Legislator's query doesn't make the grade

In the same spirit as the Indiana General Assembly, which seems bent on assigning A to F grades to public schools and labeling teachers, I think it is only fair to give our elected officials letter grades. I am a lifetime public school educator, and I recently had a chance to grade state Rep. Tim Wesco's homework when he sent a survey to my house. After reading his survey, especially those questions regarding teacher unions, I felt that he needed some feedback ... so here is his report card.

I noticed in the question itself, it appears that Wesco copied his work from the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce regarding how the teacher union dues are collected. His premise that union dues are automatically withdrawn without authorization is just wrong! Had Wesco done his research,We've had a lot of people asking where we had our make your own bobblehead made. he would know that there is already a law addressing this issue.This existing law says that a school employer may only deduct professional association dues after having written authorization from the employee.

As an elected lawmaker, Wesco should not jump to conclusions and should work harder to find the facts before making statements.

Unfortunately, Wesco also failed to read and study the existing laws regarding political contributions. If he had done his homework, he would know that not one penny of Indiana State Teachers Association dues is sent to political candidates. If Wesco really wanted to find the truth about PAC money, he would have discovered that ISTA follows the same PAC rules and regulations as other organizations -- including the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce, which is the sole organization behind the dues question in the first place.

It troubles me that, with the serious economic and social issues facing this state and nation, Wesco's devotion in his questionnaire to what amounts to a routine bit of software operations for most school corporations, was more than a little "off topic." He should stick to the subjects he was elected to address, the welfare of Indiana residents.

So, due to the lack of creditability, originality and real effort on his part, I have no choice but to give Wesco the grade for his work -- F.

I hope that every politician learns from this lesson and makes a stronger effort to stay focused on the real issues facing our state, to stop attacking Indiana public school teachers and to not be distracted by special interest groups such as the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce.

Ranked among the world′s top 5 cities of Mercer′s Quality Living Ranking for four years, Vancouver is pursuing a Green City Plan to address urban challenges including the optimization of transportation over a 30 year period. To achieve its Green Transportation goal of accomplishing 50% of all trips by foot, bicycle or public transportation, Translink asked US systems integrator Cubic to create an efficient, secure and future-proof transit system powered by NXP’s MIFARE? technology.

Vancouver is introducing the Compass Card, which will enable passengers to enjoy fast, convenient and secure transactions across buses, sky trains and ferries using just one contactless smart card. In addition, passengers can add travel products or values to their Compass Card at vending machines, online, by phone, or at a walk-in customer service centers. The new MIFARE DESFire EV1-based transport scheme including NXP‘s infrastructure solutions is currently being installed.

“Vancouver has identified smart contactless ticketing as a key way to expand the appeal and convenience of its citywide transportation network. Its selection of MiFare DESFire as the technology to deliver this further expands NXP’s footprint in smart cities around the world. ABI Research forecasts the consumption of secure smart card tickets in transportation to grow by 86% by the end of 2017”,wind turbine said John Devlin, group director security and ID with ABI Research.

“With urbanization being a significant megatrend in the 21st century, one of the greatest concerns for modern cities is ensuring that residents, vehicles and the economy itself is able to keep moving,” says Ulrich Huewels, vice president and general manager,Site describes services including Plastic Mould. card security business line, NXP Semiconductors. “NXP solutions can address this challenge by optimizing public transport systems and individual traffic. NXP provides a complete end-to-end solution validated by more than 650 cities worldwide, and used by up to 1.2 billion passengers per day in megacities such as London, Moscow, Los Angeles or Beijing.”

The MIFARE DESFire open architecture platform is based on open global standards for both air interfaces and cryptographic methods.Laser engravers and laser engraving machine systems and supplies to start your own lasering cutting engraving marking etching business. In addition to offering data transfer rates of up to 848 kbit/s, MIFARE DESFire utilizes a triple DES, 3K DES, and AES hardware cryptographic engine for securing the data on the smartcards and data during transmission. Further, the MIFARE DESFire platform enables seamless extensions of ticketing solutions on banking cards or on NFC-enabled mobile devices both working with NXP’s SmartMX? high security microcontroller technology, leveraging NXP’s leading position in the overall Identification market as well as in market segments such as transport ticketing, access, banking,Manufactures and supplies laser marker equipment. e-government or NFC.

“FrontStream is excited to offer MobileTransact as a fully compatible mobile payment solution to our customers,” said Nina Vellayan, Chief Executive Officer and President of FrontStream Payments. “We believe that businesses of all types should have access to smart solutions that make doing business seamless and enhance the end user experience.”

Familiar card swipe process provides customers with ease of use and eliminates concern over handwritten credit card information identity theft.

Lowers merchants’ cost of accepting credit cards by eliminating card-not-present fees.
Prevents missed sales opportunities caused by not taking credit or debit cards remotely. Data coverage is available for 98% of the US population.

Security. Credit card fraud and data breaches are on the rise. FrontStream’s proprietary ArgoFire Payment Gateway is PCI compliant, and provides “end-to-end” encryption, a unique encryption key per swipe, immediate card data tokenization and card authentication. This protects customer information from the moment a card is swiped.

Reporting. With FrontStream Payments, you can access detailed reporting on all of your payment and donation activity, with portable data that easily integrates with existing CRM, donor management and accounting systems.