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The scoop on proficiency tests

When it comes to proficiency tests, nothing is real. According to just some of the propaganda: schools are “failing”; we have (and need) these tests to “improve” education; the tests were created by educators; the tests are on the 4th, 6th, and 8th grade “levels”; if teachers and schools did things properly, every kid would pass every test; and over time the tests will make our schools “successful.” It’s all malarkey!

Schools are not “failing.” Schools are doing a better job than ever before, helping more kids with more problems. Over the years schools have gotten better and better. That is not to say that schools are perfect, that they provide everything certain interest groups demand, that they provide enough of what actually is needed, or that they shouldn’t be asked to do even more. Still, schools are not failing.

Medicaid shortfall threatens health spending

House Bill 578 (Rep. Dale Miller) would extend time limits for welfare recipients from three years to five years. Current time limits are sending people out into the workforce before completing education and job training necessary to support a family. Especially devastated are new immigrants, who face cultural, language and educational barriers to employment.

Status: Sponsor testimony took place on November 28, 2000. Direct correspondence on the bill to members of the Finance and Appropriations committee, especially vice-chair, Rep. E.J. Thomas.

A $647 million shortfall in the state’s Medicaid budget is raising concerns among advocates about needed health care spending in the next budget. Roughly $250 million of the shortfall comes from state funds; the rest is federal matching funds. The state has sought additional funds from both the Controlling Board and legislature.

Governor Taft has asked all state agencies to maintain current funding levels. That will be tough, in light of increased Medicaid costs. Medicaid covers both aged, blind and disabled (ABD) people, as well as low-income children and families.

160,000 Ohioans who lost Medicaid coverage to be reinstated

The State of Ohio has agreed to give free health coverage to 160,000 Ohioans who lost Medicaid since welfare reform began. This move is an important opportunity for many low-income working people to receive needed health care. The reinstatement will provide Medicaid cards that are good from January 1, 2001 to March 31, 2001. These cards have no strings attached – in other words, recipients will not have to pay for services, even if they are found ineligible for continuing benefits. The cards are good for all services covered by Medicaid. That includes doctors’ visits, hospital care, dental, vision, and most health care needs.

People will also receive a simple, mail-in application to apply for continuing coverage. This is important because eligibility limits for both parents and kids went up on July 1, 2000. Many working parents and their children may be eligible. Also, you can apply by mail, with no office visits, and the paperwork is much simpler.

Holding Candles in the Dark

When I became publisher of the Free Press in 1987, the media scene in Columbus was considerably different from today. The daily Citizen Journal was still being published. The Other Paper and Columbus Alive were not yet born, though Alive’s predecessor, Downtown Alive was in its infancy. And the Free Press was about to go under.

Amidst great optimism, a new group of Free Press enthusiasts incorporated the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism and set out to become the alternative newspaper in the city. We changed to a tabloid format and began to focus our coverage on local stories ignored by the dailies. But for a variety of financial, political and journalistic reasons, it was not to be. We didn’t have investment capital and couldn’t afford to pay salespeople or investigative reporters. We made a political decision to not accept cigarette advertising or the sex for sale ads that were offered us. And frankly, we weren’t sure if our readers wanted us to compromise our coverage for the sake of gaining a broad based audience.

What is nature?

“In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.” -- Aldo Leopold

“New York City’s Central Park …emerged out of a complex mix of motivations – to make money, to display the city’s cultivation, to lift up the poor, to refine the rich, to advance commercial interests, to retard commercial development, to improve public health, to curry political favor, to provide jobs. No single individual either conceived or carried through the massive public project that, in the end, cost more than $10 million (three times the city’s total budget in 1850) and took more than eight hundred acres out of the most expensive and intensely competitive real estate market in the United States.” -- Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and The People.

War on the “eastern front” at Pickerington Ponds

A pitched battle is now raging—again—to save Central Ohio’s best-known wildlife refuge. You could help make the difference.

As many of you may recall, a huge victory was won by environmental forces on the west (Columbus) side of Pickerington Ponds late last century. Columbus City Council attempted to pave the way for M/I Homes to slap a thousand or more houses and apartments on a 242-acre parcel northwest of the Ponds. Five Council Democrats (Habash, O’Shaughnessy, Tavares, Sensenbrenner and Mentel) voted unanimously to re-zone the land from agricultural to residential so the developers could walk away with a bundle of cash, leaving behind a parcel of trash.

That’s when the enviros mobilized. About a dozen activists took to the streets and gathered more than 12,000 signatures in less than a month. With tremendous media fanfare, it became clear central Ohio voters would be able to decide whether or not to rescind the rezoning, thus making it impossible to destroy the land. It was also clear that Columbus voters would have done just that by an overwhelming margin.

Statement on the Post-Election Crisis

It’s about the vote, stupid...

There he is: Vice President Al Gore defending democracy. But yes, sisters and brothers, there is a fight underway which is not about the elections. It is about the vote and about the inconsistent nature of democracy in the capitalist USA.

What became very clear immediately after the November Election is that the Republican Party and segments of the Democrats were more concerned about the formality of an election rather than its content. When Democrats, such as New Jersey’s Toricelli, suggested that Gore move toward concession, he was saying, in essence, that having gone through the formality of the election, the content was irrelevant. It did not matter to him and many other politicians that there were all sorts of irregularities, not to mention allegations of fraud. The USA went through an election and that was that as far as they were concerned.

New hope for the inarticulate

AUSTIN, Texas -- The president is a Texan, the governor is an Aggie, God's in His heaven, all's right with the world. And I want it noted for the record that I am doing my dead-level best to be cheerful about this revolting development.

Several reasons for non-Republicans to perk up:

George W. Bush is not stupid.

George W. Bush is not mean.

Most of us non-Republicans didn't vote for him, so no one can blame us. No matter what happens for the next four years, we can say, "It's not our fault; we didn't elect him." This will be especially useful when dealing with persons of the French persuasions.

High entertainment value: The fact that Bush cannot express himself well in the English language is a constant source of delight to us all. In his defense, no matter how badly he mangles it, you can almost always tell what he was trying to say. The Texanism is, "My tongue got caught in my eyeteeth, so I couldn't see what I saw saying."

Is our children learning?

He wants to be the Education President.

He knows that Canada is one of our most important neighbors to the north.

Sometimes he is able to laugh at himself.

50 years later, the tragedy of nuclear tests in Nevada

As golden anniversaries go, it's a somber occasion. In a forlorn expanse of desert scarcely an hour's drive northwest of Las Vegas, on Jan. 27, 1951, the Nevada Test Site went into operation by exploding an atomic bomb.

During more than a decade, mushroom clouds often rose toward the sky. Winds routinely carried radioactive fallout to communities in Utah, Nevada and northern Arizona. Meanwhile, news media dutifully conveyed U.S. Atomic Energy Commission announcements to downwind residents: "There is no danger."

In the region, journalists followed the national media spin and threw in some extra bravado. "'Baby' A-Blast May Provide Facts on Defense Against Atomic Attack," said a headline in the Las Vegas Sun on March 13, 1955.

Different players, same game

Chavez has been cruelly taken from them, but what an immense favor Bush/Cheney did the Democrats by putting up Ashcroft and Norton! It's hard to stir up liberal passions over Powell at the State Department or Rice as National Security Adviser, or even O'Neill at Treasury. How could you be worse than Madeleine Albright or Samuel Berger? And who cares about O'Neill, when the effective ruler of the economy is over at the Fed?

But with Ashcroft scheduled for the Justice Department, there are rich political and fundraising opportunities for the Democrats, lashing the Naderites with "We told you so," and painting lurid scenarios of the Klan Grand Wizard taking up residence in the Department of Justice. Here comes the Beast: Ashcroft, the foe of choice; Ashcroft, the militia-symp; Ashcroft, the racist hero of the old Confederacy. What can you say for the guy, except that he's probably marginally to the left of Eminem, great white hope of the rap crowd and currently in line for four more Grammies.

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