Archive for the 'Politics' Category

Zerohedge:

A school system in Massachusetts is proving to be malicious, incompetent, or maybe both.

Of course, we suspected that already. But the latest example comes from a lawsuit from a woman who pulled her 8-year-old son from Worcester Public Schools to homeschool him last January.

Josilyn Goodall is suing the Worcester School Committee, Superintendent Maureen Binienda, and the state Department of Children and Families after police entered her home, handcuffed her, and arrested her over what amounted to a paperwork dispute.

According to the lawsuit, Goodall is seeking unspecified compensatory damages for the violation of her Constitutional rights and for the “mental pain and suffering” inflicted upon her and her son.

The lawsuit details Goodall’s multiple attempts to contact the Superintendent after filing paperwork in January saying she was going to homeschool her son. She said she never got a response to any of her phone calls or emails.

In Massachusetts, parents who wish to homeschool their children must submit an education plan to the superintendent of the local school system for approval. However, according to Care and Protection of Charles (1987), the court case upon which homeschool legal precedent was established, the burden of proof is on the school to show that the homeschool program is insufficient.

The lawsuit further alleges that the Worcester School Committee’s homeschool policy is unlawful, in that it requires students to continue attending public school until the education plan is approved. Charles allows for homeschooling to begin as soon as the plan has been submitted.

To most rational people, Charles makes sense. If parents are to have any right to educate their children at home, they must be able to begin homeschooling before receiving approval from the schools. Otherwise, a school could conveniently hold hostage the education plan and never approve it, essentially forcing the child to stay in the public school.

But instead of following the state law or even their own policy, Worcester school administrators ignored Goodall’s education plan and her attempts to contact them, continued marking her son absent, and never reached out to Goodall to discuss their concerns.

It would be hard to tell if the school was being passive-aggressive or just plain incompetent, unable to send or receive emails and phone calls. Except that they had no problem contacting the Department of Children and Families to report Goodall for “educational neglect.”

DCF officials apparently took the school’s word for it, never asking for attendance records for Goodall’s son before showing up at her door on March 30. In addition, a DCF investigator believed the superintendent’s secretary, who told her there was a new law that required homeschooled students to continue attending school until their education plan was approved.

Yes, a state department took legal advice from a superintendent’s secretary.

Then, police escalated the situation, to the surprise of absolutely no one. The lawsuit states that officers pounded on Goodall’s door and threatened to forcibly open it. When Goodall was intimidated into letting them in, an officer laid hands on Goodall, handcuffed her, ordered her into a chair and yelled in her face — while her son watched and cried.

Additional officers arrived and started searching the home, while the DCF investigator questioned the son. Goodall was arrested and brought to the police station and was booked, though no charges were filed. She paid bail and finally made it back home after a 7-hour ordeal.

The legal battle continued with DCF filing a complaint of educational neglect that was eventually dropped by the court. Goodall submitted another education plan to the Superintendent on April 10.

You would think school officials would jump right on it this time around, but they dragged their feet yet again. Goodall left another voicemail and sent an email before finally hearing from the secretary on April 25. Her plan was not officially approved until May 9, after Goodall’s legal counsel wrote a letter essentially asking the Superintendent’s Office to piss or get off the pot.

Goodall’s ordeal is just the most extreme of many examples of harassment and intimidation the Worcester School District is doling out to homeschoolers.

According to the Worcester Telegram, many homeschooling families were waiting on District approval of their education plans months after submitting them. To add to the stress, many were receiving letters that said they could face truancy charges if their children were not in school and they had not received approval.

The hypocrisy of the District is astounding. Rather than sending approval letters—or even rejection letters— in a timely fashion, they sent letters threatening parents, as though it was the parents’ fault that their plan might not be approved “in time.”

While it is bad news that school administrators seem intent on harassing homeschoolers and escalating disputes, there is a silver lining to this whole issue.

We’re not going to take it.

Homeschoolers routinely show up in large numbers to protect their right to homeschool their children. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association hosted an informational forum on Aug. 15 in Worcester to discuss the concerns of local homeschooling families and to clarify the state’s laws.

As a Massachusetts homeschooler myself, I attended the meeting. There were upwards of 100 people in attendance from Worcester and surrounding towns. The group shared advice, made plans to turn out en masse to School Committee meetings, and made sure they were educated on what is and is not legally required in state homeschool law.

This one comes via WiscoDave.

No, to rational people, the Charles law doesn’t have to make sense.  In fact, I can discern where you stand by asking you two questions: [1] Who owns children, and [2] To whom have they been given for governance and training?

My answers are simple: [1] God, and [2] Parents.  If you believe that parents own children, you believe in slavery and you deny God’s ownership of all of His creatures.  You own your dog, not your children.  If you believe that anyone but the parents have been given responsibility for governance and oversight, teaching, training, love, discipline, correction and rebuke, you are a communist.

The reason the government of Massachusetts declares they have a right to decide what is appropriate education for children is because they are communists.  God does not recognize their authority in any of this, and His wrath will come down upon them, more than likely in time and space, and certainly and without fail, in eternity.

Public schools are centers of communist indoctrination and socialization.  And just to make clear that I know my facts, my wife and I were once part of a small group church fellowship based on home schooling.  One former home schooler now flies F-35s, another graduated from the Naval Academy, the Navy nuclear school, and commanded aboard a submarine.

Still others from that group went into the military, and my daughter is a Nurse Practitioner with a Master’s degree, ER experience and cardiology experience, and today is a “first-assist” for surgery.

There are hundreds of thousands of such examples in America and in fact all over the world.  Don’t tell me that children need the state to educate them.  I know that to be a lie.

The educational system and cops in Massachusetts aren’t liars -they’re just communists.  They know they aren’t needed, they just want the control.  The desire to control others is the first sign, incorrigible pathology and premier sin of the wicked.

Not unexpected news from Florida:

Florida has joined a coalition of major pension funds and investment companies that have adopted a set of principles aimed at encouraging gun manufacturers and retailers to act responsibly.

Ash Williams, executive director of the State Board of Administration, which oversees the state pension fund and other investments, said the agreement carries no mandates for gun-related companies. But he said it is designed to raise awareness of issues that could impact the value of investments in the firearms industry.

“We’re not telling anybody, any private company, exactly what they should be doing. Our concern is motivated very simply by one thing, as fiduciaries anything that poses a risk to the value of the assets that we own on behalf of our beneficiaries, we want to make sure we’re managing it properly,” Williams said in an interview with The News Service of Florida.

“By extension, if there is a risk or peril to the stock value of a company that we own in our portfolio, we want to make sure that company is, A, aware of it and, B, attentive to it. That’s all this is,” he said.

In signing the “Principles for a Responsible Civilian Firearms Industry” last month, Florida joined more than a dozen public pension funds and investment companies that have adopted the document.

“We believe that enterprises involved in the manufacturing, distribution, sale and enforcement of regulations of the firearms industry are well-positioned to support pragmatic transparency and safety measures that contribute to the responsible use of firearms,” the document said.

Safety measures.  Like stop selling semi-automatic firearms, invest in so-called “smart guns,” and do anything else the collectivists want, like go out of business entirely.

All by plan.  The answer is simple.  If you’re a firearm manufacturer, ensure that your employees own a majority of the stock and tell the hand-wringers to go pound sand.

David Codrea:

It’s unclear what the president hopes to accomplish by alienating his strongest supporters at a time he is being closed in on from all sides by powers intent on destroying him. If he believes this will satisfy the gun-grabbers and make them go away, that ignores everything about their incremental tactics. Experience shows they will take a piece here and a “compromise” there, and then use that position to launch their next demand for more.

And if you don’t think this will alienate his allies, just spend a few minutes reading the comments at Breitbart.

Trump has little real political sense concerning his base, and he’s being led by people who are the same.  And David is right.  This isn’t just about bump stocks – it’s more about the incrementalism this catalyzes.

CNN:

Deutch said implementing universal background checks, a “gun violence restraining order,” which allows law enforcement to ask a judge to temporarily take guns away from people who are deemed a threat, and banning so-called “bump stocks,” are at the top of his list, along with other school safety and mental health initiatives.

With Democrats in control of the House, they can also hold hearings on gun violence, which they tried to pressure Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, the Republican Congressman of Virginia, to do last year. In March, Rep. Jerry Nadler, the New York Democrat who will take the gavel next year, said “it is long past due” that the committee address the nation’s gun laws.

Get ready for a flurry of gun control bills, but don’t blame the democrats when they get signed into law.  A good number of the republicans will also go with the democrats, and my bet is that Trump will sign anything that isn’t directly opposed by the Fudds.

As long as any new controller initiative doesn’t affect bird shot and bolt action deer rifles, the NRA and company won’t oppose it.

Ted Cruz had so much trouble wining Texas and Broward County is creating votes because of immigration.  Immigration from south of the border to America, immigration from Puerto Rico to Florida, immigration of Californians to Colorado, Nevada, Washington and Oregon.

When I sat in Johnston hall at Clemson in a room with 20 other guys and watched the debates between Reagan and Carter (and we all cheered for Reagan, to a man), I knew Reagan would win big, and he carried California.  California used to be a solid red state.  Texas would have been out of the question for democrats thirty years ago.  Florida and Virginia used to be solid red states.

It has all happened because of immigration, and we are watching the beginning of the end.  You all understand that, right?

Take advantage of this as a free thread to discuss the mid-term elections.  I’ll kick it off to observe that we always knew that Trump gave us more time, an oasis in what is still a very dry desert.

Remember that approximately half of the country is still collectivist and thinks of the state as god.  Marx and Freud did their jobs well in the colleges, as did Horace Mann in the public school system.  Coupled with an anemic and powerless church who refused to teach their congregants theology and instead fed them crumbs and sweet snacks, and it makes for a country that cannot be turned.

America is divided, and it will remain so.  Even now, the lines are hardening.

David Codrea:

The documents from the Advance America et al. v. Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. et al. lawsuit “show that top leadership at the [Federal Deposit Insurance Commission] held strong personal biases and began a ruthless targeted campaign against the small-dollar lending industry [and that] These industries include local small businesses like fireworks and firearms companies…”

It’s instructive at this point to review some of the documents, particularly this appendix, and do a “find” search for the term “firearm.”

Until the actors have all been charged and tried for treason, convicted accordingly and punished as traitors, the book on this is still very much open, and justice has not been served.

I wouldn’t expect either Trump or Sessions to even bring this up to the American people.  Because laws are for little people, and when America elects an administration, we all understand that we’re electing our own law breakers to break whatever law they wish with impunity.

For Obama, it was Fast and Furious, Operation Chokepoint, and a host of other things.  For Trump, it’s bump stocks.

News from dystopia:

We listened to people talk about the longstanding disproportionate struggles they continue to face. Much of it I agreed with. And in “Any City, USA,” we should focus on our most impoverished communities and work to transform them. But we can’t transform them by simply flooding money and programs in with no oversight or accountability. The investment should include a significant focus on schools and education, community beautification projects, the demolition of dilapidated housing, reinvestment in affordable housing with first right of refusal to those who currently reside in the community and in good standing, green space, accessibility to public transportation and accessibility to fresh foods.

While capitalism is the American way, we must limit the number of unhealthy options in impoverished communities. Imagine a community that has better access to a library, fitness center, community center, grocery store and good schools compared to one in which every other home is boarded up, trash lines the streets and the four corners of the intersection consist of a phone store, carry-out, liquor store and a mini-mart that also sells drug baggies and acts as a safe haven for drug dealers. It’s not impossible to fix, but it requires a focused investment, courage, oversight and follow-up.

We can’t expect a law enforcement solution alone to solve these catastrophic, systematic socioeconomic failures. Flooding an underserved community with law enforcement only serves to further exacerbate the already strained police and community relationships. The only way we can effectively “pull back” from the law-enforcement-only approach is to transform the communities from the historic failures that put them in that situation in the first place.

I agree that policing along can’t fix their problems since I don’t believe that policing fixes anything at all.  But make sure you hear his solutions.

Capitalism is the American way, says he.  Instead of saying “but,” he says “while,” which is a difference without a distinction.  We must rectify the problems that put them where they are to begin with.

Meaning, distribute more money, goods and services to them.  Never mind the destruction of the family unit this approach has wrought, bring it on.  We need more of the same thing.

This all says absolutely nothing about Baltimore or poverty and crime, but everything about the world and life view of those in positions of power and authority and their lack of understanding of the destruction of the moral foundations of the country.

NBC News:

Authorities in southern Mexico disarmed and placed under investigation the entire police force in the once-glittering resort of Acapulco on Tuesday, claiming the local cops were infiltrated by drug gangs.

Officials in Guerrero state issued arrest warrants for two top Acapulco police commanders, accusing them of homicide. It was the latest fall from grace for Acapulco, which was a favorite haunt of movie stars in the 1960s but has since fallen victim to warring drug gangs.

The state government said it took the step “because of suspicion that the force had probably been infiltrated by criminal groups” and “the complete inaction of the municipal police in fighting the crime wave.”

The rest of the police officers were stripped of their guns, radios and bullet-proof vests and taken for background checks. Law enforcement duties in the seaside city of 800,000 will be taken over by soldiers, marines and state police.

But they seem like such nice people, doing the jobs Americans won’t do!  In other news, a majority of Latinos believe that Brett Kavanaugh should withdraw from consideration for the Supreme Court over unproven and unsubstantiated charges that are obviously taken from lurid magazines.

Well, diversity is our strength, and if you don’t want drug money corruption and a progressive Supreme Court, you’re just a racist.

Of course, there’s another way to look at all of this.  None of the charges against Judge Kavanaugh ever happened.  None of them.  This whole ridiculous thing is fabricated to save the death cult of abortion and defeat gun rights.  Because “All Mother” must have her sacrifice of children just like Baal, and guns empower men.  When men are empowered, the state must decrease.

The Federalist:

… the Nazis were firmly on the left. National Socialism was a collectivist authoritarian movement run by “social justice warriors.” This brand of “justice” benefited only some based on immutable characteristics, which perfectly aligns with the modern brand. The Nazi ideal embraced identity politics based on the primacy of the people, or volk, and invoked state-based solutions for every possible problem. It was nation-based socialism—the nation being especially important to those who bled in the Great War.

The Nazi charter published a year later and coauthored by Hitler is socialist in almost every aspect. It calls for “equality of rights for the German people”; the subjugation of the individual to the state; breaking of “rent slavery”; “confiscation of war profits”; the nationalization of industry; profit-sharing in heavy industry; large-scale social security; the “communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low costs to small firms”; the “free expropriation of land for the purpose of public utility”; the abolition of “materialistic” Roman Law; nationalizing education; nationalizing the army; state regulation of the press; and strong central power in the Reich. It was also racist and anti-immigrant.

In some areas, the Nazis followed their charter faithfully. They treated children as property of the state from the earliest age and indoctrinated them at government schools and clubs. The individual had limited rights outside the volk. German lives were for the betterment of the people and state. One’s group identity determined his rights and social hierarchy.

[ … ]

When told of Schutzstaffel (SS) Chief Heinrich Himmler’s flirtation with the occult, Hitler fumed: “What nonsense! Here we have at last reached an age that has left all mysticism behind it, and now he wants to start that all over again. We might just as well have stayed with the church. At least it had tradition. To think that I may some day be turned into an SS saint! Can you imagine it? I would turn over in my grave…”

[ … ]

“Once I have settled my other problems,” he occasionally declared, “I’ll have my reckoning with the church. I’ll have it reeling on the ropes.”

It wasn’t only theoretical. Hitler repeatedly praised Marx privately, stating he had “learned a great deal from Marxism.” The trouble with the Weimar Republic, he said, was that its politicians “had never even read Marx.” He also stated his differences with communists were that they were intellectual types passing out pamphlets, whereas “I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun.”

The Nazis were statists of the highest and worst caliber.  Of interesting note, Richard Spencer said this.

“No individual has a right outside of a collective community. You have rights, not eternally or given by God, or by nature.”

I don’t align myself with men.  I don’t join clubs.  I don’t join movements.  I don’t call myself by names, except Christian.  And everyone who believes in the collective doesn’t believe in God.  And vice versa.

Matt Bracken on diversity being out strength, multi-culturalism, political correctness and social media.