Necessary News

All you need to know to sound brilliant

Abstinence Education: Worthless And Getting Millions

• You can lead a (congressional) horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. We’ve told you countless times before how studies have shown that abstinence only education just doesn’t work. In fact, earlier this year, a federal study “showed that most Americans have their first sexual experience in their teens and have six or fewer sexual partners in their lifetime.” [Mic Check]
• Moreover, about 57 percent of Americans had sex before age 18, the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) said in a June report based on data collected between 1999 and 2002 from more than 6,000 adults ages 20 to 59.
• Still, Congress can’t wake up and smell the coffee. According to a study released by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, abstinence only programs are still eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants — despite their ineffectiveness. [AP]
• There’s more: The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having “positive outcomes” including teenagers “delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.”
• Regardless, a spending bill before Congress for the Department of Health and Human Services would provide $141 million in assistance for community-based, abstinence-only sex education programs, $4 million more than what President Bush had requested.
• Earlier this year, the House approved a $28 million increase in spending on abstinence programs, despite reports that argued “the long decline in sexual activity among U.S. teenagers, hailed as one of the nation’s most important social and public health successes, appears to have stalled.” [Washington Post]

Once again, Congress says “yes” to saying “no.”

Little Bro Bush Making Bank Off No Child Left Behind

• Neil Bush, the Bush brother notorious for his role in the 1980’s savings and loans scandal, now runs Ignite Learning, a company that makes cow-themed educational products. No joke.
• For years, we’ve suspected he’s getting a little help from his big brother President Bush’s educational policies. [MicCheck]
• Now, the Inspector General for the Department of Education is investigating whether states inappropriately used money from the No Child Left Behind Act to purchase Neil’s...ahem...unconventional products. [NY Times]
• The big question: did school districts buy Ignite’s “Curriculum on Wheels” (CoW) because it was a helpful classroom tool...or because it was sold by the President’s brother?
• Some facts:
• The CoW units cost $3,800 each, and require an annual $1000 maintenance fee.
• Ignite Learning includes George Sr. and Barbara among the investors.
• In the wake of Katrina, Barbara Bush donated eight units to damaged Louisiana schools. Close behind? An email from Neil Bush saying “in order for the schools to keep the Cows in subsequent years they will have to pay an annual fee of $1,000.”
• Ignite’s web site: “advises potential clients that it is appropriate to make purchases with No Child Left Behind dollars, as well as federal money for poor and disadvantaged children and special education students.” [Ignite]
• Yet, NCLB requires that its money be spent on “scientifically proven methods.” Melanie Sloan, of the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, says that the Ignite materials “simply does not meet the requirements.” [CREW]
• Jay Spuck, a former curriculum developer for a Houston school district about to approve a $300,000 contract with Ignite, writes: “It’s not helping kids at all. It’s not helping teachers. The only way Neil has gotten in is by his name.”

No little brother left behind.

Meet The Kerik

• Federal prosecutors are expected today to seek a grand jury indictment against disgraced former NYPD Commish (and good friend of former Mayor Giuliani) Bernard Kerik.
• A preview of the charges awaiting him today: Tax Fraud. Conspiracy. Corruption.
• Remember Kerik? He’s the guy who…
• … allegedly traded $165,000 worth of renovations on his house from a contractor who wanted a license from the city.
• … quit his post training a new Iraqi police force in 2003 after just four months on the job, telling reporters “he needed a vacation.” [Washington Post]
• … used the apartment donated for weary Ground Zero rescue workers into his own personal love nest to use with his mistress. [NY Times]
• ...was named in a civil suit in 1999 as “the architect of a system to force prison guards to work for Republicans in their off-hours.” [Newsweek]
• … had mob ties that include the best man in his wedding, Lawrence Ray, who was indicted in 2000 along with other organized crime figures in a scheme to manipulate the stock market. [Washington Post]
• ...is now being sued for stiffing the law firm that kept him out of jail for more than $200,000. [NY Daily News]
• Just last week, Kerik’s BFF Rudy Giuliani threw some love on the soon-to-be-indicted ex-chief, “saying that if his achievements as president are as good as the crime-reduction results of his New York police commissioner, a man now under criminal investigation himself, ‘this country will be in great shape.’” [AP]

We like the part where he spent $3,000 of the police department’s money to order up busts made in his own likeness. Wonder if Rudy’s got one?

Suckers! How To Get Scammed By A Minuteman

• Remember the Minutemen? They’re the vigilante group founded in 2005 to take the law into their own hands and stop illegal immigration over the U.S./Mexico border. And they promised to build a Very Big Fence. [CNN]
• Two years ago, founder and president of the Minutemen Chris Simcox started to raise money for the Daddy of all fences to stop Mexicans from crossing the border. The fence would be 2,000 miles long. It would be 14 feet high. It would be topped with razorwire and outfitted with state-of-the-art facial-recognition cameras. There would be trenches and ditches around the fence to stop vehicles.
• And the money poured in. The anti-immigrant hysterics couldn’t give fast enough. One guy mortgaged his house so he could donate $100,000.
• Last year, they had a big ground-breaking ceremony on a guy named John Ladd’s ranch in Arizona. And they built…a cow fence.
• That’s right, a cow fence. Not terribly high. No razorwire. No cameras. No trenches.
• Instead, it’s a little fence made up of some sticks in the ground and 5 strands of barbed wire. It’s only use is to keep Mexican cows from mixing in with Ladd’s Arizona cows. (It works fine for that, he reports.)
• So…uh…where’s all the money, Simcox? No one knows. And Simcox isn’t talking.
• To this day, members of the Minutemen say they have no idea how much money founder Simcox raised, nor where any of it went. When they asked questions, they were fired. (Pretty embarrassing to get “fired” from a vigilante border mob, huh?)

PSA: When you join a hate mob, make sure the guy in charge doesn’t actually hate *you* (but love your money).

Tobacco Companies Incinerate Oregon’s Child Health Care Initiative

• In Oregon, expanded health care for working class kids just went up in smoke. [AP]
• Big tobacco spent a record $12 million in ads to defeat a cigarette tax which would have paid for health insurance for 100,000 kids.
• The revenue from the.84 cent/pack tax hike would have provided universal health insurance for Oregon’s youth, “doubled spending on campaigns to educate people about smoking and help people quit, and enable more low-income adults to join the Oregon Health Plan.”
• By a vote of 60% to 40%, Oregon voters rejected the plan.
• Said Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who supported the measure, “the tobacco industry bought the election.”
• Tobacco companies outspent proponents of the measure 4 to 1 “blanketing airwaves and filling voters’ mailboxes with ads and brochures aimed at defeating the tax increase.” [Statesman Journal]
• The tobacco companies’ ads focused on the technicality that the tax would have to have been included in the state constitution and questioned whether the money would go only to help poor children. But proponents say these are clever distractions.
• A reminder: the tobacco companies also spent millions to defeat an expansion of the federal S-Chip program to provide health insurance for working class children across the country. But there, they had an ally in President Bush. [Politico]

“These are the best marketers in the world,” said Carol Butler, campaign manager for Yes on 50, the coalition supporting the Oregon measure. “They sell a product that kills you.”

Good News, Bad News

ANOTHER POISONOUS TOY...WITH A TWIST

Toy sellers around the world are pulling “Bendeez,” a stress relief toy, off the shelves because the Chinese manufacturer replaced a the adhesive in the product with a cheaper glue. The problem? The cheaper glue, when inhaled by children, can “mimic the effects of the so-called date rape drug.” Creepy. [Wall Street Journal]

GOOD NEWS

We can use Bendeez as bait to catch icky child predators.

BAD NEWS

Wall Street journal reports that the toxic beads “underscore the potentially gruesome consequences of a common practice in Chinese factories: cutting corners by substituting a toxic chemical for a safe ingredient.

Quote Of The Day

“Because nothing completes a look like children’s health-care legislation. And I think we all know that the fashion moment of the year has to be Nancy Pelosi marching the S-CHIP bill up to the White House in her Veto-Me pumps.”

— Stephen Colbert, introducing Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Glamour Magazine Women of the Year ceremonies this week.

“Thank you, Stephen. Of all the introductions I have ever received, yours is certainly the most … recent.”

— Nancy Pelosi, showing she can give as good as she gets. [New York Magazine]

Speed Round

AUDIO: “GOD, I LOVE FREEDOM!”

To President Bush, “quagmire” sure sounds a lot like “freedom.”

LANDMARK

The House last night approved a ban on discriminating against gays in the workplace. Welcome to the 21st Century, Congress! (And congratulations – you’ll like it here.) President Bush has vowed a veto. [NY Times]

RUSH BEING RUSH

As if you didn’t know already, Rush Limbaugh is a horrible, horrible person. Here, he mocks a young native Alaskan testifying before Congress about the effects of global warming. [MEDIA MATTERS]

IMPEACHMENT

Judiciary Committee Member Representative Robert Wexler (D-OH) will push to take up impeachment of Vice-President Cheney after the measure got passed to the judiciary committee on Monday. [Brad Blog]

BLOW AND GO

The name for a new strategy being employed by U.S. commanders in Iraq. We’re withholding comment. [USA Today]

TOUCHDOWN

Welcome back: The Discovery space shuttle touches down safely at the Kennedy Space Center. [USA Today]

15,000

The number of people who have appealed to the federal government to be removed from the Homeland Security Department’s terror watch list. [USA Today]

THAT’S GOTTA HURT

General Motors Corp posts a $39 billion loss for the third quarter. And that, folks, is a new company record. [AP]

15,000

Number of people in line at the Homeland Security Department trying to get their names off of the (750,000-long) terror watch list. And you thought the lines at the DMV were bad! [USA Today]

BOOK CLUB

In NYT reporter Elisabeth Bumiller’s new book about Secretary of State Condi Rice, she reveals Rice’s relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney was “much more conflict-driven than we have been led to believe,” with “much more conflict on the Middle East and detainees and on Guantanamo Bay than has been written.” [Editor and Publisher]

QUESTIONABLE ETHICS

Wish you could take expensive trips paid for by the special interests you’re supposed to be regulating but are afraid you’ll get in trouble with your agency’s ethics officer? Hey, just do what the Einsteins at the Consumer Product Safety Commission did – bring the ethics officer on the fancy vacation *with* you! [Washington Post]

JENA ZERO

This isn’t what we think they meant by Blind Justice: While the rest of the country watches noose hangings and the persecution of the Jena Six in horror, the Department of Justice is “prosecuting the fewest hate crimes in 10 years.” Check it out: “Last year, the department charged 22 people with hate crimes. That was down 71% from 76 in 1997.” [USA Today]

HOW OLD?

Poor Sen. Robert Byrd (D., WV) celebrated his birthday on the wrong day until he was in his 50s. (BTW, he turns 90 next week.) [Beckley Register-Herald]

GOING DOWN

Disgraced former NYPD chief Bernard Kerik tells his buddies he thinks he’ll be indicted very, very soon on counts of bribery, tax fraud and obstruction of justice. (Don’t worry, Bernie – your BFF Rudy Giuliani still thinks you did a heck of a job.) [ABC News] [ThinkProgress]

NO SHARING, CARING EITHER

Schools across the country are banning hugs. [Fox]

POTS AND KETTLES

Fox News pundits blasts MSNBC for having a “liberal slant” as opposed to Fox’s own “just the facts” style. [Raw Story]