So… We Are Rating the University of Delaware By Common Core

The educational department of the University of Delaware is ranked 31st in the nation... That is at least out of 5000 accredited teaching schools…

Not only that, they are 31st in the top ranked educational teacher training country in the entire world… Apparently there is no educational crises in America when it comes to teachers receiving top notch training.

Overall, the top 10 countries in rank order are the United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom….

What just passed last Thursday in Delaware, now requires the University of Delaware, again now ranked 31st in the top educator nation in the world, to be judged solely on how its teachers administer Common Core when they go out into the field…

Common Core?

Just how good is this Common Core we are talking about?

New Attack on Common Core From Pennsylvania Democrats

Common Core Standards attacked by Republicans

‘Common Core’ Standards Come Under Attack By Lucas Johnson, Associated Press

Nation at Risk Anniversary, Common Core Under Attack

Common Core Conundrum

Common Core State Standards Under Attack

The RNC’s Attack on Common Standards

The War Against the Common Core

911: Common Core Under Attack

Rotten to the Core: Conservatives spearhead drive at RNC meeting to stop Common Core

Weingarten Calls For A Moratorium on the Implementation of the Common Core: A “Save Harmless” Year for Planning That Includes Parents, Teachers and Principals.

Washington Post: Common Core is in Trouble

Common Core Standards Facing Increased Opposition

Common Core – Language

Common Core Makes Waves

Indiana Among States Acting to Oppose Common Core Standards

Lisa Nielsen: Is the Common Core an Attack on Progressive Education?

Common Core: Education Without Representation

The Common Core: The Good, the Bad, the Possible

Your Children Need a Néw Brain for Common Core

Kentuckians Against Common Core Standards

Toynbee Predicted Privatization

One would think someone in Legislative Hall would have at least looked into Common Core before mandating that the 31st best teaching institution in the best ranked nation for turning out good teachers, would have to be judged on its effectiveness by the results of a program everyone is having so much trouble with.

Progressives are against it. Tea Party Advocates are against it. Democrats are against it. Republicans are against it.. Red States are against it. Blue States are against it. How could this be? Could it be possible they all have children?

In fact, it appears there is no one who is in favor of common core, across this entire great nation we are so fortunate to live in… No one except 59 Delaware legislators, who apparently didn’t get the memo…..

It Is The Presses’ Fault; Speaking Of The Sequester

We’ve all dealt with duplicity.  Where someone will complain loudly behind their bosses back and as soon as he pops into the room, they flip and lavish praise, sometimes to the point of criticizing others in the same room….

Today I listened to WDEL’s two talk show hosts, and Allan Loudell during his two news broadcasts.

Of the three, Al Mascitti was the most honest, Allan the second, and Rick Jensen …. not even plausible.  Let me explain.

Al Mascitti laid out the facts.  The sequester was small compared to the overall budget, but the people it hurt, were the ones who not only had no safety net but nowhere else to go.   The sequester could have been, and would have been prevented if the Republicans had not filibustered the Senate bill to raise the revenue from those who could easily have afforded: the top one percent.

Allan Loudell was neutral and baited both sides.  I believe I counted four times he asked leading questions that would suggest it was both side’s fault that this bad sequester bill was passed.  I believe I counted three of the four who all laid the blame solidly on the Republicans.  However,  why was this even brought up? Any impartial observer like a journalist from another nation, can easily see off of any newscast that the Democrats are running around the country trying to avert the sequester and warn America ahead of time about its effects, while the Republicans are doing nothing!  In fact, they are gloating over how they pulled the sequester off ……   It is disingenuous to even pretend this is not completely a Republican debacle;  one forced upon the nation by their party and their party alone, and forced in such a way, that Democrats were powerless to prevent it from being fulfilled…..

Rick Jensen, … oh my.  His time was spent trying to pin the sequester on Jack Lew, because Jack Lew was the person Bernstein said originally brought it up…  Therefore only in his mind, is it a Democratic machination.   There was no mention of course, that it was a Republican filibuster that prevented the solid alternative from reaching a vote.  There was no mention that it was all the Republicans who agreed upon the sequester, and voted for it.  There was no mention that a budget act without the sequester attached, was vetoed by every single Republican when it came up for a vote, and that the sequester was only passed, because the Republicans all piled on to push it through….

And here is how he tried to explain all the press reports to the contrary.  ”Oh, the press is part of Obama’s team.  They are all lying and twisting things to make it look like it’s the Republicans are the ones who made this sequester happen….. ”  

Upon hearing this misstatement, one must readily ask themselves, hey, wait a minute! Since the press is rather hostile to Obama, perhaps reality IS that they are indeed telling the truth, (and nothing but the truth), and perhaps Rick Jensen is dismissing that truth, and all the facts supporting it, because it makes his side look really bad….

Most people will probably accept the latter before the former. After all, only 24% of voters today will admit grudgingly that they were once Republican.

And here is the problem for the rest of us.  If the press can’t straight up tell the truth, how can the American people ever know?  If the press tries very hard to contort reality into making this appear an even handed event when it certainly is not, they are doing the public a disservice by not informing the public of the reality taking place before their faces….

So, why are we not being informed Republicans filibustered that piece of legislation that would have prevented the sequester?  That alone, makes them the culprits.  You cannot filibuster a bill that will prevent something, and then say… It wasn’t us; it’s the other sides fault.

So, why is only Al Mascitti telling the truth, and nothing but the truth at WDEL these days?

There absolutely, unequivocally, irresolutely is no way Democrats are culpable to the sequestration…  This is absolutely, unequivocally, and irresolutely the Republican’s mismanagement that put us into this predicament…. Pure and simple.

If you don’t know that.  You are not reading news.  You are reading make-believe….. The most frustrating part of the latest frame of the budget war has been that the media’s fetish for evenhandedness prevents us from seeing the simplest truth…..

Dear Rush Limbaugh Radio Station

Please feel free to copy and past and email various radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh’s show. In Delaware,

WDOV-AM   1410   M-F  12-3       Clear Channel   http://www.wdov.com/pages/contact.html
WDMG-FM   92.7    M-F  12-3       Resorts Broadcasting wgmd@wgmd.com                                                                                                                               WILM-AM   1415    M-F  12-3       Clear Channel http://www.wilm.com/pages/contact.html

_______________________________________________________________________

Dear  Advertiser  c/c station manager (of one of the above stations):

I was driving and heard your advertisement on Rush Limbaugh this afternoon.  I will no longer buy anything from you until Rush Limbaugh is removed from this radio station.  Allow me to explain why.

It’s the hate.  I may be older than you but I remember such times whether hard or not, we all strived to get along.  That is not happening today.  Upon hearing Rush Limbaugh berate liberals, of which my children are (not me though), berate women (0f which I’m one) and berate blacks, Hispanics, and gays (all who go to my church), it occurred to me that this was the reason we can not get anything done.  People have to defend themselves against his accusations, whether founded or not.

I decided, that though I am one person, I had some small power to make a difference.  It may be $50 dollars, it may be $100 dollars, it may be my life’s investments.  But if I hear any of my patrons being advertised on his show, I will drop them in a heartbeat….

Why?  Because my country deserves better.

Right now I plan to tell any advertiser in person, face to face,  as to why I am moving my business to his competitor.  However, if I can’t get out like I used to,  I may not be able to fulfill this promise some day.

I would rather hear health news, like they have in a doctors office, or in depth reporting, or music.  I’m just tired of all the hate.  I know one letter matters little; I just hope others feel the same way..

Sincerely,

_________________

Please join in the national movement to rid America of Rush Limbaugh. Clear Channel which is partly owned by Bain Capital, is quietly trimming its payroll. It didn’t want to open any fissures in Mitt Romneys campaign.

Please feel free to use the links above, send an email and cut and paste the body of this letter into the message. If you hear an advertiser, write it down, and when you get the chance send them the basic email you previously sent.

Just curious, if we do get him off the public airwaves, do you think someone will take his place, or is it only there because he has been doing it so long? I don’t think anyone else can fill the vacuum. I think that if it obviously becomes commercially nonviable, that hate radio will disappear, hopefully replaced as is on Delmarva Broadcasting’s WDEL with an outstanding news team….

Comment Rescue From Allan Loudell’s Blog

it is from this headline: How Bodenweiser story is playing in the UK paper, DAILY MAIL

Here is the rescued comment…. to set the scene, the previous commenter had just mentioned the silliness of a 1987 divorce playing into determining who would be our next President….. (and now the comment.)

“I agree it is inconsequential, the Staples thing… But it brings up a fabulous point… And we all like fabulous points here.. lol…

Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath. But, if Romney also lied under oath…. what does a Republican do?

Does he admit publicly that his party was very wrong in the 1990′s? That his party was only playing politics? That his party only made it important because they thought it might embarrass the President and use that to get a Republican in the next term? Does a Republican admit that lying under oath about a personal matter, is really no big deal at all, they they, as a party were telling terrible lies as to how they felt?

Or do they stick to that story, and abandon Romney on principal? He lied under oath, and therefore, even though he is of “my party”,.. he is “unfit” to be president.

I mean one can’t morally have Donald Trump impute that Obama is lying about something that happened in college, and is therefore unfit to be a president, when you have documents paraded in front of all America, showing Romney to have actually lied, not just lied to the American people, but lied under oath….

My question for Earl Gray, Mike of Delaware, Mr. Pizza, and those who support high moral principals: what is a Romney supporter supposed to do when his morals are put into the spotlight and he has to answer which was right? To have impeached Bill Clinton and now fire Romney? Or continue ones support for Romney and have the National Party officially “apologize” publicly to William Jefferson Clinton? It truly is quite a dilemma for the Republican Party.”

Surveillance of the Masses

America gets up in arms when it’s privacy issues are at stake. How dare you know that about me! However when someone slips through our net and blows up a building or car, they exclaim, how did you not catch him in time?

Soon to be announced if not already out there, is our nation’s now no longer classified Trap Wire System. In the reports of its inception this package was held up as the ultimate surveillance tool. Cameras across the country would capture data from cities, highways, tolls, parks, public arenas, and everywhere else there is a camera, encrypt the data, then send it to a central point where it gets incorporated with all other data already compiled on every citizen. That data including public on line events such as dating services, chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, as well as corporate files, employee rosters, and the vast cesspool of corporate data gleaned each and every time you use your credit card.

On every adult citizen, a computer can spit out a file of facts that even that citizen doesn’t know… The computing power is unparalleled. You are sitting at the stoplight, and for no reason a camera goes off, you think weird, no one tripped it. and instantly your face has been identified, your file pulled, and a program knows you buy Colgate toothpaste 39% of the time. And it knows you are on Zoloft. Your credit score is 593. And you are cheating on your spouse of 27 years with a 19 year old who gets something from Victoria Secret every month…..

A song comes on the radio and your mind jumps to it and you go on never thinking of that random event again…….

Of course there is the other side of the story. You pull up to the light right beside the dufus mentioned above. The same thing happens. You wonder too. Your picture triggers an alarm because your image was last seen in the lower Philippines having been traced there from Manila before paying for the boarding of a private boat off Gov. Lim Ave, then going dark 18 months ago. The alarm is because you were once an acquaintance on the third level of a Detroit sheik who propagated militancy. The file shows you worked with explosives on construction sites, you were terminated at one time being blamed for some missing C4. You denied you had anything to do with it. The camera notes that your car is low in back, and alerts other cameras on the route your are traveling that you will soon be entering their view. Your facebook page shows you liked Iran and support Assad of Syria. Your high school psychological profile says you were quiet and brooding. Your license plate is registered to a car reportedly at the gas station on Rt.273 undergoing lengthy repairs. You are unmarried. You don’t date, and your credit card has a large cash balance, yet you spend very little and that is only on food, gas, and a furnished apartment in Christiana Meadows. As you drive by a transponder, your new phone signal gets captured, and all your calls are now being pulled up. You spoke with a person of high interest, 2 times this morning, for a length of one minute each. Your visage is updated to all local cameras and all transportation portals, and put at the top of each face recognition program. Someone is dispatched to scout your apartment.

You see. That is the dilemma. We enjoy our safety, and abhor our loss of privacy.

If you haven’t noticed already, on your emails sometimes you have these buried within the routing: Abraxas and the others you see will say, Stratfor…. Bloggers are very used to seeing these on a rather regular basis. They are everywhere across the net.

One thing noticeable during the Olympics was that the Brits live this way all the time. They are used to it and prefer the cameras and intrusive software over a coordinated attack on their trains. And no one can blame them. But what the Brits have, and we don’t, is a set of rules regarding this capturing of information. If someone violates this code as did Murdoch, then the ramifications are severe; perhaps bringing down an entire corporate empire. The CEO, Vice President, and quite a few others all charged with illegal actions.

And that is the lesson we need to take. Accept the surveillance but know that if anyone, anyone breaks the code of privacy… you are going to be filthy rich for the rest of your entire life at their or their employer’s expense…. For if that is truly the case, going back to the original story up top, if you got busted for your too hot to fail 19 year old lover, and lost your spouse, for $83 million, you really wouldn’t mind too much… My bet? You would see it as a blessing in disguise. And if you still loved your spouse, don’t worry. When you are worth $83 million, she won’t go far.

This has to become the future of surveillance. Here is why.

I’ll use Facebook as an example. I can always tell when one a friend has to hand over their password to their employer. Whereas they used to be so lively, responsive, and fun, they suddenly stop posting anything showing their personality. Their presence on line becomes reduced to “look at my kid”; “here is my dog”. Whereas you used to be able to talk to them about their spouse, their parents, how they were feeling, how they liked their job, how they were doing in the lover department, how their head was, what hopes and dreams they possessed, how drunk they got, suddenly their presence is as chilled as someone passing Checkpoint Charlie in the 60′s. There is a rigidity that they must conform to. There is a corporate mentality that they must express, and most deal with it by staying silent.

That is not what America is about. America is about freedom, about life…. about liberty….. and about the pursuit of happiness…… What once was open air on the internet is now poisoned with carbon particles, so much so that it is hard to breathe.

We can’t lose our nation’s fun-loving identity. And we can’t stop protecting ourselves by our newer and newer technology. So, what we can do (and we can easily do this), is not to constrain the surveillance, but penalize any misuse of the data that gets captured.

And make the punitive damages so huge, so grand, so big, that American citizens will actually enjoy having their privacy breached when it comes time for the judge to make the monetary judgment. Which means we need to rethink all things private, and that includes the intrusiveness of the press into private lives…

I’m always saddened when someone suffers because of something got out of control on their social media, and everyone gangs up on line, saying, “well, you shouldn’t have put it on the internet.”

Really? REALLY? A person should never have a light moment with an acquaintance, one of those few joyous moments we as people treasure forever, because someone they don’t know, someone they never met, might hack into their account, and spread it across the world?

That is ridiculous. The internet IS us. If we want a fun moment, we have the right to exercise it.. Back when I was growing up, laws were passed and on the books to control the positions that went on within the bedroom. That has fortunately faded away into being ridiculous. The same needs to happen on the internet. And the easiest way, the simplest way, is to have huge, gigantic fines, ones that are so big they will bankrupt anyone, and everyone who breaches another’s privacy.

So what if some entity knows you use Colgate 39% of the time. If no one else ever knows that they know it, as far as impacting anything in the real world, their knowledge of that minutia, doesn’t matter.

We need to start the process. We first announce the problem; we offer a solution; we educate the public; we elect responsible legislators, we pressure responsible legislators, we get legislation signed, and then, we relax and really enjoy the rest of our lives.

It is past time that our personal privacy be now given a price tag that is equal to what it is worth. Something in the range of tens of millions comes to mind….. Hell, you can get $90 million for spilling hot coffee in your lap…..

Bust The Fuckin’ Unions

In an exchange below, the campaign manager of one of Voices 4 Delaware confirmed that the only reason his candidate was added to that group, and he insists (I believe him) it was unknowingly, is because the Teacher’s Union, DSEA supported her opponent….

Outside money does not have a right to disrupt local school board elections.  They can because of Citizens United, but it means voters have to rally to make all that money spent on PAC’s  a complete waste.

If every PAC loses, then Citizen’s United is meaningless….

But, as pointed out in my Nasty Boys piece below, this whole school board race is about… busting the fuckin’ unions.

Priscilla Rakestraw

I was pleased to see Priscilla Rakestraw switch her vote to Newt.  She did so for the right reason.

Newt has been here and Romney came only to give a shout out to a Hogwarts’ staff member.

Yep, that is about it.

Someone on another blog brought up the comparison that was rather fitting.  They said  Mitt Romney was just like Neville Chamberlain, the British appeaser  at the start of WWII., one who likes and says “yes” to everything.   Newt Gingrich, is the Winston Churchill…

That has a ring of truth.  Both on the first hearing level, (and going ha ha, that’s funny), and on the final analysis, where all the facts are on the table, and when a final decision must be made.

Like Winston, Newt is a flawed individual..  But like Winston,  who warned the British that arming themselves was safer than negotiating,  Newt has been consistent.

Romney, has been for a lot of stuff before he was against it… (Must be something in the Boston water supply I’d surmise.)

If America were to come under attack, a simple question suffices:  who would you want in control?  Someone running around the White House going, “what should I do, what should I do, what’s the latest poll say”?  or someone who instinctively knows when it is time to hit back, and how to motivate a nation to do so….?

In the give and take of real life… we are often required by our own institutions to follow the direction they seem to be taking us.  It would behoove any elected official to piss off their constituents.  And I have been harsh on Priscilla for some of her statements, which were made because of her party’s wing’s sentiments.

But, I have always felt, that if one choses to castigate those with whom one disagrees with when they are wrong, it becomes a moral obligation to applaud them when they do what humans do best, and stand up for what they believe, even when it bucks the system that supports them.

Priscilla and I have disagreed on a lot.  But she needs to be applauded for her courage to stand up to Mitt Romney’s machine, and realize that putting a Neville Chamberlain in our White House, may be expedient for the moment, but have everlasting consequences to the health and wealth of the United States of America…..

I can only hope, Delaware citizens, also recognize the danger and vote against the machine….

After all, as our lives become more electronically organized around that little thing we carry in our pockets, it becomes more and more important that we put a real man in charge.

Well done, Priscilla … well done….

Taxes and The Wealthy

Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..

So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….

I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……

In A Perfect World….

Call it temporary insanity but let’s pretend, let’s just say, …that at one moment in time, if I chose to donate my youth out for my country, to be compensated back in the form of low pay; to completely and unjudgingly offer my fate up to the will of bureaucrats, all for the loss of my own self esteem, all for unending stretches of boredom, sparsed with interludes of a few intense seconds, that fortunately thorough my reactions and training, enabled me to continue living as I do today………….

I could reasonably be expected to be honored for that service to my nation, right?

In a perfect world, that is….

One would think, that in a perfect world, as needs were being debated across the universe of public funding, that a hierarchy resembling this, would sort of be the guideline, if not the rule?

National Heroes…..

over

We, The People…..

over

LLC corporations….

After all, if it weren’t for us, there’s a good chance those LLC. corporations wouldn’t be able to do business in a free and prosperous society, you would think?….

One would think, that if one of these heroes needed medical care, with the tremendous amounts of money being thrown away by our government daily, in the forms of corporate tax breaks enabling corporations to make “record breaking profits”…. that they would be put at the top of the list.. don’t you think?

Sorry, CEO… your operation will have to wait… We have a veteran who is in dire need ahead of you….

In a perfect world….

One would think, that a voucher system would be in place, or a blank check, where any veteran could walk into any hospital, and get immediate, necessary medical attention, have his prescriptions filled as a privilege for his service, and that the bill would be willing be paid by those with monetary resources more than adequate for their own needs?

One would think, (right?)… that it would be CEO’s, those who give pink slips so they can break profit records, those who cut benefits so they can break profit records, those who don’t invest in America so they can break record profits, ….who should be the ones finding themselves regulated to CEO hospitals, where they would then have to settle in on a waiting list for the next opening to occur, where they had to endure budget cutbacks and go without life-saving medicine because there was no money left in the CEO fund, perhaps because it had all gone to Veterans to pay THEIR expenses?

In a perfect world…..

In a perfect world, veterans would need no freebies…. They would not need welfare, or a pension, or a humble stipend to eke an existence… They would be working, contributing to society, in any way they could… If they had no legs, they would be outfitted at corporate’s expense, so that would not be an issue… If they had no arms, they could be outfitted at corporate’s expense so that was not an issue. If they had psychological damage, (and who wouldn’t?) they could be treated at corporate’s expense… so that was not an issue.

If they were so badly damaged that they create an efficiency drain on society, they could be honored for their sacrifice, and a useful voluntary capacity could be created to honor that commitment once made so long ago… Perhaps speaking about serving one’s country in every class, in every school, in every county? Can you think of any better civic’s lesson?

There’s a lot that can be done…

The problem is that veterans are deemed as just another expense…. Because to corporate America, that is just what they are… An expense, an obligation to be met that gets in the way of their making more money…

Unfortunately, our Congress is owned by Corporate America….

What should and does need to happen, is this relationship needs to be exposed. We need to call them out on it…

Republicans and Democrats are both complicit in allowing corporate raiders this unprecedented power. But Republicans are the symbol of Corporate America. Republicans are the ones who championed the Corporate Takeover. Republicans are the ones who dismanteled the safeguards that had been put in place to prevent that takeover from happening. That is why they need to go. Disappear… Whoever is left, the remainder, most likely after seeing the elimination of a large majority of their peers, will think twice before following their Dark Lord, now a soul less wanderer eking existence.. ……

In a perfect world…

Unfortunately, today we need to contend with obscene amounts of money saying Corporate is Good; Government Fairness is Bad….

But we have our lives telling us the opposite… It will take courage and strong will, to override all the overload of sensory data being pipelined into our soul, but we still have hearts, and those hearts are attuned to what makes America special. great, and the best place to live on this earth….

WE can still dream….

And those dreams should include a perfect world… one we CAN make happen, at least for those without whom we would not have the freedom, the resources, the nation, we have today….

Here’s to a perfect world?

Nostalgic for Old Bloggers

Pondering over Steve’s return and the ramifications which came with it, (for example, I noticed the re-humanization of Dana Garrett), I was reminiscing why so many bloggers had fallen off the wagon…

Back in the glory days, there was a rather eclectic collection of men and women who put their thoughts down nightly or almost on a regular basis. A few are left today… But missing are Mike Matthews, Shirley Vandever, Tommywonk, Dave Burris, Dana Garrett, Duffy, Maria Evans, Joe M., Mat Marshall, …..

Most all of these posted their reasons for giving it up…. and they all sound the same. Tireless demands of time, no real feeling for posting anymore, realization that it was a lot of hoopla and little real substance.

And ironically the more successful you became the more time you felt you had to spend answering comments. And for the amount of time spent, the numbers of people actually reading them, were dwarfed by just the voting totals of Delaware alone.

But it is with Steve’s return that I think I finally was able to put my finger on just why the blog-world fell apart. It was because we had stopped becoming a community. It is rather interesting to read something someone posts that says: I think thus about this subject and here is why…. It is less interesting to have a blurb saying: “check this out” and then click a video and sit back waiting through the commercial….and then after watching, think: “that was a waste of time…”

Each person had a personality. Shirley tried portraying herself as a crusty curmudgeon but she was anything but…. Dave would bluster about, but then, without warning come through with brilliance. Mat, provided a odd twist from the enlightened eyes of a Cab Calloway student. Donviti was … well Donviti..and that’s a good thing. Hube could on the turn of a dime, surprise you by agreeing with what you said. Kilroy roasted Red Clay school district, no doubt causing them to cringe with his misspellings, and put New Castle’s school troubles on the map. Duffy always found the most eclectic random findings, and mainstreamed them for the rest of us. Nancy, with her sources, and emails, provided the bulletin board for all of us to snatch our next story from… Coupled with airplay on WVUD,WHYY, WMGD, Al Mascitti and Rick Jensen, actual influence over current events was projected… or at least it felt that way…

What we had was a community. And that peer group was who you wrote for. Sometimes you wrote evocative pieces just imagining Hube reading it and reddening his ears. Other times you could get Nancy’s gander up, just by praising Chris Coons. One out of this group, even considered running for Governor, and probably should have, considering the complete tanking of the campaign by that person who did run.

But mostly, we wrote for each other… If other’s wanted to read they were welcome. I think some who tried to fly too close to the sun, and write like they were the News Journal, got burnt out, and dropped by the wayside.

It is interesting to see the change in both Hube’s and Delaware Liberal’s format, comparing todays with yesteryears. Today, everything is bite sized. Before, we had the extended version.

The difference is like eating crackers off the table in back of the meeting room, or, breaking for dinner. Taking a break for dinner, is much more enjoyable.

All great moments pass. It is fact that we look back on them in admiration, that makes them great. So, I guess, though the characters are still alive, and a few still active, we cannot return to those times, long ago and far away.

I can only hope that a new generation, may someday read this, and happen to come across something like this, and find inspiration within themselves to do it again….

I think it is safe to say, we “pulled it off big time”. We really did something, which in it’s time was unheard of, and what we did, still has lasting ramifications rippling through our state government today…

I think most of the problems we dealt with, got fixed. Although no one can point to us and say we did it, that we influenced the changes, they certainly can’t deny. After all, each and every one of those problems haunted legislature for a quite a long, long time, and.. they are gone now. We exposed them for what they were…

With that said and done, … it’s pretty cool.