SEPTEMBER 4, 2014 | OKANOGAN VALLEY GAZETTE-TRIBUNE
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THE TOWN CRIER It’s time to go back to school As the fun-filled days of summer vacation draw to close, teachers and students across Central Washington are heading back into the classroom for a new school year. Throughout my years in Congress, I have often met with local teachers, administrators, parents, and students to discuss ways we can improve our educational system so that it better serves our students. The resounding message that I hear is the need for more local control and less interference from the federal government. More than a decade has passed since Congress first passed the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act. While there is no doubt this law is far from perfect, it established a level of accountability for the first time by insisting on results for the billions of federal dollars spent on education. However, many improvements can and must be made. It is clear that a one-size-fits-all approach to education is not in the best interest of our Doc Hastings students. Education programs that work well Representative for students in Seattle may not be the best fit for (4th District those in Ephrata or the Tri-Cities. In my view, students in Central Washington and all across the country are best served when decisions about education are made by local school districts and parents – not the federal government. Last year, the House of Representatives passed, with my support, the Student Success Act. This important legislation is aimed at restoring flexibility and local control of public education programs by putting decisions about students’ education back where it should be – in the hands of parents and local school districts. There is no question that we must continue to make sure that schools are held accountable for educating the next generation, and I am pleased that this bill would replace the existing federal one-sizefits-all student progress requirement with state-determined accountability systems. The Student Success Act would also save taxpayer dollars by eliminating more than 70 duplicative and unnecessary federal education programs that further create bureaucratic red tape for local schools. Unfortunately, the Senate has failed to act on this bill or present its own plan to reform our public schools. With students headed back to school, time is of the essence and I urge the Senate to act swiftly and pass the Student Success Act to ensure that American students have access to the quality education they deserve. I will continue working to restore local control and decision-making, and ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. I wish all the teachers, students, and parents in Central Washington a safe and successful 2014-2015 school year. Editor’s Note: I’d just like to say I plan on being back in my usual spot next week. There’s a lot to read on education in this week’s newspaper -- starting with the Oroville and Tonasket school board stories on the front page, but also opinion on this editorial page. I’d especially like to draw your attention to B1 and Brent Baker’s analysis of how our schools are being given low letter grades for what appears to be more for political reasons than care about our kids’ education. Next week I might just write about my adventures in motorcycling and being broke down on the side of the road and all the good people who took the time to get me and my bike back home again. G.A.D.
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THE OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF OROVILLE & TONASKET
Our state’s super wealthy social changer at it again OPINION BY JERRY CORNFIELD THE EVERETT HERALD
Two years after their money helped make charter schools possible, the Ballmers, the Gateses and the Nick Hanauer are using some of their loose millions to try to tighten gun laws in Washington. They’ve made six- and seven-digit contributions to the campaign for Initiative 594, the measure on the November ballot which would expand the state’s background check law to cover most gun sales conducted at gun shows and online. Their checks went to the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility whose strategists will, sometime after Labor Day, start spending the dough on television commercials claiming wider use of background checks will bolster public safety without infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights. The alliance can afford to wait because it is already getting a boost from a million-dollar ad campaign paid for by its nonprofit alter ego, the Center for Gun Responsibility. Since Aug. 8, the center has been running dozens of 30-second commercials as part of an “education” campaign dubbed “Background Checks Make A Difference.” The effort is set to end Sept. 5. The ads stress the value of background checks for enhancing public safety but never mention the ballot measure that its political
self is promoting. What’s nice about this campaign finance nuance is it also allows the Center for Gun Responsibility to keep secret the source of its money. Center spokeswoman Molly Boyajian noted in an email that the nonprofit has received “gifts from local individuals, partner organizations, foundations, and our national partners.” One of those partners is Everytown for Gun Safety, founded by Michael Bloomberg, the super rich ex-mayor of New York. He’s pledged to spend boatloads of money in every corner of the country to help enact tougher gun control laws and elect pro-gun control lawmakers. I-594 fits his investment profile perfectly. While billionaires soak up attention for their prodigious checks, where is the National Rifle Association in all of this? Is it possible the NRA, the established pulpit of the gun rights movement, will keep its money to itself in this fight? The NRA does have a political action committee to oppose I-594. But its coffers are pretty much empty. A significant infusion would be needed if the venerable organization intends to deliver a serious counterpunch. The NRA did contribute $25,000 to its PAC in July then spent most of it on staff, probably to have them survey the landscape. They couldn’t have liked what they discovered. An Elway Poll in July found 70 percent
of voters – many of them in the vote-rich Pugetopolis – “inclined” to back Initiative 594. Three months earlier, in April, an Elway Poll found the level of support at 72 percent. Things could turn quickly. They did in 1995 when voters initially embraced a gun control-type measure then rejected it. Of late the state’s electorate has been in the mood for reshaping society in ways the government won’t. They’ve privatized liquor and legalized marijuana, charter schools and gay marriage. Last year, voters seemed primed to pass a food-labeling initiative until opponents shelled out $22 million to successfully defeat it. The NRA can’t fork out that kind of money, nor must it. Neither can it hope to succeed on its reputation alone. NRA leaders must decide whether it is worth trying to convince voters in one state in the far corner of the country to defeat an initiative, or focus on keeping members of Congress from changing the background check law for the nation. The next few days will be very telling. Political reporter Jerry Cornfield’s blog, The Petri Dish, is at www.heraldnet.com. Contact him at 360-352-8623;jcornfield@ heraldnet.com and on Twitter at @dospueblos
Education or propaganda? I’m an evolutionism-inclined agnostic, but I trusted my kids (and do trust my grandkids) to be smart enough and objective enough not to let any particular church nor any faction of public education convince them it has the closed, last word on any issue. And call me crazy, but I don’t fear my progeny will somehow become intellectually corrupted by alternative thoughts, as evolutionists seem to dread, so I don’t feel driven to keep the kids sheltered from exposure to those alternative thoughts. All the trendy modern American secularist bigBill Slusher otry (against Christians anyway) notwithstanding, religionists who merely want their views included in public education are absolutely no more voo-doo, superstitious, self-impressed nor faith-driven than that large religious cult among scientists who fanatically preach the scriptures of political correctness at the expense of sound science. And lo they are many. For instance, there’s no more medieval a bunch of stern, inflexible, robed clerics in America than the faux ‘consensus’ among scientists who piously and angrily insist that global warming (hastily renamed ‘climate change’ when it was proved that the Earth hasn’t warmed in nearly twenty years) is a slam-dunk, welded-shut, done-deal despite enormous objective evidence and much thoroughly credentialed scientific hypothesis to the contrary. There was a time when academia confidently welcomed objective challenge to their pet theories, that the theories be tested on the crucible of evidence. No more. Post modern American academia now defensively castigates any who deign to suggest that there could possibly be any question of such trendy pop-science gospels
as global warming. Dare to advocate any diverse, tolerant and objective consideration of sound alternative possibilities and you will fast be damned by the Warmist cult as a scientific heretic, a ‘flat-earther!’, a ‘holocaust denier mentality!’ and worse. Some elements of academia are actually pressing to have the questioning of Warmist doctrine officially declared illegal with criminal punishments for dissenters. Oh for those wonderful, comparatively open-minded Dark Ages again. I don’t yet know whether climate change is as represented by the ‘scientific’ Warmist jihadis or not, but any fair read of the full scope of evidence on the question to date strongly indicates the Warmists don’t actually know either, their self-satisfied, computermodeled convictions notwithstanding. Yet, with every bit as much blind faith and fundamentalist zealotry as any creationists, that cult is also dogmatically demanding that their ‘scientific’ religion of evolutionism be exclusively taught in our public schools with nothing more to support a case for that exclusivity than the Gospel of Political Correctness. Surely for most of us nothing outranks our children’s welfare, and top among those concerns is their education. Ergo, we have annual battles among the varying factions as to how such issues as evolution, homosexuality, guns, abortion, religion, race and many others are presented. But is not the real education risk to our children more from exclusivity than any single theme? Isn’t the biggest threat to our children (from their education) more the imposition of an exclusive view than from their exposure to an objectively presented set of alternatives? Are not our kids more at risk from being force-fed a single ‘right’ way to think as opposed to being given a selection of alternatives from which they may choose? I personally believe we’re all agnostics because none of us can prove or disprove any deity. I believe evolutionism is more likely to be correct than creationism. (Yet I never
forget that even Darwin admitted before his death that he “had no satisfactory answer to the Pre-Cambrian Mystery” whereby even secularist mathematicians admit that the odds of evolution having progressed as fast and uniformly as the historical record indicates it did in the Pre-Cambrian Era absent - their words - “intelligent design” are ... one in ... seventy ... trillion). I believe that religion is the single largest mental illness afflicting humankind, and I offer the Christian Crusades in their day and modern Islam as proof beyond any reasonable doubt. Nonetheless, I would have no objection to my grandkids being taught evolutionism, as well as religious alternatives - even the Islamic accounts - in the same class. I don’t fear my grandchildren choosing unintelligently from a set of evidence derived alternative views. I do fear them being propagandized in a single politically correct view adjudicated by some Grande Committee of the All Knowing, be they conservative, liberal or other in nature. I’d humbly suggest that we need to have more faith in our children’s ability to know right from wrong, good from bad, or correct from incorrect as they’ve been taught by their families. Perhaps we should fear less that our children may be duped by alternatives and fear more their being inculcated in any school board’s notion of a single correct view exclusive to all others. For is not our mandate to educate our kids, rather than propagandize them? William Slusher is an author, columnist and sociopolitical writer with a small ranch on the Okanogan River. Enjoy his nonpartisan Pacific Northwest political comedy: CASCADE CHAOS, or How Not To Put Your Grizzly In The Statehouse (Amazon, cmppg.com, or your local bookstore). Mr. Slusher may be contacted at williamslusher@live.com.