9th Circus Rides Again

They don’t call it the 9^th circus for nothing. Now the court has ruled that parents have no right to have any say over their children’s educational experience. There are enough others that will take issue with that, so I won’t have to.

But this little excerpt from WND’s article quotes the actual ruling.

We agree [with the previous ruling], and hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students. Finally, we hold that the defendants' actions were rationally related to a legitimate state purpose. [emphasis Reinhardt's].

What I find interesting is the final sentence in the quote, where the court holds that the actions were rationally related to a legitimate STATE purpose. Schools are not there to educate your children, they are there to fulfill a legitimate state purpose, at least according to this ruling. Whoever pays the bills ends up setting the rules.

The purse strings are the control rods of any organization. From private schools, to local community schools, to public schools, to state funded public schools, to nationally funded public schools. As government has taken a bigger and bigger role in the funding of educational institutions, it’s control has grown larger and larger. Your community has no say in what happens in your school. The best you can hope for is that your city will act in accordance with your beliefs.

This is the problem with all of the “voucher” programs. A voucher, even with statutory independence, can be used by the issuing authority to incrementally issue rules and regulations for their use. It could begin quite benignly with reporting rules necessary for redemption, but eventually end up with rules for application. And statutory rules can be changed at any time by another statute.

An educational tax credit for families would probably insulate the money enough, since the parents are the ones getting the money back from the government. The most palatable idea for state funded education is for ALL parents to get tax credits for their children, and let the parents decide which institution, whether “public” or private get their money.

In the mean time, the ideal educational option for your children is gong to be one that you pay for. Out of your own pocket. When you own the purse strings, you retain control.

Posting times...

Have dragged out a bit. My appologies. I've started a new job that requires frequent travel and I'm not able to make the Wednesday posting time.

About Time for Accountability

So Alito is now the Pres’s choice to join the Supremes. Good. And all it took was the entire base of the Republican party to rise up in protest.

About time. Kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if they had spoken up before hand.

The price of blind obedience to the man who says trust me is that you often don’t get what you want. The religious right has elected 4 of the last 5 presidents. And since their revolt against the last President bush resulted in the election of Clinton the first time around, I suppose the case could be made that they have elected all 5. Even if through their own inaction.

So what did the right do after electing the current president? Nothing. Not a darn thing. In the face of rising statist policies, increased regulation, fewer freedom, they did nothing. Their response to the affronts to liberty and even their own stated ideals was to apologize for the president’s need to accommodate the political realities.

After pushing the limits of credulity with Roberts, the Miers nomination activated a tipping point for the support of his base. I image that the president was surprised that the silent ignorant masses that had blindly supported him for 6 years suddenly rose up in protest. But he shouldn’t have been. And the right should have risen up in protest years before.

Everyone needs somebody to hold them accountable. And the president hasn’t even tried to live up to the principles that he originally ran his campaign on. If the conservatives had held his feet to the fire years ago, then perhaps all the work in The District would have been held up. But when you consider that 95 out of every 100 things that happened in the capital benefited the socialists and democrats; that lack of action would have been a good thing.

Let’s say it together now:

Blind Obedience: BAD

Accountability: GOOD

You will be tested on this again...

No gas shortage????

The former senate majority leader Trent Lott was on the Tony Snow show last week and proudly proclaimed that he was not a conservative but a populist (as if we didn’t know that before – but at least he’s got the titles correct this time around). He further railed against the oil companies and their windfall profits. Even his first statement was absurd: “there was no supply-demand imbalance.” Right. And the fact that it took me three stores to find one that had gasoline was what? The refinery production in the gulf was shut down for days, the use of gasoline spiked as everyone filled up in the face of cuts, and this senator thinks there was no supply/demand imbalance? Give me a break.