As this summer’s temperatures climb, pressure on Iran is heating up. For years now, Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is peaceful and only designed to generate electricity. But the international community has been skeptical.

The United Nations, the European Union, and the United States, all worried about the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon, recently took steps to prevent this from happening. But there’s one important route to solving the impasse with Iran that has yet to be seriously pursued: frank diplomatic negotiations at the highest level.

The scenario looks like this: Iran developed a nuclear energy program with United States ‘support over 50 years Generic pills buy cialis online now ago. Their nuclear program isn’t new and hasn’t always been so controversial. But recently, Iran has failed to fully cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an international regulatory body to which Iran had agreed to provide complete and open inspection access to verify the peaceful nature of their nuclear program. When Iran stopped fully cooperating, hiding activities that could be steps towards the development of a nuclear weapon, alarm bells started ringing the world over.

While nobody knows for sure exactly what Iran is up to, nations have been taking action to prevent Iran from acquiring the necessary materials for building a nuclear weapon and to punish them for breaking the rules and hiding things from the IAEA.

The UN Security Council, the EU, and the United States all have recently passed sanctions against Iran, banning sales of industrial items that could be used to build a bomb, freezing bank accounts belonging to people and companies known to be engaging in illegal activities, and preventing foreign investment in industries that could be crucial to building an Iranian nuclear bomb, like mining, oil, and gas.

These sanctions will be a speed bump on Iran’s path towards a nuclear weapon, but what we really need to do is convince them to return to exclusively peaceful nuclear energy usage and cooperation with the international community. Iran was once in good standing with the rest of the world. We need to convince them to stop behaving badly and regain the respect and trust of the rest of the world.

This is where diplomacy plays an important role. All is not lost in the situation with Iran. What’s needed now is a series of long, frank discussions between Iran’s leaders and other key global players.

International leaders–including Iran’s neighbors as well as powerful nations such as the United States, Russia, and China–should make it clear to Iran that there are economic benefits that would follow cooperating with the IAEA and allowing full access of their nuclear facilities to inspectors. Negotiators should join the discussions and be willing to offer Iran concrete advantages in exchange for full cooperation, such as business investment, the lifting of economic sanctions, and money for social programs.

Negotiations would make the stark choice clear to Iran: cooperate, and enjoy the benefits of economic investment and friendly relationships with other nations, or continue to engage in shady behavior and lose investment opportunities and struggle to do business with the rest of the world. Negotiations would make it explicitly clear just how damaging economic isolation would be for Iran.

High-level diplomatic engagement with Iran would benefit both the international community and Iran itself, thwarting a dangerous and destabilizing nuclear weapons program while also providing opportunities for economic growth and investment. High-level diplomatic engagement is the last, best hope for emerging from the current crisis with Iran on the right path, towards greater global peace and security.

Olivia Bouler. Have you heard of her? Does her name ring a bell? Probably not. Her name was a mystery to me. She’s not a recognized movie star, or, prominent sports figure. But I feel that I know her. Know her well. Her name has been etched on my mind. I first heard her story, and continued to reflect on it. Over and over I rehearsed it in my mind.

But I need to tell it again. Let it grasp you as it did me. What a story of human ingenuity and creativity. I can’t bottle it up inside any longer. Allow it to slip through the cracks. Olivia’s story will amaze you. Shock you. Excite you. Draw you like the pull of a powerful magnet. You’ll want to throw your arms around her and give Olivia a generous outpouring of your appreciation and love.

My introduction to Olivia came through the media news sources that surrounded the Gulf Coast oil spill. Do you remember that horrendous day? Who can possibly forget it? Blot it out of the mind? Put it behind you? Media sources unveiled it. Sent it through the airwaves. Placed it on the tube. Described it on the written page. The disaster broke my heart. Crushed me. Sent me into a downward spiral. Instilled a sense of fright. It made me aware that my planet faces a crippling catastrophe. Serious dangers lie ahead, if not outright destruction.

Like a host of other mud slingers, or should I say, oil slingers, I joined the chorus of noisy critics. I cried. Wept. Paced the floor. Screamed inside. I wanted to give BP a long drawn out tongue lashing. A biting and bitter piece of my mind. Dethrone them. Close their business operation. Remove them from the planet. Snowballing questions rose inside me like: Why was this allowed to happen? Who was responsible for it happening? Isn’t there a way BP can shut down this horror picture show? If they can’t, who can enable us to avert the dangers that lie ahead?

We are intelligent people. Scientifically alert. In possession of knowledge and skill. Boast creative inventions that boggle the mind. With all of our knowledge and insight, Online Generic pills certainly something can be done. Immediately. Without further delay.

Here is where Olivia arrives on the scene. Not as a critical voice. Nor with mean-spirited and brash utterances. Hateful resentment. But as a positive voice. A caring voice. An empathetic voice. For Olivia has put in place a counter movement to the tragedy. Not a movement to slam BP like myself and others have done. She’s painting a new smiling picture on the horizon of the mounting suffering and uncertainty cialis tabs 20mg that confronts humanity.

Olivia is an eleven year old fifth grader who lives with her parents in Islip, New York. She loves birds. Adores them. Cares deeply about them. Seeks their welfare. Contributes her abilities to support and protect them. Her love for these feathery creatures has enlarged into something phenomenal. Colossal. Stupendous.

When Olivia heard about the devastating effects the oil spill had on wildlife, she moved into high gear. Without waiting. Immediately. She contacted the Audubon Society to offer her services. Why? The Gulf Coast was very special to Olivia. She had grown up vacationing here with her parents, Jim and Nadine. She had fallen in love with the area. Literally. Thus, she couldn’t set idly by and allow this immense suffering to continue without doing something. Thus, Olivia offered her talents. She was committed to making a difference. She wanted to help in the rescue of her feathery friends.

But how could an eleven year old grade school girl help? Make a significant difference? Turn things around? Good questions. I wondered the same thing.

Yet, Olivia was not restricted by such questions. Not at all. She had confidence in her abilities. She knew what needed to be done. For you see, Olivia is an artist. A developing artist. A gifted artist. So, she wanted to sketch and paint pictures of birds, then offer the proceeds from her artwork to finance the rescue.

A dumb idea? A little girls fanciful dream? Something that will never take shape? Become effective? You must read the rest of Olivia’s story.

Those who gave donations to one of five different organizations, the Audubon Society  included, would be sent an original piece of her artwork. One hundred and thirty drawings have been sent to donors at this writing. And sixty thousand dollars has been raised.

America Online has also become involved in Olivia’s project. They have unveiled a gallery of her work. Additionally, they have donated twenty-five thousand dollars to the Audubon Society in Olivia’s name.

Does this story confound you like it does me? Touch your heart strings? Shake your inner world? Make you aware of a child’s uncanny ability? That a child can make a difference? Lead the way? Leave one breathless and agog? People everywhere are inspired. Singing Olivia’s praises. Lauding and clapping for her. Cheering her on. Enjoying the contribution, she’s making to humanity.

As I reflected on Olivia’s story, Scripture suddenly leaped out at me. For the disciples of Jesus were overly concerned with who would be greatest in His kingdom. Without hesitation Jesus called for a small child to sit among them. He then taught the following: “ … whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (see Matthew 18:4).

What did Jesus mean? In what way are children “humble?” Children are selfless. Unoccupied with me, myself and I. With being great. On the other hand, the disciples are selfish and self-absorbed. Thus, a little child is able to lead them? Why? Because they live in an unselfish manner.

Olivia fits well into the scriptural phrase, “… a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6). For her selfless actions on behalf of the Gulf Coast were directed outward toward the welfare of God’s creation. She reached beyond herself and saw the needs of others.

“Let me ask you, Olivia, why did you do it?”

“It’s very time consuming,” she said, “but everything’s for the birds.”

There’s no crying in baseball, as Tom Hanks so famously said in “A League of Their Own.”

But all that changed on June 2 when Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga tossed a perfect game, was robbed of it by a bad call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce, and the unfolding events turned into one of the most inspiring sports stories to come along in years.

In an age of whiners and self-professed victims, when so many want to blame their own shortcomings or failures on others (or on the world at large), this was more than just a teachable moment.  It was a revelation.

With two outs in the ninth inning, and having retired the first 26 batters without allowing any base runners, Galarraga fielded a throw from Miguel Cabrera which beat the runner by a full half-step.  Galarraga was about to celebrate, but then he looked back at Joyce with his arms spread wide, giving the safe sign.

What should have cheapest online cialis been only the 21st perfect game in all of Major League baseball was wiped off the books with that one horrendous call.

Galarraga’s response?  A sweet smile.  Then he walked back to the mound and got the next guy out.

No screaming, no cursing, no whining.  Not a peep.  And for a journeyman pitcher who had never even recorded a complete game, much less come anywhere near a perfect one, that’s saying a lot.

In the meantime, the videotape of the first-base play was shown in the stadium and it was clear to everyone, including Joyce, that he had blown the call.  Cabrera had to be physically restrained from Joyce.  Meanwhile, Detroit manager Jim Leyland, one of the toughest guys in baseball, unleashed a red-faced verbal assault against the ump.

Joyce’s response?  He stood and listened to every last word of Leyland’s tirade, without batting an eye.  Umpires don’t normally take two seconds of that kind of abuse, nor do they typically admit their errors or apologize for them.  But Joyce did all of the above.

“It was the biggest call of my career, drugs without prescription and I [blew] it,” he acknowledged after leaving the field.

No excuses, no finger-pointing, no passing the buck.

With tears in his eyes, he simply sought out Galarraga and apologized profusely to the young pitcher.

Galarraga’s response?  He accepted Joyce’s apology on the spot.  Then he hugged him.  Twice.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Galarraga told reporters in the clubhouse minutes later.

Ironically enough, Galarraga was perfect that night.  So the fact that he found it so easy to extend grace to someone who had scratched his name from the history books was even more astounding.

That transformed the entire situation and turned it into something that transcended sports.  It became a lesson in the power of grace.  Next thing you knew, Leyland was extending grace to Joyce, as were the Tigers players, and even the fans.

When the umpires took the field in Detroit the next day, Joyce fully expected to be showered with boos.  Instead, he was cheered.  And in yet another gesture of grace, it was Galarraga who brought the Tigers’ line-up card out to Joyce and his fellow umpires.  Galarraga then shook Joyce’s hand with that same sweet smile on his face.  Joyce was so overcome with emotion that all he could do was slap Galarraga on the back and give a salute to the Tigers dugout.

As Peggy Noonan wrote in the Wall Street Journal, the lesson to parents and children alike was:  “This is how it’s done.”  Indeed, it was a glorious demonstration of the biblical tenet to “love mercy and walk humbly” (Micah 6:8).

In the end, Galarraga pitched an even more perfect game than any other pitcher in baseball.  He is, and probably always will be, the only pitcher to throw a 28-out perfect game.  Even if the record book doesn’t show it.

That’s something no one can ever take away from him.

A clever politician can get away with a lot; standards in the profession aren’t high. But if there is one thing Americans will not put up with from their elected officials, it’s complete honesty. The only truly unforgivable sin in Washington is sincerity.

So when Rep. Joe Barton, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, apologized to BP for President Obama’s “$20 billion shakedown” of the company I knew he was in trouble.

“It is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown,” Barton had said. The Texas Republican was talking, of course, about the deal the president had cut with BP to set up a $20 billion escrow account to pay damages to victims of the Gulf oil disaster.

Naturally, Democrats were all over that like a piñata, beating it with sticks. His Republican colleagues pulled him off to one side and said: “What are you, crazy?”

Sadly, within six hours he recanted his position and apologized for his apology. He said he had been “misinterpreted.”

No, he hadn’t. In a moment of weakness he had given us a glimpse into the mindset of the political Right. To a man (and woman), it believes that poor BP is being victimized by its victims. Barton was merely being true to the Republican philosophy of standing up for the rich and powerful against the tyranny of the weak. He just didn’t have the courage of his lack of convictions.

Over the past 20 years Barton has collected $1.4 million in campaign funds from Big Oil, and he was merely paying a dividend to the industry on that investment.

Since 1998, Big Oil has spent nearly a billion dollars in Washington, lobbying for tax breaks, diminished regulation and drilling licenses–and it got them.

Actually, Barton’s apology was not unique. The day before he spoke the Republican Study Committee, an arm of House Republicans, called the $20 billion deal a “Chicago-style shakedown” and Rep. Michele Bachmann, the rightwing darling from Minnesota, has called the escrow account “a redistribution-of-wealth fund.”

When Senate Democrats proposed raising the liability of oil companies for how to get cialis without a prescription a spill from $10 billion to $75 billion, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stepped in to block it from being considered.

She said it would hurt the smaller companies and produce “unintended consequences.”

Not that Democrats aren’t on the oil companies’ tab too.  Oil-state Democrats are upset about Obama’s temporary moratorium on offshore drilling because they’re oil lackeys first, then Democrats.

They have the good grace to act shamefaced about it, however. Republicans don’t. They actually are outraged at the very thought that a corporation that pays their campaign bills should be penalized for its misdeeds. Corporations, in their view, are sacred and must be protected at all costs.

It’s why our health care is so expensive. First you have to take care of insurance companies, then patients.

It’s that reality Barton revealed, if only for six hours. It’s also a reality that Republicans can’t afford to brag much, which is why they bludgeoned Barton into a public apology. (There’s also a rumor that the House leadership locked him in a room and piped in Sarah Palin speeches until he broke down, buy phentermine without prescription but I can’t get that verified.)

The really odd thing is that the conventional wisdom says that Democrats will lose support in the next election because of the oil spill. That means Republicans–including kooks and crazies like Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sharron Angle of Nevada, who want to do away with what little government protection we have against corporations–will gain support and votes.

Some are even predicting that Republicans will pick up enough seats to take over the House of Representatives.

And voters think that will make things better? Oh wow.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill gave rise to the corporate social responsibility movement. The BP oil disaster may mark its collapse.

Over the past two decades, many organizations and investors have conducted an experiment in corporate behavior modification. An array of well-intentioned organizations promoted the idea that large corporations could be made to do the right thing, by urging them to sign voluntary codes of conduct and adopt other seemingly enlightened policies on environmental and social issues.

At first, management met this movement with resistance, but big business soon realized the advantages of projecting an ethical image–so much so that corporate social responsibility (known widely Cheap Alli as CSR) is now used as a selling point by many firms. Chevron’s “Will You Join Us” ad campaign, for example, apparently tries to convey the oil giant as a key player in global efforts to save the Earth.

Businesses found that a socially responsible image could serve as a buffer against aggressive regulation. While CSR proponents in the nonprofit sector didn’t pursue a deregulatory agenda, the image of virtuous companies conveyed the message that strong government intervention was unnecessary. CSR dovetails with the efforts of corporations and their allies to undermine formal oversight of business activities. This is what General Electric was up to when it ran its “Ecoimagination” ads while lobbying to weaken air pollution rules governing the locomotives it makes.

Recent events make it clear that a commitment to CSR can be too cosmetic. The corporation at the center of the Gulf oil disaster, BP, promoted itself as being socially responsible for many years. A decade ago it adopted a sunburst logo, acknowledged that global warming was a problem, and claimed to be going “beyond petroleum” by investing (modestly) in renewable energy sources. What did all that social responsibility mean if the corporation could still, as the emerging evidence suggests, cut corners on safety in one of its riskiest activities–deepwater drilling?

BP is hardly unique in violating its self-professed “high standards.” This year has also seen the moral implosion of Toyota, another darling of the CSR world. Only months after the Prius producer was chosen by the Ethisphere Institute as one of “the world’s most ethical companies,” it was found that Toyota had failed to notify regulators or the public about its defective gas pedals.

Goldman Sachs, widely despised these days for unscrupulous behavior during the financial meltdown, was a CSR pioneer in the investment banking world. In 2005 it was the first Wall Street firm to adopt a comprehensive environmental policy (after being pressured by grassroots organizations to do so), and it established a think tank on environmental markets.

When the members of a corporate rogues’ gallery all profess to be socially responsible, the concept becomes meaningless. The best that cialis sublingual can be said is that these corporations may behave well in some respects while screwing up royally in others–the way that Wal-Mart is supposedly in the forefront of environmental reform while retaining its Neanderthal labor policies. Selective ethics are no more tolerable for corporations than they are  for people.

BP must come clean, both literally and figuratively. The $20 billion escrow fund is a good start, but the corporation must also provide a full accounting of what went wrong in the Gulf and what it will do to improve safety conditions in all its operations. You can let BP know that true corporate social responsibility means more than cheery logos, catchy slogans, and token gestures by taking action today at StopCorporateAbuse.org/HallOfShame.

President Obama’s Fiscal Commission–a group of lawmakers, former officials, and other experts charged with developing a bipartisan plan to stabilize our soaring national debt–is primarily holding closed-door hearings. The commission’s co-chairman Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming, recently became an instant YouTube star with his rant against seniors as he exited one of the panel’s sessions. That put Social Security defenders on high alert about what’s going on in these meetings.

Simpson, who is nearly 80, has maintained that the founders of the program never expected anyone to actually live to 65 and collect. “People just died,” he has said. “Social Security was never [for] retirement.”

The program has always been an easy target for deficit hawks and budget cutters because it’s so big–the government’s largest expenditure, just ahead of the Pentagon. But setting up a target isn’t as easy as actually hitting it. George W. Bush found that out when he proposed privatizing the system so we could all invest in the likes of Enron, Lehman Brothers, General Motors, and Goldman Sachs. Thanks to a massive prescription drugs without prescription campaign by progressive interest groups, that proposal was shot down. But like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street, the nightmare of cutting Social Security never dies –it just returns in a new form every few years.

Tea partiers, egged on by Sarah Palin, were fond of claiming during the health-care debate last summer that government “death panels” were going to off our grannies, even though it was an outright lie. Now that we have a much more serious and credible threat to the well-being of our elderly poor population (the majority of whom are female) in possible cuts to Social Security, Palin and company are strangely silent.

Not so the progressive groups that want to preserve the program. Ashley Carson, Executive Director of the Older Women’s League (http://www.owl-national.org) and member of the Social Security Works coalition, points out that those same grannies the tea party has apparently forgotten about are the ones who will suffer the most if the program is cut.

Heidi Hartmann, president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, agrees. “Raising the retirement age and other ways of cutting benefits would all have a devastating effect on older women, many of whom live alone and depend mainly or entirely on Social Security,” she says.

The numbers bear this out. Women depend on Social Security more than men, and without it, close to 60 percent of elderly women would live in poverty. One reason is that women are far less likely than men to have a company-provided pension, and when they do get one it’s most often based on a lifetime of lower free cialis without prescription earnings. So much for Simpson’s “greedy geezers.” Even younger women would suffer if the program is cut, since they are the majority of caretakers when a spouse dies and leaves young children, who draw Social Security until they’re 18.

Simpson may have embarrassed some of less flamboyant members of the Fiscal Commission with his outburst, but it remains to be seen whether in their hearts they believe he’s right. And whether granny is really in the crosshairs this time.

Dr. Dorothy Height was a lantern and role model for millions of women and a long-haul social change agent, blessed with uncommon commitment and talent. Her fingerprints are quietly embedded in many of the transforming events of the last seven decades as African Americans, women, and children pushed open and walked through previously closed doors of opportunity.
My organization, Children’s Defense Fund, was blessed to have her serve on our board for over 30 years. When she passed away on April 20 at 98, we all lost a treasure, a wise counselor, and a rock we could always lean against for support in tough times.
Even as a young girl, Height’s speaking skills stood out. She attended New York University with the help of a $1,000 scholarship from a national oratorical contest sponsored by the Elks (after being turned away by Barnard, which had already reached its quota of two “Negro” students for the year). On November 7, 1937, when she was the 25-year-old assistant director of the Harlem YWCA, she had the honor of escorting First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to a National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) meeting. There she online prescriptions met the organization’s founder and president, the legendary Mary McLeod Bethune. Bethune was immediately impressed with Height. She became her close friend and mentor, and in 1957, two years after Mrs. Bethune’s death, Height became NCNW’s president–a position she held until 1998, when she became its chair and president emerita.
During the civil rights movement, while so many women were playing vital roles that weren’t featured in the spotlight, Height was always up front with a seat at the table. She was often the only woman in the room with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the rest of the “Big Six” group of male leaders as they planned many key strategies, and she was sitting on the stage–she should have been a speaker–at the historic March on Washington. She led the NCNW membership as active participants in the movement and reminded us that women were its backbone–unseen but strong.
Her organization developed a range of model national programs focused on the needs of African-American women and families, such as employment, child care, housing, hunger, health care, and youth development.
Height began the NCNW’s wonderful Black Family Reunion Celebrations 25 years ago, emphasizing the traditional values and strengths of black families at a time when too many people focused on the black family’s “breakdown.” Dr. Height always understood how African Americans’ needs connect to a larger global mission as well. She participated in conferences and leadership training sessions and on official delegations around the world, and from the White House to the United Nations, her expertise on civil rights, women’s rights, and human rights was always in demand. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first woman head of state, is just one of the many people who acknowledges owing a debt to Height’s leadership.
Through it all, Height’s intellect and strength remained as sharp as her signature sense of style. A musical based on her life was named “If This Hat Could Talk,” and anyone who knew Height and her trademark gorgeous hats understands just how that title was chosen. When Height was awarded her Congressional Gold Medal, then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton began her tribute by saying she had known Height for more than 30 years, since they first began working together on the Children’s Defense Fund’s board–and “just as in cialis overnight shipping those long ago days, today once again, Dr. Height is the best-dressed woman in the entire room.”
We all needed Dorothy Height’s example of steadfastly doing what she had to do. Now we must do what we have to do to save all of our children.

When Jaime Escalante died, we lost a pioneering teacher who changed people’s ideas of what children are capable of learning. Many people know about Escalante’s work from the popular movie “Stand and Deliver,” which depicted his success teaching Advanced Placement (AP) calculus classes to students at East Los Angeles’s Garfield High School. The Bolivian-born teacher died at 79 of cancer on March 30.
Today, the beliefs that all children can learn and every child deserves a quality education have become familiar language in goals set by the Department of Education and school boards across the country. But when Escalante genuinely believed this about the children he was teaching in the late 1970s and early 1980s, people thought he was naïve and crazy.
The students at Garfield High were exactly the kind of children other education and policy experts predicted would be left behind. They were largely from poor Mexican-American families, and the majority of their parents had not finished grade school.
When Escalante arrived at Garfield, the school was known for low test scores and a high dropout rate. Most people looked at the students’ backgrounds, their school, and their environment and simply didn’t have high expectations for them. But Escalante always did. As a result, he showed impoverished children who had been “taught” they could do nothing that they could accomplish great things. He showed the world that with a good teacher, poor and minority children can accomplish wonders.
Escalante’s expectations seemed especially farfetched at first. The class he taught, AP calculus, buy antibiotics online was an elite college preparatory course considered by many to be the most difficult class high schools take. Even many affluent public schools still didn’t offer it, and the public and private schools that did often required students to take entrance exams or satisfy other prerequisites to prove they could handle it. Escalante’s idea that he could offer it at Garfield and make it available to any willing student flew in the face of most conventional wisdom about testing, tracking, and predicting student success in a challenging course.
His students’ stellar performance on national standardized AP tests proved his own judgment correct. His formula for student success was simple: You need a good teacher committed to working hard to educate and students committed to working hard to learn. He demonstrated that student commitment and ability could be developed through the encouragement and reinforcement students received from the committed teacher.
Escalante’s demonstration of the power a single teacher can have to motivate students to extraordinary success changed the way many educators viewed student ability. Many of Escalante’s classroom techniques became implemented in other schools, like encouraging the class to tackle the material together like a team taking on an opponent, and putting in extra time so students could keep working after school and on weekends when necessary. Today, many of the most successful charter schools and other urban classrooms across the country embrace Escalante’s approach. His commitment to opening up the most challenging classes to more children also revolutionized placement policies in many schools. Escalante understood that success in AP calculus wasn’t the only goal. It was a gateway to college admissions and other future aspirations.
There’s cialis tablets 5mg still so much work to be done to lift the ceiling many insecure adults place on children’s aspirations. The most recent data show white students are more than twice as likely as Latinos to be enrolled in AP science or AP math, and about three times as likely as black or American Indian students to be enrolled in AP science or AP math. The Obama administration is making the expansion of these classes a priority, especially for low-income students. This is a key part of Escalante’s legacy.
But his most enduring lesson is that all children can learn and excel–as long as they have the right teacher. And we must all speak up to get the right teachers in the classroom for all our children.
–
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund. www.childrensd

Anderson Cooper is talking to coal-mining families and politicians in West Virginia again. Ever since that explosion ripped through an underground mine in Montcoal, it seems people all across America are discussing the dangers of mining.
If you watched the news during the recent disaster, you may have heard television anchors and reporters speaking about an “exceptional” tragedy, a once-in-40-years catastrophe that took the lives of 29 coal miners in southern West Virginia. Yet if we look at this tragedy from a global perspective, the tragedy in Montcoal looks, unfortunately, all too typical.
Since the Sago, West Virginia disaster over three years ago, I’ve been tracking deaths in the global mining sector on my blog, Coal Mountain. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t have to add more names and stories to this death roll. Mine collapse kills 16 in northwest Tanzania. Six bodies found in Xinjiang mine collapse. Worker dies in Australian nickel mine. And these are just a few of the headlines from the days since the Montcoal disaster.
What happened earlier this month happens almost every day somewhere in the world: Miners are killed at work. And why do they die–or for whom? Miners from Utah to sub-Saharan Africa to China’s Shanxi province die, in part, for us. As consumers who walk the aisles at WalMarts, 24 hour cialis dollar stores, and suburban shopping malls, we fuel the extraction of coal and other minerals every time we purchase items that are intimately connected to miners around the world.
Every time you purchase something made in China, your item more than likely was made not only in a factory with its own horrific labor conditions, but a factory powered by electricity produced from coal. And each year in China, several thousand miners are killed as they extract that “black gold” from deep inside the earth.
Similar stories can be told about objects in almost buy antibiotics every room in your house. To extract precious minerals like diamonds and gold in South Africa, for example, miners risk their lives every day–including 76 miners whose bodies were found in an abandoned Harmony Goldmining Co. mineshaft in Free State last year. And tin? From the precarious and brief lives of Indonesian “tin divers,” to the five child miners killed in a collapse in southeast Congo earlier this year, tin extraction is likewise written in blood.
One of the many lessons we must learn from the 29 miners who lost their lives in Montcoal, West Virginia is that our patterns of energy use, as well as how we shop, are intimately tied to those who risk their lives each and every day deep beneath the Earth’s surface. As we begin to discuss the changing economy and our spending habits in the post-boom period, it’s also time to think more about where the products that clutter our bedrooms and basements and boardrooms come from. And who is risking and losing their lives so that we can have them.

One bright and sunny afternoon earlier this spring I noticed that my neighbor had put some stuff out by the curb presumably for the next day’s garbage collection. Garbage piled out by the curb is not something that normally captures my attention but this was different.

The items were a wooden crib, a plastic red wagon, a stroller and a child car seat.

Had just one—any one—of these been left at the curb, I would not have given it notice. But it was the collection of the four, neatly lined up in a row cialis how long to take effect as if the owner had a twinge of remorse and was hoping someone other than the garbage truck would come along and take them that attracted my attention.

There was a statement being made here, probably unintentional, nonetheless taken together as one, they symbolized the end of a chapter in a family’s life.

No more would there be the disrupted sleep caused by a hungry baby crying for a bottle at 3:00 a.m. or the need to change diapers or having to clean dried and caked sweet potato puree from the nooks and crannies of a booster seat or to listen to the racket of a wagon being pulled along the driveway or through no prescription online pharmacy the yard.

No. That was all over, never to be repeated again in this house.

I stood transfixed for a moment, watching the afternoon sun playing on them in shifting patterns and fleeting shadows as the breeze blew the branches of the trees back and forth overhead.

I felt a twinge of sadness myself and really couldn’t say why. We had raised two boys who are now in college and we are raising two younger girls that we adopted several years ago; one in kindergarten, the other in the second grade. It wasn’t so long ago that we were giving away these very same items to families who were still in the midst of making babies, and having their sleep disrupted in the middle of the night to warm a bottle or change a dirty diaper.

The impact of the curbside ensemble forced me to confront a deeper reality than that of a neighbor making the bold declaration for all to see that he was done having children. It was a reminder that life is a book, lived chapter by chapter, each one often bringing to a close a stage to which we cannot return.

Certainly I am not the first to realize this nor will I be the last.

In the 139th Psalm, the writer, David, recorded the following: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

Next month this truth will hit home again as we attend the college graduation ceremony of our first-born son. It seems like it was only yesterday and not 21 years ago that we brought him home from the hospital.

My mom and dad were so proud to finally have a grandson. They are both gone now, their departure having closed a chapter in my book.

And I am left with the hopes and the memories, the former largely in God’s hands, the latter like those fleeting shadows cast by the sun playing on thin branches tickling across the surfaces of four childhood reminders lovingly placed out by the curb on a warm spring afternoon.