Secretary of Education Duncan “Waives” His Hands
By Lisa Schiff
Parent Teach Association
No matter how much the Department of Education tries to spin the message, the end result is the same – more testing and less focus on really educating kids. Continuing in this vein is the latest big announcement from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about the opportunity for states to apply for “waivers” that are supposedly designed to provide “relief from provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — or No Child Left Behind (NCLB)…”
Honest Officer, I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong
By Sam Gold
Injured Workers Television Network
In Part 2 we talked about how justice always seems to be meted out in favor of the insurance companies because they’re the ones who pump the Fraud Assessment Commission bucket full of cold hard cash. When is the last time, if any, you ever heard of an insurance carrier being prosecuted by the state or any DA for that matter, for committing fraud against an injured worker and violating his/her constitutional rights? And after all isn’t there a definite conflict of interests in our District Attorney offices when a monetary incentive is offered for successful prosecutions? You be the judge.
“Not Every Human Problem Deserves a Law” - But Sometimes Existing Laws Are The Problem
By Laura Thomas
Drug Policy Alliance
Governor Jerry Brown has proclaimed that, “Not every human problem deserves a law.”
He’s definitely right. However, there are laws on the books right now that worsen human suffering, contribute to contagion, and burden the state’s healthcare budget. We’ll need his help fixing those.
Case in point: state drug paraphernalia laws make it a crime to possess a syringe for personal drug use, and also make it illegal for a pharmacist to sell, or a physician or public health worker to provide a sterile syringe without a prescription. Back in the 70s—before AIDS--these laws were intended to reduce heroin use.
That didn’t work. However, government-created syringe scarcity did contribute to the rapid spread of HIV/AIDS and viral hepatitis among people who use drugs, who were infected by shared syringes, as well as their partners and children.