BLUE RIDGE MIDDLE SCHOOL in Loudoun County, Virginia,
for an extreme case of its "zero tolerance" policies as well as a good
bit of inherent hypocrisy.
In 1999, eighth-grader Benjamin Ratner was suspended for four months due
to possession of a knife--which he had because he had just taken it away
from a fellow student who was threatening suicide. Despite the fact that the
school board itself called Ratner's actions "noble" and "admirable," they
upheld the sentence based on the fact that...Ratner should not have been
in possesion of a knife. Period.
The family took the case to court, where in 2001 it finally landed in the
4th Circuit Court of Appeals. There Judge CLYDE H.
HAMILTON praised the
young man, saying he possessed "common sense" and was "the victim of good
intentions run amok." He
added, "The panic over school violence has caused school officials to jettison
the common sense idea that a person's punishment should fit his crime."
Yet Benjamin and his family lost their case. Judge Hamilton finally ruled that
it was not the federal court's place to overturn a school's zero tolerance
policy, and that such changes are the jobs of state legislatures.
HILL & KOWLTON, a public relations firm in Washington
D.C. who will work for any government that pays them enough. Their most
notorious piece of work came at the opening of the 1990's when the U.S.
government was trying to drum up support for what would become the Persian
Gulf War, and through this firm produced a
horrifying example of Iraq's inhumanity: Iraqi soldiers stealing
incubators and leaving premature babies on the cold hospital floor to die.
Later investigations revealed that the story was a hoax, created from the
brains of Hill & Kowlton.
It was this firm that also gained notoriety (but possibly more clients)
for itself by stating, "We would represent Satan, if he paid us."
Wealthy Democratic contributors ELAINE AND GERALD
SCHUSTER, for leaving the Democratic party in May 2001 after it
interfered in their own affairs.
As reported by the Boston Globe on 5/25/01, the Schusters had
contributed millions of dollars to Democratic candidates, including Sen. Ted
Kennedy (MA), Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY), and Sen. John Kerry (MA), along with
hundreds of thousands
of dollars in soft money donations. However, when Massachusetts Democratic
party state chairman Philip Johnston and two other party officials wrote the
Schusters a letter urging them to settle a labor dispute going on in a nursing
home the Schusters owned in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, the couple was furious
and announced their intentions to leave the Democratic party.
Apparently unaware of the Democratic party's long history of supporting labor
unions, a Schuster spokesman said the couple felt the party had taken the
labor union's side over theirs, and that the interference was hindering the
negotiation process.
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