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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Paradigms and Demographics: Morning Edition

American education needs competition, not Common Core, Vicki E. Alger

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman championed individual liberty and free markets instead of bigger government. This included his belief that all parents - regardless of their incomes or addresses - should be free to choose their children's schools. Yet too often expanding government instead of freedom is the default solution to ailing schools. The Common Core State Standards are a case in point.

Supporters claim that adopting Common Core, as California has done, will provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students should know to be prepared for college and careers. On the contrary, many experts serving on Common Core review committees warn that academic rigor was compromised for the sake of political buy-in from the various political interest groups involved - including teachers unions. The curriculum is being used to advance a partisan political agenda, showcasing one-sided labor union, Obamacare and global-warming materials, along with more graphic, adult-themed books under the auspices of promoting diversity and toleration. But the politicization doesn't stop there.

Through federally funded Common Core testing consortia, non-academic, personal information is being collected about students and their parents, including family income, parents' political affiliations, their religion and students' disciplinary records - all without parental consent. That information, including Social Securitynumbers of students in at least one state, is being shared with third-party data collection firms, prompting a growing number of parents to opt their children out of Common Core.

Let’s Privatize Medicare, By John C. Goodman

Paul Ryan proposed a private health insurance alternative to Medicare for future retirees, liberal critics pounced. It’s another scheme to undermine health care for the elderly by “privatizing” and “voucher-izing” the program, they said. Yet, almost one-third of seniors are already in private health insurance plans. They are called Medicare Part C, or Medicare Advantage, plans. And you would be hard pressed to find any Democratic office holder who wants to abolish them. The reason? Seniors choose to be in these plans because they like them better than traditional Medicare. Not only do seniors like them, but they appear to provide better care for less money.

That’s the conclusion of a new studyby two Harvard University health economists, Joe Newhouse and Tom McGuire. These mainstream researchers—neither of whom can be called a right-winger—conclude that Medicare Advantage plans not only lower the cost and raise the quality of care for their enrollees, there are also spillover effects. In markets where Medicare Advantage plans have a significant presence, cost goes down and quality goes up for other patients as well—including traditional Medicare patients. Austin Frakt, another health economist (left of center politically, no less), points to some recent research that confirms the positive health benefits of private insurance for the elderly:…

Extortion 17 Parent: "The Greatest Security Threat the US faces Resides at 1600Pennsylvania Avenue", Tim Brown

Last week,Billy and Karen Vaughn, parents of fallen Navy SEALAaron Vaughn, who lost his life aboard Extortion 17,blasted Barack Obama, claiming that his "JV performance" damaged global security and cost lives. On Tuesday, the Vaughns appeared on Fox News to bolster their claims of Obama's lack of strategy against ISIS and called for his resignation. Billy Vaughn told his Fox News, "Ever since Obama has been in office, our national security has gotten worse and worse and worse. Our allies are not contacting us anymore. They are doing attacks on their own… operations on their own. Nobody respects us."…… "Billy and I are fed up with watching families suffer the same thing we've suffered, losing our only son at the hands of an administration and, frankly, senior military leaders who do not care about the boots on the ground, who care more about political positioning than the human cost of our sons and daughters being slaughtered on the battlefield with rules of engagement that favor their enemy," she said......

Corrupt Agenda: UN Orders Troops to Surrender toObama-Backed Syrian Rebels, Dean Garrison

A United Nations' peacekeeping commander ordered Filipino troops to surrender on Monday at the hands of Obama-backed Syrian rebels. Thankfully, they disobeyed that order and fought bravely for their freedom. This is just the latest example of a corrupt United Nations that is leading us all toward a New World Order. Why would anyone order a surrender to these savages when the likely reward is death? I don't know exactly. Maybe to stir up more instability in the region and provide just one more reason for more outside involvement? Either way, God Bless those Filipino troops for disobeying the order. Jim Gomez reports via The Washington Times:

The Philippine military said Monday that a U.N. peacekeeping commander in the Golan Heights should be investigated for allegedly asking Filipino troops to surrender to Syrian rebels who had attacked and surrounded their camp......

The Trillion Dollar a Year Race Industry, William Lafferty

Blacks deserve special favorable treatment, even extraordinary treatment granting them certain advantages over whites because they are unique among minority groups: they came from slavery. That's what I am told when I propose disbanding the trillion-dollar-a-year race industry, financed largely with tax dollars. See my article, Keeping Racism Alive: Ferguson Missouri. Assumed within this justification of special treatment is that those who come from a heritage of slavery have sustained injuries of such magnitude that they must be treated in ways that other injured individuals or groups are not. They must be given benefits, special allowances, support, and encouragement not available to groups who have suffered their own injuries, even though the slavery in question occurred in another century.

The problem with this assumption is that it is firmly grounded in air. So far as I know, there is no scientific support for the assumption that slavery produces a unique injury requiring over a century of remedial treatment. If it turns out that there is credible support for this idea, I too would be in favor of special treatment, but as things stand now, any special treatment given to a group whose heritage is slavery, but denied other individuals or groups who have suffered grievous injuries, is based on nothing but a supposition.......

Racism, Cowardice and Responsibility, By Steven Laib

Cowardice has been variously described over the years. When asked for a definition Microsoft Word provided several, including one from Wikipedia that seems to cover all the bases:

Cowardice is a trait wherein fear and excess self-concern override doing or saying what is right, good and of help to others or oneself in a time of need – it is the opposite of courage.

Note in the above definition indicates that cowardice overrides doing what is good or right; which is exactly what has been going on in America for decades. As one who grew up during the Civil Rights Movement years, I saw what happened all around me.

We can start with the 1950’s wherein Jim Crow still ruled much of the South, and needed to be removed. But at the time, Black Americans had advantages that they do not have today. Their families stayed together. They believed in hard work and doing your best at everything. They valued education. Brig. Gen. Ezell Ware, Jr., wrote in his autobiography, By Duty Bound, that during his youth his parents and his teachers, at a segregated school, stressed the need to outperform Whites in order to succeed. He did exactly that. Today, that work and education ethic is no longer emphasized……. Yes, there is “institutionalized racism” but the institutions involved are places such as the current US Dept. of Justice under Eric Holder. They are the organizations run by such people as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They are groups that exist to continue the rhetoric that blames everyone but the people actually responsible for the problems we are experiencing today…

Editor’s Note: This next article is particularly important to me because it's my story. I tore the meniscus in my right knee in April of 2011, but since it was the beginning of my busy season I had to work through it, and very painfully I might add. In July I finally went in to schedule surgery for November, but unfortunately I favored the right knee because the pain increased daily, putting so much pressure on my left knee I torn the meniscus in that knee in August. Although I knew my right knee was going to have to be replaced, my left knee only had minimal pain, and only occasionally when I overdid.

The surgery on my right knee never fixed the pain and later in the winter I had the left knee repaired. But the pain never stopped, and even worsened. I asked why? The surgeon who operated on me never really explained what he was going to do, but one of my accounts asked me if he cleaned up the arthritis. I said I didn’t know if that’s what they do when they repair the meniscus. Finally I asked the surgeon and he said yes he “cleaned up the arthritis” - so I asked - why am I still in so much pain? I finally got the correct understanding from the people at re-hab. “Cleaning up the arthritis” means they grind down the cartilage and I was crippled. I couldn’t work without a cane and eventually lost a great deal of business, and I even turned down lucrative work because the pain was so great I knew I just couldn’t do it any longer.

Finally I went to two different surgeons to schedule knee replacements….both of them. When I saw the new x-rays of my left knee I was shocked at the amount of cartilage the first surgeon removed. He had crippled me unnecessarily. Without that procedure my left knee wouldn’t have had to be replaced then - and perhaps never - and please understand this -having one real knee, even with some pain is far superior to two replaced knees. I can no longer kneel, and that makes working much more difficult. Both of the new surgeons told me they don’t perform that procedure much anymore because it causes more problems than it solves.

Make sure to ask exactly what they’re going to do if you go in for meniscus repairs – or any knee surgery for that matter - and ask if they plan on grinding down the cartilage in your knee(s). Then go to another doctor, preferable from a younger generation, for another opinion. Don’t allow anyone to cripple you as I did through my ignorance! No matter how much research I did on this subject I still didn’t know what questions to ask.

No one is going to tell you what I’m telling you now. Now you know!

Knee osteoarthritis sufferers may not benefit fromcartilage surgery

Posted on September 2, 2014 by admin

Osteoarthritis (OA) is extremely common in adults. According to the Arthritis Foundation, about 27 million people in the United States have osteoarthritis, the most commonly affected area being the knee. Many of those affected suffer from degenerative meniscal tears, which are sometimes treated with surgery. However, a new meta-analysis found that arthroscopic surgery for these tears was not associated with improvement in function of or pain in the knee.

Dr. Moin Khan of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and colleagues conducted a systematic review of seven randomized trials including 805 subjects looking at arthroscopic surgery versus non-operative management in patients with mild knee OA. Mean age of the subjects was 56. Overall, researchers found no association between surgery and improvement in function or pain scores. Furthermore, the researchers found that surgery was not associated with any improvement in pain at six months following the surgery. The studies used the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score – an instrument assessing patients’ opinion about their knee that asks questions related to physical function and daily life, as well as sports and recreation –to reach these conclusions.

According to the researchers, “The results of this meta-analysis suggest that an initial trial of non-operative interventions should play a large role for middle-aged patients.”

ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross had this comment: “This meta-analysis clearly indicates that surgery should not be the first option for meniscal tears associated with knee OA. In fact, previous studies have found that weight loss is often an effective tool in helping to keep knee OA under control, as knee joint deterioration is well known to be accelerated by obesity. Therefore, a behavioral intervention should be considered first, depending on the patient. For more advanced OA, with life-altering pain or loss of function, the advances in total knee replacement surgery — truly a miracle of modern medicine of only thirty-plus years existence — is available to improve many OA patients’ lives.”

ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom adds, “However, it should also be considered that arthroscopic surgery for a torn meniscus can still be necessary when the tear is severe enough that the torn piece can get caught in the knee joint, essentially locking up the knee. This can be very damaging if it is not dealt with, and patients should talk to their doctors about their options. And of course, acutely traumatized knees do need urgent intervention, notwithstanding this new study.

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