No Politician Left Behind

Should elected officials, their staff, government appointees, and those who influence public policy be tested?

Having taught in public education for 3 decades, I know the value of assessment. For instance, pre-testing helps an instructor assess what his students know before launching into a particular unit. He or she may discover that much of the material planned needs to be tailored; not a single student needs to cover X, several could use help on Y, and the entire class needs introduction to Z. Post-testing reveals the growth and success of your target learners. Testing following the overall instruction may be a cause for celebration or a sad revelation that nobody really learned much.

By now, most people, not living under a rock, are aware of the standard ushered in by the George W Bush administration, No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The underlying goal of NCLB was admirable: Children in the American public schools should be kept up to standard, and no child should “fall through the cracks” lest he/she get further and further behind – whether due to ethnicity, gender, language, culture, or home life. Who can argue with that? Doing so immediately puts you in the camp of I don’t think children should succeed.

In order to measure the effectiveness of public education, each and every state developed their own yardstick, via a yearly test, which reveals a child’s level of success compared to state developed benchmarks (targets), growth from one year to the next, and provides all the data needed to fill the Grand Canyon by age, gender, ethnicity, language, poverty, district, school, teacher, hair and eye color, number of teeth, one or two parent family, pets or no, dream tendencies, vacations taken, number of ATVs owned, dwelling type, style of clothing, floss or not, brand of computer, MP3 ability, Verizon or AT&T, and, of course, ability to flare nostrils. (Okay, maybe some of those aren’t...) Based on this data, the school and the district may be put on notice that they are not close enough to the standard expected for certain populations, but not to worry, the district will be placed in Safe Harbor, which is code for “Okay, you’re on probation, but next year the Feds expect to see a 10% jump in scores for those populations who are not passing muster.” In other words, the federal government expects to see Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). The ultimate target? Schools are to have 100% of their students at the grade level targets by 2014. Or else? Or parents can move their child to a different school. Or the district doesn’t get full funding. Or the Feds send in a Navy Seals strike team which show the failing teachers how it’s done.

Based on this model, if it works for public education, it should also work for elected officials and their appointees. Therefore, I propose No Politician Left Behind (NPLB). The standard, or benchmark: comprehension of the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution by 2014. This law will apply to all elected officials, those they appoint who have ANY sway over public policy (e.g. speech writers, czars, press secretaries, all federal judges/justices, and possibly interns) AND ALL CANDIDATES SEEKING OFFICE. Unlike public schools, the standards will not change from one year to the next, as the politicians should comprehend the Declaration and Constitution prior to taking public office.

There will be two phases to the test: a) Content knowledge, and b) Application. The Content Knowledge test of NPLB will cover the Declaration of Independence, all Articles of the Constitution as well as the Bill of Rights. Questions will not be True/False. They will be short answer and extended response thereby eliminating guessing. Additionally, test takers will be questioned for understanding of the purpose and intent of Constitutional content.

Sample questions:

1. Cite the portion of Article I which allows a Senator or Representative to be absent for consideration of a bill.
2. Who may be impeached, under what circumstances, and what is the process?
3. Based on Article II, why did the Framers insist the President be a natural born citizen?
4. According to the Declaration of Independence, what is the purpose of government? Explain.
5. According to the Declaration of Independence, from whom or what, do humans receive their unalienable rights? Why are these rights unalienable?
6. How is the process of reconciliation and filibuster consistent with proportional representation?
7. Using the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, defend the concept of Separation between Church and State.
8. Why were the Framers adamant about including the Second Amendment?
9. Explain how life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness applies to a fetus in light of a physician’s obligation to save the fetus in the event of an accident.
10. List which Articles, Sections, or Amendments of the Constitution you personally ignore because it doesn’t really apply to your duties as a sworn public servant and explain your rationale.

Both the content and application tests will be given annually. Remember, NPLB applies to ALL elected and appointed officials, candidates for the same, and any person exercising sway over public policy. The expectation is that by 2014, 100% of said persons will understand and apply the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

Consequences for not meeting standard will include Safe Harbor for certain populations (e.g. interns molested with cigars, lobbyists who can’t speak English, Secretaries of the Treasury who evaded personal tax liabilities, Candidates who think there are 57 states). However, by 2014, 100% of those described above must meet standard. Or? The government loses its funding. Those in government receive less salary each year until they and their staff are brought up to standard. A Navy Seal strike team steps in and demonstrates how it’s to be done.

Who will be the holder of accountability? I guess that would be you and me. A Republic demands an educated public who holds their government accountable. Therefore, we must know the ground rules – that is, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. By abdicating this responsibility to those we elect, we are assuming they know, and more importantly, will be careful to fulfill their oaths:

Congress: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

President: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Supreme Court Justice: I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

English historian, Lord Acton, said, Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you sometimes wonder how our government has strayed so far from the blueprints set down by the Founders and Framers? All three branches swear to uphold the Constitution. How many actions do these people take, on a daily basis, which are not consistent with that document? Increasingly, actions of our government demonstrate a widespread belief among elected and appointed officials that the public is ignorant, and therefore, they can cleverly get away with just about anything. Are they correct?

Waterboarding, Jack Bauer, and Terrorism

When the article concerning the “real Jack Bauers” came to my attention, I was definitely interested. I’ve watched 24 each and every season, and can definitely say that I’m an ardent fan. That being the case, I was intrigued to hear about the real life guys.

Rather than try to rehash, the entire article, I’d definitely encourage you to visit this link:

“Meet the Real Jack Bauers”

During the Congressional hearings concerning waterboarding, I was pretty much disgusted. Personally, I didn’t care if it involved suffering. During the 9/11 coverage, I forced myself to watch as much of the suffering and destruction as I could handle. It was particularly gut wrenching to watch people jump from the Twin Towers. I kept asking myself what I would do if I were in their shoes, knowing how terrifying it is to stand on the edge of a cliff and think of falling to my death. Every time I’ve been on an airplane since 9/11, I’ve looked around at other passengers and told myself that if something bad happened on this flight, I needed to muster up the courage of a Todd Beamer and the others on United Flight 93. Perhaps somewhat blindly, I trusted our military and CIA to use discretion on who made it to the waterboarding, and if a few “innocent” people had to undergo the process to help our country avoid a repeat of 9/11, in my gut, I was willing to let it happen.

The more I learned about what prisoners at Gitmo were subjected to, the more I realized that Congress and the media had glorified the supposed suffering. The real “Jack Bauers” do nothing akin to what Keifer Sutherland does on 24. I know, I know. Most of you are probably saying, “Well, duh. That’s Hollywood!” But you have to admit, if you watched the dog and pony show led by Pelosi, et al and the mainstream media, we were subconsciously led to believe that real torturing was going on and that renegade agents were apt to take matters into their own hands.

If you bother to visit the link and read the article (assuming you find it credible), you’ll find that the goal of the investigators was to move rapidly from interrogation to debriefing by gaining two objectives: a) freeing the suspect from his moral obligation to Allah through a means explained to the investigators by the terrorists, and b) avoid using techniques involving pain as victims of pain interrogation will say anything thereby rendering the information gained as useless. So, while I may have formed some of my assumptions of what probably was going on by subconscious absorption of story lines of 24, reality was something else entirely - something tame and actually quite civil.

The byproduct of the real life investigations is impressive. I have quoted from the article:

“For example, information from detainees in CIA custody led to the arrest of an al-Qaeda terrorist named Jose Padilla, who was sent to America on a mission to blow up high-rise apartment buildings in the United States.

“Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of a cell of Southeast Asian terrorists which had been tasked by KSM to hijack a passenger jet and fly it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

“Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, KSM’s right-hand-man in the 9/11 attacks, just as he was finalizing plans for a plot to hijack airplanes in Europe and fly them into Heathrow airport and buildings in downtown London.

“Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the capture of Ammar al-Baluchi and Walid bin Attash, just as they were completing plans to replicate the destruction of our embassies in East Africa by blowing up the U.S. consulate and Western residences in Karachi, Pakistan.

“Information from detainees in CIA custody led to the disruption of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up the U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, in an attack that could have rivaled the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut.

“Information from detainees in CIA custody helped break up an al-Qaeda cell that was developing anthrax for terrorist attacks inside the United States.

“In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al-Qaeda — giving U.S. officials a picture of the terrorist organization as seen from the inside, at a time when we knew almost nothing about the enemy who had attacked us on 9/11.

“In addition, CIA detainees helped identify some 86 individuals whom al-Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations — most of whom we had never heard of before. According to the intelligence community, about half of these individuals were subsequently tracked down and taken off the battlefield. Without CIA questioning, many of these terrorists could still be unknown to us and at large — and may well have carried out attacks against the West by now.

“Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, well over half of the information our government had about al-Qaeda — how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks — came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.

“Meet the Real Jack Bauers”

If this is true, how sad to see that we were once again duped by Congress, Obama, and the mainstream media. And how sad it is to think of the program being dismantled, and the circus which will now ensue as terrorists are put through civilian courts, only to be freed to the streets of America or sent back to the terrorist country of Yemen. George W Bush may not have hit a home run when it came to remaining as conservative as I would have preferred, but there is no denying he kept America safe during his eight years in office, just as Ronald Reagan sent a clear message to the world, “Don’t mess with the US.” In contrast, Obama and Congress are sending a strong message of “We’re really sorry how evil our country has been. Anything you do to us will be our fault, and if you’re caught, we’ll try you in civilian courts while affording you all the rights guaranteed citizens of our country. We hope you find that to your satisfaction. If not, please tell us how we might improve. Would a billion dollar stimulus package, courtesy of the American taxpayer, help?”

How I wish we could just start with a fresh group of representatives and senators who weren’t elected after kowtowing to the party machines and special interest groups. And once elected, if they were going to second guess the process of Gitmo, they’d first have to experience the processes of investigation utilized by the investigators and then watch the archived videos of what happened on 9/11 along with Daniel Pearl having his head cut off and al-Qaeda film footage of their terrorist training camps. I’m thinking things might be a little different.