400-408 – • LA Times (5/6/09) L.A. Unified pays teachers not to teach. About 160 instructors and others get salaries for doing nothing while their job fitness is reviewed. They collect roughly $10 million a year, even as layoffs are considered because of a budget gap.
• LA Times (5/11/09) Parents are urged to demand more from L.A. schools. Green Dot charter operator Steve Barr wants to organize grass-roots power to improve public education. Barr calls it "the Parent Revolution," and he wants to form Parents Unions that will force LAUSD to improve schools, or face losing their campuses to charter schools. Barr promises he can turn a failing school into an excellent school in three years – "a proper school is one that is safe, orderly and small, where the principal can personally and rapidly fire ineffective teachers, where nearly all dollars get to the classroom and where every child is progressing toward college." Green Dot Public Schools operates 10 charter schools and Locke High. Marco Petruzzi is Barr's Chief Executive, and attorney Ben Austin oversees the Parents Union.
Risk-taking charter school operator Steve Barr is launching an effort through which parents would wrest political control of the L.A. school system from unions, school bureaucrats and other entrenched interests.
The plan is for parents to form chapters all over town and improve schools, one by one, using the growing leverage of the charter school movement. The goal is to unite a city of overworked and isolated parents with a brash promise:
If more than half of the parents at a school sign up, Barr's organizers say they will guarantee an excellent campus within three years. They call it the Parent Revolution.
With parents, they predict, they'll have the clout to pressure the Los Angeles Unified School District to improve schools. They'll also have petitions, which Barr and his allies will keep at the ready, to start charter schools. If the district doesn't deliver, targeted neighborhoods could be flooded with charters, which aren't run by the school district. L.A. Unified would lose enrollment, and the funding would go to the charters instead of to the district.
Based on past performance, the school district would be challenged to meet parents' heightened expectations, Barr said. "We're not trying to prove the district is doing things wrong. But our kids are at stake."
• MSNBC (5/11/09) Obama wants to see 5,000 failing schools close–Administration wants to focus on 'dropout factories'. He's got $5 billion to spend on turning around "dropout factories," that's $1 million per campus. The school districts and the states have the authority to fire the entire staff of a school, or just one or two people, to make the improvement. Or, they may decide to turn the whole school over to a charter school operator. So, teachers, is this the way to fix your school? Why won't the teacher's unions allow bad teachers to lose their jobs?
413-423 – Darryl Strawberry, eight-time All Star, four-time World Series Champion, and 1983 NL Rookie of the Year, is out with his life story, Straw: Finding My Way. He's also started The Darryl Strawberry Foundation: Fight For Autism (darrylstrawberry.com).
428-437 – Darryl Strawberry,
443-452 – Jeff & Maureen Learned, are right now in the midst of foster-adopting an almost 5 year-old boy, to go with their two foster-adopted daughters, one private-adopted daughter, and their 9 year old biological daughter, and they share how great it is to work with Olive Crest Foster and Adoption Agency (olivecrest.org, 818-563-2300).
458-508 – Carl Moeller, is President/CEO of Open Doors USA (opendoorsusa.org), an affiliate of Open Doors International (founded by Brother Andrew), and their mission is to support the persecuted church around the world – which they've done for 54 years. Their 350 employees work in 20 offices around the world and minister to persecuted Christians in 45 countries. Their 2009 Watch List lists those countries where Christians are most persecuted. Carl gives us a report from the mission field.
512-523 – Carl Moeller
528-538 – Jerry Bowyer, economist, nationally-syndicated columnist, and CNBC contributor (jerrybowyer.com), on the news of the day.
544-554 – Jerry Bowyer,
558-608 – George Friedman, founder, chairman and CEO of STRATFOR (stratfor.com), a global intelligence company that provides customized intelligence services for its clients, gives us an overview of the big international news we need to know. His previous book was America's Secret War (2004), and he's now out with his latest, The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century. George sees the coming alignment between the United States and Poland against Japan and Turkey, and he tells us why.
Bio: Friedman graduated with a B.A. from the City College of the City University of New York and holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. Prior to entering the private sector in 1996, Friedman was a professor of political science for almost 20 years and was an early designer of computerized war games. During his years in academics, Friedman briefed widely on security and national defense matters, including senior commanders in all armed services, the Office of Net Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, the U.S. Army War College, National Defense University and the RAND Corporation. In 1994 Friedman founded the Center for Geopolitical Studies at Louisiana State University, which engages in integrated economic, political and military modeling and forecasting and was the only non-DOD/non-governmental organization granted access to Joint Theater Level Simulation (JTLS) by the Joint Warfighting Center.
• Stratfor (5/11/09) The Strategic Debate Over Afghanistan.
• Caroline Glick , The Jerusalem Post (5/7/09) Column One: Obama's green light to attack Iran.
• Stratfor (5/11/09) Geopolitical Diary: U.S. Limitations in Afghanistan.
• NRO Editors (5/11/09) Nancy's Versions.
612-623 – George Friedman
628-638 – • MSNBC (5/11/09) Teen suspended for going to girlfriend's prom–His Baptist school forbids dancing, rock music and hand-holding.
• YouTube (5/5/09) Pat Robertson Gives Relationship Advice About Atheist Fiancé. Is there "common ground" between a Christian and an atheist?
(1:06) Pat Robertson giving dating advice to a woman who wrote in about her relationship with her atheist fiancé.
(:05) short clip from above.
644-652 – Calls.
657-700 – Calls
• MSNBC (5/10/09) Shot glasses ordered as prom favors–A step down from picture frames and money clips?
(:58) Wanda Sykes goes after Sarah Palin at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 5/9/09.
(1:12) Wanda Sykes goes after Rush at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on 5/9/09, (YouTube)
"Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you're saying, 'I hope America fails', you're, like, 'I don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq'. He just wants the country to fail. To me, that's treason. He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight. Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs."
• Toby Harnden (5/11/09) Not funny: Barack Obama laughs at Wanda Sykes "joke" about wanting Rush Limbaugh dead.
• Fox News (5/10/09) On World Stage, Obama Uses Podium to Express Regret. Since taking office, President Obama has made a habit of using podiums abroad to apologize and express regret for American behavior of past years.
• Robert Samuelson (5/11/09) The Great Tax Dodge Demystified.
• Michael Barone (5/11/09) On Guns and Climate, the Elites Are Out of Touch.
• Thomas Sowell (5/11/09) Housing Boom and Bust: The same discredited assumptions and the same disregard of repercussions.
• Barna (5/11/09) Many Churchgoers and Faith Leaders Struggle to Define Spiritual Maturity.
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