Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger
In 1977, Schwarzenegger’s autobiography/weight-training guide Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder was published and became a huge success After taking English classes at Santa Monica College in California, he earned a B.A. by correspondence from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, where he graduated Business and International Economics, in 1979

Doctor, M.D. D.D.S. Ph. D or J.D. does not matter, combined they are no match for Governor Schwartzenegger’s hatchet job. School Boards are attracting record number of attorneys and doctors. Yet with all this brain power, not one person in this entire state can figure out a way to derail the Governor in his quest to totally destroy the already dysfunctional educational system of California. Clinging to the bottom of all 50 states in educational funding, school boards with all these highly educated people are no match for the Body Builder.

Why are attorneys and Doctors so attracted to such low profile elected position? Maybe a testing ground for the bigger prize, city or state positions. There you have access to all that special interest perks. Hey, if you sit by quietly and allow our kids to be abused and neglected, then you are our kind of guy. Kicking and screaming and I’m not even on the Board – just the “Volunteer of the Year.”

California’s bleak budget options
LA times May 15, 2009
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday proposed two sets of budget revisions to deal with the state’s financial troubles. They contain an array of grim options:
Education
The governor’s cuts would start at $3 billion and rise to $5.3 billion if voters fail to pass the package of ballot propositions in Tuesday’s special election. More than $1 billion would come from the current school year, which is nearly over.
Requiring districts to cut in these waning days would lower the governor’s future funding obligations. That’s because, under state law, education spending is based largely on past funding.
“This is a cynical manipulation” to reduce base funding for schools, said Jack O’Connell, state superintendent of public instruction. “It would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, to realize these savings with 45 days left.”
Deputy Finance Department director H.D. Palmer said he expected school districts to balance their books by taking advantage of reserves, eased restrictions on state money and federal economic stimulus dollars.
Higher education leaders around the state warned of course-schedule reductions, overcrowded classrooms and staff layoffs in the fall.
California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott predicted that hundreds of classes taught by part-time instructors would be canceled even as enrollment surges.
Among the possible cuts are about $50 million in UC and Cal State outreach programs, which mainly get high school students ready for higher education. And fewer students would qualify for financial aid, while eligible students would receive less.

Are attorneys smarter- does it matter which law schools they attend?  Or is all that $$$$$ that makes them confused?

SOME REALSMART ATTORNEYS:
John Yoo, author of torture papers
Berkeley Law School Dean Christopher Edly, defended continued employment of John Yoo as free speech

Alberto Reynaldo Gonzales, Attorney General under Cheney/Bush. Amid several controversies and allegations of perjury before Congress, on August 27, 2007 Gonzales announced his resignation.

U.S. Senator Christopher Dodd, Sen. Bank Committee chair, sponsored bill protecting $165 million AIG. bonuses.

Kenneth Feinberg “pay czar”.who was appointed in June to decide compensation packages for the highest-paid personnel at companies that received U.S. government bailouts.
The rules do not call for capping pay, Feinberg told a conference in New York

Bill Lockyer, California  State Treasurer -Goldman, Sachs & Co. urged some of its big clients to place investment bets against California bonds this year despite having collected millions of dollars in fees to help the state sell some of those same bonds. Goldman’s strategy could raise the interest rate the state would have to pay to borrow money, thus harming taxpayers.  An increase of a single percentage point on a $1-billion bond issue would cost taxpayers an additional $10 million a year in interest. Some experts said the investment bank’s actions, while not illegal, might be inappropriate. “That’s not a good way to do business,” said Geoffrey M. Heal, professor of public policy and business responsibility at Columbia
Any one have an old VHS tape of WALL STREET, starring Michael Douglas?
Did California Over Pay in Bond Deal?
LA Times April 23, 2009
Investors who bought the $5.2 billion of long-term bonds that California sold Wednesday already have booked a tidy paper profit on them.
That raises the question of whether the state overpaid in the deal.
Short answer: Yes, it did. (How come I am not surprised?)
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer sold the 25- and 30-year taxable municipal bonds under the federal government’s new Build America Bonds plan. The program provides for the U.S. Treasury to pick up 35% of the interest cost on the securities, as a way to help state and local governments fund job-creating public works projects.
The strong reception for the bonds in the secondary market suggests that the Wall Street firms that handled the sale for California, led by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, might have been able to strike a better deal for the state.
Traders were unable to purchase bonds. Drove the yield on the 30-year issue down as low as 7.1%, according to traders.
If California had been able to pay 7.1% instead of 7.4% on the bonds, it would have saved a bigger chunk of money for taxpayers over the next three decades.
I asked Lockyer whether the underwriters should have pressed to get the state lower yields in the offering, given the strong level of investor interest.
“We worked hard to try to get the right price,” he said. Noting that the Build America Bonds are a new animal, Lockyer said it was “very hard to predict [pricing] when it’s a brand-new flavor of bond.”
Yes, but that’s what underwriters get paid to do.

Some lesser known attorneys- Cash for clunkers $ 4 billion dollars tax payer give away.
After another industry bail out this time to the American auto industry to save jobs at the tune of $50 billion (whose counting?). Program was designed to stimulate new car sales for cars that got a certain miles per gallon. After all was said and done, the car companies that benefited from the $4500 rebate were foreign owned. Some bright person (Harvard or Yale trained) forgot the stipulation; to qualify you must buy an American car.

Anonymous- Financial Industry Bailout- Almost $1trillion dollars. Government bailed out AIG to tune of $182.5 billion (unrestricted) largely out of FEAR that huge financial firms worldwide would collapse if it didn’t stand behind credit default swaps.
Bailed-out banks still dished out big bonuses -Payout lavish despite bailouts-Banks gave out more than $32 billion in bonuses even as they took in $175 billion in taxpayer dollars. Nearly 5,000 people received bonuses of $1 million or more amid worst financial crisis since great depression, according to report by N.Y. attorney general‘s office.                  L.A. Times July 31, 2009
Anonymous$750 billion taxpayer’s cash given to banks to stem foreclosures. Banks used money to buy other banks and nobody qualified for loan modification. Government response, “we can not make them do any thing.” “We can only ask.”

Music Holiday Programs?

What should be allowed and what should be excluded from the school.

Should the school be inclusive of every religion or try to neuter and or exclude as much religion
as possible?
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How Spiritual Are We?
America is generally thought to be among the most religious nations in the Western world.
Results from an exclusive Parade poll.             LA Times Oct.4, 2009.
69% of Americans believe in God.
75% believe it’s a parent’s responsibility to give children a religious upbringing.
More than 27% of respondents do not practice any kind of religion.
Americans today are separating spiritually from religion.
Old terms – “atheist” and “agnostic” – are no longer catch-alls for everyone outside traditional belief.
25% placed themselves into a whole new category: “spiritual but not religious.”
59% said faith can help solve the world’s problems and offer hope to the suffering, while
41% said religion has too often led to war and suffering.
Does that mean religion and politics should mix? Answer was a decisive no. 15% thought that religion should be a key factor in political decisions, while 58% said religion and politics should not mix at all.

This has a thought provoking message no matter how you believe.

DOES EVIL EXIST?

The university professor challenged his students with this question. Did God create everything that exists?

A student bravely replied yes, he did!”

“God created everything?” The professor asked.

“Yes, sir,” the student replied.

The professor answered, “If God created everything, then God created evil since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are then God is evil.”

The student became quiet before such an answer.

The professor was quite pleased with himself and boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, “Can I ask you a question professor?” “Of course”, replied the professor. The student stood up and asked, “Professor, does cold exist?”
“
What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?” The students snickered at the young man’s question.

The young man replied, “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Everybody and every object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (- 460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have too little heat.

The student continued. “Professor, does darkness exist?”

The professor responded, “Of course it does”.

The student replied, “Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn’t this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present.”

Finally the young man asked the professor. “Sir, DOES EVIL EXIST?”

Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course as I have already said. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. “These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”

To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. EVIL is simply the absence of GOD. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love, that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have GOD’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.”

The professor sat down.

The young mans name — Albert Einstein