Chicago Teachers Strike Proves Wisdom of Scott Walker

September 10, 2012 13 Comments

The teachers union in Chicago is on strike. The average teacher in Chicago earns $76,000 per year not including generous heath and pension benefits. By comparison, the average Chicagoan only earns $47,000 per year. Those in the private sector don’t get the lavish health and pension benefits, which bring the average Chicago teacher’s benefit package to well over $100,000. The teachers rejected a 16% increase in pay, totally more than $400 million. Chicago government school teachers have the highest salaries in the country and they want more. The pro-union press is very concerned about all the children which are “loose” in Chicago. As though those kids weren’t loose all summer long. I guess only in September are unleashed children a major concern.

The teachers unions will of course pretend like they have the best interest of children at heart. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the highest teacher salaries in the country and a 16% increase on the table (who in the private sector has gotten a 16% raise in the last four years?) the teachers said no, they want more money. These people already pay less than 3% towards their health and pension benefits, their compensation packages average well over $100,000. Yet they want more and they’ll lie about their concern for children in the process in order to garner sympathy from already overtaxed taxpayers. Keep in mind, Chicago has some of the highest tax rates in the country.

The Chicago government school strike illustrates everything Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was fighting for in Wisconsin. Government employee unions are completely out of control. Their members earn more than private sector employees, in the case of Chicago government school teachers earn nearly $30,000 a year more in salary. Chicago teachers also earn lavish healthcare benefits and pensions, lavish plans that no one in the private sector get anymore. Yet all you hear from the teachers is how difficult life is with the summers off and how hard their jobs are. Maybe no one told them that most jobs that earn more than $50,000 a year are difficult.

Taxpayers can’t afford this nonsense anymore. Especially when the government schools produce such poor results. Chicago government schools are among the 10 worst in the nation, yet the teachers want a 16% raise on their already #1 ranked salaries. If these people operated in a competitive environment, they’d be out of a job. Who would willingly send their kids to such awful schools and who in their right mind would pay such poor teachers so much money? Only in the public sector, which shields itself from competition, can this sort of nonsense take place. There’s a reason why parents in Chicago are flocking to charter schools, it’s because the public school teachers are fat and sassy with their $100k+ pay packages to the point that they don’t actually do a good job teaching.

Chicago is providing us with a good example of why we all need to follow Scott Walker’s lead. States need to restrict the power of government employee unions, for the good of taxpayers. Government employees aren’t altruistic, they don’t care about children or the public good. They care about themselves and milking taxpayers of every last dime. They get more pay on average than private sector employees, their benefit packages far exceed what most people get in the private sector. Yet they want us taxpayers to pay even more for even less service. It’s time to restrict these unions, it’s time for all of us to do what we can to make sure our city and state doesn’t become the next Chicago.

UPDATE: According to the Department of Education, 79% of Chicago government school students are not proficient in reading. It appears that the highest paid teachers in the country want a raise nearly equal to the amount of 8th graders who are actually capable of reading at an 8th grade level. Pathetic.

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Pro-Homosexual Campaign Masked As Anti-Bullying

May 3, 2012 6 Comments

Dan Savage is a radical homosexual activist who pushes the homosexual agenda via an anti-bullying campaign. In the last few years so-called bullying has become a hot button topic in the education world. We’re all supposed to be very concerned about bullied kids, the media likes to make a big deal out of teenagers who supposedly commit suicide because kids at school are mean to them. No doubt children pick on each other, often to excess. It isn’t right and schools shouldn’t put up with it. But the current wave of anti-bullying efforts have nothing to do with kids being mean to each other, it has everything to do with pushing a radical homosexual agenda on children.

Savage made waves last weekend when he spoke at a high school journalism convention. There to discuss his anti-bullying efforts, he instead attacked Christians and turned into a bully himself. He also attacked Republicans, which of course could be taken as bullying young high school Republicans. In the anti-bullying world of Dan Savage, any disagreement with homosexual sex and the homosexual political agenda is considered bullying homosexuals. It’s just like extreme Obama supporters who claim any opposition to Obama is racism. Yet, the anti-bully is free to attack Christians and Republicans. Make no mistake, Savage doesn’t think his comments were bullying at all. But had they been said about homosexuals he would be first in line to cry bully.

The anti-bullying efforts being put forth by government schools, which are controlled by the progressive left teachers unions, have nothing to do with the prevention of actual bullying. They use teen suicide and general mean behavior as a prop to convince parents that the schools are doing something good. In reality, the anti-bullying efforts of Dan Savage and the government schools (his particular anti-bullying program has reached 40 million kids) is nothing more than a pro-homosexual campaign disguised as anti-bullying. The truth is, Savage and company don’t really care about bullying. They care about pushing propaganda at children, making them in the least afraid to oppose homosexuals and at the most outright support them. Any other group, they don’t much care about. As such, it’s acceptable for Savage to attack Christians and mock believers who walked out of his speech.

There is a nationwide effort to force acceptance of homosexual acts. They’re targeting government school children, in some states as young as kindergarten. Homosexuals, deviant deathstyle and all, are held up as heroes. Christians are mocked, attacked and ridiculed. No Christian should have their kids in the government schools, no Christian child should be subjected to this nonsense. If you think the government schools anti-bullying campaign will prevent your Christian kid from being attacked, you have another thing coming. Your kid will be attacked if they don’t support homosexuals. They’ll also be spiritually attacked as the schools try to bully Christian students into accepting that which is evil via programs such as Dan Savage’s.

As Christians we can look to scripture on matters such as bullying. Love thy neighbor is a good start. How do we love the homosexual neighbor? We don’t tolerate their sin, instead we must pray that they would turn from it. We must share the gospel with them, we must encourage them to discontinue in their sin. These people aren’t any different than any other group of sinners. All sinners need to be prayed for, they need the gospel shared with them and they need to be encouraged to leave their sin behind them. Scripture is all the anti-bullying campaign we need. We Christians must be sure to follow scripture in this matter. We must also be sure to reject the pro-homosexual efforts of radicals such as Dan Savage.

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More Absurd Taxes For Failing Government Schools

June 13, 2011 Leave a comment

The Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, wants to tax pop in order to pay for government schools. He proposes a 2 cents per ounce tax, which means a 2 liter would cost around $1.30 more than it does now. I just paid $1 for a 2 liter last week, with Nutter’s proposed tax that two liter would cost $2.30, more than double. With the price in Philadelphia doubled, Nutter ought to realize that the city won’t get anywhere near as much tax money as he thinks. Folks will either buy pop in the suburbs where the tax doesn’t apply or they’ll stop drinking pop.  In other words, many people will avoid paying the tax and thus the only ones hurt by Nutter’s tax proposal would be stores that sell pop and their low end employees.

Michigan is apparently considering applying the sales tax to pop, which would increase the cost by 6%. How much they think this is going to raise is anyone’s guess. According to former state superintendent Tom Watkins the government schools need to increase revenue $500 million per year in order to keep up with health insurance and pensions alone. I highly doubt that a 6% sales tax on pop is going to make much of a dent.

Watkins highlights the problem with government schools today. Cadillac health insurance plans and massive pensions are absolutely killing taxpayers. Michigan government schools pay into pension plans at the rate of around 24% of each employee’s pay. The average teacher makes around $63,000 per year in Michigan. Which means that each school district is spending over $15,000 per year on retirement pensions for each teacher. Add in healthcare plans that cost $15,000-$20,000 each and the average teacher is getting nearly $100,000 in compensation for just nine months of work.

Watkins doesn’t just highlight a problem with teacher salaries and benefits. He unintentionally highlights another major problem with government school structure. What in the world do we need a state superintendent of schools for? Why are taxpayers funding such a job? Go to any government school and you’ll find legions of highly paid administrators who are pulling the same massive healthcare and pension benefits as teachers. There is a lot of fat to be cut at the top, it doesn’t all have to come out of teacher salaries and benefits.

Michigan spends $15 billion a year on education, with increases of $500 million a year necessary just to keep pace. Just about every other state spends as much as Michigan per student. At what point do taxpayers say enough is enough? Will it be when pop doubles in price? Will it be when property taxes double in a few years? There must be a point where taxpayers will rise up against these tax increases. Especially so as the quality of education gets worse with each year. There must be a breaking point for all this madness.

More money is not going to be the savior of government education. In fact, there may not be a savior for government education. The entire project is the folly of socialists and other assorted leftists who, for a century, want to fundamentally transform the country into a socialist paradise. They peddle their lies by appealing on behalf of children. In fact, we spend so much on this system and get so little out of it, the entire structure needs to be scrapped. Any education system that depends on the government rather than parents to be the primary educator is doomed from the start. Bureaucracy doesn’t teach very well. Until taxpayers wake up and realize the system is a failure, we can expect more absurd tax proposals.

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Radical Homosexual Agenda Taught To 5 Year Olds

June 6, 2011 16 Comments

Out in California the government schools are pushing the homosexual agenda hard. One aspect of this is by pushing the idea that we can choose our own gender. I generally hate the term gender as it is a term that has been taken over by the left. There are only two sexes, but according to the radical homosexual activists there can be a dozen genders. I will however use the term gender so as to not confuse anyone.

In any event, the government schools are pushing the idea of “gender identity” to kindergarteners. They begin by asking these kids whether various toys are “boy toys” or “girl toys.” They then are read a radical homosexual activist book disguised as “anti-bullying” called “My Princess Boy.” This book is meant to confuse 5 year olds about gender issues. The purpose here is to normalize that which is abnormal, namely boys dressing up and acting like little girls. Not to be out done, the schools are teaching 4th graders it’s ok to be a boy one day and a girl the next. Once again, all of this is meant to confuse children and move then further away from Christian and western views on gender identity.

It’s very easy to dismiss what happens in California as radical and crazy. But historically the government schools across the nation have taken their cues from what the schools in California do. It’s interestingly the same thing with law, when the California legislature passes radical legislation suddenly that legislation is passed in just about every other state. The left-wing bureaucracy throughout the nation looks to California for inspiration and guidance. So what goes on in California ought to be of great interest to those of us who don’t live on the left coast.

These issues are important because what these leftists are trying to do is separate children from the morality of their parents and the basic traditional Christian morality this nation has subscribed to for centuries. In other words, the schools are pushing cultural marxism. Worse, these leftists are pushing a deviant sin as not only normal but desirable for little children. We’re not talking about a bunch of adults in college, we’re talking about kids as young as 5. This also isn’t a matter of tolerance and acceptance. Should people be expected to accept and tolerate sinful deviancy as though it were normal?

There is surely an agenda out there to normalize and even glamorize homosexuals and other sexual deviants. This is little more than a radical branch of feminism. Feminism wants to not just raise the lot of women in society, it also wants to tear down men. What better way to do that than destroy masculinity by teaching boys it’s not only normal but desirable to dress in pretty pink dresses and act like girls. This agenda is godless and lacks Christian morality, in fact it lacks any traditional morality. It separates children from the past and tears down traditional society. Whoever would want to such a thing? The radical progressive left. They have always been quite up front about such things.

Parents need to be aware of what’s going on here. The best way to fight back against this propaganda is to remove your children from government schools. Some people will insist that fighting back within the schools is the way to go. I’m here to tell you there is no fighting back against the entrenched, left-wing government school bureaucracy. The way to fight back is to remove your kids, and thus remove funding for your kids, from the government schools. Homeschooling is the best way to ensure your kids aren’t subjected to the homosexual agenda. There are many private schools that won’t subject kids to such propaganda as well.

While we must fight back against the normalization of deviant homosexuals, we must also take pains not shut these people out of the church. Homosexuals are sinners like everyone else and there is a place for such sinners in the church, so like as they repent and flee their sin. We in the church must be waiting with open arms to accept repentant homosexuals and we must be willing to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. We must never draw a line in the sand and declare that once someone identifies as a homosexual or engages in homosexual acts that they can never be part of the church. How wicked and un-Christ like such a position is. We must boldly tell these people that they are sinners in need of Jesus Christ, we must never back down from the Biblical position. But we must never shut the church door on this group of sinners, or in fact any group of sinners. We must fight the propaganda being taught to school children, but we must also go to great lengths to offer the alternative to death in sin, which is of course life in Jesus Christ.

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Food Tyranny in Chicago: Brown Bag Lunches Banned

April 11, 2011 2 Comments

Michelle Obama’s dreams of tyrannical food control are coming true at some Chicago government schools. It seems homemade lunches are banned at more than a few Chicago government schools. Unless a child has an allergy he is stuck eating the slop that the government school hands out at lunch. His parents have no choice. The government school lunch costs $2.25 if the Federal government isn’t subsidizing it. Not surprisingly the politically connected school lunch company Chartwells-Thompson stands to make a fortune if more schools ban parents from sending their kids to school with a homemade lunch.

The arrogance of the government schools is sort of incredible. They apparently believe it is their responsibility to make sure children eat what they consider to be healthy food. According to one principle:

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

Since when was it the job of the government schools to protect children from themselves? Since when was it their job to step in and prevent parents from determining what their kids eat for lunch? It’s this sort of power that government should not have over students or anyone and yet most turn a blind eye when the government schools declare that they alone will determine what kids eat for lunch.

What’s going on in Chicago does little more that set children up for a lifetime of servile dependency on the state, which is exactly what the socialists at the government school want. They want children to grow up depending on the government to determine what is best for them. They want them to grow up with only the choices that the government decides to bestow on them. What these socialists don’t want is for children to have free and unfettered access to choices that the school or government doesn’t approve of.

One of the goals of the government schools has always been to train the next generation to rely on the state. The schools have always been viewed as the way for socialists to change the next generation. This dates back to Dewey and Mann, the founding fathers of modern government schools. Parents have long been seen as an impediment to radical socialist change dating back to the very beginning of modern government schools. So it should come as no surprise that the next government school movement, the control of food, views parents as the problem and thus seeks to isolate parents from their kids. Ironically the government schools will try to deflect blame for poor test scores by blaming parents when all along they have tried to keep parents away from any serious decision making at the schools.

It is none of the government’s business what our children eat. It is therefore none of the government schools business what parents choose to serve their kids for lunch. Even if we agree that a lot of parents give their kids unhealthy food to eat, that is not cause for government to step in. Parents have an inalienable right to raise their children and thus feed their children as they see fit. Haughty government bureaucrats do not know better than parents and should not be allowed to substitute their judgment with the force of law.

Michelle Obama’s food campaign is dangerous because it seeks to turn know it all government bureaucrats into absolute authorities on healthy eating. Those bureaucrats in turn will substitute their judgment for that of parents. Every time the left gets up in arms about something like food it leads to less freedom for parents and more government control in the lives of children and families. That is exactly what is going on in Chicago today. Mrs. Obama may be jumping for joy in one of her frumpy designer outfits but what she wants costs the American people in freedom. Parents alone should be free to determine what their children eat for lunch. Government needs to steer clear of usurping parental authority.

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Only 38% Pass Basic Civics Test; Newsweek Reaches Wrong Conclusion

March 21, 2011 4 Comments

Newsweek had a piece this week claiming that 38% of the country cannot pass a basic citizenship test. The civics test is so simple as to be ridiculous. How many members are there in the House? Who was the President during WWI? Who is the Speaker of the House? The sort of questions that any 4th grader ought to be able to answer with ease. It’s a good example of how bad the government schools are. Considering the state of education in this country, I suppose it should be no surprise that the average adult doesn’t know anything about our nation’s history.

So what does Newsweek have to say about all of this? They sought opinions from ‘experts’ who proceeded to blame decentralized education and capitalism. No, I’m not kidding. Newsweek whined about income inequality and then quoted NYU professor Dalton Conley:

It doesn’t help that the United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world, with the top 400 households raking in more money than the bottom 60 percent combined. As Dalton Conley, an NYU sociologist, explains, “it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Unlike Denmark, we have a lot of very poor people without access to good education, and a huge immigrant population that doesn’t even speak English.” When surveys focus on well-off, native-born respondents, the U.S. actually holds its own against Europe.

Newsweek then quoted Yale professor Jacob Hacker:

Other factors exacerbate the situation. A big one, Hacker argues, is the decentralized U.S. education system, which is run mostly by individual states: “When you have more centrally managed curricula, you have more common knowledge and a stronger civic culture.” Another hitch is our reliance on market-driven programming rather than public broadcasting, which, according to the EJC study, “devotes more attention to public affairs and international news, and fosters greater knowledge in these areas.”

So Newsweek argues that the reason why Americans don’t know anything about our history is because of income inequality and decentralized education. On the latter issue, I can think of nothing worse for education than having the so-called education experts centralized in Washington. Government and university experts are experts at little more than fouling everything up by making declarations unto us little serfs. Centralized education would only create a massive centralized bureaucracy and we know that bureaucracies exist not to achieve their stated goal but to feed themselves more money and power.

As for income inequality, it is perhaps the worst excuse of them all. In the 19th century there was income inequality in this country and yet it was a priority for poor people to learn how to read and get a basic education, including civics and American history. This was done not via public schools but via private schools. Even in the 20th century European immigrants made sure their children learned basic American history so that they would be American. That has been lost in this country among the poor and dare I say among just about everyone.

Teaching civics and American history is no longer a priority in the government schools. Unless the history is negative of course. I’ll bet if the questions were about the Trail of Tears or Jim Crow more than 38% might actually pass. The schools, run by extreme leftists, desire to separate us from our past. The way to separate us from our past is to not teach civics and American history. The problem isn’t decentralization or income inequality, which the NYU and Yale professors both know. The problem is that the left is actively trying to separate us from our history. The way to do that on a mass scale is via government schools.

Newsweek’s article highlights one of the big problems with government education but their explanation is backwards. We need less government involvement in education. What we need is a separation of education and state. Parents need to be responsible for their own kids education. It is not the job of the state to teach children. In fact the dismal results at government schools suggest that not only can the state not educate children but that they surely should not be trusted with said education.

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Obama Wants Schools To Monitor Students Online, Private Speech

March 16, 2011 2 Comments

The Obama administration has decided to reinterpret civil rights laws and are ordering government schools to monitor students online and private conversations in order to discover “harassment.” Prior to this reinterpretation the law was designed to require schools to monitor students in school for racist or sexist conduct. If schools do not properly monitor students for ‘harassment’ then the school can be sued and lose Federal money. Facebook, a long time supporter of the administration, is apparently on board to ‘help’ schools.

The reinterpretation declares the following:

Harassing conduct may take many forms, including verbal acts and name-calling; graphic and written statements, which may include use of cell phones or the Internet… it does not have to include intent to harm, be directed at a specific target, or involve repeated incidents [but] creates a hostile environment … [which can] limit a student’s ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or opportunities offered by a school.
In other words, harassment is whatever the school decides it wants to be. This means the school is required to monitor online activities of students and it allows them to snoop in on students private conversations lest they be discussing ‘harassment.’
 
So what is to happen if the government school discovers this dreaded harassment online or in private conversation? According to the new Federal interpretation:
 
The school may need to provide training or other interventions not only for the perpetrators, but also for the larger school community, to ensure that all students, their families, and school staff can recognize harassment if it recurs and know how to respond… [and] provide additional services to the student who was harassed in order to address the effects of the harassment.
In other words, not only will the student or students involved in the alleged act of harassment be subject to re-education but so will their families and perhaps the community at large. Keep in mind we’re not talking about acts of alleged harassment during school, we’re talking about acts that take place online, at home or in otherwise private conversations. So if your kid says something on Facebook that a teacher, who is monitoring your kid at home, decides is harassing not only will your kid be subject to re-education but so will you. Maybe even the entire community will be subject to some sort of grand bureaucratic lesson on harassment because your kid was being watched by the government school online.
 
I am in no way endorsing racism or the bullying of students. The Obama administration’s reinterpretation is expansive to include the otherwise undefined harassment. However, there’s a difference between what happens on school grounds and what happens at home. On school grounds, the school has every right to step in and prevent bullying or harassment. However, once a student leaves school he leaves their jurisdiction. It is dangerous to have teachers, administrators and other school agents monitoring what are otherwise private activities outside of the school. This amounts to having government agents (the government schools are of course part of the government) monitoring private activities.
 
Worse, if the government and their agents don’t like what they see, they can  subject the principle parties, their families and the community at large to some sort of re-education about harassment. Again, this is for activities that take place at home, online, in private conversations or otherwise not at school. Do we want the government to monitor kids online and subject them to re-education based on something flimsy and meaningless as harassment? Do we want them monitoring them at all? I will submit that any monitoring by the government at home opens a Pandora’s box for all sorts of government meddling in the private and online affairs of American citizens, not just students.
 
We may not like some of the speech that some high school kids make online. However is that speech, made online at their homes or otherwise not at school, not protected by the first amendment? Doesn’t the Obama administration’s expansive reading of these civil rights laws infringe on students free speech outside of school? Government to monitoring this free speech and to demanding re-education for speech it doesn’t like will have a chilling effect on all free speech. After all, could not political speech made online be considered harassing by some government teachers? If so, then the government would be able to stop political speech by students while made at home. That seems incredibly dangerous for the first amendment and for freedom.
 
This move by the Obama administration is dangerous. Let’s not forget that in free societies governments do not monitor the private affairs of law abiding citizens. It is only totalitarian dictatorships that seek to monitor private conversations and private affairs. Do we want government agents, even if they take the benign face of government school teachers and administrators, monitoring high school kids online speech? Do we want these people monitoring students private conversations? If we love freedom, if we believe in freedom of speech then the answer is no, we don’t want government monitoring kids online or in private. Such would be dangerous for our freedom and for our republic.

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82% Of Government Schools Are Failing

March 9, 2011 Leave a comment

According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan 82% of government schools will fail under Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. This is a stunning admission of how bad the government schools really are. What’s worse is that we know that the tests that the government hands out are dumbed down and that failing grades are declared passing. Still 82% of schools fail. Yet the government school teachers in Wisconsin still expect to be paid a King’s salary and benefits.

When are we going to admit that government schools are a failure? When are we going to acknowledge that the education establishment doesn’t know how to properly educate children and/or refuses to do so? How many more generations of poorly educated children must be handed high school diploma’s they cannot read before we wake up and realize the system has failed? For to long middle class families have pretended like the problems in government schools only are seen in the inner city. The fact is that with 82% failure, it isn’t just inner city or rural schools that are failing. Suburban, middle class schools are failing to teach children.

Why is this happening? First and foremost it must be understood that absent competition there is no incentive for public schools to achieve. No Child Left Behind seeks to threaten poorly performing schools with a reduction in government funds. In reality with 82% failure you and I both know that no school will see its government money go away. By not being subject to competition, school monopolies have no incentive to perform well. After all, tax money will always be handed to them and individual angry parents can be ignored because they aren’t directly paying for any service.

Beyond that, if you study the history of government schools it is clear that they were created by the far left for progressive social purposes. The methods they use such as look-say reading are a failure and the schools know it. They use the method anyway because their goal isn’t to have children learn to read, their goal is to affect the next generation through education. Since the extreme left, who controls the schools and teachers colleges, desire a population who are subservient to government it stands to reason that they don’t desire a well educated society. If we cannot read, we cannot learn and if we are uneducated we’ll be more willing to go along with the left’s class warfare and welfare state.

Government school students today are more likely to know about how corporations are destroying the environment and how to put a condom on a banana than they are to know how to read or know basic American history. America’s children are being fed a godless, secular, left-wing education which isn’t teaching them how to read but instead teaches them how to be a left-wing union protester who hates America’s Christian founding and history. While the schools focus on left-wing political issues, they ignore the subjects that are a relevant part of a well rounded education. Kids can’t read, they can’t write, they don’t know basic math or science.

I’ve posted test results over and over again, is there any doubt that the government schools are a failure. The solution isn’t more money at this point, it’s a radical transformation into a system that relies on market forces. The schools will never get better, no matter how much money they spend because the entire system is flawed. Don’t continue sacrificing your children to the government schools. Pull them out today.

Filed under Education, Taxes, unions Tagged with , , , ,

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