Security scam

This is a letter that was never published in the Daily Tribune, but one that I believe Lincoln High School Principal Gus Mancuso was allowed to screen. I still can't imagine what Editor Mark Treinen's reasoning for allowing Mancuso to read this letter prior to publication would be, but you can see for yourself what I mean:

In April of 2001, on the second anniversary of the Columbine shootings, an incident happened here, in our school district. While the incident did not end in tragedy, it very well could have. The greatest tragedy is that violence in our schools could be prevented if only school administrators took the time to assess what the real cause of such violence is. But instead, we see stop-gap, PR solutions.
When a school shooting happens, and I can tell you that the environment at LHS is rife for this, the geeks or the outsiders are always the ones who get blamed. But have you ever lived life as a geek? Even if you have, you would be out of touch because the situation has only worsened over the years. Not only are you an outcast among your peers, being constantly harassed, taunted and beaten, but you are shunned by most of the teachers and administrators as well. In a middle class community where sports are so prized, because let’s face it, they earn money for the financially strapped schools in a district such as Rapids, you have two school systems: one for the jocks and one for everyone else. To make matters worse, when it comes time to cut co-curriculars, while sports are seldom cut, programs that offered refuge to geeks, such as debate, are.
Instead of punishing bullies who are often popular jocks, school administrators crack down on the geeks, the outsiders, who are the subject of torment. This is often the tipping point that leads to a bloody massacre such as what happened in Littleton, CO.
When I was a student a Lincoln, I was told that I just didn’t have school spirit even though I was an active volunteer in my community, a member of art honor society, debate and forensics. I have written this letter because I have school spirit, and more than that, I happen to love this community… too much to stand by and let it be forever stained with the blood of school children.
I realize that LHS is looking at having security cameras installed. I agree that something needs to be done to heighten security, but installing cameras with visible shields and no one watching the footage during the day will not heighten security but rather only alienate teachers and service workers. When there is a school shooting, and I say when not if because if this administration keeps on this same road that they have been on for the past 17 years this will indeed happen, all of these cameras will prove no use in saving lives and will only provide footage for the nightly news. What a sorry state.
Gus Mancuso used to tell us LHS students every morning over the intercom to make all the right choices. Wisconsin Rapids School Board and LHS administrators need to make the right choices for the district. The district demands a real solution for heightening security, one that is more complex than spending $25,000 of the budget to install cameras that look good on the surface but provide no real protection. Cameras themselves are not a bad idea, but with no one watching them, they are utterly useless. Perhaps the district could save a little money by hiring some of their technically inclined students to install the cameras in exchange for class credit. Perhaps they would save enough money to hire someone to monitor the cameras. But even with someone watching, school violence will not be prevented unless a major paradigm shift occurs.

Since the letter was never published and I was not allowed to speak at a meeting last month, I brought the following questions to the school board on August 8th. I only asked the first six questions aloud and instructed school board members to get back to me on the seventh. The only question that I received an answer to that night was #7, as school board members, Superintendent Dean Ryerson and Gus Mancuso dodged my questions and replied with a familiar line about seven weeks of research. No one backed up any claim with evidence and Jim Geise committed numerous logical fallacies, most troubling of which was his slippery slope that $25,000 is peanuts if lives can be saved (remember, no one answered whether research shows that security cameras save lives or make schools safer, rather emphasis was placed on preventing theft and vandalism). Here are the questions:

To WR School Board and School Administrators

1) Mr. Ryerson mentioned at the last meeting that seven weeks of research was conducted regarding installation of security cameras at LHS, but was any research conducted to see whether or not security cameras actually make schools safer?
2) Has the School Board and LHS School Administration considered saving money by hiring some of your more technically inclined students to install cameras and/or software? If you are concerned with students using the system, you could hire only second semester seniors to work on this project in exchange for class credit.
3) If the camera footage is on a Web site or an FTP (file transfer protocol) site, couldn’t it be easily hacked into?
4) If the cameras have visible shields, wouldn’t that make them easy targets for destruction, particularly if there was a school shooting?
5) Have other means of making the school a more secure environment been explored by the district? If so, what are they?
6) How will a swipe card system enhance the security of LHS? Aside from the cost of the (I’m assuming Kronos) system, what will the cost of installation and upkeep be? What will be the cost for the replacement of lost or stolen swipe cards?
7) If debate was cut from the co-curricular budget because it was “basically the same” as forensics, why hasn’t cross country been cut when it is basically the same as track?

Musings

Greetings from Lolo:

I am a first time ever blogger so will keep this short until I get the hang of it.

My musings lately have been mostly about 2 subjects: The first is the Karl "Rovegate" affair. I, of course, would like to see him fired, but more importantly, I would like the media to again focus more on how the outing of Valerie Plame has actually changed her life and work, and how it affects not only our national security but also how the whole affair affects our trust in our administration and how it refllects on and relates to the Downing Memo and our trumped up reasons for going to war in Iraq. For several days, the media did an excellent job of reporting on this; however, I have seen little or nothing in the news lately about this subject.

The second subject is the war itself. Not only are the insurgents becoming more numerous and more sophisticated in their use of weaponry and choice of victims, but also they are becoming so bold as to actually kidnap the mayor of Bagdad yesterday and replace him with a militant Shiite fundamentalist. I think it is time we put our energies into bringing a close this ill-conceived and terribly mismanaged preemtive war.

Blog How-to

In response to the Web site survey I emailed, I have seen a couple of common threads: 1) that events and meeting information is found to be the most useful feature of woodcodems.com for our members and 2) the blog needs to be more "user-friendly." Since this is a free service offered through blogspot.com, there is nothing I can offer to change the format of this blog (other than to change some of the visual aspects), but I can, given a suggestion from one of our members, offer a how-to for people who wish to post on the blog.
You can post, even anonymously, by clicking on comments in the lower right bottom corner of each post.
In order to start a new thread, you must be invited to the blog. If you wish to be invited, email me at jenjen76@charter.net. Once invited, you will receive an email from Blogger Invites. Follow the link in the email. When you get to the Blogger screen, scroll down and click on the "Create an Account" button. Choose a username and password for the account and you are on your way.
To post, just login (if you are on a private computer, you can click on the box where it says "remember me").
Once you are signed in, you will arrive at the "dashboard." Click on "new post" and type away. When you are done, hit submit.

War crimes and misdemeanors

Whether or not Guantanamo Bay is a "Gulag of our times" as the non-partisan and globally respected organization Amnesty International has labeled it, the facility and the atrocities that have taken place on this compound are far from model behavior. (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/01/1441204)
There was a time in the history of this country where the phrase "military intelligence" was not an oxymoron. There was a time when the United States treated war prisoners in a humane manner because it was thought, quite rationally, that if you treat your prisoners well then the enemy would be more likely to treat your men well if they were captured. But gone are those days of common sense. Every beheading, every act of torture done to one of our service men and women, aid workers and contractors is directly related to the atrocities at such facilities as Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. That bit of wisdom that our armed forces used to practice, do unto others, has proven true. That is the part of the story that people dare talk about. (http://www.progressive.org/july05/roth0705.php) But the story about Amnesty International's charges, including the evidence that they built their claim on, is not covered in the mainstream media, so please read the stories I have linked you to.
I think you will be convinced, given the mounting evidence, that we need an independent council to look into this.

Conservative = Conformity

Identify the red nemesis! Yes, the Republican party under the leadership of Bush and his corporate contributors is showing its true stripes of Parastroika with their big government shenanigans. Uniformity reigns supreme as every town comes equipped with one media monopoly that includes TV, radio, print, cable and Internet access, one gigantic blue box for all your shopping needs--Wal-mart--and a handful of big restaurants where you better like the crap they are serving because there is no other choice until you hit the border!
Enough people have falsely compared Bush to Hitler. He is not like Hitler... he is like Stalin, a man who sentenced his own people to death (see Bush's gubernatorial record in the state of Texas). Stalin. Bush. Each man has taken a fairly decent form of government, and through his abuse of power, corrupted it so that it will never again be recognized as a positive force in global politics. Each man has committed atrocities that have served to destroy the credibility of his political party. Our mission is to make this known.
Identify the red nemesis! Dig out that "Better dead than Red" button and let the world know who the real enemy is.

Post your comments

Post your comments, links to stories and letters here as replies to this blog. If you would like to post independently, please email me at jenjen76@charter.net and I will send you an invitation to the blog.

Silly politicians, the First Amendment is for individuals

As I head off to St. Louis for the Free Press Conference, I look forward to meeting George Lakoff, a person who knows how important language is when it comes to politics. Sadly, many prominent elected officials, including Democrats, do not.
Case in point, the argument that by placing limits on pharmaceutical advertisements would be a violation of the First Amendment. Now, you can call me crazy, but I really don't think that our founding fathers wrote the First Amendment with corporations in mind. While individuals and members of the press are guaranteed freedom of speech, corporations should be held responsible for the content in their advertisements. Ads depicting people who are unnaturally happy to promote drugs with, often, life-threatening side effects, is down right unethical. When people began to wise up to similar advertisements, cigarette ads in the 1970s, the ads were banned from finite media (radio and television). Now, I'm not saying to ban all pharmaceutical ads, just those on television. Despite the hushed or microscopic (when in print) disclaimers, these ads are still marketing potentially harmful substances. Aside from that, these ads are so much more damaging to the health of our country because they contribute to the sky-rocketing costs of all medications. Because this is a unique situation and because there is infinite media (online and print), we as a nation really need to limit the content of advertising on finite media. Therefore, it is not a violation of First Amendment rights to ban pharmaceutical ads from television.
Remind your politicians of this.