Worcester County Freedom Trail

It is extremely unclear whether government hob-nobbing does any good for the business community. Rather than send Gov Patrick and his crew to China, we should send a contingent funded by the manufacturing community to make the outreach. At least Jack Healy from the Worcester MassMEP, the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, and manufacturers like Nypro know what, if anything, they need from the Chinese labor pool.

Instead, we get Gov Patrick spending inordinate amounts of money on over-the-top accomodations. This from the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune:

They traveled more than 15,000 miles to stay at the luxurious Grand Hyatt Beijing and St. Regis Shanghai, and enjoy cocktails, spring rolls and pork dumplings at the private China Club Beijing — where the “privileged few … step back in time to experience what China was like during the Qing Dynasty.”

The self-described delights of the China Club (“fit for an emperor”) and the sights of Beijing and Shanghai were incidental to the stated purpose of the trip to China by a delegation led by Gov. Deval Patrick.

The goal was to promote Bay State clean-energy companies and secure a coveted agreement for direct flights between Beijing and Boston, state officials say.

But the trip last December and Patrick’s plans to travel to Israel and India are raising questions about the value of the international trips that officials call trade missions but critics call junkets.

Trade missions were all but eliminated under Patrick’s predecessor, Gov. Mitt Romney, but are back on the agenda under Patrick.

The China trip cost a total of just over $312,000, with taxpayers paying $236,000 of that.

Expenses included $107,000 in airfare, $58,000 in hotel bills and $53,575 for “hospitality” and receptions, including $14,240 for the China Club shindig.

A $3,050 video crew documented the visit for posterity.

Patrick will travel to Israel in September to talk up the state’s biotech industry and its new $1 billion life sciences initiative. And in 2009, he plans to visit India, bringing high-ranking officials and business executives with him.

The trade missions are part of Patrick’s ambitious agenda to drum up business for Massachusetts.

But the value of these missions is hard to quantify, and state export data suggests they have had little impact on trade in the past.

Critics contend the trips are a waste of taxpayer dollars and are better left to private businesses.

“Most trade occurs between private entities,” said Steven Poftak, research director with the Pioneer Institute, a conservative think tank based in Boston. “These trips typically culminate in government-to-government contacts that don’t necessarily translate into revenue for private industry.”

MassGOP Executive Director Rob Willington said, “Taxpayer funded junkets like these are inexcusable when the people of Massachusetts are being crushed by skyrocketing property taxes and gas prices. Instead of spending $236,000 of our money on lavish trips, Governor Patrick should explain why he hasn’t delivered the property tax relief that Candidate Patrick promised.”

It appears that Senator John Kerry and Governor Deval Patrick would not fare well if their re-elections were held right now. No idea who’s going to run for Governor in the next election, but I do know that Kerry has a credible and serious opponent in Jeff Beatty.

According to a new Suffolk University poll:

If John Kerry were to face a strong candidate in running for re-election this fall, he might be vulnerable, as 51 percent of general election voters polled by 7NEWS/Suffolk University said it’s time to give someone else a chance, while 38 percent said the senator deserves to be reelected.  Nine percent were undecided, and 2 percent refused a response in the poll released today.

“This number signals to us a potential weakness; if the right candidate came along, John Kerry would be vulnerable,” said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University. “The hook is that no credible candidate has challenged Kerry to date, and it all comes down to the choices on the actual ballot.”

Still, Kerry’s weakness could be seen in several key areas: 56 percent of independents — the largest voting block by far in Massachusetts — said it was time to give someone else a chance. This sentiment was shared by  55 percent of voters over age 55; 60 percent of those living in Worcester, Hampden, Hampshire, Berkshire and Franklin counties; and 61 percent of voters in Bristol, Plymouth, Norfolk, Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket counties.

An April 2007 7NEWS/Suffolk University poll showed that only 37 percent of Massachusetts likely voters believed Kerry deserved to be reelected, while 56 percent said it was time to give someone else a chance.

Governor Deval Patrick didn’t fare much better: 39 percent of respondents said that Patrick deserved a second term, while 41 percent said it was time to give someone else a chance, and 20 percent were undecided.  Patrick was weaker among men, independents, and the Southeastern Massachusetts/Cape Cod region.

It is a tragedy to see anyone lose their home, whether it’s a house or an apartment. But if you didn’t understand the obligations when you took out a mortgage, the government shouldn’t be bailing you out. Before you signed those papers, you knew whether or not you could afford the house. I’m a home owner so “been there-done that.” Even 20+ years ago, when my husband and I bought our first house, realtors were pushy. They were sure we could afford a house more than twice as expensive as the one we bought. Guess what? We knew we couldn’t. So we bought what we could afford and we paid our mortgage. Some years it was a struggle, other years it was easier.

I’m not sure I’m happy about the government stepping in between banks and homeowners now that foreclosures are on the rise. If banks did, indeed, fool people into a mortgage they couldn’t afford, then the banks will get what they deserve — holding the bag on an empty structure that isn’t going to sell for, well, quite some time now. If the bank was on the up-and-up about the terms of the mortgage and the homeowner got in over his/her head, then now is the time for that family to find something more affordable.

Forcing a judicial review will only add to the already overburdened courts. And I’m not sure what a 6 month reprieve will do for the overburdened consumer. Worcester already has the toughest laws when it comes to removing tenants. For landlords in Worcester, it’s almost impossible to remove a tenant, even when they destroy property, forget to pay the mortgage for months on end, etc.

This from Shaun Sutner in the Worcester Telegram:

With time running out to pass foreclosure legislation on Beacon Hill, city officials are asking state lawmakers to give them local authority to halt sub-prime foreclosures for six months, protect tenants in foreclosed buildings and force judicial review of foreclosures.

The two-year legislative session winds down at the end of next month, meaning that if a foreclosure bill now in committee does not come before legislators for a vote, it will have to wait until January to be considered again.

Meanwhile, the heavy pace of foreclosures and adjustable rate mortgage resets to much higher interest rates is continuing unabated, worrying city housing officials and city councilors who have expressed growing concern about vacant buildings spurring the decline of city neighborhoods.

The city saw 54 foreclosures in May, and they are expected to continue at the rate of about 50 a month into the foreseeable future, said Scott M. Hayman, the city’s housing director.

With more than 1,000 mortgages set to go up this year and another 534 to be reset next year, many renters also are likely to be affected as mortgage holders such as banks try to get out of the landlord business, Mr. Hayman said. Many mortgage holders try to get tenants out by offering them cash payments to move, but in many cases renters have a right to remain in the buildings, he said.

“The only one who can really tell them to move is the Housing Court,” Mr. Hayman said.

The City Council last week unanimously approved three home-rule petitions, modeled on similar measures in Boston, which would go further than a bill that has sat in the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee since April. Home rule requests are generally granted as a matter of course by the Legislature.

That measure, sponsored by state Rep. William Lantigua, D-Lawrence, and co-sponsored by Central Massachusetts state Reps. James J. O’Day, D-West Boylston, Jennifer M. Callahan, D-Sutton, and James B. Eldridge, D-Acton, would declare a 180-day moratorium on foreclosures of sub-prime mortgages that reset to dramatically higher rates.

The ordinances the city wants to be able to enforce include not only a moratorium, but also “just cause” evictions, which would prevent financial institutions from emptying properties after foreclosure if tenants are paying their rent on time; and mandating a review of foreclosures by Superior Court or Housing Court.

Such judicial review would allow mortgage payers to argue that they were victimized by deceptive or unfair mortgage practices, and also would allow judges to modify mortgages.

Humankind has always had a problem following the letter of the law — whether it’s civil law or religious law. Catholics seem particularly divided on a number of key issues that have been coming up in recent election cycles, most notably abortion and gay marriage. So where does Obama stand with respect to Catholic doctrine? This from Inside Catholic:

There’s no way to nuance this: Barack Obama’s record puts him on the extreme wing of the abortion movement, and has already been labeled by one critic as the “infanticide candidate.” Despite this, polls show Obama gaining traction with Catholic voters, and Catholics in general are trending toward the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama’s stances on life and marriage issues are simply antithetical to Catholic social teaching. From the beginning of his candidacy, this has been Obama’s greatest vulnerability in attracting Catholic voters (“Why Barack Obama Will Not Win the Catholic Vote,” 1/7/08). In the primary fight against Hillary Clinton, for example, Catholic resistance to Obama’s candidacy was obvious from the election numbers (“Obama’s Catholic Problem,” 2/27/08).

Only with the departure of Senator Clinton from the campaign has Obama picked up steam with Catholic voters. Clinton will surely use her clout with Catholics to help the Democratic nominee, which will help break down the resistance of blue-collar white Catholics to an Obama candidacy.

Obama’s breakthrough moment with Catholics came with the surprising endorsement of Prof. Doug Kmiec, a well-known pro-life Catholic jurist who served under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (“Preacher Man: Barack Obama and the Gospel of Liberalism,” 2/17/08). Kmiec’s reasons for supporting him echo those of Obama Catholics in general — the positions of the GOP on the war in Iraq, poverty, health care, and immigration are so objectionable that they feel justified in supporting Obama (“Doug Kmiec and the Lure of Obama,” 2/20/08).

Kmiec’s position has been picked up by various Obama-friendly organizations devoted to influencing Catholic voters (“Catholics Organize to Elect Barack Obama,” 4/2/08). Their strategy is obvious: Obama’s Catholics will do everything they can to avoid the infanticide question — along with all that it symbolizes — and will try to foster a moral equivalence between their positions on prudential matters and the non-negotiable life issues (“How Obama’s Catholics Will Dodge the Infanticide Problem,” 5/12/08).

The debate among Catholics, then, is whether this list of prudential policy issues trumps the obligation taught by the Church toward protecting unborn life and families based upon the marriage of a man and a woman.

In the past two national elections, there has been a 15% increase in the number of Catholics who voted for the GOP. Exit polling suggested life and family issues made the biggest difference. But in 2008, the Iraq War has destabilized the dynamics of the Catholic vote — the steady migration of Catholics out of the Democratic Party to the GOP has stopped (“Can Obama Use Iraq to Win the Catholic Vote?,” 4/8/08). Many Catholic voters are just too angry at Bush and the GOP over Iraq.

Oddly, when Obama’s list of high-profile Catholic supporters was announced, Kmiec’s name was not on it. That may have been due to the fact that nearly all of the 25 governors, senators, and congressmen on the list had a 100 percent pro-abortion voting record from NARAL (“Who Are Obama’s Catholic Supporters?,” 4/15/08). It’s very likely Kmiec was asked to serve on the advisory council, but may have demurred when he saw the list of solidly pro-abortion Catholics. Former White House speechwriter Bill McGurn called them “NARAL Catholics” in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, made national news when he called for the disbanding of Obama’s Catholic committee because its membership was so overwhelmingly pro-abortion. One of its members, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-KS), had just been warned by her bishop, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, to refrain from taking communion.

Interestingly enough, not long after Donohue’s appeal, all references to Obama’s National Catholic Advisory Council disappeared from the campaign’s web site. Perhaps the campaign realized that branding Obama’s Catholic outreach with a Who’s Who of pro-abortion Catholics was not a good idea, especially after the warning shot fired by the bishop of Kansas City. The last thing the Obama campaign wants is a replay of 2004, when John Kerry was dogged by story after story of bishops who said they would deny communion to politicians who obstinately support abortion rights.

Several bishops have already shown their willingness to address this issue publicly in 2008. In addition to the statement of Archbishop Naumann, Boston archbishop Sean O’Malley said in an interview last November that Catholic support for Democrat pro-abortion candidates “borders on scandal as far I am concerned.”

Various pro-Obama Catholic organizations are working effectively to draw attention away from their candidate’s weaknesses on fundamental issues. They are well-funded and led by people with extensive experience in the Democratic Party and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They are not shy about selling their candidate through official channels. For example, pro-Obama e-mails are now regularly sent to the executive directors of state Catholic conferences (several have been forwarded to me).

Probably the most sustained drumbeat of Obama’s Catholic circle will be their support for building a “Culture of Life” in spite of their candidate’s position on abortion and infanticide. They will argue that reducing poverty and improving health care, among other things, will bring down the number of abortions more effectively than passing laws outlawing the procedure.

In response to this, Catholic voters should be reminded of what Archbishop Chaput said to Obama’s Catholics. On May 19 he rebuked a group called Roman Catholics for Obama who quoted him out of context to justify voting for the pro-abortion nominee. The group had seized upon the following quote: “Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite — not because of — their pro-choice views.”

Roman Catholics for Obama deliberately left out the paragraph following where Chaput added that he could think of no “proportionate reason” to support abortion. “It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life — which we most certainly will.”

Archbishop Chaput also pointed out that the emperor had no clothes when it came to Obama’s candidacy benefitting a culture of life. He himself was a politically active Democrat as a young man at the time when Catholic politicians began invoking the “personally opposed to abortion” mantra. Chaput writes:

“For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand wringing and a convenient excuse — exactly as it is today. In fact, I can’t name any ‘pro-choice’ Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life — not one.”

Likewise, if Obama is elected, he has pledged to sign the Freedom of Choice Act during his first week in office, making it difficult for Catholic supporters of Obama to keep a straight face when talking about a culture of life.

As I’ve mentioned, our child is about to start an interesting new venture in American education — homeschooling. But with a twist. We’ve enrolled her in an online high school that has made impressive investments in both technology and quality content so she can run with an aggressive studies program at her own pace.

In our case, we chose KeystoneHighSchool.com. But before we made that decision, I reviewed over 90 online high school options. You heard right — there are over 90 options for online high school…how cool is that?! We went with Keystone because we needed the self-paced flexibility on top of a high-achieving curriculum. We found that Keystone has more AP course offerings than the private school our daughter had been attending.

We have a brilliant child (yes, all parents say that but the standardized tests will tell you so, too . But this brilliant child is recovering from Lyme Disease and so has good days and not so good days. Forcing her to sit in a classroom on days when she can barely see straight is a waste of everyone’s time and energy. But giving her the flexibility to work double or triple time when she’s feeling well more than makes up for it.

So today I was quite intrigued when my husband pointed out an article about a new book by technology innovation maven Clayton Christensen. This from Dr. Matthew Ladner on Townhall.com:

I have described how the primordial soup of a market system could transform education. In their book, Disrupting Class:  How Disruptive Technologies Will Change the Way the World Learns, Clayton Christensen and Michael B. Horn argue that online technology will reformat American K-12 education, sooner rather than later. [Sooner would be much better, based on the pitiful MCAS scores of the Worcester public school system -- Ed.]

Online learning has grown rapidly, but the impact to date has hardly been revolutionary. It’s been interesting, but, ultimately, only a niche activity. Christensen and Horn, however, maintain that filling niches is exactly how a disruptive technology such as online learning advances.

Distance learning, for example, is very popular in Alaska, where children might otherwise have to commute vast distances through dangerous weather to attend a traditional school. Homeschoolers have also taken to online learning.

The authors point out that only about a third of American high schools have Advanced Placement courses offered on campus. Better, many school administrators are beginning to reason, to adopt such courses online than not to offer them at all.

Christensen and Horn describe the progress of online learning to date as being broadly similar to past disruptive technologies. The tipping point comes years after the disruptive technology has filled various niches. Through the normal course of incremental improvement, the disruptive technology becomes superior to the dominant technology. Once this occurs, the disruptive technology displaces the once dominant technology to become dominant itself.

Projecting from data available and based upon past experience, the authors estimate that 50% of K-12 courses will be delivered online by 2019.

This “out with the old, and in with the new” prediction is pretty bold. In this case, however, the “old” is the labor-intensive method of classroom instruction that has gone more or less unchanged since Socrates. Could we really be on the verge of displacing the basic method of education content delivery?

Designers may improve online programs to the point that they will be of demonstrably better quality than the tried and true methods. For example, innovators are working on computer-based learning programs that will adapt to the individual learning styles of children. These programs present information in a variety of ways, figure out which way works best for each child and adapt the presentation accordingly.

Personalized, self-paced learning also offers enormous promise. Both fast and slow learners often find themselves frustrated by the pace of teaching that suits the average learner.

I can imagine an online course built around  Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose television series that could be better than the average high-school or college economics class. I can’t remember the name of the graduate student who taught my Econ 101, but he wasn’t Milton Friedman. He didn’t adapt his presentation to my learning style. Come to think of it, I don’t think he spoke English terribly well.

Quality teaching powerfully drives education outcomes. An online Friedman might very well best many flesh and blood instructors.

Education may always remain primarily a social enterprise, but mixed models of classroom and online instruction are already underway. A “guide on the side” instead of a “sage on the stage” might actually make sense when technology delivers the primary content.

NAEP scores show that 34 percent of American fourth graders can’t read. Somewhere close to that percentage of students drop out of high school, and many others graduate in need of remediation.

Can technology deliver learning better and cheaper than today’s schools? We don’t know yet, but I’m willing to experiment to find out. Politics will doubtlessly play an inhibiting role, but bet on the better mouse trap in the long run.

Not surprisingly, it appears key political leaders on the left and right disagree about today’s momentous decision from the Supreme Court to uphold the rights of the 2nd Amendment. This from PolitickerMA.com:

“Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms that which many people already knew: that the right to bear arms is an inalienable right, protected by the Bill of Rights of our Constitution,” said Massachusetts GOP Chairman and former Congressman Peter Torkildsen. “As the decision notes, this is not an unlimited right. Governor Patrick, Attorney General Coakley, and the General Court must uphold this Constitutional right for all citizens of the Commonwealth.”

Massachusetts’ senior U.S. Senator Edward Edward Kennedy (D-Hyannis Port) had a very different take on the decision. Kennedy criticized the court’s decision through his spokesman, saying the decision moves the country backward.

“Senator Kennedy has long been committed to reasonable gun control laws, and is concerned that this decision opens Pandora’s box,” said Anthony Coley, Kennedy’s spokesman. “Much of the progress we’ve made in making Americans safer by placing reasonable restrictions on the possession of firearms is now in doubt.”

Coley also said the ruling doesn’t jibe with several justices’ confirmation testimonies in which they stated they opposed an activist bench.

“As Senator Kennedy has repeatedly pointed out,” he said, “members of the Roberts Court have consistently shown their determination to impose regressive changes in the law despite their claims of judicial humility at their confirmation hearings.”

There is nothing regressive about supporting the right to bear arms. Citizens have a right to protect themselves. If criminals are the only ones with guns, then the rest of the population is doomed to lives of cowering in the corner, waiting to become victims.

This just in. The Supreme Court has struck down Washington, DC’s handgun restrictions. This from the Wall Street Journal:

The Supreme Court Thursday in a 5-4 decision Thursday for the first time declared the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contains a specific right to individual gun ownership and rejected Washington, D.C., handgun restrictions, which were the strictest in the nation.

“We find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority ruling. “This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment.”

The ruling significantly restricts the D.C. gun laws, enacted in 1976 as the strictest gun control law in the country, but does not bar government regulation of firearms.

The D.C. law, on the books since 1976, bans handguns, bars concealed weapons possession and requires shotguns and rifles to be registered and then kept unloaded and disassembled or locked.

The law was challenged by six D.C. residents who said they wanted to legally possess handguns in their homes for self-protection. A U.S. District Court threw out the challenge, but a panel of the Washington-based U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived one of the claims and ruled a special police officer, the now-retired Dick Heller, was wrongly denied a handgun permit.

Apparently, if you’re offended by something in the Canadian public education system, you can hire yourself an attorney and gain control over a significant portion of the program, including the ability to tell parents what must be taught to their children beyond the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Is it any wonder so many parents want to pull their kids out of public schools?

This from LifeSite News:

The Vancouver school board has announced that it intends to enforce the B.C. Ministry of Education’s policy that forbids parents from removing their children from the classroom during pro-homosexual discussions.

The school board announced their staff-recommended decision this past Friday. A spokesman for the board said, in the board’s defence, that the board was simply falling in line with Ministry guidelines.

“We’re expected to do that (enforce the policy) by the (Education) ministry, so it’s not something we’ve initiated of our own volition,” said Ken Denike, a Vancouver school board trustee, according to Canwest News.

“It’s a very touchy subject,” he admitted, saying that the board expected some backlash from disgruntled parents. “It has to be handled sensitively. It’s going to be difficult.”

The province of British Columbia has been subjecting its curriculum to a complete revamp in the last several years, largely under the supervision of a homosexual “married” couple, Murray and Peter Corren.

In 1999 the Correns filed a human rights complaint against the B.C. Ministry of education, alleging that the Ministry’s curriculum didn’t adequately “address issues of sexual orientation.” Subsequently the Ministry made a settlement with the Correns in the form of a contract that gave the couple an unprecedented level of control over the development of the province’s revamped, pro-homosexual curriculum. Under the Correns direction, a host of new and redesigned courses in various subject areas that include positive portrayals of “alternative sexualities” have been introduced in B.C.

One aspect of the new curriculum that the Correns insisted on was a stipulation that B.C. parents could not choose to remove their children from the classroom during discussions on homosexuality – a stipulation that, in the end, the B.C. Ministry of Education agreed to.

Currently, therefore, parents are only permitted to pull their children out of health classes that deal with “alternative sexualities.” However, pro-homosexual material appears all throughout various courses in the new curriculum, and not only in the health classes. And even in the case of the health classes, children who do not attend are still required to learn the material either at home or through independent study, and to prove that they have learned it.

The Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) has been fighting the new curriculum, and in particular its Draconian opt-out prohibition, since it was first announced that the province would be reworking the curriculum with the Correns.

It is long past time for Senator John Kerry to retire. I can’t think of anything important he’s done for our country or our state in the last 10 years. There are plenty of times he’s embarrassed us by dissing the military and anyone who’s not part of the rich elite.

The good news is that I’m happy to report that we have an excellent candidate running against him, Jeff Beatty, from Cape Cod. This from Human Events:

The fact that almost 1 in 4 Democratic delegates want to see someone else represent Massachusetts as senator is astonishing.  Recent polls have shown even more shocking results for the Democratic presidential nominee of ’04.  A recent poll taken by Suffolk University (the only ones to get New Hampshire’s primary right) shows that only 38% of voters want to see Kerry re-elected. After the primary, Kerry has one of the best stories in the 2008 election season waiting.

Meet Jeff Beatty. Beatty is a retired US Army Delta Force assault team commander, a former CIA counter-terrorist agent and served the FBI as a hostage crisis analyst. Beatty, a Harwich, Massachusetts resident recently sold a security consulting firm which he founded and ran for 12 years. This guy would make Tom Clancy blush. Beatty has appeared on all major television networks as a national security analyst.  In that capacity:

• He predicted a package bombing 6 months before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta

• He sent letters out to major airlines warning them to “harden the cockpit doors”.  He urged security measures to prepare for hijackers who may use the planes as missiles. These letters went out in April of 2001.

• He was on the first Black Hawk helicopter ever shot down and then rescued American medical students in Grenada after he was wounded in the crash.

Now Jeff Beatty is ready to take on Senator Kerry who was once thought to hold one of the safest seats in Washington until only a year ago. A  Zogby Poll taken in July of 2007 showed that Kerry soundly defeats any Republican, Beatty included. However, the same poll shows a statistical tie when the same voters were allowed to review Beatty’s credentials.

Beatty’s donor list is well over 30,000 and has the backing of many Special-Ops alumni.

Beatty, who was adopted at the ripe old age of 4 days, doesn’t know what his ethnicity is other than to say he is an American.  He claims he never thought of himself as someone who would run for office but after 9/11, he knows, in his mind, America can do better than John Kerry who missed over 75% of the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence meetings during the 1990s when the US was under constant attack by Islamic zealots (for those paying attention and not catching the waves on Nantucket). Beatty thinks he will be more engaged than Kerry who wasn’t present for one committee meeting for over a year after the first bombing of the World Trade Center.

Beatty is also making inroads with territory thought to be a Democratic given; labor. Beatty is meeting with union officials reminding them of Kerry’s coddling of illegal immigrants who are seizing their jobs. Beatty also points out that the New Bedford fisheries union has disintegrated without any resistance from Senator Kerry.

An AP story in today’s Worcester Telegram tells of states opting out of the federally-supported abstinence program.

Skeptical states are shoving aside millions of federal dollars for abstinence education, walking away from the program the Bush administration touts for slowing teen sexual activity.

Barely half the states are still in, and two more say they are leaving.

Some $50 million has been budgeted for this year, and financially strapped states might be expected to want their share. But many have doubts that the program does much, if any good, and they’re frustrated by chronic uncertainty that it will even be kept in existence. They also have to chip in state money to receive the federal grants.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat, made his decision to leave based on the congressionally mandated curriculum, which teaches “the social, psychological and health gains of abstaining from sexual activity.” Instructors must teach that sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.

“It was just too strict,” said Emily Hajek, policy adviser to Culver. “We believe local providers have the knowledge to teach what’s going to be best in those situations, what kind of information will help those young people be safe. You cannot be that prescriptive about how it has to be taught.”

Too strict?!?! You’re kidding me, right? Is that why the Gloucester high school is overrun with pregnant teens and baby carriages?

Either our educators are serious about reducing teen pregnancy and STDs or they aren’t. If abstinence isn’t discussed, then the sex ed program is simply encouraging more sex.

Many college students are now rebuffing the “go for it” attitude that pervades most college campuses. Harvard has a student run organization called True Love Revolution.

Many college students today, however, grew up with abstinence classes and clubs in their communities, and so the movement has raised a generation of activists. Among prominent abstinence activists is Wendy Shalit, who wrote “Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good,” which came out last year. She says that talk of disease rates and the amount of sexual activity on campuses is beside the point. A sex-saturated popular culture creates certain expectations, she argues. “The key thing to remember,” Shalit wrote me recently in an e-mail message, “is that many young people involved in sexual activity feel pressured into it.” Many are uncomfortable with “the hookup scene,” she continued, and “college abstinence programs are growing out of this awareness that disconnected sex is not as pleasurable as the media (and sometimes college administrators) have led us to believe.” The awareness is especially acute in the highly politicized environment of the elite schools, where, according to Shalit, “there is just one lifestyle that doesn’t get recognition” — premarital abstinence.

Virginity pledges are now catching on. But Planned Parenthood is around every corner, undermining efforts that encourage waiting; they’ll stop at nothing, including invading the Girl Scouts.

The local Girl Scout organization endorsed a Planned Parenthood sex education program which admittedly claimed not to officially mention abortion but provided material on masturbation, homosexuality, and illustrations of couples having sex.

Where does it end? When every child is having sex, STDs have infested everyone, and abortions are on-demand at every street corner?

I am appalled that Massachusetts and so many other states are refusing to participate in abstinence programs. We parents need to speak up. We teach our children to wait, then the school overrides us by encouraging sex every chance it can. Who are they to instruct my child on morals as they have so few themselves?