Stoopid government schools

Associated Press:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A central Ohio principal says she suspended a 10-year-old boy from school for three days for pretending his finger was a gun and pointing it at another student's head. 

Apparently this principal endorses a very strict reading of the Second Amendment, where the right to bear arms is protected, but the right to bear fingers is not. 

To be fair, I shouldn't only mock the principal for this nonsense. She was following her district's "zero tolerance" policy regarding "pretend gun play." Yes, there's an app for that.

Look, I get that people are concerned about gun violence, especially in our schools, but adopting policies of militant stupidity that prevent kids from being kids isn't the answer. 

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. The article mentions other examples, including a similar policy that was cited last year when a Maryland school suspended a 7-year-old boy who had chewed a Pop-Tart into a gun shape. It's unclear whether the yummy pastry was loaded, or whether the boy had obtained it legally.

It's easy to laugh this stuff off and chalk it up to good intentions gone awry. But it's far from clear that good intentions are behind these policies. It is clear, however, that some serious consequences result from them. Kids lose instruction time. Tax payer dollars are wasted. Good kids end up with permanent marks on their records suggesting that they are prone to violence, sexual harassment, and other offenses. These are heavy consequences for a 6-year-old to bear, for doing nothing 6-year-olds haven't been doing for centuries.

A toxic culture also emerges as a result of this nonsense. Educators -- nearly all of them Leftists -- get quite drunk on their power to militate for their causes. Don't like guns? Punish a 7-year-old for the way he eats. Think men are predators? Punish a 6-year-old for kissing a classmate's hand, even if she welcomes it. Don't like America? Ban the American flag while allowing flags of other countries to stay.

It's insidious. It's also dangerous. Such a culture becomes so rigid and controlling that not only are kids not allowed to be kids, but adults stop being adults as well:

A Minnesota public high school was so committed to obeying its fire drill policy to the exact letter of the law that it forced a female student–dressed only in a swimsuit, and sopping wet–to stand outside in the freezing cold for ten minutes. As a result, she suffered frostbite.

Administrators wouldn’t let the student retrieve her clothes, sit in a car or wait inside another building...

It was 5 degrees, with a wind chill of 25 below, and they literally forced this girl to stand there and freeze rather than allow her to take safe,  nearby shelter. How culture-whipped and unthinking does one have to be to blindly follow a policy that puts a kids' health in danger?

This is the price of militant stupidity. And no one does militant stupidity like government. Our government schools have gone down a very dangerous path. They have crossed the line from educational malpractice into child abuse. Our children are no longer safe, and it's not only mass murders we should fear, but those who would protect us from 7-year-olds wielding Pop-Tarts.

Off the reservation

Actress Maria Conchita Alonso, best known for her work in Moscow on the Hudson, lost her job with a theater company in San Francisco’s Mission District because she voiced support for Tim Donnelly, a conservative candidate for California governor.

The show's producer, Eliana Lopez, had this to say:

We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately. Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe.

It's a shame that people routinely lose their jobs over such innocuous things as voicing an opinion -- that whole "free country" thing, and all -- but that's where we are. Still, it works both ways. Alonso can say what she wants; her employer can hire who she wants. Assuming no one broke any contracts, that's about right, I think, as far as fairness goes. But I also think we have gotten a little too sensitive about people expressing opinions -- and by we, I mostly mean those on the "tolerant" Left.

What was it Alonso said that was so offensive? According to the Washington Examiner, she used the word illegal to describe those who entered the country illegally. Say it isn't so!

This is what is so maddening. The term illegal immigrant is about as neutral and accurate a description of the people at issue as the English language allows. They literally immigrated here illegally, and it is that precise behavior that is at issue. The Left insists that we abandon this perfectly apt phrase and instead refer to these people as undocumented workers -- a term that is misleading and inaccurate.

We have no way of knowing whether they are workers or not, and their employment status is not what is at issue. Undocumented downplays the the whole deliberately violated our sovereign borders thing as if it were a mere clerical error.

But this is the go-to move of the Left. They can't win arguments on the merits, so they bully people by trying to control the language. Force people to use meaningless, innocuous phrases and they will think meaningless, innocuous thoughts. It's pure propaganda, but, too often, it works.

Alonso was also called out for her use of "vulgar language" in the ad. After watching the ad twice, I gather this refers to Alonso's comedic reduction of a host of California's chronic ills to "We're screwed." Pretty tame stuff as vulgarities go, and also ironic considering the show she was canned from: The Vagina Monologues.

But as one hyper-sensitive Mission District residents put it, “We don’t act like that. First of all, that is not a typical Latina."

A typical Latina? Now there's something to be offended about. How insulting is it to suggest that members of a group have to act, think, and talk alike? Think about that. This is the "tolerant" Left, calling for heads because someone dared to color outside the lines of their racial group. Can't have those Brownie's going off the reservation, now, can we?

Sad, and disgusting.

Red States vs. Blue States

Here's something.

The Mercatus Center has just released a study that examines states’ abilities to meet their financial obligations. It isn't a pretty picture, mostly due to rising health care costs and the burden of government worker pensions.

Here's the thing I found most interesting. Take a look at the top and bottom 10 and notice how Red States states compare to Blue States. (Wikipedia has some handy maps which show voting trends over the past couple of decades.)

Top 10:
1. Alaska
2. South Dakota
3. North Dakota
4. Nebraska
5. Wyoming
6. Florida
7. Ohio
8. Tennessee
9. Montana
10. Alabama

Bottom 10:
50. New Jersey
49. Connecticut
48. Illinois
47. Massachusetts
46. California
45. New York
44. Maryland
43. Hawaii
42. Pennsylvania
41. West Virginia
40. Kentucky

 Pretty definitive, no?

Eight of the top 10 fiscally solvent states are solidly Red; eight of the bottom 10 fiscally solvent states are solidly Blue.

Further, the same striking pattern emerges when we look at other measures of success. I took a look at William P. Ruger and Jason Sorens' latest edition of Freedom in the 50 States. In it, they rank the states by a host of measures of personal and economic freedom. If you take a few minutes to thumb through the various charts, you'll see that Red states consistently outperform Blue states, especially when it comes to fiscal issues.

There was a time when we didn't have the data to determine whether conservative or liberal policies lead to better outcomes over the long run. But that time has long past. We now have many decades of data to examine, and the results are clear: liberal policies don't hold up over time.

And this is true on the world stage as well. Compare East Germany to West Germany, Hong Kong to mainland China, or North Korea to South Korea. In each case we see free market policies along side state-controlled economies within the same culture and time. The free market approach wins every time, and the differences are dramatic.

Bully for the Boy Scouts

Connie Schultz believes that it is "bullying" for the Boy Scouts of America to have a policy that bars homosexuals from being Scouts or serving as leaders. She has this precisely backwards.

According to my dictionary, bullying is "the act of intimidating a weaker person to make them do something." That's a pretty straightforward definition of the word as it's universally understood.

So is it bullying to have a policy that restricts membership? Most organizations have membership restrictions. I assume I need to be a doctor to join the American Medical Association, or that I need to have a law degree to become a member of the American Bar Association. Are those organizations bullying me? If so, I wasn't aware of it.

The Constitution restricts those who can be a member of the Senate:

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

If restricting membership is "bullying," we'd have to conclude that every person in the United States is being bullied by our very Constitution, for none of us is permitted to be a Senator of a state in which we don't live. Yet no one considers this bullying -- because merely having a membership requirement doesn't intimidate anyone. It doesn't force anyone to do anything.

So how is the Boy Scout membership policy different? It's different only in who it excludes. Instead of discriminating against those without medical or law degrees, or against young people or outsiders, it discriminates against homosexuals. And why shouldn't it? Why shouldn't a private organization have the right to define itself and determine the makeup of its own membership? Ms. Schultz may not like it -- just as I may not like the fact that I can't represent the state of Hawaii in the United States Senate -- but we don't have an inalienable right to not be offended by others' choices.

But back to Ms. Schultz' bullying charge...

Can it fairly be argued that the Boy Scouts are intimidating anyone simply by restricting their membership? Can it fairly be argued that they are forcing anyone to do anything? As far as I can tell the Scouts aren't on any crusade to combat homosexuality, or to impose behaviors or values on anyone. They're not activists, overtly political, or overtly anything, really. They simply want to be left alone, to do what they've always done, promote traditional values and foster thoughtful, responsible young men -- something America badly needs at this juncture.

And that, I submit, is what this is really all about. It's not that the Boy Scouts have intimidated anyone, or that they are attempting to force anyone to do anything. The Scouts is a voluntary organization. It hasn't bullied anyone. The true source of the conflict is Ms. Schultz, and so many like her on the Left, who hold traditional American values in contempt. The Boy Scouts represent everything they wish do destroy -- traditional families, Judeo-Christian values, personal freedom, individual responsibility.

The Left brand the Boy Scouts as intolerant and bullying. But ask yourself, who is the real aggressor here? Which side is minding its own business, and which side is trying to intimidate and force the other side to do something? Who is the real bully?

The Left -- always the Left.

From God's lips to your ears

Matthew 20

New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

20 “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. ² He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

³ “About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. ⁴ He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ ⁵ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. ⁶ About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
⁷ “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
⁸ “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
⁹ “The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. ¹⁰ So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. ¹¹ When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ¹² ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
¹³ “But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? ¹⁴ Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. ¹⁵ Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
¹⁶ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

I'm not a Christian, so I defer to others on how this passage should be interpreted. For my part, I find verse 15 instructive. Christ, the very embodiment of altruism, relies on the individual right to do as one wishes with one's own money to support his teaching. Further, He exposes the pettiness of envy. The grumblers were not wronged in any way by the landlord's generosity to others. Yet they took offense at a perceived slight and became ungrateful. There's a powerful lesson there for those who trade in class envy.

A related point: many liberals appeal to the concept of "Christian charity" to justify higher taxes (inevitably on the rich). They either don't understand, or pretend not to understand, that charity is a voluntary act. You can't force someone to be charitable, and you can't be charitable with other people's money. What these people are promoting is much closer to theft than charity.

And another: President Obama often insists that we need this or that government program because the Bible teaches that we are our brother's keeper. I'm pretty certain he's got this wrong. In the first place, I can't find the part in my Bible where it says I'm my brother's keeper. In the second place, even granting that we have a duty to help those in need, why does he take this as a call for bigger government? Government is notoriously bad at identifying those in need, let alone helping them. Individuals, on the other hand, are very good at this. Most people don't realize that poverty rates in America were dropping steadily right up until government declared its "War on Poverty." Since then, poverty rates have flat lined, and even gotten worse.

Ask not what your country can do for you, nor what you can do for your country. Ask instead what you can do for yourself, your family, and your community.

Oh, and keep your self-righteous hands out of my wallet.

Socialism, coming soon to a country near you

President Obama, while villifying [sic] Mitt Romney for opposing the auto industry bailout, bragged about the success of his decision to provide government assistance and said he now wants to see every manufacturing industry come roaring back. “I said, I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back,” he said. “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry."

 Several points here...

First, of course the auto industry came "roaring back." You gave them 85 billion dollars!

What company isn't going to come "roaring back" if you slip them a cool 85 billion? Hell, even Solyndra would be "roaring back" if we'd given them 85 billion tax payer dollars instead of a measly half a billion.

Second:

The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast.

In a monthly report sent to Congress on Friday, the Obama administration boosted its forecast of expected losses by more than $3.3 billion to almost $25.1 billion, up from $21.7 billion in the last quarterly update.

The report may still underestimate the losses.

Note that this report comes from "the Obama administration." So Obama is out touting the "success" of a project that his own people are saying is costing tax payers $25 billion and counting. Worse, he's vowing to do the same thing "in every industry." I'm thinking this could get expensive.

And finally, can we finally stop pretending that Obama is not a socialist?

“Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry."

Recall that Obama didn't just give GM and Chrysler a boat load of our money. He also went in and took over operations. He fired managers, closed down plants, forced mergers, and illegally took money from share holders and gave it to the unions. He literally put a private company under government control. And now he wants to do this in every industry.

I'm increasingly convinced the guy is a Marxist at heart, who has been forced to give capitalism a nod because he knows hard core Marxism won't fly in America. But that aside, can there be any doubt, based on his own words, that he is a socialist?

I recently came across a great G.K. Chesterton quote: "Liberalism is communism in slow motion."

That so describes what we are seeing unfold before our very eyes.

Update:  "a taxpayer loss of $25 billion on the auto bailout isn't so much an estimate as a wish." (Senator Blutarsky via Instapundit)