the distance. The evening sun preparing to drop over the horizon at only 5 pm lit the tower in a majestic way. It made me wonder if Doc Thompson of 700 WLW would actually show up at the School Choice event culminating School Choice Week at the Liberty Bible Academy. He said he would, and announced the event over the station’s 50,000 watts, so my hopes were high.
“Is this a religious event?” My wife asked me as we stepped up to knock on the door to Jennifer Miller’s house. Jennifer is a former Mason School Board member and firebrand for School Choice. She was hosting a dinner for the “key” people in Southern Ohio behind education reform and she wanted me to personally meet Jeff Reed, who was the featured speaker at the event that started at 7 pm.
“Why, because it’s being held at a bible academy?” I knew what she was thinking. “No. But people firm in religion tend to be support choices in education, so that’s probably why the academy is donating the space for the event. “
Our conversation didn’t have time to advance as the small frame of Jennifer greeted us with an open door. Jennifer is a “small” woman, but she had a reputation for being very “LOUD” when she set her mind to a fight.
She led my wife and me to the dinner table and a reunion with Sharon Poe and her husband. Sharon led the anti-Mason Levy effort and worked closely with me while I did the same for Lakota. Sandra Tugrul was putting bread from the lasagna dinner on her husband Yil’s plate as she enthusiastically said hello to me. Sandy is a former Board of Education member for Lakota and is very active in education reform. She along with Jennifer had realized long ago that the system was irreparably broken, and School Choice was the best option on the horizon. The two of them were the architects of tonight’s event. As Jennifer took a seat placing a bowl of salad in the center of the table, Vicky Roarke, a former teacher helped her out from her seat at the head of the table.
My wife, Wendy sat down next to Doug, Jennifer’s husband, a man we had come to know already and I sat down directly across from Jeff Reed who was speaking so rapidly that he held the same piece of lasagna on his fork for exactly 7 minutes. “Good to meet you, I’ve heard a lot,” he said taking my hand. “Glad to see so many people around here taking an active position on this. It’s a great program. Jeb Bush has made great strides in Florida…….the teachers union tried everything they could to defeat him…..Indiana is moving in this direction…..and Ohio is further along than you might think……….” He went on like that until we reminded him to eat his food. His passion was evident!
“How many states are doing this,” I asked. I first heard about School Choice from Jennifer only a few months back as I was looking for options. My role in defeating the Lakota Levy with the NoLakotaLevy Group was noted, but I felt responsible to offer a solution to the district instead of just saying “No” to school levies.
Jeff gobbled up a few more bites of his food then said, “I’m glad you asked that! So far, Arizona, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin. Now they’re not what our goal is which 100% eligibility for every student in those states. Right now for instance, Ohio only has 3% eligibility, but it’s a start.”
My wife and I looked surprised at each other, and then I said to Jeff, “I’m surprised that I haven’t heard of this before.”
Jeff was still a young man with a well-groomed beard not yet 40, and fit looking. He smiled knowingly. “You probably wouldn’t. People are still attached to brick and mortar schools. And teachers unions have spent a lot of money to paint school vouchers in a bad way. For them, it’s protective business. School Choice brings competition to education, and that is something they don’t want.”
From that moment I liked Jeff Reed, he was speaking my language.
But Jeff wasn’t done. “Albert Shanker, who founded the teachers union, said it best regarding the union philosophy regarding education, ‘when school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.’ That is the behavior that we are all dealing with, and why they hate school vouchers.”
Jeff was reflecting an opinion that I had formulated during the Lakota Levy campaign which is modern education is basically being run like a flashy casino in Vegas. When you go to Vegas, or any casino for that matter, they use flashy lights, alcohol, sexy imagery, and exotic buffets to draw human beings like insects to a trap. The goal of the casino is to get you to spend money so the house makes money. They’re not in the business of giving away money, even though they sell their service that way. Brick and mortar schools use sports, local patriotism, luxurious accommodations, and convenience of transportation to get local residents “addicted” to their services. I’ve met many people who display addictive behavior toward alcohol, and gambling, and the look of a parent that has built their professional lives around their children’s schedule at school, and the promise of sports scholarships as a kind of “jackpot” is the same basic human frailty.
“So is School Choice just another name for school vouchers?” my wife asked.
Jeff took a few more bites and wanted to answer, but Jennifer did it for him. “No, not at all, school choice can be that of course, but the money comes from the state and goes directly to the parent for homeschooling, which has grown from 15,000 students in 1970 to over 1.5 million now, the money can go to virtual schools of online schooling, it can go to charter schools, or it can go to your public school. The key is that if the parent has options, it will force all schools to do like all businesses do and that’s be competitive, and that will bring responsibility to what education costs.”
Then Sandy chimed in, “and that’s how we can break up these monopolies that the unions have over public education. It’s just not fair to the students, and it’s really not fair to the parents to have to endure the outrageous costs of maintaining these monopolies.”
Sharon had been pretty quiet listening attentively, “the cost in Mason per pupil is now almost $10,000. And most of the cost of that is tied up in salaries and that’s what’s driving up the cost and forcing these levies.“
“Because they have monopoly statues that is protected by government.” I added.
Jeff finished chewing quickly so he could answer me, “exactly, do you know that schools in New Jersey are spending over $15,000 per student! And they aren’t getting any better results with those students than schools in say, Alabama, or Mississippi which are among the lowest per pupil.”
Up till this point Vicky, the former teacher, at the head of the table had been quiet. “Back when I was a teacher, when a levy was passed, we saw money. That was the talk in the teacher’s lounge and that was our primary worry, it was about the pay day.”
I looked at her, “how did you end up with this group?”
She looked back at me with sincerity. “I want to help make it right.”
Jeff was all smiles, “may I say that I LOVE THIS GROUP. Man, I wish everyone had this much enthusiasm.”
I looked at my wife, then at Sharon, Jennifer, Sandy, then at Jeff. “We’re very serious about this. Something is going to be done and that seed is planted here in Southern Ohio. We’re here to fight and move forward.“
The conversation went on for another hour going into more detail over those same topics, much of it revealed in Jeff’s speech at the Academy which you can see below.
As 7 pm approached we left Jennifer’s house and headed over to the Liberty Bible Academy where Sharon, Vicky and Jennifer had to get everything set up. I had to find a good spot to set up the camera, whether or not to use a tripod, and figure out how to get good sound to my camera. I elected not to use a tripod because the room filled quickly with over 60 people and I wanted the freedom to move the camera around for different angles. This gave me some rough video moments, but the effort was worth it in the end.
At just before 7 pm I met Doc Thompson out in the lobby. I was glad to see him, a guy of his reputation and talent could have done half a million things on a cold Thursday night on the last of January. I recognized his tall, lanky form instantly and grabbed his hand to shake it.
“Hey, good to see you. “
“Is this the place? I just had dinner at Bravo’s right over there recently,” Doc’s voice boomed. His voice was magnificent, belonging on the radio which is theater of the mind.
“Yes, you’re at the right place. This is Sharon who was on with you yesterday, and this little woman here is Jennifer who was on with you on Monday, the day you had on Kyle Olson of School Choice.”
Doc took their hands and was genuinely happy to meet them. He stood what looked like well over 6’,3” and towered over Jennifer. After his greeting he returned to me. “So, is this it in here,” looking into the crowded room behind us.
“Yeah, I think we’re about to get started.”
“Yeah, yeah, OK.” His long legs took him to the front where Jeff Reed sat, who had been on his show the day before as well. Doc took Jeff’s hand and shook it sincerely. I noticed shaking hands and looking people in the eye was important to Doc, which is an admirable trait. He took a seat in the front so he could be engaged with the speakers. I found I respected Doc even more than I had before. He had just completed a 12 hour day working between 700 WLW in Cincinnati, and WRVA in Richmond Virginia. And here he was as promised looking at education options like the rest of us. He was far more than just another “radio shock jock.” He cared about the issues he covered on the radio.
People fluttered in and took their seats as Jeff took the podium and gave his speech.
Pete Beck was the next speaker. Pete was mayor of Mason from 2007 to 2009 where he became a member of the Ohio House representing the 67th house district of Warren County. Pete before that was a member of Mason City Council from 1995 to 2007.
The next speaker was Bill Coley, whom I know because he represents me in Butler County. Bill did a good thing under the Strickland Administration. He managed to put Ohio on the doorstep to “true innovation” with digital technological learning. Under his plan, School Choice would be the ideal option to capitalize on the Ohio Revised Code that he’s already established, which is signed into law. In addition to being a Representative for the house 55th District he is an inaugural member with Governor Jeb Bush of the Digital Learning Council.
In this clip, Bill Coley is addressing State Senator Cates of District 4 who was in the back of the room sitting with my wife.
At the end, we all shook hands and went home. The event had the feeling of the “start” of something much larger. Doc spoke to Coley about putting him on his Richmond Radio show because this was the first Doc had heard about a digital learning bill that actually passed a state house anywhere and had a governor’s signature on it!
What I learned was this, that the money that the state would typically give the school district would go to the parent of the child instead, which sounds like a good idea. As far as who collects the property tax and where it goes is still something that will have to be debated in the state house. As discussed, the current method of collecting property tax was found unconstitutional. Currently the state of Ohio is spending about $4,100 on 13,000 students for a voucher program over 273 different schools. The program started in 2005 and began operation in 2006 and has increased steadily since then. That gives an idea how new the program is. The School Choice program would work much the same way. An amount of money determined by the state would go to the parent and depending on what school the parent wanted their child to go to, they’d cover the rest on their own. Either the parent would not pay the addition property tax and could afford to cover the difference in cost, or the property tax money would go into a savings account similar to the Flex accounts available in the insurance industry.
The reason School Choice as an option is important is the trend is for the cost of educating students in Ohio is hovering around $9,000 per student, communities all across the state must find a way to get those costs down, and only competition can do that.
About 6 months ago when my daughter went to the studio of WLW with me to photograph the experience for promotional reasons we had a long talk while driving there. She doesn’t live with me any longer, but we’ve always been really close, and father, daughter talks are hard to come by without spouses and other people always around. “Quality time” is something that is rare when kids grow up and move away. So we made my trip to The Big One studio a fun, father daughter day, which is why staring at that tower on the way to Jennifer’s house held so much reverence for me.
“Dad, don’t take this wrong,” as we pulled into the parking garage at The Death Star, where all the Clear Channel Stations are located. Scott Sloan was promoting my visit as we hit the garage and my daughter thought I was getting in over my head a bit. “You’re kind of a fist fight in the parking lot kind of guy. Why are you suddenly interested in school reform? I mean, you wear a cowboy hat, and you hate politics.”
I parked the car and we sat there a moment in silence. “Because it’s the right thing to do. I see that these unions are controlling the school districts and it’s bankrupting the community. I’ve worked around unions all my life. I’ve seen them destroy companies, and people making their minds lazy because through collective bargaining people forget how to fight for anything, even knowledge. I see kids your age looking blank and passionless, and I see senior citizens scared that property tax increases will push them out of their homes since they’re on a fixed income. I see parents addicted to the services schools provide with glee, that behaving like education is a right that must be provided to them, because their “drug pushers” have convinced them they’re entitled to a type of collectivism more at home in communist theory than in the guts of what America was built on, and it’s time to fight the drug pushers.”
My daughter made a face. “You’re not going to say that on the air are you, sounds a bit extreme?”
“No, I’ll calm down before I say anything stupid, but between you and me, the kind of extortion these people are doing is worse than what the mob bosses in Las Vegas have been guilty of doing. These people use the children of our community to gain for themselves a level of selfishness that is evil, because they’d be willing to hurt countless families to secure their own livelihoods. And it has to stop somewhere. So we’re going up to the Scott Sloan show and we’re going to tell 500,000 people what the real problem is. And we’ll let the people figure out for themselves what to do. I’m only going to make them aware of what’s really behind the curtain.
And that’s what we did, and that fight is just getting started.
Back when I was in school, there weren’t any alternatives, because technology was evolving. But the guy that made Star Wars was using a lot of the money he made off those films to change the way kids learn much to my admiration.
A lot of people don’t know it, but George Lucas has been out in front of this whole issue for over twenty years. He founded a company called Lucas Learning which would be an ideal program for Bill Coley’s new legislation in Ohio.
Lucas has always been committed to helping improve education. Education was his primary reason for producing the very good Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which used a very popular character to teach his viewers a bit about history at the turn of the century.
But now that the computer is here to stay, education under the research started at places like Lucas Learning can greatly enhance our children’s lives. George is now involved in a company called Edutopia. Check it out:
When I finished my spot on WLW that day, my daughter and I went to the Kenwood Mall and had a Smoothie, just the two of us. She told me she was proud that I restrained my anger. She knew what I was talking about when I spoke about the thug mentality of teachers unions. She had spent thousands and thousands of hours watching movies that I showed her and her sister over the years, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles being most prominent and memorable among them. My wife and I had homeschooled our kids for a bit, and both kids finished their high school years online. So as a family we have experience in this issue and know what works and what doesn’t. My kids watched me and decided to push themselves into a lifelong education, not just a goal based education to secure employment.
Throwing money at public education just to meet the status quo isn’t the right thing to do. It doesn’t have any merit to me if a school has an “excellent” rating or not. Because the rating system comes from the same people that push the confusing and expensive legislation which are incentivized to support the whole current system that is producing mediocre results. If that’s what society wants, that’s fine with me. But I’m not going to endorse spending over $10,000 per kid to have it.
If mediocre results are what everyone wants, then I want a 50% reduction in cost.
Or we can embrace a program like School Choice to use competition to change the system not only for ourselves, but for the betterment of our children. If you still want your kids to go to Lakota, Mason, Little Miami, or wherever, that’s fine. But if those schools don’t give you good customer service, you could leave. And the threat of that will keep their costs in line.
It’s up to you. I have let you into my little circle of friends here, and introduced you to good people that have been working on education reform for decades. All you have to do is support their work and let them know you want options.
Let your state representatives know you want changes and will have their back if they extend themselves to the teeth of teachers unions and other lobbyist that will attempt to make life difficult for them. Let them know that you’re there for them with an email, or a letter. But before you do any of that have the courage in yourself to be “BOLD.”
Victory goes to those “Bold” enough to demand action. And our kids deserve to have “bold” members of the communities they are growing up in to give them better than a mediocre existence.
Special interests are already salivating to have a crack at Governor Kasich’s defenses, quickly attacking his staff for their lack of “diversity.”
Diversity in “progressive” terminology means “no white straight people who are men.” But for the rest of us, diversity means anybody, of any gender, sex, or nationality. Yet the illness of progressivism muddies the mind so that common sense can’t be found. Evidence of that behavior can be found from Dave in the below blog post at the Progress Ohio website. Read the whole article at the link. A small portion of it is included below.
Tell Governor Kasich Gay Rights are Civil Rights! By Dave on January 28, 2011 12:18 PM
“When the governor acknowledges them [gays] as a minority group, which they are not, you’re also saying to them that their behavior is OK. And it’s NOT OK to engage in this type of behavior when it’s gonna cause you possibly to die from AIDS.”
– Phil Burress, Citizens for Community Values
With those short sentences, Citizens for Community Values, a group that endorsed John Kasich for governor, proved that bigotry still exists in the public square. They oppose any protections for LGBT workers and made outrageous, inaccurate statements that played on radio stations across Ohio on Tuesday.
The irony is that Governor John Kasich has already found a way to deny state workers basic rights they had under Gov. Ted Strickland. Last week, Kasich signed a “non-discrimination” Executive Order and purposely removed ‘Gender Identity’ from the employment protections, despite promises that he would keep those protections during his campaign.
The interviews aren’t intended to protect John Kasich. When Doc interviewed a radical socialist organizing the Defend Ohio Rally a few weeks ago, (you can hear that interview too) Doc agreed with the socialist when the activist criticized the amount of money the Governor was paying members of his cabinet. So as would be the tendency of progressives, not everyone follows “bullet point” politics as they do, where they follow without question the rhetoric of their “leaders.”
The people I know, myself included don’t follow leaders, so we can criticize public officials and still support aspects of their political platforms.
Most progressives that I know think the world is some tribal council where a tribe leader tells the whole village how to behave. Wasn’t it Hillary Clinton that said “it takes a village?”
The goal behind the attacks on Kasich is to put him on a defensive so these radical groups can gain some form of control of the Governor’s behavior. Because Kasich could never make those radical types happy unless he ignored “qualified white men” and hired blacks, Asians, and homosexuals, and sadly a lot of politicians actually cave under that type of pressure.
I find it ironic that when Ken Blackwell ran for governor against the white Ted Strickland none of these progressives stood behind Ken. Ken was a very good candidate for governor. I was ready to support him. I would have helped with his campaign in less than a second. When I think of Ken it NEVER occurs to me that he’s a black man. But he’s a smart guy, and I’d vote for him any day.
But to assign personnel because they are “gay” or a “woman” or of some exotic nationality is to actually discriminate against people!
The facts of the matter are that none of this is about “equal rights.” It’s about control, power, manipulation, and turning the minds of the American people so they get dizzy and look to a progressive leader for clarification.
So a note to progressives, the people of Ohio did not send Kasich to the governorship of this state to be a lap dog to anybody. Everyone, including myself, may not like everything he does as a person or as a governor. But it’s expected of him to balance the budget and does the work of the people of Ohio without concern for his political future and to let the chips fall where they may with regard to all the weak-kneed emo’s that seek to further undermine our great republic.
The primary reason I started this site back in August was because I caught a group of union members working a local message forum in order to apply “peer” pressure on potential Anti-Lakota Levy advocates to keep their opinions to themselves. I thought the comments I was reading were “thuggish” and inexcusable toward good people who were just trying to voice their opinion.
In March of 2010 the Pulse Journal published in a special edition the wages of all the teachers and administrators of all the local schools. And it amazed me how quickly people forgot, and how shallow the waters of our collective memories really were. Local TV news, newspapers and other media were doing the stories but people forget. 6 months later when that information was needed it was lost when those decisions were needed, such as during an election.
So I saw a need to create a site that would make it easy for people to remember where we were, and watch over time how we got where we’re going. I have a conservative opinion and a literature background and enough business training to break down issues as well as any reporter. I also have a background in video editing and visualization technique, so I set out to use all the assets of a web-based site, video, sound, and literature to create a unique web-based news service that does not have any commercial ties, political affiliation, or otherwise special interest that might taint the content of my posts. They would simply be my opinions that I have found many, many other people share.
That’s why this site has been successful, because it utilizes all the benefits of what a web site can offer. And it would be noted by now that I have a lot of radio clips up here, mostly from Doc Thompson. Well, there’s a reason for that. Since Doc came to town, I have found that I like the man. He has similar views as I do, so I enjoy his program. I’ve met him and I like him personally too. He has a deep sincerity in what he is doing, and I respect that. There are parts of his shows that I think deserve to live on in a sense of permanence instead of reaching people’s ears over the 50,000 Watts of the Big One, and then becoming lost among the millions of radio waves that emanate around the globe. I have found that many people miss a lot of the good stuff he broadcasts because they have busy lives themselves, and could benefit from listening to his show at their convenience. And the things he talks about are very similar to the things I’m writing about, and as I mentioned in my About Me section, I like to write these blogs in two ways, with the typical literary style, then again with the assistance of video and audio. I have put thousands of videos on this site to help bring depth to the discussions expressed here. So it is only natural to use Doc’s show to assist my topics and let the reader get more from these articles than just text.
A few years ago when I was touring The Land Exhibit at the Epcot Center, I was intrigued by their horticultural activity and thought the work at Epcot was way out ahead of the rest of the nation. It brought to my mind, “why is it that the farmers in our country aren’t producing with the techniques at the Epcot Center?”
The Celebrity Gardner had sent Doc some great vegetables grown from a farm in Northern Ohio using innovative techniques that led to a great discussion from a man on the fore-front of innovative horticulture. Listen to that interview here:
As usual, progressive government with its farm subsidies and other intrusions have created a status quo environment that is actually preventing the beneficial evolution of horticulture evolution. It is a shame now that many of today’s youth won’t have a grandma or grandpa that run a farm. Growing up, both of my grandparents ran farms. Farm life was a fact of life, and was part of the community experience. Many kids today have to go out of their way to see a farm, let alone know somebody that runs one. Heck, most kids are lucky to have contact with two biological sets of grandparents, or even parents, another wonderful legacy of progressivism.
That’s a sad fact, and another sign of weakness in our American Society. Everyone wants to be lawyers, and doctors, and politicians, but nobody wants to be a farmer. Just some of the comments leveled at me, because I love my background, and the backgrounds of my family, that I’m some kind of “hillbilly” or country “hick” of “low intelligence” because I wear a cowboy hat yet live in a “professional” community. Those opinions come from women with rear ends the size of busses and men that surrendered their manhood to dominating women long ago, so I weigh them properly in perspective. Those types of people are shallow in their understanding of how things work, and it’s because of people like that which allow politicians to think we’re all stupid, because those people behave foolishly. They are the first ones to put down a hunter for skinning a deer, because they buy their meat in a grocery store, and they are the first to call a farmer a “hick.”
My wife and I went to Amish Acers up in Indiana one day just for the fun of it. Amish Acers is a really cool community located just on the fringe of the Chicago Skyline, which you can just barely see over the horizon of the Earth. Amish Acres is like the amusement park of everything Amish.
Think what you want about the Amish. They have their religious beliefs, but they have a culture that decided not to follow down a progressive path, and people flock in large herds to Amish Acres to buy “authentic” Amish goods, watch “Amish” plays, and in general experience a much simpler life where things make sense.
What does that say about the American consciousness? American’s deep down inside love quality. We love independence. And we love the simplicity of a straight approach to religion, life, and family. And American’s see in the Amish what they used to be. That’s why they drive to Amish communities to buy items of “quality.”
Horticulture is yet another victim of Progressive ideology, and it is the progressive oriented government that is hindering the wonderful technology that is currently available.
What a shame, because like everything else in our lives, we could have better food and a higher quality of life, if only we had the courage to have it.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the start of “progressivism” as it emerged in the early 1900’s. I was shocked to learn that the first “socialist” congressman was elected during the election of 1910, that gives you an idea of the kinds of discussions that were taking place during that time. I can understand to some point the hunger to bust up the monopolies that business had over the working population. I admire Teddy Roosevelt for sticking up to the court decision by Simeon E. Baldwin for the ruling of Hoxie v. the New Haven Railroad of 1909 which denied liberty of labor compensation for the loss of a leg of an employee in a collision of two trains. Such stories ushered on its back progressive ideas that sought to regulate “big business” abuse.
Now, after 100 years of asking questions, we know what went wrong, and why it went wrong, and the experiments of “fairness” have caused trouble on the radical opposite end of the political spectrum. And that trouble has literally bankrupted our nation.
Listen to Doc Thompson discuss the State of the Union the way President Obama should have done during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday January 25th, 2011.
Obama should not have said that the state of our nation was “good.” While I understand not wanting to scare people, saying such things is like a football coach telling his team at half time, when his team is down three touchdowns, “hey, you guys are playing good. Keep it up.” What the coach should say if he’s a good coach is, “hey, you guys are down three touchdowns. You still have a chance. Toughen up and win this game!” No, instead the President said America is strong, because he doesn’t want to admit to anybody that changes are coming.
How screwed up is it? Listen to this radio bit about the Death Tax. Here Doc has on an expert about the Death Tax as it applies to Ohio, but the examples could be applied nation wide.
The hinge-pin of American society is self-reliance however, and people like Teddy Roosevelt knew that. The Progressive Party wasn’t supposed to become the monstrosity of naïveté that it currently is. It was supposed to free people to live good lives. But weak, power-hungry politicians quickly distorted the policies to create jobs for themselves by expanding government to an extraordinary size that it was never intended to become. And now government is collapsing on itself.
America will survive because the people that made up the country are still out there. But the government in the size it is now will not. It would be advisable that everyone unhook themselves from as many Federal shackles they can handle, and to do it rapidly. It will be less painful now than later when you won’t have a choice.
I spent a year reading the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and the work of John Locke. It was not easy, because it can be a dull read, and is sometimes repetitive. The volume of that work however is deeply innovative and provable, and far more philosophical and intellectually sound than anything produced in any nation in the history of the world. And if you want to see this nation succeed in the future, America will stick with the blueprint that works. The other social experiments that have been attempted need to stop, now.
Georgetta voteyeslakota@aol.com 75.185.0.41 Submitted on 2011/01/20 at 11:14 pm Evil prevails when good people do nothing. I am a good person and I am about good education. I am doing something: speaking out. Rich Hoffman is misleading people. Teachers teach children so they DON’T end up working themselves into an early grave and barely making payments on a lot in a trailer park. The good teachers will go elsewhere in order to make a living wage. Rich Hoffman raised children and his wife didn’t work. Apparently he is making too much money. Yet, I hear no one attacking him. Some of us have to have both parents work in order to put food on the table.
Georgetta here reflects many of the comments that I get from people who think just like her. The premise is this, that education is a right, they hide the actual numbers in the scribble of government bureaucracy, and if you show that you don’t support it, or if you even question their reasoning, they use “peer pressure” to shape the community to their will, just like kids on a playground. That’s the mentality. They end up sounding like children with their minds wrapped up in extreme assertions to make their points seem to carry more weight.
The first thing they do is attack you “the tax payer” and your ability to pay the increase in tax. They’ll say, “Public education was there for your children, but now that you don’t have children in the school, you don’t want to pay.” They do the same with business leaders, “We built the good schools and you provided the homes, and now you don’t want to pay.” What doesn’t get said is that as all this growth was going on, the LEA, the teachers union at Lakota, negotiated an aggressive contract in October of 2008 that was focused on wages and that contract is bankrupting the community because at the same time, indications were that state funding was on a decreasing trend. So the contract was irresponsible, and what is happening now, is the community is establishing the parameters of future contract negotiations, because we can’t trust school officials to do the job, otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten this far out of control.
These pro levy people will attempt to proclaim that nobody but them can look at the numbers and understand the situation. They sadly put out apologist groups to plead the case like what you will hear in the below interview. What they don’t want to discuss is why there is a financial crises. They simply discuss finance as if it were beyond their control. When listening to this interview ask these questions, if cutting only a million here, or there isn’t much because the numbers are so large, then why is it such a large savings that cutting busing to 9000 students will only save $600,000, then why cut busing? And how has Lakota done everything it can do before cutting busing. Did the LEA come to the bargaining table to renegotiate their contract? And how does the tax dollars stay in the district when the union spends the union dues on political candidates. One of the reasons the LEA wants its teachers to make so much is so that the teachers will want to pay their union dues without hardship. But nobody talks about any of that here. The sum of this discussion is that there isn’t an answer. These are nice parents that just want the system to work long enough for their children to get an education. Nobody wants to play the hot potato game when the music stops, and the music is stopping. All they can really do in an interview like this is paint over the dirt.
All businesses whether they are service oriented or manufacturing oriented have a responsibility to keep their costs in line. One way that businesses do that is to use the 10-80-10 rule as it’s applied to labor. That rule states that 10% of your workforce will be your typical “top” performers, and they will get the most dramatic increases, 4% to 15% depending on the situation. 80% of your workers are average, and will typically get a standard 2% to 3% increase, otherwise considered a “cost of living” increase. And of course every place of business has approximately 10% that are poor performers and they won’t get an increase of any kind. Why? Because those bottom 10% you want to look for another job, and you want them to leave so you don’t have to pay them. It gives you a chance to hire somebody that might want to compete for the top 10% percentile. If you manage things correctly, your bottom 10% are the kind of people that your competition is hiring at the middle 80%, and you want that so you can maintain a competitive edge.
What you don’t do is uniformly advance everyone in your place of business with some socialist “everybody is equal” policy like what we have in school systems, and unions advocate. That’s a disastrous concept and gives employees like Ryan Fahrenkemp time and the luxury of job security to participate in an evil deed like child pornography. I would argue from experience that if Ryan had to fear for his job, and didn’t feel comfortable hiding in the muddy 80%, he probably would have not indulged in his warped perversion while at school. He might have done it in hiding, or in his mother’s basement, but not with his students, and not with school equipment. And he certainly wouldn’t have been making 70K at only age 42 no matter how much experience he had with the amount of tenure he’d accumulated in a relatively short time.
I used Fahrenkemp as an example because he belonged in the bottom 10% and somebody didn’t do their job in the review process of weeding him out. And that didn’t happen because he was protected by the complicated process created by the OEA which the president of the LEA had been a big part of, and knew how to manipulate the system to the advantage of her members.
I’d say you are, by telling the tax payers that the budget just “grows” on its own. That the school system had no way to deal with people like Fahrenkemp, and that all teachers are worth over 62K, and if the community doesn’t pay it, those beloved teachers will leave the district for another one.
I would say any teacher that would leave Lakota is only in it for the money, and those are personalities that I would rate low on a review, and may be tempted to put them on the bottom 10% anyway, so for them to leave would be desirable.
All the Yes Lakota people have to argue with is emotion,
• “The money is for the kids.” No it’s not, if it was, the LEA wouldn’t have threatened to strike in 2008 to get more money, and again in the spring of 2010.
• “We have to offer top pay for top teachers or they will leave.” No they won’t because the other districts are broke too and are getting ready to go through the same process Lakota is.
• “We have to protect property values by voting for the schools.” No you don’t. If taxes keep increasing that will kill real estate values anyway, tax payers in the district already pay $11 per $1000 assessment on their property.
• “I’m for education.” No you’re not. If you were, you’d keep the budget under $160 million. Throwing money at something doesn’t mean you’re for education. It means you don’t value the source of the money but want what the money can buy.
• “We have had explosive growth and must adjust to it.” Growth, like budgets can be controlled. If the cost is too high, growth will slow down, and growth will slow down because of the economy. Growth will also slow down from parents wanting to go to Lakota who aren’t willing to pay for the extra things they want, too. One of the reasons Yes People want sports and extracurricular activities is so enrollment will increase, so parents looking for those items can move to the district and participate cheaply. It’s all about job creating and getting parents used to programs that the district tax payers fund collectively. No different from colleges with NCAA programs that are nationally known for their sports, will see increases in enrollment. It’s always about increased enrollment so money can be justified.
• “The state is forcing us to all-day kindergarten.” No, the OEA lobbied to get all-day kindergarten passed, and the Republicans in the state house are getting ready to eliminate that unfunded mandate along with many other mandates lacking funding. So that anticipated requirement will be taken away from district budgets.
• “We have to spend $50,000 dollars to get the best superintendent we can get.” No, you are throwing money at the situation like you do everything else. It’s that kind of mentality that locked us into the contract with the LEA that is causing the current financial crises. Money does not equal quality. It seldom does. Money can be used to create competition, but it is useless without competition. If money is not getting you dramatic results, it is simply killing your budget.
• “Paying for a school levy keeps your money in the community.” No it doesn’t. The union dues collected by school unions are directly applied to liberal politicians that further perpetuate the bureaucratic mess creating expensive economic necessity. The OEA had revenue of over $62 million dollars in 2008. Where did that money come from? They don’t make any products that they can sell? Check the info for yourself here. http://teachersunionexposed.com/state.cfm?state=OH All that money comes from union dues, paid from the salaries of teachers that are paid exceptionally well by the local tax payers. The average pay at Lakota for teachers is 62K per year. So the money doesn’t stay in the community.
And you Yes Lakota people go ahead and leave your comments. I’ll post them, and I’ll use them. People need to see your thoughts. For those of you wanting to see some of them, read the comments here. I am quite aware that there are many people at many levels reading all the posts I’ve put up here and you’re looking for a way to spin it to your advantage. For an example, have a look at the work David Little from Progress Ohio attempted. I’m happy to fight your sloppy facts with the truth and if you want to spin the community around and make them so dizzy they can’t tell which way is up or down, I’ll continue to prevent it, as I have. And I’ll do it because I love my community, and I want to see education continue to be an option for families in the future. But it won’t be in a form controlled by organized labor. Those days are over.
Don’t believe me; read this from your parent union the OEA, this is how bad the financial situation is. Even the union staff is threatening to strike and the union itself is participating in union busting strategies.
The Ohio Education Association and Its Goose
The executives of the Ohio Education Association sent a memo informing local presidents that if the union gave in to striking staffers’ demands, it would require an $80 to $90 dues increase per member. Such an increase would raise roughly $10 million. That sounded familiar to me, so I checked the archives and found this, in the May 8, 2000 EIA Communiqué: Ohio Education Association in Severe Financial Straits. The last time the Ohio Education Association negotiated a staff contract, in September 1997, it resulted in a two-week strike, restraining orders against picketers, and a lot of bad publicity. That contract expires this year and it’s bad financial news all around for OEA, its members, and the staff. OEA recently informed its local presidents that the union is facing a projected deficit of $6.3 million for next year. The union is asking staff to accept benefit cuts totaling $4 million. The rest of the deficit would be eliminated through a dues increase of up to $25 per member.
“Specifically, and regrettably, we can no longer afford to sustain the current number of OEA employees at their current level of compensation and benefits and continue to provide the expected level of services and programs without significantly raising OEA dues for you and every other member,” reads a memo from OEA President Mike Billirakis and Executive Director Robert Barkley.
If our community is going to continue to be a “great” and “excellent” district, we have to get in front of this problem. Not avoid it by tossing more money at the problem. And the Yes Lakota people need to listen to the No Lakota People, because the solution is in good business strategy. The same tired old bullet points won’t be valid any longer. I’ll make sure of it.
Seeing miles and miles of backed up traffic the morning that Lakota’s busing cuts were implemented was like watching a world of sanity coming undone and going backwards into a time of primeval foolishness. Scott Sloan and Tracy Jones capture the lunacy wonderfully.
So what’s the next step? Without question, the school system is poised to put another levy issue on the ballot targeting the roughly 10% that are anti-tax but only moderately. Those people will have to decide if they will be steadfast, or buckle under the pressure extorted by the busing cut strategy, because it’s all about converting a few percentage points in voter turnout, into a “yes” vote.
My wife and I had dinner with an instructor for Forensic Anthropology on Saturday and I learned how there is a shortage of Forensic Anthropologists. That little fact surprised me. “How can that be? Where do you find Forensic Anthropology employment? Who’s paying for them?” It was an honest question.
I received an honest answer. “The shortage is due to museums and other research facilities that are trying to comply with the “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act”
“The what?” I asked. “What the hell is that?”
He proceeded to educate me which is most accurately described in this definition from Wikipedia.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub.L. 101-601, 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law passed on 16 November 1990 requiring federal agencies and institutions that receive federal funding[1] to return Native American cultural items and human remains to their respective peoples. Cultural items include funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. In addition, it authorizes a program of federal grants to assist in the repatriation process. It is now the strongest federal legislation pertaining to aboriginal remains and artifacts.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “Are you kidding me?” I asked. “What bunch of idiots passed that law? That has to cost a fortune.”
My dinner guest was agreeing with me, but being a man of science, he is eternally sympathetic to funding needs. Then I remembered when he and I had watched John Dunbar’s epic journey into the land of the Sioux Nation together around that time, then it came back to me. The film Dances with Wolves by Kevin Costner came out on November 21st of 1990. And the NAGPRA was passed just days before the release of the film.
The Heard Museum Report had been debated for three years starting in 1987 and had been passed by the 101st Congress as advanced copies of Dances With Wolves was circulating around Washington, after all Costner has just had a wild success with Field of Dreams. So there was a lot of buzz around the new movie about Native Americans. So with the usual sentimentality that engulfs the puffy coffee enriched minds of bureaucracy, they passed the NAGPRA without thinking much about the cost to science, or the tax payer.
“That is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard in the history of bad ideas,” I stated in clichéd fashion, knowing it was a cliché when I said it.
My dinner guest proceeded to educate me on various cases and pointed me in the direction of an article by Jan Bernstein:
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NAGPRA – Future Applicability Rule Article written for SPNHC by Jan Bernstein Does the institution that you work for have Native American cultural items under its control or in its possession and does it also receive Federal funds? If so, more than likely you already know that your institution is a “museum” and therefore is legally required to comply with 25 U.S.C. 3001, which is more commonly known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act or NAGPRA. But what you might not know is that there are new NAGPRA compliance rules for what is known in the Act as Future Applicability.
These rules apply to the following situations: 1) The museum or Federal agency acquires a new collection item or finds a previously unreported item that may be covered by the Act (covered items are Native American human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony; 2) A previously unrecognized Indian group is recognized by the Federal government as an Indian tribe. 3) An institution in possession or control of an item or items that may be covered by the Act receives Federal funds for the first time; and 4) The museum or Federal agency revises a decision previously published in the Federal Register.
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was signed into law on November 16, 1990, but it wasn’t until March 21, 2007 that the final rule for §10.13 Future Applicability of NAGPRA was promulgated. It was published in Federal Register Volume 72, Number 54 and it applies to existing and newly acquired museum collections. Those are Sections Five, Six, and Seven of the Act. It does not apply to inadvertent discoveries or planned excavations which are addressed in Section Three of the Act.
The Future Applicability rules became effective on April 20, 2007. And on that date it established statutory deadlines for completion of NAGPRA Section Five Human Remains Inventories/Notices of Inventory Completion and NAGPRA Section Six Summaries (unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony). For you organization, the first deadline may be October 20, 2007. The rule set a six months deadline to produce and distribute a NAGPRA Section Six Summary for a new holding or a previously unreported holding newly located that may be unassociated funerary objects, sacred objects, or objects of cultural patrimony. October 20, 2007 is the deadline for the Summary distribution if the new holding was acquired or found prior to April 20, 2007. Your organization has two years from the promulgation date or acquisition/discovery date to prepare a NAGPRA Section Five Human Remains Inventory/Notice of Inventory Completion in consultation with affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations. If the new holding was acquired or located prior to April 20, 2007, you have until April 20, 2009 to do culturally affiliation consultation and distribute a NAGPRA Section Five Human Remains Inventory and publish a Notice of Inventory Completion in the Federal Register.
A newly Federally recognized Indian tribe has standing under NAGPRA and museums and Federal agencies covered by the Act are required by the Future Applicability Rule to send Section Six Summaries to these Tribes within six month of recognition. Federal Agencies and museums are also required within two years of recognition to prepare in consultation with culturally affiliated Indian tribes NAGPRA Section Five Inventories/Notices of Inventory Completion.
Maybe your organization didn’t receive any Federal funds between November 16, 1990 when the law passed and November 16, 1995 when the last deadline occurred. But since that time it began to receive such funds. Those funds may be flowing directly to your organization or to your parent organization. For example, maybe you are working for private college anthropology or art department and another department at the college started to accept Federal contracts or grants after 11/16/1995. Those funds have redefined your department as a museum covered by NAGPRA. If this is the case, your organization is required to comply with NAGPRA. If you find your organization is in this situation, you must within three years from the time the Federal funds were received or from the effective date of the Rule (4/10/07), whichever is later provide a Section Six Summary to Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations that are most likely to be culturally affiliated. Within Five years of the date of receipt of Federal funds, or within five years of the effective date of this Rule, whichever is later, you must prepare, in consultation with affiliated Indian tribes or Native Hawaiian organizations, a Section Five Human Remains Inventory/Notice of Inventory Completion.
If your organization previously published a Notice of Inventory Completion, but the information has since substantively changed, the Future Applicability Rule requires a Notice of Inventory Completion Correction be published in the Federal Register. A substantive change is a change in the culturally affiliated Indian tribes or a change in the minimum number of individuals count. The National NAGPRA Program will assist you with this process.
What does this mean for those of you who represent a Federally Recognized Indian tribe? Well, I hope you will see some new Summaries hitting your desk as well as an increase in the number of requests to consult in preparation of new human remains Inventories. The rules can be found on the National NAGPRA Program’s web site. I wish you all great success in your NAGPRA compliance efforts.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________ “How can an anthropologist or archeologist be expected to return the remains of Indian Tribes when much of the tribal movements aren’t even understood by anybody yet? There are still completely mysterious cultures that no science organization understands regarding Native Americans.” I was thinking of Cahokia outside of St. Louis, and several of the mound builders in the Ohio Valley. The Shawnee had in fact migrated from Florida before settling in Ohio. Few tribes could be traced back for thousands of years.
The instructor laughed. “That’s part of the problem. There are a lot of finds and burial relics that predate 1492, so it is nearly impossible to return cultural items to specific tribes.”
I was getting angry. “What about the ancestors of Anglo Saxons that were fleeing tyrants of Europe to settle the frontier that were cannibalized in giant kettles and eaten like soup, entire families were slain for no reason what-so-ever.”
“That’s not politically correct,” he laughed at me.
“That’s politics, which is the same as what comes out of an elephants ass.”
“Well,” he said, “its business. Laws like that put people to work and make people feel like they’re doing something important.”
He mentioned Bernstein and Associates, who I looked up and read their literature.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bernstein & Associates, LLC We work with Indian tribes, museums, universities, and governmental agencies on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) compliance projects.
Services we provide to our clients
NAGPRA Grant Writing We write successful Consultation/Documentation and Repatriation grant proposals. Our clients have received over $1,000,000 (one million dollars) in NAGPRA Consultation/Documentation and Repatriation Grant grant awards. Annually since 1999, we have written at least one NAGPRA Consultation/Documentation grant for clients and every year we’ve had a grant funded.
Jan Bernstein teaches a two-day NAGPRA Grant Writing Seminar for the National Preservation Institute.
NAGPRA Consultation Support There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into NAGPRA consultation planning, implementation, documentation, and follow-up. Official tribal representatives frequently praise our culturally sensitive, insightful, respectful approach to consultation. Bernstein & Associates helps Indian tribes, museums, and federal agencies with all phases to whatever degree suits your needs: • Meeting planning • Consultation preparation including document research and assembly • Consultation documentation • Consultation follow-up
Since 1990, we have organized and facilitated several hundred individual and group consultations with tribes that have traditional territory in all regions of the country including Alaska and Hawaii.
Repatriation, Physical Transfer, and Reburial We have worked with tribal leaders, official tribal NAGPRA representatives, and traditional religious leaders in the Southwest, Plains, Great Basin, and Southeastern US as well as Peru (non-NAGPRA) to facilitate the repatriation and reburial of nearly 1000 individuals and hundreds of cultural items. Bernstein & Associates is available to: • Write repatriation grant proposals for up to $15,000 to defray the costs associated with reburial • Provide assistance in writing valid repatriation requests and repatriation claims • Write draft notices of intent to repatriate • Facilitate the development and implementation of reburial plans and agreements
NAGPRA Summary and Human Remains Inventory Preparation Because of the long-standing, positive working relationships that we have built with the tribes throughout the U.S since the mid 1980s, we are extremely successful in aiding clients in the preparation of culturally sensitive NAGPRA Summaries and Inventories. Every client utilizes our services in a slightly different way. Some of the many services we provided to clients are: . Assess collections to determine which tribes should receive summaries and invitations to consult on cultural affiliation for development of Inventories – Write letters to tribes using our tribal contact database, which is constantly updated with current contact information for tribal leaders and NAGPRA reps, as well as consultation style preferences – Initiate Summary consultation after initial correspondence – Facilitate NAGPRA consultation conferences
Strategic Planning
We help clients assess what needs to be done to comply with NAGPRA, how long it will take, and develop a chronology. We then break it down into manageable projects that could be funded by grants for museum clients. We provide clients with a written plan that can be used to track progress.
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“So it’s all about getting federal grants,” I asked.
He smiled and sipped his wine. “It’s always about money, and that’s why there’s a need for Forensic Anthropologists.”
Then our conversation over the rest of the wine migrated to the Kennewick Man, which I found a nice back story below.
__________________________________________ Source World of Forensic Science The remains of an ancient human found along a river in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996 set off a heated debate about the ownership and future of the skeleton. Scientists argued that the skeleton, dubbed Kennewick Man, could provide new information about human migration in North America, while Native Americans claimed him as an ancestor and wanted to bury him according to their rites. Forensic anthropological findings and cultural evidence were presented in court procedures over the course of nine years while the fate of the Kennewick Man was debated.
The story of Kennewick Man began in July 1996, when two college students watching hydroplane races found a human skeleton along the Columbia River. The young men turned the remains over to local police, who realized that they were probably very old. The bones were then given to forensic anthropologist James Chatters for evaluation. Chatters reconstructed the skeleton, which was 80–90% complete. He determined that it was from a man who was probably five feet nine or 10 inches and about 40–50 years old when he died. He showed little evidence of arthritis, indicating that he wasn’t used to carrying heavy weights and that he might have been a wandering hunter. Dental examinations showed that the skull contained 30 of the 32 teeth and that they were in good shape, indicating that he probably had a diet that included lots of soft foods like meat. He was taller and thinner than most ancient Native Americans and the back of his skull was not flattened from a cradleboard as is commonly observed in skeletons of ancient Native Americans. In addition, the man had a stone spear point lodged in his pelvis and there was evidence of severe trauma to his rib cage that probably limited the use of his arm. Using computerized tomography (CT), Chatters determined that the spear point was serrated and leaf-shaped and typical of the types of spears used between 8500–4500 years ago. He hypothesized that the skeleton was either from a European pioneer who had been attacked by native people using stone-age weapons or from an ancient human. Chatters sent pieces of the bones to a laboratory for carbon dating, which determined that the age of the skeleton was between 9,200–9,400 years old, making the skeleton one of the oldest, and most complete, ever found in North America. Once the age of the skeleton was determined, several groups came forward, vying for control of the remains. A group of five Native American tribes in the region, the Umatilla, the Yakama, the Nez Perce, the Wanapum, and the Colville, wanted to accord the remains the same rites given to any Native American, namely a speedy burial. They cited the legal authority of the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGRA), which requires the return of American Indian remains to tribes. As news of the unique find spread throughout the scientific community, a coalition of eight anthropologists and archaeologists petitioned for their right to study the ancient remains prior to burial. The scientists believed that study of the Kennewick Man could reveal important information about early human migrations into North America. The Native American group believed that any manipulation of the remains would show enormous disrespect to the dead and vehemently opposed scientific investigation of the skeleton, which they called the Ancient One. Because some of the features of the Kennewick Man, such as his height and the shape of his skull, indicated that he might not be of Native American ancestry but rather of European descent, a group of people representing the ancient Norse religion called Asatru also petitioned the court for the right to the remains.
The ensuing legal battle raged for more than nine years. One of the key questions of debate in the courts concerned whether or not the skeleton was subject to NAGRA. NAGRA requires that all Native American remains be returned to the tribe for burial, however it was unclear if the Kennewick man was of Native American ancestry. Eventually the court ruled that some scientific study was required in order to establish the origin of the skeleton and between 1998 and 2000, the Department of the Interior coordinated these studies. A 1999 physical examination of the bones established that the Kennewick Man shared most physical characteristics with people from Southern Asia. In April 2000, samples of bone from the Kennewick Man’s skeleton were removed and sent to two different laboratories for DNA testing. Because of the age of the bones, it was impossible to extract sufficient DNA for analysis and the results of the study were inconclusive. After a series of appeals by all sides, in February 2004, a U.S. Federal judge ruled that it was impossible to prove that the Kennewick Man’s ancestry was culturally affiliated to any of the Native American tribes in the region and gave scientists the right to go forward with their investigation. In 2005, plans were outlined for study three-phase study involving as many as 23 different scientists.
The dinner was over and it was time to go home. The impact of this NAGPRA has seriously hampered science by bringing politics into the whole business and allowed ourselves to be hampered by sensitivity. America had allowed our guilt over pushing the Native American’s westward to cripple us the same way we currently do over slavery, neither of which we can do anything about now. All we can do is learn from those experiences, which is what science is all about.
Instead of learning and expanding our worldly knowledge, we’re wasting time appeasing political factions, getting grants so we can move some bones around the country and argue over bones that pre-date our known understanding of history, which is shallow at best.
But that is the nature of politics. It’s equivalent to living life in a straight jacket. All I can do is shake my head at the invention of yet another useless government created position, a Forensic Anthropologist that spends less time digging and understanding the past, and more time filling out papers to qualify for federal grants.
Since I began this web log, a lot has changed. The intent was to provide some conservative views to combat the numerous liberal sites that are out there. One thing the left is good at is selling their position. Conservatives tend to trust the law and keep themselves out of some of the crazy rhetoric that one must engage in to combat the radicalism of the left’s strategy. Conservatives have great ideas, and often have history on their side. They just need to become better at selling it, and have lost over the last two decades terribly to the radical left at communicating ideas.
There have been great strides at the top-level of communication, to sell logic and traditional principles. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and many others have emerged to fill the market void that exists due to many Americans that lean-to the right. Only a small percentage lean left, yet it is the left, because they are more aggressive that is shaping the world in a way the majority of Americans don’t want. But those top names can’t due it on their own. The left has managed to be very successful at having their own big names at the top, people like Michael Moore, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Keith Obermann, and James Carvel do their work, but they also have active grass-roots to carry the baton MoveOn.org and the Huffington Post along with many, many others to lead an active online campaign that occurs daily and fills millions of email boxes with a leftist spin that partially inquiring minds have difficulty combating.
Radio like what Doc Thompson does locally on WLW is particularly powerful, and while those sounds broadcast over 50,000 watts to hundreds of thousands of ears, people often forget what they heard just a few hours later. It is my intent to capture some of those moments so people can return to them later and listen at their convenience. Stations like WLW makes it available for complete podcasts of these programs, but I seek to make it easier for people to filter out the important moments, so I am going to the trouble to provide some professional editorial help for the convenience of the curious listener. One such example is the below section of Doc’s show from January 10, 2011, the first time he was on the air after the Arizona Shooting.
There are other conservative blog sites out there. I particularly like American Thinker, and The Blaze.com. But, I have found that I have some abilities that are particularly beneficial to the blog medium, experience in video, editorial training, and the ability to write thousands of fresh words each day that is pertinent to current events and complimentary to the other work within the conservative movement. I also understand the value of entertainment, and live a colorful life that people find inspiring. It is a pleasure to share that with people to use in their own lives. In other words, not all conservatives are suit-and-tie men and work in the law profession. So I have a unique position to speak from and I’ve found that people enjoy it because it loosens up the seriousness of some of the topics.
Currently I’m drooling over my copy of Colonel Roosevelt, the new book just released by Edmund Morris and given to me by my youngest daughter for Christmas. I had some things to finish up before being able to jump into that book. Roosevelt back then read a voracious amount, and I share with him a childlike curiosity for everything. I adored the previous two books on Roosevelt by Morris called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Theodore Rex so I understand his ravenous appetite for fun and knowledge that only children seem able to combine. I have often wondered what a man like that would be like in today’s culture where a person can read on a digital pad, write on a keyboard as fast as his mind can produce the information, and be exposed to thousands of various media in television, radio, and the internet.
I can imagine because in my own life I often write while walking, read whenever I’m sitting, and if I get pinned down in my living room I watch two televisions at the same time while scanning the internet on a lap top, and playing Xbox. My wife has gotten used to my multimedia abilities even though she is accustomed to reading 12 to 16 hours per day in the same spot without any noise, which is how she prefers it. She often cringes when I come home and “power up” plugging myself into the world. She prefers to turn off the world so she can see it clearly. But as for personalities I can relate to, Roosevelt is one of them. He was a Republican. He was a lot more power-hungry than I am, but his adventurous nature and insatiable appetite for knowledge I share with him. I was very disappointed to hear Glenn Beck proclaim that Roosevelt was the creator of the Progressive Movement, which anyone who has read my stuff here knows I despise. But those events had not yet been explored in Theodore Rex, and would not be revealed until this Colonel Roosevelt volume. I am hungry to see how those events transpired.
Glenn Beck I think feels the same as me about Roosevelt, because Beck himself appears to be a similar personality, always plugged in and learning and doing it with a childlike curiosity. And he knows that the creation of the Progressive Party, which Roosevelt ran against the Republican Party, ushered in Woodrow Wilson.
I don’t personally know Beck. I’ve only been around him, so I can only make assessments about him based on the work he does, which is the volumes of books he reads, he is writing about three books a year, does three hours of radio, one hour of television and still values time with his family. Roosevelt did much the same, while President he wrote books, read many more, and still had time for all his interests. And I’ve been getting the same type of comments, “how do you have time to write all this.” And, “how do you scan all those videos, and listen to all that radio content, and read too. Is your wife lonely? What do you do for a living?”
All I can really say is that it has something to do with never really growing up. If more people took into their adulthood the energy of their childhoods, they’d find they can do a lot more with their lives. And they’d be less prone to chemical abuse such as smoking, over-eating, and drinking. An active mind is a happy mind, and that is what will be finding its way to this web log.
What makes me happy is sharing with people who things can be different. WordPress sent me the December numbers and seemed shocked that there were over 10,000 readers of my articles, which WordPress seemed to be very impressed with. And in just one business quarter I can see that many, many people want to help with the Lakota School Levy next time, which will make it a lot easier on me and the other people who worked hard on that campaign. Back in August you couldn’t find anyone wanting to even stick their name next to a controversial idea like saying no to the levy. And people are reading the stuff that is more libertarian and those articles are getting passed from email to email and is having an effect, even if it is only encouraging people to get involved in their local Tea Party, or the 9/12 Project and any of the movements emerging. It is a useful service to offer, which is to provide a place for people to meditate on some of these ideas at their leisure.
After putting topics on this web log, such as the pay rate of the teachers at Lakota, and the governor pay rates, and the amount of people that did not go to college, but are successful anyway, it has allowed people to openly question sacred cows that have simply been glazed over in the past, and I feel very privileged to have been able to provide that.
For the third No Lakota Campaign, there is now a line of people that want to be a part of the campaign. People heard me on the radio, and read what I wrote, and they saw that the levy failed, and now they are drooling to be a part of the next victory campaign, and not just at Lakota. There are districts all over Ohio that feel empowered to act. And that is much to my delight. A group called Educate Ohio is emerging from some of those curious minds, and that is something which brings me great delight.
I feel I can inspire more people to action the way I have been doing, which ultimately puts more troops on the battlefield. I avoid long drawn out meetings like the School Board Meetings at Lakota because they are very inefficient meetings. I tend to rely on “eyes and ears” for the important stuff. I attend when absolutely needed, which is something I’ve learned to do in management work. What’s coming is something that people who see clearly need to be free to articulate. So I will keep myself free of peril with tenacious equanimity. I welcome those who want to help and ad their names to the great fight to jump on board and help anyway possible. For it is the dream of all artists that their work inspires some didactic reaction to move beyond ones previous limits, and it gives me great pleasure to see that happening as a result of the work done at this site. Such a reaction is more important to me than money, fame, or any form of orthodox social acceptance. There is room for everyone that wants to cast an arrow on behalf of truth, justice, and the American Way!
I am extremely pleased to learn that my nephew, who is 6, just received his first toy Millennium Falcon for Christmas.
It’s great for young people, but it’s good for adults too. When you have an imagination without limits, there are few playgrounds for the mind than what you can find in Star Wars. As far as my personal thoughts and philosophy, the clip of Mace Windu below, reflects most accurately my essential foundations.
The politics in Star Wars is sophisticated and worth watching just for the interesting problems that are addressed. But the combat is always entertaining and visually pleasing to look at.
Here is a scene from one of my favorite Star Wars games. This is EPIC!
This TV show is keeping Star Wars alive for a whole new generation. GREAT STUFF!
A lot of people are asking me to run for office. Others are asking me to join their company to help them get their finances in line. But to be honest, I am thinking of retiring when this game comes out. My wife and I are planning to play this together for thousands and thousands of hours!
Star Wars is a great escape when you need it. But its themes are more valuable than just escape, and to me, this scene is the greatest scene of any movie in the history of film.
While it may seem like a lot of information to follow, the topics I have covered on this site, it really is only complicated in relation to other adults that have allowed their minds to be clouded with routine, golf games, shopping and other unnecessary burdens. Star Wars is something my entire family enjoys together, and places our minds on subjects much larger than the silly grip of power that a local trustee or city council member pursues. And because I value the fictional world of Star Wars more than the communist musings of the modern world looking for just an “average” existence that ends in some eventless death, it is easy to see the error many of these small minded politicians pursue. I would rather spend a minute with a deep seated Star Wars nerd than a whole afternoon with a powerful politician, if that tells you anything. Because the Star Wars nerd is spending their time thinking big, where the politician is on the silly little aspects of human achievement that a developing species, in their infantile beginnings, is limited to.
