Pioneer Press Release: STUDY ESTIMATES COST OF NATIONAL EDUCATION STANDARDS AT $16 BILLION Recently, Pioneer released The Road to a National Curriculum, raising questions about the legality of the Obama Administration's push for states to adopt Common Core national education standards and assessments. This week, we follow up with new research, National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards, that estimates the transition to national education standards will cost the 45 states plus the District of Columbia that have adopted them nearly $16 billion.
"The nearly $16 billion in additional costs is nearly four times the federal government's Race to the Top grant awards," said Pioneer Institute Executive Director Jim Stergios. "With state and local taxpayers footing 90 percent of the bill for K-12 public education, the federal government's push to get states to adopt national standards and tests amounts to one big unfunded mandate."
Click here to read the press release and here to read the report.
Check out the Boston Herald's piece today on "the Trial Court's 9% Pay Hike." Our Steve Poftak was quoted: "It doesn't surprise me that payroll's going up. I do think it's problematic that we've built this perpetual motion machine that continues to load costs onto a budget where resources are very scarce."
Make Jim Stergios' Rock the Schoolhouse Blog on Boston.com a regular stop for the some of the best education policy commentary in the country:
http://boston.com/community/bl... In today's post, he disabuses Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his fellow educrats of the dangerous and misguided notion that they can "turn around" schools and districts from central offices. http://boston.com/community/bl...
Enter Pioneer's 2012 Better Government Competition for your chance to win $10,000! We want your ideas for this year's theme - federal programs that can be devolved to the states across the following policy areas: Education, Healthcare, Regulations, Urban Redevelopment, Transportation, Interstate Commerce, Banking and Finance, and any others you can think of.
Click here to learn more about the contest and three easy ways to enter!
Please join us at these upcoming events featuring national experts and advocates for school choice and digital learning!
› Removing the Barriers: Virtual Schools and State Regulations (March 1, 2012)
› No More Know-Nothing Laws: School Choice in Massachusetts (March 15, 2012)
http://www.pioneerinstitute.or...
Alex Zaroulis, spokeswoman for Gov. Deval Patrick, said the governor "has consistently kept executive-branch employment and compensation levels in check" and has eliminated 6,000 state jobs since the recession. Patrick has proposed slashing another 300 state jobs in next year's budget.
The problem is that the number quoted by the administration time and time again, just isn't true. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (http://data.bls.gov), the number of state workers has risen by 8,000 since December of 2006, the last month of the Mitt Romney administration. Since July of 2008 in the midst of the 2008 financial meltdown, the number of state workers has risen by 5,100 according to the bureau.
Saying that state government employment has dropped under the Deval Patrick administration is a fallacy. Unless of course the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment numbers are not to be believed.
Section I. Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthen, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that event he forcing him to support this or that teachers of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Section II. We the General Assembly of Virginia do enact that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
Section III. And though we well know that this Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies, constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
(Does Elizabeth Warren support Barack Obama's pick of Sub-Prime banker to co-chair his campaign? - promoted by Rob "EaBo Clipper" Eno)
As new allegations about Deval Patrick's role in Ameriquest, the sub-prime mortgage crisis and collapse of the economy surface, media types are saying it all doesn't really matter,no new news has come out of it. Well in fact there is new news the voters of the Commonwealth have not been apprised of. Even though most people know that underlying story that Deval Patrick made an unethical phone call on behalf of his sub-prime friends to Bob Rubin of Citigroup, they don't know that the subsequent purchase of ACC by Citigroup led to its downfall and the economic malaise we now face.
From 2004 to May of 2006 Deval Patrick was a member of the Board of Directors of ACC Capital Holdings the parent company of Ameriquest and Argent both sub-prime mortgage companies. Ameriquest on the retail side and Argent on the wholesale side. Patrick takes credit for the 2006 agreement by which Ameriquest, and Ameriquest only not Argent, agreed to stop retail predatory lending. Subsequent lawsuits show that this really didn't stop but only shifted from Ameriquest to Argent at ACC. That still doesn't rise to something that Deval Patrick did while in public office. The infamous phone call on February 20, 2007 does however.
On February 20, 2007 Adam Bass, the chief counsel of ACC Capital Holdings and nephew of Ronald Arnall the founder and Chairman of the Board of ACC, called newly sworn in Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. The purpose of Bass' call was to ask Deval Patrick to act as a reference or character witness for ACC to Citigroup's Robert Rubin. Rubin and Patrick both served together at high levels of the Clinton Administration. Citigroup was in negotiations to purchase ACC Capital at that time, but the immediate need for ACC was an infusion of cash.
This story may well have slipped under your radar, but if you plan to vote in the U.S.Senate race in Massachusetts later this year and you care about Massachusetts' history and the unique attributes of its economy, you should take heed: Senator Scott Brown is currently engaged in the most effective direct constituent advocacy we are likely to see this year, on behalf of a struggling Massachusetts industry that desperately needs an effective champion in Washington.
The top-line story is pretty straightforward. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is responsible for (among many other things) regulating the fishing industry. One of the myriad ways in which NOAA discharges that duty is by levying fines on fishermen who violate regulations. And employees of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a division of NOAA, were just caught rigging the federal procurement process to use some of the proceeds of those fines to purchase a pleasure yacht, which was then used to host booze cruises. Here's the Seattle Times:
Federal fish cops in Seattle bought a $300,000 luxury boat to spy on whale-watching tours - but didn't go through an appropriate bidding process, held barbecues onboard, ferried friends and family across Puget Sound to restaurants and resorts, and used the boat for what one visitor called "a pleasure cruise."
When confronted, one federal employee in Seattle misled inspectors about how the vessel was used, and one interfered with federal investigators, according to an internal investigation by the Commerce Department. Those documents were released Friday by U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass.
At issue is a 35-foot, 14-passenger boat purchased by federal agents with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) using money seized from fishermen who violated the law.
Leave aside the ludicrous intended use of the vessel (spying on whale-watching tours??). In fact, the boat was used primarily to ferry NMFS officials and their spouses to seaside dinner locations along the coast of Washington.
So why is this getting any attention? Because Scott Brown is making a pretty loud fuss about it... READ THE REST at CriticalMASS
This past Saturday, I was in studio with Tom Duggan, the publisher of the Valley Patriot, for his Paying Attention Radio show on WCAP. Click on hour 2 below to hear it.
After a long wait, SoapBlox has finally updated the software to allow social media widgets. You'll see them at the bottom of every post now. If you like something, with one click you can tell everybody on Facebook.
Welcome to 2008.
Ed Lyons, that last piece was snark on my part so you didn't have to do it.
Many speak about a broken Washington, DC, that cries for new leadership. The CLASS Act is living proof of the problems that plague Washington, and why it is time for change in Congress.
The CLASS Act ("Community Living Assistance Services and Supports") was passed as part of ObamaCare and hailed as a long term care insurance program that would help seniors maintain independence at home and avoid nursing home placement.
At the time, Congressional leaders promised that every senior in the nation would be eligible for this new government run program and that this new benefit would be financed solely by enrollee premiums without federal subsidy. Seniors would pay premiums for 5 years before receiving benefits of up to $50/day to pay for homemaker and other services. In addition, low income enrollees would pay a premium of only $5/month, and be subsidized by those paying full premiums.
If it sounded too good to be true, it was! Even before passed into law, Richard Foster, Chief Actuary of the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, reviewed CLASS for financial solvency.
One of the widely talked about rumors in Massachusetts State Politics is who is Ernie Boch III, the prolific diarist on Blue Mass Group. Many believe that he is a court officer of the General Court, aka the legislature. If so, this latest piece from David Frank of Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, may cause him and other Court Officers to pause.
It appears that a federal grand jury investigating the hiring and promotion practices of the state's Probation Department may have expanded its reach to court officers.
Multiple sources familiar with the investigation, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, say a grand jury acting under the direction of U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz has subpoenaed court officers to testify in the case.
"I'm told they are working from the bottom up," says one State House source. "But I have no doubt that it's expanded beyond probation."
The news comes at a time when prosecutors are expected to call former House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi to the grand jury.
The expanding probe may catch more people in its net. As State House News said last week it's "like a tell tale heart beating under the golden dome".
In case you haven't heard, the Scott Brown Campaign and MassVictory team collected over 20,000 signatures for the Brown reelection effort. This is a significant milestone and shows that Brown places a high priority on grassroots activism as a way to win an election.
In 2010, except for small pockets, the Republican Party and Charlie Baker campaign lost the focus on the grassroots, instead opting to run a campaign from 30,000 feet and on the airwaves. The Democratic Party and Deval Patrick instead focused on an impressive grassroots effort, which propelled not only Patrick, but surprisingly also Suzanne Bump to victory.
Scott Brown has always run grassroots centric campaigns, and this year looks to be no different. A strong grassroots effort by MassVictory, the GOTV arm of the state Republican Party will help all of our candidates, up and down the ballot.
The next phase of the campaign for 2012 begins today. It is time to start talking to your friends and neighbors about Scott Brown and all our candidates. If you want to help in that effort click here.
"1736 Women were raped in Massachusetts in 2008. Scott Brown wants hospitals to turn them all away." - John Walsh Approved Message in 2010 U.S. Senate Special Election.
John Walsh, the Chairman of the Democratic Party who presided over the loss of the Kennedy Seat, is once again making the mistakes which cost his candidate the 2010 special election. If you remember Walsh sent one of the most vile pieces of negative attack mail ever during that election. Widely panned by national groups but cheered by our friends over at Blue Mass Group the ad hurt Martha Coakley's chances.
Saturday evening Walsh showed he hasn't learned from his mistake tweeting that Scott Brown is for "harming women".
Exactly how is Scott Brown "harming women" Chairman Walsh? Is Scott Brown looking to outlaw birth control? Is Scott Brown looking to raise the cost of already low-cost birth control? Is he forcing women to be subjected to torture?
Chairman Walsh has not learned the lessons of the last campaign. In the progressive circles Walsh surrounds himself with his stance will be seen as "the truth", to the majority of voters in Massachusetts who are independent, or even conservative Democrats, Brown's stance will be seen for what it is. The protection of religious liberty.
In an election year, those of us involved in MA politics are expected to reach out to many different groups. We listen to various points of view, study local issues, and develop policy positions that, hopefully, benefit the largest number of citizens.
However, true to form, our State Senator is foregoing opportunities to improve the overall small business climate or zero in on ways to improve public education. Instead, he throwing yet another 'bone' to the local and State House environmental groups:
2) The fifteen words that ended a career. "Have more questions about your charges? Get details for all your Usage Charges at vzw.com/mybusinessaccount."
3) The second half of the recent Suffolk poll suggests that Deval is not Presidential material, Marsha is the fav to be the next Democratic candidate for Governor, and Murray is polling side by side with Setti. (see #2 above)
Last evening I took part in a video podcast using the Vokle platform with Jack Gately of JackGately.com. You may remember Jack as the creator of the Charlie Baker E-Trade spoofs.
In the half hour interview we talked about a lot of topics, including the recent row over the conscience clause. Enjoy the show.
Question: what do Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have in common? Aside from their alternating status as the un-Mitt du jour I mean.
Answer: Both served multiple terms in Congress, and neither left of his own volition. Newt was drummed out by his own caucus. Senator Santorum was tossed out by his constituents after two full terms, by a whopping margin (18 percent).
Any observer of American politics understands how powerful an advantage incumbency is in our elections. It is a rare thing for a sitting US Senator to be deposed by his constituents; rarer still for his ouster to be so emphatic (absent scandal, that is). The voters of Pennsylvania had twelve full years on which to base their decision in 2006, and their verdict was unambiguous. Out Senator Santorum went. Yes, 2006 was a bad year for Republicans. But it was a particularly bad year for Rick Santorum.
Another Answer: Both have had difficulty winning endorsements from Republicans who served with them in Congress. This phenomenon has been more conspicuous in Gingrich's case... READ THE REST at CriticalMASS
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, FEB. 17, 2012.....If you blinked, you missed it - that concupiscent sparkle in the eye of House Republican Leader Brad Jones, an almost flirtatious glimpse that cooed silently: "Sal DiMasi, will you be my Valentine?"
For Jones, the news that DiMasi, the former speaker of the House and current federal inmate, has been bopping around New England - in all likelihood to testify in a white-hot patronage investigation that could net his old Democratic friends and allies in the Legislature - was the icing on a red velvet cake served by a GOP that appeared to hit its election year stride midweek.
(photo credit: Representative Jay Barrows Facebook Wall)
It wasn't just the cacophonous rumble of potentially impending indictments - now the stuff of daily capitol rumor-mongering - beating like a telltale heart beneath the dome. It wasn't only the way Republicans seized on a seemingly disjointed legislative agenda to deliver a resounding pro-jobs message, and it wasn't only the way they lacerated Democrats for scoffing at annual spending caps - transforming an all-too-often placid House chamber into an old-school debating hall.
It was also the way Democrats handed them fodder that could make its way into mailers and YouTube videos for the next 263 days. Lt. Gov. Tim Murray's nonexistent cell phone records come to mind, as well as Gaming Commission Chairman Stephen Crosby's reception that happened to be held at a firm just hired by the Patrick administration to vet tribal gambling compacts come to mind.
In short, for the first time in a long time in deep-blue Massachusetts - in an election year that many feel will diminish a Republican legislative delegation at the height of its still-miniscule influence - it seemed like a decent week to be a Republican.
I went "paperless" on all my bills a long time ago. So, like Patrick Administration, I do not receive itemized cell phone bills.
But if I find myself needing to check out the particulars on my usage for any given month, day or hour - dating back to day 1 of my Verizon Wireless contract - all the specific info I could ever want is but a few mouse clicks away. Amazing, these internets.
For one reason or another, when they came into office the Patrick Administration decided to stop receiving itemized cell phone records for the dozens of Executive Office staffers who use state-issued smart phones. Why? "Efficiency." Here's a blurb from the State House News:
In letters responding to requests for information from the Boston Globe and Boston Herald, state Public Records Division Assistant Director Shawn Williams said that during a phone conversation last month Abim Thomas, deputy chief counsel in Gov. Deval Patrick's office, told him that the executive department does not receive detailed cell phone invoices, but does receive summarized invoices.
"Attorney Thomas explained that the Department formerly obtained detailed invoices, but changed this practice at the beginning of the Patrick Administration in January 2007," Williams wrote in a letter dated Thursday. "The Department now receives summary invoices that indicate usage information for each respective period, by user, but provide no detail as to incoming or outgoing calls."
Asked what spurred the 2007 change, Kimberly Haberlin, Gov. Patrick's press secretary, said in an email to the News Service, "Nearly fifty members of the Executive Office staff use a blackberry for work. Changing to summary invoices streamlined our billing process and helped achieve administrative efficiencies."
It is hard to argue with the Administration's reasoning. God knows, particularly when paying bills with taxpayer money nothing gets in the way of "efficiencies" quite like "details" and "information." Such things quite often result in other efficiency-busters, like "questions" or even "criticism." Best to just pay the bills and take it on faith that EO employees and electeds aren't using their state-issued phones to - oh, I don't know - talk to political operatives or make fundraising calls. If ignorance is bliss, intentional ignorance is ecstasy.
It is obvious that if the Administration (oft self-described as the most transparent in history) wished to reveal the particulars of LG Murray's cell phone usage, it could easily obtain the information... READ THE REST at CriticalMASS
As politicians like Elizabeth Warren and journalists like Margery Eagan raise their ire at religious Catholics and those defending their right to conscience like Scott Brown, I think it is important to remember Ted Kennedy's 2009 letter to Pope Benedict XVI:
Most Holy Father,
I asked President Obama to personally hand deliver this letter to you. As a man of deep faith himself, he understands how important my Roman Catholic faith is to me and I am so deeply grateful to him.
I hope this letter finds you in good health. I pray that you have all of God's blessings as you lead our church and inspire our world during challenging times.
I am writing with deep humility to ask that you pray for me as my own health declines. I was diagnosed with brain cancer over a year ago and although I am undergoing treatment, the disease is taking its toll on me.
I am 77-years-old and preparing for the next passage of life.
I've been blessed to be part of a wonderful family and both my parents, specifically my mother, kept our Catholic faith at the center of our lives.
That gift of faith has sustained and nurtured and provided solace to me in the darkest hours. I know that i have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my past.
I want you to know, your Holiness, that in my 50 years of elected office I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I've worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I've opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a U.S. Senator.
I also want you to know that even though I am ill, I am committed to do everything I can to achieve access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life.
I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field and I'll continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national health policy that guarantees health care for everyone.
I've always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness. And though I have fallen short through human failings I've never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith.
I continue to pray for God's blessings on you and on our church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me.
-EMK
However grave as some of the disagreements we may have had with the late Senator Ted Kennedy, at least on paper, he defended Catholics and their church from assaults on our religious freedom and called for strong conscience clauses. If he were alive today, I suspect we might not be dealing with the uproar as we have seen over the past few weeks.
Once in American politics, faithful Roman Catholic politicians existed on both sides of the aisle and they would cross party lines on matters that deserved their support as faithful Christians. Today, the Democratic Party has become relentlessly and intolerably secular, with little room for people of faith. Senior Catholic "leaders" within the current federal government run the gamut from weak men like Joe Biden who cannot muster the fortitude and credibility to effectively fight for their fellow adherents, to Kathleen Sibelius, a clearly disgruntled Catholic trying to act out against her own church for perceived or real grievances. Our own situation in Massachusetts is not much better, with prominent Catholics like MassDem Chair John Walsh not even paying a fig leaf of respect to the idea of religious freedom.
Ted Kennedy, whether we Republicans like it or not, was a leader. Someone who would stand up when it was unpopular and fight for what he thought was right whether anyone had his back or not. On this issue we could have used his support.
Section I. Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthen, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; that event he forcing him to support this or that teachers of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honors and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment, and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
As politicians like Elizabeth Warren and journalists like Margery Eagan raise their ire at religious Catholics and those defending their right to conscience like Scott Brown, I think it is important to remember Ted Kennedy's 2009 letter to Pope Benedict XVI: 
