KCKPS Deploying MacBooks to High Schools, 2nd Year

We've been reimaging 7,000 Macbooks with Leopard and Windows XP for the last 3 weeks, we're 2 days away from being finished and KMBC did a story about the redeployment:
http://www.kmbc.com/video/17045171/index.html

Different Approaches to Poverty

Summing up this article:

I don't have to sum up McCain because you can guess that he's still using Voodoo Economics, or what Reagan's administration like to call "starving the beast," (cut taxes for rich people and business and EVERYBODY saves!). This has shown time and time again to only create class divide and not wealth across the board.

"Raising the Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax credit for low-income workers, has been suggested by Democratic contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and would allow higher-income families to claim the credit."

Clinton

• Proposing tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for single workers, supposedly this would provide an average tax cut of $750 for 4 million people
• Offer $1,000 in investing incentives to encourage low-income people to build wealth
• 5 million jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy technology
• $1 billion annually to states to create 100,000 new jobs to improve energy efficiency in public buildings
• A program to weatherize 20 million low-income homes would reduce heating bills and create 2,000 new jobs
• Take 300,000 families off welfare
• Force capable fathers to pay child support
• job programs would help struggling fathers through job training/counseling

Obama

• Reduce the marriage penalty, which taxes some married couples at a higher rate than if each partner filed as a single person

• Plans to tap into alternative energy to create a "green jobs corps" made up of disadvantaged youth
• Responsible Fatherhood programs
• Address Domestic violence
• Sponsor activities to sustain healthy relations and marriages
• Limit reductions in welfare payments if both parents work
• Grants for programs to educate young people about the consequences of early parenthood
• Aims to remove penalties on married families and "break the cycle of early parenthood" (good luck)
• Grants would be given to states to fund transitional job programs
• Require states to give full child support to the families

Ya, they're pretty much the same thing, numbers are slightly different and Obama wants to encourage fathers instead of forcing them in to anything, as Clinton suggests. Both seem to want to create another unemployment division.

Ralph Nader

"Stop tax cuts and start dealing with real problems."

As far as environmental issues/jobs, Ralph Nader was instrumental in establishing EPA, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act. Personally, I feel poverty has less to do with focusing on "deadbeat dads" and removing people from welfare when the U.S. education system is a joke. Take college tution:

In February (2006) Congress ... cut $12 billion out of the student loan programs, mostly from students and parents. In a report just out, the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) found that in California, 17.9% of public college students and 28.8% of private college graduates have unmanageable student loan debt were they to take jobs as teachers or social workers. Yet these critical careers desperately need college graduates to replenish their ranks. (To download the full report, go to http://www.calpirg.org. See also http://www.studentloanjustice.org.
"Sallie Mae and the Student Loan Swindle" Ralph Nader, Counterpunch.org May 13/14, 2006
see also "Sallie Mae's Success Too Costly?" CBS 60 Minutes May 7, 2006

If a student can't start working on their career because of the burden of debt ruining their credit, how can they begin raising a family? A lot of single mothers and fathers put themselves through college with student loans.

Nader on Education

• Invest in K-12 education; that will reduce poverty
• Teach democratic principles & citizenship in schools
• Kick Channel One & commercialism out of class
• Focus on civic & consumer education
• Help people grow up civic instead of growing up corporate is an important function of the Department of Education
• Children are spending more and more money directly -- under 12 years of age they spent $ 12 billion last year, and they caused their parents to spend $ 150 billion. They need a consumer perspective, how to become a smart shopper.
• Charity work is good; but politics addresses root causes
• While the minimal government benefits still afforded the poor are provided only to the most impoverished, no such “means testing” is applied to corporate welfare beneficiaries. By and large the bigger the company, the more it extracts in government supports.

"Democracy can’t co-exist with gross income inequality" (on welfare and poverty)
In 1941, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis made a prescient observation when he wrote: “We can have a democratic society or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both.” Today, that concentration of wealth and its political power has reached stunning intensities. In large companies, people who work in the same enterprise are now earning $1 for every $416 that the CEO takes away. In 1940, it was $1 for every $12. Today the financial wealth of the top 1% of households exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom 95% of American households. Earlier this year Bill Gates’ wealth was equal to the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans. Whatever this enormous imbalance says about the Great software imitator from Redmond, Washington, it means that about tens of millions of Americans, who work year after year, decade after decade, are nearly broke. What democracy worth its salt would have led to this profound inequity?"
Source: Nomination Acceptance Speech Jun 25, 2000

"While the minimal government benefits still afforded the poor are provided only to the most impoverished, no such “means testing” is applied to corporate welfare beneficiaries. By and large the bigger the company, the more it extracts in government supports."

"The new welfare law sets strict time limits for how long poor people can receive government supports, but no such time limitations attach to government handouts to big business."

"The welfare law denies benefits even to legal immigrants; corporate welfare, by contrast, is far more non-discriminating-Uncle Sam subsidizes foreign corporations as well as domestic businesses., including millions to Canadian mining companies. "


Homelessness
He proposed a "Domestic Marshall Plan to abolish poverty and the class/race system;" a public works project to rebuild America’s cities; a big affordable housing program, and an effort to expand mass transit.

[Instead of economic statistics, ] let’s look at the people indicators. We have homelessness. Affordable housing levels are at a peak in terms of not being met even though Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are reporting record profits. And then the facilities, the schools, the clinics, the public works that serve ordinary Americans aren’t being repaired. If you take people indicators, there’s quite a different economy.
Source: Interview on ‘Meet the Press’ May 7, 2000

14M families spend half of their income on housing
Fourteen million families spend more than half of their entire income on housing much of it crowded and substandard, leaving little for other necessities such as food, clothing and medical care. Any payout for housing beyond that often leads to serious economic problems which push families into bankruptcy and homelessness - not to mention the fact that many forgo proper nutrition and medical care in an attempt to keep their homes. Source: In the Public Interest, "Tax Cuts Homeless Problems Grow" Jun 3, 2003

1.35 million children are homeless
Lack of a stable place to live is traumatic for adults, but for children the experience is particularly cruel. More than 1.35 million children are homeless at some point each year. They exist in shelters, cars, parks or pushed into already badly overcrowded quarters. The homeless life disrupts their education, exposes them to communicable diseases, malnutrition, depression and drug addictions.
Source: In the Public Interest, "Tax Cuts Homeless Problems Grow" Jun 3, 2003

How To Research An Unknown Online Retailer

from Consumerist
So you just spotted that gizmo you've been lusting for at unbeatable price, but the only problem is it's for sale at an online retailer you've never heard of. How do you know if they're trustworthy? Consumerist reader "Gigantic Robotic Penguin" (don't let the name turn you off) has put together a comprehensive guide to evaluating unknown online retailers. Get started snooping, inside...

All these steps add up to a matrix that can either reassure you or make you want to run the other way.

* Do they have a toll free customer service number and published hours of operation?
* Do they take credit cards? It is no guarantee of quality if they do, but it is one step up. I think you should generally avoid any place that only takes Western Union money transfers.
* Do they have a security/hacker prevention or testing certificate?
* Does the checkout process use an encrypted HTTPS page?
* Are the company Privacy and About pages blank, or do they look like they are from a default template for an online shopping cart that was just set up the day before?
* Search Google for the store name and words like "scam" and "customer service." It is not a good thing if all the entries are for people asking if a site is a scam in Yahoo Answers.
* [www.google.com]
[answers.yahoo.com]
[wiki.answers.com]
* Check the Whois to see what the website registration looks like. It is not a good sign if it was just registered last week. It should not look like someone is trying to hide the fact that they are running a business out of their parents basement.
* [www.geektools.com]
* Check the Traceroute to see what network it is running on. It should match the WhoIs info to some extent.
* [www.opus1.com]
* Check if the company has a yellow pages listing and street address. If you have a phone number, a company with a street address is a lot more reassuring. Check the address on Google Maps to see if it is a vacant lot or an address in a housing tract.
* [www.411.com]
* See if the site has a warning listed on McAfee SiteAdvisor.
* [www.siteadvisor.com]
* Check fraud and scam report sites. Some of them also list sites that have allegedly scammed other people.
* [edsbandwagon.com]
[www.fraudbureau.com]
[www.ripoffreport.com]
[www.scambusters.com]
[www.scamclub.com]
[www.cybercrime.gov]
[www.fraud.org]
* Beware of "Online Review" sites. Some are little more than a site for scammers to post fake positive reviews, and the owners to make money on banner ads. Here are some you can trust:
* [www.epinions.com]
[reviews.pricegrabber.com]
[www.bizrate.com]
[www.resellerratings.com]
* BBB online. Lots of places do not have entries because they are small and treat their customers well enough to not get a complaint.
* [search.bbb.org]

What techniques do you use to see if a site is legit? Share your thoughts in the comments.

What Every American Should Know About the Middle East

originally from DMIESSLER.com

Basics

1. Arabs are part of an ethnic group, not a religion. Arabs were around long before Islam, and there have been (and still are) Arab Christians and Arab Jews. In general, you’re an Arab if you 1) are of Arab descent (blood), or 2) speak the main Arab language (Arabic).

2. Not all Arabs are Muslim. There are significant populations of Arab Christians throughout the world, including in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Northern Africa and Palestine/Israel.

3. Islam is a religion. A Muslim (roughly pronounced MOOSE-lihm) is someone who follows the religion. So you wouldn’t say someone follows Muslim or is an Islam, just as you wouldn’t say someone follows Christian or is a Christianity.

4. Shia Muslims are similar to Roman Catholics in Christianity. They have a strong clerical presence via Imams and promote the idea of going through them to practice the religion correctly. Sunni Muslims are more like Protestant Christians. They don’t really focus on Imams and believe in maintaining a more direct line to God than the Shia.

5. People from Iran are also known as Persians, and they are not Arabs.

6. Arabs are Semites. We’ve all heard the term antisemitism being used — often to describe Arabs. This doesn’t make sense given the fact that the word “Semite” comes from the Bible and refers to anyone who speaks one of the Semitic Languages. That includes both Jews and Arabs.

7. According to the Bible, Jews and Arabs are related [Genesis 25]. Jews descended from Abraham’s son Isaac, and Arabs descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. So not only are both groups Semitic, but they’re also family.

8. Sunni Muslims make up most of the Muslim world (roughly 90%). 1

9. The country with the world’s largest Muslim population is Indonesia. 2

10. The rift between the Shia and Sunni started right after Muhammad’s death and originally reduced to a power struggle regarding who was going to become the authoritative group for continuing the faith.

The Shia believed Muhammad’s second cousin Ali should have taken over (the family/cleric model). The Sunni believed that the best person for the job should be chosen by the followers (the merit model) and that’s how the first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was appointed.

Although the conflict began as a political struggle it now mostly considered a religious and class conflict, with political conflict emanating from those rifts.


Here’s how the various Middle Eastern countries break down in terms of Sunni vs. Shia and whether or not they are predominantly Arab. Keep in mind that these are generalizations; significant diversity exists in many of the countries listed.

* Iraq Mostly Shia (roughly 60%), but under Saddam the Shia were oppressed and the Sunni were in power despite being only 20% of the population. Arab.

* Iran Shia. NOT Arab.

* Palestine Sunni. Arab.

* Egypt Sunni. Arab.

* Saudi Arabia Sunni. Arab.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

* Syria Sunni. Arab.

* Jordan Sunni. Arab.

* Gulf States Sunni. Arab.

MIT OKs Plan to Offer Tuition-Free Break

guardian.co.uk
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology says undergraduates whose families earn less than $75,000 a year will not have to pay tuition.

Expectations Lose to Reality of Sports Scholarships

NYTimes
"..expectations of parents and athletes can differ sharply from the financial and cultural realities of college athletics, according to an analysis by The New York Times of previously undisclosed data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association and interviews with dozens of college officials..."

Election Season

What's been pulled off the table by the corporatized political machines in this momentous election year?

Answer:

-Cutting the huge, bloated and wasteful military budget,
-adopting a single payer Canadian-style national health insurance system,
-impeaching Bush/Cheney,
-opposing nuclear power - among many others.


What candidate, if any, would address these issues?
Post with your opinion and provide references if you have them. Thanks!
Watch NBC Sunday Feb 24th at 8am

Since last Tuesday, I've been working for the Kansas City Kansas Public School District at Sumner Academy as the on-site Mac Technician. This is a brand new position that started with the district's new Laptop for Learning program, which has deployed Apple laptops to the hands of all high school students in the district. I will be updating the site with photos as more develops!