The link for the event:
http://austin.cantstoptheserenity.com/

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown
Time and Special Guests TBA
Schedule of Events TBA

Can't Stop the Serenity 2006 raised over $65,000 for Equality Now, and we are looking to raise $100,000 in 2007!

For more information about the screening, visit our Theatre page (coming soon). We are in need of volunteers. See our Get Involved! page, as well as our News section below to keep apprised of our volunteer opportunties and descriptions. We are also looking for individuals and businesses to donate items to be used for our raffle and silent auctions. Based on donations and sponsorships, we will try to offer door prizes. More information about that will be available in our News and Theatre section.

One of the arguments in favor of government schools that I frequently hear is how the private schools cannot handle the requirements of special needs children, and how only the government funding of schools allows for the proper education of these children.

I happen to know that this is a fabrication. I have watched a close friend engage in the endlessly frustrating task of trying to find a school, any school, which can meet the requirements of educating her special needs child. The charter schools were simply disappointing, because they have so far failed to deliver on their promises of being able to teach her child. At least, with the charter schools, it was a simple matter to find another charter that might do the job better.

The government school (frequently mislabeled as public school) was a complete disaster by comparison. After taking months preparing an IEP (Individual Education Plan) for her son, which she was involved with to such a large extent that she even attended school classes with him in order to help guide his progress; the school decided they couldn't educate him the first day that they were left alone with him, and called the police to have him arrested (he's 10) for leaving his classroom.

What the police would have done is anybodies guess, but the crisis was averted by her timely arrival and permanent removal of her son from the only available school system in her area.

Subject: Autism Services Accessibility
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:58:46 -0500
From: Senator Kirk Watson

Dear Mr. Steele:

Thank you for your letter regarding your support of Senate Bill 1000, relating to the use of public money for private school tuition for children with autism. I appreciate you sharing your views with me.

I am committed to ensuring that we have an adequate and equitable funding structure for public education. The issue of vouchers has always been a controversial one, and I believe that we must carefully consider the options available for public school funding before we come to any decision regarding alternative education systems. We need to find ways to strengthen public schools and not weaken them by draining them of money and students.

I support providing teachers and teacher's aides with up-to-date information and training on programs and best practices on educating students with disabilities. I also support keeping parents well-informed on and involved in their child's education.

To that end, I have filed several bills to improve public school services to children with disabilities.

• Senate Bill 1490, which requires the Texas Education Agency to update the Guide to the Admission Review and Dismissal (ARD) Process to ensure that teachers have current information on the process by which an individualized education program (IEP) is developed for a student in a special education program and the rights and responsibilities of a parent concerning the process;
• Senate Bill 1491, which permits the Texas Education Commissioner to make grants, consisting primarily of federal funds, to school districts to cover the high cost of educating students with disabilities;
• Senate Bill 1625, which allows a teacher to be more involved in the development and implementation of a child's IEP and to request any necessary training to ensure the child's needs are met; and
• Senate Bill 1686, which allows parents and teachers to discuss and consider teacher qualifications and the need for teacher training with the ARD committee for their school. This committee reviews the special education programs and personnel for each school and helps establish the individual education program for each student who requires special education.

I appreciate that you took time to contact my office. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance to you in the future.

Sincerely,

Kirk Watson

The public school system already costs (at least) twice as much as private school, where teachers are selected by parents to teach exactly what and how the parents want. "Draining the school of students and funds" in that light yields a net gain to the Texas taxpayer, and a benefit to the children of Texas by allowing them to attend schools of their choice rather than forcing them into a one-size-fits-all, centralized, micro managed, antiquated system.

Looked at from another perspective, adding another facet to the already over-burdened bureaucracy in order to deal with special needs children simply adds an even greater expense to a government school system that is already cash strapped and in need of re-organization. Allowing children with special education needs to leave the government school system assures that these children will get the education they need without exacting a greater cost on a system that is already stressed to the breaking point.

Four bills introduced with the best intentions at heart, I'm sure. All of which will do exactly what I predict, increase the cost of administrating the schools by adding another facet to the already overly complex state school requirements. They will increase the cost of training teachers to meet every eventuality, rather than allowing them to specialize in the types of children they wish to teach.

Four bills, all of whose goals could be met, simply by allowing the parents to take their children and their money out of the system. Which is what the one bill, SB1000 will do.

Caught news of the roll out of Star Wars themed collection bins on Keith Olbermann the other night (I'm sure I'm not the only one; according to their stats, it's the most DVR'd program on TV. Glad I could help, Keith) A friend of mine sent me a picture of the R2D2 bin in Austin today, along with a link to a goofily mocked up video of a letter being inserted into R2D2 by Princess Leia (www.uspsjedimaster.com) that probably could have been done better by any of the special effects people I've met here in Austin.

If there was any truth in advertising, the postmen would be dressed up to look like Stormtroopers (heralded over by a postmaster general garbed like a leering Emperor Palpatine) rather than bins painted up to look like freedom loving androids; but then I guess I'm just nitpicking. I don't have a serious beef with the post office, I just don't appreciate all the snail mail spam that they insist on bringing me.

True artwork doesn't come in the form of a repetitively decaled mail bin, anyway. True artwork can be found one block up the street from the R2D2 bin on Congress Ave, in front of the Littlefield Building at 6th and Congress; the location selected for S.C. Essai's Cybertar (I blogged on the subject of finishing this behemoth of a project several months ago)

There is a map to all of the Guitartown displays on the Guitartown website. I haven't seen any of them that I didn't like.

I doubt this will change the outcome of things. The US bus of happiness is already careening on the cliff's edge. It's going to take more than one good president to drag it back onto the straight and narrow.

However, Ron Paul (the only member of congress for which I have any respect) has declared his intention to seek the Republican presidential nomination. I wish him the best of luck, he's going to need it. Especially with press coverage like this:

Paul limits his view of the role of the federal government to those duties laid out in the Constitution. As a result, he sometimes casts votes at odds with his constituents and other Republicans.

Something else to celebrate this season. On December 24th, 1798, the Virginia resolution was passed. Most of the people who have the standard, sub-standard government school education will not know the significance of The Principles of '98 or why they should be something we celebrate today.

The short reason is, because the principles of '98 may be our only avenue of escape from the ever encroaching federal government; by providing a way for the states and their residents to nullify any federal law that they disagree with.

Want to know more? I recommend The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. over at Mises.org. It's as good a place as any to start, and it's pretty entertaining if you are into history.

If this had been the curriculum and the teacher at my public school, the rest of the kids might have been able to stay awake...

Last year I went on a rant concerning the meaning of Christmas, and the debt that we owe to our nation's founders (it's a strange juxtaposition that seems to reoccur every year; a Holiday event that has been hijacked by religion, and a nation in similar straights) and I followed that up with a short rantlet for the well meaning christians and their attempts to set me straight after reading the initial rant.

This year, I think I need to target some of the well-meaning people who share my lack of faith, but figuratively throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Recently I was listening to PennRadio (actually it was November 2nd, but that was too early to write The Christmas Rant) and listened to an hour's worth of broadcast on the evils of Santa Claus and lying to your children. Personally, I've never heard a more hard-hearted hour of radio in my life. Destroying the wonder in the mind of the child. Telling them that the hard, cold world around them is all that there is, so get used to it. How does the imagination grow, constrained by such a weighty burden as that?

Let me tell you a story. The Wife and I discussed whether or not to share the myth of Santa Claus with our children before they were born. I was all for bursting that bubble; better yet, just not even going there. My memories of Santa Claus are anything but pleasant. My mother and father did Christmas to the hilt. Large tree, Santa decorations, pictures with Santa, the works. Once, when we were staying at our grandfather's house in Sacramento, my sister and I heard a noise in the living room. We nearly made it to the door before our fear of being discovered, and not getting any presents, sent us scurrying back under our covers where we finally feel back to sleep. When we awoke the next morning, there were snow footprints on the fireplace hearth. That was the best year. The next to worst was the year when we were particularly nasty to mom and dad, and got switches (sticks to get spankings with, for the uninitiated) in our stockings instead of candy.

Why is that the next to worst? Because the worst year was when we found out that there was no Santa, and suddenly the magic was gone from the Holiday. Santa never came to our house again. Not too long after that, there was divorce and hardship of an all too real nature as the family was torn apart, and there was no more talk of silly little things like Santa Claus. So you can imagine the mindset that I carried with me to the discussion.

For her part, The Wife never experienced an end to the myth. Even after she knew there was no physical person named Santa Claus that visited her house on Christmas eve, the presents from Santa still showed up. The stockings still were filled, even for mom and dad. It wasn't until I met and married her that there was any magic during the Holidays for me, and then only because of her.

She presented an argument that I couldn't defeat. That there was something good in nurturing a sense of wonder in the children. That perhaps Santa isn't a person, but is instead the charitable spirit that lives inside all of us. That the giving (and recieving) doesn't have to end at all.

So, I tell my children that Santa comes to our house, and there is no lie involved in that statement. Santa Claus is the Spirit of Giving, the anonymous benefactor who gives out of the kindness of his heart and doesn't seek to be recognized for his charity. He leaves presents that are from no one, and fills stockings for the people sleeping under our roof, no matter the age. His is a kindly old soul that doesn't get recognized enough these days.

The Daughter figured out that spirit meant just that, a feeling that comes from within, a few years ago. I know that she has figured it out, because gifts appear under the tree, or in the stockings, that The Wife and I have never seen before. Santa Claus lives on in my house.

Oh, you can point to the Wiki entry on Santa Claus, and tell me how he's actually St. Nicholas, and how his gifts were given personally. That he was a real person and he is really, very dead now. Or you can say that he's the mythological figure, Father Christmas, and that as a mythological figure he never existed at all. It's all fine by me, I love a good story. The Red Ranger came calling is an excellent story about Santa Claus, and it's just about as true as any of the rest of them.

You just go right on believing whatever suits you. I know Santa will visit this house on Christmas Eve, no matter what anybody else believes.

...And that's real magic.

Merry Christmas!

I'm rehashing an old subject, trying to update it for publishing in the Austin Liberator. As I pointed out in the recent blog post The Vote, I pulled the lever next to "L" again this year, just as I have for the last 10 plus years. I do this because I vote my conscience, rather than worry about wasting a vote.

The only wasted vote is the vote cast for a lessor evil, rather than being cast for a greater good. I vote and refer to myself as a Libertarian, and I do it with pride.