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July
21, 2005
Vol. 1, No.
22
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Education
In thrall to
John Dewey's ghost
The
basic problem with Nevada's colleges of
education is that their core teacher-training
agenda is—speaking candidly—essentially bogus.
To be sure, this problem is not
the Silver State’s alone. For decades, American
ed-schools have trotted out Progressivist
dogmas, presenting them as genuine teacher
development. Indeed, as education historian
Diane Ravitch and others have shown, it was this
agenda that, historically, was behind the rise
of American colleges of education.
The preeminent fountainhead of
these faux theories of education was John Dewey,
who lusted throughout his long life to make
American schooling an instrument of state
socialism. Though a self-proclaimed apostate
from the German philosophy that initially
infatuated him, Dewey remained a committed
Hegelian in many ways—with a commensurate soft
spot for Marxist and other German
authoritarianisms.
[continued]
Politics
Should felons vote?
By Edward Feser
City Journal
Forty-eight states
currently restrict the right of felons to
vote. Most states forbid current inmates to
vote, others extend such bans to parolees, and
still others disenfranchise felons for life. A
movement to overturn these restrictions gained
swift momentum during the 2004 presidential
campaign, and pending legal and legislative
measures promise to keep the issue in the
headlines in the months to come. It hasn’t
escaped notice that the felon vote would prove a
windfall for the Democrats; when they do get to
vote, convicts and ex-cons tend to pull the
lever for the Left. Had ex-felons been able to
vote in Florida in 2000—the state permanently
strips all felons of voting rights—Al Gore
almost certainly would have won the presidential
election.
Murderers, rapists, and thieves might seem to be
an odd constituency for a party that prides
itself on its touchy-feely concern for women and
victims. But desperate times call for desperate
measures. After three national electoral defeats
in a row, the Democrats need to enlarge their
base. If that means reaching out to lock in the
pedophile and home-invader vote, so be it. Even
newly moderate Democrat Hillary Clinton has
recently endorsed voting rights for ex-cons.
This is inclusiveness with a vengeance.
[continued]
Values
Heralds of a brighter black future
By Heather Mac Donald
City Journal
When
Bill Cosby, in a speech to the NAACP last
May, let fly a merciless condemnation of black
illegitimacy, educational apathy, and the idea
that white racism causes black social problems,
political commentators dropped their jaws.
They remained stunned when he vented similar
frustration to audiences across the country over
the next six months. Sure, “civil rights”
advocates have been known, on rare occasions, to
criticize self-defeating black behavior, but
convention requires that after briefly
denouncing, say, black-on-black crime (as if
black-on-white crime would be okay), the
“leader” should turn his attention to the racial
injustice that allegedly causes such crime and
harp on that for the next year or so.
This Cosby refused to do. “It’s not what [the
white man] is doing to you; it’s what you’re not
doing,” he thundered in Detroit.
The reaction of black audiences was just as
unexpected. Rather than take offense, they
waited hours in line, in blistering heat and
freezing cold, to hear Cosby deliver his
impassioned plea for bourgeois behavior.
[continued]
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WHY
BusinessNevada
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Nevada law
Nevada A.G. v.
Nevada A.G.
Are
decades of Nevada Tax Commission decisions legally at
risk?
By Steven
Miller
BusinessNevada
Recent actions
of the Nevada Attorney General’s Office in a
double-taxation case are bringing the integrity of the
office into question, a growing number of tax experts
are suggesting.
The controversy arose after the Nevada Tax Commission at
a May 9 meeting approved a $40-million-plus tax refund
for Southern California Edison. SCE operates the Mojave
Station power plant near Laughlin and fuels it with coal
mined in Arizona.
Because the State of Nevada was levying not only a
minerals tax but also a use tax on the coal, the company
in 2002 appealed to the commission, challenging the
double taxation under Article 10, Section 5 of the
Nevada Constitution. That section not only directs
lawmakers to “provide by law for a tax upon the net
proceeds of all minerals, including oil, gas and other
hydrocarbons, extracted in this state,” but it also
explicitly bars any other tax upon a mineral so taxed.
However, on July 7 the Office of Attorney General Brian
Sandoval filed suit against the tax commission, asking a
court to nullify the May 9 tax-refund decision on the
grounds that the commission had violated the state
open-meeting law by deliberating and voting in a closed
meeting.
Tax commission members expressed consternation, saying
that for at least the last 10 years, the Attorney
General’s office had counseled them to hold closed
meetings under state law NRS 360.247, which says a
taxpayer’s appeal proceedings may be “closed to the
public if the taxpayer requests that it be closed.”
“I am, frankly, shocked that these issues have arisen as
they have,” said Tax Commissioner John E. Marvel,
according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I
question whether there is good faith or not on the part
of the attorney general’s office.”
[continued]
Government corruption
Councilmen
convicted in
San Diego corruption trial
were part of union effort
Labor Reform News
In the largest corruption scandal to hit San Diego in 30
years, a federal jury Tuesday convicted two Democrat
city council-members – including the acting mayor – of
numerous charges in what has come to be known as the
“Cheetahgate” scandal.
The council-members – Michael Zucchet and Ralph Inzunza
– were strongly supported by organized labor as part of
the AFL-CIO’s campaign to take control of the San Diego
City Council, which until 2001 was controlled by
Republicans. In the 2000 election, Democrats won a
majority on the council, and in 2004 labor-backed
candidate Donna Frye narrowly lost in a write-in
campaign that garnered national attention from a
weeks-long recount reminiscent of the 2000 Bush-Gore
recount in Florida .
Zucchet won in 2002 with strong backing from organized
labor. He formerly worked for the local professional
firefighters union and was widely seen as “labor’s
candidate” in a coastal council district.
Labor’s determined drive to take over San Diego city
government now stands on the verge of collapse with the
convictions of Zucchet and Inzunza, combined with the
possible loss of Democrat Donna Frye in the upcoming
special election for San Diego mayor. The election is
July 26 with a runoff on November 8. Frye is not
expected to reach the 50%+1 threshold on July 26, and
has so far proven incapable of reaching a level of
support higher than the low 40’s.
AFL-CIO crackup
Dissident unions may
boycott AFL-CIO convention
Threatening to bolt
unless demands met
By Steven Greenhouse
The New York Times
Leaders of several
dissident
unions warned yesterday that they might shun next week's
A.F.L.-C.I.O. convention in Chicago unless the labor
federation's president, John J. Sweeney, agreed to some
of their demands.
The
possibility that those unions -- the service employees,
Teamsters, food and commercial workers and Unite Here --
would boycott the convention signals that the four might
carry out their threat to quit the federation, labor
leaders said.
These
threats represent the biggest rift in the labor movement
in decades and come as Mr. Sweeney has sought to stage a
triumphant convention celebrating his expected
re-election as well as the 50th anniversary of the
American Federation of Labor's merger with the Congress
of Industrial Organizations. The dissident unions, which
include about one-third of the federation's members, are
unhappy that Mr. Sweeney seems certain to win a new
four-year term at the convention.
[continued]
Travel
Nevada ACLU challenges new airport security gizmo
By
Valerie Miller
LVBusinessPress
A Southern
Nevada civil libertarian is troubled by recently
installed machinery at McCarran International Airport
that checks passengers for traces of explosives.
The two devices by British company Smiths Detection &
Protection Systems were installed in February, making
McCarran one of 14 model U.S. airports to test them.
Travelers are sent to the machinery if they meet certain
criteria, said Clark County Aviation Department Director
Randy Walker. But Walker and top law enforcement
officials have declined to discuss those criteria,
raising civil liberties concerns.
[continued]
Immigration
Once here
illegally, the Laras savor kids' success
Mexican
family tale suggests
strides made by migrants
by Miriam Jordan
The Wall Street Journal
LOS ANGELES -- In the late 1960s, Mexican
peasant Hector Lara successfully crossed the U.S. border
on his third try and arrived here as a penniless illegal
immigrant. Mr. Lara worked long hours at a variety of
jobs -- from manufacturing to yard work -- to support
the wife and four children who later joined him from
Mexico's Jalisco state. Like millions of immigrants
before and since, the Lara family took its place on the
bottom rung of the U.S. economy.
[continued]
(This link is good up
to seven days for non-subscribers to the online Journal)
Nevada growth
Soaring cost of materials
boosts construction prices
By Alana Roberts
InBusinessLV
Construction
industry insiders say increased labor costs are a
major part of the rising cost of construction—but not as
significant as the skyrocketing cost of materials.
“Where the escalating has really come about is because
the escalation of materials cost due to, again, supply
and demand,” Steve Holloway, executive vice president of
the Associated General Contractors Las Vegas Chapter.
“You’ve got China opening up and other parts of the
Third World opening up; there’s a huge demand for
materials. It’s going on everywhere; it’s national in
scope.”
[continued]
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