Bird’s-Eye View

Remember the race for state Senate? Can’t blame you if you don’t.
Nonetheless, the first debate of the local election season is scheduled for Tuesday night as Democrat Jose Urdaneta, Republican Lloyd Smucker and write-in candidate Bill Neff square off on education. Those three are running for the 13th state Senate seat, which represents southern Lancaster […]

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NPR’s Michel Martin, a former White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, calls out the Republicans for their double-speak regarding education and their attacks on Barack Obama for his supposed “elitist” attitude.
 Education, as John McCain says, is the civil rights issue of our time, but … :
It is so interesting to me that at the same […]

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While no one in the crowd at today’s F&M event with John McCain and Sarah Palin will say it was a failure, they did miss some opportunities to inspire that crowd in ways they will never forget. But the McCain/Palin team did not mention Obama’s answer about when life begins from the Saddleback forum last […]

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Anything, anything, about the economy beyond the simple message about lower taxes. The Bush tax cuts have been in place since 2001 and 2003, and yet here the economy is with higher than 6 percent unemployment, a weak U.S. dollar and a housing crisis. Why would continuing the Bush tax cuts and giving middle- and […]

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1:02 p.m.: McCain ends by saying rural Pennsylvanians are not “bitter” and clinging to their guns and religions because they’re disenchanted with government and the economy:
“Judeo-Christian values they hold dear is the strength of America. They’re the reason why the people in Georgia today are looking to America.”
Gettin’ on the Straight Talk Express. Keep checking […]

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Breathe a sigh of relief. Call off the search dogs. The kids can come out the play, again.
Late last night, Gov. Ed Rendell announced an agreement between his office and the Legislature over a budget that was more than $500 million less than what Rendell wanted. Here’s some details from his press release:
The Governor said […]

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As Aerosmith once said, “I’m back in the saddle, again!” Had a couple of nice days off, and I see the political arena has gotten itself in a frenzy.
Some random thoughts:
Obama foregoes public financing
I spent a couple of days with close friends in York County. One of them - mother of two, college educated, someone I […]

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12:37 p.m. McCain’s exiting now. Nothing much new, and he’s exiting to the (CLICHE ALERT! CLICHE ALERT!) the Rocky theme. McCain’s not learning much from Clinton’s failures. She invoked Rocky but forget the movie involves a white boxer who went toe-to-toe but did not defeat the charismatic African-American champion with a funny name.
12:33 p.m. WOW! […]

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The rumblings about the “real” motive of President Bush’s major education intitiative “No Child Left Behind” or NCLB have never really died down. The feeling among critics is by forcing students no matter their educational or emotional or mental development to impossibly march in lockstep or their school would be labeled a “failure” (just as the students would also) was […]

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The state Department of Education released Thursday just how much each homestead will save in 2008-09 on property taxes due to gambling receipts. The Intell’s education reporter Brian Wallace is adding up the figures and working on an article, and for our county the school district with the highest “estimated” savings is the School District […]

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