Today, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill that would allow Arizona police to search homes and cars without warrant.

NPR gives the analysis:

An easier question, in his mind, is whether the law will lead to constitutional violations, such as unlawful searches and seizures or discrimination based on protected characteristics such as race or ethnicity… …The law requires noncitizens in Arizona to carry their immigration paperwork with them at all times. That clearly would be an example of the state intruding into exclusively federal domains of enforcement and regulation, Tumlin argues, and will inevitably lead to racial profiling.

Newsweek asks the question, “Now That the Arizona Immigration Bill is Law, What Next“.  They look at the specific effects of the bill on Arizona citizens and economic problems on the state.

One thing overlooked was the political implications set upon the GOP because of this bill.  Jan Brewer is NOT up for reelection, but has definitely solidified her place in the GOP, whether she’s intended to or not.  She’s also solidified even fewer votes from the Hispanic caucus in Arizona. More than 30% of Arizona is Hispanic.  If the Hispanic population wasn’t with the Dem’s, they are now.

Brewer promised the use of racial profiling wouldn’t be used inappropriately, but doubts spew from the left, as they should be.

There’s already reports of challenges and I would expect that the law may not see real daylight.

Here’s the video of Brewer signing the bill:

The fight isn’t over yet and mud-slinging lies aren’t over yet.  Palin has been awarded the “Lie of the Year” and is standing by it.  The GOP has been calling for the DEATH of Democratic Senator Robert Byrd.

Now the GOP is ready to block the House/Senate negotiations.  The attacks are mind-boggling and ridiculous.

They are un-educated and stupid for not educating themselves.  Let them wallow in their filth and liberal WILL succeed in 2010 & 2012.

It’s tough to please the masses when media outlets and astro-tuff sedition groups denounce the president as a fool with his head in the air.  Some of these groups have already declared victory in 2010 for the GOP and a 50/50 split for the 2012 election.

It will be a near impossible victory for Obama if he doesn’t start living up to his promises.  The hope of a 2009 Public Option Health Care Bill is still being decided in the Senate and there’s rumors of a 2010 Immigration Reform Bill.  Only time will tell…

Beyond the initial shock and awe of being a first year teacher, I feel like I’ve taken a big, giant step in my life when it comes to understanding how the real world works.  Specifically, I speak of the bureaucracy that exists in the education sector.

I work in a very poor district, in virtually every way. Mapleton Public Schools is the smallest district in the Denver-Metro area. The building that I work in is the same building my mother went to junior high at in 1968.  I student-taught at a different school in the district and we had no books.  None.  The teacher that I was working with made copies of books, information, periodicals, and articles for about 120 students, each day.  Also, and quite possibly most importantly, our district and the constituency that makes up the population of it, has not passed a bond in 17 years.

In the spring of this last school year (2008-2009), our superintendent had a district wide meeting and presented us with a slide-show with information about how our district compares to others in the Denver Metro area.  If you click on the image to the left, you can see that compared to every other district, we spend the least amount of money on students that any other district.  Keeping in mind that last year was my first year, I was shocked.  Other teachers around me, were not.

Money

The lack of support from the community is evident by the lack of funding.  Our district is made up of the elderly and immigrants (legal or illegal).  There’s no real reason why they would want to pass a bond or mill levy.  To add to the problem, part of the district is unincorporated into any city.  This means very low income tax, property tax, and sales tax.   This leads to businesses that desperately want to  keep the status-quo.  In November of 2008, the district put forth a bond and mill levy that the school district needed badly.  This bond would raise property tax and the mill levy would raise sales tax.   I live in the district and I would be taxed, just like everyone else.  I calculated the amount of money it would be, monthly, that I would be paying: $11 a month.  That’s as much as a movie ticket to our local theater.

The local businesses absolutely defied all efforts for the bond and mill levy to pass.  They protested on the street, they informed their customers of the tax hike, and they talked of corruption in the administration, a very serious accusation.  The bond and mill levy failed to pass by a margin of 12-15%.  To the lead up of the election, it turns out that people who are closely linked to the bigger local businesses, had been illegally taking down signs put out by the school district and had been stealing campaign information and materials.  This information had been made public two weeks prior to the election.  It was too late.

This year, they will try again to pass the bond and mill levy for the eighteenth year in a row.  With the economy down for a year now, our superintendent planned last year to have a furlough this year.  This would be a week long break that would save on buses, power, heating, and water.  I don’t remember the exact amount of money it saves, but it saves all certified teachers from loosing their jobs.  The timing of the furlough, I’m hoping, will be in the middle of October, a month prior to the November elections.  This would mean that students would be running around for a week due to lack of funds and hopefully people would see this and hopefully vote for the bond.

Reform

My dealings with the bureaucratic side of education has been limited and brief.  For my first year, I was not considered full-time but I did receive benefits in a limited manner.  I did not join the district union because I did not have the funds to do so.  I plan on joining this year, once I receive my first paycheck as a full-time teacher.

When considering the inner workings of the education system and reform on a national/federal level, the obvious road blocks pop up and most subscribe to the theory that as failure.  No Child Left Behind has left behind many critics.  President Bush’s efforts shouldn’t be thrown out, though.  With NCLB, the accomplishments of accountability are evident and are based off of evidence.  So very, very few industries, understand the value of a standards based hierarchy.  There’s a level that must be reached or taught, one must achieve those standards, and then an evaluation of those standards are to be given to the constituency of that system.  This is the THEORY of the current model.  The PRACTICE is much different though.

I don’t choose to lament on the problems of NCLB, but it must be said that the aren’t academic in the sense of creating effective teachers.  I think some, if not all, of my colleagues would agree that the problems lie with in the teacher expectations and the translations of state testing.  This being my first year, I am unaware of other states and how they identify scores.  But it’s useless to talk about the state of education if you don’t actually look forward.   Change, cultural or political, for our nation starts with our education system.  I’m sure we’re aware of the scores of developing nations and the business that flourishes from them.  This is undeniable.

In thinking of education reform,  I think politicians need to understand that the motive is not FORM, but RE-form.  This, to many teachers, means using resources that exist and are in current use.  I am a teacher with a great deal of training.  I spent two years at a community college deciding what I wanted to do, chose the career path of a youth pastor, spent a year at a university for that, then changed to secondary education.  This was after my third year of post-secondary education and added three more years.  Essentially, I spent four years in a youth focused programs.  I am one of the few who don’t have a masters degree in my building, let alone the whole district.  Education IS an industry that is in high demand.  Teachers desperately seek jobs each summer and teachers work very hard to stay competitive in their current positions.

There is a dirty assumption that even our president has with our current education system:

We will recruit an army of new teachers and develop innovative ways to reward teachers who are doing a great job, and we will reform No Child Left Behind so that we are supporting schools that need improvement, rather than punishing them.

This assumption is that a new army of teachers is needed in the first place.  I can speak for myself and the school I work in and, no, we do not need an army of new teachers.  I don’t think there’s any harm in replacing those who do not do their jobs, but identifying this will/has become a laborious task with MANY different variables to take into account (I’m speaking of replacing teachers in an academic sense). I am happy to see that they would reward teachers for doing a great job, but what is a great job? How is that defined?  Obviously, supporting schools that need improvement is a must.  No one would agree there (unless you’re part of the last administration in the White House).

As my last note on reform, I will say that the quote above was taken directly from the Obama web site and is part of a four paragraph statement on the goals and objectives of education reform.  I feel as though that education reform will come, but not in the next four years.

Meat consumption in the U.S. is out of control. The modern balanced diet is hardly balanced at all. According to the author of The Case for Vegetarianism, John Lawrence Hill, the average American will consume 11 cattle, 1 calf, 3 lambs and sheep, 23 hogs, 45 turkeys, 1,100 chicken and 862 pounds of fish, for a total of about two hundred pounds of meat per year and over seven tons of meat in a lifetime. This, obviously, can create problems, given that the population of the U.S. is around 307 million people.

Unfortunately, such an incredible demand for meat has had a disastrous effect on the earth and it is paying the price for our desire to consume animals. According to Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO Livestock and Information and Policy Branch, ”Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy this situation.”  Raising livestock adds to greenhouse gases, destroys land, and consumes resources. A United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report found that livestock contribute to greenhouse gases even more than automobiles. It also found that livestock now use more than 30 percent of the earth’s entire land surface. This includes 70 percent of previous forests in the Amazon that have been converted into land for cattle to graze. Hill writes that 80 percent of Costa Rica’s tropical rain forest has been removed over the last twenty years and in Mexico 37 million acres are now used to raise cattle. Along with the problem of deforestation come soil erosion, overgrazing, and the relocation of both indigenous people and animals. Sadly, the future looks bleak. The world consumes far more animal products than it did 40 years ago and consumption is estimated to more than double by 2050 to 465 million tons a year.

As mentioned earlier livestock, especially cattle exhaust a tremendous amount of resources, with water topping the list. In his book, Hill writes that 2,500 gallons of water are required to produce a single pound of beef and that livestock production uses eighty percent of our nation’s water supply. This does not include the amount of water polluted as a result of pesticides, herbicides, hormones, antibiotics, and other harmful chemicals.

Yet another issue stemming from an increasingly high demand for meat production is that of world hunger. Hill writes that, “In the United States, over 70 percent of the grain produced is fed to cattle and various other livestock. Worldwide about a third of all grain is similarly disposed of.” Ultimately, everything goes back to land. Land is needed to raise the crops that feed the livestock that occupy more land. According to Jeremy Rifkin, “a third of the world’s grain harvest is now being fed to cattle and other livestock while nearly a billion human beings go to bed malnourished.” As land continues to become more scarce, it truly makes sense to use available land to grow food for people, not animals.

Some say that a vegetarian diet is unnatural and unhealthy, but evidence suggests otherwise. Numerous links have been made between eating meat and an increased risk of heart disease and cancer. Studies show that a diet that is free of meat not only reduces the risk of many diseases but, in some cases, actually restore a person’s health by strengthening the immune system, lowering cholesterol and increasing blood circulation. Putting twenty-eight patients with heart disease on a vegetarian diet, Dr. Dean Ornish found that the coronary disease was reversed in 82 percent of the patients. These results aren’t to be taken lightly considering that heart disease is the #1 killer in the U.S. Rashmi Sinha, who led a study recently published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, said,” The bottom line is we found an association between red meat and processed meat and an increased risk of mortality.” Not only does meat itself pose a serious health risk but so do the chemicals found within it. The FDA has reported that as many as six hundred chemicals may be in the nation’s meat supply. These chemicals range from antibiotics and sulfa drugs to pesticides and drugs that are known to cause cancer.

A common misconception is that most vegetarians suffer from a lack of protein. According to Hill the opposite is actually true. A vegetarian will actually receive the proper amount of protein, while meat-eating Americans generally consume two and a half times the protein their bodies require. This excess protein would not be an issue if the body simply expelled it. Unfortunately, a link has been found between excess protein and osteoporosis.

Why should anyone blindly accept any tradition? Especially when that tradition affects their own wellbeing and the wellbeing of others? It does not make sense to do something purely because it’s what past generations have done. The repetition can only bring destruction. It is far more important to seek out the truth, however hidden it may be and follow the convictions that truth creates with us.

On Friday, May 22, 2009, a conservative talk show host (self-proclaimed Libertarian) took the challenge and was water-boarded for 6 seconds.  Here’s the video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The conclusion that Mr. Mancow comes to is one that the ENTIRE Republican party is/will be coming to:

“It is way worse than I thought it would be…I don’t want to say this. I do not want to say this. Absolutely torture. That’s drowning.”

The Republican party is in dismay over efficacy of water-boarding and Bush Administration torture.  How can/should they defend the undeniable truth of the matter?  The effects of Mancow’s experiment are deep and painful for any Republican, right now.  Torture, which is what our government has classified water-boarding, is a train wreck for the the GOP, in which they can’t turn their eyes away.  It’s an awful scene.

But the damage has been done and the overall lack of remorse by those who approve and initiated the process are down in the polls.  It’s a sad situation for the GOP and it doesn’t look like it will be improving, any time soon.

Resources

http://wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=1323491

It has come to this contributor’s (also a high school history teacher) attention that some of our representatives need a history lesson.  Luckily, the lesson was provided by another media source, CNN.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The lack of insight should shame her into hiding. More than anything, though, she lacks the understanding of the power that bloggers hold and the scrutiny that they put our government under.  This is not the first time she has mistakenly taken history into her own hands, nor does this contributor think it will be the last. (source)

The Utopian Politico is not a rhetorically reactive and passive blog.  We pride ourselves on our active voice and have only responded to this story due to evidence in folly and the need to be one of  the many voices on the internet to disavow the undereducated representation that is so clearly evident.

To futher the education of Michelle Bachmann, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has built a website — www.bachmannwatch.com — devoted entirely to Bachmann’s rhetoric. (source)