.
CALL TO ACTION – "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN (only 5 minutes of your time is needed to save America's inner-city children) –
RESPECTFULLY REQUESTING POPE FRANCIS DURING HIS IMPENDING FIRST VISIT TO THE U.S. TO CALL UPON AMERICAN CHRISTIANS IN GENERAL AND ROMAN CATHOLICS IN PARTICULAR TO LOVE THEIR NEIGHBORS AS THEMSELVES IN THE PERSON OF THE 23% OF U.S. CHILDREN WHO UNICEF CONFIRMS LIVE IN POVERTY
We take great pride in our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaigns to decision makers such as President Obama which, with only a few computer keyboard key strokes, can be sent by each of our members (1) to the decision maker, and (2) to all of the member's friends and acquaintances requesting them to do the same in an unending chain. [Indeed, these campaigns are what make us more than an unimportant self-edification group of patriotic policy wonks.]
Accordingly, we also take great pride that each of our recommendations has been approved unanimously at one of our meetings or, at most, received only one dissent.
The following e-mail campaign was adopted at our 6/17/2015 meeting.
The reasons for the campaign are contained in the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below the long string of asterisks that follows the end of this weekly E-mail.
If you agree with the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below, please:
(1) send the already-prepared e-mail appearing below to Pope Francis with a copy to the President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by simply cutting-and-pasting the already-prepared To, Cc, Subject and Text into your e-mail software (NB: please be sure to include both the To and the Cc to insure that both the Pope and the President of The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops actually see the e-mail, rather than the e-mail being discarded by staffers who aren’t worried about their bosses being blind-sided by the other addressee taking an interest and calling their own boss).
(2) send to all your friends and acquaintances the already-prepared e-mail package that comprises everything below the long string of asterisks that follows the end of this e-mail -- so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone in a cascading chain.
*******************************************************************************************************
To: All of your friends and acquaintances
Subj: CALL TO ACTION -- "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO SAVE AMERICA’S INNER-CITY CHILDREN FROM A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH (only 5 minutes of your time is needed)
Dear Friends,
I have been requested to participate in the referenced "call to action" and request that you participate as well.
It is the 25th such Call to Action on various topics recommended by a monthly patriotic study group over the last 9.5 years comprising already-prepared e-mails that can be sent to decision makers on important policy issues. The group’s attendance averages 11-12. Participants come from all walks of life but regular attendees include 5 attorneys (2 of whom are Assistant Utah Attorneys General) and 3 University of Utah scientists. [Its three meetings over the years on nuclear issues have been led by a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U/Tenn - Oak Ridge National Nuclear-Research Laboratory.] More information about the group is available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.
The campaigns are based on the fact that there are NO MORE THAN SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION between us and 100% of the American population.
And that, on important occasions, we can send to all of our friends and acquaintances an already-prepared e-mail (1) for them to send to decision maker(s), and (2) for them to send to all of their friends and acquaintances to do the same in an unending chain.
The salient reasons for the campaign are contained in the following already-prepared e-mail to Pope Francis.
**********
If you agree with the proposal, please –
If you agree with the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below, please:
(1) send the already-prepared e-mail appearing below to Pope Francis with a copy to the President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by simply cutting-and-pasting the already-prepared To, Cc, Subject and Text into your e-mail software (NB: please be sure to include both the To and the Cc to insure that both the Pope and the President of The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops actually see the e-mail, rather than the e-mail being discarded by staffers who aren’t worried about their bosses being blind-sided by the other addressee taking an interest and calling their own boss).
(2) send to all your friends and acquaintances this entire e-mail -- so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone in a cascading chain.
---------------------------- Your E-mail to Pope Francis ----------------------------
Subject: Message For Pope Francis Re The 23% of U.S. Children Living In Poverty
To: av@pccs.va
Cc: chancery@archlou.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suggested text of your E-mail --
To: His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
Cc: The Most Reverend Joseph E. Kurtz, D.D., President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Re: The 23% of U.S. Children Living In Poverty
Dear Holy Father,
As you are probably aware, UNICEF reports that not only do 23% of U.S. children live in poverty but that no other industrialized country tolerates even half that rate. Indeed, 23% is triple the rate of child poverty in Germany, Austria and France, and quadruple the rate in such nations as Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland.
The size of America’s Permanent Under-Class causes the U.S. to rank dead last among industrialized countries in terms of virtually every measure of civilization (e.g., infant mortality, literacy, life expectancy, upward mobility, etc., etc.).
It would appear that America is failing to obey Christ’s Second Commandment to Love Your Neighbor As Yourself when it comes to America’s inner-city children.
This despite the overwhelming majority of Americans self identifying as Christians and despite the Roman Catholic Church’s 78.2 million baptized members comprising 24% of the U.S. population.
Accordingly, it is respectfully suggested that during your pending visit to the United States, you challenge Americans in general and American Catholics in particular to follow Christ’s Commandment to love America’s inner-city children as themselves by adopting entire third-grade-or-earlier classes of children in inner-city schools (or entire third-grade-or-earlier class cohorts of children in public-housing projects) and providing them through high school graduation with tutoring and mentoring, and a guarantee of college tuition.
By way of background, this was essentially what was done in 1981 by Eugene Lang, a self-made multi-billionaire who went back to his Alma Mater, Harlem Public School 121, to address the graduating sixth-grade class and, on sudden inspiration, promised them their college tuition if they would stay in school. He promptly followed up by providing each of them with tutors and mentors for the next 6 years.
In 1986, his “I Have A Dream” Program was featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes and on the front page of The New York Times.
As a result, almost immediately 178 individuals stepped forward to replicate what Eugene Lang had done in 51 U.S. inner cities. Most were CEO’s of major corporations. But many were clergy whose congregants became the tutors and mentors -- indeed the very-first follow-on IHAD Program was implemented by Marble Collegiate Church beginning a mere 2 years after The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale had retired after serving as its Senior Minister for 52 years.
I am associated with a monthly study group that has been facilitated for the last 9.5 years by John Karls who was one of those 178 individuals and who, in addition, served as the volunteer treasurer of IHAD-National in the 1990’s. [Additional information about the study group is available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
The typical conditions faced by those 178 IHAD Programs in 51 U.S. inner cities???
Single-digit high-school graduation rates; 99% of children living in single-adult households; 95% of total households headed by a single adult who was a drug addict; 75%-80% of total households headed by a single-adult drug addict who turned over any receipts to the pusher so that the kids had to steal just in order to eat; and universal recognition by even 5-year-old inner-city children that their only realistic career objectives were to be a pimp or pusher, or a girl friend of a pimp or pusher graduating to whore.
The results of the 178 IHAD Programs???
The earliest programs (including Eugene Lang’s original group) transformed the typically single-digit high-school graduation rates of the classes ahead of the Dreamer class and following the Dreamer class to 60%-65%.
Then it was discovered that approximately 50% of the female Dreamers in the earliest programs had become pregnant as a result of which they dropped out.
And that their motivation almost invariably was that each felt that nobody had ever loved her, and she was going to create a human being that would have no choice but to love her.
Whereupon we discovered that for the 50% of the female Dreamers who had NOT become pregnant, each felt that there was someone who did love her (typically one of our tutors or mentors). And who had impressed upon her that she could make something of herself with the IHAD Program and it would break the heart of the person who loved her if she failed to do so.
The later programs among the 178 were encouraged to have all of their tutors and mentors who had become de facto Surrogate Parents impress upon their Dreamers that message.
The result was that the typical single-digit high-school graduation rates exceeded 90%.
[Unfortunately, this institutional knowledge appears to have been lost by IHAD-National whose Project Sponsors since 2000 have preferred to concentrate on close-in suburbs that were beginning to experience the White Flight that created America’s inner-city ghettos.]
So what became of The Promised Land???
Hillary Clinton was on IHAD-National’s Advisory Board until the 1992 Iowa caucuses. The first President Bush raised prodigious amounts of contributions for IHAD-Boston (which was headed by his nephew, Jamie Bush) and for IHAD-Houston, and was fond of proclaiming that the famous One Thousand Points Of Light portion of his Presidential Inaugural Address was inspired by IHAD.
But the False Prophets in the form of major foundations treated America’s inner cities as having an EDUCATION problem, rather than a SOCIOLOGICAL/SPIRITUAL problem!!!
Which made no more sense than closing an inner-city police precinct in whose jurisdiction a crime is committed and hiring amateurs in their place.
Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation have led the nation away from The Promised Land to worship for 10 years The False Idol of breaking up inner-city schools into smaller units and, after admitting that failure, of leading the nation to worship The False Idol of charter schools.
Charter schools are False Idols???
In 2009 Stanford University, financed by such pro-charter groups as the Walton Family Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, analyzed 2,403 charter schools in 15 states (about 50% of all charters and 70% of all charter students) and found that 37 percent had learning gains that were significantly below those of local public schools; 46 percent had gains that were no different; and only 17 percent showed growth that was better. This despite typically cherry picking the best students and expelling those who under-performed.
Does America have any excuse for failing to Love Its Inner-City Neighbors???
No!!!
Identical-Twin Studies are the Gold Standard for determining what is genetic and what is environmental because they focus on identical twins orphaned before their first birthday and raised in radically-different environments.
Identical-Twin Studies consistently show that the inner-city identical twins adopted by suburban families generate Measured IQ’s equal to average suburban Measured IQ’s, while their identical twins adopted by inner-city families generate Measured IQ’s equal to average inner-city Measured IQ’s.
But America appears to be crippled by its form of government!!!
It appears to be the only industrialized country that does NOT have a parliamentary form of government.
Under a parliamentary form of government, of course, a nation’s poor classes can form their own political party and elect a bloc of Members of Parliament whose votes, sooner or later, one of the major parties will need to form a governing coalition. Whereupon the needs of the poor classes are addressed.
It appears obvious from the last 35 years of Wandering In The Wilderness that America’s Government will NEVER enable America to enter The Promised Land.
And that unless Americans who believe that they should Love Their Neighbors As Themselves step forward to create protective cocoons within which the atmosphere of an entire inner-city grade-level of children is transformed from a disdain for learning to respect for education by long-term tutoring and mentoring, America’s inner-city children living in poverty will not only be condemned to a Fate Worse Than Death, but their ranks will continue to grow.
I hope that you will Carpe the Diem during your impending U.S. visit to challenge U.S. clergy to organize such programs and you will challenge their congregants to become the Surrogate-Parent tutors and mentors to minister to the 23% of American children that UNICEF confirms live in poverty.
Thank you for your consideration.
CALL TO ACTION – "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN
POPE FRANCIS AND ARCHBISHOP KURTZ NOW BOUNCING OUR E-MAILS
.
Reading Liberally Editorial Note:
The following exchange of e-mails is with Calvin Burgart.
Cal earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U.S. Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN in the 1960’s while the successful 18-month continuous demonstration project was proving the feasibility of thorium/fission reactors.
Thorium fission is the only technology which is already proven to solve global warming 100%, which is already proven to be safe (its inability to explode is why the U.S. turned away from thorium 50 years ago and turned toward uranium and plutonium instead), and which is so cheap compared to any alternative fuels that coercion (such as military invasions) would not be necessary to prevent, for example, China from bringing on stream one new monster-sized coal-fired electric-generation plant every week.
With regard to climate change, Cal was gracious enough on 4/9/2014, 9/11/2013 and 10/10/2012 to lead our meetings on thorium fission and to edit our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following each of those meetings (as well as leading our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukusima Daiichi).
Cal spent his career as head of his own companies in Southern California. (Cal stands for Calvin rather than California.)
Like Yours Truly, Cal’s association with Utah is skiing.
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Re: CALL TO ACTION REQUIRING ONLY 5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME + INFO ABOUT OUR JULY 15 MEETING
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, June 21, 2015 7:00 pm - MDT
To: Cal Burgart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Cal,
Yes, 'tis a pity!!!
Not that the e-mails are bouncing!!!
But that the Pope has taken the attitude that he has!!!
To explain, the Pope's e-mail address is correct according to the Vatican website. And the e-mail address for Archbishop Kurtz is correct according to his website.
But I began receiving reports late Saturday like yours that the e-mails were beginning to bounce.
Obviously the Pope and the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decided that they did NOT want to hear about this issue.
Which is tragic in and of itself.
But to be so brazen about not caring about The Poor and not caring about the second of Christ's Two Commandments to Love Your Neighbor As Yourself is incomprehensible.
Several recipients of our weekly newsletter whose attempts to send the e-mail to the Pope and Archbishop Kurtz also bounced are Roman Catholic.
Needless to say, they said they were shocked and appalled that the Pope and Archbishop Kurtz would turn their backs on the 23% of U.S. children who UNICEF confirms are living in poverty, while squandering their moral authority on the political issue of climate change.
With regard to climate change, thank you for leading our discussions on thorium fission on 4/9/2014, 9/11/2013 and 10/10/2012 and editing our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following each of those meetings (as well as leading our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukusima Daiichi).
It is a shame that the Pope is also turning his back (though, in fairness, he may not be aware of thorium fission) on the only technology which is already proven to solve global warming 100%, which is already proven to be safe (its inability to explode is why the U.S. turned away from thorium 50 years ago and turned toward uranium and plutonium instead), and which is so cheap compared to any alternative fuels that coercion (such as military invasions) would not be necessary to prevent, for example, China from bringing on stream one new monster-sized coal-fired electric-generation plant every week.
Because, according to several Roman Catholic participants whose e-mails to the Pope and Archbishop Kurtz bounced, a push by the Pope for thorium fission would not only solve all those problems (and just think of how the world's poor would benefit from a cheaper source of 100% clean energy from a substance that is so plentiful that, for example, virtually all of India's "sand" beaches are composed of thorium) --
but, according to the Roman Catholic participants, would enable the Pope to turn his attention back to religious issues, such as the needs of the 23% of U.S. children who UNICEF confirms are living in poverty.
Thank you for participating in the Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign to Pope Francis.
Your friend,
John K.
PS -- Will you be in Utah at all this summer trying to keep your ski house in shape??? If so, please let me know in case it is possible to rendezvous!!! If not, perhaps you could let me know about your BIG life-changing development!!!
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: CALL TO ACTION REQUIRING ONLY 5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME + INFO ABOUT OUR JULY 15 MEETING
From: Cal Burgart
Date: Sat, June 20, 2015 6:02 pm - MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried to send to both the email addresses that you indicated. They both bounced.
I did get this to my daughter who is a super volunteer. Hope to see you this summer. Have a BIG life changing development.
Calvin
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: The Approximately 150 Recipients Of Our Weekly E-mail
Subject: CALL TO ACTION REQUIRING ONLY 5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME + INFO ABOUT OUR JULY 15 MEETING
Date: Sat, June 20, 2015 1:28 am - MDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends,
**********
5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME REQUESTED TO SAVE AMERICA’S INNER-CITY CHILDREN
We take great pride in our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaigns to decision makers such as President Obama which, with only a few computer keyboard key strokes, can be sent by each of our members (1) to the decision maker, and (2) to all of the member's friends and acquaintances requesting them to do the same in an unending chain. [Indeed, these campaigns are what make us more than an unimportant self-edification group of patriotic policy wonks.]
Accordingly, we also take great pride that each of our recommendations has been approved unanimously at one of our meetings or, at most, received only one dissent.
The following e-mail campaign was adopted at our 6/17/2015 meeting.
The reasons for the campaign are contained in the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below the long string of asterisks that follows the end of this weekly E-mail.
If you agree with the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below, please:
(1) send the already-prepared e-mail appearing below to Pope Francis with a copy to the President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by simply cutting-and-pasting the already-prepared To, Cc, Subject and Text into your e-mail software (NB: please be sure to include both the To and the Cc to insure that both the Pope and the President of The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops actually see the e-mail, rather than the e-mail being discarded by staffers who aren’t worried about their bosses being blind-sided by the other addressee taking an interest and calling their own boss).
(2) send to all your friends and acquaintances the already-prepared e-mail package that comprises everything below the long string of asterisks that follows the end of this e-mail -- so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone in a cascading chain.
**********
OUR NEXT MEETING ON WED JULY 15
Our next meeting is Wed evening, July 15, at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South) in our regular Conference Room C.
Our focus book is “The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran” by Nazila Fathi ($19.59 + shipping or $15.39 Kindle from Amazon.com -- 336 pages).
**********
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Nazila Fathi worked for two decades as an Iranian correspondent for The New York Times before being forced to flee the country in 2009 at the height of the Green Revolution. Currently a writer for NPR and Foreign Policy and a commentator for Persian Language Voice of America television, she has held fellowships at Harvard University's Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard's Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics, and Harvard's Nieman Foundation, as well as at Lund University in Sweden. Fathi holds an MA in Political Science and Women's Studies from the University of Toronto. A frequent guest on BBC, CNN, NPR, and Fox News, she has also written for The New York Review of Books, Time, CNN.com, Agence France-Presse, Harvard's Nieman Reports, and the online news outlets openDemocracy and GlobalPost.
Teaser =
In the summer of 2009, as she was covering the popular uprisings in Tehran for the New York Times, Iranian journalist Nazila Fathi received a phone call. “They have given your photo to snipers,” a government source warned her. Soon after, with undercover agents closing in, Fathi fled the country with her husband and two children, beginning a life of exile.
In The Lonely War, Fathi interweaves her story with that of the country she left behind, showing how Iran is locked in a battle between hardliners and reformers that dates back to the country’s 1979 revolution. Fathi was nine years old when that uprising replaced the Iranian shah with a radical Islamic regime. Her father, an official at a government ministry, was fired for wearing a necktie and knowing English; to support his family he was forced to labor in an orchard hundreds of miles from Tehran. At the same time, the family’s destitute, uneducated housekeeper was able to retire and purchase a modern apartment—all because her family supported the new regime.
**********
RSVP’s REQUESTED BY NEXT FRIDAY
In accordance with our quorum-policy revision of 6/12/2013, instead of waiting until the last week before each monthly meeting to request RSVP's and canceling if we do not have our minimum quorum of six, RSVP's are requested in our first-of-the-monthly-cycle weekly e-mail.
Those who have RSVP’d will be informed immediately when we reach six so they can proceed to read the materials with assurance a discussion will take place.
If there are not six RSVP's by 11:59 pm next Friday, then next week's weekly e-mail will announce that the 7/15/2015 meeting is cancelled.
**********
SKYPE PARTICIPATION
Non-Utah-residents (and regular attendees who are temporarily out of town) are invited to participate in our meeting via Skype.
If you would like to do so, please press your reply button and type “request participation via Skype” and we will contact you to make appropriate arrangements.
**********
We hope to see/hear all of you on July 15th.
Your friend,
John K.
PS -- To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."
*******************************************************************************************************
To: All of your friends and acquaintances
Subj: CALL TO ACTION -- "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO SAVE AMERICA’S INNER-CITY CHILDREN FROM A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH (only 5 minutes of your time is needed)
Dear Friends,
I have been requested to participate in the referenced "call to action" and request that you participate as well.
It is the 25th such Call to Action on various topics recommended by a monthly patriotic study group over the last 9.5 years comprising already-prepared e-mails that can be sent to decision makers on important policy issues. The group’s attendance averages 11-12. Participants come from all walks of life but regular attendees include 5 attorneys (2 of whom are Assistant Utah Attorneys General) and 3 University of Utah scientists. [Its three meetings over the years on nuclear issues have been led by a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U/Tenn - Oak Ridge National Nuclear-Research Laboratory.] More information about the group is available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.
The campaigns are based on the fact that there are NO MORE THAN SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION between us and 100% of the American population.
And that, on important occasions, we can send to all of our friends and acquaintances an already-prepared e-mail (1) for them to send to decision maker(s), and (2) for them to send to all of their friends and acquaintances to do the same in an unending chain.
The salient reasons for the campaign are contained in the following already-prepared e-mail to Pope Francis.
**********
If you agree with the proposal, please –
If you agree with the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below, please:
(1) send the already-prepared e-mail appearing below to Pope Francis with a copy to the President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by simply cutting-and-pasting the already-prepared To, Cc, Subject and Text into your e-mail software (NB: please be sure to include both the To and the Cc to insure that both the Pope and the President of The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops actually see the e-mail, rather than the e-mail being discarded by staffers who aren’t worried about their bosses being blind-sided by the other addressee taking an interest and calling their own boss).
(2) send to all your friends and acquaintances this entire e-mail -- so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone in a cascading chain.
---------------------------- Your E-mail to Pope Francis ----------------------------
Subject: Message For Pope Francis Re The 23% of U.S. Children Living In Poverty
To: av@pccs.va
Cc: chancery@archlou.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suggested text of your E-mail --
To: His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
Cc: The Most Reverend Joseph E. Kurtz, D.D., President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Re: The 23% of U.S. Children Living In Poverty
Dear Holy Father,
As you are probably aware, UNICEF reports that not only do 23% of U.S. children live in poverty but that no other industrialized country tolerates even half that rate. Indeed, 23% is triple the rate of child poverty in Germany, Austria and France, and quadruple the rate in such nations as Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland.
The size of America’s Permanent Under-Class causes the U.S. to rank dead last among industrialized countries in terms of virtually every measure of civilization (e.g., infant mortality, literacy, life expectancy, upward mobility, etc., etc.).
It would appear that America is failing to obey Christ’s Second Commandment to Love Your Neighbor As Yourself when it comes to America’s inner-city children.
This despite the overwhelming majority of Americans self identifying as Christians and despite the Roman Catholic Church’s 78.2 million baptized members comprising 24% of the U.S. population.
Accordingly, it is respectfully suggested that during your pending visit to the United States, you challenge Americans in general and American Catholics in particular to follow Christ’s Commandment to love America’s inner-city children as themselves by adopting entire third-grade-or-earlier classes of children in inner-city schools (or entire third-grade-or-earlier class cohorts of children in public-housing projects) and providing them through high school graduation with tutoring and mentoring, and a guarantee of college tuition.
By way of background, this was essentially what was done in 1981 by Eugene Lang, a self-made multi-billionaire who went back to his Alma Mater, Harlem Public School 121, to address the graduating sixth-grade class and, on sudden inspiration, promised them their college tuition if they would stay in school. He promptly followed up by providing each of them with tutors and mentors for the next 6 years.
In 1986, his “I Have A Dream” Program was featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes and on the front page of The New York Times.
As a result, almost immediately 178 individuals stepped forward to replicate what Eugene Lang had done in 51 U.S. inner cities. Most were CEO’s of major corporations. But many were clergy whose congregants became the tutors and mentors -- indeed the very-first follow-on IHAD Program was implemented by Marble Collegiate Church beginning a mere 2 years after The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale had retired after serving as its Senior Minister for 52 years.
I am associated with a monthly study group that has been facilitated for the last 9.5 years by John Karls who was one of those 178 individuals and who, in addition, served as the volunteer treasurer of IHAD-National in the 1990’s. [Additional information about the study group is available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
The typical conditions faced by those 178 IHAD Programs in 51 U.S. inner cities???
Single-digit high-school graduation rates; 99% of children living in single-adult households; 95% of total households headed by a single adult who was a drug addict; 75%-80% of total households headed by a single-adult drug addict who turned over any receipts to the pusher so that the kids had to steal just in order to eat; and universal recognition by even 5-year-old inner-city children that their only realistic career objectives were to be a pimp or pusher, or a girl friend of a pimp or pusher graduating to whore.
The results of the 178 IHAD Programs???
The earliest programs (including Eugene Lang’s original group) transformed the typically single-digit high-school graduation rates of the classes ahead of the Dreamer class and following the Dreamer class to 60%-65%.
Then it was discovered that approximately 50% of the female Dreamers in the earliest programs had become pregnant as a result of which they dropped out.
And that their motivation almost invariably was that each felt that nobody had ever loved her, and she was going to create a human being that would have no choice but to love her.
Whereupon we discovered that for the 50% of the female Dreamers who had NOT become pregnant, each felt that there was someone who did love her (typically one of our tutors or mentors). And who had impressed upon her that she could make something of herself with the IHAD Program and it would break the heart of the person who loved her if she failed to do so.
The later programs among the 178 were encouraged to have all of their tutors and mentors who had become de facto Surrogate Parents impress upon their Dreamers that message.
The result was that the typical single-digit high-school graduation rates exceeded 90%.
[Unfortunately, this institutional knowledge appears to have been lost by IHAD-National whose Project Sponsors since 2000 have preferred to concentrate on close-in suburbs that were beginning to experience the White Flight that created America’s inner-city ghettos.]
So what became of The Promised Land???
Hillary Clinton was on IHAD-National’s Advisory Board until the 1992 Iowa caucuses. The first President Bush raised prodigious amounts of contributions for IHAD-Boston (which was headed by his nephew, Jamie Bush) and for IHAD-Houston, and was fond of proclaiming that the famous One Thousand Points Of Light portion of his Presidential Inaugural Address was inspired by IHAD.
But the False Prophets in the form of major foundations treated America’s inner cities as having an EDUCATION problem, rather than a SOCIOLOGICAL/SPIRITUAL problem!!!
Which made no more sense than closing an inner-city police precinct in whose jurisdiction a crime is committed and hiring amateurs in their place.
Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation have led the nation away from The Promised Land to worship for 10 years The False Idol of breaking up inner-city schools into smaller units and, after admitting that failure, of leading the nation to worship The False Idol of charter schools.
Charter schools are False Idols???
In 2009 Stanford University, financed by such pro-charter groups as the Walton Family Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, analyzed 2,403 charter schools in 15 states (about 50% of all charters and 70% of all charter students) and found that 37 percent had learning gains that were significantly below those of local public schools; 46 percent had gains that were no different; and only 17 percent showed growth that was better. This despite typically cherry picking the best students and expelling those who under-performed.
Does America have any excuse for failing to Love Its Inner-City Neighbors???
No!!!
Identical-Twin Studies are the Gold Standard for determining what is genetic and what is environmental because they focus on identical twins orphaned before their first birthday and raised in radically-different environments.
Identical-Twin Studies consistently show that the inner-city identical twins adopted by suburban families generate Measured IQ’s equal to average suburban Measured IQ’s, while their identical twins adopted by inner-city families generate Measured IQ’s equal to average inner-city Measured IQ’s.
But America appears to be crippled by its form of government!!!
It appears to be the only industrialized country that does NOT have a parliamentary form of government.
Under a parliamentary form of government, of course, a nation’s poor classes can form their own political party and elect a bloc of Members of Parliament whose votes, sooner or later, one of the major parties will need to form a governing coalition. Whereupon the needs of the poor classes are addressed.
It appears obvious from the last 35 years of Wandering In The Wilderness that America’s Government will NEVER enable America to enter The Promised Land.
And that unless Americans who believe that they should Love Their Neighbors As Themselves step forward to create protective cocoons within which the atmosphere of an entire inner-city grade-level of children is transformed from a disdain for learning to respect for education by long-term tutoring and mentoring, America’s inner-city children living in poverty will not only be condemned to a Fate Worse Than Death, but their ranks will continue to grow.
I hope that you will Carpe the Diem during your impending U.S. visit to challenge U.S. clergy to organize such programs and you will challenge their congregants to become the Surrogate-Parent tutors and mentors to minister to the 23% of American children that UNICEF confirms live in poverty.
Thank you for your consideration.
Reading Liberally Editorial Note:
The following exchange of e-mails is with Calvin Burgart.
Cal earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U.S. Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN in the 1960’s while the successful 18-month continuous demonstration project was proving the feasibility of thorium/fission reactors.
Thorium fission is the only technology which is already proven to solve global warming 100%, which is already proven to be safe (its inability to explode is why the U.S. turned away from thorium 50 years ago and turned toward uranium and plutonium instead), and which is so cheap compared to any alternative fuels that coercion (such as military invasions) would not be necessary to prevent, for example, China from bringing on stream one new monster-sized coal-fired electric-generation plant every week.
With regard to climate change, Cal was gracious enough on 4/9/2014, 9/11/2013 and 10/10/2012 to lead our meetings on thorium fission and to edit our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following each of those meetings (as well as leading our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukusima Daiichi).
Cal spent his career as head of his own companies in Southern California. (Cal stands for Calvin rather than California.)
Like Yours Truly, Cal’s association with Utah is skiing.
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: Re: CALL TO ACTION REQUIRING ONLY 5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME + INFO ABOUT OUR JULY 15 MEETING
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, June 21, 2015 7:00 pm - MDT
To: Cal Burgart
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Cal,
Yes, 'tis a pity!!!
Not that the e-mails are bouncing!!!
But that the Pope has taken the attitude that he has!!!
To explain, the Pope's e-mail address is correct according to the Vatican website. And the e-mail address for Archbishop Kurtz is correct according to his website.
But I began receiving reports late Saturday like yours that the e-mails were beginning to bounce.
Obviously the Pope and the President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops decided that they did NOT want to hear about this issue.
Which is tragic in and of itself.
But to be so brazen about not caring about The Poor and not caring about the second of Christ's Two Commandments to Love Your Neighbor As Yourself is incomprehensible.
Several recipients of our weekly newsletter whose attempts to send the e-mail to the Pope and Archbishop Kurtz also bounced are Roman Catholic.
Needless to say, they said they were shocked and appalled that the Pope and Archbishop Kurtz would turn their backs on the 23% of U.S. children who UNICEF confirms are living in poverty, while squandering their moral authority on the political issue of climate change.
With regard to climate change, thank you for leading our discussions on thorium fission on 4/9/2014, 9/11/2013 and 10/10/2012 and editing our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaigns following each of those meetings (as well as leading our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukusima Daiichi).
It is a shame that the Pope is also turning his back (though, in fairness, he may not be aware of thorium fission) on the only technology which is already proven to solve global warming 100%, which is already proven to be safe (its inability to explode is why the U.S. turned away from thorium 50 years ago and turned toward uranium and plutonium instead), and which is so cheap compared to any alternative fuels that coercion (such as military invasions) would not be necessary to prevent, for example, China from bringing on stream one new monster-sized coal-fired electric-generation plant every week.
Because, according to several Roman Catholic participants whose e-mails to the Pope and Archbishop Kurtz bounced, a push by the Pope for thorium fission would not only solve all those problems (and just think of how the world's poor would benefit from a cheaper source of 100% clean energy from a substance that is so plentiful that, for example, virtually all of India's "sand" beaches are composed of thorium) --
but, according to the Roman Catholic participants, would enable the Pope to turn his attention back to religious issues, such as the needs of the 23% of U.S. children who UNICEF confirms are living in poverty.
Thank you for participating in the Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign to Pope Francis.
Your friend,
John K.
PS -- Will you be in Utah at all this summer trying to keep your ski house in shape??? If so, please let me know in case it is possible to rendezvous!!! If not, perhaps you could let me know about your BIG life-changing development!!!
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Re: CALL TO ACTION REQUIRING ONLY 5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME + INFO ABOUT OUR JULY 15 MEETING
From: Cal Burgart
Date: Sat, June 20, 2015 6:02 pm - MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I tried to send to both the email addresses that you indicated. They both bounced.
I did get this to my daughter who is a super volunteer. Hope to see you this summer. Have a BIG life changing development.
Calvin
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: The Approximately 150 Recipients Of Our Weekly E-mail
Subject: CALL TO ACTION REQUIRING ONLY 5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME + INFO ABOUT OUR JULY 15 MEETING
Date: Sat, June 20, 2015 1:28 am - MDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends,
**********
5 MINUTES OF YOUR TIME REQUESTED TO SAVE AMERICA’S INNER-CITY CHILDREN
We take great pride in our Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail campaigns to decision makers such as President Obama which, with only a few computer keyboard key strokes, can be sent by each of our members (1) to the decision maker, and (2) to all of the member's friends and acquaintances requesting them to do the same in an unending chain. [Indeed, these campaigns are what make us more than an unimportant self-edification group of patriotic policy wonks.]
Accordingly, we also take great pride that each of our recommendations has been approved unanimously at one of our meetings or, at most, received only one dissent.
The following e-mail campaign was adopted at our 6/17/2015 meeting.
The reasons for the campaign are contained in the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below the long string of asterisks that follows the end of this weekly E-mail.
If you agree with the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below, please:
(1) send the already-prepared e-mail appearing below to Pope Francis with a copy to the President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by simply cutting-and-pasting the already-prepared To, Cc, Subject and Text into your e-mail software (NB: please be sure to include both the To and the Cc to insure that both the Pope and the President of The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops actually see the e-mail, rather than the e-mail being discarded by staffers who aren’t worried about their bosses being blind-sided by the other addressee taking an interest and calling their own boss).
(2) send to all your friends and acquaintances the already-prepared e-mail package that comprises everything below the long string of asterisks that follows the end of this e-mail -- so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone in a cascading chain.
**********
OUR NEXT MEETING ON WED JULY 15
Our next meeting is Wed evening, July 15, at the Salt Lake Public Library (210 East 400 South) in our regular Conference Room C.
Our focus book is “The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran” by Nazila Fathi ($19.59 + shipping or $15.39 Kindle from Amazon.com -- 336 pages).
**********
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Nazila Fathi worked for two decades as an Iranian correspondent for The New York Times before being forced to flee the country in 2009 at the height of the Green Revolution. Currently a writer for NPR and Foreign Policy and a commentator for Persian Language Voice of America television, she has held fellowships at Harvard University's Belfer Center at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard's Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics, and Harvard's Nieman Foundation, as well as at Lund University in Sweden. Fathi holds an MA in Political Science and Women's Studies from the University of Toronto. A frequent guest on BBC, CNN, NPR, and Fox News, she has also written for The New York Review of Books, Time, CNN.com, Agence France-Presse, Harvard's Nieman Reports, and the online news outlets openDemocracy and GlobalPost.
Teaser =
In the summer of 2009, as she was covering the popular uprisings in Tehran for the New York Times, Iranian journalist Nazila Fathi received a phone call. “They have given your photo to snipers,” a government source warned her. Soon after, with undercover agents closing in, Fathi fled the country with her husband and two children, beginning a life of exile.
In The Lonely War, Fathi interweaves her story with that of the country she left behind, showing how Iran is locked in a battle between hardliners and reformers that dates back to the country’s 1979 revolution. Fathi was nine years old when that uprising replaced the Iranian shah with a radical Islamic regime. Her father, an official at a government ministry, was fired for wearing a necktie and knowing English; to support his family he was forced to labor in an orchard hundreds of miles from Tehran. At the same time, the family’s destitute, uneducated housekeeper was able to retire and purchase a modern apartment—all because her family supported the new regime.
**********
RSVP’s REQUESTED BY NEXT FRIDAY
In accordance with our quorum-policy revision of 6/12/2013, instead of waiting until the last week before each monthly meeting to request RSVP's and canceling if we do not have our minimum quorum of six, RSVP's are requested in our first-of-the-monthly-cycle weekly e-mail.
Those who have RSVP’d will be informed immediately when we reach six so they can proceed to read the materials with assurance a discussion will take place.
If there are not six RSVP's by 11:59 pm next Friday, then next week's weekly e-mail will announce that the 7/15/2015 meeting is cancelled.
**********
SKYPE PARTICIPATION
Non-Utah-residents (and regular attendees who are temporarily out of town) are invited to participate in our meeting via Skype.
If you would like to do so, please press your reply button and type “request participation via Skype” and we will contact you to make appropriate arrangements.
**********
We hope to see/hear all of you on July 15th.
Your friend,
John K.
PS -- To un-subscribe, please press "reply" and type "deletion requested."
*******************************************************************************************************
To: All of your friends and acquaintances
Subj: CALL TO ACTION -- "SIX-DEGREES-OF-SEPARATION" E-MAIL CAMPAIGN TO SAVE AMERICA’S INNER-CITY CHILDREN FROM A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH (only 5 minutes of your time is needed)
Dear Friends,
I have been requested to participate in the referenced "call to action" and request that you participate as well.
It is the 25th such Call to Action on various topics recommended by a monthly patriotic study group over the last 9.5 years comprising already-prepared e-mails that can be sent to decision makers on important policy issues. The group’s attendance averages 11-12. Participants come from all walks of life but regular attendees include 5 attorneys (2 of whom are Assistant Utah Attorneys General) and 3 University of Utah scientists. [Its three meetings over the years on nuclear issues have been led by a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U/Tenn - Oak Ridge National Nuclear-Research Laboratory.] More information about the group is available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.
The campaigns are based on the fact that there are NO MORE THAN SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION between us and 100% of the American population.
And that, on important occasions, we can send to all of our friends and acquaintances an already-prepared e-mail (1) for them to send to decision maker(s), and (2) for them to send to all of their friends and acquaintances to do the same in an unending chain.
The salient reasons for the campaign are contained in the following already-prepared e-mail to Pope Francis.
**********
If you agree with the proposal, please –
If you agree with the recommended E-mail to Pope Francis that appears below, please:
(1) send the already-prepared e-mail appearing below to Pope Francis with a copy to the President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops by simply cutting-and-pasting the already-prepared To, Cc, Subject and Text into your e-mail software (NB: please be sure to include both the To and the Cc to insure that both the Pope and the President of The U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops actually see the e-mail, rather than the e-mail being discarded by staffers who aren’t worried about their bosses being blind-sided by the other addressee taking an interest and calling their own boss).
(2) send to all your friends and acquaintances this entire e-mail -- so that, through no more than six degrees of separation to 100% of the American population, we reach everyone in a cascading chain.
---------------------------- Your E-mail to Pope Francis ----------------------------
Subject: Message For Pope Francis Re The 23% of U.S. Children Living In Poverty
To: av@pccs.va
Cc: chancery@archlou.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Suggested text of your E-mail --
To: His Holiness, Pope Francis PP.
Cc: The Most Reverend Joseph E. Kurtz, D.D., President of The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Re: The 23% of U.S. Children Living In Poverty
Dear Holy Father,
As you are probably aware, UNICEF reports that not only do 23% of U.S. children live in poverty but that no other industrialized country tolerates even half that rate. Indeed, 23% is triple the rate of child poverty in Germany, Austria and France, and quadruple the rate in such nations as Denmark, Slovenia, Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland.
The size of America’s Permanent Under-Class causes the U.S. to rank dead last among industrialized countries in terms of virtually every measure of civilization (e.g., infant mortality, literacy, life expectancy, upward mobility, etc., etc.).
It would appear that America is failing to obey Christ’s Second Commandment to Love Your Neighbor As Yourself when it comes to America’s inner-city children.
This despite the overwhelming majority of Americans self identifying as Christians and despite the Roman Catholic Church’s 78.2 million baptized members comprising 24% of the U.S. population.
Accordingly, it is respectfully suggested that during your pending visit to the United States, you challenge Americans in general and American Catholics in particular to follow Christ’s Commandment to love America’s inner-city children as themselves by adopting entire third-grade-or-earlier classes of children in inner-city schools (or entire third-grade-or-earlier class cohorts of children in public-housing projects) and providing them through high school graduation with tutoring and mentoring, and a guarantee of college tuition.
By way of background, this was essentially what was done in 1981 by Eugene Lang, a self-made multi-billionaire who went back to his Alma Mater, Harlem Public School 121, to address the graduating sixth-grade class and, on sudden inspiration, promised them their college tuition if they would stay in school. He promptly followed up by providing each of them with tutors and mentors for the next 6 years.
In 1986, his “I Have A Dream” Program was featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes and on the front page of The New York Times.
As a result, almost immediately 178 individuals stepped forward to replicate what Eugene Lang had done in 51 U.S. inner cities. Most were CEO’s of major corporations. But many were clergy whose congregants became the tutors and mentors -- indeed the very-first follow-on IHAD Program was implemented by Marble Collegiate Church beginning a mere 2 years after The Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale had retired after serving as its Senior Minister for 52 years.
I am associated with a monthly study group that has been facilitated for the last 9.5 years by John Karls who was one of those 178 individuals and who, in addition, served as the volunteer treasurer of IHAD-National in the 1990’s. [Additional information about the study group is available on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
The typical conditions faced by those 178 IHAD Programs in 51 U.S. inner cities???
Single-digit high-school graduation rates; 99% of children living in single-adult households; 95% of total households headed by a single adult who was a drug addict; 75%-80% of total households headed by a single-adult drug addict who turned over any receipts to the pusher so that the kids had to steal just in order to eat; and universal recognition by even 5-year-old inner-city children that their only realistic career objectives were to be a pimp or pusher, or a girl friend of a pimp or pusher graduating to whore.
The results of the 178 IHAD Programs???
The earliest programs (including Eugene Lang’s original group) transformed the typically single-digit high-school graduation rates of the classes ahead of the Dreamer class and following the Dreamer class to 60%-65%.
Then it was discovered that approximately 50% of the female Dreamers in the earliest programs had become pregnant as a result of which they dropped out.
And that their motivation almost invariably was that each felt that nobody had ever loved her, and she was going to create a human being that would have no choice but to love her.
Whereupon we discovered that for the 50% of the female Dreamers who had NOT become pregnant, each felt that there was someone who did love her (typically one of our tutors or mentors). And who had impressed upon her that she could make something of herself with the IHAD Program and it would break the heart of the person who loved her if she failed to do so.
The later programs among the 178 were encouraged to have all of their tutors and mentors who had become de facto Surrogate Parents impress upon their Dreamers that message.
The result was that the typical single-digit high-school graduation rates exceeded 90%.
[Unfortunately, this institutional knowledge appears to have been lost by IHAD-National whose Project Sponsors since 2000 have preferred to concentrate on close-in suburbs that were beginning to experience the White Flight that created America’s inner-city ghettos.]
So what became of The Promised Land???
Hillary Clinton was on IHAD-National’s Advisory Board until the 1992 Iowa caucuses. The first President Bush raised prodigious amounts of contributions for IHAD-Boston (which was headed by his nephew, Jamie Bush) and for IHAD-Houston, and was fond of proclaiming that the famous One Thousand Points Of Light portion of his Presidential Inaugural Address was inspired by IHAD.
But the False Prophets in the form of major foundations treated America’s inner cities as having an EDUCATION problem, rather than a SOCIOLOGICAL/SPIRITUAL problem!!!
Which made no more sense than closing an inner-city police precinct in whose jurisdiction a crime is committed and hiring amateurs in their place.
Bill and Melinda Gates and their foundation have led the nation away from The Promised Land to worship for 10 years The False Idol of breaking up inner-city schools into smaller units and, after admitting that failure, of leading the nation to worship The False Idol of charter schools.
Charter schools are False Idols???
In 2009 Stanford University, financed by such pro-charter groups as the Walton Family Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, analyzed 2,403 charter schools in 15 states (about 50% of all charters and 70% of all charter students) and found that 37 percent had learning gains that were significantly below those of local public schools; 46 percent had gains that were no different; and only 17 percent showed growth that was better. This despite typically cherry picking the best students and expelling those who under-performed.
Does America have any excuse for failing to Love Its Inner-City Neighbors???
No!!!
Identical-Twin Studies are the Gold Standard for determining what is genetic and what is environmental because they focus on identical twins orphaned before their first birthday and raised in radically-different environments.
Identical-Twin Studies consistently show that the inner-city identical twins adopted by suburban families generate Measured IQ’s equal to average suburban Measured IQ’s, while their identical twins adopted by inner-city families generate Measured IQ’s equal to average inner-city Measured IQ’s.
But America appears to be crippled by its form of government!!!
It appears to be the only industrialized country that does NOT have a parliamentary form of government.
Under a parliamentary form of government, of course, a nation’s poor classes can form their own political party and elect a bloc of Members of Parliament whose votes, sooner or later, one of the major parties will need to form a governing coalition. Whereupon the needs of the poor classes are addressed.
It appears obvious from the last 35 years of Wandering In The Wilderness that America’s Government will NEVER enable America to enter The Promised Land.
And that unless Americans who believe that they should Love Their Neighbors As Themselves step forward to create protective cocoons within which the atmosphere of an entire inner-city grade-level of children is transformed from a disdain for learning to respect for education by long-term tutoring and mentoring, America’s inner-city children living in poverty will not only be condemned to a Fate Worse Than Death, but their ranks will continue to grow.
I hope that you will Carpe the Diem during your impending U.S. visit to challenge U.S. clergy to organize such programs and you will challenge their congregants to become the Surrogate-Parent tutors and mentors to minister to the 23% of American children that UNICEF confirms live in poverty.
Thank you for your consideration.
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