The Free Lunchers Who Want Out Of Afghanistan
They're the usual suspects who want to cut and run.
I assume they have all coverted to Islam to bring about the world peace Osama bin Laden promised if everyone in the world did.
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Yea : 65 Members
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
John Campbell (R-CA)
Judy Chu (D-CA)
Sam Farr (D-CA)
Bob Filner (D-CA)
Barbara Lee (D-CA)
George Miller (D-CA)
Grace Napolitano (D-CA)
Laura Richardson (D-CA)
Linda Sanchez (D-CA)
Loretta Sanchez (D-CA)
Jackie Speier (D-CA)
Fortney Stark (D-CA)
Maxine Waters (D-CA)
Diane Watson (D-CA)
Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
Jared Polis (D-CO)
John Larson (D-CT)
Alan Grayson (D-FL)
Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
John Lewis (D-GA)
Danny Davis (D-IL)
Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)
Jesse Jackson (D-IL)
Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
Mike Quigley (D-IL)
Janice Schakowsky (D-IL)
Michael Capuano (D-MA)
Barney Frank (D-MA)
Edward Markey (D-MA)
James McGovern (D-MA)
Richard Neal (D-MA)
John Olver (D-MA)
John Tierney (D-MA)
Niki Tsongas (D-MA)
Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Michael Michaud (D-ME)
Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Bart Stupak (D-MI)
Keith Ellison (D-MN)
Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO)
Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)
Walter Jones (R-NC)
Donald Payne (D-NJ)
Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
Joseph Crowley (D-NY)
Dan Maffei (D-NY)
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Charles Rangel (D-NY)
Jose Serrano (D-NY)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Peter DeFazio (D-OR)
Mike Doyle (D-PA)
John Duncan (R-TN)
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX)
Ron Paul (R-TX)
Peter Welch (D-VT)
Jim McDermott (D-WA)
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Steve Kagen (D-WI)
David Obey (D-WI)
Posted by: KevindF on 3/15/2010 at 5:20 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink
He's The Oldest Retiree At 62
How did he find the strength to make it this long? 
If teachers are so poorly paid, how is it they can afford lakeside estates to retire to? 
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Fifth-grade teacher Don Dronen is retiring in May after 41 years of teaching. Nearly all of those years have been at Lewis & Clark Elementary School in Fargo. At 62 years old, he’s Fargo’s most senior retiree this year.Nearly all of Don Dronen’s 41 years of teaching fifth-grade have been in one Fargo school.
That means walking out of Lewis & Clark Elementary in just over two months won’t be easy for the 62-year-old.
“I don’t handle change,” he said recently. “I know when I walk out of here it’s going to be tough.”
So the quiet, soft-spoken teacher is preparing now and hoping for an uneventful exit from Fargo Public Schools as the district’s most senior retiree this year.
“It’s a big life change,” said his son, Scott Dronen, 31, a fourth-grade teacher at West Fargo’s L.E. Berger Elementary. “He doesn’t like to bring attention to himself.”
Family and friends plan to have a quiet, private party to celebrate Dronen’s career. However, the small gathering likely won’t be reflective of the big impact he’s had on the community and the 1,000-plus kids he’s taught.
“I’m having kids of kids,” he said. “You run into people.”
Like Angie Lipp.
She was a student in his class, a colleague when she taught down the hall from Dronen, and more recently, a parent when her son was in his class.
“I think you would find that he has a big following of kids who remember him fondly,” said Lipp, 45, now a teacher at Fargo’s Kennedy Elementary and Discovery Middle School.
“I have never heard a bad word said about the man,” she added. “He just kind of brought out things in the kids that I’m not sure the kids always knew they had in them. I admire that.”
While Dronen may shy away from the attention, Lipp said they just want to thank him for making a difference.
It’s that appreciation Dronen said will be the biggest gift he’ll walk away with from teaching.
“You can’t put a price tag on that,” he said.
Raised by two teachers, he started student teaching at Lewis & Clark Elementary in 1969. He didn’t stray far from the profession or the school. In fact, for 39 of his 41-year career, he’s been in a fifth-grade classroom at Lewis & Clark.
Now, come May, Dronen and his wife, who’s also retired, plan to relax on their lake home near Detroit Lakes, Minn., and spend more time with their five grandchildren and three children – two of whom are teachers.
“I won’t have a hard time finding things to do,” Dronen said.
In fact, retirement leaves more time for ice fishing, watching Vikings games, training for his fourth halfmarathon, deer and duck hunting, carving wooden decoys and painting.
Until then, Dronen is relishing his final school days at Lewis & Clark.
“I’ve had a lot of fun,” he said. “I’ve worked with lifelong friends.”
He’s also made a lifelong impact on the hundreds of students he’s taught.
“I just have a great deal of respect for Mr. Dronen,” Lipp said. “He will be missed as a co-worker and as a friend.”
Number of teacher retirees up in Fargo, West Fargo
Marjory Hochgraber is one of 22 Fargo School District staff retiring this year. That’s up slightly from the 16 teacher retirees last year.
However, the Hawthorne Elementary Title I and Reading Recovery teacher said she thinks the economy is still making some teachers hesitant to retire.
In West Fargo, the number of teacher retirees is also up.
So far, the district has received notification from 11 teachers about retiring compared to the seven teacher retirees last year, Human Resources Director Robin Hill said.
In Moorhead, the school district has six teacher retirees so far this year – half the number of last year’s 12 teacher retirees, spokeswoman Pam Gibb said.
For Hochgraber, after 40 years in the Fargo School District, it’s time for her to move on, she said, even though she still loves her job.
“There’s so much joy I get out of my job,” she said, tearing up. “The reward is seeing the kids read. When you see them excited and proud, that’s No. 1.”
However, the 62-year-old isn’t exactly calling it quits from work. She said she may explore teaching at the college level or another position in education.
“I enjoy it a lot,” she said. “I don’t know where those years went.”
Posted by: KevindF on 3/15/2010 at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Why Bother Working?
Everyone can just sit home and collect a government check like James Lein does!
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Published March 14 2010
Bunning was busy pitching
What do Jim Bunning and John Kenneth Galbraith have in common? Unemployment compensation, that’s what.By: James Lein, Minot, N.D.
Bunning, of course, is the U.S. senator who single-handedly held up these benefits for many Americans out of work. Galbraith, a renowned economist who died in 2006 at age 97, wrote of the widespread economic benefits of unemployment compensation. I read his bestselling book, “The Affluent Society,” the summer of 1961, between my sophomore and junior years of college.
Recently, when I followed news reports of Bunning’s action, I recalled some the book: how unemployment compensation during the Depression helped families with no income, as well as businesses in their community. Money flowed again, in a manner that was immediate and obvious. What Galbraith would have thought of recent bailouts to Wall Street, I’m not sure. I doubt he would have advised them – unless they came with the strings of re-regulation and accountability.
Neither Bunning nor Galbraith ever used unemployment compensation, to my knowledge. Yet Galbraith extolled it; he went to work for FDR three years after its inception. Bunning apparently sees it as something that can be trifled with to make a political point.
Some countries, such as Norway, grant unemployment compensation right away – until the person returns to work. There are no time limits.
People do not abuse the system, and communities continue to have money flowing when there are layoffs. Norway also has no elaborate legal procedures for workers to go through to prove injury on the job or that their layoff wasn’t their fault.
Here, we seem to think that laid-off or injured-on-the-job workers are latent criminals who were just waiting for the opportunity to fleece the system. And we seem to think Wall Street bankers and investment people are honest and noble enough to police themselves.
How did we come to such conclusions? We will mistrust our neighbors or family members but trust people like Bernie Madoff. Go figure.
If there is to be anyone on the honor system, it’s the average person living paycheck to paycheck, not those with billions of other people’s money.
In my 40 years of mental health work, I’ve encountered many hardworking people who had to live on virtually nothing while they battled with their employer for unemployment compensation, or with Workplace Safety and Insurance (formerly Workers’ Comp) or with Social Security Disability for some assistance – processes that can take years.
We make average folks clear many hurdles to get something to pay for shelter, utilities and food. Yet we trust those who almost brought on another Great Depression. We seem more for Wall Street than Main Street.
In hard times, however, when the economy needs stimulating, unemployment compensation gives us more bang for the buck by putting money right back into the local economy.
I suspect that Bunning didn’t read about this in Galbraith’s bestseller the summer of 1961. He was busy pitching for the Detroit Tigers, while Roger Maris was hitting his 61 homers for the Yankees. None of the homers were off Bunning, who in 1964 threw a perfect game for the Phillies.
Lein is a retired psychotherapist who writes an occasional column for North Dakota newspapers.
E-mail onlein@srt.com
Posted by: KevindF on 3/14/2010 at 2:47 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink
Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln, How Was The Play?
Charlotte neglected to mention who pays for her health care since she is a US citizen.
Published March 13 2010
Canadian health care works well
I am an American citizen and a former resident of North Dakota, who has lived in Canada for 37 years. I encourage Americans to support publically-funded health care for all.By: Charlotte Schumacher Majic, Port Hope, Ont.
My husband had a kidney transplant 27 years ago and has had two heart attacks (regularly sees a number of specialists) and is in excellent health. As in the US, some procedures take priority over others. He did wait for a kidney to become available, but he never waited when he had a heart attack.
We have never received a bill or made co-payments. And, it never felt wrong, that we had something everyone needs. Canada has a single-payer, publically-funded system. We pay slightly more income and sales tax than the U.S., but these taxes do not come close to the outrageously-high premiums my U.S. relatives pay.
Canadian medical costs are half as much per capita as the US pays for health care, and, it covers all Canadians. We do not fill in forms and wait for reimbursement. We simply give our Health Card number and see our doctor of choice, no questions asked.
Republicans agree that there is a need for the government to end annual and lifetime caps on insurance benefits, to end denial of coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions and on the need for regulation to contain rising costs and combat fraud. Therefore, they cannot also argue that the government has no role to play in health care coverage. This also undercuts the core Republican argument that Democrats need to throw out all the legislation and start over, since they agree with the core.
So, let’s get on with it and pass this for the people, not keep the status quo for the insurance industry, who are the only ones benefiting from the status quo.
Posted by: KevindF on 3/13/2010 at 9:09 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Friday Night Video
Posted by: KevindF on 3/12/2010 at 10:13 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
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