Where Are My Keys?

No good deed goes unpunished..

Kid tries to pay back the good deeds of those who helped him, and gets suspended for it.

The 17-year-old leukemia survivor said he decided over the holidays to grow out his hair and donate it to Locks of Love after learning that the sister of a family friend had cancer.

In the process, officials at Madison Academy in Burton ruled Monday that Gaskins' hairstyle is violating school policy.

Despite his suspension, the teen says he isn't planning to cut his hair and hopes the board of the charter school near Flint will reconsider.

"I fought cancer my entire life. I'm going to keep fighting this," he said. "I'm not going to not give back just because my school says no."

Gaskins' mother, Christa Plante, says she supports her son's effort "100 percent."

On Monday, she launched a petition on Change.org asking the school to amend its hair policy for boys to allow them to grow it for charity donation.

Plante said her son has been assisted by charities over the years, including the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Now he's ready to do his part, she said.

"He's seen how it works and how it helped people, how it helped us," she said. "This is for him. He wants to do it now. This feels right."

Well done, Madison Academy.

What will Joe Pa's legacy be?

Over the span of a long career, there is bound to be evidence of both good and bad in a man's body of work.  While the guilt or innocence of Joe Paterno will be discussed for many years in the courthouse of America's drinking establishments, here's something to consider:

In 2000, Penn State freshman defensive back Adam Taliaferro had his spine crushed when tackling an Ohio State player. He lay on that September field paralyzed and panicked.

The first person he saw when he opened his eyes was Paterno, who died Sunday at 85.

"He could see I was losing it, but his eyes stayed totally calm," Taliaferro remembers. "And I remember that familiar, high-pitched voice, going, 'You're gonna get through this, Kid. You're gonna be OK.' And I just trusted him. I believed it."

Taliaferro wound up in a hospital bed in Philadelphia, everything frozen solid below the neck. Doctors said he had about a 3 percent chance of walking again. And every other week, Paterno would fly to Philly to see him.

"He'd bring our trainer and a couple of my teammates," Taliaferro says. "Nobody in the hospital knew he was there." Paterno would tell him all the dumb things his teammates and coaches had done lately. Pretty soon, Taliaferro would be laughing his IVs out.

"I can't tell you what that meant to me," says Taliaferro, now 30. "I'm stuck in that hospital, and here's Coach Paterno bringing a piece of the team to me, in the middle of the season. How many coaches would do that?"

One midnight, Taliaferro moved a toe and the first person his dad called was Paterno. His dad held the phone to Adam's ear and Paterno said, "You're gonna prove 'em all wrong, Kid!"

From then on, every visit, Paterno wanted to see Taliaferro move something new. "I got to where I wanted to be ready. A finger, a hand, whatever. I wanted to perform for Coach Paterno."

One day, five months into it, Paterno walked in and said, "What's new, Kid?" Taliaferro swung his legs over the bed, stood and extended his hand to shake.

"I'll never forget his eyes," he says. "They were already huge behind those Coke-bottle glasses, but they got even bigger." Paterno gave him a 10-second hug and then said, "Kid, ya make me proud."

Paterno went on to encourage that kid to go to law school, become a lawyer, and is now running for a spot on the Penn State Board of Trustees.  Clearly, Paterno had a significant impact on a yong man's life, and opened a world to him that he most likely would not have discovered, if not for Penn State.

Then you have the other side of the equation.  A man that stayed on too long, lost control of a very powerful force, and enabled despicable things to happen on his watch.

Will Paterno be remembered more for the long career, the wins, the men he shaped, and the lessons he taught?  Or will he be remembered as a guy who should have seen what was going on beneath his nose, and bears significant responsibility for dozens of boys losing their innocence, childhood, and their identity?

I guess time will tell.

Presented without comment..

 

Yep, I'm sure glad my tax dollars are hard at work..

How many other clowns like this are there out there, wasting taxpayer dollars?

 

Weekly IUC data..

Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday when it came out.  The numbers slipped in the wrong direction, increasing to 377,000 new claims.

The four-week average is still below 400,000, but the weekly numbers are all over the board.  Stay tuned.

Skip the drinks at Joe Rogan's house..

I've never understood why people do what they do on Fear Factor.  It's not like they are winning millions of dollars, I think the winners pick up $50,000.  This one ain't quite worth the effort in my eyes. 

Before you raise anyone's taxes..

How about getting the people that work for you to pay theirs first, mmkay?

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.

...

The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.

The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million.

As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most -- almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.

The country's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too.

As with ordinary people, the IRS attempts to negotiate back-tax payment plans with all delinquents, whose names cannot be released. But according to current federal law, the only federal employees who can be fired for not paying taxes are IRS workers.

I'd say it's time to change that law.

President Thin Skin rears his head again..

Glad to see he's getting upset with things that matter, like unemployment, rising food and gas costs, and Iran playing around with an important waterway.  Oh, wait..

It's that time of year..

Girl Scout cookie time!  The little Duper has joined a Daisy troop (Daisy->Brownie->Girl Scout), and has already unloaded close to 40 boxes of Thin Mints to suckers friends and neighbors.  She'll get a patch for her uniform, and everyone gets to enjoy delicious cookies.  Win-win!

 

Thank goodness he didn't get a difficult word..

How bad does the lady want to choke this kid after saying the word 418 times?