California Right to Life Advocates

1. Commentary.
2. Legislative Report.
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COMMENTARY.

Though much of what is being reported regarding legislation in today’s State of Things seems far removed from the crucial abortion/euthanasia debate please be assured that the current apparent merging of education with labor, as I have been attempting to illustrate, is a very important and long sought move to control not only the means of education but the individual who will provide the labor of production.

This does not mean that abortion has been reduced to a secondary concern. Far from it. However, if we chose not to understand the relationship between the value placed on individual human life and its correlation to education and labor we will fail in our task to stop the destruction of human life.

At the same time we need to recognize the central role of certain media personalities in acting as the front man for the change agents for all this change in the values for which our country has stood these 200 plus years. These reporters and commentators write about current activities but in such a way as to lull us into accepting changing goals in education, health care and “human resources” aka laborers.

An example is Ellen Goodman. Since the election of Obama as President she has written some devastating articles, She wrote (5-12-09) an article entitled: “Times when rationing may be rational.” This concerned a subtle but strong pitch for euthanasia using the example of President Obama’s grandmother. She quoted him as saying: “…he would have paid for the operation himself if necessary, but then he asked aloud whether society should be expected to pay for such treatment of any other terminally ill parent or grandparent. Was this a ‘sustainable model?’ “ Goodman goes on to say that she was struck by the thought that, said Obama, “she died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side.”

Well, excuse me, if it is wrong to burden society or individuals with providing the funds to pay for a family member’s health needs, why is it okay, in fact, demanded, that society pay for the killing of pre-born babies?

Goodman then goes on to frame an important question: But, aren’t there places at the end of life where ethics and economics, compassion and cost, dovetail rather than conflict?” Sometimes, in her mind, choosing to withhold health care is a superior moral value to one in which money is spent on health care (and just maybe education) of one who is no longer a (presumed) productive member of society.

She also wrote a column predating Obama’s appearance at Notre Dame entitled: “Change in abortion debate is welcome, but not expected.” She reminds us that during the campaign Obama promised that his administration will initiate a fresh conversation on family planning, working to find common ground to meet the needs of women and families around the world.”

Of course Obama and the Progressives would like to find a common ground, a ground where labor is not burdened or interrupted by the health care needs of pregnant or abortive women. The goal of labor is the continual productivity of the laborer. Universal birth control will achieve that common ground. Planned Parenthood’s easy access to our children in the schools, through cell phone and online sites push birth control.

Therefore: labor needs workers who are educated to supply the required level of productivity of the market place, and no further, and both education and labor require healthy individuals unencumbered by the results of lifestyle activities. One should always ask themselves, when they read articles about sex education classes helping to reduce pregnancy and abortion, are the students not engaging in sexual activity or are they contraception? In that regard sex ed. classes are merely designed to produce contraceptors. that’s outcome based education - OBE.

In my last report I wrote about the Workforce Investment Act and Youth build legislation along with a listing of about 5 bills. These bills plus many more have now gotten out of their respective house suspense files and are making their way to the second house for passage, some have already made that leap. the deadline to pass to the second house and survive is now past.

Now is the time for intense activity in supporting or opposing bills, please choose one or all of these bills to urge your legislators to oppose. Get a supply of postal cards and tell your legislator to oppose bill #_____ because. Use your fax machine to send an online composed message. Use your phone to call your legislator’s local office, or if you have unlimited minutes on your cell phone call the Sacramento office of your legislator and require that the receptionist list your position on a certain bill.
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LEGISLATION.

Note: During a phone conversation with a spokeswoman for the state Work Force Investment Board (CWIB), Jennifer Mitchell, I asked her, in regard to the WFIB as an example, if, once a federal bill passed that called for initiating programs in all the states, were the states mandated to follow through with the development of state and local branches? She said, “yes.” I then asked her if all states were required to be as gung-ho as California in developing and implementing the program?. She acknowledged that California seemed to be a very enthusiastic state in embracing these federal workforce mandates. She indicated that county WFIB’s could chose just how active they wanted to be and/or how large a cohort of providers and clients they wanted to work with. for instance, the state board determined that the age range would be 14 years to 24 years of age, but some counties were choosing the 16-21 year range.

This eagerness to create state and county level agencies, which must go through the pretense of passing legislation authorizing the taking of the federal grants and the creation of local agencies can be seen in several bills racing through the state legislature this term.

When I asked Ms Mitchell what would happen if a particular bill didn’t get passed she seemed lost for words, then said, well, we don’t have to worry this year because the youth summer work program funds are already available. They don’t know what will happen next year, though.

All these bills have passed their first house (Assembly) and are awaiting Senate hearings. All of these bills provide for government agencies, i.e. health, education and labor, to partner with community organizations to deliver a broad spectrum of services to just about every segment of any community. Groups such as Planned Parenthood, ACORN, PICO, Catholic Charities, La Raza, etc.

AB 3, V. Manuel Perez, (D-Indio) Workforce development: Renewable Energy Workforce Readiness Initiative.
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Sponsors include Planned Parenthood of San Diego along with a long list of trade unions, and community non-profits.

This bill which went through a major amending process strengthens the authority and oversight of the CWIB; ensures green collar career placement and advancement opportunities within California’s renewable energy manufacturing, construction, installation, maintenance, and operation sectors that is targeted towards specified populations.

These targeted populations tend to be teens, low income families, illegals, parolees, disabled, unwed mothers.

The Green Collar Jobs Council, waits for funds of $787 M from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, expecting also $480 M from the Fed. Workforce Investment Act for youth and an additional $70 M for supplemental things.

Includes Non-profits in the mix of groups able to receive this money to help develop job markets. Previously I wrote that the Office of Statewide Health Education and Development authorized grant money to about 3 Planned parenthood clinics (one in Concord, Ca. to train non-medical people in the performance of abortions.

AB 1559, Workforce Development: Summer Youth Job Training. This bill is authored by the Assembly Labor and Employment Committee. It requires the CWIB, in collaboration with local workforce investment boards, to establish the California Youth at Work Program, for the purpose of providing summer job training and work experience opportunities for youth…”through partnerships and effective collaboration.”

Though it sets up summer time youth employment and the funds for that employment are already received by the state; Ms Mitchell admitted that a major part of their mandate is to work with the business and private sectors to predetermine the future job market in various localities and to then work with the schools to prepare students for that job market.

The federal Reinvestment Act has set aside $1,200,000,000 for all 50 states for development of these workforce programs. California will receive $500 million and the summer youth employment program has $186.6 Million to pay for 50,000 California youth for this summer at minimum wage which, in California is $8.00 according to the CWIB. The local employer will pay nothing.

California has 49 county boards (unelected members often referred to as shadow government jobs) plus the state board.

AB 857, Kathleen Galgiani, (D-Merced). Workforce Development: One-Stop Career Centers. Service Employees International Union - SEIU - is the sponsor of this bill. It sets up the delivery of unemployment services at One-Stop-Career-Centers. The bill is quite vague and Ms Galgiani’s office has not responded to questions of where will these one-stop centers be established. the suspicion is that they will be at schools. Schools have been targeted for some time by community planners as one-stop service centers for health care, jobs, day care and education/training of youth and life-long learners.

AB 543, Fiona Ma, (D-San Francisco) Perinatal Care: Nurse-Family Partnerships. Nurse-Family Partnerships, apparently an adjunct to Invest In Kids, originally a Canadian org. are the co-sponsors.

This is yet another group of professionals who, like Rob Reiner’s First Five program, believe that only professionals can best rear our children. This bill authorizes the creation, funding and promotion of programs placing visiting nurses into all the homes of women no more than 28 weeks into their pregnancy and for 2 or more years after birth, to assist parents in the proper rearing of their children preparing them for school readiness at age 5.

Though this program would be placed in the department of Public Health, no place in the bill stipulates that the “nurse” must be a registered medical nurse. This is just like the parish nurse program about which I reported a couple of years ago. That “nurse” is merely a member of the community who is a good listener and able to sign up clients for Healthy Families Medicare programs.

USSHR 2205, Danny Davis (D-Il) Early childhood Home Visitation Programs. This is the federal level legislation that will establish the mandate for the state programs of home visitation programs. I prefer to call this California’s version of the home invasion program.

This bill discusses the “proper care of infants and youth Children.” It appropriates $150 Million for the first year to target pregnant, especially first time moms, immigrants, native Americans as defined under the ESEA - Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It sets of partnerships between health, education and community service providers to monitor the home life and lifestyles of young families.

Please contact your legislators, mostly Senators since these bills are now in the senate. Urge their “NO” vote. All of these bills effect the family relationship and line of authority substituting the state for parental guidance.

Posted by Camille to General News | add a comment

On May 22, 2009, the San Francisco Chronicle published an Opinion Page article entitled: A new day for learning in San Francisco: re-imagining our public schools.

It was written by Carlos Garcis, S.F. School Superintendent and Margaret Brodkin, former Director of the S.F. Department of Children, Youth and Families and current Director of a dubious program entitled A New Day for Learning ²

Ms. Brodkin, trained as a community organizer, fairly gushes with enthusiasm about “galvanizing the community around a “new vision’ of what it takes to prepare the next generation for success in life.”

The article continues with ”[T]o do this, the school district, the city and community organizations have created a formal partnership [in which] the school is opening its doors to the community and saying ‘we need everyone of you to ensure our children graduate from college.’  The article goes on to set up a lovely scenario of future employees trained for the available jobs in the local community with the assistance of every conceivable community organization. If, with all this, the student should fail he/she would be sent back to the community classroom to be “trained in handling community violence.””

If you think this vision sounds a little like Hillary Clinton’s “it takes a village” you are correct. Only it is more than that. It’s not only a re-making of the purpose of education on a global scale, it is a re-making of the purpose of the student. It is a very utilitarian ethic in which the person is viewed as having value based upon that person’s usefulness to the community. It’s also not a new concept started by Hillary but has its roots in the educational and Philosophical writers and thinkers beginning in the early 1900’s.³

This view of humanity has been revived at certain periods throughout the 20th Century, especially around the 1930’s, 1970’s and again, beginning in the 1990’s to now where we can see it full blown in reports such as the one mentioned here. During these decades various pieces of federal and state labor, education and health legislation have been passed, and think tank type heavily financed foundations have been developed to  furnish and promote these ideas.  Like slow growing wild flowers scattered along the hillsides, the flowers are beginning to bloom.

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¹ Educational Policy Research Center, Syracuse University Research Corp,

² www.newdayforlearning.org a subsidiary of ACORN.

³ “But if we can get the…Aldermen, the town council, and mayor interested in the community education
concept, the whole future is going to be wide open.” Community Education Journal, 1972, pg 20.

Every year federal and state legislators submit bills  to their various houses. The state usually submits upwards of 4000 per term. These bills either delete, modify or add to various civil and criminal codes and statutes, especially those related to health, education, labor and funding levels. that’s a lot of changes that the citizens are unaware of. If some of these bills get vetoed, such as the Education Master Plan of former legislator John Vasconcellos its supporters merely move ahead with a non-profit funded group and promote the Plan to school districts and educators directly.⁴

Every year dozens of bills are submitted amending, for example, the various titles of the Social Security Act especially as they affect education, health care and employment. Did you ever wonder why there is a federal committee on education AND labor? Why are they connected? They are connected because education is mandated to design its educational programs to produce the laborers.⁵

Have you ever heard of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (HR1385/S 143, Kassebaum)? Did you know that it is a major remake of a 1933 depression era Wagner-Peyser Act which dealt with finding jobs for unemployed people? Did you know that since 2004 our state and every county has had a Work Force Investment Board⁶ (shadow government) collecting data on and forecasting and advising the job market and working with schools to install training programs to prepare the students for a smooth transition from School-to-Work? School To Work Opportunities Act, 1994, another piece of federal legislation reflected in many state bills. This is not to be mistaken with a compassionate concern for assisting the unskilled to find gainful employment. This is a third party officially designated to funnel certain workers, regardless of intellect, into the community job market in a predetermined manner.

Here it might be worthwhile to consider the political meaning and definition of community.  Is it local, is it global? Does it have a new meaning - community, with unity, oneness of goal? Who sets the goal?⁷

 President George Herbert Walker Bush’s (not so) original bill, Education 2000, got amended into Bill Clinton’s Goals 2000 which further moved the remaking of education and community sustainability along its track. Now that we have the ultimate community organizer at the national helm plans and legislation just waiting for the right moment  are quickly being moved forward.

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⁴ The John Vasconcellos Legacy, The Politics of Trust, http://www.politicsoftrust.net/about-us.php

⁵ Committee on Skills of the American Workforce, 1990. This contains the development of Certificates of
Initial Mastery described as a gateway to professional and technical certificates. In other words, persons
(not limited to high school students) in a government approved life-long learning track will be the first to
be hired

⁶ Ca. Workforce Investment Board - WIA, http://www.calwia.org/state_board/index.cfm

⁷ Humanist Manifesto, ll, 1973, pg 21 (World Community) “We have reached a turning point in human
history where the best option is to TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF NATIONAL sovereignty and to move
toward the building of a world community…We thus reaffirm a commitment to the building of world
community…

Behind this New Day for Schools program is a whole myriad of federal and state legislation needed to provide the bureaucracy with authority and appropriations but little government accountability to make it all happen. Health Care, academics, labor, unions, non-profits,⁸ and many others too numerous to recount here, are all involved with the new directions planned for schools and each of these need to have their various regulating civil codes adjusted which means legislation.  I have counted about 100 bills in the California legislature designed to make those changes plus a large number of bills on the federal level designed to interject the federal government into every school district and carry federal level tax money to the states and, in some cases, directly to school districts bypassing the state.

The only thing slowing down the process is the funding. You will recall that Governor Schwarzenegger has gone, hat in hand, to petition the feds for bailout funds. President Obama has indicated that California has disappointed him because with all the cuts proposed Obama’s union buddies are not being taken care of.

There is a cure for that. It is HR 2187, Grants to state education agencies. It was submitted on 4/30/09 and passed to the Senate on 5/14/09 in Unprecedented speed.⁹

According to a press release issued by Rep. Howard ‘Buck’ McKeon,(R-Santa Rita) a member
of the House Education and Labor Committee: “It’s not the job of the feds to tell local schools
and communities how to build schools.”¹⁰

This bill will provide something like $7 billion to build new, green, schools using only American made building products (unless these products are over 25% higher in cost than otherwise obtainable, and the latest in innovative environmental products. It also provides for a Youth-build program (AB 271, Jose Solorio (D-Anaheim, based on the federal Youth-build Transition Act of 2005) in which 18-24 year olds will receive on-the-job training in building the buildings alongside the building trades union workers and, at far less pay than the union members. Maybe this is what they want to do with the young adult lifers that Sen. Leland Yee’s bill, SB 399, Sentencing, would let out of prison.

HR 2187 is supposed to be an education bill which, in combination with California bill, AB 339, Norma Torres, (D-Ontario) Federal Funds transfer to School Districts, would supposedly provide funding for education, but would, in reality, merely transfer taxpayers money from our pockets to the feds thence to the state and on to the state’s favorite unions.

The recent Teabag revolts and the defeat of most of the initiatives on May 19th are a good beginning to let the legislators know that we won’t willingly be further taxed, but, folks, its got to be only the beginning. The legislative Aide in Assemblyman Tom Berryhill’s (R Modesto) office admitted that the Republicans “have taken” to the idea of school-to-work quite readily and they have shown it by submitting legislation to further its goals.
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⁸ Contra Costa for Every Generation, http://www.foreverygeneration.org, and the Workforce Development Brd of Contra Costa Co. http://www.wdbccc.com/eastbay.htm

⁹ WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, House Democrats gave final approval to controversial legislation that not only adds to our nation’s mounting deficit, but also dramatically increases the power of the federal government over our nation’s schools. The 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act (H.R. 2187) empowers federal bureaucrats to dictate everything from what building materials must be used to how a school’s carbon footprint must be measured.

¹⁰ http://Republicans.edlabor.house.gov. “This will divert Title 1 ESEA funds from disadvantaged students.”

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Here is a sampling of the 60 plus bills:

AB657, Ed Hernandez (D) Health Professions Workforce.
Requires the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, in collaboration with the Workforce Investment Board, to establish the Health Professions Workforce Task Force to assist in the development of a health professions workforce master plan for the state. Requires the task force to submit a complete statewide health professions workforce master plan.

Referred to the Appropriations Suspense file meaning that it contains too much money and too few supporters.

[Note: the Director of a branch of the state Public Health Department had provided funds to Planned Parenthood to train non-medical personnel to perform abortions as one answer to the lack of professional health care workers.]

AB1559 Assembly Labor and Employment Committee is the author of this bill meaning that it is the Governor’s bill. It is entitled Workforce Investment Act: Local Workforce Boards provides that it shall be the duty of a local workforce investment board to facilitate the implementation of summer youth training programs through partnerships and effective collaboration.

AB 332, Felipe Fuentes, (D-Arleta), Work-Based Learning.
Authorizes school districts that maintain high schools to establish work-based learning programs, [job shadowing] and to purchase liability insurance for pupils enrolled in programs of study involving work-based learning off school grounds. Authorizes partnership academies, regional occupational programs and other educational programs to deliver work-based learning opportunities for pupils that may include work experience education, community classrooms, cooperative career technical education programs. This has passed the Assembly and awaiting a hearing in the Senate Education Committee.

AB 465, Joe Coto, (D-San Jose), Schools: Parent Involvement.
Encourages school districts to review and contract with nonprofit community-based organizations that have a proven track record and can demonstrate their success in educating parents and building direct collaboration with school districts, administrators and educations, and would be required to demonstrate and provide a culturally and linguistically competent parent involvement program. Encourages a low performing district to submit a report showing efforts to promote parent engagement and the outcomes. It has passed the Assembly and awaits a hearing in the Senate.

[note: Making parents partners of the school district to design a plan for the raising of children has long been tried in the state legislature and vetoed. This idea has its counterparts in legislation dealing with parent/nurse partnerships establishing a bond between the medical profession watchdogs and new mothers, and with something called a Medical Home which basically incorporates the other partnerships and encourages patients to sign contracts promising to adhere to certain health care practices and giving the medical professionals access to patients private lives.]

SB 725, Loni Hancock, (D-Berkeley) Regional Occupational Centers: Apprenticeship Program. To Suspense file.

Requires collaboration to develop curriculum covering all aspects of the building trades and construction industry that meets specified requirements and standards, including state-approved joint labor management and unilateral nonunion apprenticeship programs.

Arguments in Support. The Ca. Federation of Teachers and the Building and construction Trades Council are co-authors. It provides guidelines for ROC/Ps to develop contracts for students to enter into apprenticeships upon the completion of the skills certificate program. They state that by providing structured collaboration between schools, ROC/Ps, industry and trade organizations, California will be able to provide a better education system in this arena.

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