UPDATE ON NATHAN

Hello everyone. I wanted to send you an update on Nathan. When he left San Diego he went to Camp Lejune , North Carolina to join 2 nd Marine Division. He spent two weeks there doing a ton of training and getting ready to leave. They did all kinds of stuff there, but the most interesting was the "helo dunker". Basically they were strapped into something that resembled a helicopter and spun around underwater numerous times and then left underwater upside down to try and get out. To make it more "fun" they did it multiple times with blackout goggles on, and then locked some windows to make them find another way out. Being spun around underwater, upside down and then having to try and get out of a helicopter does not seem like fun to me--but Nathan really seemed to enjoy it.

They left Camp Lejune and flew halfway around the world stopping at every wonderful vacation spot along the way-- Ireland , Italy , Greece . Of course, they could not leave the airports on the stops. After about two days of continuous travel they arrived in East Africa near the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea . Nathan said it is hotter than Iraq , with temperatures already hitting 120 degrees--in March! He says the landscape is beautiful but the urban areas are not-- said the actual cities look a lot like other places he has been--Iraq, Cambodia, Serbia, East Timor, etc. I think he needs to get a new travel agent.

Upon arriving in country they went right to work getting ready to head out on a mission. Nathan was also promoted by a two star Marine General to the rank of Staff Sergeant. He is leading out his own team and has been busy putting together their training schedule and preparing all their gear, flights, weapons, etc. The mission is a "joint" one with all the services. He is the team commander and on his team is himself (Marine), an Air Force guy, an Army guy, and a civilian. He said all he needs is a Navy guy and they will have all the branches covered. They did more training in all kinds of things--weapons, communications, driving, etc. The worst part (to me at least) was the medical training. They were prepared for almost any injury. During the training, Nathan made his team pair up and start IVs on each other. He said he started the one on his partner on the first "stab" and didn't spill a drop of blood--same can't be said for the guy who stuck him. Again--this is something he enjoyed but not sure most people would.

After all this fun he left last week for his first mission. I'm not sure exactly where he is (he can't say), but I won't hear from him much for 30 to 45 days at a time. He said the plane is taking them about two hours past the end of civilization and dropping them off. After 30 to 45 days, he gets to go back to the main camp for a few days and then back out for another month or so.

I also thought it was interesting (and knew you would too) to hear about the other countries that have military members at the main camp. He has seen service members from Britain , Canada , Australia , France (no comments on this one), Germany , Belgium , and a few others. Everyone seems to get along--probably because there aren't many Marines.

Since he isn't going to be somewhere to get mail for the next 30-45 days, he can't get packages yet. However, hopefully we can work something out for when he comes back to the base. I will keep you posted. In the meantime you can send an e-mail message for him to me and I will compile them all together and get it to him. He does love hearing from you.

Mindy

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

John Stuart Mill

English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

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BULLET POINTS

Lisa Snell of The Reason Foundation is helping lead the fight against the universal pre-school initiative on the June ballot.

The Case Against “Preschool For All” in California

• Proposition 82’s taxation plan for universal preschool is bad for California ’s economy and would end up back-firing on the poor. An analysis by LECG, an economic consulting firm in California , has found that the Reiner tax-hike would actually result in more than $4 billion in general fund losses over the first five years as rich taxpayers either flee the state or report less taxable income. This would either mean cuts in health, welfare and other programs for the poor -- or an even bigger fiscal deficit.

• Scarce preschool resources should be targeted to disadvantaged children. Universal preschool programs are by definition not means-tested, they help not the poor so much as middle-income or wealthy families who are better at negotiating the system. In Quebec , for instance, which implemented the most ambitious universal preschool program eight years ago, about half of the government-funded day care spots are taken up by families in the top 30% income bracket who can well afford to pay out-of-pocket.

• There is little empirical evidence to demonstrate any lasting educational or socioeconomic benefit of government-run preschool programs. Georgia has had universal preschool open to all children since 1995 and Oklahoma has had a universal program in place since 1998.  In a recent analysis of the top 10 best and worst state performers, based on the percentage point change fourth-grade reading tests between 1992 and 2005 on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which is considered the nation’s report card , both Georgia and Oklahoma were in the bottom 10 performers. In fact, Oklahoma was the worst performer of all states in terms of gains in fourth grade reading between 1992 and 2005, actually losing 4 percentage points.  None of the top-ten states had universal preschool.

• California should fix the problems we have with our current K-12 system before spending $2.4 billion annually in limited resources to create an unnecessary and duplicative new preschool bureaucracy.

• The cost of moving from a private to a public preschool system is high. Currently, 66 percent of preschool age children attend preschool in California . The Reiner Initiative aims to bring enrollment to 70 percent. That’s $2.4 billion per year for a 4% increase in preschool enrollment – hardly a wise use of limited taxpayer dollars! The marginal cost of moving from a private to a public preschool system is more than $100,000 per new preschooler.

Lisa Snell
Education Director
Reason Foundation

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CHAIRMANS MESSAGE

Who Really Owns Your Home?

by Robert A. Virtue,
Chairman, Los Angeles County Lincoln Clubs

That question has usually had two answers for most Americans. Our home belongs to us, and to whoever holds our mortgage. The mortgage holder has only a security interest however – we pay the mortgage and they leave us alone.

The idea that the government could seize our home against our will has always been more of a theoretical consideration than a real one. The doctrine of eminent domain, that the government could take private property from an unwilling seller for public purposes such as road construction or expansion of public facilities, seemed remote and far away.

Then the United States Supreme Court handed down its infamous Kelo decision last year. Kelo expanded the scope of eminent domain to include the taking of private property for private purposes. That means state or local government can take your home if they decide the land could be used for a better purpose – be that a road or a shopping center, movie theatre complex, new high density housing development, etc. The only public purpose of these private projects would be to increase local government tax revenues.

We had a saying for hundreds of years in America that a man’s home was his castle. I always liked that saying and what it represented – homeowners are secure in their homes as long as they pay the mortgage; with the limited exception that government can take the home for important public purposes such as building new roads.

In the post-Kelo world, our homes are our castles only until some bureaucrat decides there is a better use for our property. Then our home is fair game for local or state government to take away from us.

This is not what most Americans would call home security. The only good part of this decision was that it left states free to fashion their own standards. Senator Tom McClintock introduced Senate Constitutional Amendment 15 within weeks of the Kelo decision to do just that. SCA 15 would prohibit the taking of private property for private use, and require a simplified compensation process for property owners whose property was taken for eminent domain. Predictably, the Democrats bottled it up.

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