Indiana Withdrawing from Common Core Standards

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Photo Credit: abdulrahman.stockBy Associated Press.

Indiana is the first state to withdraw from the Common Core reading and math standards that were adopted by most states around the country.

Republican Gov. Mike Pence’s office says he signed a bill Monday pulling Indiana from the program. Legislators earlier approved the measure requiring the State Board of Education to draft new standards outlining what students should be learning in each grade rather than using the Common Core standards.

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Michelle Malkin flattens Jeb Bush’s assertion Common Core is ‘truth serum’

By Richard Berkow.

Speaking before 900 people at the annual Broward County Workshop breakfast Friday, former Governor Jeb Bush decried the controversy surrounding Common Core.

Let me tell you something,” he said. “In Asia today, they don’t care about children’s esteem. They care about math, whether they can read in English, whether they understand why science is important, whether they have the grit and determination to be successful,” the Sun-Sentinel reported.

He added that the standards are “benchmarked to the rest of the world…a truth serum for our communities to wake up and realize that we’ve languished far too long,” also berating the critics “who go nuts about it.”

What he did not mention, of course, was the integral role his brother Neil has in the financial success of the project, or the prominent role K Street lobbyists, Bill Gates, George Soros, high-placed Democratic strategists, and other left-wing plutocrats have played in promoting this one-size-fits-all brainwashing agenda, according to Dr. Alison Rampersad, Co-Chair of Eyes on U.S. Education.

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Cain: If ObamaCare Had Been In Place in 2006, I Would Be Dead

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Photo Credit: Cain TVBy Herman Cain.

Cancer centers opt out, including the one that saved my life.

I saw recently that several cancer centers in this country have decided to opt out of taking ObamaCare-insured patients. One of them is M.D. Anderson in Houston.

That hit home in a very personal way, because it made me realize something. If ObamaCare had been in place in 2006, I would now be dead. (Let’s see if Harry Reid, or Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, want to try to call me a liar for this.)

Eight years ago this month, I was diagnosed with cancer. The first opinion I received was not encouraging. Not at all. So I sought a second opinion. Fortunately, the nature of my insurance at the time was such that I had the freedom to choose who I would see, and I chose the outstanding Dr. Lloyd at Houston’s M.D. Anderson. He believed I could beat the cancer, and I then had the freedom to begin seeing an Atlanta-based oncologist who helped get me on the path back to health.

Today I am cancer-free.

Now let’s say I had been relying on an ObamaCare insurance policy, which would mandate that all my treatment take place within its own network. In that case, I would not have had the freedom to go to M.D. Anderson and I would never have seen Dr. Lloyd.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueObamacare’s Regulatory Costs More than Double Benefits

By Sarah Hurtubise.

The annual costs of Obamacare regulations come in at $6.8 billion a year so far — around 2.5 times the total benefits of its heavy-handed regulations, according to study released Monday.

The federal government’s estimates of Obamacare’s regulatory “benefits” — what they project in increased efficiency or productivity due to streamlined processes and standards — clock in at just $2.6 billion annually, as opposed to the cost of complying with all those regulations, which is almost $7 billion.

By 2014, when all but those delayed parts of the Affordable Care Act have been implemented, regulations have imposed over $27.2 billion in costs upon the private sector and $8 billion in unfunded state burdens, the report by free-market think tank American Action Forum (AAF) found.

A large portion of the costs come from the paperwork burden that Obamacare places upon states and private companies. Implementing the law takes 159 million paperwork hours a year for state governments and the private sector — an amount that would take close to 80,000 employees, working 50 weeks per year full-time. (That’s 40 hours per week, not Obamacare’s 30-hour work week threshold for full-time.)

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Teacher’s Resignation Letter After 25 Years Describes ‘Disturbing Era’ in Public Schools

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock By Liz Klimas.

Susan Sluyter has been a teacher for more than two decades. One can imagine that she’s seen and adjusted to her fair share of change within the educational system during her 25 years in the field, but the more recent shift in requirements was so dramatic that she resigned last month.

“In this disturbing era of testing and data collection in the public schools, I have seen my career transformed into a job that no longer fits my understanding of how children learn and what a teacher ought to do in the classroom to build a healthy, safe, developmentally appropriate environment for learning for each of our children,” Sluyter wrote in her resignation letter to the Cambridge Public School District in Massachusetts in February.

The kindergarten and pre-K teacher said she’s watched her job requirements “[swing] away from a focus on the children, their individual learning styles, emotional needs, and their individual families, interests and strengths to a focus on testing, assessing, and scoring young children, thereby ramping up the academic demands and pressures on them.”

As a teacher, requirements for Sluyter included attending classes and workshops that filled her in on new content for her students, which she wrote were like the academic demands for a first- or second-grade student. In addition, she wrote that she has needed to schedule more meetings to address the “extreme behaviors” of her students, which she believed were the result of them not being able to fully comprehend the content.

“I recognize many of these behaviors as children shouting out to the adults in their world, ‘I can’t do this! Look at me! Know me! Help me! See me!’ Sluyter’s resignation read.

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Common Core spawns widespread political fights

By Associated Press.

More than five years after U.S. governors began a bipartisan effort to set new standards in American schools, the Common Core initiative has morphed into a political tempest fueling division among Republicans.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce leads establishment voices — such as possible presidential contender Jeb Bush — who hail the standards as a way to improve student performance and, over the long term, competitiveness of American workers.

Many archconservatives — tea party heroes Rand Paul and Ted Cruz among them — decry the system as a top-down takeover of local schools. The standards were developed and are being implemented by states, though Common Core opponents argue that President Barack Obama’s administration has encouraged adoption of the standards by various parameters it set for states applying to get lucrative federal education grants.

Tea party-aligned officials and candidates want to delay the standards or abandon them altogether in at least a dozen of the 45 states that adopted some part of the guidelines. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Monday signed the first Common Core repeal to make it through a legislature.

“Common Core is like Obamacare: They passed it before they knew what was in it,” said William Evers, a Hoover Institute research fellow and lead author of a California Republican Party resolution denouncing Common Core.

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President Obama’s Overtime Pay Gambit

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Photo Credit: APIf you take an economics course, you may learn about the different events that can cause an increase in workers’ pay. The demand for the product a worker makes may rise, causing the demand for workers to go up. The supply of workers may decline, causing employers to bid up wages to keep the ones they have.

But there’s one event the textbooks don’t cover: The president of the United States gives you a raise. Many workers will get news to the effect that he has done just that. But it’s not as simple as it sounds.

President Obama thinks American companies are not paying their employees as much as they deserve. A White House fact sheet asserts that he intends to “make sure millions of workers are paid a fair wage for a hard day’s work.”

So he’s proposed an increase in the minimum wage, which Congress is not likely to approve. He’s also decided that more workers are entitled to time-and-a-half pay when they work overtime — a decision he can implement without legislation.

A 1938 law stipulates that hourly employees who put in more than 40 hours a week have to get a 50 percent premium for the additional hours. Under current rule, those making less than $455 a week are automatically covered, even if they are on salary. The president, however, plans to raise that threshold to expand the number of salaried workers who are guaranteed extra compensation.

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Shot, Bleeding, He Begged To Be Sent Back (+video)

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Photo Credit: WNDHe took the bullet meant for a police officer.

He’s been credited with saving at least one life and possibly many more.

But even with his jaw shattered, the bullet lodged in his chest and blood filling his lungs, he merely let out a whimper, then strained at his leash, begging to be sent back into to the action.

So explain the men in uniform who witnessed the heroic actions of Bruno, the senior K-9 officer of the Anaheim, Calif., police department in a confrontation with an armed gang member on March 19.

“Even as his handler raced him to the hospital,” an Anaheim police blog explains, “Bruno’s ears were up and he didn’t want to lie down.”

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ObamaCare: Choose Between Healthcare Or Food

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry Downing Sunday marks the fourth anniversary of Obamacare’s signing on March 23, 2010. Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said that at this point Democrats “have a really good story to tell.” But Americans outside of Washington, D.C. are also telling their own stories about the health care law.

To commemorate the anniversary, Republican Ohio Rep. Bob Gibbs this week asked people on his Facebook page to share how “this law has impacted your life.” A few of the answers to Gibbs’ question are presented below.

Please mark this anniversary by sharing your own stories about Obamacare impact in the Comments section. The president might not see them, and the mainstream media sure won’t report on them, but we will.

“My Premiums have gone up around 20% a year, my deductible has gone up by $6000 (not a typo). My wife had to change her doctor, I was unable to keep the plan I liked because my company didn’t want to pay a ‘luxury tax’. We’re still waiting to see if my children have to change pediatricians. Small businesses are being decimated in my area, in part because of this and in part because of the lack of a coherent economic policy. I had to have some tires put on a my car the other day and the mechanic was saying that things haven’t been this bad since 1981…you know, when President Carter had just completed his term and President Reagan took on that mess. We need that kind of leadership now.”

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GOP, Democrats Spar Over Obama’s Foreign Policy, Amid New Fears of Putin Takeovers

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Photo Credit: REUTERSTop Democrats and Republicans squared off Sunday over President Obama’s foreign policy, in the aftermath of Russia taking over part of Ukraine and amid new fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin is just getting started.

The deepening dispute between East and West is expected to dominate Obama’s visit to Europe, which begins Monday in the Netherlands. Obama will join world leaders at the Nuclear Security Summit and head a hastily arranged meeting of the Group of Seven – the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney delivered perhaps the most stinging criticism of Obama’s handling of the Ukraine crisis.

He accused Obama of being naïve about Putin’s world views and “lacking the judgment” and foresight to perhaps have stopped the Russian president from taking over Ukraine’s Crimea region before he even ordered troops across the border.

“There’s no question but that the president’s naiveté with regards to Russia, and his faulty judgment about Russia’s intentions and objectives, has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face,” Romney, also a former Massachusetts governor, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

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Transgender Teacher to Return to California Classroom as ‘True Self’

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Photo Credit: Kellie ParkerParents of students at a California high school are reacting to news that a long-time male high school science teacher is going to return after spring break as a woman.

The teacher, Gary Sconce, informed the Yosemite School District that he will be back in the classroom April 22 as his “true self,” a woman by the name of Karen Adell Scot, KFSN-TV reported Thursday.

“When you aren’t who you really are, it’s like being smothered. It’s like being rolled in a wave, if you’ve ever been rolled in a wave in the ocean where you can’t find your way up, you don’t know which direction you’ve been turned,” Scot told the station.

The 56-year-old husband, father and award-winning teacher came out to his family last April. Since then he has been undergoing hormone replacement therapy to transition to the person he says he is intended to be. He has been a teacher for 24 years

School district Superintendent James Sargent announced that Sconce was “in the midst of gender transition” in a March 19 letter to the parents of all 650 students at Yosemite High, the Fresno Bee reported.

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Wyoming Welder Faces $75,000 a Day in EPA Fines Over What He Built on His Own Property

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Photo Credit: Andy Johnson/FacebookAndy Johnson, a hardworking welder in Wyoming, and his wife put their “blood, sweat and tears” into building a stock pond on their 8-acre farm. They constructed it with their bare hands, filling it with brook and brown trout and even bringing in ducks and geese to float on the clear water.

However, Johnson’s dream of a pond quickly turned into a nightmare when the federal government stepped in and threatened him with civil and criminal penalties, including a potential $75,000-a-day fine.

In an interview with FoxNews.com, Johnson defiantly proclaimed: “I have not paid them a dime, nor will I.”

“I will go bankrupt if I have to fighting it. My wife and I built [the pond] together. We put our blood, sweat and tears into it. It was our dream,” he added.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims Johnson violated the Clean Water Act by “building a dam on a creek without a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers,” according to the FoxNews.com report. The federal agency also says material from his pond is leaking into other waterways.

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Louisiana Bans Use of Welfare Benefits for Tattoos, Lingerie, Jewelry

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Photo Credit: APLouisiana welfare recipients will be prohibited from spending the federal assistance at lingerie shops, tattoo parlors, nail salons and jewelry stores, under new limits enacted by state social services officials.

The Department of Children and Family Services announced the emergency regulations late Thursday. They cover the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program — commonly known as welfare benefits — and the Kinship Care Subsidy Program.

Both programs pay cash assistance to low-income families for items like food, clothing and housing.

DCFS Secretary Suzy Sonnier said the agency decided to ban the use of electronic benefit cards, which work as debit cards, at stores that don’t sell items that are considered basic needs for families.

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