Cultural Revolution of the United States – a la destroying public schools

Diane Ravitch has this up on the lack of accountability and oversight of a voucher program.  Children watching DVD’s in a gymnasium…seriously??

I found the comments particularly poignant–that what is happening to public schools is akin to the Chinese Cultural Revolution.   Can you imagine how the American public would react if these were called Communist Revolution programs?  The * fit * would hit the * shan *….

And I like the idea of some of these folks bankrupting school systems to be brought up on criminal charges and serve some jail time for fraud.

Why aren’t they?

Histamine and the Brain

A member of the mercury support group posted a link to an interesting report on the effects of histamine on the brain and the resulting serious psychological problems.

I am of the belief that many mental problems are not caused solely by brain chemicals gone awry.  I know too much now to ever go back to that thinking–mercury poisoning has taught me that.  Rather, I think many mental problems are manifesting in the brain, but the real issue is something gone wrong in the body.  And the issue of environmental toxins is key, also.

This page explores the effects histamine has on a person’s personality.  It is just stunning how severely someone can be affected.

I learned something today.

Nina Olson, Taxpayer Advocate

…was on CSPAN today.

She is responsible for advocating for the lowly taxpayer and gives an annual report to Congress…which they promptly ignore.

She stated what I had surmised what the real problem was when this whole IRS mess came up–that there weren’t enough people to process applications for those wanting tax exemptions.  She stated that this has been an ongoing problem.  The graphic they showed was that it now takes 17 minutes of waiting on hold before an IRS staffer can take someone’s call.  It was only 3 minutes in 2004.

So…the whole whining by the Tea Party/repub conservatives who want tax exempt status for their dirty little political organizations but don’t want to pay up like everybody else…was a…wait for it…repub fiasco by wanting to shrink the gov’t down to drown it in a bathtub….which means cutting federal employees….

…but yet they’re whining about not getting fast enough service for the IRS to do its job of investigating whether they are political organizations or not….where’s Mrs. Alito when you need her?

Is anyone else sick of the Tea Party whiners?

And can we define mental illness by the act of cutting the budget, cutting employees but demanding that they get a speedy answer on their applications….and then playing the victim?