Category: folly

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crime and punishment education and schooling folly Second Amendment rights

Pop Gun Tart

Pop Tart Criminal

America is often said to be a land of second chances.

Just not for 7‑year-​olds. At least, not when they’re in the public school system.

Back in 2013, a boy then in second grade in Anne Arundel, Maryland, was suspended for two days for what was deemed a “gun-​related” offense.

It was also a Pop Tart-​related offense.

No, he didn’t shoot a Pop Tart; he bit his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun. There’s a dispute as to whether he then pointed the high-​calorie weapon at the ceiling or at other students. Either way, unless the strawberry filing was piping hot (it wasn’t), there wasn’t really anything to fear.

Still, school officials pretty much freaked out.

Of course, the incident did occur just months after the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting, when six- and seven-​year-​olds were feeling the full weight of adult hysteria about guns, pastries, pointed fingers, etc.

Fast-​forward to the present: the Maryland lad’s parents are still fighting to clear this gun-​related black mark from his permanent record, fearful it could damage him even decades from now.

I don’t blame them.

Unfortunately, last week the Maryland State Board of Education upheld the suspension. A spokesperson for the local schools claimed it was warranted because of the lad’s “long history of disciplinary issues,” adding that the school “has gone to every conceivable length to assist that student.”

The attorney for the family says they will appeal.

My kids have been homeschooled, but next year my youngest will attend a public high school. I just hope we can find a good, inexpensive attorney to go with her.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall meme term limits too much government

Stop Phony Crony Pay Grab

Arkansas Tricksters

Are people in Arkansas as stupid as their legislators think?

Last November, legislators tricked enough voters to narrowly pass Issue 3. 

I’ve addressed before the measure’s dishonest ballot language, mis-​identifying a doubling of allowed terms as the “setting of term limits.” And about a much-​ballyhooed gift ban that has proven so weak that now most legislators are offered “free meals nearly every day.”

Perhaps the biggest of the tricks used to pass the measure was this: Hide from voters the measure’s establishment of an “Independent Citizens Commission” . . . a majority hand-​picked by those same legislators. 

This “Legislative Cronies Commission” (as it should be called) has announced it will unilaterally hike pay by an outrageous 150 percent!

The commission claims to have looked at legislative salaries in nearby states, except Texas and Mississippi — two states that just so happen to pay lower salaries. Economic factors were also considered, supposedly, but household income in Arkansas has actually dropped in the last decade.

The commission held only one poorly publicized hearing — at, get this, 10:00 am on a Monday, when most folks were working. No surprise, public comments have run ten to one negative. Letters and emails contain words and phrases such as “shameful,” “insult,” “actually sick to my stomach,” “a joke,” “ludicrous,” “appalled” and “slap in the face.”

This led Larry Ross, chief crony on the commission, to rudely dis citizens, telling the Arkansas Democrat-​Gazette that he would look at the “quality” of comments, not the “quantity.”

Only a tsunami of public anger can stop this rip-​off of Arkansas taxpayers. Act fast. A March 16 meeting is set to finalize the increase.

Tell the Independent [sic] Citizens [yeah, right] Commission what you think: call (501) 682‑1866.

This is Common Sense. Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom nannyism too much government

America’s Twilight Zones

On Friday I lamented the picking up, by local police, of two children, 10 and 6, for walking home from a local park …

and the subsequent two-​month Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services investigation, which found the parents “responsible” for “unsubstantiated child neglect.”

Left unanswered? Whether parents “may” let their kids walk somewhere without supervision.

There’s no law, of course, against children walking in public without parents. But the “swarms of Officers” employed “to harass our people” aren’t limited by trifling things like laws.

This Kafkaesque episode reminds me of my experiences with campaign finance agencies.

In both cases, agencies rely upon meritless complaints to investigate, intimidate and impoverish people without any law being broken. All that’s required? An unelected bureaucrat’s arbitrary decision.

Take Lois Lerner. She ran the IRS division targeting conservative groups. Remember her allegedly lost emails? Irretrievable! Until someone actually looked for them.

Before violating people’s rights at the IRS, Lerner did so heading the Enforcement Division of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A recent George Will column detailed her threats and very public and politically damaging harassment of Al Salvi, the Illinois Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Sure, he was fully acquitted in federal court … after his defeat.

Using a spurious complaint by former Rep. Mike Synar (D‑Okla.), Lerner launched a political persecution against U.S. Term Limits, costing us nearly $100,000 in legal fees and much more in dislocated time and manpower.

Finding no evidence — there was none to find — the FEC finally closed the matter. But agency officials still issued a news release proclaiming that they believed we had violated the law.

An Oklahoma newspaper headline read, roughly, “National Term Limits Group Broke Law, Says FEC.”

Talk about “unsubstantiated.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling folly nannyism

Well-​Substantiated Insanity

Well-Substantiated Insanity
In what sort of place are children taken from their parents, or parents investigated by the authorities with that in mind, because they allowed their 10- and 6‑year-​olds to walk to a park to play?

Not a forced 20-​mile march across Death Valley, mind you, but a Saturday stroll of less than a mile under normal earth conditions.

What sort of place? These United States — Silver Spring, Maryland, to be specific.

That’s where Danielle and Alexander Meitiv’s two kids, Rafi and Dvora, were picked up by police, on their way home from a neighborhood park.

A two-​month Montgomery County Child Protective Services (MCCPS) investigation followed. Now, there’s no law against youngsters walking in public by themselves. Local public schools don’t provide bus service for kids within a mile of the school, deeming that close enough to walk. Nevertheless, this week, authorities announced that the Meitivs were “found responsible” for “unsubstantiated child neglect.”

The good news is that the neglect charge is completely “unsubstantiated.” The bad news is that official “Free State” busybodies seem to have not one clue as to what that word means.

MCCPS will keep a file on the suspicious family for five years. “We don’t know if we will get caught in this Kafkaesque loop again,” says Mrs. Meitiv, noting that the agency left unanswered the question of what might happen if they ever again dare allow their kids to walk outside the house without adult supervision.

The family is appealing the nonsensical MCCPS “finding.” In the meantime, the Meitiv children will continue to walk in public as if it’s a free country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly judiciary

Contemptible Court

Judge Tim Grendell

Judge Tim Grendell missed his calling. Given his dictatorial impulses, he should have been a Soviet commissar or ancient Egyptian vizier. O, but for time, and place, and the mismatches of metempsychosis!

Grendell has lashed out punitively at Nancy McArthur, chairman of the Geauga County (Ohio) Republican Party, for seeking to undermine his authority with “vile” criticism. What happened? Did she interrupt courtroom proceedings with her aspersion-​casting? Shout obloquy as he sought to instruct a jury?

Nothing like that. McArthur was never in Grendell’s court.

She did badmouth the judge, however … in private conversation.

The person McArthur was talking to is involved in a case presided over by Grendell, and, in a private email, reported on McArthur’s comments. Grendell, somehow, got hold of that email. 

His response? Slap a subpoena on McArthur, demanding that she show cause why she should not “be held in Contempt of Court for making vile, contemptuous, slanderous, and insulting language directed at the Judge which reflects negatively on the integrity of the Court and impedes the Court in the administration of justice.…”

Yikes. McArthur was actually threatened with incarceration for speaking of this judge as if he were the type to do the sort of thing he did. Fortunately, his attempt to hold her in contempt has been blocked by an appellate court.

This isn’t the first time Grendell’s judicial reach has exceeded his ethical and constitutional grasp. Guilty of outrageous malpractice, he deserves a boot — to his rear, ejecting him from the bench.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Non-​neutral Net Neutrality

Worried about its costs, Netflix has asked millions of customers to support so-​called “net neutrality” policies to curtail the freedom of action of broadband companies like Comcast. Netflix, a huge suck of bandwidth, doesn’t want to have to make deals with ISPs like Comcast to deliver service to its customers.

One goal of “net neutrality” is to prevent Internet providers from affecting Internet access via such nefarious practices as charging different rates for different levels of service (a ubiquitous form of “discrimination” without which markets cannot function). Mises Institute writer Ryan McMaken wants to know what problem the new regulations are supposed to solve: “Who is being denied access to the web?”

Since the Internet first became generally available, it has become only more widespread, service only faster.

Any problems caused by existing government barriers to entry should be solved by dismantling those barriers. But according to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai, the voluminous new regulations go in the opposite direction, giving the agency “power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works.”

The FCC has voted to proceed with the regulations. The result will likely throttle the quality of broadband service. 

Netflix and other advocates of the regime have also foot-​shootingly increased the chances of intrusive new regulations of their own net-​based businesses.

Any sweeping assault on our liberty is hardly “neutral.” Regulations like those proposed always favor some over others, the essence of partiality. What we need from government is not “neutrality” with respect to our freedom, but consistent upholding of our right to it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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