School Board Meeting This Wednesday

Please be sure to attend the school board meeting Wednesday night. It will be interesting to see just how the Newport crowd will try to scare Croydon residents out of school choice Wednesday night? More than anything the want our money they do not care about the wishes of Croydon parents and taxpayers.

Obama's Education Secretary is Doing at Least One Thing Right.

Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan is doing at least one thing right. In the story below Arne Duncan tells the teachers' unions correctly "But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."

The following article appeared on CNSnew.com.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

Education Secretary Challenges NEA on Teacher Pay
Thursday, July 02, 2009
By Libby Quaid, Associated Press

Washington (AP) - Education Secretary Arne Duncan challenged members of the National Education Association Thursday to stop resisting the idea of linking teacher pay to student achievement.

It was Duncan's first speech at the union's annual meeting, a gathering at which President Barack Obama was booed when he mentioned the idea of performance pay last year.



"I came here today to challenge you to think differently about the role of unions in public education," Duncan told the 2.7 million-member union in San Diego.

"It's not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation," he said in a speech distributed by the Education Department. "You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change."

Unions are an important part of the Democrats' political base of support. Duncan, even as he challenged NEA members, promised to include teachers in his decision-making.

"We're asking Congress for more money to develop compensation programs with you and for you, not to you," Duncan said.

Duncan described how, as CEO of Chicago public schools, he negotiated a performance pay program with the Chicago Teachers Union, which is part of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the other national teachers' union.

The program is still very small; it will be in only about 40 of Chicago's more than 600 public schools next fall.

The Chicago program started with federal dollars from the Teacher Incentive Fund, which the administration is trying to drastically expand. The administration wants Congress to boost spending on the program from $97 million this year to $717 million next year.

But Obama may face resistance. Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, challenged Duncan at a hearing last month on whether there is any evidence of performance pay having improved student achievement.

Critics worry that pay might be based mostly on test scores, even though tests can be flawed, and all subjects are not tested. Some states prohibit student test scores from being used to evaluate teachers.

Duncan said Thursday that test scores should never be the driving force.

"But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible," he said.

Duncan has made a series of speeches to promote Obama's priorities, though Thursday's was the first where he faced a potentially hostile crowd.

He told charter school supporters last week they should do a better job of closing bad schools and opening good ones. Last month, he urged the nation's governors to agree on common, internationally measured academic standards for students.


(Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

One Huge Reason Not to Have an Income Tax in New Hampshire

Once you give the State your tax dollars there is no guarantee you will get them back or get them back in a timely manner. It is best not to have an income tax in the first place.

The following story appears on Breitbart.com. I found the picture on Pay no taxes.org.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.


Much-needed tax refunds delayed from Ga. to Calif.

ATLANTA (AP) - Colin Daymude was out of work last year after his business failed and eagerly filed his taxes in mid-January, figuring he'd get his refund sooner. He was wrong.
It took the 44-year-old entrepreneur more than six months to get his $1,300 check—money that he needed to pay living expenses while he worked a few side gigs.

Tax day—April 15—has long since come and gone, but sharp budget cuts and falling revenues have forced many states to delay income tax returns for months—and left taxpayers longing for their money.

"I'm just trying to get my money back," said a frustrated Daymude. "It's my money anyways."



Some states say plummeting tax collections drove them to hold on to the money so they can make ends meet. Others complain of not being able to keep up because the economic downturn has forced staffing cuts in revenue departments.

But critics worry governments are withholding funds that rightly belong to taxpayers when they need the extra cash the most. And some of the tardy states are fast approaching a stiff deadline of their own: The longer they wait, the more likely they'll have to pony up interest from thinning state coffers.

That prospect could soon become a reality in Georgia and Alabama, where tax officials are racing to beat a mid-July deadline to send hundreds of thousands of tax refunds or risk racking up millions of dollars in interest.

"I know some of the taxpayers are wondering if the state is going to pay the refund," said Carla Snellgrove of the Department of Revenue in Alabama, where more than 120,000 taxpayers are waiting for at least $63 million in income tax refunds.

"You talk with them and assure them they'll get the refund, it's just much slower this year," she said. "And if we don't meet the July 15 deadline, then the state will pay interest—that provides them some assurance."

In Georgia, tax officials say that more than 320,000 returns still need to be processed. If they are not completed by July 16, the state may have to dish out 1 percent interest for each month it is late.

State tax officials say it's not an issue of money, but an issue of staffing. Georgia Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham said the department had to cut about 280 jobs since October, including more than 150 processors who helped file refunds.

The funding problems have become familiar in cash-squeezed states.

California, which faces a deficit that could top $24.3 billion, may have to issue about $3 billion worth of promissory notes this month to state contractors, college students and taxpayers owed refunds unless there is a budget-balancing agreement.

Smaller states have also had trouble. Freda Warfield of the Kansas Department of Revenue said tax officials are hoping to send out $31 million in refunds by next week—but she knows residents are getting anxious. The returns average $500 a person.

"The revenue receipts have just been down," she said. "There's not enough coming in to issue all of our refunds. Tough decisions needed to be made, and one of the things that we could do is to hold our refunds."

It quickly became a touchy subject there, where thousands of people still haven't gotten refunds. Republican state Sen. Jeff Colyer said he raised the alarm that the state may not be able to make the payments back in August.

"It's unfair to taxpayers," said Colyer, a surgeon from Overland Park. "It's creating a cash-flow concern for these people. They rely on tax refunds for a big purchase, or to make a house payment. People have already budgeted how that money will be spent."

Other states have had to be a bit more inventive.

Missouri, which delayed issuing income tax refunds earlier this year, ultimately used $250 million of federal economic stimulus money to pay hundreds of thousands of refunds.

And Maryland, which still has about 3,000 filings left, dipped into a $366 million reserve account that many lawmakers didn't even know existed. Legislators hope to pay it back in 10 years.

Meanwhile, analysts say the delays essentially rob the poor of what had become an extra paycheck.

"Low-income families rely on that money getting reimbursed to them in the spring," said Mike Herald, a lobbyist for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group for the poor. "They pay bills with that money, they buy furniture—a lot of people rely on that income."
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Cap and Tax

The Cap and Tax Bill passed the house a week ago Friday without any legislator reading the Bill. Essentially this Bill is taxation without representation. There is a lot of BS (that is the only way to put it) in this Bill. Homeowners when selling their home will have to re-roof their home, costing them upwards of 10,000 dollars.



The following is from Boortz.com.

The bottom line is that you put your home on the market, and as part of the closing process, you will have to cough up some sort of certificate to say that your home is compliant with green guidelines as promulgated by the federal Department of Energy. For example, does your home have roofing materials that reflect solar energy? That will be a requirement if you want to sell your home under green guidelines. That means that you as a homeowner will have to put a new roof on your home before you can sell it, and not just a new roof but one that reflects solar rays. How much does a new roof cost nowadays? Maybe $9,000 or $10,000. Yeah, and that's just one of the mandates. The government is going to test air quality around your home, take infrared readings of your house. How much is all of this compliance going to cost you when you try to sell your home?


To read the full post go to Boortz.com.

Any representative who supported this Bill be they Democrat or Republican should be voted out of office.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

New tax could put campgrounds out of business

The following piece appears on the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers' website.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

New tax could put campgrounds out of business

According to a report by NH’s Senator Jeb Bradley, Democrats claim that the new tax on campsites closes a “loophole”. He said, “If budget writers really thought this tax on camping was closing a loophole it is hard to imagine why they would have introduced it in the wee hours of the night without a public hearing. The fact is that it is a brand new 9% tax on camping. It is positively amazing how supporters of this budget claim to be the politicians that support the little guy.”

Bradley is talking about the much-contested budget contained in HB1 and HB2.

To read the rest of the story go to the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers' website.

Anastasia's Chemistry Quiz #4

Anastasia fell in love with the Chemistry book we bought her the first day she received the book. It was not our intention to teach her chemistry so early but she is eager to learn more and as you can see she is capable of learning chemistry. At four almost five she is able to read the names of the atoms or molecules herself. Teaching her to read phonetically has been the key to her learning success. Her instructions were to match the symbols with the words.

Click on the image to enlarge.



Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.

I Will Be Posting Less Frequently

This BLOG has less readers during the summer because many of them are school employees. I will be posting less frequently with my energies focused on fighting current legislation that will greatly increase our taxes like Cap and Trade, the card check bill and the health care bill. I will also be working to actively unseat Senator Bob O'dell because of his approval of the New Hampshire State Budget.

Cathy

Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.