The President circumvents parental authority?

On September 8th, President Obama is planning to address schools across our nation.

Now we don't know what he's going to say yet, and having the President talk to kids is not necessarily an evil thing. It's good to teach children about our country and its political process. When I was young, I wrote a letter to President Reagan. I got a lovely little courtesy book with full-color pictures of the White House most famous rooms. I have it to this day.

However, we do not know what this community organizer plans to say to our children. There is no copy circulating of the speech that I can find. The one document I was able to find, a teaching guide for the event, did not inspire confidence that this would be a simple, friendly hello. The guide can be found here.

For those of you who don't want to read it, these are the parts that trouble me:

Before the speech, third point: Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

Indeed, why is what they say important? In this country, the government is created for the people and by the people. Of course it's important to listen to what they have to say. But why is that? Do you think that the teachers will encourage students to answer that they should become involved in the political process so that they can do their best to intelligently evaluate the truthfulness of their President's speeches and speak out against them if he is wrong?

During the speech, second point: Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

This troubles me, because it is basically evidence that, when our President speaks to our children outside of our presence, he will be asking them to do something. What sort of thing will he ask them to do? What was the last thing he asked people to do? The last thing he asked people to do was to go to town hall meetings specifically to shut up the people who disagreed with his nationalized health care plan.

Some people might say, "What's the big deal? So the kids have to sit through this speech. They'll probably be bored. They'll have forgotten it by tomorrow. Just let it happen and let it fade away." Unfortunately, the teacher's guide includes a followup:

Extension of the speech, second point: Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

Everyone should find this troubling. The President is encouraging children to work for him directly, and encouraging teachers to put a system into place by which children are made accountable for their goals. I would like to point out that in our system of government, children are traditionally considered too young to enter into contracts and have them enforced. There is a reason why, for instance, there are minimum ages on marriage and on entering the Armed Forces. Further points on the same section encourage teachers to set up school-wide incentive programs for students who reach their goals and graph student progress toward these goals.

This is no longer about a student sitting through a speech and then going home. It's about peer pressure and adult pressure for a student to do what the President has asked them to do. This is serious business, whether you approve of Mr. President or not. We do not live in an authoritarian society, and our elected leaders of the country should not be directly interfering with our children's lives in this fashion.

Quite simply, this is wrong.

I personally have no worries about this event for my family. My son is homeschooled and my daughter is too young to understand speeches. Still, I would like to encourage parents of public school students to keep their children home on September 8th. If enough people do so, perhaps we can send a message.

Now let me put in my "usual disclaimer". Suppose the President merely wants to ask the students to be more charitable? To help others? Isn't this a good thing? Don't we want our children to help others? Yes, we do! We definitely do, and I entirely agree with the goal in mind. What I disagree with strongly is its implementation. Children should be charitable because their parents and community teaches them to be. Charting progress toward charity goals should be done at home, or perhaps in Sunday School. Children should not learn the lesson that they must do whatever their President requests of them. That is the road, not to genuine charity, but to tyranny and despotism.

How dare you question my wisdom?

It looks as if town hall meetings are no longer meant to give us a forum in which to express our concerns and hear lawmakers try to support their decisions. It is now a forum in which the lawmakers tell us what we are going to roll over and allow them to do. It is no longer a place of persuasion and debate, but a place of demands and coercion. What happened?

Well, apparently Obama got tired of hearing people object to his plan, and so he rustled up his union buddies to go attend these town hall meetings. The result: Thursday night featured the first bouts of actual violence in the entire government-run healthcare debate.

A note about the protestors and town hall participants: They raised their voices. They held signs. They chanted sometimes. That's it. They are not violent people. They are not terrorists. They're people like you and me. The initial town hall meetings reminded me a bit of heavy metal fans. Now that probably sounds like an odd correlation to make. Let me explain it.

My sister and I attended a heavy metal concert with a couple of other friends. We found ourselves, country mice on a long journey, in the part of Poughkeepsie where the cops don't go, in line with a bunch of people (mostly men) wearing black leather, chains, spikes, ponytails, and various piercings. To hear the major news media reporting on town hall protests, you'd think these people had attended them. You might not be off the mark.

Why? Because they turned out to be the friendliest, gentlest, most respectable and respectful people you could hope to share an auditorium with. Imagine this: at a standing-room-only concert, I tried to step forward to get a better look at the band. The people in the audience readily parted for me, giving me an excellent view close to the stage. You could get bumped into in a crowd like that, but not without an exchange of "I'm sorry" and "Excuse me" and "That's alright". There were a couple of bouncers on hand, who were not needed. There was no violence, no trampling, no accidental injury, and the fans even left the place clean as it was when they arrived.

From what I have seen and heard of the town meetings, the people were very much like that. They would rail and shout, but nobody was getting trampled, nobody was getting separated from their group, and nobody was getting frightened... except for the Democrats up on stage, who are not used to having their wisdom questioned and did not know how to deal with well-reasoned opposition from the people who are supposed to follow like sheep.

Then Obama spoke up. He sent out emails to his supporters asking them to show up at the town hall meetings to shout down the protesters. This act made apparent that he was not looking for actual discussion. At the absolute best, he was hoping for a photo-op of people not disagreeing with his plan. Oh, he got a photo-op alright. The pictures and video taken of the violence has hit Youtube and, as the phrase goes, "gone viral". (This despite having not hit the major news media in any way except a vague sort of "there was violence between opposing groups" without revealing who was actually throwing people against walls.)

Now I've heard people raise various possibilities of why Thursday night's violence happened. The kindest opinion, however, is just as bad as the least kind. The least kind opinion is pretty obvious. Many people believe that Barry Obama, Chicago politician, purposely rounded up the union people in order to intimidate and attack the town hall attendees. They account the violence, which resulted in torn shirts, bruising, and one man beaten into the hospital, directly to his fault. They view him as a modern-day crime boss telling his minions to go out there and break a few knees.

The kindest opinion is that Obama is so blindingly inept at the only job he has any real experience in, community organizing, that he simply did not know what happens when you ask union officials to get their guys to show up and provide a counter to a protest. Despite my adventures to places like heavy metal concerts, I have grown up in a fairly sheltered community, among Christians and homeschoolers, in a rural neighborhood. Even I knew exactly what was going to happen once union thugs got involved in this wasn't-yet-a-mess. If even a rural Connecticut housewife knows how they behave, how could an urban community organizer and Chicago politician have no clue whatsoever?

Of course, this raises serious questions about our president. Is he utterly inept and astonishingly naive? Or is he purposely intimidating ordinary citizens with the only means of force that will target innocent people? Note that these first clashes were not against police (who were already monitoring the protests long before Thursday) or military (who have not been called in), but union people proudly wearing their union shirts.

In either case, it seems that the one thing the Democrats do not want us to do is to object to their plans. They are not interested in compromise; they are not even interested in our opinion. Now we find out whether they can strong-arm the American People into backing down and giving them their own way. If this issue is decided by force, our way of life just might be over.

We value your input

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

This simple statement has set off a firestorm across the country, among just about everybody who opposes the Democrat-proposed government-run health care plan, which is a majority, and even among some who support the plan. Some have argued that the White House plans to make an 'enemies list' by identifying people who disagree with them. Others have scoffed at the notion, noting that we have not currently lost the right to free speech. One person said, "Has it ever occurred to you knuckle-dragging sheep that he just wants your input?"

I immediately answered, "No."

I find myself once more in the "middle of the right". I do not believe that the original intent of this post was to mark conservatives for destruction. I don't think we'll be wearing little yellow stars on our coats anytime soon. After all, we outnumber him, and the military is majority-conservative. Even the liberal members would not fire on their own, and yes, I have heard that many of them are already considering what they would do if they were asked. The atmosphere is that volatile. Still, as I said, I don't take the worst possible interpretation of the White House request.

Even so, the nicest possible interpretation is not good. I answered "No" because Obama has not shown any interest whatsoever in changing his bill to meet our concerns. He has merely claimed that he wants to hear them so that he can refute them, so that he can explain them away, so that we will 'see the light' and stop opposing his plan. I also noted that the original forum poster listed a fact and a group of people were heartily agreeing with it, while Obama was trying to force something down our throats that we don't want "for our own good". Who was treating us like "knuckle-dragging sheep"? As you might have guessed, I was a little riled.

I have good reason to be. Under ordinary circumstances it would be nothing more than a poor choice of wording. However, with this administration, we have to look at it with the 'abusive-boyfriend principle' I noted in my previous post. "Joe the Plumber" opposed Obama's plans within Obama's earshot and look what happened to him. Then we got the Homeland Security memo that labeled those who peaceably assemble to protest liberal policies as "terrorist-lite". Now Obama wants to know what YOU think of his plan. Of course, his request has a nasty little Orwellian twist to it.

The White House blog could have said: "We understand that you have some concerns about the plan. Please feel free to send those concerns to this address so that we can address them." We're not fools, and we'd still know that he was interested more in denying our concerns than incorporating language into the bill to put our minds at ease. It still would have been an improvement over what was said, which basically amounts to this:

"We want you to send us logs of private conversations you've had with people who oppose this bill."

The same person who called me a knuckle-dragging sheep claimed that Obama was only looking for our opinion. I replied, "If you want our opinion, ask us to send in OUR opinion! Don't ask people to send in their NEIGHBOR's opinions!" That wording alone, even without the example of "Joe the Plumber", is enough to rattle a generation who grew up learning how Things Were Done in the Soviet Union. If a secretly-recorded conversation is submitted in a court case, the judge must rule whether it is admissible as evidence. Shouldn't there be some sort of consideration taken before asking people to basically submit private conversations to the Federal Government?

This nation, God love 'em, is still full of the same types of personalities who stood up to the British long ago. It is still full of people who emigrated here to escape totalitarian regimes. I have heard from a number of people who have chosen to send their own concerns about the White House request for other people's private conversations straight to that email. I am going to join them and send this post...

...but I'll use my spam-catcher email address.

The Government Relationship

This thought has been percolating in my head all day. I don't know if I have enough of it to put out a long, nicely-reasoned post, but I would like to get it out there for you anyways. It's been a long day with a tired baby, so if I get short and incomprehensible, please leave me a comment and I'll fix it!

Conservatives are starting to bring up things that Obama and other Democrats have said in the past regarding taxpayer-funded, single-payer healthcare. Most of it has gone along the lines of "We won't be able to do it to them right away because they'd never accept it, but be sure that we're starting a process if we regain Congress and the White House!" Meanwhile, liberals are complaining mightily that it doesn't conclusively prove anything. That last part, about conclusively proving, is the point.

See, the Scientific Method and the criminal court system are very good and useful in their place. However, they can be overused and often are in modern society. You have to prove your religious beliefs by the Scientific Method or they're invalid. You have to prove your political stance by the Innocent-Until-Proven-Guilty method... only when you're going up against the liberal Democrats, of course. However, you shouldn't need to go that far to oppose new legislation. After all, our government was built in such a way as to make it difficult to pass a new law.

As a woman, I have a certain frame of reference that I use when considering liberal Democrat promises about the health care plan. (This is, by the way, a government-run health care plan meant to fix a private medical insurance issue, not a "public health care option" or a medical insurance fix to a medical insurance issue. Anyways.) My frame of reference is that of a woman seeking to avoid becoming a victim of domestic abuse.

You learn quickly, or you end up learning by experience. You can't try too hard to prove conclusively and without a shadow of a doubt that the guy is going to hit you. You can't analyze him through the scientific method or put him on trial to deliver a guilty verdict only if you are convinced beyond all reasonable doubt. You have to be on your guard, and you have to keep your eyes open.

See, if you confront him directly, you bet he'll say, "Oh no, baby, I would never hurt you." But if he's been rough and physical, pushed you around a little, if he's told his friends he'd smack around any woman of his who didn't get his dinner on time, if he's been known to hit previous girlfriends... you had better start making tracks now. Don't move in with him. For heaven's sake don't have sex with him.

When I view the evidence presented that the liberals are taking us on a trip towards a truly socialist system, that this is just the first step and groundwork is being laid for more, I can't take for granted their claims that it just isn't so. I can't assume that they won't use a power that their bill is giving them just because they said they won't use it. After all, Obama said that he didn't want to run auto companies, and see where that's taken us.

I don't need the proof of the scientific method, or the guilty verdict in a criminal case, to hesitate at handing over the power of my health and life to the government. All I need is about the same level of suspicion that would prompt me to back away from a potentially abusive boyfriend.

Schooling Decision #2 - Homeschool

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again. Students are gearing up for their next year of school. My son finished his Kindergarten through the CLASS plan last year, and they mailed back an S for Satisfactory. The only grade you get in Kindergarten from CLASS is an S or a U. Guess what U stands for.

So what's up for this year? Well, my son is still doing a good job learning how to socialize. He isn't doing quite as well in keeping his room clean, but compared to other kids his age, it's not that bad. We're working on some defiance issues, and that's utterly normal. Basically, I've got a kid I can take out to dinner, and that's pretty cool. We had him professionally evaluated earlier this summer, and he was declared to be right on the line between ADHD and not ADHD. That didn't surprise me. He's flighty in the mind, but he's a solidly good worker. Easily distracted, but very intelligent.

It probably will come to no surprise to my regular readers that we have decided to continue homeschooling. The method, though, is slightly different. This year, we ordered the CLASS First Grade Family Plan. What's the difference? With the CLASS Plan, we send the work in and they give us his grade. With the Family Plan, we give him the grades ourselves. We send nothing back. Basically, they send us a full curriculum and a lovely Year Planner for homeschoolers (containing weekly planning sheets and myriads of forms from field trips to doctor's office visits) and we're on our own.

I noticed last year that my son has a bit of difficulty getting a real handle on history as something that actually happened long ago. We happen to live in lovely New England, and there are several historical sites for him to visit and actually experience history. I plan to incorporate history-based field trips heavily into his curriculum this year.

CLASS allows you to make some course substitutions for each year. I took the A Beka option for reading and science. I like the old classic readers A Beka offers, and the science book has an extra section on toys that I know will please my mechanically-minded boy. This is really what homeschooling is all about. Each child can have a curriculum that, while it covers the basics in full, will also play to his strengths and interests while shoring up his weaknesses. He'll also have all the drills and memorization that makes up a classic education, and arrive in highschool able to do his multiplication problems without a calculator.

This week I am going to be concentrating on planning out the school year. Each book needs to be divided into chapters and decisions have to be made as to how many days per week, how much per day will be done. The primary homeschooling parent, usually the mother, makes this choice. She must balance each day so that daily subjects and weekly subjects will all be completed without burning out her kid. Again, each child has a custom-tailored education key to his strengths and weaknesses. My son tires quickly when doing phonics, and there are a lot of pages in his book. I decided to start him on his new book in June, so that he can do one page every day and finish on time. He tires much less quickly with math, but there is a lot of work to do between his workbook, drill sheets, and tests, so I have started him on that subject already. "Summer school? What a bummer!" Seriously, one phonics page and two math pages is not a terrible fate. When he's in a good mood, he can complete all his summer schoolwork for the day in one hour.

Of course, we have a complication this year in the form of a baby. Lil Tricia is fussier than most. She likes to be held, and she has a tendency to soak up a lot of time. This can be dealt with. Most homeschooling mothers have breastfed and administered lessons at the same time. Homeschooling with multiple children becomes a balancing act, when you must not only work out each child's schedule, but correlate them so that one has busywork while you teach another. If you have many children close in age, this job is actually easier than you might think. History and science rarely take on significant differences between grades until highschool, and homeschooled children are often above their peers in reading comprehension. A second grader, third grader, and fifth grader can all learn from the same sixth-grade science or history book at the same time.

Of course, this doesn't quite apply to me yet. I will be sitting the baby up while listening to a lesson read aloud, playing with the baby while my son is doing his busywork, and discussing lessons with my son while the baby either plays with her toes or sleeps. It's going to be an adventure, but I wouldn't give it up for the world.

First grade subjects are theology, phonics, reading, spelling, handwriting, mathematics, science, history, art, music, and gym. I've got a handle on just about each item on the list. His history book is short and will only cover about half the year. Last year, I just started him late in the year, so that his amount of daily schoolwork slowly ramped up as he got used to this new system in his life. This year, I found a third grade History of United States book that I am going to read to him for the second half of the year. It might be a little over his head at times, but it'll be good for him.

I'm not worried about art. I used to teach it to my younger sister when I was a homeschooled student, and I've used it to keep kids happy while watching them for years. Music shouldn't be much of a problem. My mother agreed to start teaching him piano lessons. (I could do it myself, if I needed to, but I think it's good for him to have other teachers.) That will involve learning how to read music. Last year I taught him how to identify strings, brass, winds, and percussion by ear. (Not the individual instruments.) I also exposed him to the audio-only Peter and the Wolf. I know I ought to put him through an actual music appreciation course in time and teach him the names of the greats and so on. For now, though, the piano lessons should suffice.

It's gym that I am still trying to plan. I'm not much of a sports person. He gets plenty of exercise, but not much in the way of traditional active games. My mother loves taking him on bicycle rides, and he and I take plenty of walks, but I'm not the right person to teach him how to hit a ball or make a basket, and he needs to learn how to play in a team. He gets some of that in his weekly kids' group, but not like he'd get it from a gym class. What does a kid really need in the area of gym class? What will help him be a well-rounded kid? How can I be sure that I meet that need? I was easy. I was so anti-athletic that my mother could meet my need easily just by keeping me in shape. My son is so full of energy and good hand-eye coordination that he is going to need more than I personally can give him.

I'll talk to other homeschool parents in the area, including my mother, and we'll work something out. For the sake of those who like to learn more about homeschooling, when we've figured it out, I'll tell you what we've planned.

Clunkers for Cash: Subsidy for the Rich

I'd like to take a moment and complain heartily about the Clunkers for Cash program. In case you haven't heard, it allows you to get something like up to $4,500 from the government if your old car is sufficiently fuel-inefficient and it is replaced with a tidy little econobox... brand new, of course. And that is where my problem lies.

Just to clarify my wider stance, I disagree with the program itself on the simple basis that I do not believe the government should be using my taxpayer dollars to pay people for the cars that they drive. This is not a matter of national defense or the simple running of the government. It is not a matter of ensuring the uncoerced determination of value that runs a good free market economy. However, even were I to agree with the program and with the government's administering of it, I can still find a problem with what it does and for whom.

If you are going to buy a new car, you need one of two things: a bank account containing the money for a new car, or enough room in your budget for a monthly payment. My family has neither. I continue to wonder how we would be classified economically. My husband works a middle-class job, technically. Since I do not work full-time (I purposely took a job with lower earning power than I actually have, because it is family-friendly), our household income is less than half of what you might expect from a family with college-educated parents. Anyways, the relevancy to this topic is that we have neither sufficient savings to buy a new car nor the room in our monthly budget to make payments on a new car.

Therefore, Cars for Clunkers automatically does absolutely nothing for us.

Recently, my husband's car permanently died. It was a '90 Cutlass Ciera that we bought six years ago for $500, and though it technically still runs, its problems include brake line failure, a rusty gas tank beginning to leak, a transmission that downshifts as if it's going to drop out of the vehicle, and a myriad of mysterious oil leaks. It garnered, on average, 15-20mpg.

We took all of our savings and purchased an '01 Honda Civic. Despite having higher mileage than the car we are replacing, it looks as if it has at least five more years of life in it. My husband reports fuel economy in the neighborhood of 50mpg, but that is only an estimate, since he has not had to fill the gas tank yet.

My car is an '89 Chevy Cavalier station wagon. As of right now, it has no mechanical problems, just a few cosmetic 'quirks'. The body is finally rusting, and I hope it can hold together until we can afford its replacement. If it doesn't keep running for another three or four years at least, we may be stuck with one car, which is tougher than it sounds when you live at least 3 miles away from any non-residential building.

If the Honda Civic was a new vehicle, we would surely qualify for Cash for Clunkers. Unfortunately, we don't have the money to buy a new vehicle. Even the least expensive new vehicle, after the government rebate, would be at least twice what we paid for the Honda. If the program worked for used cars, we could have just about paid for the Honda with the rebate and still had our little nest egg to use when my car gives up its ghost.

But I've learned a long time ago that the government, when run by Liberals, doesn't care about people like us.

The kicker is this: Since we are not too poor to pay taxes, the government will be taking money that we could have used to save for our car fund and using it to pay people who earn more than we do so that they can buy their brand-new cars for less.

Liberals often wonder how anybody below the upper-middle-class could possibly disagree with their social programs. I'm here to explain that this is just one of many examples that formed my anti-socialist bent.

If the government trying to help troubled Americans save the economy results in lower-class Americans paying for upper-class Americans to drive brand new cars, what will the government trying to help troubled Americans afford health care do to us?

Let's show them how we do things in cyberspace!

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_12/news/37125-1.html?type=printer_friendly

Congressional rules for franked mail bar Members from using taxpayer-funded mail for newsletters that use “partisan, politicized or personalized” comments to criticize legislation or policy.

The dispute over Brady’s chart is being reviewed by the franking commission, which must approve any mail before it can be sent. No decision had been made on the matter by press time.

Brady adamantly denied that the chart was misleading and said Democrats are simply threatened by the content of the graphic.

“I think their review was laughable,” Brady said. “It’s ... downright false in most of the cases. The chart depicts their health care plan as their committees developed it.”

“The chart reveals how their health care bureaucracy works, and people are frightened by it,” he added. “So this is their effort to try and discredit” the chart.

Republican Members have made 20 requests to mail a version of the chart to their constituents and have been told that the requests are being delayed while the commission reviews allegations that the chart is misleading.

...
The dispute centers on a chart (view PDF) created by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee to illustrate the organization of the Democratic health care plan.

At first glance, Brady’s chart resembles a board game: a colorful collection of shapes and images with a web of lines connecting them.

But a closer look at the image reveals a complicated menagerie of government offices and programs that Republicans say will be created if the leading Democratic health care plan becomes law.

UPDATE: Congressman Carter's Twitter confirms this report in the blogosphere: The Democrats are blocking free speech in the House. We can not use the words "Democrats" or "Government Run Healthcare" in official mail.

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I say let's show this "government of transparency" what happens when they try to block Republicans from showing us what's really going on. Please feel free to post/spread this on your own blog and/or email, complete with link to the PDF file. After the fiasco surrounding the DVD encryption key, the Democrats should know that you can't just hide things from the citizenry anymore.