The BCCT is beginning a series on the new Pennsylvania Right to Know Law.
Who are the Morrisville contacts?
For the borough: George Mount, borough manager
For the school district: Paul DeAngelo, business administrator
Considering the secrecy that the Emperor and the board of chosen accomplices has employed over the past year of amazing cosmic power, I'm expecting Mr. DeAngelo's waiting room to be a bit too small to accommodate the number of people wanting answers.
The school district has a link right on the home page. I did not see one on the borough webpage.
New law makes secrecy more difficult
Seeking records used to mean proving why they should be released; now the government must prove why they shouldn’t.
By PETER JACKSON
HARRISBURG — PennDOT’s list of dangerous roads and intersections is an official secret, shielded from the public because of loopholes in the state’s Right-to-Know Law.
In 2006, a Commonwealth Court panel upheld PennDOT’s refusal to turn over a partial list to a Pittsburgh television station. The court said the station had failed to prove the information was sufficiently connected to an account, contract, voucher or decision — categories in the law that define what is a public record.
“The situation is a Catch-22 for requesters, in that the agencies and courts hold them to an impossible standard — prove there is a connection, but you cannot have the records that will enable you to do so,” said Gayle Sproul, a media lawyer who represented Hearst-Argyle Television Stations, WTAE’s owner, in the case.
Public-access advocates hope that widely shared frustration will subside after Jan. 1, when an overhaul of the state’s Right-to-Know Law takes effect. The changes are expected to dramatically expand what people can find out about what goes on behind the scenes of the state and local governments.
The new Right-to-Know Law will repeal the 52-year-old original, long regarded as one of the nation’s weakest.
No longer will you, journalists or activists interested in mining government records have to cross their fingers and hope the document they want fits into one of a half-dozen narrow categories. Nor will they have to hire a lawyer and go to court to challenge an agency’s refusal to turn over a record.
The new law is built on the presumption that most government records are open — the opposite presumption of the current law. It also places on public agencies — from state bureaucracies to county governments and local school districts — the legal burden of showing why a record should be withheld, instead of forcing requesters to establish why it should be made public.
“This is really a change in the culture of governance in Pennsylvania,” said Barry Kauffman, director of Pennsylvania Common Cause. “In too many cases, employees and officials of government agencies had an attitude that they own the government records instead of just being the caretakers of the government records.”
In most case, those whose requests are denied will be able to appeal directly to a new, nonjudicial agency — the Office of Open Records — whose director has a track record as an advocate of public access.
Teri Henning, general counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, which spearheaded lobbying for the new law, said the hope “is that, over time, these fundamental changes will create a culture of openness in Pennsylvania government.”
That spirit of openness is tempered in the law by a list of 30 wide-ranging exceptions that are tailored to respond to such concerns as personal privacy, public safety and internal deliberations by public officials.
The exceptions, which make up about one-fifth of the law, are “very wordy, very detailed and dense, filled with what I will call, kindly, mumbo jumbo,” said Sproul, who’s also president of the Pennsylvania Freedom of Information Coalition. “That in itself is an impediment to getting public records.”
The law also expands access to government contracts: Private businesses that do business with state and local governments are required to make some records available to the public. It covers all of state government, including — to a limited extent — the Legislature and the state’s judicial system, both previously exempt.
It covers an array of state affiliated entities including community colleges, the 14 state owned universities in the State System of Higher Education and the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association. The state related universities — Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple and Lincoln — are generally exempt, but required to issue annual financial reports that include their highest 25 employee salaries.
Local agencies covered by the law include counties, boroughs, townships and school districts, as well as charter schools, vocational schools and intermediate units.
By now, every agency should have designated an open-records officer to oversee compliance, adopted a policy for managing its records and briefed employees on how to handle records requests.
No one is predicting a flawless implementation.
“There’s going to be confusion at the beginning ... from citizens, from public officials and from members of the media,” said Terry Mutchler, the lawyer and former reporter that Gov. Ed Rendell appointed to a six-year term as director of the openrecords office.
Many observers predict a spike in records requests — and appeals to Mutchler’s office — in early 2009 as Pennsylvanians test their access under the new law. That will likely be followed by a gradual return to a more normal pace.
“After five years, we’ll forget it was ever such a big deal,” said Emily Leader, a lawyer for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, which speaks for the state’s 501 school districts.
Mutchler, who’s hiring six staff lawyers to help her handle the expected deluge of appeals, has been working with associations representing county commissioners, township supervisors and school boards — as well as newspapers. At some sessions, concerns were expressed about the status of e-mails.
The new law defines a record as “information, regardless of physical form or characteristics, that documents a transaction or activity of an agency.” That includes not only e-mails, but audio recordings, photos and even films.
“Here’s the e-mail training,” Mutchler told a Pennsylvania School Boards Association workshop in October. “If you don’t want to read it on Page One, don’t put it in e-mail. If you’re sending an e-mail, envision it on letterhead.”
Access advocates hope the new law will open records like PennDOT’s hazardous-sites list to public scrutiny.
PennDOT spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said the lists are kept confidential because the rankings can be misleading and state law bars such information from being used in legal claims against the state.
Asked if PennDOT plans to withhold the information after the new law takes effect, he said, “I can’t speculate.”
Monday, December 22, 2008
Property Tax Hit for Taxpayers
From the BCCT.
I remember former business manager Reba Dunford warning about some of these items. Does anyone remember how the President Emperor responded?
A big hit expected for taxpayers
Early this month, the state increased its projections for how much school districts will have to pay into the employee pension fund in coming years.
By GARY WECKSELBLATT
The next decade is not expected to be kind to those who pay property taxes.
After hearing the numbers released Dec. 12 by the people running the public school pension system, Bob Reinhart did some calculations.
The business administrator for the Pennridge School District looked at the 2012-13 school year, when figures show the current contribution residents will have to fork over rises from next year’s 4.78 to 16.4 percent. The 16.4 was adjusted up from 11.23 after the Pennsylvania Public School Employee Retirement System fund fell 2.8 percent.
Reinhart’s math shows Pennridge’s cost rising by $6 million. A hefty number for a district that finds itself in a $900,000 hole for the 2009-10 school year.
“It’s going to be a big concern for us,” he said.
Probably worse than Reinhart and his fellow business managers across the state realize. The projections released earlier this month by PSERS’ actuarial firm, Buck Consultants, are based on the pension fund’s performance through June 30 — well before the fall’s carnage to the stock market.
If the fund fell 12.8 percent from $62.7 billion to $54.7 billion by Sept. 30 — as PSERS reported — a period when the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped 9 percent and the Dow Jones dropped 4 percent — what might the fund look like now?
Since Oct. 1, those wellknown investment indicators are down significantly. The Dow has been the best performer, losing 26.5 percent; the S&P is down 31 percent, the Nasdaq 34 percent.
It’s conceivable the fund, with a membership of more than 272,000 active school employees and more than 173,000 retirees, might have fallen to $40 billion.
If a 2.8 percent setback pushes future employer contributions up more than 5 percent a year from 2012-13 to 2017-18, what would a decline 10 times greater mean to the pocketbooks of area homeowners who are watching their own retirement savings dwindle?
Central Bucks, the area’s largest school district, could feel a significant hit. Even before the PSERS’ projected rates rose, CB business manager Dave Matyas expected his district’s costs to double in three years from $10 to $20 million.
“It is unrealistic to predict the fund will be able to earn its way out of the projected rate spike given the current investment market conditions and the precarious state of the economy,” PSERS Executive Director Jeffrey B. Clay said in a statement. “Previously PSERS made significant progress dropping the projected rate spike by earning outstanding investment returns for four years. It is highly unlikely, given the current recession taking place in the U.S., that the fund will be able to re-create those outstanding returns in the short-term.”
PSERS, which assumes an annual return of 8.5 percent for its pension fund, is the 14th largest defined benefit pension fund in the country. Members contribute between 5.25 and 7.5 percent of their salary to help fund their retirement.
During this past year, school districts budgeted 4.76 percent of teacher salaries for the pension fund. That was down from 7.13 percent in 2007-08.
In a letter to school districts last December, John Godlewski, the state department of education’s former director of budget and fiscal management, recommended that districts disregard the lower number and set aside money at the 7.13 percent rate in preparation for future increases.
Clay agrees with creating a reserve in anticipation of the large projected rate increase.
“It would be very prudent for school employers to do so,” he said.
Like some other local districts, Pennridge has taken that approach and is budgeting 7.13 percent rather than next year’s 4.78 figure. Had Reinhart budgeted the lower number, the district’s current $900,000 budget hole would shrink to about $265,000.
“The board and myself want to be prudent,” he said.
I remember former business manager Reba Dunford warning about some of these items. Does anyone remember how the President Emperor responded?
A big hit expected for taxpayers
Early this month, the state increased its projections for how much school districts will have to pay into the employee pension fund in coming years.
By GARY WECKSELBLATT
The next decade is not expected to be kind to those who pay property taxes.
After hearing the numbers released Dec. 12 by the people running the public school pension system, Bob Reinhart did some calculations.
The business administrator for the Pennridge School District looked at the 2012-13 school year, when figures show the current contribution residents will have to fork over rises from next year’s 4.78 to 16.4 percent. The 16.4 was adjusted up from 11.23 after the Pennsylvania Public School Employee Retirement System fund fell 2.8 percent.
Reinhart’s math shows Pennridge’s cost rising by $6 million. A hefty number for a district that finds itself in a $900,000 hole for the 2009-10 school year.
“It’s going to be a big concern for us,” he said.
Probably worse than Reinhart and his fellow business managers across the state realize. The projections released earlier this month by PSERS’ actuarial firm, Buck Consultants, are based on the pension fund’s performance through June 30 — well before the fall’s carnage to the stock market.
If the fund fell 12.8 percent from $62.7 billion to $54.7 billion by Sept. 30 — as PSERS reported — a period when the S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped 9 percent and the Dow Jones dropped 4 percent — what might the fund look like now?
Since Oct. 1, those wellknown investment indicators are down significantly. The Dow has been the best performer, losing 26.5 percent; the S&P is down 31 percent, the Nasdaq 34 percent.
It’s conceivable the fund, with a membership of more than 272,000 active school employees and more than 173,000 retirees, might have fallen to $40 billion.
If a 2.8 percent setback pushes future employer contributions up more than 5 percent a year from 2012-13 to 2017-18, what would a decline 10 times greater mean to the pocketbooks of area homeowners who are watching their own retirement savings dwindle?
Central Bucks, the area’s largest school district, could feel a significant hit. Even before the PSERS’ projected rates rose, CB business manager Dave Matyas expected his district’s costs to double in three years from $10 to $20 million.
“It is unrealistic to predict the fund will be able to earn its way out of the projected rate spike given the current investment market conditions and the precarious state of the economy,” PSERS Executive Director Jeffrey B. Clay said in a statement. “Previously PSERS made significant progress dropping the projected rate spike by earning outstanding investment returns for four years. It is highly unlikely, given the current recession taking place in the U.S., that the fund will be able to re-create those outstanding returns in the short-term.”
PSERS, which assumes an annual return of 8.5 percent for its pension fund, is the 14th largest defined benefit pension fund in the country. Members contribute between 5.25 and 7.5 percent of their salary to help fund their retirement.
During this past year, school districts budgeted 4.76 percent of teacher salaries for the pension fund. That was down from 7.13 percent in 2007-08.
In a letter to school districts last December, John Godlewski, the state department of education’s former director of budget and fiscal management, recommended that districts disregard the lower number and set aside money at the 7.13 percent rate in preparation for future increases.
Clay agrees with creating a reserve in anticipation of the large projected rate increase.
“It would be very prudent for school employers to do so,” he said.
Like some other local districts, Pennridge has taken that approach and is budgeting 7.13 percent rather than next year’s 4.78 figure. Had Reinhart budgeted the lower number, the district’s current $900,000 budget hole would shrink to about $265,000.
“The board and myself want to be prudent,” he said.
Wanted: Generous souls in tough times
From the BCCT.
Yes, times are tight. You can still do some good. Give at that office collection, the Salvation Army bell ringer, your church, the local food bank, or even your neighbor you know is having a hard time. This is not a specific endorsement of any specific way to help: There's plenty of outlets where your generosity can be used.
Maybe this year, the tables are turned. You've always been the generous giver. This year, you need to be the receiver. Reach out. It's hard to extend a helping hand when only one is reaching.
Wanted: Generous souls in tough times
The faces of the unemployed, the foreclosed upon and those in poverty in Bucks County demonstrate how much your help is needed.
By CARL LAVO
STAFF WRITER
The economy sputters on Wall Street and Main Street. Fortunately, the spirit of giving continues to burn bright in Lower Bucks County.
For 50 years and counting, you and your neighbors have contributed everything you can to the annual Give-A-Christmas fund sponsored by the Levittown-Bristol Kiwanis Club and the Bucks County Courier Times. Your generosity has made a difference to those who are crushed by circumstances during the holiday season.
This year, the heartbreak of families in trouble continues and is all around us.
Here’s just a sampling:
“I am a single mother with breast cancer. I have 2 daughters, ages 4 and 6. I am not working due to my illness and have no way to provide Christmas to my girls. If there is any way you could help, it would be greatly appreciated.” — Northampton
“This family has always donated to the needy but now finds themselves in desperate need. The husband and wife, both injured, are barely surviving on a fraction of their original income while trying to support their children, as well as their 20-year-old daughter who had to drop out of college when they couldn’t afford her tuition. They’re struggling to just keep a roof over their heads.” —
Levittown
“I have two children and receive $650 a month to live on from Social Security. God bless what you’re doing.” — Langhorne
“I am writing to you about a family in great need. They just lost their apartment and they have two children, ages 3 and 2, and the mother is expecting any day. The father was working 2 jobs when he lost one of them. … They aren’t having Christmas this year due to no money. They have no tree, no gifts for the children. Please help.” —
Northampton
“Mom and 4 boys — She has cancer and no money to get the boys anything for Christmas. Please help.” —
Levittown
“I work so hard to take care of my son and I. One of the Grey Nuns in Yardley gives me her old things and I sell them at flea markets to make ends meet. Please help make Christmas possible.” —
Bensalem
“I am writing for a friend who could use some holiday cheer and a touch of kindness this Christmas season. … He has been laid off several weeks ago, cannot collect unemployment or find a fulltime job. He has worked for some temp services but only gets two to three days a week. I know he could use a little help but would never ask.” —
Morrisville
These are just some of the faces behind sobering statistics in Bucks, where poverty is mostly hidden behind an aura of affluence. Here, where the average household income is a comfortable $88,888, others struggle just to get by:
Nearly 5 percent of workingage adults in Bucks are unemployed, up 1.5 percent from last year. That translates into more than 31,000 county residents out of work — from Morrisville to Quakertown, Bensalem to Riegelsville.
More than 5 percent of county residents live below the poverty line. That’s at least 32,000 people earning less than $22,200 a year, the federal poverty threshold. One county official estimates the number is far higher in Bucks because it requires $33,000 to $37,000 a year for a family of three just to afford basic necessities here.
One house out of every 1,868 homes in Bucks County is in foreclosure. People also are being evicted from apartments for failure to pay their rent.
So here’s your chance to help.
Give these families a little hope in these final days leading to Christmas. Give them something to smile about. Give them something to be thankful for — a reminder that there are neighbors like you out there who care.
Contribute what you can to Give-A-Christmas. Every penny, every nickel, every dime, quarter and dollar will mean a lot.
Yes, times are tight. You can still do some good. Give at that office collection, the Salvation Army bell ringer, your church, the local food bank, or even your neighbor you know is having a hard time. This is not a specific endorsement of any specific way to help: There's plenty of outlets where your generosity can be used.
Maybe this year, the tables are turned. You've always been the generous giver. This year, you need to be the receiver. Reach out. It's hard to extend a helping hand when only one is reaching.
Wanted: Generous souls in tough times
The faces of the unemployed, the foreclosed upon and those in poverty in Bucks County demonstrate how much your help is needed.
By CARL LAVO
STAFF WRITER
The economy sputters on Wall Street and Main Street. Fortunately, the spirit of giving continues to burn bright in Lower Bucks County.
For 50 years and counting, you and your neighbors have contributed everything you can to the annual Give-A-Christmas fund sponsored by the Levittown-Bristol Kiwanis Club and the Bucks County Courier Times. Your generosity has made a difference to those who are crushed by circumstances during the holiday season.
This year, the heartbreak of families in trouble continues and is all around us.
Here’s just a sampling:
“I am a single mother with breast cancer. I have 2 daughters, ages 4 and 6. I am not working due to my illness and have no way to provide Christmas to my girls. If there is any way you could help, it would be greatly appreciated.” — Northampton
“This family has always donated to the needy but now finds themselves in desperate need. The husband and wife, both injured, are barely surviving on a fraction of their original income while trying to support their children, as well as their 20-year-old daughter who had to drop out of college when they couldn’t afford her tuition. They’re struggling to just keep a roof over their heads.” —
Levittown
“I have two children and receive $650 a month to live on from Social Security. God bless what you’re doing.” — Langhorne
“I am writing to you about a family in great need. They just lost their apartment and they have two children, ages 3 and 2, and the mother is expecting any day. The father was working 2 jobs when he lost one of them. … They aren’t having Christmas this year due to no money. They have no tree, no gifts for the children. Please help.” —
Northampton
“Mom and 4 boys — She has cancer and no money to get the boys anything for Christmas. Please help.” —
Levittown
“I work so hard to take care of my son and I. One of the Grey Nuns in Yardley gives me her old things and I sell them at flea markets to make ends meet. Please help make Christmas possible.” —
Bensalem
“I am writing for a friend who could use some holiday cheer and a touch of kindness this Christmas season. … He has been laid off several weeks ago, cannot collect unemployment or find a fulltime job. He has worked for some temp services but only gets two to three days a week. I know he could use a little help but would never ask.” —
Morrisville
These are just some of the faces behind sobering statistics in Bucks, where poverty is mostly hidden behind an aura of affluence. Here, where the average household income is a comfortable $88,888, others struggle just to get by:
Nearly 5 percent of workingage adults in Bucks are unemployed, up 1.5 percent from last year. That translates into more than 31,000 county residents out of work — from Morrisville to Quakertown, Bensalem to Riegelsville.
More than 5 percent of county residents live below the poverty line. That’s at least 32,000 people earning less than $22,200 a year, the federal poverty threshold. One county official estimates the number is far higher in Bucks because it requires $33,000 to $37,000 a year for a family of three just to afford basic necessities here.
One house out of every 1,868 homes in Bucks County is in foreclosure. People also are being evicted from apartments for failure to pay their rent.
So here’s your chance to help.
Give these families a little hope in these final days leading to Christmas. Give them something to smile about. Give them something to be thankful for — a reminder that there are neighbors like you out there who care.
Contribute what you can to Give-A-Christmas. Every penny, every nickel, every dime, quarter and dollar will mean a lot.
"The Parallels are Striking"
Thanks to the emailer who sent me this information along with the cryptic notation that "the parallels are striking." :)
The American Debate: He leaves with a record of contempt, secrecy, lies
By Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
I last saw Dick Cheney at a Colorado rodeo arena, in August of 2004, flashing his grin-grimace on a stage flanked by bales of hay, his hands seemingly glued to thick thighs encased in cowboy jeans - and it was painfully obvious that he wanted to rid himself of these campaign rituals and return to a secret, undisclosed location.
He had little patience for his fans, even when they yelled nice things at him ("Knock it off," he yelled back), and after posing for their digital cameras, he parted the curtain and vanished. Which made perfect sense, because, unlike your typical politician and vice president, this was truly a guy who lived in the shadows, like a mushroom. He thrived where nobody could see him.
And that's where he did the most damage to the very notion of honest, democratic self-rule.
It's impossible to critique the failures of the Bush era without targeting the de facto deputy president, a historically unique veep who did the policy work and the dirty work for his detail-averse boss. Not that Cheney would care what I think. Or what you think. His governing style was always predicated on the notion that he knew best and that public opinion was a mere irritant, as consequential as a fly buzzing a picnic basket. And it was always his basket, to restock as he pleased.
Cheney biographer Barton Gellman, whose groundbreaking new book, Angler, has been praised even by Cheney supporters, wrote: "Cheney's most troubling quality was a sense of mission so acute that it drove him to seek power without limit . . . [He] did not much admire the way his fellow Americans made decisions. Our fickle loyalties, our emotional swings, our uneven grasp of facts, our failure to see the main point, our logical errors - all the things that made our collective conversation so unlike Dick Cheney's conversation with himself - brought the vice president close to saying he need not bother listening."
Nor did he bother communicating, at least in ways that approximated the truth.
The Bush administration went into free fall for a host of reasons - such as its documented incompetence in Iraq and New Orleans - but it can fairly be argued that, at some point, a landslide majority of Americans simply decided that the White House was telling too many lies. And Cheney was a prime offender. No leader, even a legendarily skillful infighter like Cheney, can repeatedly insult the public and get away with it indefinitely.
He viewed the average citizen as moldable clay, and he crafted his prewar propaganda accordingly. He shaped the intelligence on Iraq to reflect his post-9/11 fixation on Iraq; as our British allies wrote on July 23, 2002, in a now-infamous memo, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." And then he went out and sold us on the fix.
He declared publicly in August 2002 that "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction; there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." In reality, intelligence officials had been voicing their doubts, and reporting their doubts, all year. But Cheney opted not to share those doubts with the citizens who would have to finance the war and, in some cases, send their kids to fight it.
And whereas Cheney kept publicly telling us in 2002 that Hussein was in close cahoots with Osama bin Laden, the president's own Daily Brief of Sept. 21, 2001, said there was "scant credible evidence" of any "significant collaborative ties" - a conclusion since endorsed by the 9/11 Commission report in 2004 and a new Pentagon report in 2008.
Cheney's characteristic debasement of factual empiricism was not limited to the war, of course. Even after voters booted the GOP out of power on Capitol Hill in 2006, he sought to deny statistical reality. He said the Democrats had won only "a narrow victory," whereas, actually, the aggregate tally of all contested House races showed the Democrats winning by 6.6 percentage points nationwide - a wider margin than when Newt Gingrich and the GOP captured the House in 1994. And the swing-voting independents favored the Democrats in 2006 by 18 points - a portent of the Democratic seizure of the center in 2008.
Yet even though Cheney is currently playing out the string with the lowest favorability rating of any veep in modern polling (scraping bottom with Dan Quayle, which says a lot), and even though he no longer has the clout that he enjoyed when ally Donald Rumsfeld ran the Pentagon, there is nary a hint that he confess error or lighten his hubris with a dose of humility.
On ABC News recently, Cheney was still justifying the Iraq invasion, claiming that the postwar inspectors had determined "that Saddam Hussein still had the technology to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks." This was yet another lie. The authoritative postwar Duelfer Report concluded four years ago that Hussein's mass weapons programs had "progressively decayed" since 1991, and that inspectors found no evidence of any "concerted efforts to restart the program."
But perhaps the GOP should have the final word. During the early presidential primaries, one of the candidates was asked, "Would you grant your vice president as much authority and as much independence as President Bush has granted to Vice President Cheney?" The candidate simply replied: "No" - and the Republican audience cracked up. And that alone should be the verdict on Cheney's legacy.
The American Debate: He leaves with a record of contempt, secrecy, lies
By Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
I last saw Dick Cheney at a Colorado rodeo arena, in August of 2004, flashing his grin-grimace on a stage flanked by bales of hay, his hands seemingly glued to thick thighs encased in cowboy jeans - and it was painfully obvious that he wanted to rid himself of these campaign rituals and return to a secret, undisclosed location.
He had little patience for his fans, even when they yelled nice things at him ("Knock it off," he yelled back), and after posing for their digital cameras, he parted the curtain and vanished. Which made perfect sense, because, unlike your typical politician and vice president, this was truly a guy who lived in the shadows, like a mushroom. He thrived where nobody could see him.
And that's where he did the most damage to the very notion of honest, democratic self-rule.
It's impossible to critique the failures of the Bush era without targeting the de facto deputy president, a historically unique veep who did the policy work and the dirty work for his detail-averse boss. Not that Cheney would care what I think. Or what you think. His governing style was always predicated on the notion that he knew best and that public opinion was a mere irritant, as consequential as a fly buzzing a picnic basket. And it was always his basket, to restock as he pleased.
Cheney biographer Barton Gellman, whose groundbreaking new book, Angler, has been praised even by Cheney supporters, wrote: "Cheney's most troubling quality was a sense of mission so acute that it drove him to seek power without limit . . . [He] did not much admire the way his fellow Americans made decisions. Our fickle loyalties, our emotional swings, our uneven grasp of facts, our failure to see the main point, our logical errors - all the things that made our collective conversation so unlike Dick Cheney's conversation with himself - brought the vice president close to saying he need not bother listening."
Nor did he bother communicating, at least in ways that approximated the truth.
The Bush administration went into free fall for a host of reasons - such as its documented incompetence in Iraq and New Orleans - but it can fairly be argued that, at some point, a landslide majority of Americans simply decided that the White House was telling too many lies. And Cheney was a prime offender. No leader, even a legendarily skillful infighter like Cheney, can repeatedly insult the public and get away with it indefinitely.
He viewed the average citizen as moldable clay, and he crafted his prewar propaganda accordingly. He shaped the intelligence on Iraq to reflect his post-9/11 fixation on Iraq; as our British allies wrote on July 23, 2002, in a now-infamous memo, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." And then he went out and sold us on the fix.
He declared publicly in August 2002 that "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction; there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us." In reality, intelligence officials had been voicing their doubts, and reporting their doubts, all year. But Cheney opted not to share those doubts with the citizens who would have to finance the war and, in some cases, send their kids to fight it.
And whereas Cheney kept publicly telling us in 2002 that Hussein was in close cahoots with Osama bin Laden, the president's own Daily Brief of Sept. 21, 2001, said there was "scant credible evidence" of any "significant collaborative ties" - a conclusion since endorsed by the 9/11 Commission report in 2004 and a new Pentagon report in 2008.
Cheney's characteristic debasement of factual empiricism was not limited to the war, of course. Even after voters booted the GOP out of power on Capitol Hill in 2006, he sought to deny statistical reality. He said the Democrats had won only "a narrow victory," whereas, actually, the aggregate tally of all contested House races showed the Democrats winning by 6.6 percentage points nationwide - a wider margin than when Newt Gingrich and the GOP captured the House in 1994. And the swing-voting independents favored the Democrats in 2006 by 18 points - a portent of the Democratic seizure of the center in 2008.
Yet even though Cheney is currently playing out the string with the lowest favorability rating of any veep in modern polling (scraping bottom with Dan Quayle, which says a lot), and even though he no longer has the clout that he enjoyed when ally Donald Rumsfeld ran the Pentagon, there is nary a hint that he confess error or lighten his hubris with a dose of humility.
On ABC News recently, Cheney was still justifying the Iraq invasion, claiming that the postwar inspectors had determined "that Saddam Hussein still had the technology to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks." This was yet another lie. The authoritative postwar Duelfer Report concluded four years ago that Hussein's mass weapons programs had "progressively decayed" since 1991, and that inspectors found no evidence of any "concerted efforts to restart the program."
But perhaps the GOP should have the final word. During the early presidential primaries, one of the candidates was asked, "Would you grant your vice president as much authority and as much independence as President Bush has granted to Vice President Cheney?" The candidate simply replied: "No" - and the Republican audience cracked up. And that alone should be the verdict on Cheney's legacy.
What Are Inclusive Programs?
Thanks to the emailer who sent this information.
Everyone seems to have their ideas about Inclusive Practices. What do the experts have to say about Inclusive Programs?
The National Organization of School Psychologists is the premier source of knowledge, professional development, and resources, empowering school psychologist to ensure ALL children and youth attain optimal learning and mental health.
http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/pospaper_ipsd.aspx
Position Statement on Inclusive Programs for Students With Disabilities
The 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 97) created significant educational opportunities for students with disabilities and established important safeguards that ensure the provision of a free, appropriate public education to students with special needs. NASP strongly supports the continuation and strengthening of this mandate. NASP also recognizes the need to continually evaluate the effectiveness of all aspects of our educational system and to promote reform when needed.
A Call for Inclusive Schools
NASP, in its continuing commitment to promote more effective educational programs for all students, advocates the development of inclusive programs for students with disabilities. Inclusive programs are those in which students, regardless of the severity of their disability, receive appropriate specialized instruction and related services within an age appropriate general education classroom in the school that they would attend if they did not have a disability. NASP believes that carefully designed inclusive programs individualized to meet the needs of students with disabilities represent a viable and legitimate option on the special education continuum that must be examined for any student who requires special education. Inclusive education is within the continuum of special education services, and must be based upon the individual needs, goals, and objectives determined by IEP teams.
Potential Benefits
Some of the benefits of inclusive programs include:
* typical peers serving as models for students with disabilities;
* the development of natural friendships within the child’s home community;
* learning new academic and social skills within natural environments, facilitating generalization of skills;
* students with disabilities existing in “natural” proportions within the school community;
* all students learning to value diversity; and
* general education classrooms that are better able to meet the needs of all students as a result of additional instructional resources, staff development for general and special educators, a more flexible curriculum, and adapted instructional delivery systems.
Developing Inclusive Programs
In advocating for the development of these programs, NASP takes the position that:
* Inclusive programs must provide all the services needed to ensure that students make consistent social, emotional, and academic gains.
* General education teachers, special education teachers, school psychologists, other related services providers, and parents must collaborate to ensure appropriate services for all students and to ensure that all programs are based upon a careful analysis of each student’s needs. Decisions regarding services must be made on an individual child basis.
* Outcome-based data on inclusive programs must be collected to ensure that students with and without disabilities are making consistent educational progress. Ongoing empirical examination and further research are needed.
* All educators and administrators involved in implementing inclusive programs must participate in planning and training activities. When developing inclusive programs, adults with disabilities serving as experts and/or advocates, in addition to the students themselves, need to be included as much as possible.
* Knowledge and skills in effective collaboration, curriculum adaptation, developing supportive social relationships, and restructuring special services are but a few of the areas in which skills are needed.
* Preservice and inservice training based upon the needs of the staff involved in planning these programs is essential. The active involvement of general educators and administrators in staff development is critical for successful inclusion.
* School districts with limited resources may have difficulty meeting the needs of all students, particularly those with low incidence or severe disabilities. It may be necessary to provide planning and training for the provision of reasonable accommodations to students with low incidence or severe disabilities attending their neighborhood schools.
The Role of the School Psychologist
School psychologists can provide effective leadership in the development of inclusive programs. School psychologists have training and experience in collaborative consultation, behavioral and academic intervention design, curriculum adaptation, modification of learning environments, program evaluation, peer mediated learning, facilitating friendships, and other issues critical to effective inclusive programs. Because of this expertise, school psychologists are in a unique position to assist schools in assessing student needs, reallocating existing resources, and restructuring service delivery systems to better meet the educational and mental health needs of all students. School psychologists can foster the development of inclusive schools by:
* gathering and providing information regarding the strengths and needs of individual students;
* providing meaningful support and consultation to teachers and other educators implementing inclusive programs;
* distributing articles and research to fellow educators and district committees responsible for educational restructuring;
* leading or serving as members of groups that are evaluating or restructuring education programs;
* planning and conducting staff development programs that support inclusion;
* offering training and support to teachers, students and families;
* developing new resources through grant writing and collaboration with other community agencies, and other activities;
* providing information on needed changes to legislators and state and federal policy-makers; and,
* collecting and analyzing program evaluation and outcome based research.
Concerns Regarding the Traditional Special Education System
Certain aspects of traditional special education include a number of problems that create unintended negative outcomes for students:
* A referral and evaluation system that does not function as originally intended. Some of the weaknesses of this system include:
o Over reliance upon a classification system of disability categories that lacks utility and reliability for this purpose, and lacks acceptance by many parents and professionals.
o A lack of empirical research showing that students with mild disabilities grouped by category learn differently or are taught differently.
* Inequities in implementation of the least restrictive environment and access to general education curriculum provisions of IDEA 97. Data suggest that the restrictiveness of many special education placements is not based upon the severity of students’ disabilities, but may instead result from the configuration of the service delivery system that is available in the community.
* Concerns that traditional special education programs are not effective in terms of learner outcomes.
* Overly restrictive special education programs housed in separate schools or “cluster” sites that result in social segregation and disproportionate numbers of students with disabilities being grouped together. For example, some students, especially those with more severe disabilities, must attend separate schools to receive special services, rather than being provided appropriate services in his/her neighborhood school. Many parents and professionals feel that it is inherently inequitable that some students must leave their neighborhood schools and communities to receive appropriate services. Although neighborhood schools may be the best decision for most students, decisions must be made on an individual basis.
Changing our Schools
NASP recognizes that the traditional framework of special education policies and regulations is often incompatible with inclusive programs. Consequently, NASP joins with the National Association of State Boards of Education in calling for a fundamental shift in the policies which drive our compensatory education system. Changes are suggested in:
* The system used to identify and evaluate students with special needs. This should be made more reliable and less stigmatizing. Noncategorical services (Rights without labels) may be appropriate for inclusive education.
* The traditional special education funding system. The link between funding and placements must be severed. Many aspects of the funding system are driven by labels and program locations rather than by student needs. Special education funding systems must be based on the provision of services to students and not on the maintenance of programs, facilities, personnel, etc.
* School improvement planning. School improvement /restructuring plans must include students with disabilities. The integration of general and special education issues must be reflected in building and district level improvement plans. This requires collaboration and staff development for both general and special educators in order to address the needs of all students.
* NASP recognizes that the shift toward more inclusive schools will require profound changes in the ways in which schools are organized. We are committed to working with parents, other professional groups, and state and national policy-makers in creating new funding and regulatory mechanisms that promote effective programs within neighborhood schools and ensure that students with special needs continue to receive appropriate resources. We endorse a process of planned change that involves all stakeholders in research, planning, and training to ensure that our nation’s schools can attain excellence for all of our children.
References
Baker, E.T., Wang, M.C., & Walberg H.J. (1994). The effects of inclusion on learning. Educational Leadership, 52(4), 33-35.
Falvey, M.A. (Ed.). (1995). Inclusive and heterogeneous schooling. Assessment, curriculum, and instruction. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
National Association of State Boards of Education. (1992). Winners all: A call for inclusive schools. Alexandria, VA: Author.
National Association of State Boards of Education. (1995). Winning ways: Creating inclusive schools, classrooms, and communities. Alexandria, VA: Author.
National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY). (1995) The national study of inclusive education. New York: National Center on Educational Restructuring and Inclusion, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York.
Rogers, J. (1993) The inclusion revolution. Research Bulletin, no. 11. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappan Center for Evaluation, Development, and Research.
Salisbury, C.L., Pumpian, I., Fisher, D., Roach,V., & McGregor, G. (1995). A framework for evaluating state and local policies for inclusion. Consortium on Inclusive Schooling Practices.[On-line]. Available: http://www.icdi.wvu.edu/others.htm#g10
Stainback, S. & Stainback, W. (Eds.). (1996). Inclusion: A guide for educators. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
Staub, D. & Peck, C.A. (1994). What are the outcomes for nondisabled students? Educational Leadership, 52(4), 36-40.
Thompkins, R. & Deloney, P. (1995) Inclusion: The pros and cons. Issues About Change, 4, 3. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.
Waldron, N.L. (1997). Inclusion. In G.G. Bear, K.M. Minke, & A.Thomas (Eds.), Children’s needs II: Development, problems and alternatives. Bethesda,MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
- Adopted by the NASP Delegate Assembly, 1993
- Revision adopted by NASP Delegate Assembly, April 1, 2000
© 2002 National Association of School Psychologists, 4340 East West Highway, Suite 402, Bethesda MD 20814 - 301-657-0270.
Please note that NASP periodically revises its Position Statements. We encourage you to check the NASP website at www.nasponline.org to ensure that you have the most current version of this Position Statement.
Everyone seems to have their ideas about Inclusive Practices. What do the experts have to say about Inclusive Programs?
The National Organization of School Psychologists is the premier source of knowledge, professional development, and resources, empowering school psychologist to ensure ALL children and youth attain optimal learning and mental health.
http://www.nasponline.org/about_nasp/pospaper_ipsd.aspx
Position Statement on Inclusive Programs for Students With Disabilities
The 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA 97) created significant educational opportunities for students with disabilities and established important safeguards that ensure the provision of a free, appropriate public education to students with special needs. NASP strongly supports the continuation and strengthening of this mandate. NASP also recognizes the need to continually evaluate the effectiveness of all aspects of our educational system and to promote reform when needed.
A Call for Inclusive Schools
NASP, in its continuing commitment to promote more effective educational programs for all students, advocates the development of inclusive programs for students with disabilities. Inclusive programs are those in which students, regardless of the severity of their disability, receive appropriate specialized instruction and related services within an age appropriate general education classroom in the school that they would attend if they did not have a disability. NASP believes that carefully designed inclusive programs individualized to meet the needs of students with disabilities represent a viable and legitimate option on the special education continuum that must be examined for any student who requires special education. Inclusive education is within the continuum of special education services, and must be based upon the individual needs, goals, and objectives determined by IEP teams.
Potential Benefits
Some of the benefits of inclusive programs include:
* typical peers serving as models for students with disabilities;
* the development of natural friendships within the child’s home community;
* learning new academic and social skills within natural environments, facilitating generalization of skills;
* students with disabilities existing in “natural” proportions within the school community;
* all students learning to value diversity; and
* general education classrooms that are better able to meet the needs of all students as a result of additional instructional resources, staff development for general and special educators, a more flexible curriculum, and adapted instructional delivery systems.
Developing Inclusive Programs
In advocating for the development of these programs, NASP takes the position that:
* Inclusive programs must provide all the services needed to ensure that students make consistent social, emotional, and academic gains.
* General education teachers, special education teachers, school psychologists, other related services providers, and parents must collaborate to ensure appropriate services for all students and to ensure that all programs are based upon a careful analysis of each student’s needs. Decisions regarding services must be made on an individual child basis.
* Outcome-based data on inclusive programs must be collected to ensure that students with and without disabilities are making consistent educational progress. Ongoing empirical examination and further research are needed.
* All educators and administrators involved in implementing inclusive programs must participate in planning and training activities. When developing inclusive programs, adults with disabilities serving as experts and/or advocates, in addition to the students themselves, need to be included as much as possible.
* Knowledge and skills in effective collaboration, curriculum adaptation, developing supportive social relationships, and restructuring special services are but a few of the areas in which skills are needed.
* Preservice and inservice training based upon the needs of the staff involved in planning these programs is essential. The active involvement of general educators and administrators in staff development is critical for successful inclusion.
* School districts with limited resources may have difficulty meeting the needs of all students, particularly those with low incidence or severe disabilities. It may be necessary to provide planning and training for the provision of reasonable accommodations to students with low incidence or severe disabilities attending their neighborhood schools.
The Role of the School Psychologist
School psychologists can provide effective leadership in the development of inclusive programs. School psychologists have training and experience in collaborative consultation, behavioral and academic intervention design, curriculum adaptation, modification of learning environments, program evaluation, peer mediated learning, facilitating friendships, and other issues critical to effective inclusive programs. Because of this expertise, school psychologists are in a unique position to assist schools in assessing student needs, reallocating existing resources, and restructuring service delivery systems to better meet the educational and mental health needs of all students. School psychologists can foster the development of inclusive schools by:
* gathering and providing information regarding the strengths and needs of individual students;
* providing meaningful support and consultation to teachers and other educators implementing inclusive programs;
* distributing articles and research to fellow educators and district committees responsible for educational restructuring;
* leading or serving as members of groups that are evaluating or restructuring education programs;
* planning and conducting staff development programs that support inclusion;
* offering training and support to teachers, students and families;
* developing new resources through grant writing and collaboration with other community agencies, and other activities;
* providing information on needed changes to legislators and state and federal policy-makers; and,
* collecting and analyzing program evaluation and outcome based research.
Concerns Regarding the Traditional Special Education System
Certain aspects of traditional special education include a number of problems that create unintended negative outcomes for students:
* A referral and evaluation system that does not function as originally intended. Some of the weaknesses of this system include:
o Over reliance upon a classification system of disability categories that lacks utility and reliability for this purpose, and lacks acceptance by many parents and professionals.
o A lack of empirical research showing that students with mild disabilities grouped by category learn differently or are taught differently.
* Inequities in implementation of the least restrictive environment and access to general education curriculum provisions of IDEA 97. Data suggest that the restrictiveness of many special education placements is not based upon the severity of students’ disabilities, but may instead result from the configuration of the service delivery system that is available in the community.
* Concerns that traditional special education programs are not effective in terms of learner outcomes.
* Overly restrictive special education programs housed in separate schools or “cluster” sites that result in social segregation and disproportionate numbers of students with disabilities being grouped together. For example, some students, especially those with more severe disabilities, must attend separate schools to receive special services, rather than being provided appropriate services in his/her neighborhood school. Many parents and professionals feel that it is inherently inequitable that some students must leave their neighborhood schools and communities to receive appropriate services. Although neighborhood schools may be the best decision for most students, decisions must be made on an individual basis.
Changing our Schools
NASP recognizes that the traditional framework of special education policies and regulations is often incompatible with inclusive programs. Consequently, NASP joins with the National Association of State Boards of Education in calling for a fundamental shift in the policies which drive our compensatory education system. Changes are suggested in:
* The system used to identify and evaluate students with special needs. This should be made more reliable and less stigmatizing. Noncategorical services (Rights without labels) may be appropriate for inclusive education.
* The traditional special education funding system. The link between funding and placements must be severed. Many aspects of the funding system are driven by labels and program locations rather than by student needs. Special education funding systems must be based on the provision of services to students and not on the maintenance of programs, facilities, personnel, etc.
* School improvement planning. School improvement /restructuring plans must include students with disabilities. The integration of general and special education issues must be reflected in building and district level improvement plans. This requires collaboration and staff development for both general and special educators in order to address the needs of all students.
* NASP recognizes that the shift toward more inclusive schools will require profound changes in the ways in which schools are organized. We are committed to working with parents, other professional groups, and state and national policy-makers in creating new funding and regulatory mechanisms that promote effective programs within neighborhood schools and ensure that students with special needs continue to receive appropriate resources. We endorse a process of planned change that involves all stakeholders in research, planning, and training to ensure that our nation’s schools can attain excellence for all of our children.
References
Baker, E.T., Wang, M.C., & Walberg H.J. (1994). The effects of inclusion on learning. Educational Leadership, 52(4), 33-35.
Falvey, M.A. (Ed.). (1995). Inclusive and heterogeneous schooling. Assessment, curriculum, and instruction. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
National Association of State Boards of Education. (1992). Winners all: A call for inclusive schools. Alexandria, VA: Author.
National Association of State Boards of Education. (1995). Winning ways: Creating inclusive schools, classrooms, and communities. Alexandria, VA: Author.
National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities (NICHCY). (1995) The national study of inclusive education. New York: National Center on Educational Restructuring and Inclusion, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York.
Rogers, J. (1993) The inclusion revolution. Research Bulletin, no. 11. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappan Center for Evaluation, Development, and Research.
Salisbury, C.L., Pumpian, I., Fisher, D., Roach,V., & McGregor, G. (1995). A framework for evaluating state and local policies for inclusion. Consortium on Inclusive Schooling Practices.[On-line]. Available: http://www.icdi.wvu.edu/others.htm#g10
Stainback, S. & Stainback, W. (Eds.). (1996). Inclusion: A guide for educators. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.
Staub, D. & Peck, C.A. (1994). What are the outcomes for nondisabled students? Educational Leadership, 52(4), 36-40.
Thompkins, R. & Deloney, P. (1995) Inclusion: The pros and cons. Issues About Change, 4, 3. Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.
Waldron, N.L. (1997). Inclusion. In G.G. Bear, K.M. Minke, & A.Thomas (Eds.), Children’s needs II: Development, problems and alternatives. Bethesda,MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
- Adopted by the NASP Delegate Assembly, 1993
- Revision adopted by NASP Delegate Assembly, April 1, 2000
© 2002 National Association of School Psychologists, 4340 East West Highway, Suite 402, Bethesda MD 20814 - 301-657-0270.
Please note that NASP periodically revises its Position Statements. We encourage you to check the NASP website at www.nasponline.org to ensure that you have the most current version of this Position Statement.
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