I was very pleased with the Kansas Caucus I attended last night that covered Sumner and Cowley counties. At our caucus location they (the organizers) were only expecting 80 people and 494 registered democrats showed up. Something like 25 Independents and 16 Republicans showed up as observers, or actually switched to the Democratic party. One lady had been a Republican for something like 30 years and the gentleman organizing the event went and found her regisitration card from back then and actually handed in back to her. It was a moving moment.

The vote was 67% Obama, 33% Clinton at my location. I am a Hillary supporter so I wished it would have been more equal or in her favor BUT...

I was just glad to see other Democrats in my district. I have felt so utterly alone in a see of Republican Red. I knew they had to be out there somewhere, but getting to meet them last night was nice. I am sure if the weather had been better (it was snowing and VERY windy) and it was an all day event like a primary vote and not just something at night there would have been more of us. Our area is heavily into manufacturing and farming and those people in those industries are on different 'shifts'. Two of my girlfriends husbands wanted to come and support Hillary but couldn't because they both work 2nd shift at the Boeing Spirit plant, and because of that, my girlfriends had to stay home with their children. SO - there are four Hillary supports that couldn't get out last night. I know the general election in November will be different, but as the caucus helps picks the nominee, this kind of blows. Also, due to the weather, the parents of one of my girlfriends were afraid to go out being elderly and weary of slipping on the ice and snow. Had this been a primary, they could have voted during the daylight hours when the weather was perfect. For all those out there who are aware of the weather in Kansas - it changes at the drop of hat. I was told the reason why Kansas uses the caucus rather than a primary vote is because of the expense. Well, shoot, this was the first time there has been a caucus/primary for Democrats in Kansas in more than three decades! You think the state party would have thought about this and kicked up the dough for a primary. That's the only bummer - I feel so many were left out. I mean, my caucus site was 24 miles from my home. 24 miles in near blizzard condictions is just not a fun time to drive AND there is no public transportation. Had this been a vote my regluar polling station is less than a block from my house, I could have walked. OR I could have voted then gone and watched my two girlfriends children and they could have voted. *sigh* Well, it is said and done, and not everyone's voice got to be heard. Still -

Everyone was very excited and respectful, which is very important to me as some people on this website were starting to make me feel that rudeness was a new requirement to being in this party. What I felt was most important was the message of the night came together as "no matter if the nominee is Obama or Clinton, the Democratic party is the first party to offer up a viable African American candidate and a viable female candidate." The party is about progress and diversity. Either of them will be a testament to that fact, and regardless of which one is chosen, we as Democrats need to support the nominee. It was a proud moment in my life to be able to stand up and be counted. Also, to be a part of such a group of like minded people (despite our minor differences) there to support the Democratic platform was thrilling. I hope you got to go to your caucus or primary, because I am sure it was something to be remembered. It was special.

Immigration is an issue that is created to give people something to rant about and direct the blame for a tanking economy at people who come here looking for something all of our ancestors came here looking for (that is if you are not 100% Indigenous /Native American) that being work, and basic freedoms; the opportunity for success. Immigration laws in this country have been biased, bigoted and exploitative since the Constitution was inked. I am all for fair, rational immigration law, as the current laws do nothing but make criminals out of people looking for a better life.

* Eliminate quotas based on education and country of origin

* Open up immigration

* Give each (adults and children) incoming immigrant something akin to a social security number and identification like a green card that they can use to achieve legal, gainful employment from which taxes are collected

* Additionally every immigrant will continue to pay an immigrant fee on each paycheck until they become a full legal citizen; this will help offset the immigration program

* Higher fees for areas of the country that are already densely populated

* Lower fees for areas of the country with shrinking populations

* Identification green card pseudo passport must be used when the exit or enter the US

* If they leave the US for more than a six month period, and then return, they must pay the immigrant fee they would have been paying on each paycheck while they were gone up to a maximum of $500

* Applications for citizenship are immediately created and an application fee is collected (adults and children, same application fee for children, no exceptions)

* Many illegal immigrants pay people (coyotes) to sneak them in to the United States. Why not make it fair and up front having the fees come to the US Government to help offset the immigration program?

* Applicant Immigrants must establish a bank account (checking and savings account at the time of entry with minimum deposits)

* Partnership with national banks to encourage applicant immigrants to be a part of the system and become a part of the community

* Provide information about the applicant immigrants destination community with contact information community outreach, including translator services

* Information could include: education opportunities for citizenship classes, basic living skills for US life, employment opportunities for various levels of skills in that community, training opportunities to fill positions currently unfilled, basic guide to that community and its various social services like schools, libraries, etc.

* Upon entering the US immigrants do the following: Provide a set of fingerprints entered into a national database, take a drug test (and if they fail, no entry into the county), have a picture of themselves taken, including any identifiable marks (like tattoos), have a physical to determine if they have any contagious diseases (like TB), and if they do provide them with treatment

* Additional benefit of making these people legal is they won’t be as worried to be a part of the system since they will have rights, protection, and services from the police and emergency services. Many crimes among the illegal immigrant community go unsolved and unreported due to their fear of being found out.

* Using the database that is created from the application and identification process, provide access to businesses to verify applicant immigrants legality.

* If businesses are found to be employing illegal immigrants, severe penalties and the removal of any tax breaks for that business

* Possible criminal charges against the persons directly responsible for hiring the illegal immigrant

* No additional fences

* All current illegal immigrants must go through the application and identification process, paying all associated fees, submitting to all the fingerprinting, drug testing, opening a bank account, etc, and will begin paying the non-citizen fee. They are in essence a new applicant immigrant. No additional penalties for being here illegally

* Any criminal felony violation committed by the applicant immigrant during the application and citizenship process means immediate deportation

It might seem radical and liberal to allow everyone to just come to the US, but why not? Is it that we are worried they will take jobs? Jobs like what, picking fruit or working in a meat packing plant? Or changing sheets at motels or busing tables? Many Americans find that work beneath them and feel they are entitled to a job of a certain status and pay – they don’t want to do grunt work. Well, if there are people out there will to hustle and work hard for a living than I think those jobs should go to them. Besides, there are a lot of places in the US that are having a shortage of specialized workforce. Here in Kansas we are so hurting for teachers that we are importing them from the Philippines. YES! And why? Because unemployed teachers in other states are unwilling to move to Kansas or don’t have the credentials to pass Kansas’ tough certification process for teachers.

Anyway, for all those out there that think immigrants don’t contribute to US society…

One of my great-grandfathers was an immigrant from Italy. He moved to New York in the 1890’s. He worked delivering ice and coal. It was a dirty, sweaty job, but he did it. His son went on to become a grocer. His son went on to become a telephone repairman and then an insurance salesman. His daughter (me) went to college and holds teaching degrees and is a professional budget analyst. That’s just one of my great-grandfathers.

Another was a mason from Armenia that escaped the Armenian Holocaust. Coming to America saves his and my great-grandmother’s lives. There daughter went on to work in the airplane factories during WWII, and then to raise three children all of whom are successful – small business owner, program director for NASA, executive assistant for Raytheon.

Another set of great-grandparents came to America from Lithuania just before the Czar was killed in Russia and the Soviet Union came to power. Again, who knows what would have happened to them had they stayed there. He was a cobbler. His son was also a cobbler, and his son served in WWII fighting at Iwo jima, and after the war was over, came home to become a small business owner.

I am now a married, middle class person, tax paying, home owning, and college educated all because my ancestors came to America. Yes, I do not believe I would be here today if they hadn't come to America - for one thing at least the Armenians would have been killed by the Turks. Anyway, I think the community I live in is better off for me being a part of it.

Immigrants (and their eventual descendants) have PLENTY to offer this country.

BTW - I posted this as a response to some post on immigration by someone else, but added a little bit to this blog.

Part 1 - Department of the Interior - Bureau of Indian Affairs

Being a budget analyst, I’ve set out to use my talents to try and decipher the federal budget. I started with one of the issues near and dear to me, the Native American community. For those of you who do not know, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is funded through the Department of the Interior. It was to this budget I turned to take a look at just want Tribes could look forward to in the way of funding.

As a background on why Tribes should be getting funding in the first place, I will cram more than two hundred years of American – Tribal relations into a few paragraphs.

The US Constitution, Article 1 Section 8 proclaims that “The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; …(it continues)..To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”  Here in the Constitution, Indian Tribes are granted the same distinction as foreign Nations, and the States. The United States recognized the sovereign status of Indian tribes as domestic dependent nations. With this established, more than 370 treaties were signed between 1778 and 1871, further elaborating on the relationship between the various Tribes and the federal governments. Treaties differ, but promises were made in those treaties, for land, financial support, resources for education, health care, etc.

Various legislation was passed (Snyder Act of November 2, 1921, the Dawes Act, the Indian Reorganization Act, etc) which tried to sever or lessen the government’s responsibility to the Tribes. Forced assimilations were commonplace. Indian children taken from their parents and forced to live in ‘Indian Schools’ had their hair cut, mouths washed out with soap when they spoke their own language, their religious and cultural practices were forbidden to them, and a systematic program of ‘conversion’, for lack of a better word, was forced down the children’s throats to make them less Indian. These forced assimilations where terribly painful for the Native peoples – their Spanish Inquisition, as it were. Indian Allotment broke apart whole reservations into tiny parcels quickly bought by white settlers and corporations. The Termination Era saw whole Tribes declared ‘not Indian’ so the government didn’t have to provide for their health care or land management anymore.

Finally, to correct these wrongs inflicted by a very bigoted government, the American Indian Education & Self-Determination Act passed in 1975. Also known as PL 93-638, this legislation spelled out in very clear terms that Tribes and the federal government were to conduct themselves in a government – to – government relationship, and that the federal government was to act in true good faith. Tribes could determine in a contract what services they wanted the government to provide for them, or they could create a compact, whereas the government provided the funding and the tribes themselves would create their own infrastructure and take care of their own people through their own government without the federal government having any other responsibility except for providing the money. I’ve REALLY simplified that, but there is the crux of it. The details and regulations are spelled out in 25 CFR Part 900 (25 U.S.C. 450 et seq.), as amended, the Education Amendments of 1978 (25 U.S.C. 2001–2019)

In FY07, the funding set aside for the contract and compacts support costs established under PL 93-638 was $134,609,000. That might sound like a lot of money to you, but in the federal register on July 12, 2002, the Department of Interior published, “Notice is hereby given of the current list of 562 tribal entities recognized and eligible for funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs by virtue of their status as Indian tribes. This notice is published pursuant to Section 104 of the Act of November 2, 1994 (Pub. L. 103–454; 108 Stat. 4791, 4792)."

If I divided the total amount of the contract support costs budget by the total amount of Tribes to give each Tribe an even amount that would be $239,517.80. As an aside, Wichita Public Schools annual budget to serve 48,500 students is over $480,000,000, four times the amount of the BIA’s contract support budget.

Now there are other bits of funding specifically set aside for housing, schools, roads, etc, but that money is very specific and Tribes have to follow all sorts of regulations on how the money can be spent. For the Housing Improvement Program that can determine if a house can have carpet or not, how many windows it can have, what the total square footage can be, and a host of other small details that can add up to a woefully inadequate house. When I worked for a Tribe in California, the BIA routinely made these houses cost less than $75,000 a piece, maximum. This was in 2001 in California. Can you really build a suitable house for that amount in California?

The way funding works though is that not all Tribes are given an equal share. Larger Tribes like the Navajo are given much more money since they have more land and more tribal members. Smaller Tribes like the Blue Lake Rancheria of California are given far less than a large Tribe, like the Navajo. And, overall, that can make sense since they have less land to manage and fewer members. Yet, isn’t there a basic amount a government needs to ensure that it can run? What kind of government do Tribes need or want? Well, what kind do you expect where you live? You want roads, schools, drinkable water, electricity, access to health care, emergency services such as a fire department and police department, land management (zoning, building inspection, permits for building, burning, hunting, etc.), and a basic legal system – tribal courts, not to mention a ruling council and tribal office that keeps the records, and makes the laws and services available to tribal members, handling the fiscal and fiduciary responsibilities of the Tribe. There is so much more to a government than I just listed. Many Tribes are in very remote areas and are essentially isolated from all of these services found in modern day non-reservation communities. Granted there are some very small towns in rural Kansas or California even that do not have ALL of those things I’ve listed, but are they sovereign nations with a government – to government relationship with the United States? Do they have trust land that must be protected from abuses, poachers, grave robbers?

Now, there is additional funding out there besides the money from the Department of the Interior via the BIA, for all those things like transit systems, clean air monitoring, nutrition services, and housing, etc, but Tribes must apply for it in a competitive grant atmosphere, sometimes against not just other Tribes, but against States, counties, and other non-profit entities. Because of this, smaller Tribes tend to not get much additional funding because they lack the staff and initial funding for grant writing proposals, studies, and research necessary to produce fundable grant documents. HUD, Department of Transportation, USDA, and the EPA all expect top notch plans and budgets, as they should, but can smaller under funded tribes truly compete? And if they do compete, and do win the grant, do they have the governmental resources to make the grant a success for the future of their tribal members?

So, what does FY08 hold in store? A cut, that’s what, for the third year in a row. Now do you still wonder why Tribes have turned to gaming?

Has the American experiment failed?

Ever think we should scrap everything and start over?

We are a country totally divided and I haven’t a clue how to really heal that mess, and I really don’t think any of the Presidential candidates of any party do. No one person can solve all this nations ills. Only a group working together can. Yet, nobody seems to want to work together anymore.

We’ve (the collective conscious of the United States) have lost site of what the initial goals of this Union were.

Life. – To go about our own daily business and live. Stop trying to prevent other people from choosing a lifestyle that’s different than your own. Stop forcing your beliefs on others. Let people LIVE the way they choose to live. That ties neatly into Liberty, each person living according to his or her own values. Where is the freedom of the individual from outside interference or compulsion? Where is the equal distribution of power? Remember that Liberty without equality amounts to the domination of the most powerful over those who cannot protect themselves. Yet are we kidding ourselves to ever think we’ve had true Liberty in this country. From it’s founding one group has oppressed another, has denied Liberty to a group, class, race – forcing them, dominating them, interfering and compelling them to do things against their own desires. We didn’t have Liberty then, and we don’t have it now. Look how we are trying to shove it down the people of Iraq’s throats!

Happiness – The Secret Society of Happy people have over thirty different states of happiness. Have you found yourself in any of them recently? Have people forgotten what it is like to be happy? Do we have to deny other people happiness to find our own? I sure hope that isn’t the case, because that’s just sick. Has the United States turned into a country of sadists? Enjoying bringing pain to others, because that’s why we (again, collective conscious) are doing. By electing officials who allow the government to stomp around the globe and impose ‘our’ will on foreign nations and their people, we are depriving them of their happiness and inflicting a great deal of pain.

Freedom. – It is not our duty to police the world. We should be taking care of business back home within our own boarders and let others take care of their own people. I’ve often thought that we should think globally and act locally, but my goodness, the meddling the government has done in ‘our’ names has got to stop. We’re in another Vietnam, people! Nobody invited us to Iraq. It’s not like WWII. We are not wanted there, nor many other places.

If we can’t take care of our own people, what gives us the right to force our ways on other nations?

I was an optimist. I hope deep down I still am. My heart yearns for peace, unity, and a certain tranquility of the soul and spirit. I don’t think it can be found here anymore. I’m loosing my resolve that the American experiment can still work.

Here is a question to all those out there that follow education funding from the federal government: Why has educational funding for Title IIA Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants, Title IID Enhancing Education through Technology, Even Start, Dropout Prevention, and Title V Part A Innovative Programs been cut? Title IID, Title VA, and Even Start have been decimated in Kansas.

I work directly with federal grants management in the largest school district north of Dallas, west of the Mississippi, and east of Denver. We have roughly 49,000 students and each is being impacted by these cuts.

Schools lack up to date computers, whiteboards, and other technological devices that aid in learning and preparing students for futures beyond school.

The Even Start program in our district was highly successful yet without federal funding and the constant increases in the cost of health care and utilities, the district could not afford to redirect General Fund dollars to support the program – nearly $550,000 worth a year.

The rate of graduation / completion of school for our district is 77% - so tell me why should Dropout Prevention funding be cut?

The FY08 Budget Appropriations that were published in February 2008 make no sense to me, and it sickens me that my two children are in overcrowded classrooms using outdated technology, with under trained teachers while valuable tax dollars are being flushed away on a war that nobody wants and has done very little to secure the safety of the nation.

Yet, appropriations for Title I went up. Neither of my children attend Title I schools, so they do not benefit from the increase in Title I funding. Out of the 90 schools in our district, 38 receive Title I dollars. With the provisions of the Title I authorization, districts must use the money to supplement rather than supplant normal General Fund expenditures. So, 38 schools get loads more money than the rest, which means they can hire more paraeducators, teachers, resource teachers (training coaches for teachers), etc. Title I dollars are handed out to schools based on Free Lunches. Supposedly all schools that have 35% of more Free Lunch eligible children are eligible for Title I dollars, but because the Title I program has reached over $1 Billion dollars in funding the federal government has turned over management of the program to the States, who in turn have allowed districts to set their own standards.

In our district, only schools with 75% rate of Free Lunches receive Title I funding. I don’t begrudge the helping of the truly needy, but honestly, just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you’re dumb. Just because a student gets a free lunch doesn’t mean he needs an extra paraeducator in his class. There are plenty of children from middle class homes that have learning issues and need extra help in a classroom setting from trained individuals.

We have a very good parent support network at SOME schools, usually those that aren’t qualified for federal Title I money, those that don’t meet the 35%, basically, the schools in wealthy neighborhoods. So what about the bubble schools? The ones that don’t have a wealthy PTA or PTO, and those that don’t meet the district’s 75% parameter, but qualify at the federal level. Those schools and students are getting screwed!

They did it again! Yes, the Senators from Kansas voted no on S.5, the Reid-Harkin Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. Did I expect them to vote any other way. No, I most certainly did not. Both Brownback and Roberts are so far right…wait, that’s starting to sound like a bad joke. Unfortunately, it’s not.

What really truly strikes me funny about his argument for not funding this research is that it uses federal taxpayer dollars to sanction the destruction of nascent human life. Okay…and funding for all the Pentagon’s weapons isn’t basically the same thing? Well, I guess the ‘nascent’ part of his statements makes it a little different, kind of, unless of course soldiers use the weapons to kill pregnant women in say…Iraq or Afghanistan, or elsewhere. Oh, but our soldiers would never do that – right? Yeah, if I had no memory of the recent past I MIGHT believe that, but Vietnam taught us different, didn’t it? Can anyone remember the My Lai Massacre? Women, children, babies – sounds like budding, promising, growing human life to me!

So, we can shoot up living people but we have to protect embryos that aren’t really living, breathing, productive people? It’s okay to use taxpayers dollars for committing atrocities around the world in the name of liberty and freedom, but not to make headway in scientific research to end cancer? Here is where I would like there to be a survey on the 1040 form so I can say where my tax dollars are spent. Even if they didn’t follow my wishes, at least I would have had my say. People in Washington might just find out what we really care about – health and welfare, science, alternative energy, education, the environment, farmers, mass transit – that’s where I’d want my money spent.

**sigh** When, oh, when, are the people of Kansas going to wake up, shake off the mantel of these narrow minded conservatives and elect someone who will think about something other than their superior moral highground.