Bad Deeds for 3/11/2010

 

Fox News Inaccurately Reporting State Board of Education Action – Fox News in recent days has repeatedly broadcast highly inaccurate information about the State Board of Education’s efforts to adopt the new social studies curriculum standards.

Here are the facts. The direct quotes come from the March 10 broadcast of Fox & Friends.

Fox: “Texas board of education begins hearings today on proposed changes to textbooks…”
The truth: The State Board of Education today is expected to take a preliminary vote on updated social studies curriculum standards. The standards detail what teachers are to teach in each class. New social studies textbooks are not scheduled to be selected until 2011.

Fox: “So one of the proposed changes is to start history class in the year 1877.”
The truth: Texas has and always will teach U.S. History from the beginning until present day. U.S. History through Reconstruction is taught in the eighth grade and those standards can be found in the middle school standards, which are called Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). Here is a link to the middle school standards. U.S. History since 1877 is taught in 11th grade.

Fox: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington have been removed from the textbooks.
The truth: The standards, not textbook, are before the board this week. Lincoln is required to be included in the first and eighth grade history classes, as well as in the U.S. government class. Washington is required to be taught in kindergarten, first grade, fifth grade and eighth grade. Here is a link to a document detailing those historical figures, including Lincoln and Washington, who are required to be taught as part of the standards. There is another list of individuals who are suggested for inclusion.

Additional modifications are still possible to both lists as the board debates the standards during its March and May meeting.

Fox: Independence Day and Veteran’s Day are being deleted from the textbooks.
The truth: Again, the new history textbooks have not been written yet but they will be based on the curriculum standards adopted by the board. The standards currently under consideration cover Independence Day in kindergarten, second and fifth grades. Veteran’s Day is included in kindergarten, first, second and fifth grades.

Fox: References to Christmas have been deleted.
The truth: A TEKS review committee briefly recommended removing Christmas from a list that mentioned one major holiday for each of the world’s religions. The committee recommended leaving Easter in the document. The State Board immediately rejected this idea and a reference to Christmas was restored in the standards months ago and can be found in sixth grade in standard 19(b).

Fox: Textbooks adopted in Texas will be used classrooms across the country.
The truth: Each state has its own textbook selection process. Publishers may offer other states the Texas edition of a book but they are not required to select it.

 

Republican Talking Points About Cost of Health Care Reform Not True – The Congressional Budget Office released its new cost estimate for the Senate version of the health care reform bill on Wednesday and found that the measure would reduce the deficit by $118 billion over 10 years.

 

Republicans Misrepresent How Americans Feel About Health Care Reform – Republican lawmakers are dramatically out of sync with American citizens on health care, with large majorities of people looking for bipartisan cooperation that’s nowhere in sight.

A new Associated Press-GfK Poll finds a widespread hunger for improvements to the health care system, which suggests President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have a political opening to push their plan. Half of all Americans say health care should be changed a lot or “a great deal,” and only 4 percent say it shouldn’t be changed at all.

 

Republican Senator Admits Their Game Plan Is To Sow Doubt On Reconciliation – Hoping to trip up health care reform as it enters its final procedural stages, leading Republicans are trying to sow doubts in the minds of House Democrats that the Senate will end up fixing the legislation in ways that they like.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) admitted, during a press conference organized by health policy journal Health Affairs on Thursday, that his role now is to make skeptical House Democrats even more doubtful that the Senate can change the bill it passes using reconciliation. He insisted that tough votes on non-health care related topics are bound to come up, raised the specter that the reconciliation process will shut the Senate down, and even questioned whether the president can use reconciliation in the first place.

The whole session, which lasted about an hour, was a remarkable illustration of how disinterested the Republican Party actually is in the substantive aspects of the health care bill — so dedicated are they to simply stop the process in its tracks. [Stopping everything President Obama wants is their goal, even if they have to contradict themselves. If you are not with them (right-wing authoritarians), you are the enemy and must be defeated.]

 

Liz Cheney’s Attacks on DoJ are ’Shoddy and Dangerous’ According to Former Bush Attorney General – Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush’s last attorney general, has added his voice to a growing conservative chorus of condemnation against Liz Cheney’s attacks on Department of Justice lawyers who represented Guantanamo Bay detainees.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Mukasey argues that an ad from Keep America Safe, the pressure group headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, is part of a “shoddy and dangerous” trend of politicizing the work of lawyers.

The New York Times noted on Tuesday that even Bush White House Attorney John Yoo objected to Cheney’s campaign. Earlier this week, 19 former members of the Bush administration signed a letter condemning Liz Cheney’s group for launching the attack. Among the signatories was Ken Starr, the lawyer known best for his turn as special prosecutor investigating the Clinton administration. South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham also attacked the Keep America Safe ad.

 

Republican Party Sends Out Fake Census Forms – The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Republican National Committee (RNC) recently sent out deceptive political fundraising letters that looked like U.S. Census letters so they could fill their campaign accounts with cash from a misleading and deceptive fake census letter, leaving taxpayers like us to foot the bill!

The Census Bureau was concerned that these misleading mailings would undermine response rates for the official census forms, which arrive in mailboxes next week. By misleading and confusing Americans about which forms to return, lower mail response rates of Census forms increase government costs because a census employee is sent to every home that does not respond by mail.

The US Census estimates every one percent decrease in the mail response rate costs taxpayers approximately $85 million to send census workers back to re-count. The House of Representatives voted today 416-0 to ban these misleading fundraising letters disguised as 2010 Census forms.

Warn your friends about the FAKE GOP Census:
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Proposed Bill Would Do Away with Some Dietary supplements and Make the Price of Others Go Up – The stated aim of his so-called Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) is to curb doping in major league sports. But in reality, the bill will do more harm than good. The FDA already has power to do more to stop illegal steroids. What’s most troubling is that if Senator McCain’s bill passes, it would repeal key protections in the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) and give the FDA sweeping new powers.

What would this mean for us? It would likely lead to drastically fewer supplements available and higher prices.

Please take a moment and urge your Senator to oppose this harmful anti-supplement legislation.

 

Incompetent Terrorist: Underwear Bomb Could Not Have Blown Up Plane – Even if the “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had exploded his device on Christmas day, 2009, the Airbus A330 would have survived, according to an experiment conducted by a BBC documentary team.

Using a decommissioned Boeing 747, Joseph, Wyatt and the BBC team set about recreating the conditions of last year’s attempted bombing. While the person sitting next to Abdulmutallab probably would have died, the worst injury most passengers would have suffered would have been ruptured eardrums.

 

Video: Glenn Beck Attacks Stephen Colbert – Not real, but really funny.

Regards,

Jim