Best Friends Foundation Sponsors Dance Dinner
The Best Friends Foundation will hold a reception, dinner and dance-Do You Remember When Rock Was Young?-featuring the Supremes starring Mary Wilson, Bobby Vee, and Paul Revere and the Raiders at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, the Washington Ball room, in Washington, D.C., Saturday, April 12, 2003.
Proceeds of the event will sponsor the Best Friends youth development programs of Best Friends, Best Men and Diamond Girls Leadership. Best Friends is a youth development program with a character-building curriculum for girls in grades 5-12 with messages of abstinence from sex, drugs and alcohol. Best Friends is an in-school program conducted during the school day by educators who serve as instructors and mentors. Throughout the school year, each participant receives at least 110 hours of guidance and instruction.
Grounded in Bandura's social learning theory, Best Friends provides activities that help adolescent girls develop skills necessary to avoid at-risk behaviors and become socially competent individuals. By postponing sex and rejecting drug and alcohol use, participants learn that they can take advantage of real opportunities in a society where they are valued members.
The goals of the Best Friends Program are to help adolescent girls (ages 10-18):
- Develop critical thinking skills to enable them to progress from the concrete operations stage to the formal operations stage of reasoning;
- Develop a sense of self-respect and self-worth through achievement and community service;
- Develop skills to make sound decisions and avoid at-risk behaviors, including sexual activity and substance abuse;
- Aspire and set goals with plans to achieve them;
- Incorporate their school and families into their support system;
- Be valued members of a positive peer group based on friendship that is fun and builds a sense of connection to their school and to each other.
A girl enters Best Friends in the fifth or sixth grade and continues the curriculum through middle school and high school. Participants are not self-selected but receive the curriculum, with parental permission, as part of their school curriculum.
Best Friends' girls represent a cross-section of the student body with student leaders and achievers, average girls and girls that may be considered "at risk." School principals report that having a Best Friends Program in their school has a beneficial "spill-over" effect improving the general school environment and the behavior of students not in the group. The Best Friends curriculum operates from the premise that adolescent risk behavior is a function of several factors and dynamics operating simultaneously in a young person's life. The Best Friends curriculum addresses a broad set of cultural and social factors through a long-term prevention strategy. For more information on the Best Friends Foundation and the forthcoming benefit dinner call (202) 237-8156 or visit their website at: www.bestfriendsfoundation.org.
Chesterton Society Annual Conference
The 22nd annual G. K. Chesterton Conference, "A Chesterton Aeneid" will be held June 12-14 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. All sessions are free of charge.
Speakers include: Biographer Joseph Pearce, author of Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of G. K. Chesterton and Literary Converts; Dale Ahlquist, president and co-founder of the American Chesterton Society and author of G. K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense; and eleven other scholars from a variety of academic fields.
Registration for the conference is requested for those who need lodging or meals.
For more information about the conference and a detailed listing of the program visit the American Chesterton Society website: www.chesterton.org/conference.html.
AEI Sponsors Forum On Mid-East Economics
The American Enterprise Institute will hold a discussion by Leszek Balcerowicz, of the Central Bank of Poland, on "Economic Shock Therapy: A Prescription for the Middle East."
The discussion will compare and contrast the East European transition from communism to democratic capitalism and what the lessons of this transformation may hold for Middle Eastern economies. Balcerowicz, former deputy prime minister of Poland is the architect of its successful economic shock therapy initiative.
The discussion will begin at 5:00pm in the Wohlstetter Conference Center, 12th floor, 1150 17th St. NW, Washington, D.C.
For more information contact the American Enterprise Institute (202) 862-5850 or visit the AEI website: www.aei.org/events.
Dividend Tax Report Calls For Ending It
A new report published by the Heritage Foundation explains the economic growth potential that would follow from a cut on dividend taxes.
Pathway to Economic Growth and Tax Reform: Eliminating the Double Tax on Dividends by Daniel J. Mitchell, Norbert J. Michel, and David C. John explains why all Americans would benefit from the elimination of the dividend tax.
The authors cite Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, "who rarely has a kind word to say about tax relief proposals, testified recently that 'This particular program will be of net benefit to virtually everybody in the economy over the long run, and that is one of the reasons I strongly support it.'"
The authors show how this double taxation-at the individual and corporate level-has a negative impact on investments.
Benefits of eliminating dividend taxes include:
- Boosting the economy and increasing wages.
- Increasing investment.
- More efficient use of capital.
- Attracts global capital.
- Makes America more competitive.
- Builds wealth and boosts retirement income.
- Boosts stock values.
- Improves corporate governance
The report contains a graph on the top dividend tax rate (combined individual and corporate rates), which shows the United States second only to Japan with a 70.5% dividend tax rate.
The report is available from the Heritage Foundation website: www.heritage.org/research/taxes/bg1640.cfm.
Planned Parenthood Honors Jane Fonda
While our nation is at war officials at Planned Parenthood have bestowed their contempt for not only the unborn but America's military by honoring 'Hanoi Jane' Fonda, who as an anti-war activist visited Hanoi at the height of the Vietnam war.
Fonda received the PPFA Margaret Sanger Award on March 29.
"Every American, especially our veterans and active-duty military, should be outraged that Planned Parenthood would pay homage to Jane Fonda," said Jim Sedlak, Executive Director of American Life's League STOPP International.
STOPP International is an American Life League project dedicated to fighting Planned Parenthood's anti-life agenda.
For more information visit their website: www.stoppinternational.org.
