In January of this past year my son started to have more severe emotional issues that resulted in a series of traumatic events which culminated with the school having my son arrested and sent to Timberlawn. I was frantic and didn’t know where to turn so I called an old friend who recommended a child advocate. Not knowing what they did, I spent some time speaking to her on the phone and discovered a whole world of rights and services that had been denied to my son.
I was told that I needed to immediately call for an emergency ARD at Lake Highland JH and that she would come with me to ensure that proper procedures were followed and that we would ask for several changes to his IEP. So in early February we had his ARD and what happened in this meeting was nothing short of shocking. I have been going to ARD meetings with my son since he was 3 in Houston. So I know what to expect in these. When we set down and my advocate introduced herself the Vice Principal appeared to get noticeably more uncomfortable. My advocate immediately requested that minutes be taken and insisted that the meeting be recorded ( which is standard protocol apparently). As the meeting progressed my advocate made several request for services from the school for my son.? Repeatedly the Vice Principal would proceed to talk over her and insist that my advocate was not the parent and did not have a right to talk to her. I repeated, as did my advocate that she was representing me and had every right to make request on my behalf. This did not matter to the VP, she kept interrupting and talking ( or shouting) over my advocate.? This kept going on for an hour and a half until the VP got so upset that she quiped ” this meeting is over” and proceeded to get up and leave. During this meeting my advocate asked to see my son’s folder that the school keeps, which is my right by Federal Law. We were repeatedly refused, which culminated when my advocate attempted to take the folder at the end of the meeting and had a tug of war with the VP over the folder which my advocate lost. Essentially this meeting turned into a ” cover our ass” meeting for the school as they stonewalled us and refused to accomplish anything else other than assigning a shadow to my son, who it turned out seemed to have a grudge against my son and would trump teacher’s decisions and tell my son that he was not permitted to do things that other kids were doing. My advocate and I were so disgusted with the the school’s completely unprofessional approach to my son’s issues that we decided to go to the state for Arbitration.

So a month later we spent the day at RISD’s administration building in Richardson. RISD doesn’t mess around, they brought their in-house lawyer and a very expensive hired gun. We started in earnest trying to get them to do what was right with my son and accommodate his disabilities. Something seemingly as trivial as emailing me his homework assignments and putting in place a comprehensive behavior improvement plan ended up being deal breakers. We were told that we would continue working with this hired gun to come to an agreement. Well, it is now July, and this ” hired gun” played dumb waiting until the very end of May to ask us what the hold up was. We had sent her the changes no less than 3 times between March and June and she seemed to never have them and always said she would get back to us in a week.

The school district is being investigated by the Fed’s OCR division that deals with these things, but I don’t expect much from them. It is coming down to our word against theirs and we have discovered that RISD administration has no problem with stonewalling, changing documents, misrepresenting the truth and throwing tax payers money at high priced lawyers who apparently don’t do anything. I have run up a $3500 bill to date just trying to get what is fair for my son.? If you stumbled across this because you are in a similar situation please feel free to contact me and I’ll help you prepare and tell you what to expect. In short expect no mercy, you might as well be going after an evil corporation. They will circle the wagons and cover their ass rather than help your child. You will be harassed and made to feel like you are at fault.

They went so far as to hold my son in his Special Ed class all day several times and count him absent, which resulted in a letter from the County attorney stating that my son had a court date for truancy. I had to make several request to get this fixed. Problem is I don’t know if it has been fixed. The district may have fixed it on their side but that does not mean the county has closed his case.

It comes down to one thing, professionalism. Can we as a people of these United States imagine a POTUS that looks down at his/her hand to come up with the answers or remember what to say? We all know what happens when someone like GW Bush starts ad libing and talking about Doctors practicing their love with women. Presidents have to look and act Presidential. Wondering what to say next while talking to Russia’s Premier Putin would look down right pathetic and definitely would not come from a point of strength. Of course, she is a real hit with the tea party fanatics whose movement is disintegrating faster than ice in the desert. Maybe she can run on their ticket in 2012 and offer to tea bag her opponents.

City’s budget for 2008-2009 $ 2.7B
City’s budget proposal for 2009-2010 $ 2.72B
Budget estimated Shortfall $190M
Jobs cut as a result 900+

If you want to see a pdf by the city here it is. The first thing you notice is that the city’s budget still went up by 20M this year. Which seems odd considering the 900+ layoffs. So the city manager and city council approved a budget increase last year, in what was obvious to everyone else, a major recession. I was aware that we were heading into a recession in 2007. So how is it that city hall did not even think to be conservative in its figures in 2008 when planning for 2009? More interestingly is to look at the city’s budget over time. Looking back at the previous few years:

Year	Budget	Increase over previous year
2002-2003	1.72B	na
2003-2004	1.92B	10%
2004-2005	2.05B	6%
2005-2006	2.22B	8%
2006-2007	2.34B	5%
2007-2008	2.65B	12%
2008-2009	2.7B	2%
Total Difference	$980M	64% Total Increase in 7 years

So the city has increased its’ budget $1B in 7 years, which is a 64% increase. Does that number seem really high to anyone else? But, lets take a look at the population estimates for Dallas. In 2002 the city had a population of 1.19M. The Census Bureau estimates the city had a population of 1.279M in 2008. Now that number really jumps out at you. The city’s population has only increased by roughly a 89K people in the same time frame, which is only a 7% increase. So our city budget went up 64% over the same time period that our population increased 7%. That in my book is out of control spending. That should indicate that the city’s taxes are too high to begin with. So using the Census Bureau’s data I thought I would look at a couple of cities of similar size to Dallas. San Antonio is slightly larger than Dallas at 1.3M and has a 2010 budget of 885M, that is a whopping $1.8B less than our budget.  San Diego, which has essentially the same population as Dallas, ( but a much higher cost of living) has a 2010 budget of $3.01B.  Houston with a population of 2.2M, quite a bit larger than Dallas, only has a budget of $2.3B, $400M less than Dallas.

So our city is laying off people and screaming about a drop in tax revenue, when the reality is it has been over taxing its citizens and spending like mad. Having lived in Houston for 4 years, I can’t say Dallas has any real advantage over that city’s level of service. So why is the discrepancy so large? What is our city wasting our money on? The really profound thing to me is I have noticed no changes with an extra billion in “services” the city is spending. There are still potholes everywhere, crime is out of control and response times suck. My car had both windows smashed out by thieves the other day and the police no longer even come out to take a look at the crime. All these extra cops on the streets and no service. It is a joke and so is the city council.

I can only hope he is as successful as his inauguration was today. The sense of pride and joy I felt that our country could put aside its differences and prejudices to elect Obama within a generation of MLK truly shows how much this country can do in such a short time. Compared to the Middle East, China or a 100 other countries where change is measured in centuries, rather than decades, this is truly a remarkable time in history. God bless our country.

They had a workable truce up until a few months ago and then deliberately opted to start launching homemade, tin can rockets into Israel. That is like jumping into the cage with the lion and poking him in the eye repeatedly, then expecting someone to come to your rescue.

I do understand their plight. They want their own homeland with no interference from Israel, but do they think this is the way to go about it? It just defies all logic.

The system and software have proven effective and reliable in an independent security audit, Kaidro said. He dismissed security concerns, claiming the system “is the most secure way to authenticate digital signatures.”

Of course, what this doesn’t address is voter fraud. How exactly does this prevent people from selling their votes, or in this case, their chips? Yet, I have to wonder if something like this could be implemented here in the United States? It would definitely make voting easier and likely increase participation. Imagine being able to turn on your phone and vote in a few minutes from anywhere. The possibilities are endless, I can imagine myself on a remote beach and voting for my state Rep.

I have to question why the US has not tested a set up like this. It is interesting that we are so interested in preventing voter fraud but are more than willing to elect Governors and other politicians that flaunt the law and think they can get away with it. It seems to me they would be the ones most likely to try to manipulate votes, and yet they are in office already. Which begs to question, ” how much worse can a mobile phone voting system be?”