A Real New Years Promise - A Longer Life Span

A very significant fact was released in December, 2014 by the highly regarded nonprofit Society of Actuaries on the new mortality estimates. It is showing the average 65-year-old U.S. woman is expected to live to 88.8 years, up from 86.4 in 2000. A 65-year-old U.S. Man is expected to live 86.6 years, up from 84.6 in 2000.

Looking ahead as a country, we viewed that our healthcare system has served us well up to 2015. The impressive proof of longer lifetimes are the good news, especially since most people are healthy in the bargain. However, it may be for some a Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil, if one's life is long yet ill-health plagues them until their dying day.

As it has been reported, ten thousand people a day are turning sixty-five years old and retiring under Medicare coverage. It is, however, the perfect storm as the impending danger of Medicare's financial collapse is due to the Obamacare Program debacle draining Medicare's operating funds transferred over to support it but also is driving up costs for Medicare patients seeking healthcare services. The Obama Presidential legacy is littered with all the trappings of failed big governmental meddling in the very fibers of our dynamic democracy. As his last term finally winds down, Obama still continues feverishly to further his progressive, socialist ruination of the nation. 

Obama is a statist who believes the state is greater than the sum of its parts and that individuals have a moral obligation to serve the state. His collectivist values are the embodiment of Barack Obama's core plan to destroy free markets and control free speech. It means the Federal government of the state controls, owns and distributes as it sees fit all of our private properties, personal civil rights as it dictates how and where we live too. The United States Constitution is not upheld or even followed closely as it is written either. [Go to our site "Search Box" at top right & Input "UN Agenda 21" or click on link here: UN Agenda 21 to see more about Obama's plans he has for us.]

There are more highly organized left-wing, socialist activists working out in the streets too. No doubt you2015 NYC New Year celebration revelers with protesters.'ve heard about and seen the New York City protests that were conducted during the 2015 New Years eve celebration.

A very revealing photo surfaced and was freely distributed around news outlets. In it, there were some protesters marching against the Grand Jury findings in the Ferguson, MO police officer involved shooting. It pictured a specific social profiling of participants as the majority of the protesters were all of the correct ethnicity, mostly Blacks, along with a few Whites to hold up the signs, all professionally printed letter-perfect too; and also they shouted out rhythmically their scripted programmed chants. Another interesting demographic was there weren't any older people in the picture and they all looked to be in their late teens into their twenties which are much more amenable age to agitate radicalization. So, it had all the outward signs of a very well organized, orchestrated, professionally run protest rally by agents of manufactured unrest. Can I back up my claims?--Read the next paragraph and you decide.

One last thing to mention is at the bottom of all of the signs was a dot com organization's name, REVCON.US, which seemed innocent enough until I clicked on it--and then when you do that, you will know the rest of the story too!

We have a new year ahead of us filled with 365 opportunities to defend our country's Constitutional liberties as well as others around the world. There are 190 countries in the world, so we cannot be the global police force due to our available resources, both human and financial assets. However, we must build an unwavering resolve to build our backbone of defense back up along with our strong voice for the defense of global democracy too. Our President's word must be the gold standard for truth and the guarantee of swift action when tendered. 

So the promise of your longer life need not be a deal with the devil, but it will be a devil of a problem as Barack Obama's many programs deliberately get into full swing like Obamacare after he leaves office. Remember that Obama today is vastly different than what he promised during his first presidential primary run as he was not going to nationalize everything but only “the commanding heights of the economy.” Everyone seemed blissfully unaware of the Marxian roots of that expression and that tactic. Apparently, it is getting harder to distinguish between classic Marxism and liberal thought.

So, Obama is in an ongoing process, like an administrative amoeba, constantly changing, growing, transforming himself--and us. We no longer have laws, we have mandates as all of the branches of the government have been collapsed into one, the all-powerful Presidential branch. Are we all doomed to this Faustian deal?--Only our next presidential elections will tell.

"Maybe I did well and maybe I led the battle but nobody ever said we were going to win this thing at any point in time. Eternal vigilance is required and there have to be people who step up to the plate, who believe in liberty, and who are willing to fight for it." -- Milton Friedman, PhD Economist, Nobel Laurette (1912-2006)

Simple as A,B,C - Like 1,2,3 - Obama Gets Grade of F

Program Student Minds

Obama's Federal Education Program is based upon Arne Duncan pushing the Common Core State Standards, CCSS, Academic standards - understand it - its your future.

"Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education can’t understand why Americans are demanding freedom from nationalized testing, nationalized standards and nationalized data collection. The Common Core State Standards. Academic standards are under attack as a federal takeover of the schools - parents want local controls back again.

In a speech on September 17, 2013 to the American Society of News Editors, Duncan admits: “… the federal government has nothing to do with curriculum. In fact, we’re prohibited by law from creating or mandating curricula. So do the reporting. Ask the Common Core critics: Please identify a single lesson plan that the federal government created…Challenge them to produce evidence—because they won’t find it. It simply doesn’t exist”.

Duncan says there is no evidence of a federal takeover using Common Core. Well, almost; there is no trace of an Department of Education fingerprint on the writing of the national standards, tests and curriculum. This it correct. But there are massive, unmistakable Department of Education fingerprints all over the promotion, marketing, funding and imposition of the standards on states. These fingerprints are everywhere.

Federally created lesson plans don’t exist because Duncan’s department has worked so hard to get around the rules (i.e., Constitution) and to make others do the wrongs that the Department then promotes and funds. The Department’s associates (i.e. Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University educator, who believes in forced national redistribution of wealth; Bill Gates, left-wing Microsoft Founder; David Coleman, lead "architect" of Common Core, liberal antagonist to narrative writing and is no fan of classic literature) work with Achieve, Inc., with SBAC, with PARCC, with CCSSO, with NGA and others, to collectively produce the federally-approved education “reform” agenda known as the Common Core Initiative. We know this."

Guess what? There is no evidence that Common Core will do anything it has claimed it can do does not exist– there’s no empirical data, no pilot test, no study to verify claims that the standards will improve diddledy."

The well-reknown and regarded American Association of School Administration, AASA, in their Journal of Scholarship & Practice Research states their purpose for an "Evidence-based Practice That Advance the Profession of Education Administration."  This Winter 2011 Journal contains their highly critical and detailed analysis of what Arne Duncan, the Obama "Education Czar", has developed to indoctrinate the entire American student population from elementary school through college with 'progressive, socialist, liberal studies'. 

This relatively daunting, dry looking report is actually a well written, brief overview about our 'exceptional country' and how well-placed deceptive ideas have been woven into our political landscape.  The mind grab for the people's intellect to think as they are taught is the end game today.  The education misinformation leads to misconceptions which are the hazards of attending classes in schools.  Powerful, left-wing, radical progressives like Billionaire Bill Gates, who heads up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are entrenched in the battle to replace the American school systems.

PLEASE READ - EDUCATE YOURSELF AGAINST EDUCATION

Read Time: 8 Minutes

Winter 2011

AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice

COMMENTARY

Christopher H. Tienken, Editor

AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

An Example of Data-less Decision Making

The major arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical literature: (a) America‘s children are lagging behind international peers in terms of academic achievement and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students out ranking their global peers on international tests of academic - Winter 2011 AASA Journal of  Scholarship and Practice achievement because of the mythical relationship between ranks on those tests and a country‘s economic competitiveness..

The persuasive, and to this point effective argument made by proponents combines the classic combination of fear and falsehoods. The Roman Poet Seneca wrote, “We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” and in this case Seneca was correct.

Unfortunately for proponents of this empirically vapid argument it is well established that a rank on an international test of academic skills and knowledge does not have the power to predict future economic competitiveness and is otherwise meaningless for a host of reasons.

·   However, fortunately for proponents it seems as if some policy makers, education leaders and those who prepare them, and the major education associations and organizations that penned their support for the CCSS did not read the evidence refuting the argument or they did not understand it.

The contention that a test result can influence the future economic prowess of a country like the United States (U.S.) or any of the G20 nations represents an unbelievable suspension of logic and evidence. (NOTE:  This is one of Obama's most often used "Scare Tactics" to push Americans into supporting federal government education.) 

According to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, China‘s undervaluation of its currency cost the U.S. almost 1 million jobs and over 200 billion dollars in lost economic growth and 1.5% of its  gross domestic product last year (The Washington Times, 2010). Economic strength of the G20 countries relies more on policy, than education achievement. Tax, trade, health, labor, finance, monetary, housing, and natural resource policies, to name a few, drive our economy, not how students rank on the Trends in International Math and Science Study  (TIMSS) or the Programme for International student Assessment (PISA). 

To believe otherwise is like believing in the tooth-fairy. The U.S. already has one of the highest percentages of people with high school diplomas and college degrees compared to any other country and we had the greatest number of 15 year-old students in the world score at the highest levels on the 2006 PISA science test.

We produce more researchers and scientists and qualified engineers than our economy can employ, have even more in the pipeline, and we are one of the most economically competitive nations on the globe.

The major arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical literature: (a) America‘s children are―lagging behind international peers in terms of academic achievement , and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students out ranking their global peers on international tests of academic.

The proponents of the CCSS claim that the standards address critical skills necessary to compete in the 21st century. If so, why do they repackage 19th century ideas and skills? We only need to look at the mid 1800‘s and the Lancasterian Method used in London and some of America‘s cities and the Quincy, Massachusetts schools to see how the idea of standardization will play out. It did not work then and it will not work now.

The language arts and mathematics curriculum sequences embedded in the CCSS standards are nothing more than rehashed versions of the recommendations from the Committee of Ten in 1893 and the Committee of 15 in 1895; hardly 21st Century innovations. The standards do little to promote global literacy through cultural collaboration and cooperation. They do not stress socially-conscious problem solving or strategizing. In fact, a conscious is not even necessary because there is not any authentic critical thinking in the standards. They are inert, sterile, socially static, and in stark contrast to what the United States Council on Competitiveness called for:

The proponents of the CCSS have a problem: They have no data that demonstrates the validity of the standards as a vehicle to build 21st century skills nor as a means to achieve the things the business leaders say will be needed to operate in a diverse global environment. The CCSS are stuck in a time warp. A curricular time machine if you will, set to 1858.