ACADEMY, CALIF. -- Among the men from all sections of the country who thronged to California during the excitement following the discovery of gold was a young American of Scotch ancestry, Gillum Baley, who was born in Pettis County, Mo., Jun 19, 1813. Gillum Baley from Gallatin County, Illinois.
     His youth and young man hood was spent in Sangamon County, Ill., where at the age of nineteen he was an ordained minister of the Methodist Church, although he never held an itinerant pastorate. At the age of about twenty-one, he chose Missouri as his place of residence, settling there in 1834.
     He was admitted to the bar in Missouri but never practiced, although he served for sixteen years as Associate Justice in the counties of Andrew, Jackson and Nodaway, in that state. In 1849 he crossed the plains to California with his two brothers, Caleb and W. Rite Baley. Leaving their home in April they arrived at the destination in September, and worked in the mines with more or less success for several years.
     In 1852 young Baley returned to Missouri via Panama, but the memory of California's charms lingered with him in his eastern home and he was not content until he was again en route for the Golden State.
     In 1858 he gathered 200 thoroughbred Durham cattle and with his wife and nine children and his brother W. Rite in the party, again started for the Pacific Coast. Near Fort Hardy the party was attacked by Indians, and losing their cattle and supplies were obliged to return to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a new outfit, starting again for the coast in August, 1859, with six mules and wagons. This time they were more fortunate and reached their destination, arriving at Visalia in November 1859.
     January 17, 1860, Mr. Baley moved to Millerton, Fresno County, leaving his brother, W. R., in Visalia. He made a number of trips from Stockton to Millerton, driving a six-mule team with supplies, and also mined on the San Joaquin River three miles above Fort Miller, and on Fresno River, until 1866, when he removed to Fort Miller on accout of the school advantages for his children.
     In 1867 he was elected County Judge of Fresno County and served twelve years on the bench. When the county seat was moved to Fresno in 1874 he was elected and served two years as treasurer of Fresno County. For a time he was engaged in the grocery business in Fresno with his son Charles C. Baley.
    He owned 160 acres of land at Tollhouse, Fresno County, also 1,000 acres in small tracts in different parts of the county.    Mrs. Permelia E. Baley died in Fresno in 1906.

    [Editor's Note: For more detail on this incident see: "The History of Fresno County, California, with Biographical Sketches," by Paul E. Vandor in two volumes from The Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, Califonia Vol. I, pp. 623.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

THE DAILY arise and read a news leak from CLOVISNEWS.COM

~Updated~
February 17, 2004
THE MYSTERY AT ACADEMY
SCHOOLHOUSE & CEMETERY
Howard E. Hobbs PhD, Editor & Publisher

     ACADEMY, CALIF. -- The historic one-room Academy prairie schoolhouse, located one-quarter mile Northwest of the Academy Cemetery on the South bank of Dog Creek in a grove of oak trees, was established at the exact location of a much earlier settlement that would be renamed as as Academy in 1871. It would become the foundation for a first secondary school in Fresno County.  
     James Darwin Collins, later sheriff, was the first teacher. He taught there until 1876. The reputation of the young schoolmaster drew many of the early pioneer families to the vicinity of this school where they established homes along the Upper Dry Creek in order to give their children the benefit of his teaching service paid for by tuition. In this way the Academt settlement grew large as it was built into a thriving community.
    The Clovis Free Press has obtained a news story which appeared in the Fresno Expositor on the school and its name "Academy." The text of the Expositor story reported: "Academy is the name of th new Post office, and will become the local name of th region heretofore known as Upper Dry Creek. The name Academy is well deserved from the enterprise and liberality of its citizens who built the beautifu and an commodious school edifice that adorns the valley among the big Oak Trees just at the edge of the foothills."
     Just easterly of The Academy stood the small Methodist-Episcopal South Church, built in 1869 and still in use today. The stage route from Visalia to Millerton passed nearby and soon, a small village sprang up including a hotel, store, stables and a post office to which the name ACADEMY was attached. Later, it was a stopping place for the Tollhouse Teamsters.
     Many of the County's earliest families settled here engaging wheat growing and the cattle raising business. Nearly all of the early families attended the Academy Secondary School. Most of them and many of their descendants now rest in the nearby pioneer cemetery.
    The school building is typical of most one room school houses throughout the California prairie. Placed on one acre of land, the front door faced the East. There were four windows on the North and South sides, later a window on the Southwest side was changed to a door for fire safety reasons. There was a wood plank front porch floor with four galvanized posts that were worn slick from the pupils swinging on them.
     A school bell in the belfry was rung at 8:30 a.m. for 5 minutes, then class started at 9:00 a.m. The teacher's desk was on a raised platform on the West end of the room, with a blackboard, bookcase, piano and pull-down maps behind and to the sides. Three rows of double desks for the pupils, smaller desks in front and larger desks in back were placed in front of the teacher.
     There were curtains that could be pulled together in front of the platform area for plays and performances. A potbellied stove was on the North side of the room. Older boys would bring in kindling from the shed on those cold days and they would pop corn on the stove.
     Just inside the front door were pegs on the wall for coats, shelves for lunch buckets, places to hang drinking cups, a pail for drinking water, and a wash basin and towel.
     Outside on the South was a well near the drinking water. The wood shed was near the back door. On the North side was the two outhouses - one for boys, and one for girls. The official Academy School Roll Book included most of the names that are now carved in stone and marble headstone cemetery markers.
     The distinction of the most mysterious Academy grave goes to Permelia E. Baley (Plot #130) who died at age 87 with birth year shown as 1719 -- 130 years prior to the California gold discovery and the oldest known pioneer grave site in the Wild West. Funds to build the Academy Schoolhouse $3170 was raised from local donations. By 1877 the school had enrolled 55 students.
    In 1856 when Fresno County was organized, the town of Millerton became the Fresno County Seat. Big Dry Creek and its Academy were the nearest settlement. As the 1850's progressed, a wide variety of people began moving in. Women and children came too,on horseback and in horse-drawn covered wagons, bringing large quanties of food.
    In 1868 the first geneal store was opened. Lewis Clark and Jesse Blasingame arrived at about the same time. John Simpson donated land for a church house. Joel Hedgepeth became its first minister in the one-room building with the steeple and a bell in the same clearing near The Academy School house was constructed in1872. In 1876 the Academy Post Office was established.
    

       [Editor's Note: See an alphabetical list of persons and families remembered at the Academy Schoolhouse and Cemetery; Appreciation to John Allan Dow for permission to cite University of Southern California, doctoral dissertation: "History of Public School Organization and Administration in Fresno County, California" June 1967; to Wallace Smith, Max Hardison Pub., Fresno, Calif, 1935; to W. Storrs Lee, California, A Literary Chronicle, Funk & Wagnalls, N.Y., 1968; Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads,
p. 44, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1943; John Dewey, Democracy & Education, N.Y., Macmillan Co., 1916  .Miwok Indian peoples are known to have ranged at or near Big Dry Creek at Academy: U.C. Anthropologist A.L. Kroeber (1925) estimates that in 1770 there were about 500 Lake Miwok, 1,500 Coast Miwok, and 9,000 Plains and Sierra Miwok, bringing the total to 11,000. However, The census of 1910 returned 670, but Kroeber estimates less than 700 of the Sierra Miwok. The census of 1930 returned 491.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

~Reprise~
May 5, 1996
Humble Clovis Defies
Education Visigoths
by Christopher Garcia, assistant editor of Policy Review:
The Journal of American Citizenship.

     CLOVIS -- In 507 AD, at Vouille in present day France, the King of the Franks led a band of warriors against the Visigoths, the marauding barbarians who had sacked Rome a century earlier. The king, named Clovis, defeated the Visigoths and broke their hold on Europe.
     Today, a modern namesake-the Clovis Unified School District (CUSD),another ominous empire: the education establishment. Despite serving a significant portion of Fresno's urban poor, Clovis is proving that public schools can deliver a good education with a small budget and minimal bureaucracy.
     Clovis has long ignored the prevailing cant about the need for high spending and huge bureaucratic machinery to regulate public education. During the 1993-94 school year, CUSD spent $3,892 per pupil; school districts nationwide averaged $5,730. The district's student-to-administrator ratio is 520:1-nearly twice the national average. And although similarly sized districts (like those in Rochester, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin) typically house 300 to 400 employees in their central offices, CUSD employs just 167.
     With no teachers union or Parent Teachers Association (PTA), CUSD is a rarity among public schools. In this case, less means more-more students performing above average across a broad range of measures. The district's average score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) is 52 points higher than the state average and 42 points higher than the national average. CUSD's mean composite score on the American College Test (ACT) stands respectably at the 65th percentile. In 1995, with a senior cohort of 1,606, CUSD students passed 720 Advanced Placement (AP) exams.
     Perhaps one reason Clovis kids outperform their peers is that they show up for class more often: The district's high-school attendance rate is nearly 95 percent, and its drop-out rate is only 4 percent. The district doesn't skimp on its extracurricular offerings, either. More than 80 percent of Clovis students participate in one of the most successful programs in California.
     Last year, the district earned a championship at the National Future Farmers of America Convention and sent its state-champion Odyssey of the Mind team to compete in the world finals. Many Clovis children are among the most disadvantaged in the region. Nearly 40 percent of the district's students live in Fresno City.
     Six of CUSD's elementary schools enroll enough AFDC children to qualify for direct financial assistance from the federal government. And five schools have student bodies with more than 50 percent minorities. In 1989, the median household income of the community surrounding Pinedale Elementary School was $10,000 below the national median of $28,906. And yet Mexican-Americans, who make up the district's largest minority (about 18 percent of all students),state and national counterparts on the ACT by significant margins.
     Created in 1960 from the merger of seven rural, low-income school districts, CUSD presented its first superintendent, Floyd V. Buchanan, with a significant challenge: Barely more than one in three of the district's 1,843 students performed at grade level. Buchanan wanted to push this figure to 90 percent-but how? Put simply: competition, control, and consequences. Buchanan reasoned that schools would not be spurred to meet the goals that he and the central administration set for them unless they competed against one another in academic and extracurricular achievement. He established goals for each of the system's 11 schools at the start of the year, ranked them according to their performance at year's end, and established a system of carrots and sticks (mostly carrots).
     Most importantly, administrators and teachers were allowed to choose the teaching methods and curricula they felt suited their objectives. This formula, in place for decades, has allowed the district-now with 30 schools and 28, 000 students-to place between 70 and 90 percent of its students at grade level. Competition in the district exists at several levels. Earning a rating as a top school is its own reward, but the district recognizes high achievement in other ways.
     The top schools on the elementary, intermediate, and high- school levels are recognized at an annual, districtwide award ceremony. The district's best teachers and administrators are honored at a dinner. And the school's achievements are reported to parents and the community in the pages of the district's publications.
     The friendly, competitive culture at Clovis clearly has helped drive achievement. Because a school's performance at a districtwide choral competition or drama fair influences its ratings, teachers, students, and administrators work hard to give their routines the extra edge needed to push ahead of their colleagues. Schools borrow the winning strategies used elsewhere. Students at Clovis West High School, for example, often score better on SATs and AP exams than those at Clovis High School, so Clovis High has borrowed test-preparation tips from Clovis West.
     Clovis High is also trying to improve discipline by looking at successful techniques employed at Buchanan High. Competition, however, would produce little without local decision-making. Anticipating trends that would revolutionize America's Fortune 500 companies, Buchanan made flexible, decentralized, site-based management a fundamental feature of the school system in 1972. The district office has been responsible for setting goals and establishing guidelines, but schools have worked to meet these goals in their own ways. ";They give us the what and we figure out the how,"Elementary School.
     When officials at Pinedale Elementary School determined that parent participation there was lower than at other schools, for example, they realized that immigrant parents felt locked out by language barriers. So they created ";family nights"; to help these parents take part in their children's education. With their children present, the parents are taught games and devices they can use at home to help their children with their homework.
     The result: Immigrant parents now participate more. Such innovation is easier in the absence of teacher unions. For example, the district deploys teachers weekly to the homes of about 100 recently arrived immigrants to provide them English-language instruction and to help them build a bridge to their rapidly assimilating children. Meredith Ekwall, a first-grade teacher at Weldon Elementary School, teaches English at night to the parents of her ESL students to encourage
     English use in the home. In districts where collective-bargaining agreements stipulate precisely how much time teachers spend teaching, micromanage the amount of time teachers can devote to activities outside of the classroom, and dictate what a district can and cannot ask its teachers to do, such flexibility and voluntarism is rare. Along with teacher autonomy and greater parent access, Clovis strives for accountability.
     All the teachers, without exception, are expected to bring 90 percent of their students up to grade level. If they do not, everyone knows about it. The district's research and evaluation division notifies teachers, parents, and administrators of school and student performance. And with curriculum development and teacher hiring and firing in the schools' hands, knowledge is power. The approach has "made every teacher accountable,"VanDoren. "It made me sit down and look at all those kids [needing help] and ask, 'What can we do?"
     Parents seem more likely to ask that question in Clovis than in other school districts. Parents and other community members (including the clergy, senior citizens, and businessmen) sit on advisory boards, where they review individual school performance and formulate policy. Last year, some parents were upset that children were required to read feminist author Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Parents forged an agreement with the district that allows them to review books assigned to their children and help develop alternatives.
     Other boards recently voted to institute a voluntary uniform and a fee-based home-to-school transportation program. Teams of parents issue critiques of schools on the basis of data culled from parent surveys; these reviews are posted in every staff room in the district. These boards function the way PTAs are meant to, but without the stifling hand of teacher-union influence. ";The reason for the success of Clovis,"";is that these schools are truly governed by elected lay people."
     Ultimately, it seems, success in CUSD is driven by community expectations. ";There's a corporate culture that has been established that requires more of people, expects of people more, and gets of people more,"director of Fresno- Madeira Youth for Christ and member of CUSD's clergy advisory council.
    This culture of expectation is impressed upon teachers even before they pick up a piece of chalk. A lengthy, multi-tiered interview process incorporates parents, teachers, community leaders, principals, and administrators and signals to prospective teachers that the Clovis community demands much of its teachers.
     According to Ginger Thomas, the principal of Temprance-Kutner Elementary School, some teacher candidates quit the interview process, saying "you guys work too hard."Assistant superintendent Jon Sharpe contends that Clovis sustains "
a work ethic in the public sector that's almost unsurpassed."He may be right: In 1992, CUSD teachers even voted down their own pay raise to channel the money into books and supplies. In an education system under assault for its academic failures, Clovis has produced a winning formula.
     CUSD schools have won recognition by the state of California 15 times and earned national blue ribbons from the U.S. Department of Education 13 times. The prestigious Phi Delta Kappa Center for Evaluation, Development, and Research has featured Clovis in two works, Clovis California Schools: A Measure of Excellence and Total Quality Education. Even outspoken critics of public education recognize the district's accomplishments.
     "If we are going to limit ourselves to the Prussian system of education, Clovis is the best we are going to get in a tax-financed school,"founder of the Fresno- based Separation of School and State Alliance and the father of four Clovis students. Awards aside, the real lesson of Clovis is that good education depends not on bloated budgets but on creative and committed teachers and administrators held accountable by engaged communities. Clovis's success also suggests that quality in public education will not be the norm until resources are channeled to classrooms rather than bureaucrats, and parents wrest control over education from teachers unions. .

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

December 23, 2003
Private  Graduate Schools Challenge Colleges of Education
By Howard E. Hobbs, Ph.D., Editor & Publisher

    CLOVIS -- Teaching may not pay much, but apparently teacher education does. Ever eager for new growth, several companies that operate for-profit colleges are expanding their offerings of master's and doctoral degrees in education. The companies are also taking steps to promote the teaching degrees they already offer.

"Part of it is driven by the new sense that continuing education is where the money is," says Thomas J. Jennings, associate dean of teacher education at Columbia University's Teachers College. The programs the companies are offering, he says, which are aimed at teachers who already have undergraduate degrees, are part of "a very profitable market" within teacher education.

While most of the companies continue to enroll greater numbers of students in their programs in business and information technology, the number of students signing up for graduate degrees in education -- both at campuses and online -- continues to grow.

So far, most traditional education programs have not been hurt by the companies' expansion. But some education deans and higher-education observers predict that the companies are edging the market for teacher education toward a period of change that will force traditional colleges to compete aggressively on price and service -- or lose students.

"Over the next 10 years, this is going to become a very big, free-falling market," says H. Wells Singleton, provost of the Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University, a private nonprofit institution.

The four companies with the biggest presence in teacher education -- Apollo Group, Capella Education, Education Management Corporation, and Sylvan Learning Systems -- now collectively enroll more than 22,500 students pursuing master's or doctoral degrees. That's a sizable chunk of the overall market for those degrees.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, about 130,000 people received master's degrees in education in the 2001 academic year, the most recent year for which statistics are available. An additional 6,700 received doctorates. While the overall number of students pursuing graduate degrees in education is also on the rise, the for-profits are making some nonprofit colleges more than a little nervous, particularly private institutions, which have a harder time competing with the companies on price.

More than half of the students now studying with the largest for-profit providers of graduate programs in education are enrolled at institutions owned by or related to Sylvan. Sylvan says its enrollment in education programs has increased 20 to 25 percent a year since 1997. Its revenues from teacher-education offerings topped $59-million in 2002, an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2000.

Sylvan expects continued growth now that it has jettisoned the tutoring business on which it was founded and refashioned itself as a higher-education company. Within the past 18 months, Sylvan introduced three new master's degrees in education at Walden University, the online institution of which it is majority owner. Walden will add a fourth master's degree in January.

Sylvan also owns Cantor and Associates, a division that provides distance-learning options for traditional colleges with which it forms partnerships. But Sylvan has been paring back its involvement with those partners and placing more focus on degree programs it offers through Walden, whose programs are more profitable for the company. Cantor had about 50 partners when it was acquired by Sylvan in 1997; today it has just eight.

Smaller players are also expanding. Argosy University, which is owned by Education Management, expects to offer its master's and doctoral degrees in education at 12 campuses beginning this fall, up from six last year. Jones International University, an online institution, added two new master's degrees this summer. And Career Education Corporation, a company known more for its culinary and computer-arts programs, entered the education market in February 2002 with an online master's degree program at its American InterContinental University. It says the program is still tiny but is beginning to catch on.

Meanwhile, another formidable competitor is planning to enter the fray. Kaplan Inc., which already earns more from its higher-education operations than from its better-known test-preparation business, plans to open its own education school within the year. Initially, it will offer master's degrees and hopes to attract students interested in switching to teaching from other careers. A subsidiary of the Washington Post Company, Kaplan also runs 57 undergraduate and career colleges and the online Concord Law School.

The company says its experience running the colleges, where enrollment has doubled every year for the past three years, proves it can thrive in an already-crowded field, because it understands how to reach and serve students. "We do know how to get people into and through academic programs," says Andrew S. Rosen, president and chief operating officer of Kaplan.

Education deans at traditional colleges and analysts of for-profit higher education say the companies are gaining ground because their approach is student-friendly. Many, for example, offer flexible scheduling. Capella students take nearly all of their courses online, and Kaplan's will, too. Some traditional colleges offer similar flexibility, but fewer have the marketing budgets or prowess to promote their programs.

Also, none of the for-profit companies offer bachelor's degrees in teaching. Because of the costs of setting up teaching internships at schools and of supervising those student teachers, bachelors' programs are often more expensive to operate than master's or doctoral programs.

"There's an element of cherry-picking," says Frank Newman, director of the Futures Project, a research center on education issues at Brown University. But traditional colleges will suffer if they don't respond, he says: "They're losing market share, and they don't even know it."

But even the undergraduate market may not scare these companies much longer. Officials at several institutions said they had heard that Apollo Group was considering offering a bachelor's-degree program through its University of Phoenix. Apollo officials declined to comment on any aspect of the company's teacher-education programs.

The companies also have a distinct financial advantage over the state institutions and private colleges that have traditionally offered graduate education for teachers: lower expenses. Because company-owned institutions don't have scholarly research or public service as part of their missions, their per-student costs are lower. Yet their tuition charges are not substantially lower than those of traditional private colleges. That allows the companies to keep more of their tuition revenue as profit -- and trim their prices to compete better if necessary.

"In effect, they are providing a different product line," says Arthur E. Wise, president of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, or NCATE. For-profit institutions "do not assume any responsibility for knowledge generation."

Some of the educators who have disparaged the quality of education research in recent years might say that's just fine. But Mr. Wise and others note that there are negative consequences as well.

For one thing, students enrolled in company-owned programs are much less likely to be exposed to researchers engaged in scholarship on such important topics as how best to teach reading.

Research could suffer, too. "If colleges of education are further squeezed by competitive pressures of for-profit providers, what effect will that have on the ability of nonprofits to do research?" asks Mr. Wise. Institutional support for research is already hard to come by, he notes.

The companies moving into the market argue that there is room for new approaches to teacher education, particularly because so many policy makers remain frustrated by the quality of America's teachers.

"There's not this universal sense that 'Boy, we really have great teachers and great schools,'" says Mr. Rosen, of Kaplan. "I just think this is a market that is ripe for added competition." He recognizes that the quality of Kaplan's programs, like those of the other companies operating in the field, will always be viewed suspiciously by some traditional colleges. But either Kaplan produces graduates the school systems want, he says, "or we won't have a business."

Frank B. Murray, president of the Teacher Education Accreditation Council, a new accrediting body, says the for-profit character of the colleges isn't the key to assessing their quality.

"Some of the for-profits will enter the market for the wrong reasons, and because standards are low for the profession they will be able to mount and sustain marginal programs," Mr. Murray says. But he says some traditional nonprofit colleges operate marginal programs now, and some of the for-profit providers may well be offering programs "of fairly high quality, relative to traditional programs."

Deans at several traditional colleges acknowledge that their uneven reputation leaves many of them vulnerable. "We probably do need to be shaken up," says Elizabeth Hawthorne, dean of the National College of Education, an arm of Chicago-based National-Louis University. The college, one of the largest non-profit institutions offering teacher-education courses, enrolls about 7,000 students in its bachelor's, master's, and doctoral programs in locations throughout the country.

Though her institution, which is private, has been nimble -- it offers one degree online already and has plans to add another this winter -- she worries about having to compete with institutions like the University of Phoenix and Walden, which place less emphasis on costly endeavors like research. Also, she notes that her institution is accredited by NCATE, while none of the for-profits are. Gaining and keeping that accreditation helps to distinguish the college from others, she notes, but it also is expensive.

Unlike schools of law or medicine, colleges of education are not required to qualify for special professional accreditation by groups like the one Mr. Wise oversees. General accreditation by a regional body suffices.

Of the 1,200 or so colleges offering education programs, 560 are accredited by NCATE and an additional 100 are candidates, Mr. Wise says. He says Phoenix and representatives of some other for-profit institutions have been attending NCATE workshops to learn about earning accreditation, but none have yet applied for it.

Should they bother? While many education deans and policy makers think of accreditation by NCATE, and the new TEAC, as measures of quality, many deans grudgingly acknowledge that the factors that contribute to accreditation, such as well-stocked libraries and commitments to research, may not matter to many of their potential students.

Take Delores Bellinger. A teacher for 27 years, she is now teaching gifted third-graders at Arden Elementary School, in Columbia, S.C., and hopes to eventually become a principal. A year ago, when she decided to pursue a Ph.D., she enrolled at Capella University. For her, Capella's online approach sealed the deal. After so many years as a classroom teacher, and taking graduate classes in traditional settings, "I just could not face going through four walls again," she says.

Capella's accreditation, by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, "was enough for me," she adds.

She says she has been more than satisfied with the quality of her courses. "I'll be able to stand up against any graduate from any college," Ms. Bellinger says. She's also been pleasantly surprised by the level of interaction with her Capella professors. Like many of the other companies, Capella has a small core of full-time faculty members and hires working professionals -- principals, assistant superintendents, and the like -- to teach its courses. Many have doctoral degrees.

Taking two courses at a time, Ms. Bellinger hopes to complete her classwork by December and then move on to her comprehensive exams and dissertation. Once she has her degree, she says, she'll be eligible for a $7,000 bump in salary, and even more if she lands a post as a principal.

Like Ms. Bellinger, many classroom teachers pursue graduate work because they need it to advance in their careers and earn more money. And in most school districts, pay increases for advanced degrees are awarded as long as those degrees come from institutions recognized by a regional accrediting body.

In some cases, that means teachers are drawn to "programs that are quick and easy," even if they cost more, says Beverly Young, director of teacher-education programs for the California State University system. Cal State's are quite inexpensive, but "our programs are academically rigorous," she says. A Cal State student could earn a master's degree at a cost of about $3,000. At Capella, a master's degree costs about $15,300; at Phoenix, it's about $14,000; and at Walden, about $7,400 to $9,500.

As Kaplan and the other for-profits get even more aggressive, Mr. Singleton, the Nova Southeastern provost, predicts that students will shop around a lot more for the programs that best suit them, and colleges will have to compete more vigorously. He also expects more colleges to start working closely with school districts to develop customized graduate degrees.

Nova, which has seen its enrollment in education grow from about 7,000 to nearly 13,000 in seven years, is already doing a lot of that, he says. But it will need to do even more to stay competitive.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

November 23, 2003
Clovis Schools Instructional Methods Under Parent Fire
By Howard E. Hobbs, Ph.D., Editor & Publisher

    CLOVIS -- According to Clovis parent, Mrs. Lisa Alves current methods of instruction are inadequate. Alves has raised her voice in protest at the school's Parent-Teacher Club. Apparently in response to Alves comments, the School District administration issued an order banning Alves from making contact with school personnel and ordering her from coming onto the school site.
     The mother of the Riverview Elementary School First Grader claims she has the right to assess teacher and administrator effectiveness. Apparently the district officials didn't see it that way.
     This all ended up in local Court and an eight-day trial ensued during which the presiding judge ruled in favor of Alves, holding that the Clovis Unified School District had not proved that Alves' conduct constituted any danger to school district administrators or teachers.
     According to court records, Alves explained that she and many other parents with children enrolled in CUSD schools are dissatisfied with the tactics of school district officials in managing parental objections to district policies. The District then spent $25,000 on legal fees to defend the school district board's actions.
   The local school district and its governing board need a new approach to civility in school district governance. Whatever else a school board member may provide, we need board members who are willing and amenable to examine the impact a school board has on the community over the course of several years.
     Such associations require much of board members. Existing research indicates that school board conflict contributes to learning disruptions and diminishes student learning gains, as much as prior achievement and family and peer characteristics.
     What is needed is a way to separate the important contributions that school board members, teachers, administrators, family, school, and other influences bear on student achievement and feelings of well-being.
     It is unfair to attribute everything that goes on in schools to school board members. But our current school accountability programs do not separate the role of teachers from such things as how closely aligned a district’s curriculum is to state academic standards, turnover in staffing, or new administrative and school board leadership or test scores.
     Although we currently know little about the interplay of these effects, we will need to better understand them to know which factors amenable to public intervention hold the best promise for improvements in public education within the Clovis Unified schools.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

Friday November 7, 2003
Everything In Clovis
Save Mart Swiped This Week
Amy Williams, Staff Writer

   CLOVIS -- News America Marketing is handling the Save Mart advertising campaign here in Clovis. This is advertising with a big impact. The firm boasts that it has the power to impact the purchase decisions of local consumers through an integrated portfolio of home-delivered, on-line and in-store media marketing service.
    News America Media boasts it is one of a kind. The complete range of products is part of the company’s International division. It's clients include hundreds of brands from the nation's leading packaged-goods manufacturers, entertainment, communications and direct response companies. News America Marketing is a News Corporation Company.
    One of News America's attention getting ads is drawing wide spread attention in Clovis. Attached to every Save Mart shopping cart is a small sign which reads, "whatever you're buying SWIPE IT." On the News America Marketing web page, they state the purpose of the ad "... is a mini-billboard that separates groceries at checkout with custom color advertising, providing a "last chance" exposure to consumers moments before they leave the store..." and is a graphic representation of an American Express Charge card and beneath is is the statement: "Earn Points, Miles, or Cash Back."
     According to Webster's Dictionary the word swiped is an informal expression meaning - to steal, as in - He'll swipe anything that isn't nailed down. Alternatively, Webster makes reference to the word swipe as a slang expression -- to make a sweeping stroke.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

August 11, 2003
Davis' Version of Budget Crisis:
Effort to Rewrite History
By Dan Walters

    SACRAMENTO, CA -- Governor Gray Davis and his minions have been working overtime to convince Californians that the budget crisis isn't his doing, well aware that it is a major source of voter anger as he faces a historic recall election.
     Davis' version of the crisis portrays the state treasury as the victim of a sudden, steep and unanticipated economic nose dive that slashed revenues and threw the budget into imbalance.
     "Over the past four years," Davis said in January as he submitted his budget, "working together, we have made critical investments in improving education, protecting public safety, expanding access to health care and providing taxpayers with significant tax relief.     "With the pace of both the national and state economies continuing to languish, and no significant rebound in sight, California has experienced the most dramatic decline in revenues since World War II ... " Davis said.
     When Davis unveiled a revised budget in May, he also issued a revised version of his message that an unanticipated economic decline created a deficit that he pegged at $38 billion. And he continued to beat that drum for weeks, until he finally signed a much-overdue budget that does little, if anything, to resolve the underlying crisis.
     The problem with the message is that it simply doesn't square with either the state of the economy or the historical record of what Davis and the legislators did.
     The undisputed fact is that after a severe recession ended in the mid-1990s, the state experienced a solid, if unspectacular, gain in tax revenues for four years before the highly volatile high-tech industry produced a spike in personal income taxes -- about 12 extra billion dollars -- that lasted just one year before revenues resumed their normal pattern of slow growth.
     When the extent of the windfall became known in 2000, Davis publicly -- and prudently -- declared that it would be a mistake to enact major increases in ongoing spending, or major tax cuts, and promised to resist them. But succumbing to pressures from both fellow Democrats and Republicans, Davis soon agreed to commit roughly $8 billion of the windfall to tax cuts or new spending. And when revenues did return to normal levels, the state was left with a "structural deficit" of roughly $8 billion a year -- one that will continue indefinitely.
     The mistake of enacting those unaffordable tax cuts and spending increases was compounded in the subsequent three years by budgets that papered over the deficits with creative, if misleading, gimmicks, raids on other state funds and loans of various kinds.     But was it, as Davis said in his January message, the product of a languishing economy? California's economy has been a bit sluggish, but economists agree that its problems, whatever they may be, have been largely confined to the San Francisco Bay Area-centered technology sector and that overall, California's economy has been outperforming those of other states.
     "When the hard budget decisions must be made, the economy is often a convenient scapegoat, but in this case it's an inappropriate one," says a recent economic review by Santa Monica-based Straszheim Global Advisors, which cites a series of indices indicating that California has done no worse than the nation as a whole, and by some measures better. It describes California's worst-in-the-nation budget woes as "home grown," more political than economic.
     "The tech boom ... threw off a tremendous tax windfall which California's elected officials spent like an ongoing new revenue stream," the analysis continues. "The rest is budget trouble history."
     In part, economists agree, California's budgetary problems stem from a volatile, income tax-centered revenue system that tends to push revenues sky high in good times and into a deep trough a mild downturn. Rather than make budget decisions based on that reality, politicians tend to act on faulty, if convenient, assumptions.
     A phony history of California's fiscal crisis may serve Davis' political need to shun responsibility, but it just isn't accurate. And acceptance of reality is the first step toward fixing a badly broken budgetary process.

    [Editor's Note: California went from a surplus when Gov. Davis was elected, to a record decline and a $34.8 Billion deficit.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved     

July 25,2003
The End of Everything
By Dennis Overbye, Science Writer

    CLOVIS  -- Recent astronomical observations indicate not only that universe is expanding but also that it is speeding up under influence of mysterious 'dark energy,' an anti-gravity that seems to be embedded in space itself.
    Astronomers say that if the universe is accelerating, distant galaxies will disappear from view, leaving our sky dark and empty, and will eventually be moving apart so quickly that usual methods of formulating physics may not all apply. The domain of life and intelligence, starved finally of energy, will not expand, but constrict and eventually vanish.
     In the decades that astronomers have debated the fate of the expanding universe -- whether it will all end one day in a big crunch, or whether the galaxies will sail apart forever -- aficionados of eternal expansion have always been braced by its seemingly endless possibilities for development and evolution. As the Yale cosmologist Dr. Beatrice Tinsley once wrote, ''I think I am tied to the idea of expanding forever.''
     Life and intelligence could sustain themselves indefinitely in such a universe, even as the stars winked out and the galaxies were all swallowed by black holes, Dr. Freeman Dyson, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, argued in a landmark paper in 1979.
     ''If my view of the future is correct,'' he wrote, ''it means that the world of physics and astronomy is also inexhaustible; no matter how far we go into the future, there will always be new things happening, new information coming in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory.''

Comment

©2003 New York Times
All Rights Reserved.

July 21, 2003
Stebbins Dean
Crack Up in Naples!
By Thomas Hobbs, Staff Writer

     FRESNO - Stebbins Dean, CEO of Fresno’s Chamber of Commerce, has been arrested in a police sting operation in Naples, Florida. The arrest was covered in the local Naples Daily News. Collier County Sheriff’s report states that Dean negotiated purchase of what he believed to be crack cocaine from undercover officers on Saturday night.
      At the time of his arrest, Dean told officers he was in staying at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples while attending a conference for the national Chamber Executives' Leadership Forum...More.

Comment

©1867-2003 Fresno Republican Newspaper
All Rights Reserved.

Monday July 14, 2003
The Worth of Freedom
Stepping On the Free Press
By Howard Hobbs, Ph.D., Editor & Publisher

    CLOVIS, CA -- It is not always easy to separate society's need and the individual's right under State and federal laws.
     In the City of Clovis this week, however, American constitutional guarantees to a free press are being indirectly questioned and perhaps abridged if city fathers go ahead with plans to force the local newspaper out of its editorial office space at 754 3rd Street corner on Third and Hughes in Old Town Clovis.
     This is the more serious question of the day. The inviolate role of the free press must be...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

June 1, 2003
Clovis High Commencement
A Century of Excellence
By Tom Hobbs, Associate Editor

     CLOVIS -- 2,000 seniors will graduate from Clovis Unified School District’s four high schools. Clovis High School graduation will be a last sendoff to about 900 seniors this year. Ceremonies will be held at the LaMonica Stadium tomorrow night. Senior Class officers are Sarah Byrd, President, Mollie Markus, Vice President, Nadeen Hmeiden, Secretary/Treasurer. Good Luck, one and all!
    Summer School Dates Have Changed. The 2003 Summer School dates have changed. Summer School will still run from Monday, June 16 to Thursday, July 24, 2003. School will be held on Friday, June 20 and there will be no summer school on Thursday, July 3, 2003.
    Other additions or changes to the 2003 Summer School schedule include: Algebra Readiness Institute open to current 6th and current 7th grade students. The Institute will be on the Clark Intermediate campus and will be headed by Tom Judd, 327-1521. · Preschool Change – Dry Creek will have a program, not Garfield.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2004 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved     

May 27, 2003
Clovis Law School
Grads Pass Bar Exam
By Amy Williams, Staff Writer

     CLOVIS -- San Joaquin College of Law announced today the following alumni passed the February 2003 California State Bar Exam. They are Michelle Jorgensen, Charles Leath, Cadee Peters, Tres Porter, C J Secula, Gerald Schwab, and Travis Stokes.

~ Book Review~
May 23, 2003
Terrorism & Religion
Latest In-Depth Report From The Front
By Congressman Paul Findley

     CLOVIS -- Digging continues for the fallen at Ground Zero and in the gaping hole in the Pentagon. When the human remains are sorted out, burial rites will follow.
     As the vast and varied services occur, our nation and much of the world will remain in mourning. At this sad, somber and fearsome moment in our national life, binding up the nation’s wounds must come first, but thanks to television, other themes also get attention.
     One broadcast image combines both terrorism and religion. In it, an airliner, transformed into a giant guided missile, pierces the upper part of a World Trade Center tower.
     As it emits a fireball of bright orange, a horrified woman looking up at...More!

THE DAILY arise and read a news leak from CLOVISNEWS.COM

April 2, 2003
Stanford Anti-War Activities
Clash With Hoover Institution
and Bush Administration
by Emily Biuso, The Nation Magazine

   WASHINGTON -- As student antiwar activists work to make their case against war persuasive to ambivalent classmates, the leaders of a Stanford University peace group have launched a different kind of campaign--to reform a conservative think tank on campus with dubious ties to the Bush Administration.
     The 84-year-old, Stanford-based Hoover Institution, long famous for its influence over national Republican policy, currently wields substantial power at the Pentagon, with eight Hoover fellows sitting on the Defense Policy Board advising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the war in Iraq.
     But the institution makes an impact, albeit of a different sort, at its home in California, too.
     A generous sum ...and More!

February 1, 2003
Fresno State's
Environmental Extremism
By William Sadler
Staff Writer

     FRESNO STATE -- This morning university officials are standing behind their decision to invite a questionable group of radicals to meet with students and discuss something called "revolutionary environmentalism". However, in the interest of fairness, the administration has just announced that it would close the two-day February 13 and 14 event to the public.
     One of the featured speakers at the event will be Rodney Coronado, of the Animal Liberation Front. Coronado was convicted of arson and was sentenced to four years in prison the 1992 fire-bombing at Michigan State University animal labs...More!

January 1, 2003
Consumer Confidence
Continues to Decline
by Barbara Schoetzau

    New York -- Concern about rising unemployment undermined consumer confidence across the United States in December. The Conference Board, a private business research group, reports that its monthly Consumer Confidence Index declined four points in December.
     The index has declined...More!

    WASHINGTON -- Henry Kissinger - Nobel Laureate and the most famous diplomat of his generation - also an international business and foreign policy consultant to President George W. Bush, and some undisclosed foreign interests, has abruptly resigned his 911 Commission chair set up to investigate intelligence and security failures related to the September 11 terrorist attacks.
    Dr. Kissinger cited "conflicts of interest" when asked to disclose the names of his clients, which include many...More!

Friday December 13, 2002
Lott's Choice
An American Tragedy
By Howard Hobbs PhD Editor & Publisher

   WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Thursday openly denounced Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, for intemperate comments that shocked and may have cost the Republican majority in Congress the goodwill of the nation.
     Bush's censure came as calls for the Mississippi senator to resign his congressional leadership post rang out at the Capitol.
    President Bush angrily told reporters...More!  

    WASHINGTON -   Many combinations of unanticipated events will come back to haunt governments in the Middle East region and beyond. The economist George Perry, spoke of the unintended economic impacts of disruptions of world oil supplies, for example.
     His study mostly focused on the underlying economic world crises from the oil reduction in supply the supply of food and heating fuels, world wide.
    His worst case scenario is an outcome which assumes a decline in world oil production of seven million barrels per day. Some of this deficit might be provided by US strategic oil reserves of about 2 1/2 million barrels per day.
     in the event of an OPEC boycott, oil production might be reduced to less than 20 percent.
    Such impacts would readily drive up oil prices to around $75 per barrel or more. Perry estimates that gasoline prices would skyrocket overnight to more than $3 per gallon.
     The Bush administration assumes the negative effects...More!

© Copyright 1876-2002 By The Daily Republican Newspaper. All rights reserved

    CLOVIS -- - Now that he's retired, Phillip Carter spends much of his free time fishing on the shores of San Pablo Reservoir in Contra Costa County. Now a new focus on the purity of fish in local reservoirs is dimming the pristine image of these freshwater lakes. Fish contamination with mercury is of particular concern."It's not a rare problem," said Robert Brodberg, a senior toxicologist with the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "Mercury is pretty much everywhere, unfortunately. There's mercury in virtually any fish."
     Until recently, most people have assumed that the problem of toxin-tainted fish was confined to the most polluted waters, said Brodberg, the state toxicologist. Now the reservoir studies are changing that assumption.
    No one's advising anglers to forgo their cherished pastime, and there's too little data just yet to know how extensive the problem is for fish in inland waters, most officials state. And health experts point out that the lowfat meat is nutritious and, in some species, high in omega-3 fatty acids, which is believed to lower rates of heart disease.
     No one quite understands yet where the mercury contaminating San Pablo Reservoir, or other nearby lakes, comes from, but geologists note that the region has high levels of naturally occurring mercury. Most people figure the levels are, at least to some degree, linked to old gold mines in the Sierra Nevada.
     An estimated 26 million pounds of mercury were used in California during the Gold Rush to extract gold from dirt and gravel, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Much of that mercury escaped into the environment, and rivers still carry it downstream. It's considered the primary source of mercury contamination in the region's waters.
     It's that legacy of California's Gold Rush that's destined to linger for hundreds of years, unless aggressive efforts are undertaken to keep the toxic metal out of streams and rivers, said Wiener.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

    CLOVIS -- The San Joaquin River is one of the beautiful rivers in our state. It has its own spirit, its unique images, and a colorful history. It is also a river betrayed by humankind.
     People need rivers to transport, to irrigate, to supply industry, to fill glasses and tubs, to turn turbines, as well as for recreation, sources of inspiration and aesthetic pleasure.
     Unfortunately, we have also used our rivers as sewers, polluting them; we have dammed them, changing the ecosystem; channelized them, ruining them for wildlife; and developed them with houses and factories. In California we have dammed over 1,300 rivers, and destroyed 90 percent of riparian habitat.
     Now, we struggle to preserve this once great river for future generations. It was in this spirit this interdisciplinary curriculum was initiated to help students foster a heightened awareness of our San Joaquin River environment through art.
     I worked to inspire student artists to create insightful images of the nature, wonder, history, ecology, and environmental issues of the San Joaquin riparian wilderness and wildlife. They learned about artists of water, wildlife, and plant life, and worked in various media of pen, pastel, and watercolor.
     In the spirit of nineteenth and twentieth century artists, these young artists enlarge our perception of the river environment and celebrate that environment with their own creations.
     One middle school and eight elementary Clovis classes participated during the Fall semester with four two-hour classes at Lost Lake Park. The program was facilitated by a generous grant from the Bonner Family Foundation through the Fresno Arts Council, with matching funds from the participating Clovis schools, including supplies and program coordination by Phyllis Johnson, Clovis Unified School District Art Consultant.
     This program will yield a framed exhibit at the Fresno Art Museum. It is part of the "The Rivers Calls Festival " a community-wide event featuring the river, its history, culture, and habitat through classes, a KVPT documentary, a Valley Public Radio series of river vignettes by Gene Rose, field trips, nature walks and library exhibits.
     Much of this is coordinated by the San Joaquin River Parkway and Conservation Trust and its many volunteers who dedicate time and energy toward the preservation of our river environment and the education of valley residents about our river heritage.
     An art educator and environmentalist, I am grateful for this opportunity to create a learning experience sensitive to student artists, for our heritage of artists and their works, as well as for ideas that promote the sustainability of the San Joaquin River environment.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

    ARLINGTON, Va. -- The Alfred Nobel organization may have taken a stab at the "Cowboy" in the Oval Office by handing this year's Peace Prize to Jimmy Carter (D) Thiry-Ninth President of the United States.
     I caught up with him in his office here recently. He was wearing his Southwestern silver jewelry and brimming with ideas on how we can save money by protecting our infrastructure against terrorist attacks. In Chicago, he said, "If terrorists successfully attack power plants, half the city could lose power. Utility companies have enough power to meet peak demand but can't rationally distribute power in the event of a major shock to the power grid."
     It is also apparent that if authorities could develop a pricing system that would help them determine which are the more important and essential uses of power in the event of an emergency. Price can quickly allocate power to where it is needed, helping the city ride out a major disruption while keeping the power on for hospitals and--by charging a little more--allow homeowners to run some of their more essential appliances. In short, even terrorists can't beat the laws of economics.
     Logic can help distribute just about everything from water to airline landing slots at busy airports. Airlines that can trade their gate allotments can profit from more efficiently run airports. This efficiency can make airports more secure too. Fewer planes, and less time spent boarding passengers or circling the skies waiting to land, mean less exposure to potential attacks.
     Likewise, allowing farmers--who buy an acre-foot of water for thousands of dollars less than city residents--to sell their water to the highest bidder would make it easier for cities to cope in the event of a major disruption in their water supply.
     Economists are fond of devising theories and arguing for increased efficiency. The criticism they've been unable to meet head-on has long been that humans aren't always motivated by money, and it's hard to measure altruistic motives, or downright irrational ones.

"...for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development..."
    

          [Editor' Note: Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal. His column appears Mondays. The Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science at George Mason University has just announced that they will offer necessary funding for the study of experimental economics The laboratory there will be used to isolate decisions to test economic theories.  One of their projects there involves studying the human brain in an effort to determine the neural processes involved in economic decisions. What they learn may tell us why economic decisions are not purely rational. Economics, as a science, has not, as yet, reached the developmental state that physics had in Galileo's times.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

November 14, 2002
Clovis Streets
Changes at City Hall
Staff Writers

    CLOVIS - There have been some changes to local streets here in Clovis this week. The State of California has transferred ownership of various streets to the City of Clovis.
    Streets previously designated as State Route 168 and portions of Shaw Avenue between Winery and Clovis Avenues, Clovis Avenue between Shaw Avenue and Third Street, Third Street between Clovis Avenue and Tollhouse Road, and Tollhouse Road between Third Street and Shepherd Avenue are included in the change.
   If you are a property owner along this route you have previously received services from Caltrans. You will now be serviced by the City of Clovis and questions should be directed to city offices. For questions about road maintenance contact City Hall at 559-324-2600.

Wednesday November 6, 2002
Stunning Momentum
First Time In US History
The Party In Power
Wins Midterm Election!
By Edward Davidian, Staff Writer

    CLOVIS -- Republicans captured control of Congress last night, regaining power in the Senate and expanded their majority in the House. GOP candidates with the taste of a stunning victory rode the momentum of President Bush's high level popularity to defy the odds against winning a midterm election.
     Congress then fell into place in wee hours. this morning as Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) conceded victory Jim Talent (R). His win suddenly put the GOP over the top in the Senate
      The GOP held on in all but one of their seats and defeated at least two Democratic incumbents. In addition to Talent's victory, Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R) beat Sen. Max Cleland (D) in Georgia, a state that proved particularly disappointing to the Democrats.
     Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor beat Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R), long seen as the GOP's most vulnerable senator, but Democrats could not win any of the other Republican-held seats that were within their grasp in the final days of the campaign.
     Several races still are i the undecided column, the Republicans will have at least 50 seats in the Senate and Vice President Cheney to cast the tie-breaking vote. Mr. Talent's victory also means that Republicans will be in the majority when Congress returns this month for a lame-duck session. Carnahan was filling the unexpired term of her husband, former governor Mel Carnahan, who was killed in a plane crash but remained on the 2000 ballot.
     Under Missouri law, Mr. Talent can be sworn into office immediately. The GOP performance in the House was equally impressive. The party that controls the White House almost always loses House seats in the first midterm election of a new president, but House Republicans were on track to add a few seats to the 223-seat majority they hold in the current Congress.
     No Republican president had seen his party gain House seats in a midterm election. "President Bush and the Republican Party have made history," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.
     Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe told the Associated Press that Bush was the critical factor in the Democratic losses. "I pin a lot of it on that this is a president who has had very high approval ratings," he said.
     "He's had the longest sustained approval ratings of any president in modern history." In gubernatorial races, Democrats claimed three big prizes by winning in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan.
     But they were struggling to win an absolute majority among the governorships, which they had set as their goal for the year. Republicans retained power in Florida, where Gov. Jeb Bush easily defeated Democrat Bill McBride in a race that echoed with the bitter memories of the Florida recount battle two years ago.
     The GOP also pulled off the biggest surprise of the night by ousting Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes (D), who was seen as coasting toward a second term not long ago. Republicans turned history on its head last night, thanks to an aggressive White House strategy to put the president into the most competitive House and Senate races in the final weeks of the campaign, superior financial resources in the battleground contests and, apparently to a revamped GOP voter turnout operation.
     The GOP had 27 of the 50 governorships to 21 for the Democrats, with two states led by independents. No matter the outcome, one party was destined to make history.
     The party that holds the White House normally loses House seats in the first midterm election of a new president's first time, with the only exception being the election of 1934, during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term, when Democrats gained seats.
     Democrats were running up against another historical oddity, which is that only once in his century has a party gained seats in four consecutive elections. After their shellacking in 1994, when they lost 52 seats and control of the House, Democrats picked up seats in the past three elections.
     A net gain in this election would go against history's trends. First midterm elections are often a referendum on a new president's performance, but this year Bush was hardly an issue, creating an environment far more favorable than normal for GOP candidates.
     Bush's approval rating, which stands somewhere between the low and high sixties, makes him the most popular midterm president at least since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
     Although the president's ratings have slid significantly since he hit about 90 percent approval after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, they remained high enough to make him an unattractive target to many Democratic candidates.
     In some states, Democratic challengers embraced the president's tax cut in their own elections. Unlike some presidents, Bush did not shrink from risking his political capital in the elections.
     He proved to be the most prodigious fundraiser in the history of politics, raising more than $140 million on behalf of GOP candidates and state parties around the country this year.
     Even more significant, however, was the commitment he made in the last weeks to campaign in the most competitive races. Bush's last swing alone took him to 15 states in five days.
     Through much of the year, Democrats saw the weak economy as their most powerful weapon, but were constantly frustrated by their inability to turn the election into a clear referendum on that issue.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved

Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Sterling Magnificent
Ronquillo Absentee
Autry's Collapse
By Edward Davidian, Staff Writer

       FRESNO -- At the latest count, District Three's new Council Member is well known local business person, Cynthia Sterling. It appears that Phil Larson won a seat on the Fresno County Board of Supervisors. Probation officer and City Council activist, Dan Ronquillo was significantly trailing Larson at press time this morning.
     Erstwhile television bit player finds voters didn't buy another one of his scripts as Fresno voters denied him the control of the Fresno Unified School Board...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.

~ Reprise From~
November 6, 1980
Travels With Steinbeck
and his mind-reading dog, Charley.
By Kenneth Close
Staff Book Reviewer

     CLOVIS -- John Steinbeck is a rugged, broad-shouldered, six-foot Californian, born in Salinas, and destined to write his first stories about the Valley. He has the gift of identifying himself passionately with other Americans, with migratory fruit pickers, as in his novel In Dubious Battle, and with ...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.

Monday November 4, 2002
Journal of Science:
Research Papers Discredited
Marc Clark, Contributor

    CLOVIS --The journal Science retracted eight of researcher Hendrik Schon's discredited research papers this week, but the information is still posted on the Internet. Worse yet, the offending material was still accessible immediately after the Bell Labs Press Release. However, Bell announced that it was officially withdrawing six patent applications based on Schon's research. Schon could not be reached for comment.
     An investigative committee has found that more than a dozen research reports submitted to Bell Labs and posted on the Bell Web Site by Mr. Schon apparently were based upon falsified data ...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.   

Sunday November 3, 2002
Clovis CART's "Business Model"
Not What it Used to be!
By Howard Hobbs PhD, President
Valley Press Media Network

    CLOVIS -- Many local taxpayers would like to take a closer look a what the Clovis Center for Advanced Research and Technology is calling its "business model."
     Every business owner is quite familiar with how business are run, with costs of doing business and profit and loss statements. A business model is quite simple: it is a brief statement of how an idea actually becomes a business that makes money. It tells who pays, how much, and how often...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.

September 4, 2002
Views on an
Unprovoked "act of war"
By Clovis Free Press Staff

    CLOVIS, Ca -- Most interpretations of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States have tried to fit a "culturally exotic enemy" into a familiar framework, a typical response that can be "unfortunate -- indeed, fatal," writes one World War Three apologist, Lee Harris.
     An unprovoked "act of war" he says, has been the most common way to explain where we are today. But interpretating an act-of-war is murky. It's just that, "9-11 was the enactment of a fantasy" in which an entire group of people -- Al Qaeda and its sympathizers -- used their victims as props in their grandiose thirst for glory.
     Harris says the evolution of this kind of political theory as rooted in the theory of the French Revolution, "in which political ideology replaced religious myth that eventually becomes accepted, much the same as Nazi fascist propaganda in Germany'a Third Reich era.
    Though they did not invent the tactic, Fascists soon came to realize the efficacy of stage props in an invasion as means to an end. The Al Qaeda terrorism has also been "a spectacular piece of theater" crafted to rouse the Arab world.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.

July15, 2002
$125 million in PG&E Fees Questioned
By Edward Davidian, Staff Writer

    SACRAMENTO -- PG&E opposes CPUC request to pay fee PG&E Corp. and its subsidiuary, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., have filed "strong opposition" in San Francisco U.S. Bankruptcy Court to the California Public Utilities Commission's request that PG&E pay for what could amount to more than $125 million in fees.
    The fees would go to investment banker UBS Warburg. However, in a papers just filed with the Bankruptcy Court, the companies allege the CPUC lacks standing under the Bankruptcy Code to file the request.
     PG&E spokespersons told reporters the proposed compensation structure exceeds Wall Street standards for investment banking fees, including an $8 million upfront retainer fee.
    The Bankruptcy Court will rulem on these arguments on July 22.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.

Sunday May 19, 2002
Valley Press
Media Network News Venue
Howard Hobbs, PhD, President

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Valley Press Media Network. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

January 17, 2001
Clovis Schools
Fiscal Data Reported
Clovis Free Press Staff Researchers

CLOVIS -- The most recent national reports from the Clovis Unified School District finance and demographics and ...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

Monday January 14, 2002
"Freedom of the Press
is guaranteed only
to those who own one. "
A.J. Liebling

    CLOVIS --Thanks to the Internet, now you can. Now all it takes to be a publisher is knowledge. A high-quality school paper can be published with very little money; a school with an Internet connection and at least one computer could do it ...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2002 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

December 14, 2001
City of Clovis Online
Urban Development and the Internet
By Amy Williams, Staff Writer

CLOVIS -- The Internet is creating unprecedented, economic development opportunities in low-income neighborhoods, according to a report of the Web Portal Foundation and the Clovis Free Press, on-line ClovisNews.com just out this week.
     The report findings of thre Pew Foundation coincide with what the Clovis Free Press has learned about in-depth case studies of how well the City of Clovis and other small cities which are using the Internet are beginning to revitalize their social and economic missions.
     By comparing educational attainment, the size of the local high-tech sector and population growth as primary factors it is fairly easy to compare cities for things like the highest percentage of residents with Internet access.
     The Internet is injecting new energy into many small cities as public, private, and nonprofit institutions move to capitalize on the Internet a powerful new communications tool. Municipalities like Clovis California are finding that with the use of digital communication they can transform the traditional roles of local city government and local business activity. In social terms, this promises a closer, more interactive relationship between a community and its citizens. At least, on the surface.
     To the City's business community, it clearly offers the dream of a local or regional economy transformed, Silicon Valley-style, by high-tech success. The Clovis Free Press examined how institutions are adapting to the Internet in the Central San Joaquin Valley. The Clovis Free Press focus is on economic and community development organizations primarily in the greater Clovis area which have sought out the Internet as a means of improving sales or customer service and performance to broadly benefit the community.
     In examining how civic institutions or businesses in the greater Clovis area have been using the Internet, the Clovis Free Press researcher asks whether the Internet is introducing a change in the "rules of the game" that shape social capital— the informal norms and customs that grease the wheels of urban life of the region.
    We also looked at how the greater Clovis community may have influenced the Internet by developing Internet content to serve local and regional needs in specific ways. And by comparing what is happening in other regions of the U.S., the study makes recommendations on some excellent ways to take advantage of the Internet.
     In searching for ways to exploit the Internet, a common theme in in Clovis was the use of physical places where social networks could be nurtured. In those places, local residents establish relationships that the Internet can build upon. This applies just as much to entrepreneurs networking in hopes of finding venture capital in the Clovis area as it does to Internet users attending local College of Law and the neighboring University.
    In the Clovis City economic development community, the recognition that the digital economy rewards entrepreneurs, has led to a fundamental change in economic development strategies which now strongly encourage Silicon Valley software firms to consider the favorable workforce, municipal planning and community support atmosphere in Clovis as a prime relocation point.
     It appears the City of Clovis is employing a social networking strategy that fosters Internet access via the City of Clovis official web page as a way to draw new people in the doors of City Hall.
     This approach has been especially prominent since activists have successfully lobbied city government to provide funds to expand community Internet access. The web page had been previously created and maintained as a local high school project when   Internet access was seen as an end in itself, which means the organization provides access and the minimum training necessary to allow people to surf the Web and send email.
    However, it is clear that The City of Clovis has turned a corner. The goal of the City's web page now seems to focus on enticing outside computer manufacturers to plant roots in Clovis where job training will expand people's economic opportunities and, alleviate regional worker shortages in the technology sector. Whatever the motivation, an outcome of these initiatives is additional social interaction among residents of the Clovis park like neighborhoods.
     The catalytic effect of the Internet has also resulted in the development of Internet content to serve community needs. In other words, in the greater Clovis area, people have developed Web-based portals for home-based businesses or nonprofits to improve service delivery.
     In terms of neighborhood and community content. Content development for nonprofits community trusts has been a prominent theme in the Clovis area.
     Nonprofit organizations devoted to providing affordable housing are using the Web to connect providers of housing to clients, as well as using the Web to more efficiently schedule maintenance of units.
     The WebPortal Foundation in Clovis, is using funds to enable nonprofits to develop Web content. Content development in the business sector is difficult to pin down, since a measure of that would be the ease of starting an Internet-based business.
     The flow of information on how to start a business, the existence of supporting services in the area, and, of course, the availability of capital are all ingredients for starting a dot-com business.
     In the present environment, however, little capital is available to start or even sustain dot-coms. Nonetheless, in Clovis the strategy provided a physical location for one businesses that wanted to develop Internet content. This was made possible by the refurbishing of an office in Old Town to provide space for multimedia entrepreneurs with a number of electronic-content businesses. Much of this is tied to the understanding that the things that make Clovis a desirable place to relocate — drive economic growth, as well. Today, that means the specific growth objectives generally encourage businesses that rely on the Internet.
     In adapting to the Internet, it is no surprise that different cities— and different parts of cities— move at varying rates. In a small town called Clovis, California we were surprised to learn that even while City growth objectivers are being augmented in the subtle and quiet growth advanced at the same time the City is expanind its use of the Internet for community purposes.
    With respect to foot traffic, the Clovis Free Press Study findings suggest the presence of Internet connections may bring new people to a place who might not otherwise go there.
     There is ample research support for the concept that this can inject new life into an organization by stimulating social networks. In this way, foot traffic is an indicator of the catalytic effect of the Internet on social capital formation.
     It is the presence of the Internet that shapes social capital, as people establish new networks of contacts as they congregate at places where the Internet access-point or terminal is.
     As for content, Internet-driven projects may result in the creation of new Internet content that is devoted to addressing economic or community needs. So, it appears, rather than the Internet shaping social capital, as is the case when the Internet spurs new social networks, the presence of social capital is shaping the Internet through the creation of specialized community driven content, especially so, in the case of local or regional daily newpapers.
     The creation of specialized content is a strong indicator of the connection between the Internet and social capital, because content creation only comes about if levels of trust about the Internet's potential have been established in the "foot traffic" phase of the Internet's development within an organization.
     Taking into account performance across different dimensions, economic, social, and governmental, were are pleasantly surprised to find that the City of Clovis is doing very well in exploiting the Internet for a public purpose.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

October 22, 2001
Education Technology Investment
Reports Mixed Results
By Tiffany Danitz, Education Writer

   CLOVIS -- Computers, the Internet and education technology have the potential to revolutionize schools and learning, but not without good policies that will help teachers use the new tools to raise student achievement, according to a study released the past week by the National Association of State Boards of Education.
     "We are looking at the multitude of ways in which technology will fundamentally alter the traditional notion of American education. The very basics of the school building, the school day, even the classroom teacher at the blackboard, with students sitting at their desks are all open for reconsideration," said School Boards Executive Director Brenda Welburn.
     The nearly $7 billion that America spends annually on technology and learning has resulted in "islands of innovation," according to the report.
     But, the authors note that the quality of programs varies across the country and poor and minority children have little or no access to technology.
     Twenty school board members from 16 states worked for eight months studying the impact of technology in an effort to give education leaders a tool to develop sound e-learning policies.
     The task force, headed by Maine's State Board Chief Jean Gulliver, came to the conclusion that e-learning is valuable and "should be universally implemented as soon as possible."
     She told reporters, "Our work is a clarion call to policymakers to set thoughtful and coherent policy on issues surrounding e-learning and technology in schools. I am very pleased that it offers concrete state examples on a range of topics, including online assessments tests and online courses."
     The study found that by restructuring the public schools to maximize technology states could give tests online and provide high quality teaching to all students regardless of where they live.
     But, the report continues that states would have to make major strides in providing access to equipment and the Internet at schools.
    The authors hope the report will be a handbook for lawmakers facing a new education landscape.
     Corine Hadley, a member of the task force and president of Iowa's State Board of Education said that technology, whether in the classroom or at home, changes basic ideas about when, how and where schools teach.
     "The implications for the teacher-student relationship, standards, assessments, accountability and traditional geographic boundaries are fundamental issues with which state and local boards of education will have to wrestle."
     Florida, Kentucky and Illinois have already set up virtual high schools and each offers a different model. Still, many states are resistant to such sweeping change. The Milken Family Foundation, Lightspan, Inc. and NetSchools Corporation supported the research for the report.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

Friday September 28, 2001
THE CLOVIS DREAMSCAPE
A Nightmare In Pursuit of Open Space!
By Howard Hobbs, Ph.D. President
The Valley Press Media Network

   CLOVIS -- City-planners, at first thought, ought to be good social scientists. This is rarely the case. Then comes the realization of the social and environmental consequences urban planners and careless city officials are capable of.  
Critics of recent Clovis City Council moves in remaking of Clovis Old Town say tax payers are wondering why the historic environs have suddenly become denser, more urbanized, with more mass transit, but with fewer roadways.
     The suburban backlash against sprawl is a response to congestion and disorder that seem to accompany the rezone practices of the City Council. Clovis is becoming more like a dense big city -- which is the congestion and disorder that Clovis property owners want.
     What they do want is a more natural environment, which suggests suggests to this writer, paying more attention to the larger landscape of the greater Clovis environment, not just by preserving open space but by working to create a distinctive sense of place in in the community.
     The essence of the approach we need to pursue lies in the work of the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed some of the nation's early urban parks and suburbs. Instead, most City Hall officials have disdainfully turned away from the image of a historic Clovis village, to aid profit-conscious developers who seek out people at City Hall who will fall for regional planning schemes that push urban sprawl in the exactly the wrong direction.

    [Editor's Note: According to the State of California, most urban planners work for city, county, or other governmental agencies, where they help develop and carry out official policy regarding current and future land use.
     They look at all the environment, including the location and design of buildings, transportation systems and with the protection of natural resources, including air and water quality and population density. They also consider social and economic factors that will be affected by land use changes.
     They analyze trends in population and economic growth; estimate long-range needs for residential, commercial, and industrial development; and investigate property availability.
     They hold meetings and public hearings to get community reaction. They then summarize their findings and recommendations in written reports and submit these proposals to local authorities for adoption as the official general plan. Planners working for local government agencies have additional tasks.
     They review applications for proposed development to determine conformity with broad general plan policies and with specific zoning and subdivision standards. They conduct studies to determine the potential environmental effects of each project and may also prepare or review detailed environmental impact reports for projects that are likely to have significant harmful effects.
     As part of this process, planners meet with property owners, developers, consultants, and interested citizens to discuss problems and solutions. After completing their review, planners recommend either approval, denial, or approval under specified conditions to the appropriate governing body.
     The work performed by planners in private consulting firms varies with the client and the project; in most cases it is closely related to that done by public agency planners. Consultants prepare studies and general plans for planning departments that have insufficient staff or specialized expertise.
     They write environmental impact reports for proposed construction projects. Consultants also draft preliminary plans for private developments and work with planners and developers to negotiate changes and speed the project's approval.
     Planners work for land developers or construction firms on a variety of private projects.
          For an excellent text on this topic, Click on the link to order: AMERICAN DREAMSCAPE: The Pursuit of Happiness in Postwar America. By Tom Martinson. Carroll & Graf. 288 pp.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

September 25, 2001
The Truth About Indian Removal
and the Making of National Park Policy
From The Yosemite Valley News

   YOSEMITE VALLEY -- Indians and the American National Park "Wilderness" have been an important area of historical exploration for National Park visitors and writers of Park history.
     Ironically, the early day landscape artist, George Catlin, in 1833 depicted a "wilderness park" where tourists could come and see the Indian "...In his classic attire, galloping his horse ... amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes."
     Catlin's artistic vision of the "shared" wilderness for Indians, Nature, and European settlers was not to be. Probably because of the fierce Indian wars in the Southwest and the Mexican War that preceded the changing American idea of wealth and private property which made possible westward expansion and destruction of the wilderness. For example the Indian removal from Yellowstone National Park in 1872 is an example of the ultimate cultural conflict intinsified by the National Park Service as removing the Native American Indian population in order to 'preserve' nature!
     Beginning in the late 1870s, the National Park Service officials began to act on the belief that the presence of Indians in the parks frightened tourists and depleted hunting by Indian practices such as use of fire and destruction of wild game. One such case is...More!

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

August 30, 2001
Reagan: In His Own Hand
By Michael New Contributing Writer
Stanford Review

   PALO ALTO -- During the past 10 years, a number of conservative activists and scholars have undertaken substantial efforts to improve the reputation and standing of our 40th President, Ronald Reagan.
     While President Reagan has always been held in high esteem by conservatives, these scholars and activists have attempted to achieve a greater recognition for Reagan and his accomplishments while President among members of the media and the general public.
     Among the most notable of these projects include Grover Norquist's Reagan Legacy Project, whose goal is to have a monument dedicated to President Reagan in each of the 50 states and Dinesh D'Souza's 1997 book Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Ordinary Leader.
     The recent book, Reagan in His Own Hand, is one of the most successful of these efforts, largely because it gives readers the opportunity to witness the wisdom and insight of Ronald Reagan at a very personal level.
     Edited by Hoover Institution Fellows Martin Anderson, Annelise Anderson, and Kiron K. Skinner, this book is a compilation of one minute radio commentaries that Reagan wrote and delivered himself after he left the Governor's office in 1975, but before he declared his intention to seek the Republican nomination for President in 1980.
     These commentaries deal with a wide range of foreign and domestic policy issues and according to one pundit, "have finally dispelled the notion once and for all that Reagan was an amiable dunce."
     Paradoxically this book is both uplifting and depressing. While reading the book, one can see the immense progress that has been made on many of the issues that Reagan wrote about between 20-25 years ago.
     However, in other areas little progress at all has been made and in still others the situation has actually deteriorated since the mid 1970s. One policy area where immense progress has been made since the 1970s is that of defense spending.
     Now it is true that many elected officials today make the case for increased spending on defense in order to increase compensation for America's soldiers and to begin construction of a missile defense system.
     However, the infrastructure of America's military is still in far better shape today than it was during the years of neglect that immediately followed the conclusion of the Vietnam War.
     In his commentaries, Reagan makes the case for a strong defense and increased defense spending through both historical examples and through number of detailed stories. He argues against negotiated missile reductions by demonstrating how the Soviet Union and other totalitarian powers have never abided by the terms of previous arms control agreements.
     Reagan also provides numerous examples of disabled fighter planes that are supposed to serve as America's first line of defense, and training runs that fail due to malfunctioning equipment or outdated weapons.
     All of these stories effectively demonstrate the importance of strengthening America's military. Another positive development since Reagan's commentaries is the fall of communism.
     Communism collapsed in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe by the early 1990s and is now relegated to such rogue nations as Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. However, communism was flourishing during the mid to late 1970s. Shortly after the fall of Vietnam in 1975, Communists had assumed control of at least eight additional countries. In his commentaries Reagan consistently makes the case for opposing the communists, both strategically and in humanitarian terms.
     These particular commentaries provide good background for anyone interested in foreign policy and defense issues. We can see first hand what an important and loyal ally Taiwan is, as Reagan describes how Taiwanese spies were adept at providing the United States with confidential information from the Chinese government.
     This commentary also serves the useful purpose of showing the low regard that China held toward the United States and its allies even in the 1970s. Finally, Reagan also shows us at a very personal level the human rights violations that occur communist countries.
     He gives examples of students who were sent to detention centers because they gave their teacher a gift and families who were jailed or sent to mental institutions because they sought a visa to leave the misery that surrounded them in the U.S.S.R.
     However, in some cases we can also see how the current thinking on many issues has taken a turn for the worse. For instance, when was the last time you heard an elected official denounce some kind of government program?
     Politicians and elected officials are always willing to rail against waste, fraud, and inefficiency. However in this era of "compassionate conservatism" very rare is the politician who takes issue with some kind of government program in its entirety.
     However, in many of his columns, Reagan does exactly that, arguing against food stamps, welfare, and other programs. Again his stories drive home the point exceptionally well. He talked about how new welfare guidelines, which made college students, even those with affluent parents, eligible for food stamps. He also mentions how the U.S. Government is sending welfare and social security checks to people who do not even reside in the United States. The much maligned 'welfare queen' a Chicago woman who was receiving over 50 welfare checks at taxpayer expense receives a mention in one of Reagan's commentaries as well. Reagan devotes a lot of time to criticizing such mismanaged government programs and state intrusions in the economy. However at the same time, he neglects social issues. For instance, not a single one of his commentaries deal with the subject of homosexuality. While issues surrounding gays held less salience during the 1970s, it is still somewhat surprising that Reagan chose to altogether neglect them during his weekly commentaries.
     Similarly, only one of his commentaries deals with the topic of abortion, and this commentary is particularly disappointing. During Reagan's first term as governor first and before Roe vs. Wade was decided, Governor Reagan signed a bill into law that allowed women to obtain abortions if their pregnancy endangered their health. However, this health exception was poorly defined and the bill had the effect of virtually legalizing abortion on demand throughout the entire state of California.
     However, in this commentary, Reagan tries to portray this particular bill as a pro-life piece of legislation that reaffirmed the personhood of the unborn. Reagan's reluctance to detail the consequences of this bill is understandable.
     After all, Reagan intended to run for President and acknowledging that he signed into law a bill that expanded abortion rights would have certainly hurt his chances in the Republican Presidential Primaries in 1980.
     Nonetheless, this particular commentary still struck me as being a little disingenuous. The final part of the book is perhaps the most interesting. It is a compilation, not of Reagan daily radio commentaries, but instead of Reagan's other writings, including papers he wrote as a student, speeches he gave as a political candidate and Presidential addresses.
     The final section even includes a letter that he took the time to write while Governor to the current editor of the Pegasus, Eureka College's campus newspaper, who openly criticized Governor Reagan's part in the recent dedication of a campus field house.
     While reading many of these speeches in the final part of the book, I noticed a striking similarity between the statements he made as President and his daily radio commentaries.
     There is extremely little in the way of incendiary rhetoric, ideological posturing, or shrill demonizing of partisan adversaries in these speeches. Instead Reagan consistently conveys an optimistic tone, coupled with solid common sense examples of how government programs are often failing people and how conservative solutions would often be preferable.
     Though I am a little too young to remember Reagan's presidency in any great detail, the uplifting nature of many of these speeches and commentaries demonstrated why Reagan was so adept at using television and media to communicate his vision to the American people.
     All in all, modern day Republican leaders would do well to read this book and learn from both Reagan's policy prescriptions and the appealing manner in which he conveyed those ideas to the American people.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 2001 by Stanford Reviews. All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, Aug 15, 2001
For Ronald Reagan
Character Was Everything!
By Peggy Noonan

   CLOVIS -- In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant; Harry Truman wasn't brilliant, and he helped save Western Europe from Stalin. He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever.
     White Houses are always full of quick-witted people with ready advice on how to flip a senator or implement a strategy. You can hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you can't buy courage and decency, you can't rent a strong moral sense.
     A president must bring those things with him. If he does, they will give meaning and animation to the great practical requirement of the presidency:
     He must know why he's there and what he wants to do. He has to have thought it through. He needs to have, in that much maligned word, but a good one nontheless, a vision of the future he wishes to create. This is a function of thinking, of the mind, the brain.
     But a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character--the courage and heart--to see it through.... (Reagan) had the vision. Did he have the courage without which it would be nothing but a poignant dream? Yes.
     At the core of Reagan's character was courage, a courage that was, simply, natural to him, a courage that was ultimately contagious. When people say President Reagan brought back our spirit and our sense of optimism, I think what they are saying in part is, the whole country caught his courage.
     There are many policy examples, but I believe when people think of his courage, they think first of what happened that day in March 1981 when he was shot. He tried to walk into the hospital himself but his knees buckled and he had to be helped. They put him on a gurney, and soon he started the one-liners.
     Quoting Churchill, he reminded everyone that there's nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without effect. To Mrs. Reagan, it was, "Honey, I forgot to duck." To the doctors, "I just hope you're Republicans." To which one doctor replied, "Today Mr. President we're all Republicans."
     Maybe he caught Reagan's courage too. But Reagan the political figure had a form of courage that I think is the hardest and most demanding kind. A general will tell you that anyone can be brave for five minutes; the adrenaline pumps, you do things of which you wouldn't have thought yourself capable. But Reagan had that harder and more exhausting courage, the courage to swim against the tide. And we all forget it now because he changed the tide.
     Looking back, we forget that the political mood of today, in which he might find himself quite comfortable, is quite different from the political mood the day he walked into politics. But he had no choice, he couldn't not swim against the tide. In the fifties and sixties all of his thoughts and observations led him to believe that Americans were slowly but surely losing their freedoms.
     When he got to Hollywood as a young man in his twenties, he shared and was impressed by the general thinking of the good and sophisticated people of New York and Hollywood with regard to politics. He was a liberal Democrat, as his father was, and he felt a great attachment to the party.
     He was proud that his father had refused to take him and his brother Moon to the movie, Birth of a Nation, with its racial stereotypes. And he bragged that his father, Jack, a salesman, had, back long ago when Reagan was a kid, once spent the night in his car rather than sleep in a hotel that wouldn't take Jews.
     Ronald Reagan as a young man was a Roosevelt supporter, he was all for FDR, and when he took part in his first presidential campaign he made speeches for Harry Truman in 1948.
     When Reagan changed, it was against the tide. It might be said that the heyday of modern political liberalism, in its American manifestation, was the 1960s, when the Great Society began and the Kennedys were secular saints and the costs of enforced liberalism were not yet apparent. And that is precisely when Reagan came down hard right, all for Goldwater in 1964. This was very much the wrong side of the fashionable argument to be on; it wasn't a way to gain friends in influential quarters, it wasn't exactly a career-enhancing move.
      But Reagan thought the conservatives were right. So he joined them, at the least advantageous moment, the whole country going this way on a twenty-year experiment, and Reagan going that way, thinking he was right and thinking that sooner or later he and the country were going to meet in a historic rendezvous.
     His courage was composed in part of intellectual conviction and in part of sheer toughness. When we think of Reagan, we think so immediately of his presidency that we tend to forget what came before. What came before 1980 was 1976--and Reagan's insurgent presidential bid against the incumbent Republican President Jerry Ford. Ford was riding pretty high, he was the good man who followed Nixon after the disgrace of Watergate; but Ford was a moderate liberal Republican, and Reagan thought he was part of the problem, so he declared against him.
     He ran hard. And by March 1976 he had lost five straight primaries in a row. He was in deep trouble--eleven of twelve former chairmen of the Republican National Committee called on him to get out of the race, the Republican Conference of Mayors told him to get out, on March 18 the Los Angeles Times told him to quit.
     The Reagan campaign was $2 to $3 million in debt, and they were forced to give up their campaign plane for a small leased jet, painted yellow, that they called "The Flying Banana." On March 23, they were in Wisconsin, where Reagan was to address a bunch of duck hunters. Before the speech, Reagan and his aides gathered in his room at a dreary hotel to debate getting out of the race.
     The next day there would be another primary, in North Carolina, and they knew they'd lose. Most of the people in the room said, "It's over, we have no money, no support, we lost five so far and tomorrow we lose six." John Sears, the head of the campaign, told the governor, "You know, one of your supporters down in Texas says he'll lend us a hundred thousand dollars if you'll rebroadcast that speech where you give Ford and Kissinger hell on defense."
     The talk went back and forth. Marty Anderson, the wonderful longtime Reagan aide who told me this story, said he sat there thinking, 'This is crazy, another hundred grand in debt....' The talk went back and forth and then Reagan spoke. He said "Okay, we'll do it.
     Get the hundred thousand, we'll run the national defense speech." He said, "I am taking this all the way to the convention at Kansas City, and I don't care if I lose every damn primary along the way." And poor Marty thought to himself, 'Oh Lord, there are twenty-one....' The next night at a speech, Marty was standing in the back and Frank Reynolds of ABC News came up all excited with a piece of paper in his hand that said 55-45.
     Marty thought, 'Oh, we're losing by ten.' And Reynolds said, "You're winning by ten!" Reagan was told, but he wouldn't react or celebrate until he was back on the plane and the pilot got the latest results. Then, with half the vote in and a solid lead, he finally acknowledged victory in North Carolina with a plastic glass of champagne and a bowl of ice cream.
     Ronald Reagan, twenty-four hours before, had been no-money-no-support-gonna-lose-dead--but he made the decision he would not quit, and at the end he came within a whisker of taking the nomination from Ford..... We have all noticed in life that big people with big virtues not infrequently have big flaws, too.
     Reagan's great flaw it seemed to me, and seems to me, was not one of character but personality. That was his famous detachment, which was painful for his children and disorienting for his staff.
     No one around him quite understood it, the deep and emotional engagement in public events and public affairs, and the slight and seemingly formal interest in the lives of those around him. James Baker III called him the kindest and most impersonal man he'd ever known, and there was some truth to that.... He had a temper. He didn't get mad lightly, but when he did it was real and hit like lightning.... Reagan is always described as genial and easygoing, but Marty Anderson used to call him "warmly ruthless." He would do in the nicest possible way what had to be done.
     He was as nice as he could be about it, but he knew where he was going, and if you were in the way you were gone. And you might argue his ruthlessness made everything possible.

       [Editor's Note: Ms. Noonan was a speechwriter for President Reagan and Vice President Bush. She is the author of What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era and Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. She lives in New York.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

   CLOVIS -- This week in Clovis, permits for new homes in Clovis has nearly tripled this year as buyers fgrom the bay Area and Los Angeles pour into Clovis. The median price of a new house in Clovis has now climberd to about $161,000 a $7,000 increase since this time last year. No wonder, as the average size has more than doubled to around 4500 feet to accommodate 4 bedrooms and and over-size garage. I
    In another matter, the Buchanan High School senior who admitted kidnapping a 7 year old Clovis girl earlier this year, was sentenced during the Fresno Juvenile Court heaing on Wednesday.
     He will serve out his 9.3 years sentence at the California Yiouth Authority Detention Center in Sonora.

          [Editor's Note: The California Welfare and Institutions Code states that: the Juvenile Court is primarily the rehabilitation as well as the punishment of juveniles and the protection of the community.
     Generally, the public and the press are not allowed into the court or access to the records, without the specific permission of the juvenile court judge. The purpose of confidentiality laws is to avoid stigmatizing the juvenile for errant behavior and is based on the belief that the young person will reform.
     California's Juvenile Justice System is a complicated network of people and agencies which processes about 250,000 juvenile arrests annually at a cost of over $1 billion. There is a consensus among those who have conducted recent studies of juvenile justice issues in California that the juvenile justice system is often unable to adequately address "minor" crimes because of a lack of time and resources. Source: Legislative Analyst's Office, Juvenile Crime Outlook for California.]

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

   CLOVIS -- City Planner Dwight Kroll and the City Council met in a public meeting on Monday night at City Hall and discussed the proposed 200+ subdivision on some of the last agricultural use land on the outskirts of Clovis.
     Nearby residents voiced doubts during during a July meeting in which the subdivision was being reviewed. Worse yet, some Council members had their own doubts about the proposal bur are moving ahead, anyway.
    Making matters worse, Clovis Fire Chief Jim Schneider expressed concern about the narrow street design in the proposal. He said , "... standard fire department response times is five minutes." Schneider estimated that he could not meet that standard on the narrow streets in the proposed subdivision. Schneider also had doubts about the proposed fire station hat will not be built to serve the area for about six years.
    City staff is in the process of analyzing the effects of street widths on public safety and speeding drivers. Council Member Harry Armstrong joined the dissenters by observing that the City should not be approving huge subdivision with lots that will lots be about 10,000 square feet or more but thatwill have the narrow street widths.
     The proposed 200+ housing tract on what is now prime rural aricultural land was not well received by neighbors in the area. Some of the residents objected to the density and enormous size, congestion, and noise of the proposed subdivision.

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

   CLOVIS -- Yosemite National Park is a five-hour drive from San Francisco, a six-hour drive from Los Angeles, Its a three-hour drive from Sacramento. From Clovis, CA it is a pleasant 90 minutes, the most convenient gateway. No matter how you get there, the Yosemite experience is well worth connecting there.
     To reach Tuolumne Meadows, take Highway 41 north from Clovis, then Highway 120 east, which turns into Tioga Pass Road, which usually opens in late spring -- a 39-mile drive through forests, meadows and lakes. Entrance fee is $20 per vehicle. It expires after seven days.
     Tuolumne Meadows is generally less crowded than Yosemite Valley, which during the summer has all the trappins of a carnival atmosphere. Four millions of visitors pack into Yosemite Valley during the Summer. Most of them miss the great sights of subalpine meadow on Tioga Pass Road. Why not give it a try. There are many campsites along the Tuolumne Rriver at the Meadows.
     There is a family campground ($18 a night), Lembert Dome is an easy walk away, and children love paddling in the river. Camping reservations can be made through the National Park Service Web site. Reservations are available on weekdays, and you can still get a good spot by lining up in the early morning.
     Lodging options are more limited and include canvas tent cabins and central dining areas at Tuolumne Meadows Lodge. Hard to get -- but worth trying -- are bunk-style tent cabins known as High Sierra Camps, which cost $48 per night for two adults.Use the reservation system..
     : If you're experienced but want a good guide, try Falcon's "Rock Climbing Tuolumne Meadows," by Don Reid and Chris Falkenstein.
     Whether you're a beginner or more advanced, there are many area climbing schools; the best known is . Group climbing lessons for three to six people run about $90 each; advanced classes, including self-rescue, cost about $100 each, with discounts for multiday packages. You can pay as little as $400 for five days with a guide, lessons and equipment for two. Private guided climbs also are available.
     Excellent trails crisscross the area. One is the Pacific Crest Trail, which extends from Tuolumne Meadows to Lyell Canyon. There's a gorgeous hike to the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, which can also be done on horseback. Or, wander the nearby meadows, especially under a full summer moon. A drive to the east takes you to 9,945-foot Tioga Pass and eventually into the Nevada desert -- that is, unless you're hardy enough to ascend 13,053-foot Mount Dana. There's a stunning panorama of the Sierra crest and salty Mono Lake. Getting around without a car is less convenient but entirely possible; a shuttle bus runs throughout Yosemite.
     Snow mosquitoes pester campers in late June and July. As for bears, there were 654 "incidents" in Yosemite last year, resulting in $126,192 in property damage, such as car trunks being pried open by hungry bears.
    The National Park Service provides online news bulletins, latest road and travel conditions. at the Park
    For more links to nearby hotels and resports at Yosemite and nearby, try our sister newspaper, the YosemiteNews.net

Letter to the Editor

Copyright 1962, 2001 by Clovis Free Press. All Rights Reserved.

Featured Book Review Reprise
May, 1896
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Realistic Picture Of Life On the River!
A Review By William Dean Howells

   Mr. Samuel Clemens has taken the boy of the Southwest for the hero of his new book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and has presented him with a fidelity to circumstance which loses no charm by being realistic in the highest degree, and which gives incomparably the best picture of life in that region as yet known to fiction.
     The town where Tom Sawyer was born and brought up is some such idle shabby Mississippi River town as Mr. Clemens has so well described in his piloting reminiscences, but Tom belongs to the better sort of people in it, and has been bred to fear God and dread the Sunday-school according to the strictest rite of the faiths that have characterized all the respectability of the West.
     His subjection in these respects does not so deeply affect his inherent tendencies but that he makes himself a beloved burden to the poor, tender-hearted old aunt who brings him up with his orphan brother and sister, and struggles vainly with his manifold sins, actual and imaginary. The limitations of his transgressions are nicely and artistically traced.
     He is mischievous, but not vicious; he is ready for almost any depredation that involves the danger and honor of adventure, but profanity he knows may provoke a thunderbolt upon the heart of the blasphemer, and he almost never swears; he resorts to any strategem to keep out of school, but he is not a downright liar, except upon terms of after shame and remorse that make his falsehood bitter to him.
     He is cruel, as all children are, but chiefly because he is ignorant; he is not mean, but there are very definite bounds to his generosity; and his courage is the Indian sort, full of prudence and mindful of retreat as one of the conditions of prolonged hostilities.
     In a word, he is a boy, and merely and exactly an ordinary boy on the moral side.
     What makes him delightful to the reader is that on the imaginative side he is very much more, and though every boy has wild and fantastic dreams, this boy cannot rest till he has somehow realized them.
     Till he has actually run off with two other boys in the character of a buccaneer and lived for a week on an island in the Mississippi, he has lived in vain; and this passage is but the prelude to more thrilling adventures, in which he finds hidden treasures, traces the bandits to their cave, and is himself lost in its recesses.
     The local material and the incidents with which his career is worked up are excellent, and throughout there is scrupulous regard for the boy's point of view in reference to his surroundings and himself, which shows how rapidly Mr. Clemens has grown as an artist.
     We do not remember anything in which this propriety is violated, and its preservation adds immensely to the grown-up reader's satisfaction in the amusing and exciting story. There is a boy's love-affair, but it is never treated otherwise than as a boy's love-affair.
     When the half-breed has murdered the young doctor, Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn, are really in their boyish terror and superstition, going to let the poor old town-drunkard be hanged for the crime, till the terror of that becomes unendurable.
     The story is a wonderful study of the boy-mind, which inhabits a world quite distinct from that in which he is bodily present with his elders, and in this lies its great charm and its universality, for boy-nature, however human nature varies, is the same everywhere.
    The tale is very dramatically wrought, and the subordinate characters are treated with the same graphic force that sets Tom alive before us. The worthless vagabond, Huck Finn, is entirely delightful throughout, and in his promised reform his identity is respected: he will lead a decent life in order that he may one day be thought worthy to become a member of that gang of robbers which Tom is to organize.
     Tom's aunt is excellent, with her kind heart's sorrow and secret pride in Tom; and so is his sister Mary, one of those good girls who are born to usefulness and charity and forbearance and unvarying rectitude.
     Many village people and local notables are introduced in well-conceived character; the whole little town lives in the reader's sense, with its religiousness, its lawlessness, its droll social distinctions, its civilization qualified by its slave-holding, and its traditions of the wilder West which has passed away.
     The picture will be instructive to those who have fancied the whole Southwest a sort of vast Pike County, and have not conceived of a sober and serious and orderly contrast to the sort of life that has come to represent the Southwest in literature.

Letter to the Editor

©1896 Atlantic Magazine. All rights reserved.

Monday, June 25, 2001
College Degree
Get One To Earn A $Million!
By Howard Hobbs, Ph.D. President
Valley Press Media Network

     CLOVIS -- According to the College Board, the cost of a Bachelor's Degree, including books and materials, college tuition, and room and board now costs $22,541 at a private college and $8,470 at a state institution.
     The price of a college education is rising so quickly that if you are the parents of a new born baby you should consult a financial planner if you plan on sending the child to college in a few years.
     Why? By the time the newborn reaches college age the cost of college tuition, books, and related materials is expected to be $200,000 at private college or $80,000 at a public school. That's for the year 2019.
     There is hope on the horizon. The new tax bill signed by President Bush recently, offers a tax break known as a 529 Plan, an investment programs that permits parents to invest up to $200,000 for a child in state-approved mutual funds along the same general lines as a traditional 401(k) Plan.
     Most of the state plans are open to people regardless of their state of residence, so residents from all over the U.S. can sign up for California's 529 Plan. Funds you place in the account can be used for any accredited state college or state run university in the United States.
     The Bush tax changes will exempt any money withdrawn from the California 529 Plan from federal taxes after Jan. 1, 2002. This is real break for parents. Before the change, withdrawals from tuition savings plans were subject to federal taxes at around 15 percent.
     Money placed in the account grows tax-free and withdrawals are free from federal income tax as long as the money is used for tuition, books, or supplies at state universities. Private universities are not covered under the new plan.

Thursday May 24, 2001
American Dream Slip Sliding Away
Who You Gonna Blame It On?
By The Clovis Arm Chair Economist

   CLOVIS -- It's a national concern. America is borrowing more and more to support spending. This is the mantra from Washington, "keep spending to keep the economy growing!" I don't buy it. You shouldn't either.
     A closer look by the Clovis Free Press reveals that the burden of debt is making more and more local families vulnerable when times turn bad. The same is true for the entire nation..
     Clovis families who once saved about eight percent of their take home pay only a few years ago now spend about one percent more than they earn.
     Payments on personal debt for such things as credit cards and student loans used to consume less than six percent of after tax income. This year the ClovisNews.com opinion poll found the percentage to be nearly eight percent, highest since President Bill Clinton was elected and still shooting up.
     The Clovis Arm Chair Economist predicts the high level debt burden families are shouldering threatens to push the current financial slowdown over the edge and into a flea market paradise.

Thursday May 24, 2000
Clovis Newspaper Founder
Long-Time Fresno State News Writer
By Amy Williams Staff Writer Clovis Free Press

    CLOVIS, CALIF. --- Dr. Howard E. Hobbs started interviewing Fresno State faculty and major newsmakers for the Bulldog Newspaper when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President. Hobbs, whose illustrious career includes the US Marines and co-founding CSUFresno.com and serving as chairman of the its board, has hosted the longest-running public-affairs newsletter history-since 1958.
     Now he is drawing on forty-six years of those conversations, as well as his own thoughtful perspective on the last half century, to mold real journalism on Fresno State's old University Campus and the new footprint at its present locale. Drawing on the template established in 1958 Hobbs has woven nearly five decades of provocative and thoughtful news jouranlism into a unique and authoritative news history covering the major stories of our time. Hobbs' reporting and editorial style is a history of the past fifty years.
    . One can read this fairly as a diverse reflection of Hobbs' thought over the last half-century. Hobbs columns are a digital collection of stories and editorials drawn from Bulldog Newwspaper at Fresno State. The work and the web site archive are nicely formatted to allow for browsing.

THE DAILY arise and read a news leak from CLOVISNEWS.COM

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