The Patriots

   by J.  D'Aloia

Elected officials often introduce laws for the sole purpose of having a piñata to bash for the cameras and the folks back home. Congressman Poe in the linked video is certainly making such use of the law banning incandescent light bulbs - I did not research to find out how he voted, but it matters not - he is making the most of it for his time in front of the camera.

My cynical side says the law was applauded by the environmental Luddites not because compact fluorescent light bulbs were reducing the dreaded greenhouse gases, but because the law was a means to further control society. Such is their goal. Demand changes in what society uses and how they use it to satisfy some environmental talking point. When the change has been ordained by a sycophantic legislative body, then raise a new issue and demand that new laws placing further control over society be enacted to counter the threats now spotlighted. More rules, more government, more taxes, less freedom.

Another cynical wonderment - why all the fuss about broken CFLs? Why has it not all played out for fluorescent tubes? They too have mercury in similar amounts. There has not been an avalanche of reports of people suffering from mercury poisoning from broken fluorescent tubes or moon-suited technicians cleaning up the family room after a tube was broken. Could it be that within the grand strategy, the timing was not right to play the poison card? And with LED light bulbs coming on the market, with an even greater energy efficiency (and much higher cost than CFLs), will CFLs be banned next? 

‘Tis a tempest in a teapot. CFLs do have a place in the grand scheme of things, especially for those lights the replacement of which is an all-day project, or if the spectrum you want cannot be obtained with an Edison special, or if your lighting demands are such that the cost vs. energy saved equation comes out to your benefit. Prudent respect for the dangers mitigates the dangers.

Tacitus nailed it in the First Century AD: "Corruptissima republicae, plurimae leges" - The worse the state, the more laws it has.

See you Trackside.

by Brian Silhavy

This past week (April 2018) a group of Minnesota parents filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing Dakota County and the State of Minnesota for kidnapping their children and placing them unnecessarily into foster care.

Dwight D. Mitchell (center at podium) is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit of parents suing the State of Minnesota for kidnapping their children via Child Protection Services. Image courtesy kaaltv.com.

The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is Dwight D. Mitchell, who founded an association of parents called Stop Child Protection Services From Legally Kidnapping, which has about 250 members in Minnesota. Mr. Mitchell and several parents held a press conference at the State Capital last week, and Mr. Mitchell was interviewed by several local media sources. Mr. Mitchell explains how he had his three children removed from his home because a family babysitter reported him to CPS for a “bottom spanking” with one of his children. It took him almost 2 years to get his son back home.

According to the Star Tribune:

“It was every parent’s worst nightmare,” said Mitchell, 57, a management consultant. “My children were legally kidnapped for a bottom spanking that was done out of love, because I want my children to grow up to be hardworking members of society.”

The child, Xander Mitchell, was kept in state custody for 22 months, during which time his father was refused all contact. Mitchell’s other child was removed for five months, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

Mitchell said his involvement with child protection began on the night of Feb. 16, 2014, when he and his wife went to dinner and a movie and left their children in the care of their longtime babysitter. A day earlier, Xander had received a “bottom spanking” from his father for stealing and other acts of disobedience, including failing to do his homework and playing video games when he should have been sleeping.

When the babysitter called to report the alleged maltreatment of the child, police were dispatched to Mitchell’s residence and his three children were taken to the police station for questioning, he said. Days later, Dakota County filed a court petition seeking protection for Mitchell’s children, who were removed from his home and placed in foster care while the county investigated.

Mitchell said his son Xander, now 15, has never been the same since. The once-gregarious and athletic child, who loved soccer and skiing, has become increasingly introverted and now spends most of his time indoors, he said. “The abduction by child protection services ruined my son’s life and changed it forever,” Mitchell said. “Can you imagine if you thought that your father abandoned you?”

In Minnesota it is reportedly illegal to use corporal punishment with one’s own children, but not in schools where it is allowed by teachers. 

The lawsuit claims that Minnesota unfairly targets Black families and other minorities in removing children from homes. TwinCities.com reports:

“Every night, I went to sleep not knowing where he was,” Mitchell said, describing the experience as traumatic and comparing it to a legal kidnapping.  “The abduction by (child-protective services) ruined my son’s life and changed him forever,” Mitchell said. “Without a doubt, this has been the most horrific experience of our life.”

Mitchell’s lawsuit claims Minnesota laws regarding corporal punishment by parents, such as spanking, are unconstitutionally vague. Child protection can investigate parents for any action that causes pain or mental injury.  Mitchell says state and county officials enforce that and other child-protection laws inconsistently and black families are considerably more likely to end up in the system and lose custody of their children.

State data show black children are three times more likely to be involved in the child-protection system and be taken from their parents. Black parents also are more likely to lose their parental rights than their white neighbors.  The disparity is even higher for multi-racial and American Indian children and their families.

When children of color are removed from their homes, they are often placed in white homes for foster care that some parents feel is culturally inappropriate.

ABC affiliate KaalTV interviewed Dwight Mitchell about the federal civil rights lawsuit for kidnapping children:

Richard Wexler, the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, wrote an op-ed piece for MINNPOST earlier this month on why Minnesota’s approach to child protection makes children less safe.  Citing statistics that Minnesota takes children away from their families at the sixth highest rate in the country, a rate more than double the national average, Wexler points out that this has been a long-standing problem in Minnesota that has nothing to do with abusive parents on drugs:

No, this is not because of opioids or any other drug plague. Minnesota has been an outlier since at least 1999 and probably far longer.

Everything was made worse by the state’s bungled response to the death of Eric Dean in 2014. The governor promptly named the obligatory task force. Incredibly, the task force concluded that a state which for nearly two decades was among the most extreme in tearing apart families was not extreme enough. The result was predictable: a foster-care panic – a sharp, sudden spike in children torn from their homes.

Of course all of this was done in the name of making children safer. After all, New York City, with its much lower rate of removal, has had horrible cases of deaths of children known to the system so clearly – oh, wait. Minnesota is still seeing such tragedies as well, in spite of taking children at a rate more than six times higher.  In fact, foster-care panics actually make such tragedies more likely. (Source.)

Wexler points out that the main reason children are taken away from their families is not because of abuse, but because of poverty. He cites studies showing that children left in poor, troubled homes, fare far better than the ones taken out of those homes and put into foster care:

Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with “neglect.” Other cases fall between the extremes. The problem is compounded by the sort of racial bias cited by the Minneapolis NAACP.

So it’s no wonder that two massive studies involving more than 15,000 typical cases found that children left in their own homes typically fared better even than comparably maltreated children placed in foster care. A University of Minnesota study, using a smaller sample and different methodology, reached the same conclusion. (Source.)

If one wants to find the main cause of child abuse in America today, look no further than foster care homes:

That harm occurs even when the foster home is a good one. The majority are.  But the rate of abuse in foster care is far higher than generally realized and far higher than in the general population. Multiple studies have found abuse in one-quarter to one-third of foster homes. The rate of abuse in group homes and institutions is even worse.  But even that isn’t the worst of it. The more that workers are overwhelmed with false allegations, trivial cases and children who don’t need to be in foster care, the less time they have to find children in real danger. So they make even more mistakes in all directions. That’s almost always the real reason for the horror stories about children left in dangerous homes.

That’s why Minnesota’s longstanding embrace of a take-the-child-and-run approach to child welfare, an approach that’s only worsened in recent years, makes all children less safe. (Source.) 

Related

The U.S. Foster Care System: Modern Day Slavery and Child Trafficking

Child Kidnapping and Trafficking: A Lucrative U.S. Business Funded by Taxpayers

by Judy Brown

Alfie’s parents lost all of their appeals and can do nothing else. In the process, mankind has lost as well. The reasons are simple.  The use of the words “futile” and “best interests” are fraught with innuendo. They are subjective terms that can mean whatever the person uttering them wants them to mean! If you are wondering whose best interests are served when planned death is arranged, then you are on the same page we are on the fate of this sweet baby.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital has violated Alfie’s basic human rights by making this decision, which has been upheld by a British Court of Appeals. Many have protested with letters, with calls, and even with demonstrations outside this deadly hospital, but apparently the court system has made a decision that may, barring a miracle, result in the death of this baby boy.

The sad reality of this case, like so many others in Britain, the USA, and elsewhere, is that human dignity and parental authority matter not if a hospital staff, a medical ethics panel, or a judge decides that they know what is “best” for a child. While we might question where such thinking comes from, it does not take a genius to figure that out. After all, when man usurps the rights of others as he acts in what he may feel is for the greater good, all manner of evil can occur.

The sad reality of the #AlfieEvans case, like so many others in the UK and the USA, is that human dignity and parental authority matter not if a hospital staff, a medical ethics panel, or a judge decides that they know what is “best” for a child.

— Judie Brown (@Judie_Brown) April 27, 2018

John O’Sullivan at National Review nailed it when he wrote of Alfie’s case:

In a movie, Alfie would survive in the last final scene. It’s hard to believe that he will do so in life. We can understand the quite simple emotions that move Alfie’s parents, the crowds of sympathizers, and the Italian diplomats and their voters. But how are we to interpret the official UK decisions? It seems to me (partly on the basis of earlier such conflicts) that all involved will believe passionately that they are doing the right thing. But something else has taken over their thoughts and action: They are now determined to defend their claim to be Alfie’s real parents and their compassionate administration of his inevitable death without pain—against what they see as the primitive sentimentality of those trying to rescue him. They grit their teeth and get on with it, maybe feeling a little noble about it all. And they don’t realize that they are moving by baby steps towards the compulsory euthanasia of the weak and sick.

Yes, for mankind this is the case. Those baby steps have become increasingly prevalent and have generated very little from the community at large—a community that seems to be asleep, unaware of what lies ahead.

This entire tragedy reminds me of Flannery O’Connor’s prescient quote: “In the absence of faith, we govern by tenderness. And tenderness leads to the gas chamber.”

Indeed, the Alfie Evans tragedy bodes badly for mankind.

Related:  https://www.naturalnews.com/2018-05-01-alfie-evans-executed-by-lethal-injection-organ-harvesting-alder-hey.html

by Cillian Zeal

An independent report from a student journalist who attended Broward County, Florida, schools says there was significant inattention paid to security issues in the years leading up to the Parkland shooting.

According to the piece, written by 19-year-old Kenneth Preston and published on Medium, only a fraction of the money allocated for school security in Broward schools was actually spent on safety measures and that Obama-era school behavioral policies, purportedly designed to counteract racial bias, led to problem students like the shooter evading punishment.

“After weeks of research, searching through thousands of pages of government documents, and speaking with dozens of officials, I have come to the conclusion that Superintendent [Robert] Runcie and members of the school board have failed at their essential role in keeping our students safe,” Preston wrote.  “Whether that’s because of incompetence or the incentive of federal dollars is for you to decide based on the evidence provided below.

“Ultimately, no matter what laws pass, the extent, or how infrequent these shootings become, if the people who were complicit in facilitating an environment in which something like this could occur don’t face consequences, then there is no justice.”

Preston wrote that of $800 million in voter-approved school funding available to Broward schools, “$104,325,821 was designated specifically for school safety.”  “Of that money, only $5,584,512 (roughly 5.3%) has been spent since its passage,” he said. “If the school safety money continues to be doled out at the current rate of 1.76% spent per year, Broward Public Schools will not see the entirety of that safety money for another 53 years, or the year 2071.”   The decision not to spend the money on school safety didn’t just have hypothetical consequences in the Parkland shooting, either.

As The Blaze reported, one of the safety items that was supposed to be installed in Broward schools was a device that would determine if a fire was actually present after a fire alarm was pulled.  That device was never installed, and the Parkland school shooter pulled the fire alarm to force students out of their classrooms, making them easier targets. Preston also claimed that Broward’s implementation of the Promise Program and the Behavior Intervention Program — Obama-era programs designed to stop the “school-to-prison” pipeline by lessening punishments at schools with “disproportionate discipline rates” — might have contributed to the shooting.

“In March of 2013, the Department of Education listed Broward County as one of those counties with ‘disproportionate discipline rates,'” Preston wrote. “Months later, Robert Runcie and the Broward School Board applied and become finalists for the ‘Race to the Top’ grant after promising their intent to have an ‘evaluation of proposed indicators around attendance, suspensions, and arrests and promoting school-wide, positive behavior interventions.’

“Soon after, Superintendent Robert Runcie, the School Board, and the Sheriff’s office created ‘Promise,’ a program intended to address the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’ by outlining 13 misdemeanors that formerly would have been referred to law enforcement, but are now dealt by administrators instead.   “Those misdemeanors include harassment, fighting, assault, and threats  —  all of which Nikolas Cruz was reported for, but never arrested.” (Emphasis Preston’s.)

“Robert Runcie claims the shooter never benefited from the program because he was never formally enrolled in the Promise Program,” Preston noted. “Broward Schools released a statement saying, ‘the District has no record of Nikolas Cruz committing a PROMISE-eligible infraction or being assigned the PROMISE while in high school.’  “However, Jeff Bell, President of the Broward Sheriff’s Union and supporter of the Promise Program says, ‘There’s no documented report that he was ever enrolled into the PROMISE Program. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t confronted with something and just let go.‘” (Emphasis Preston’s.)

Preston also called out a “culture of corruption” on the county school board when it came to spending and noted that a grand jury found the corruption so deep it suggested in 2011 that the board be dissolved entirely. 

The student journalist also noted Runcie’s dubious performance at his previous job with Chicago Public Schools — where he was demoted three months before accepting his position with Broward County — and the fact that the county’s school spending habits were under scrutiny by state tax watchdog groups.

Since the shooting, Broward has instituted some transparency, although not quite of the kind that Preston might support. The most visible school safety measure taken since the massacre (literally) is mandating transparent backpacks for students. Meanwhile, activists continue to blame the whole thing on the diabolical AR-15 — which is a solution Broward Sheriff Scott Israel seems perfectly fine with, since it absolves his department of any public liability in the matter.  Meanwhile, Superintendent Runcie remains in his job, much like Sheriff Israel, and he isn’t making any moves toward transparency.

“Without knowing Superintendent Runcie’s motives for taking the actions he did, it’s nearly impossible to say why the money wasn’t spent and why such lax disciplinary policies were instituted,” Preston notes in conclusion, calling for an independent investigation.

“What is clear is that the Superintendent failed to take the appropriate security precautions. He has not at any point after the tragedy at MSD acknowledged the mismanagement of school safety funds, indicated any sort of intention to reform the way the Board functions or assumed any responsibility for the systematic failures that occurred in failing to properly deal with (the shooter).” 

Preston said Runcie called his meticulously sourced investigation “fake news.”  “I reached out to Florida Taxwatch, and Vice President of Research Robert Nave has told me that my numbers are correct,” he wrote.