The Audacity Of… What?: Obama Pushing Taxes He Fought AGAINST In Senate AND In His Book

Barack Obama’s ambitious tax reform plan is a proposal to gut the popular 529 savings accounts used by millions of Americans to save for college. The administration has labeled the plans “inefficient” and complained that the benefit accrues too heavily towards higher-income Americans.

But in 2006, Obama actually voted in the U.S. Senate to make the 529 savings permanent, and has written favorably of the plans in the past.

The bill in question was the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which perpetuated a tax benefit that was originally created in the 2001 Bush tax cuts. The bill was overwhelmingly approved, but several Democrats did oppose it, including Senator Barbara Boxer.

Ryan Ellis, the tax policy director with right-leaning nonprofit Americans for Tax Reform, said it’s no surprise that Obama voted to preserve the plans back then.

“Presumably, he saw a lot of virtues with [529 plans],” Ellis told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “He spoke about them quite favorably in his autobiography.”

In “The Audacity of Hope,” while talking about the struggles of Americans to attend college, Obama praised tax-free savings accounts as a way to help control rising college costs.

We “still need to provide many students and parents with more direct help in meeting college expenses, whether through grants, low-interest loans, tax-free educational savings accounts, or full tax deductibility of tuition and fees,” Obama wrote in 2006. He then criticized Congress for “moving in the opposite direction” on the issue.

Under current tax policy, earnings off money invested in a 529 plan (named for the relevant section of the tax code) will not be taxed upon withdrawal, as long as the money is used to pay for college education. According to the College Savings Plans Network, such plans are popular, with over 12 million children from 7 million households benefiting. In some states, the government will even match contributions up to a certain amount in order to encourage their use.

Among those 12 million beneficiaries are Malia and Sasha Obama, as the president used the proceeds from The Audacity of Hope to put away $120,000 for each of the girls’ educations.

Now, the Obama administration wants to kill the plans by having them be subject to ordinary taxation.

“He profited handsomely from that book, [and] he did the right thing by taking that money and investing some of it in his daughters’ futures,” Ellis said. Obama’s proposed reform, he noted, wouldn’t offer the same chance to future American parents, but would preserve his own tax benefits.

“It’s like he rides up into the castle and pulls up the drawbridge behind him,” said Ellis.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/26/the-audacity-of-what-obama-pushing-taxes-he-fought-against-in-senate-and-in-his-book/

Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare Students for STEM

BOSTON – National mathematics standards adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia that supporters say are designed to make high school graduates “college- and career-ready” and improve the critical science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pipeline do not prepare students to study STEM or even be admitted to a selective four-year college, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.

Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM

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“With the exception of a few standards in trigonometry, the math standards end after Algebra II,” said James Milgram, professor of mathematics emeritus at Stanford University. “They include no precalculus or calculus.” Professor Milgram co-authored “Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare High School Students for STEM” with Sandra Stotsky, professor of education emerita at the University of Arkansas.

U.S. government data show that only one out of every 50 prospective STEM majors who begin their undergraduate math coursework at the precalculus level or lower will earn a bachelor’s degree in a STEM area. Moreover, students whose last high school math course was Algebra II or lower have less than a 40 percent chance of earning any kind of four-year college degree.

At a 2010 meeting of Massachusetts’ Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, Professor Jason Zimba, a lead writer of the math standards, said the standards, known as Common Core, prepare students “for the colleges most kids go to, but not for the college most parents aspire to,” and added that the standards are “not for selective colleges.”

In 2010, William McCallum, another lead writer of Common Core’s math standards, said “The overall standards would not be too high, certainly not in comparison [to] other nations, including East Asia, where math education excels.”

The U.S. Department of Education’s competitive grant program, Race to the Top, requires states to place students admitted by their public colleges and universities into credit-bearing (non-remedial) mathematics (and English) courses if they have passed a Common Core-based “college readiness” test. The authors argue that selective public colleges and universities will likely have to lower the level of their introductory math courses to avoid unacceptably high failure rates.

“It’s astonishing that 46 boards and departments of education adopted Common Core’s ‘college- and career-ready’ standards without asking the faculty who teach math at their own higher education institutions to do an analysis of Common Core’s definition of college readiness,” Stotsky said.

Professors Milgram and Stotsky were members of Common Core’s validation committee, which was charged with reviewing each successive draft of the standards, but they both refused to sign off on the academic quality of the national standards.

Pioneer’s comprehensive research on Common Core national education standards includes:Common Core Standards Still Don’t Make the Grade; The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers;National Cost of Aligning States and Localities to the Common Core Standards, and A Republic of Republics: How Common Core Undermines State and Local Autonomy over K-12 Education. Recent national media coverage includes op-eds placed in The Wall Street Journaland The Weekly Standard.

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Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

 http://pioneerinstitute.org/news/lowering-the-bar-how-common-core-math-fails-to-prepare-students-for-stem/

One of the lead drafters of the Common Core national math standards, Jason Zimba, admitted under questioning in 2010 that the math standards were not designed to help students succeed

“the colleges their parents aspire to.” Instead, he said, the standards were designed to prepare students only for “nonselective colleges” – i.e., community colleges. But what happens when these Common Core-“educated” students end up in four-year universities? Will their lack of academic preparation expose Common Core for the mediocrity it is and bring down the whole rotten structure? 

The Obama administration has tried to forestall this result with the incentives in the Race to the Top program and the illegal No Child Left Behind waiver scheme, both of which pressure colleges and universities to accept these unprepared students and place them in credit-bearing courses. But the administration is now working harder to disguise the inevitable, woeful effects of Common Core. The next round of the deception game seems to be discouraging students from attending four-year universities, where their academic shortcomings would be more glaring. 


Last week President Obama announced with great fanfare that federal taxpayers should pick up the tab for students to attend two years of community college. Much discussion has ensued about the economic and philosophical problems inherent in borrowing more billions from China to pay tuition. But seen through the wider lens of the Common Core scheme, this ploy makes perfect sense. What better way to mask the unpreparedness of students than to steer them away from the more demanding arena of a four-year university? 

And if the “free community college” lure doesn’t work, try this: Change the tax laws so that parents are penalized financially for saving for college. Millions of middle-class parents now contribute to “529” plans, through which they can save and later withdraw money tax-free as long as it’s used for college tuition and expenses. The President’s new budget proposes snatching that safe harbor from parents and making them pay taxes on their 529 savings upon withdrawal, regardless of what the money is used for. 

Is this beginning to make free community college look a little better? 
http://dailycaller.com/2015/01/22/how-to-make-common-core-loo...

By the time common care is done we will have to have that free 2 years of community college to get our kids back UP to where an 8th grader was in the late 1800's... If that would even get them that. Think I am wrong? See if YOU can pass this test.

EXAMINATION GRADUATION QUESTIONS
OF SALINE COUNTY, KANSAS
April 13, 1895
J.W. Armstrong, County Superintendent.

Examinations at Salina, New Cambria, Gypsum City, Assaria, Falun, Bavaria, and District No. 74 (in Glendale Twp.)

Reading and Penmanship. - The Examination will be oral, and the Penmanship of Applicants will be graded from the manuscripts

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case, Illustrate each Case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time, 1.25 hours)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $.20 per inch?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865?

Orthography (Time, one hour)

1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthography, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret 'u'.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final 'e'. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences, Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.

Health (Time, 45 minutes)

1. Where are the saliva, gastric juice, and bile secreted? What is the use of each in digestion?
2. How does nutrition reach the circulation?
3. What is the function of the liver? Of the kidneys?
4. How would you stop the flow of blood from an artery in the case of laceration?
5. Give some general directions that you think would be beneficial to preserve the human body in a state of health
*****************************...

So when you hear "My granddad only had an eighth grade education." understand that was a better education than many colleges give you now.
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/who-says-common-core-advocates-dont-like-fiction/question-4681306/?page=1&new=1&scroll=1#post_135814426

Obama's Massive Land Grab Has Alaska Furious: 'We Will Fight Back'

Obama announced Sunday that his administration plans to lock up the oil-rich 1.5 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge coastal plain and offshore areas in Alaska from oil and gas exploration.


Obama is asking Congress to designate 12 million acres of ANWR as a “wilderness” to keep it off-limits to development, despite widespread Native Alaskan support for drilling in the area. ANWR’s coastal plain alone is estimated to hold 28 billion barrels of oil.


“Designating vast areas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as Wilderness reflects the significance this landscape holds for America and its wildlife,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell.


The Obama administration argues that making ANWR off-limits to development will help protect the region’s wildlife and natural beauty. Obama is also considering ways to prevent new oil production at the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. Environmentalists have long campaigned to hinder oil production in Alaska.
“Just like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is one of our nation’s crown jewels and we have an obligation to preserve this spectacular place for generations to come,” Jewell added.


But Alaska lawmakers were furious with the administration’s proposal — for decades Alaska Republicans and Democrats have been pushing for opening ANWR to drilling.
“What’s coming is a stunning attack on our sovereignty and our ability to develop a strong economy that allows us, our children and our grandchildren to thrive,” said Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. “It’s clear this administration does not care about us, and sees us as nothing but a territory.”
The Obama administration has already proposed designating 226 million acres of waters off Alaska’s coast as a critical habitat for the Arctic ringed seal. Alaska’s outer continental shelf is believed to be home to the world’s largest untapped oil and gas reserves. According to Alaska’s Resource Development Council, the outer shelf could hold 27 billion barrels of oil and 132 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
“The promises made to us at statehood, and since then, mean absolutely nothing to them,” Murkowski said. “I cannot understand why this administration is willing to negotiate with Iran, but not Alaska. But we will not be run over like this. We will fight back with every resource at our disposal.”


Alaska’s energy production has been hampered in recent years due largely to federal restrictions and adverse economics. In recent months, the state has seen its financial situation grow worse because of plummeting oil prices. At one point, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline used to transport some 2.1 million barrels per day. It now carries well under 1 million barrels per day. The pipeline has so far only carried oil from state lands, as federal lands have been off-limits. The pipeline will have to be shut down and dismantled if it drops below 300,000 barrels per day.


“This is the best news for the refuge since President Eisenhower established it in 1960 as the Arctic National Wildlife Range,” said Rhea Suh, a former Obama Interior Department official who is now president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s a national treasure worthy of the highest protection available for our public lands.”


Environmentalists have been keen on slowing down the flow of oil through the pipeline to make it uneconomical and impractical to get oil from Alaska. Eco-activists have labelled Alaska a ground-zero for global warming, saying shrinking sea ice levels are harming polar bears, wildlife and Native Alaskans – despite evidence to the contrary.


Reacting to the news, Alaska’s newly elected governor said he would work to open more state lands to drilling. Though this will not likely solve the long-term decline in oil production – Alaska’s production fell from more than 2 million barrels per day in 1988 to 515,000 barrels per day in 2013.


“I will consider accelerating the options available to us to increase oil exploration and production on state-owned lands,” said Alaska Republican Gov. Bill Walker. “This further underscores the need for Alaska to become a participant in the infrastructure development for the benefit of all North Slope participants and the residents of Alaska.”
http://freedomforce.com/1204/obamas-massive-land-grab-alaska-furious-will-fight-back/