Tag Archives: congress

Send Money

I’m turning this morning’s post over to a government teacher at Cathedral High School, who is trying to raise money for her students to travel to Washington, D.C. to compete in the national We The People contest.

My name is Jill Baisinger; I am the coach of Cathedral High School’s We the People team.  My class is trying to fund raise our trip to Washington D.C. for the We the People National Competition.  Below is some information regarding the program and our school’s involvement.  

We the People is a national civic education program that is taught in 5th grade, 8th grade, and 12th grade classrooms. Its purpose is to help prepare students to become more active citizens. Students specialize in an area of constitutional studies from founding philosophies, historical application, civil rights, civil liberties, or current applications. The culminating activity is a competition set up as a Congressional hearing where students take and defend their constitutional view as they have a conversation with attorneys, judges, historians, and other members of the community.

This is only Cathedral’s second year to have a We the People program, yet the team this year won their Congressional district competition and the Indiana State competition, which is one of the three hardest competitions in the country. Cathedral is now “Team Indiana” – and will represent Indiana at the National hearings at the end of April in Washington D.C.

In the past, when We the People was fully funded through a Congressional earmark, the Indiana Bar Foundation was able to pick up the cost of the team to travel to D.C. and compete. During these economic hard times, this is no longer the case; now the team must raise $33,000 to get to the national competition. Students, parents, and Cathedral High School are working hard to make this come true – and this is what the money would go toward – getting the team to D.C. to compete against the best We the People teams across the country.

The students and I would be more than happy to do a 15 minute demonstration for you, to introduce you to the program. Or I would be more than willing to meet you to chat about the benefits of the program myself – Just let me know! Here is the website for our group – that gives a little more information about the program, history at Cathedral, and the team’s achievements in a short period of time. www.gocathedral.com/wethepeople ;

If you are interested in more information on ways to make a tax-deductible contribution to Cathedral’s “We the People…” team, please contact Cathedral’s Development Officer, Michelle Rhodes at (317) 968 – 7311 ormrhodes@gocathedral.com.

The decision to de-fund We The People has to rank as one of the stupidest, “penny-wise, pound foolish” decisions by a Congress that seems to wallow in stupidity. The program is one of the very few that has consistently been demonstrated to be effective in imparting basic civic understanding. As someone who has been a judge for the state contest, I can personally attest to the depth of historical and constitutional knowledge the students display. And unlike contests like “brain game,” all of the students in a given class participate–the extent of that participation is one of the criteria for which points are awarded. A couple of bright kids can’t “carry” the others.

I know young people for whom participation in We The People was a turning point, an experience that engaged them in active citizenship for years afterward. Competing at the national level can only intensify that experience.

I’m going to send a contribution to Cathedral; I hope many of you reading this will choose to do likewise.

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Even While We’re Falling Off a Cliff…..

A couple of days ago, the New York Times reported on a little-noticed provision inserted in the “fiscal cliff” legislation. The report is a prime example of what ails our broken Congress.

According to the Times, a bare two weeks after pleading guilty in a major federal fraud case, Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm, scored what the Times called “a largely unnoticed coup” on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers inserted a paragraph into Section 632 the “fiscal cliff” bill that delays the effective date of a set of Medicare price restraints on a class of drugs that includes Sensipar, a lucrative Amgen pill used by kidney dialysis patients.

The provision gives Amgen an additional two years to sell Sensipar without government controls. The company’s chief executive immediately informed investment analysts of this measure and its likely positive effect on the company’s bottom line.

That one simple bit of language may gladden the hearts of corporate investors, but it is projected to cost Medicare up to $500 million over that period. 

And there you have it–the deep corruption that lies at the heart of the current legislative process. At the same time sanctimonious Congressional “fiscal hawks” are wringing their hands over “runaway” health spending and demanding reductions in Medicare coverage and benefits for millions of seniors living on fixed incomes, they are voting for costly measures to benefit big Pharma. In this case, adding insult to injury, a big Pharma company that had just admitted to defrauding the government.

Economists warn about the growing inequality in America, and the pernicious effects of the growing gulf between the 1% and the rest of us. This was a vote to take from the middle-class and give to the rich. Political scientists warn of political cynicism and its corrosive effects. This is the sort of blatant quid pro quo that feeds that cynicism.

Pollsters tell us that Americans prefer head lice and cockroaches to Congress.

This crap is why.

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Pretty Brutal….

A couple of weeks ago, NYTimes columnist Gail Collins cited a poll in which ten percent of Americans self-reported a favorable view of communism, while only nine percent had a favorable view of Congress.

Lest you think she was making that up, here’s a graph displaying the results of a similar poll, with equally dismal results for our legislators.

When people have a higher opinion of head lice than they do to our elected Representatives, I think it’s safe to assume we’ve reached a high (or low) water mark of sorts. What was that theory about electoral politics and accountability?

Calling the Founding Fathers….

What We Don’t Know and How It Hurts Us

Remember the old saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”? Unlike a lot of folk adages, it’s wrong. Very wrong.

A lot of folks–especially younger people–shrug off the suggestion that they need to follow what our political class is doing. They have lives to live, livings to earn, children to raise, parties to attend. Let the politicians tend to governing.

This morning’s New York Times–buttressed by an article from the Journal of the American Medical Association–offers a prime example of why it’s important to keep tabs on Congressional shenanigans.

In the wake of the most recent horrendous shootings, of children in Connecticut and firefighters in New York, fingers have been pointed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives. ATF is theoretically an agency with the authority to thwart gun violence. But it has been without a permanent director for six years, thanks to the persistent efforts of Republicans in Congress to block any and all Obama appointments. Furthermore, it is hampered by laws lobbied for by the NRA and dutifully passed by Congress. As the Times notes,

Under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different.

So–unlike many countries–the U.S. doesn’t have a gun registry database. The NRA thinks such information would “pose a threat to the Second Amendment.”

In fact, the NRA evidently thinks that information would pose a threat to their version of the Second Amendment.

A former student who went on to get his doctorate in medical informatics sent me a recent Viewpoint from JAMA, the Journal of the AMA. After detailing several of the most recent mass shootings, and noting that in the U.S. more than 31,000 citizens die annually from firearms, the authors note research findings that ready access to guns in the home “increases, rather than reduces” a family’s risk of homicide in the home.  Then they make their main point:

The nation might be in a better position to act if medical and public health researchers had continued to study these issues as diligently as some of us did between 1985 and 1997. But in 1996, pro-gun members of Congress mounted an all-out effort to eliminate the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the CDC. Although they failed to defund the center, the House of Representatives removed $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget–precisely the amount the agency had spent on firearm injury research the previous year.

The funding was restored in joint conference committee, but only on condition that it be earmarked for traumatic brain injury. And the following language was added to the final appropriation: “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

Similar language has been added to funding for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, after a research study was funded by that agency to determine whether carrying a gun increased or decreased the risk of firearm assault. The article went on to detail similar restrictions on other agencies.

A couple of rhetorical question: why doesn’t the NRA want the American public to have good information about gun violence? and why does a majority of Congress do its bidding?

A not-so-rhetorical question: when will citizens of this country say “enough!”

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