OK, I’m getting sick of this. There’s a ton of people passing around the following picture that are about to get a slappin’ by ye olde Annoyed Elephant:
Seriously… what’s wrong with you people? Christians are among the most generous people on the planet. They give and give and give to food banks, homeless shelters, and individuals in need on a near-constant basis, giving billions of dollars every year out of their own pockets to combat poverty and hunger, not only in America, but around the world. On top of that, Chick-Fil-A mandates that its franchises also give to local charities and people in need.
And yet, socially-minded folks are lining up to point out how evil some Christians were for spending $7 at Chick-Fil-A to support a man who shares their family values. As if it’s an either-or scenario where we either help the poor or support Chick-Fil-A, and ne’er the twain shall meet. As if, somehow, because of all the people who ate at Chick-Fil-A on Wednesday to support Truett Cathy’s freedom of conscience regarding his Biblical morals will somehow erase decades of “success” in the war on poverty.
Get off your high horse, people. Eat your damned chicken sandwich.
If a business does something I don’t approve of, I simply stop shopping there. For instance, Citgo is owned by Hugo Chavez, communist dictator of Venezuela, and because I consider Hugo to be a gigantic douche, I don’t get gas as Ctigo. Ever. If my friends ask me, I’ll tell them why I avoid Citgo. They may agree and stop shopping there, they may not. It’s all good because we’re all individuals capable of making adult decisions and I don’t pick my friends and colleagues based on politics – and those friends I have who do disagree with me tend to be adult enough to realize this.
So, this leads to the question: why the war on Chick-Fil-A?
First, let’s get this clear: Chick-Fil-A the company was founded by a Christian man whose values have driven his business model. The employees are typically extremely friendly to customers, the restaurants are very considerate towards families in both design and menu offerings, and they’re closed on Sunday (a point which has annoyed me often when I’ve had a mis-timed craving). The founder of Chick-Fil-A, S. Truett Cathy, continues to promote his personal values. So what’s the problem?
I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
Well, shockingly to some, this man – who’s fostered over 200 kids, attends church every Sunday, and continues to teach Sunday School classes in his 90′s, doesn’t like gay marriage. His business doesn’t discriminate against gays, they don’t refuse to serve gay people, they don’t put pictures of the Chick-Fil-A cows holding signs that say “God Hats Homoos” on their marquees. It’s simply that Truett doesn’t think gay behavior is right and doesn’t support gay marriage. Now, what would an adult do about this shocking revelation?
Option 1: Realize that we’re talking about a 91 year old Christian man and get on with life, applauding his works you agree with, and occasionally stopping by Chick-Fil-A for their delicious sandwiches.
Option 2: Disagree with Mr. Cathy and send the company a letter expressing your discontent with his position, but accepting the fact that Chick-Fil-A probably isn’t going to be putting out an Anti-Gay Kids Meal any time soon.
Option 3: Perform a personal boycott of Mr. Cathy’s businesses. Be content in your personal sacrifice, but sad that you’re missing out on their delicious chicken.
Option 4: Perform same boycott, but mention to friends that they may want to join you. Send a letter to the company stating your reasons for boycotting.
Option 5: Demonize a 91-year-old man whose values you never agreed with and use the force of government to exert the force of your will, not only upon the business whose founder has beliefs you don’t agree with, but on the potential employees of said business. Plus, hold gay kiss-in events at Chick-Fil-A so that the people who eat their lunch there will feel totally weird about it and not eat there, forcing Chick-Fil-A to serve people who held their kiss-ins, except that they already totally do serve gay people at Chick-Fil-A, which means you’re just doing it for show. Besides, people who don’t agree with your political views don’t deserve the same freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment that good progressives do.
Normal people would choose 1-4. Sadly, a ton of retards are choosing 5, getting the likes of Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Chicago Mayor and Obama associate Rahm Emanuel to try to push Chick-Fil-A out of their respective cities, a fascistic move that’s even set off the free expression alarm at the incredibly liberal Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, and NPR.
The ultimate in irony is that while Rahm Emanuel was pushing against Chick-Fil-A for Cathy’s support of traditional marriage, he was also welcoming Louis Farrakhan to Chicago, who not only opposes gay marriage, but also openly and proudly hates Jewish people like… Rahm Emanuel.
The pro-family groups have organized today, August 1, as a Chick-Fil-A appreciation day, and have encouraged people to go by and grab a sammich. Personally, I disagree with this. I think that a better approach is simply to eat mor chikin. Don’t limit it to a single day – go support the businesses who support your values on a regular basis. Show them your support by becoming a regular customer. Go buy a sammich today… and then another tomorrow… and then another a few days from now. Sure, you’ll get fat, but it’ll be delicious and you’ll be giving your support to a business whose values are the same values found in Scripture.
So the court says Obamacare is a-OK. That’s right: the right of the government to force you to spend your money how they see fit is covered under “taxation authority”. And, as expected, there’s a lot of blame to be passed around, most of it resting on the back of Chief Justice John Roberts.
But I don’t blame Roberts. Honestly, looking at the ruling, I see the direction he was heading in: Congress has the power to tax you, and forcing you to buy health insurance is no different. It’s not an argument I agree with 100%, but it’s a logical one. It also throws the role of healthcare back into the legislature. No, I don’t blame Roberts or even the left side of the court.
I blame you.
That’s right, America – I blame you. You’re the one who elected these idiots. You’re the one who voted for “hope” and “change” instead of thinking things through. You’re the ones who voted retards into Congress assuring us that they were nowhere near as socialist and liberal as we said they were. You, and only you, are the ones that I hold responsible for wiping your ass with our constitution, our economy, and our future and flushing it down the toilet. You were stupid.
You don’t like that, do you? You don’t like me calling you a bunch of retards? Well, then, you shouldn’t have voted for retards.
Want to change my mind about you? Then freaking vote right this time. Stop sticking your fingers in your ears when someone tells you that Obama and his radical left are lying to you. Stop feeling bad about your own racism, thinking you can cure it by voting for a black guy who hangs out with domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers. Stop not thinking things through.
And you Republicans? Don’t you DARE back down on this. Take hold of the reins that the people are screaming at you to take hold of and show us some leadership. Defund this piece of garbage and send it back to hell where it belongs. Be conservative, not stupid.
School in the… wait for it… liberal Democrat-leaning state of New York… censored an art student’s contribution to a mural. They had tons of religious imagery on the wall, but the minute a student who believed that Jesus was the Way, the Truth, and the Life decided to paint a cross and a few song lyrics, the school felt that she’d crossed the line.
Scary!
Painting a mosque? Fine. A demonic creature? A-OK. The Taj Mahal? 10-4. A Native American totem pole? Yee-hah. A cross? BLACKLIST THE TWIT!!!
Look, I’m all for not pushing religion on people. I am a dedicated, strong, stubborn Christian, but I know that there are people who neither share my faith nor want to share my faith. And while I do believe I am called to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to let you know the Good News that He can save you from your sins and the penalty to come if you only repent and believe in Him… but I’m also well aware that the best way to communicate the Gospel is to build a personal relationship with people and to meet them where they are so that you can point them to the Cross. An ineffective method would be sticking students in a classroom and indoctrinating them via a state-approved religious curriculum.
Having said that, there seems to be a mistake made by the anti-religious crowd and bureaucrats, that our precious little angels – and by extension, our precious little public – must be freed from any expression of religious (read: Christian) belief in the public circle. They crow about the separation of church and state and point out that the Supreme Court has ruled that prayer isn’t allowed in any classroom, ever! Ha ha ha!
Silly people. Silly, evil people.
Let’s take a quick look at the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
There’s a lot of meat in there, but it’s meat that’s easily identified and served up. Let’s stick with just the stuff that sticks with this case.
1. Congress shall make no law. This is pretty simple: the first amendment is a restriction on the actions of Congress, not the people. Much like the 2nd Amendment protects the right to bear arms, the First Amendment protects the rights of the people.
2. An establishment of religion. Again, pretty simple: Congress is not allowed to declare an official religion of the United States. This was because many of the American colonies were founded by Christian people for religious purposes, and those Christian groups sometimes didn’t get along, sometimes even with themselves. By avoiding the establishment of a national religion, those debates were rendered moot at the Federal level, even though every single colony still acknowledged Almighty God in their charters. Today, this has been extended to other religions.
3. Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Federal Government cannot keep you from practicing your religion. If you want to practice Voodoo, that’s your business (so long as you’re not breaking any laws in doing so).
4. Or abridging the freedom of speech. Again, while there are reasonable limits placed on this right (you can’t yell fire in a theater, you can’t threaten someone’s life, etc.), it’s typically accepted that the government is not allowed to tell you what you can and cannot say. Simple? Sure.
So where did we get lost? In my ever-loving opinion, it started in the 1980′s, when the Supreme Court ruled in Abington Township v. Schempp , where they introduced the “secular vs. religious” test. Later, in Allegheny County v. Greater Pittsburgh ACLU, the court went full retard, ruling that having the words “Gloria in Exelcis Deo” was illegal because that was totally religious, but it was OK to have a Menorah, because that’s totally secular. By entertaining a micromanagement approach towards the free exercise of religion, the Court empowered those who want to push a secularist religion like atheism.
This leads to incidents like this, where the same people who thought it was evil, wrong, super-evil censorship to ban the sale of 2 Live Crew albums in Florida think it’s perfectly OK to paint over a student’s artistic expression of admiration for her God because, Lord knows someone might see her picture and get magically forced by the school board to join the Baptists. They’re so busy enforcing point #2 of the amendment that they miss #3 and #4. They’re taking a very liberal view of the constitution, where one can change the plain meaning of the constitution as it suits the situation (hence why I join Alonzo Rachel in rejecting “progressive” as a label for people who are more accurately described as “liberal”). This liberal view means that the freedom of those who should be protected by the constitution is subject to the whims of a government bureaucrat.
Everyone who gets involved with guns has their favorites, and when I started this list, I had a nice, large collection of guns that I’ve owned, fired, or just plain fascinate me in every possible way…. and then I realized I have a life and I could easily spend hours making up this post.
So I’m going to keep this simple: my favorite long gun, my favorite semi-auto handgun, and my favorite revolver. And then you can tell me your favorites.
My favorite long gun:
Winchester Model 1892 – I’m Accepting Donations
Winchester Model 1892
I love shotguns and rifles with varying degrees of love, but there is just something special about the Winchester 92. The beautiful lever action and its widespread Hollywood-generated mythos just make for an awesome, gorgeous gun. I have to confess: I don’t own one. Yet. I do, however, accept donations.
Runners up: M1 Garand, Mosin-Nagant Model 1944
My favorite semi-auto handgun
Beretta 92fs – How a Semi-Auto Should Feel
Beretta 92fs
There are tons of great semi-auto fans out there and I know I’m going to step on some toes when it comes to those who prefer Glocks, Rugers, Sigs, or God help us all, Hi-Points… but the Beretta 92fs is one of those guns that just feels right. There’s a reason it’s been the standard sidearm for the US military. It feels like a handgun should feel. I’m not a fan of the feather-light semi-autos that are like air in your hand. I want a gun that has some heft to it, and the 92fs delivers. It’s accurate as hell, comfortable and simple to handle, and fun to shoot.
Runners up: Smith and Wesson M&P, Colt M1911A1 (again, accepting donations)
Favorite revolver:
Ruger LCR – Perfection
Ruger LCR
This one’s been a long time coming for me because I’ve toyed with revolvers for a while, but never bit. Revolvers, especially snubbys, always had too many shortcomings for me: lack of accuracy, too much kick, too tight on the double action pulls. I’d handled a few, but was never really impressed with them – until now. I put my hands on this baby for the first time this past February and, following that event, knew that this gun would be mine. I finally picked one up a couple of months later and I have to say: Ruger got it 100% right. It’s super-accurate for snubby, handles kick a lot better than expected, and the double action pull is smooth as butter. Not only my favorite revolver, this has quickly become my favorite gun. It’s a perfect balance of power and ease of use. The LCR comes in 3 calibers: .22, .38, and .357. I recommend the .357 simply because it gives you the option for .38 or .357 and the added few ounces weight help to reduce the kick even on the .38.
Runners up: Ruger SP101, Smith and Wesson Police Special
So what’s your favorite? What boomstick lights your fancy? What piece of 2nd Amendment awesomeness do you hope to add to your collection? Comment below (or on one of the places where this article pops up).
Thanks for tuning in this week to Gun Week. We’ve gotten some positive feedback and may do this again in the future. In the meantime, if you own guns, I’d love to get your feedback on these articles. If you don’t own a gun, but have considered buying one, I highly recommend that you take the advice of people far more skilled than I on the subject. Massad Ayoob is a master at understanding the laws regarding the use of guns, and any of his books on gun use comes highly recommended. My other favorite source of information (if anything, just for the great attitude he has towards the subject) is Hickok45, whose Youtube gun reviews and commentary are extremely popular for a reason.
First – I updated yesterday’s post because I forgot one big point about why you should own a gun: hunting.
Now, on to guns! Or more accurately: gun laws.
If there’s anything that the Trayvon Marin case has taught us, it’s that the average citizen – and occasionally, gun owner – knows about as much about gun laws as they do about quantum physics. On the one hand, you have puppet masters and their marionettes screaming about the evils of “stand your ground” laws.
Again, as The Great Ayoob says in the above video, you have a right to defend yourself with deadly force in the United States. No state in the union can take that right away from you. They can, however, restrict that right using laws like the “duty to retreat” and “concealed carry”. We’ll talk about reasonable restrictions tomorrow, but for today, let’s reiterate some basic points.
First, let’s talk basic self defense. Again, you have the right to defend your life and the lives of those around you if you, as a reasonable person, believe that you are presented with a real and present danger to your life, serious bodily injury, or serious sexual assault. If a bad guy is coming after you with a knife, you have the right to pull a gun to defend yourself.
Where you live, however, defines how you can use that gun. A few states require you to at least attempt to retreat, even in your own home (“officer, he was coming to kill me and I tried to get away, but couldn’t”). Other states have a castle doctrine or stand-your-ground law that removes this duty to retreat, so long as you are in your home or, depending on the state, in your car or your place of business. Other states have a variety of the stand-your-ground law, where you have no duty to retreat at any time in any situation, and you have a near-absolute right to defend your life without retreating an inch.
As I’ve said before, I am not a lawyer. You should consult your state’s laws if you have any questions.
Posted Here for Totally Non-Gratuitous Reasons
Second, let’s talk about carrying your gun. Again, this depends on where you live (hence why you should call on your Senators to back the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which will protect your rights to carry your weapons if you cross state lines into any state that allows you to carry your weapons (Illinois and DC being the only notable anti-freedom locales in the US). The House has already passed the bill, and now it’s in the hands of Harry Reid’s Senate.
God help us all.
It’s important to know how you can carry your gun. Most states have some sort of concealed carry license that requires you to receive some level of training and maybe do a background check so that you can carry your gun in a way that it can’t be easily seen by the public – and that shares that rights to some degree with other states. Some states allow you to carry your gun on your hip in full view of the public. Some of those states have restrictions on open carry that are, well…. Interesting. North Carolina, for instance, protects the right to open carry in the state constitution, but the right is whittled down by a restriction that doesn’t allow you to cause terror to the public. In other words, you have a constitutional right to carry your sidearm in a holster in full public view… right up until someone gets nervous. As soon as that happens, you may be found to be “armed to the terror of the populace” and you may find yourself in trouble. Again, check your state’s laws (and the laws of states you visit) for more information.
Having said that – I’ve got some opinions here. Surprise, surprise. My take is this: if you haven’t been convicted of a violent felony or adjudicated by the courts to be mentally deficient or found to have an intelligence quotient that would qualify you as mentally disabled (below 80), you should have the right to open or concealed carry without a license. If you’ve been convicted of a non-violent felony or a misdemeanor, you’ve served your full time including probation and parole, and you’ve gone 10 years without having another conviction, then I believe your full gun rights should be restored.
While I’m dreaming, I’d also like a pony and 100 bajillion dollars.
I guess the simplest point to all of the law questions is: be educated. 20 years ago, it was more difficult and sometimes you could slide on simply not knowing things. Heck, 20 years ago, a woman carrying a gun in her purse often wouldn’t have a moment’s worth of trouble from the police who figured that an armed woman was better than a dead one. Now the laws have changed, concealed carry is a state law (meaning that the state has a financially vested interest in you following the law that criminals aren’t going to follow anyway), and the cops presume that you’ve Googled all state laws regarding weapons carrying. There’s a bit more freedom, but far less leeway. Hunting laws are similar: there’s much less flexibility in their enforcement than there was in previous times, so you need to keep up to date on the laws, limits, and licensing.
There’s nothing like watching a Union thug beat a Nikki Haley piñata to make you ask a simple question: why is it OK? Or, to be a bit more direct: would it be OK if someone made a Barack Obama piñata and beat it with a stick?
I’m not saying that the right has been innocent in their treatment of liberals, but… well, we are. Seriously. There’s no comparison. Between the union thugs assaulting people who disagree with them to the Occupiers who attack cops and destroy private property, the left seems to have trouble containing the most violent of their ranks.
In comparison, the Tea Party events were peaceful, well-organized, and cooperative with law enforcement. I’ve been able to come across a couple of stories of TPers getting arrested (most notably when a group decided to Occupy the Hart Office Building in Washington DC), but most of the events have been peaceful. Sure, there’ve been accusations of people spitting on Congressmen and calling them names, and one CNN producer totally heard a Tea Partier use the F-word once, maybe, possibly…. but in comparison to the Occupy Twits? They’re freakin’ boy scouts.
The point being that equivocation only serves its purpose when there’s something to equivocate, and there’s nothing here to equivocate. I’ll go ahead and say it: the AFL/CIO idiot who made a Nikki Haley piñata was just as wrong as someone who’d make a Barack Obama piñata. They’re both idiots and should both be treated accordingly.
Very few things get my ire up more than our educational system here in the United States. “Oh, but Mr. Elephant”, you say, actually believing my first name is “Annoyed”, “teachers are wooooooonderful…. and don’t you know that I believe the children are our future…?”
Silly person. Sit down and let Mr. Elephant educate you, and by “educate” in that sentence, I mean something completely different from the “education” your children are getting today.
First, let me get this much out of the way: I think the public education system is unconstitutional. I believe our students would be better off if we had a system of privately-held schools that had a profit motivation for producing high quantities of high-quality students. I also think they would do so at a much lower cost than we currently blow on our unbelievably mediocre national school system – over $1.1 Trillion dollars annually on all levels of education from all levels of government – compare that to our Defense Budget of $707 Billion. And yet, here, I am not going to advocate for the dismantling of the system. No, I’m just going to point out what’s wrong with our current system and what we could to fix it.
Seems legit.
Pedophiles. Whenever I say that word, I’ll bet you that you start thinking “priests” or “boy scout leaders” or “creepy guy hiding in a white van labeled ‘free candy’”, right? I mean, obviously, the problem of child sexual predators is surely restricted only to those weird and creepy people who do stuff like “pray”, “build fires”, and “drive around in a van advertising free candy”.
OK, I’ll give you the last one.
An organization called “Bishop Accountability” once estimated that 10% of priests were pedophiles. The problem is that they used a very loose interpretation of “pedophile” that included priests who were merely accused of sexual abuse. The real number is probably between 2 and 5 percent. Still a high number, but it’s pretty much equivalent to the rate of the general population. Still – 64% of people, when you say “Catholic Priest” wonder exactly how many children they’ve diddled.
If they’re looking for diddlers, tho, maybe they should look at teachers. There are no hard facts because, shock of shocks, powerful lobbies like the National Education Association have worked to keep government polls from being done. Fortunately, private polling has been done. It is estimated that the percentage of abuser teachers is similar to the general population (between 1 and 5%), but the problem is that while the average abuser is exposed to children for only a brief time, teachers are exposed to children on a daily basis for many hours a day. The result is that between 10 and 15% of students have reported being sexually harassed or abused by their teachers. When the American Association of University Women Foundation interviewed over 1,600 students between 8th and 11th grade, they found that 25% of girls and 10% of boys had been abused or harassed, and identified their abuser or harasser as a school employee. The same poll found that between 1991 and 2000, over 250,000 students had been sexually abused or harassed by a school employee.
The response from the schools? 15% were terminated. 38.7% resigned, changed districts, or retired. 54.3% suffered no ill effects other than a stern talking-to or re-education. While it’s certainly terrible that sexual abuse happens, it’s even more terrible when over 54% of cases are covered up, ignored, or punished with little more than a slap on the wrist. In New York City, teachers accused of sexual abuse of students are put through the district’s disciplinary system, aka “the rubber room”. Basically, they’re sent to a room to twiddle their thumbs, get paid their full salaries with benefits, and wait – often for years – until the district decides what to do with them.
How bad is it in NYC? Well, we have the case of this lovely man, one Roland Pierre. He finally retired last year at the age of 76. He’d spent every day since 1997 in one of the rubber rooms, twiddling his thumbs and collecting his full salary and benefits. Why was he in the rubber room, you may ask? Did he give a rich kid a bad grade? Did he vote Republican? Nothing that heinous, apparently. All he did was call one of his 6th grader ESL students into his classroom, hugged her, kissed her full on the mouth (with tongue), grabbed her boobs, and finally reached under her skirt for a good feel of her downstairs parts. He was arrested and then the school system parked him in a room and paid him $97,000 a year, with full vacation and benefits from the age of 62 (when he could’ve retired) to the age of 76.
And then there’s Alan Rosenfield. This man has a $10 million real estate portfolio and has been deemed a walking danger to children when he perved out, made some lewd comments to 8th graders, and grabbed some girls’ butts. So the NYC schools pulled him out of the classroom and put him in a rubber room, paying him $100,049 a year with benefits (including a currently-estimated $87k annual pension) for the past decade. Again, he could’ve retired at 62, but decided he’d rather, in his own words, give a big F-U to the school system for denying him his rights to grab 13-year-olds’ hinnies.
And then there’s Francisco Olivares. This genius among men impregnated a 16-year-old back in 1978, but avoided any fooferall by marrying her. Over the next 14 years, he molested and took porno pictures of at least 3 more 12-year-old girls. The school system… overturned his conviction on a technicality and later, in 2002, he found himself in trouble again when he fondled yet another girl. This time, the schools struck back hard and the arbitrator gave him a warning not to stand close to students. And then the stuck him in the rubber room and paid him $94,154 a year, plus benefits.
The NYC Schools response, once these controversies were exposed? They shut down the rubber rooms, sent the teachers home, and paid them their salaries and benefits anyway.
It’s like the thin blue line, except with chalk.
Performance. There’s a very helpful infographic that will pretty much sum up my problems here. Non-collegiate American education spends more money, per student, than any major country on the planet, and yet, our students consistently come in average to below average in comparison to the rest of the planet. Obviously, dollars are not helping matters, as nations who spend less money per student get consistently better performance from those students (Canada, Finland, South Korea, etc.). And yet, at the state and local level, we consistently hear how our schools need more money, more money, more money. I’m fully convinced that if you offered them every last dime, there still wouldn’t be enough money to spend on making students more and more mediocre.
Indoctrination. Teacher in Rowan County, NC tells her students that it’s illegal to criticize Barack Obama. Another NC teacher, Diantha Harris, used her classroom to bully a student who supported John McCain. And lest we forget: Barack Hussein Obama… mmm… mmm… mmm…A simple question: would this be allowed for George W. Bush? How about Mitt Romney? Ronald Reagan? I’ll go ahead and tell you: hell, no. Private organizations, like clubs and churches, may voice support for those men, but never, ever would a public school be allowed to be used for such caterwauling praise of a sitting President. At least, not a Republican President. And why is that, do you suppose?
Student discipline. There’s a reason people’ve been complaining for years about how schools aren’t paddling students anymore: paddling works. There’s nothing that’ll cure a desire to bring an AK-47 to the classroom like the thought that you’re going to get your butt whooped by a principal with a 2×4 and the upper arm strength of a major league home run king. You don’t need to be abusive, but with classroom behavior downtrending like a flushed turd, a logical person would have to somehow conclude that maybe, just maybe, a limpwristed approach to discipline isn’t an effective means of discipline. Joe Clark took up a baseball bat and chained the doors to his school and got rid of most of the discipline problems at his school.Of course, there’s more than just political indoctrination. There’s religious indoctrination, too. If you’re opposed to teachers pushing the religion of Christianity on students, then certainly pushing Islam, Buddhism, and Atheism is equally wrong, right? RIGHT?
Those are just 4 areas. There’s more, but let’s just run with those 4 for right now because my solution, frankly, will solve the other problems, too. And like I said above, I’m not going to advocate for dismantling the schools, even though I think it would probably solve these problems much, much more quickly.
The Solution
End teacher unions. There is no reason in the modern world for a teacher union to exist except to bully the taxpayers and protect a class of citizens that need no protection.
End tenure. There is no reason in the world to allow bad teachers to have extra protection in their jobs. Good teachers will keep their jobs by being good teachers.
Keep testing students. Like it or not, standardized testing is good. It lets us know if your students meet the standards. Yes, there are issues, but at least we have a number we can use to base whether your students are failing to meet, meeting, or exceeding expectations.
Pay teachers accordingly. If your students are expected to be at level 7 and they’re consistently testing at level 9, you should be paid more. If, however, they’re testing at level 4, you should be fired.
Hold all school staff accountable. Do regular background checks and drug testing of all school staff, from the janitors to the principals. Hold them accountable if they step out of line.
Ban political activity by teachers and hold them to the ban. Teachers who push a political agenda should be fired immediately.
Revoke licenses regularly. If a teacher crosses the line often or egregiously enough, revoke their license permanently.
Fire limp-wristed disciplinarians. Children need to learn to act like adults and they can’t learn from adults whose solution to discipline problems is to hide in the corner, smile through their teeth, and hippie-hug people into submission. If you have a child who’s a problem, they’re keeping other children from learning. Send the child home with a note that says they’re not to come back until they grow up and if the parent doesn’t like it, they can pay for a private education or homeschool their little angel.
Give parents an out. If the school their kids attend sucks, then parents need to have an out, via school vouchers and charter schools. At the very least, if those kids end up in charter schools, then you’ll get lower classroom sizes at the schools they leave.
Keep school boards accountable. In North Carolina, I’m in favor of removing school taxes from city and county budgets and placing that taxation authority in the hands of the school system – but only giving them taxation authority over families whose students use the school system. On one hand, if I have no children, then I am receiving a very limited benefit from the school system. On the other hand, it means that the people who receive the greatest benefit from a public education will have to hold those elected officials responsible for the expenditure of their local tax dollars. In other states, I dunno. Just vote the punks out.
Do you have any ideas to make our schools better? Comment below, man!
For two months now, all we’ve heard is how an evil white guy in Florida gunned down a poor, innocent black kid in cold blood, and I’m sick of it.
I’ve spoken out on this on Facebook and message boards quite a bit, but it’s time to lay everything out, both in terms of understanding the situation, the law behind it, the people involved, and the fluff on both sides of the argument. If you don’t agree with me, feel free to start your own blog on the matter.
Here’s the facts that we actually know at this point:
On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch guy and concealed weapon license holder that lived in a neighborhood with rising crime rates, saw a person he thought was behaving suspiciously. He phoned it in to the non-emergency number at the Sanford, FL police department at 7:09 PM. At around 7:11-7:12, Martin begins running and Zimmerman begins to chase him. The operator tells him “We don’t need you to do that”. Zimmerman says “OK” and gives his best address location to the operator. At 7:13, he hangs up.
Martin’s girlfriend was on the phone with him around 7:12 and was told that someone was following him. She reported that there was a verbal confrontation at some point during the phone call.
At about 7:25, there is a physical altercation during which Zimmerman pulls a Kel-Tec PF9 pistol and fires a single shot at very close range. The slug hits Martin in the chest. At 7:26, support personnel arrive and perform lifesaving measures on Martin, who is declared dead at 7:30 PM. Zimmerman tells the police officer on site that he had shot Martin.
According to witnesses, there was a physical altercation that involved Martin on top of Zimmerman, hitting him with his fists. Medical reports released after the event show that Zimmerman had wounds to his face, nose, and back of head, and the back of his jacket was wet and covered with grass, consistent with him lying on his back in the wet grass. Zimmerman’s hands were not bruised (indicating that he did not hit Martin). Martin’s autopsy report showed that his hands were bruised, as if he’d been hitting someone. The autopsy report also showed that Martin had THC (a byproduct of marijuana) in his system at the time of his death, but the quantity as of today is not known.
Zimmerman was placed into police custody and taken downtown where he was photographed, interviewed, and investigated. The state attorney’s office called it self-defense and declined to pursue charges against him at the time.
After protests by the victim’s family and rising national pressure, Florida Governor Rick Scott assigned a different state prosecutor to the case. On April 11, 2012, the new prosecutor charged Zimmerman with 2nd Degree Murder.
Here’s where we have to start talking about legal specifics. I am not a lawyer, so please consult a legal professional if you have questions about this:
Self-defense law in the United States is simple and is accepted nationwide. If a reasonable person believes they or someone else is at risk of loss of life, serious bodily injury, or serious sexual assault, then they have the right to use deadly force in defense.
There are two doctrines that are tied to self-defense. The first is called “duty to retreat” and it states that a defendant who is claiming self defense must prove to the court that they attempted to avoid the conflict and took reasonable steps to attempt to retreat before they used deadly force. 19 states use this doctrine.
The second doctrine is called “stand your ground”. This doctrine states that if you are in a conflict that you did not provoke and you have to use deadly force to defend yourself, you are under no duty to retreat. 31 states use some form of this doctrine that varies from an absolute stand-your-ground law (24 states) to a limited version that only applies to home, business, car, etc. (7 states)
Under Florida Law, Second Degree Murder in Florida is defined as “The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree”. (FL State Code 782.04 (2)). In other words, it is an unlawful killing of a human being with malice, but without premeditation. A classic description of 2nd Degree Murder is if a person became angry, grabbed his usual self-defense gun, and then shot the person he was angry at.
This is what we know so far. Unfortunately, there’s so much stupid heat over this tragedy that we’ve forgotten the real facts of this case:
A young man is dead, possibly because of his own actions.
Another young man’s life is ruined, possibly because he defended his life against an aggressor.
1jason1
The Annoyed Elephant
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