Comcast & Time Warner deal . Opinion.

Between  Russia , and the deep blue sea . One BIG event in American capitalism is the merger of organizations and businesses that no longer leave any room to the little guy. Comcast’s deal to buy Time Warner Cable is not fantastic  . Its a matter of  fact frighting in this day and age of "free flowing internet " ( free was never free , but...)  . The flow of information is vary vital . We have heard that there was  issues with the control of bandwidth , and streaming . As a Comcast subscriber in the digital age I see that last remnants of the long failed  (1) "Deregulation" of Cable  is down the sewer. The proposed $45-billion transaction has sparked social media solidarity among those who hate Comcast, Time Warner Cable or both. Also *** AT&T Uverse is no better . Consumers are left with vary few choices , that are extremely expensive , and that steal your money. Sen. Al Franken, the MN Democratic who once toiled on behalf of Saturday Night Live, fears the plan will result in higher cable bills and worse service.

“There’s not enough competition in this space, and what we need is more competition, not less,” Franken said in a statement to The Hill.

Another problem resides with this deal.  3 million subscribes will soon be kicked out of bother services , just to barter a merger. Companies as large as Comcast & TWC should never been allowed to merge, both for anti-competitive reasons and jobs. Can anyone really argue that mega-mergers of the past have been good for consumers? The 10 largest cable operators serve about 85 percent of all cable subscribers. And the three largest cable operators - Comcast, Time Warner and Charter - together serve approximately 56 percent of all cable subscribers, up from 48 percent in 1996. Consolidation in the cable industry has been justified on the grounds that bigger companies would operate more efficiently and incur lower costs, which would translate into lower rates.Congress must empower state public utility commissions (PUC) to regulate all cable rates and charges for video services until meaningful competition emerges. Congress should grant state public utility commissions the authority to regulate all cable rates and charges and to combat anti-competitive predatory-pricing business practices. With the 1996 Act's deregulation, rates for the cable programming tier to which the vast majority of consumers subscribe have inflated without restraint. Consumer rate protections at the state level are needed, but state PUC rate regulation is only necessary and desirable until robust competition that actually disciplines cable prices emerges.Prohibit cable broadband content restrictions to allow consumers full use of the Internet. Cable operators have a long history of restricting consumer access to content that cable operators disfavor. With the cable industry's ongoing dominance of the broadband market, cable operators must be prohibited from restricting consumer access to Internet content based on the source or nature of the consumer's request. The Future depends on some great inventor who would make WI-FI free to the public in America , with all air-waves that are digital , and sold out to the giant monsters like Comcast and Warner . WI-FI is the only hope to cut the cable cord , the digital cord . It will also depend on the public out cry to reach Congress , set the air waves free again.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***Nobody's safe anywhere anymore, but my choice on communications would always be ATT over charter, time warner and all the rest. Our building is monopolized by charter who holds an actual key to the room that ATT would like to enter to provide us with ATT service, and are not allowed. It's monopoly and we are not happy campers here. (1) .Certainly deregulation has been good to cable. Consumers Union, the nonprofit that puts out Consumer Reports magazine, took a look at the results. Their conclusion? It led to much, MUCH higher prices. "Until 1984, local governments kept cable prices in check," says CU. "Then deregulation resulted in a torrent of price hikes, interrupted only by a brief period, 1993-1996, when rates were regulated. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the flood gates to deregulation and more price hikes. Since passage of the 1996 Act, cable rates have increased by 59 percent—almost three times the rate of inflation—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics." However, Comcast backlash is not new — websites have popped up over the last few years denouncing the company.  One such site, comcastsucks.org, has a simple message: “This site is dedicated to letting Comcast know what they need to do to (hopefully) become a responsible business entity.”

Kerry's and Yulia's dream.

Former Prime Minister of Ukraine ,

 Yulia 

 I am a bit worried about the " Ukrainian Crisis",  first there are a lot of  hot heads on either side.  I am also a bit curious how good American 'diplomacy' is at this point.  In my last blog about the Ukraine , I pointed out that although our nation acts as the 'leader of the free world',  it pokes it's nose into way too many international incidents that it has no control of , and ignores countless others  as ( in Africa ) . I don't want to be the 'devils advocate' , ## but I see that Russia has every right to invade Ukraine. Sure you think I am harsh , and pro- Russian but ***My arguments  to that are that the Ukrainian instability threatens the rest of the region . You would think otherwise , and Russia is the bad guy ? The new Ukrainian government seems too unstable as it is right now ,  it's likely to be over turned as well. The Ukrainian people as far as their country is concerned,  never had a 'stable democracy' it seems since the fragmentation of the Soviet Union . Let alone  acting as a independent state,  it was always under  - part of the former Soviet Union. I remember at one time that a  lovely woman who led Ukraine she was  Prime Minister Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko who was arrested and thrown into prison on corruption charges  by the current overthrown  Viktor Yanukovych. The Orange Revolution was squandered by infighting between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko they are just as responsible for what is now happening .  It becomes vary clear that the Ukrainian people may have loved Yulia over Viktor , with no sense of the word 'revolution' one too many . There is another prospect , that of John Kerry . I know that he is going to fly to Ukraine to show solidarity  . What bother's me is  that Kerry is not meeting directly with Vladimir Putin in order to defuse a situation . Secondly I find John Kerry a bit of a load mouth , Kerry boasted : “He's going to lose on the international stage," Kerry told David Gregory on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Russia is going to lose, the Russian people are going to lose, and he's going to lose all of the glow that came out of the Olympics, his $60 billion extravaganza."  I just laugh what Kerry said , you know what a tough guy sounds like .  Also the recently  "leaked" transcript between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey  Pyatt gives a creepiness to this situation ,( Go here ) apparently bugged phone conversation in which a senior US diplomat disparages the EU over the Ukraine crisis has been posted online. The alleged conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, appeared on YouTube on Thursday. It is not clearly when the alleged conversation took place. Supports Putin's claim that :  "I have a feeling that they sit somewhere in a lab in America over a big puddle and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without understanding the consequences of what they are doing," he said. It shows as well  that greed plays a part of everything, the DOW flopped because of the crisis , The world’s 300 wealthiest people lost a combined $44.4 billion yesterday as global stocks tumbled the most in a month and the ruble dropped to an all-time low amid Russia’s growing military presence in Ukraine. 

Kerry pledges 1 billion dollars in aid ,

 our money.

The day’s biggest losers were Gennady Timchenkoand Leonid Mikhelson, who fell a combined $3.2 billion after OAO Novatek slumped almost 18 percent, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the richest people on Earth. The two billionaires own almost half of Russia’s largest gas producer after Gazprom OAO. John Kerry arrives in the Ukraine with promises of 1 billion dollars in aid of our hard earned "tax money", Anyway, I can think of a lot of things that the money could be better spent on here in the US. It's funny how we have over 16 Trillion Dollars in debt yet we can pull money out of our ass to give to the Ukranians, and the Ukranians will use it pay the Russians, yet we are threatening economic sanctions. Meanwhile the hope that the Ukrainians have not have any  short of a civil war is having  Yulia Volodymyrivna Tymoshenko back in power,  Tymoshenko got as far as she did on her good looks, and that, unless she herself decides not to run, silly Ukrainians will return her to power, fooled by what the Economist calls her “terrifying … sexual magnetism.” “Don’t let her looks fool you,” writes the Daily Beast. Instead, pay attention to “Tymoshenko’s not-so-pretty past.” The Wire says that male pundits find Tymoshenko sexually threatening, but it isn’t just the men focused on her looks. The New Republic’s Julia Ioffe describes Tymoshenko’s national political emergence in 2004 as a “Ukrainian-speaking Joan of Arc, a newly dyed blonde with a peasant braid ringing her head like a halo.”

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

*** How would the United States react if the the government of Mexico were overthrown by a violent revolution ? , I pretty sure that we would see Yankee troops down south . ##"Comments from US and British officials on Ukraine are under particular scrutiny as both countries signed the Budapest Memorandum with Ukraine and Russia in 1994, affirming “their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of  Ukraine”. Is it possible to be so disgusted with your country's leaders and policies, that countering the absurdities becomes too onerous and painful, cause that is how I feel. Fate placed the US denouement in their five billion dollar coup scheme, in Russia's hands. There is a subliminal separatist movement smoldering between the Bandera nationalist memorialists and the Crimea, East and South. The nation state is stricken, the fault line exposed by the Nuland and Pyatt fracking of Ukrainian historic unconscious. Separatism is now on the table as a consequence. The US, in their usual imbecility in foreign menacing, brought about this exigency. Russia's actions are perfectly sane and moral in response to this coup and shattering of any unity left by  the Americans. Kerry's words are so absurd, we might as well open James Joyce and put a finger on a passage for guidance and truth; it might be more meaningful. 

The New Reformed "Republican Party"

The Old Party is so far from Lincoln , Eisenhower   can it
survive?

The New Reformed "Republican Party" .The GOP is in serious trouble —Why is it that for the last 30+ years, any time the Republicans have a slump, the immediate prescription is "stop being Republicans"?  Both parties are in trouble, which is why the particular troubles of the GOP won't hurt them so badly in 2014.  What we are witnessing is a historic break-down of the two-arty system, unfortunately the only system that works with a presidential constitution like ours.  What precipitates this breakdown is that the post-War welfare and entitlement state is at an end, and so too is the post-War economy.  The Republicans are not necessarily doing us any harm by "obstructing" a president and federal bureaucracy that is simply out of control.One of the reasons the national Republican Party is such a mess is because Republicans are far too reluctant to criticize their own. Republicans are nice people.  Too many Republicans think it's wrong to criticize other Republicans.  Opening paragraph of the Republican National Committee’s Chairmen’s Preamble Ideals that unify our country?  A devotion to the inherent dignity and rights of every person?  Distrust of government’s interference in people’s lives?  Unless these ideals are not to be taken literally, why would the Republican Party insult its members with such a disingenuous offering of the Republican Party’s ideals?  If the Republican Party really believes that Individual Rights are the foundation of a free society and that the Republican Party considers discrimination based on sex, race, age, religion, creed, disability, or national origin to be immoral, why does the Republican Party make it a point in their platform to call for aconstitutional amendment prohibiting same sex marriage?  If the Republican Party believes in the devotion to the inherent dignity and rights of every person, why is it that the Republican Party wants to take away the right for a woman under any circumstances from having an abortion?  If the Republican Party believes in freedom of speech and freedom of the press and opposes all attempts to violate or weaken those rights, why is it that the Republican Party wants to take away those same freedoms by passing legislation making it a crime to desecrate the American flag? the Republican Party has lost its way.  What we see in the Republican Party are people whose favorite ideas suffered the indignity of being disproven by reality, and as most people tend to do until they've replaced dis-proven favorite ideas with new not disproven favorite ideas is to hold to the former all the more steadfastly. I suspect Reagan is turning over in his grave, if he's paying attention to the behavior of his party in the last decade. Yes, Federal spending and the public debt did increase dramatically during his time in office, but at least he had the courage to increase taxes to help slow the growth of the deficit, by using both direct tax increases, and by reducing deductions. I suspect, if Reagan was President, we would not have invaded Iraq, and if we did, he would not have pretended it was "off budget". I also suspect that he would not have pushed a massive increase in entitlement spending (Medicare Part D), during the time we were bleeding cash. Also, Reagan had room in his politics to get something he wanted and was OK with the other side getting something they wanted from new legislation.  

The situation in Ukraine

Ukraine is a testing ground to end cold
war diplomacy .

Well America  again is jumping up the old  cold war era band wagon . The situation in Ukraine . Here is my little analysis of the problem . The Ukrainian people revolted when President Viktor Yanukovich walked away from a treaty with the European Union under pressure from Russia. President Barack Obama referred to Ukraine in his  last State of the Union address on , voicing support for the principle that all people have the right to free expression. Vice President Joe Biden has spoken to Yanukovich at least three times. And two U.S. senators, Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, traveled to Kiev last month and addressed demonstrations. It seems to me that with all the pomp of being a world leader as such we seem to be meddling the nations own nose where it should not be .Why I ask? Our American foreign  policy has not exactly worked well , we have Egypt , Syria as 'examples' . Now our nation is off again to poke it's nose in the 'name of freedom' with out any kind of justification  If Yanukovych government was democratically elected, why should we support anarchy?  Why should we impose our values on a sovereign nation?  Isn’t Ukraine itself divided about its future?  With so many problems of our own. The Obama administration is still playing from the cold war blue book . In every international conflict since 1917 the US has laid its principles and beliefs on the line as a guide to the purpose of the conflict, and its key objectives ie: Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. From The trenches of WW1 to the burned out alleyways of Aleppo these freedoms have been at the core of the reason Americans have gone into battle. No other country has done this.Obama believes this is the right path for his country and will continue to follow it.Warning Russia not to make any moves. Anyhow Ukraine has always been under the Russian umbrella for a 1000 years . Here is some points to ponder as I call them. Many point out that Viktor Yanukovych was elected President in free and fair elections.  This is true, but the issue at hand isn’t his election, but his actions in office. Case in  point of the "revolt". Sen. Bob Corker, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he is concerned that Russia will invadeUkraine, just as it started a war with Georgia when it sent troops to back rebels in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008. Although I doubt that Obama has any plan (other than which celebrity to party with in the White House next) I have to ask Senator Corker: what plan do you suggest? If Russia does invade Ukraine what can the U.S. government really do about it? How should this crisis end . Look no further than what Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev urged the presidents of Russia and the United States on Thursday to help broker negotiations to end violent protests in Ukraine, which he said was facing a possible "catastrophe".Gorbachev, 82, a Nobel Peace laureate whose reforms helped end the Cold War but led to the Soviet Union's demise, appealed to Russia's President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama to help Ukraine resolve the conflict peacefully. "Without the help, without the cooperation of authoritative representatives of our two countries this (situation) could lead to catastrophe," Gorbachev, who has Ukrainian heritage, said in an open letter posted on his foundation's website. "I ask you to seize the opportunity and take a decisive step to help Ukraine return to the path of peaceful development. I am really relying on you," he said. "The opposing sides should sit at the negotiation table."

Michelle's 'Get Fit' initiative .

School Lunches are in danger of going hungry.

I am just shaking my head at this , and you might think I am over critical  and so on that  Michelle Obama and her fight against child hood obesity is not a bad thing  . Sure it's a good thing , but there is something that not clicking right as a image maker for the First Lady of the nation .  @Why can't she have  been focused on ending poverty on the national level  ? I know that School foods across the nation have been the subject of issues,yes there is lots of grease , lots of sugars. The problem is that children don't eat their lunch anyway, they throw it away anyhow regardless .  It's hard to get a grip on what is healthy at a school lunch table.  ***You NEVER HAVE PARENTAL INPUT ON THIS anyway!!  The proposed rules are part of first lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move initiative to combat child obesity, which is celebrating its fourth anniversary this week. Mrs. Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the new rules at a White House event.  ##Rules set to go into effect next school year will make other foods around school healthier as well, including in vending machines and separate "a la carte" lines in the lunch room. Calorie, fat, sugar and sodium limits will have to be met on almost every food and beverage sold during the school day at 100,000 schools. Concessions sold at afterschool sports games would be exempt. The healthier food rules have come under fire from conservatives who think the government shouldn't dictate what kids eat - and from some students who don't like the healthier foods.  Some on-campus marketing will be slowly phased out, however, and there are ways that schools can opt out of the new limitations altogether. The other, less flashy announcement made today will have a much broader, more sustained impact: universal free school meals for all students at more than 22,000 schools around the United States. The 9 million children who will receive breakfast and lunch at no cost starting on July 1 attend schools where at least 40 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-cost meals. Among other problems the universal meal program will eliminate is the social stigma that subsidized breakfast and lunch programs create for low-income students. No longer will these students be ostracized or, worse, forgo free or low-cost meals to not tip off their peers to the poverty they experience at home. It sounds good , but School Districts could lose money here is a news item . School officials in Carmel Clay, Ind., said they lost $300,000 last school year because students are rejecting the healthy menu changes brought on by First Lady Michelle Obama’s federal lunch regulations.  A school in New York that was getting rid of the Mrs.  Obama way of feeding kids  because they were hungry at the end of the school. They didn't like the food. They weren't eating it. There wasn't enough of it.  Now we have this other district here in Indiana losing hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to comply and failing because the kids hate it. Damage is already done. Many districts were already forced to increase the price of lunches even if they didn't want to. There is no chance those prices will come down, even after the rules are 'relaxed'. Many also had to spend hundred of thousands to millions of dollars in order to comply with the new rules.

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***Parents are up in arms, saying their kids can’t learn because they’re so hungry. There is no provision in the guidelines to recognize the difference between a 250 pound linebacker and a 90 pound cheerleader…..There are two reasons for why a lot of these kids are ending up just plain hungry: the strict federal limits on fat, carbs and calories aren’t giving them enough food to fill them up, and many kids just won’t eat the food that’s being forced on them, like dark brown whole wheat bread and chocolate skim milk. All this hunger is the result of the ironically-named “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,” which got Washington involved in local school cafeterias by providing federal funds in exchange for control over the menu. ##  Even the scoreboards in high school gyms will have to advertise only healthy foodsunder new rules announced Tuesday by the Obama administration. The "obesity epidemic," could be more readily addressed by having schools (at the K-8 level) expand the lunch time, outdoor and gym recess periods to what they were, 20-25 years ago. At some schools, the kids have to wolf down their food in 20 minutes, and get a whopping 15 minutes of recess. An hour of the school day used to be allotted to lunch plus recess - about 30 minutes of each. The schools have got the mealtime and recess shrunk from an hour, to only 35 minutes. Also, when home, a lot less time on the video games and i pads, where the parent is in direct authority, would go a long way towards reducing obesity in children. @ Kids were eating fine. The fact that kids are fat in America is a testament to how well-fed they are.

ICE AGE POLITICS.

The St. Joseph Lighthouse on North Pier, Lake Michigan, on Jan. 6, 2014; Photographer: HotSpot/Landov. Ice builds up along Lake Michigan at North Avenue ..

Great Lakes Frozen Over . Sign of an Ice Age?

California has been experiencing dry weather , seasonally warm temperatures . I am sure the Global Warming people are up and arms as "proof" . I am going tell you readers this . There is no GLOBAL WARMING , but there is "Climate Changes" , that I believe is in the works , rather if you believe in it or any theory . Back east most of the "Antarctic " conditions  that froze over the Great Lakes is vary PECULIAR . I heard one weatherman remake that " It's almost as cold as the Planet Mars.........."  My response is that MAY BE we are going into the NEXT ICE AGE . Just what scientific proof we need? The blizzard conditions that came along with the shift the Polar Vortex  might just be another twist . Oddly I have not heard a public peep out of former Vice -President Al Gore on this . With  the minus -30 F temps lately one of things that struck me is that was that the COLDER it get's there is a volatile limit for Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere . CO2 which is a green house gas , typically has been blamed for the rise of warmer temperatures in the last decade.  The "colder" temps work the opposite with CO2 . Learning about the planet Mars for instance , ***it has a thin atmosphere of CO2 that literately freezes out and snows onto the surface of Mars at winter temperatures below -50F. With this in mind if you remember the news reports of wind chill factors back east where temp's  dropped nearly to Mars winter levels . This means that whatever CO2 is in Earth's atmosphere also freezes out causing more and more colder weather .  NEXT we have the SUN spot activity , If you thought the polar vortex was bad, get a load of a new climate phenomenon that just might be coming our way. First, a bit of background. The sun goes through cycles that last roughly 11 years, marked by the ebb and flow of sunspots on its surface. At peak sunspot activity, the so-called solar maximum, the sun sports lots of sunspots and is steadily unleashing solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Since our current solar cycle, Number 24, kicked off in 2008, the number of sunspots observed has been half of what heliophysicists expected. But a relatively quiet sun could cause problems. Some scientists say that this period of weak solar activity may mirror what happened before the so-called Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715 -- a period named after solar astronomers Annie and E. Walter Maunder, who studied sunspots and helped identify the sun's strange activity in the latter part of the 17th Century. That time period saw only 30 sunspots (one one-thousandth of what would be expected) and coincided with a "Little Ice Age" in Europe, during which the Thames River and the Baltic Sea froze over. While scientists have not proven that low sunspot activity directly caused the "Little Ice Age," and say other factors may have been involved in plunging Europe into the frigid period, they do believe that fewer sunspots may mean less solar energy reached Earth. And this in turn could have led to global cooling. So if the sun did enter another extended period of low activity, how likely is it we'd enter into our own "Little Ice Age?"

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

***Maybe spun like this: with a certain level of Co2, conveniently 400-600ppm, Co2 actually acts as a coolant. We can’t wait 80 years for Co2 to once again to show it’s ugly uncontrollable green house effect. We have to act now, we must act now to stop this cooling, cooling we have created. If we don’t act now this cooling may trigger the next ice age. An Ice Age we conveniently caused, because of AGW. “…In addition the Avg. Global Temperature line in the graph appears to indicate that we are on descent into, and are currently in an ice age. The depths of which we simply do not know…” The length and “depth” of the previous glacial periods (of the present Ice Age) indicate an increasing trend that agrees with your statement,http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/Image5.gif

The High Cost of Common Core.

The " Smarter Balanced Assessment" known as " Common Core" may have disrupted the learning and testing process in California . I just spent several hours watching a Pro's and Con's about Common Core on TV . Regardless some of the panelists agree that  California 's suspending the STAR TEST may have dug the state's educational  nails into the soil. California is defying the requirements of No Child Left Behind, Testing season begins soon in U.S. public schools, requiring millions of students to spend days answering standardized questions in math and reading, as mandated by an outdated federal law. But this year is filled with tumult. Educators are questioning the purpose of testing, lawmakers in several states are pushing back against federal regulations, and a momentous standoff between California — the state with the largest number of public school students — and the Obama administration looms. But California says it can’t administer the tests this year because, like much of the country, it has adopted new Common Core national academic standards and the corresponding exams aren’t ready. Remember the words " aren't ready" , the Sate Department of Education is vary behind in creating the "test" to replace the STAR , it convinces me that Common Core is vary poorly conceived as a replacement for STAR . There is a boiling opposition of it on both the Right and Left .  The Common Core curriculum it's self as was examined by the panel on TV with some outstanding remarks . First , This was done with insufficient public dialogue or feedback from experienced educators, no research, no pilot or experimental programs — no evidence at all that a floor-length list created by unnamed people attempting to standardize what’s taught is a good idea. Second, The Common Core Standards assume that what kids need to know is covered by one or another of the traditional core subjects. In fact, the unexplored intellectual terrain lying between and beyond those familiar fields of study is vast, expands by the hour, and will go in directions no one can predict. Third, So much orchestrated attention is being showered on the Common Core Standards, the main reason for poor student performance is being ignored—a level of childhood poverty the consequences of which no amount of schooling can effectively counter. Forth,  he Common Core Standards are a set-up for national standardized tests, tests that can’t evaluate complex thought, can’t avoid cultural bias, can’t measure non-verbal learning, can’t predict anything of consequence (and waste boatloads of money). Fifth, In a recent white paper, “Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare Students for STEM,” professors James Milgram and Sandra Stotsky explain how the Common Core math standards do not include academic standards that prepare high school students for STEM programs. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The lead author for the Common Core math standards, Jason Zimba, publicly stated that the standards provide students enough mathematics to make them ready for nonselective colleges and not for STEM. One has to wonder why Tom Raffio, chairman of the state board of education, failed to mention that deficiency. The Common Core math standards put students on a path to complete algebra I by the end of 9th grade. This is two years behind students in the top-performing countries and one year behind the old superior California math standards.

California's big loss.......

California, threatened with the loss of $3.5 billion in federal funds for suspending high-stakes testing next spring, has tweaked its exam plan. But it's not certain that the change, which was not cleared first with U.S. officials, will ease the threat to take away funds. Federal lawrequires states to annually test students in English and math and publish results. The state still doesn't plan to release results, and it doesn't plan to give any student a comprehensive sample test. Instead, most students will take about half the math test and half the English test. A representative sampling of California students, or 5 percent of those tested, will take the full test in just one subject or the other -- so that the test developers can refine their questions. Without test results, the state will not calculate an Academic Performance Index score for each school and school district in 2014, and possibly in 2015. Meanwhile, educators across the country are watching California’s standoff with Washington. California officials say that beginning March 18, they will give the math and reading Common Core field tests to all 3.4 million students in the designated testing grades, at a cost of about $51 million .The federal government has not resolved what to do about California, but federal officials said a decision could come as soon as this week.

A technology that costs too much.

School Districts have been spending more and more on getting the students ready for Common Core , one of the budgeted items is the expansion of touch I pads , Google  Chrome laptops . Sacramento-area school districts have spent millions of dollars in the past two years upgrading their broadband connections and buying computers and other technology so thousands of students can simultaneously take the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, which will replace the former pencil-and-paper STAR test. The arrival of these standards – and the accompanying tests – have put the purchase of computers at the top of every district’s priority list. The Legislature boosted the effort by making $1.25 billion available this school year for computers, bandwidth and training. School districts also passed bonds, dipped into their general funds and used federal technology dollars. States will spend up to an estimated $10 billion up front, then as much as $800 million per year for the first seven years that the controversial program is up and running. Much of the cost is on new, Common Core-aligned textbooks and curriculum, but the added expenses also include teacher training, technology upgrades, testing and assessment. The figures are taking states by surprise.