Quick Roundup 204
Thursday, June 14, 2007
I'm having one of those days. I've been busy and scatter-brained all week and now I find myself running late....
Hoping for Hurricane Gerry ...
... Mander, that is.
The leftists in charge of Broward County, Florida, have shown the true extent of the feelings they have for their fellow man by threatening to stop broadcasting emergency information on a radio station because it carries Rush Limbaugh!
Radio station WIOD, AM 610, has been the official channel for emergency information from Broward County government for the past year. The County Commission, all Democrats, balked at renewing the deal Tuesday, unable to stomach the station also being home to Limbaugh's talk show.This speaks volumes, none of it good, about these county officials. They don't just want to dictate what a private radio station airs, but they're willing to put lives in jeopardy to do so. Remember this the next time a leftist tries to claim the moral high ground based on his "concern" for "humankind".
Commissioner Stacy Ritter said she did not want to support a station that's out of step with area politics. Ritter, a Democratic stalwart in the state Legislature before being elected to county office, cited talk shows hosted by Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and WIOD's partnership with Fox News. [bold added]
Also remember: These are the same people who complain about how hard it is for the electorate to vote using simple ballots. One can only conclude that they are hoping that a bunch of stupid conservative voters will not have enough sense to change channels if they don't find emergency information in the usual place.
Sickening Article on Student Loans
A full treatment of what is wrong with the federal student loan program would take an entire book, but suffice it to say that getting the government further into the business of offering loans is not a step in the right direction:
This very idea -- that banks "lure" universities into doing business -- brings us to perhaps the best argument on behalf of direct lending: it eliminates any possibility of corruption, favoritism or abuse. The traditional bank loan program will always depend on volume for its earnings. No matter how many regulations are issued by Washington, there will always be an incentive for lenders to win over financial aid officers by any means possible.So based on the incorrect premise that it is wrong for banks to try to get business from universities, we should instead have the government luring students (by promising to make the rest of us pay for their educations) into low-paying careers in (what those in power call) "the public interest"?!?!
Another advantage of direct lending is that universities do not have to try to sort out which of the thousands of private lenders would be best for their students. With direct loans, the government can ensure the lowest costs for taxpayers and students.
An additional benefit for students (and the nation) is that the direct loan program offers income-contingent loan repayment options, which can lower premiums, and that after 25 years of repayment, loans are forgiven. These features make it easier for debt-ridden students to take lower-paying jobs that serve the public interest without having to worry about defaulting on their loans. [bold added]
Regarding student loans, I recently considered some aspects of the matter (e.g., how easy money can distort a job market) from a pro-capitalist perspective. Regarding author Madeleine May Kunin, her demonization of what few elements of free enterprise there are in higher education strike me as psychological projection -- from someone with a bad case of the "dictator fantasy" besides.
There is so much wrong with this article that I am overwhelmed.
More on Public Education
(1) I finally saw the video on public education I pointed to yesterday and highly recommend it. I already had a very low opinion of public education before this and it is now even lower. That says a lot.
(2) Commenting on another post, Rational Jenn brought up a very interesting quote from a legal paper on government oversight of home schooling she read recently:
States delegate power of children's basic education to parents, and the delegation itself is necessarily subject to constitutional constraints. [bold added]Got that? You, the parent, have no rights because you are simply keeping an eye on government property. I find it ominous that someone feels comfortable saying such a thing openly.
(3) In other, less-consequential news, Antioch College, a bastion of doctrinaire leftism, is about to close its doors. Follow the link for some entertaining excerpts from its loony student "survival" guide.
No Les, No More
My congratulations go to Lester More and the other member(s) of the Cuban national soccer team who recently took advantage of an international soccer tournament to flee tyranny.
Two players defected from the Cuban national soccer team before Wednesday's Gold Cup match against Honduras at Reliant Stadium, sources said.Lester More. I love that name, even though I am sure it isn't pronounced as it would be in English, because it reminds me of a famous but I think fictitious epitaph ("Here lies the body of Lester Moore,\Shot in head with a forty-four.\ No Les, no Moore.").
Forward Lester More and midfielder Osvaldo Alonso defected, apparently while the team was in Houston, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, both of whom asked not to be identified.
Perhaps we should mark this occasion with similar verse celebrating his escape from the land of the dead. With apologies in advance for my assaults on the Spanish tongue: "Here comes the future of Lester More,\Free from the drone of that awful bore.\No mas! Mejor!"
Good luck in your new life, Mr. More!
-- CAV
6 comments:
Yo, Gus, you write: "You, the parent, have no rights because you are simply keeping an eye on government property. I find it ominous that someone feels comfortable saying such a thing openly." Said minor-level slave-driver is only repeating what was taught by such professors of education as William H. Seawell, who stated back in 1981 (at a school opening in Fort Defiance, VA, of all ironies!): "Each child belongs to the state." Decent commentary can be found in the archives of The Underground Grammarian for Volume 7, No. 2, "The Children of the State." It's things like this that remind me that Mencken's proposal that we burn all the schoolhouses and shoot all the teachers won't do a damned bit of good in the long run if we don't dismantle our septically corrupt tyrant- and slave-molding "progressive" education establishment into the bargain.
Indeed.
BTW, thank you for the link to The Underground Grammarian -- although my excitement at seeing it online is tempered by my learning that Richard Mitchell died some time ago.
I have several of his books, including that one.
And lemme tell ya what, that's a nasty bit of legal misreasoning. "States delegate power of children's basic education to parents, and the delegation itself is necessarily subject to constitutional constraints." Uh huh. So now try to combine that with these two nowadays largely gutted little items: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" and "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The mind reels. One is tempted to dig into the legal record behind this mess of pottage, but one is then dismayed at the thought of what one will find squirming there. Urf.
It is through such convoluted reasoning and massive numbers of bad precedents along the way that we finally see someone arguing, explicitly, for the government to act for precisely the opposite of its proper purpose!
Sickeningly, the dangerousness of it would hardly register with the vast majority of adults, if they could read the sentence in the first place!
If you have the stomach to wade through the rest of that paper, you will discover even more heinous errors. It's simply terrible. I am also shocked and dismayed that something like this would be produced by a professor of law. If this is what lawyers these days are learning about and producing, then....shudder. Evidently that little class about the Constitution is an elective now.
Thanks for pointing me to The Underground Grammarian. Really appeals to the English major in me. Hope to spend a lot of time there!
Must go back to rearing my government property now... :o)
I believe you! I didn't get around to the abstract yesterday until after I'd posted and even after that quote, its frank statement of purpose took me aback:
"The paper relies on federal state action doctrine and state constitution education clauses to argue that states must -- not may or should -- regulate homeschooling to ensure that parents provide their children with a basic minimum education and check rampant forms of sexism."
Ugh! There HAVE to be more errors to get to that point. Should I get the time to write more in-depth on education, I will almost certainly end up perusing that thing, so thank you again for bringing it up.
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