I will have the honor of appearing today as part of the confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee for Loretta Lynch, nominee to serve as United States Attorney General. Below is my written testimony for the hearing today.
Here is the full list of witnesses appearing today:
Sharyl Attkisson
Investigative Journalist
David Barlow
Partner
Sidley Austin LLP
David A. Clarke, Jr.
Sheriff
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
Catherine Engelbrecht
Founder
True The Vote
Janice K. Fedarcyk
Fedarcyk Consulting LLC
Stephen H. Legomsky
John S. Lehmann University Professor
School of Law at Washington University
The Reverend Doctor Clarence Newsome
Cincinnati , OH
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Professor Of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Cato Institute
Jonathan Turley
Professor, J.B. And Maurice C. Shapiro Chair Of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School
Washington , DC
The full committee hearing resumes this morning at 10 a.m. in Committee Room 216 in the Hart Senate Office Building.
Here is my testimony: Statement.Lynch Nomination.Turley Testimony.Senate
Inga, my birthday is tomorrow also! He’s an Aquarian! They are good, kind people.
Nick, I know lots of atheists and agnostics. They aren’t angry at those who have faith and believe in God. Why is this constantly fought? It’s a waste of time. Upwards of 80% of Americans are Christians.
Our Bill of Rights are based on the Ten Commandments. If you are an atheist and don’t want your children hearing anything about God, put them in private schools where you can control that. Why are you, in a very tiny minority, attacking what more than 80% of your fellow citizens believe and want used in their government? In God We Trust was here long before you, and will be here, long after you are gone.
Isaac, is there anything you don’t blame Republicans for? The fact that Obama refused to meet and negotiate had no impact? We sent Republicans there to put a lid on Obama’s pot of money.
I’d put on a hiring freeze including no replacements when people retire or other reasons. I worked in a business for 30 years. When we became 8 instead of 10, with the same responsibilities for the group, we got it done. Work smarter not harder. When the hiring freeze ended we were doing just fine with eight, so no request for addition employees, unless the responsibilities got bigger.
Give a bonus to people who are eligible to retire to encourage them. But only a three-month window, not a forever thing.,and don’t replace them. The management and employees responsible for the same things, minus one person. They’ll find a way, especially if that buyout came up again and they become eligible.
That’s what I did. I missed the first buyout by nine months. I was eligible for the second buyout, a one-year salary to leave now with two years credit for retirement.
That is the quickest way to reduce the number of employees. When I took that offer I was leaving in three months. During that time we spread the work around and found one less had no impact on getting the job done. They also found duplicate work. Tracked where reports went and what they did with them. Three of them just filed it. Nobody read it, someone just put it in a file.bthere were 25 departments doing that report. Whoever did look at it looked at it, initialed and sent to be filed. The information wasn’t needed since they didn’t use it for anything.
Can anyone imagine the number of the Federal Government’s unnecessary, unused reports that could be eliminated. Also , if you did your job and found something that should eliminated, you got a check. The amounts were different depending on how much time saved.
Nope, I knew that was one of the sources you folks would trust explicitly.
And DBQ, those “elitist” and involved parents that are so succesful in my grandchildren’s school, worked damn hard to get where they are. I thought you people admired hard work and success.
Her remark may have been innocent, but in it’s innocence it was also condescending. Your remarks, however are never innocent.
Paul S.,
“Most parents are not equipped to teach high school subjects to their children.”
Some parents choose to enroll their kids in a brick-and-mortar school. The homeschooling families I know use community colleges and co-ops at this point.
Prairie Rose – those are always an option. 🙂
I assume nothing. I’m glad to hear that you are passing on your family traditions. However, you do seem awfully defensive and belligerent about an innocent and helpful remark that Sandi made in general about passing on those values.
Talk to your grandchildren about the history you grew up with because the books leave out a lot and overemphasize the blips. Give them your knowledge about history without the distortions in the books and classrooms. Truth is the best history you can give. And explain why the books are different.
https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/sdpr/district-report.action
Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
DBQ, I didn’t say that passing on family stories was something that wasn’t a good idea, now did I? As I said upstream, my daughter put together an extensive family history book, replete with recipies, pictures, documents, genealogy and family stories and how the family fared during historical events. Don’t assume that I haven’t already discussed historical events and how they related to my family to my children and grandchildren. Always with the assumptions.
http://www.alec.org/publications/report-card-on-american-education/
Wisconsin schools rank 15th from the top.
Inga – you have stooped to citing ALEC? I thought I would never see the day. You really are desperate.
“Probably 80%” numlock was off.
DBQ, Only used a textbook as a guide. Probably % of the history I taught was non textbook. Took a lot of work. Those textbooks come w/ worksheets, fill in the blank, fill in the bubble horseshit that the lazy teachers love.
PR, More the rise of school choice, vouchers and charter schools. Home schooling has exploded the last couple decades as well. If I could do it over, I would have home schooled my kids.
Nick – most home schooling falls apart when the kids hit high school. Most parents are not equipped to teach high school subjects to their children. This is where charter schools do well with them. I had many home schooled children at charter schools I taught in.
PR, Those assignments I just spoke about were hated by the lazy union teachers. You see, when I got into teaching in my late 40’s I was appalled @ how poorly students wrote. The reason, it’s HARD work to correct written assignments. The lazy ones like worksheets and multiple choice tests. My tests were mostly essay. Parents loved it and that put pressure on the lazy union ones to get off their asses and work. I got so much resentment from the old timers. Now, there were teachers who were not lazy. I had a lesson I came up when the internet was nascent. It was a current events class. I had each student adopt a city, foreign or domestic, and give us a quick verbal report on what was going on in their city. They loved it. A hard working teacher adopted the plan and thanked me for it.
Evidently some of us have children and granchildren in uber elite, uber rich, highfaluting schools and “don’t need no stinkin’ advice from the peons”. Goodie goodie gumdrops.
However uber your schools are they no substitute for passing on family stories and family histories. What the children ‘read’ in the adulterated, politically correct, history books is one thing. But to hear how your ancestors dealt with the history as it was happening, makes it real. Instead of a teacher droning on and teaching to the test, parents and family can pass on their own unique….or maybe even super uber unique family histories. People who do this are giving their children and heirs a valuable lesson in history that they will never get in school.
We recently digitized a big box of 8mm film that my father took in the 1950’s to early 60’s that show us in our travels all over the United States and Mexico and Canada. Some of it we have set to music. The kids and grandkids are fascinated and find us old farts pretty hilarious as children and amazed at what we were able to do. So glad that we saved this historical (to us alone likely) record.
Nick,
“The public is rapidly taking back their education systems from unions and overpaid, unneeded bureaucrats.”
Then why do we have Common Core? And, NCLB is still on the books. 🙁 Perhaps I’m out of the loop, but what are you thinking of in particular? The rise in homeschooling or something else?
There must be accountability. Teachers need to be evaluated by test scores, administrators, parents, students, a wholistic approach to weeding out the bad teachers quickly, and rewarding good teachers w/ merit pay. The public is rapidly taking back their education systems from unions and overpaid, unneeded bureaucrats.
Nick,
“the union drills that out of them over time”
I am not a big fan of unions, because at their worst they can end up doing the students a disservice (like in my husband’s case there was a long strike that affected his learning at the time).
On the brighter side, it seems to matter who is part of the union. The union where I taught had excellent, dynamic teachers who were old enough to be my parents. The loved their subject areas and loved teaching.
Perhaps it is the pressure to teach to the test or outside control over a teacher’s curriculum/lesson planning that “drills that out of them”. 🙁
Prairie Rose – teaching to the test is the biggest problem. This is a administration problem. Since the tests are high stakes all other subjects, not tested, are either dropped or take second place to the tested. Since social studies is not tested, time for social studies is used for English and Math.
Yes, the rich kids get good public education. Blue collar and poor kids, get crapped on in this country. Boys in particular get the short end of the stick.