It’s election campaign time once again and, predictably, incumbents are dancing through the tulip patch of happy promises with a money basket of taxpayer money. Most recent example, a $26B stimulus package to avoid teacher, fireman and policeman layoffs. True to form, Congressman Hinchey staged a photo shoot in front of Kingston High School to announce we can now hire back laid-off teachers.

Now for a dose of reality. In May, we told the school board this is what the community can afford to educate the students. The unions refused to suspend a salary increase for one year and 50 employees were tossed under the bus. The administration had three months to come up with a plan to educate students with the money available.

Now, three weeks before the start of another school year, we are about to receive “Washington’s gift to you.” Time for another reality check. This “gift” lasts for one year and next year, without a “gift,” we will still be looking at the additional people we added to the payroll. This is what I suggest we do. Just say thanks but no thanks to this “gift” because we don’t want to go through with the same pain and agony next year.

Ronald Dietl

Kingston

What would have happened had the Bush administration, representing Corporate United States in the Americas, done as we expected them to do upon their ‘mission accomplished’ as proclaimed by George W. Bush upon the foot-soldier phase of the invasion of Iraq?

You ask, “Just what are you speaking about, Philip?” To put it in other words: had the government of the United States, in the Trinity of the Americas, put the Iraqi people to work and trained them for self-management, none of this chaos in the Middle East would not be happening, including what happened in Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Iran and then Russia for supplying the technology for that power plant. The Pentagon is attempting to place nuclear arms around Russia even though the godly space station is function as a joint venture between these two “corporate allies” but “government enemies” is the ultimate insult to [sic] huemanity.

To the contrary: the true American Vision of the people will be alive in the minds and eyes of the world when we have our municipalities commit to being pesticide-free and green-built municipalities. The Bush administration set global precedence with the trial of Saddam Hussein, president of an independent republic under military rule since the nationalizing of Zapata Oil. President of Zapata Oil at that time was George Herbert Walker Bush, for which his “son” proclaimed: “I’m gonna get even with Saddam for what he did to me dad!” And, the comment was “white-washed” at the time!

Invasion and then the murder of a sovereign president with impunity makes us wonder just if the “New World Order” is actually Pentagon fear since Hiroshima and Nagasaki being blessed by the almighty WMD mushrooms! Should George Walker Bush be put on trial for treason and crimes against humanity? Not until we have a pesticide-free and green commitment from our municipalities. Period!

William Jefferson Clinton should also be put on trial for crimes against humanity by not putting a bridle upon the corporate conglomerates that via NAFTA have displaced so many Americans’ ability to earn a living causing them to be crossing the “illegal” border from Mexico in the Americas. Like the EU, there were to be no “borders” within a decade. No one in government can open their mouths because the corporation has become the god-almighty with more god-money than any of our governments with the aid of the U.S. ‘born-again’ Toxic Tea Drinkers now attempting to claim that they are not a grass-roots movement but a political party formerly knowing as the Christian [sic] Reight whose name have globally never been mentioned since Barack Obama became our 41st president.

Blessed are the Christian meek, they shall inherit the earth: one shovel full at a time! The U.S.A. was a one-party system of government until the advent of our, and I am proud to say, President Barack Obama. You, on the ‘far’ Left want what; a healthy for all U.S.A.? Liar; otherwise you would have that written municipality agreement in hand so that we can open that green door to pass over that bridge of affordability with the organic green key-stone in hand and trillion-dollar interdependent green industries!

Philip Gurrieri

Kingston

Schooling is not education. Money thrown at schools for increased “standards” diminishes teaching and real education. What are “standards”? We are dizzied into confusion with the mantra of “higher standards,” yet few question what is meant by the term. Pol Pot, Stalin and Hitler all had higher standards, but we cringe at the meaning of those standards. What the state (and soon to be federal) “standards” will impose is “one size fits all.” Yet we know that children grow at different rates and learn best with various teaching styles. Yet the so-called new “standards” reduce teaching to tests and a disregard for the education of the individual person.

The false promises of the “Race to the Top” is another government bribe to reduce our schools to a Pavlovian system and offer the false promise that it will lead to good jobs in the future. We are sadly seeing our college graduates paying the price with a future of unemployment and the taxpayers burdened with the cost of dysfunctional schools. Education is supposed to foster the love of learning, individual initiative and a strong civic and moral sense.

With the advent of brilliant technological advances, most of the knowledge-based education is best done through video and the Internet, rendering 20th-century constructs of school useless. We do not need new buildings, but real curriculums designed not by old academics but by innovative citizens who will resurrect a system of education which elevates the whole person, and does not mold children into future units of the corporate state.

The public, and parents in particular, need to start now, demanding an end to state-imposed curriculums and testing tyranny if they are going to save the future of our children.

Dr. Paul Jankiewicz

Ulster Park