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Accountability education and schooling initiative, referendum, and recall

Weak Link in Chain of Corruption

How do you replace anti-child school board members with persons of common sense? That is, with those who favor educating children rather than indoctrinating them with socialism and racism?

This is not a battle that all parents need to fight directly on behalf of their own children. Those who can enroll them in a sane private or charter school, or homeschool them, may do that instead.

But parents who are taking on corrupt school boards have found a couple of very effective approaches.

One, recall campaigns. 

Some board members are so horrible that parents will catapult themselves to polling stations for the chance to oust them. Unfortunately, not all voters everywhere have the right to recall crummy officials.

Two, regular board elections.

But to succeed in replacing the zanies entrenched in many school boards with better persons, one must field appropriate candidates.

Among those who have been doing the necessary preparatory work in Minnesota, where “the teachers’ union, Education Minnesota, has largely run our state for decades,” are John Hinderaker of Powerline fame and the members of his organization Minnesota Parents Alliance.

The Alliance reports that in the recent election, its candidates won 49 seats statewide, “with victories in 15 of 19 targeted districts.”

It’s just a beginning. But, wow, a substantial beginning. And fast. The Alliance was created only a year ago. This achievement is also a ray of hope and proof of concept that we parents (and grandparents; and uncles and aunts) in the other 49 states really need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Thought

John Quincy Adams

There is one principle which pervades all the institutions of this country, and which must always operate as an obstacle to the granting of favors to new comers. This is a land, not of privileges, but of equal rights.

John Quincy Adams, Letter written as Secretary of State under President James Monroe (1819).
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Today

A Republic

On November 14, 1918, Czechoslovakia became a republic.

Born on the same date 29 years later — American writer P. J. O’Rourke.

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by Paul Jacob video

Watch: Apt Man Out?

The man. The myth. The mystery. Plus Spike Cohen, Joe Biden, and other politicians.

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Thought

Abigail Adams

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.

Abigail Adams, Letter to John Quincy Adams (19 January 1780).
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Today

Citizens Advancing Science

On this day in 1833, Denison Olmsted was alerted by his neighbors to something truly amazing, a night sky filled with shooting stars.

Not just a one or two or a dozen or a hundred: 72,000 or more per hour. Though recognizing where among the constellations meteors came from was ancient knowledge, it had not been recorded by modern-era scientists, at least in this case. What Olmsted noticed was that the meteors were coming from one point in the sky, the constellation Leo. This regular meteor event is now called the Leonid meteor stream.

In the morning, Olmsted wrote a brief report on the meteor storm for the New Haven Daily Herald newspaper, which elicited correspondence from around the country, thus beginning a social storm, in a sense: crowd-sourced science.


November 13 is World Kindness Day, which has been celebrated in various countries since 1998. It is not an official celebratory day of the U.S.A., or of the United Nations. But individuals are free to be kind this day . . . or any day, for that matter.

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audio podcast

Listen: Apt Man Out

It’s been a big news week, and someone was noticeable by his non-presence. Or would that be behind-the-scenes presence?

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Thought

Tom Paine

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

Thomas Paine, “The Forester’s Letters,” Letter III—‘To Cato,’ Pennsylvania Journal (April 24, 1776).
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Today

Monarchy or Republic

On November 12, 1905, Norwegians established, by referendum, a monarchy — not a republic. Exactly 14 years later, to the day, Austria became a republic.

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election law partisanship political challengers

Democratic Money for Republicans

“After years of claiming that money in politics is bad and Trumpists will destroy America,” writes Joe Lancaster in Reason, “Democrats spent millions to boost the people they are most afraid of.”

In a strategy that might be designated Too Clever by Half, “Throughout the 2022 primary season, groups affiliated with the Democratic Party funded ads to boost immoderate Republican candidates,” Lancaster explains. “The goal was to boost the least moderate candidates in the hopes that they would be easier to beat in a general election.”

The Senate Majority PAC bought ads for New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, for instance, calling Chuck Morse a “sleazy politician,” allowing a retired brigadier general to advance on to the general election — only to lose to the incumbent. Another Democratic PAC pushed “nearly $100,000 on ads proclaiming Republican House primary candidate Robert Burns ‘the ultra-conservative candidate’ who ‘follows the Trump playbook.’” Burns went on to defeat his more moderate competitor and then be defeated in the general election.

That was the pattern around the country.

If this all sounds familiar, this is how we got Trump into the forefront in the first place. Hillary Clinton’s campaign infamously orchestrated the corporate news media’s fixation on Trump in 2015 and through to Trump’s winning the primary contest. And then, you will remember, the news media changed course and started the great anti-Trump freak-out.

This time, however, it may have paid off. Or at least not horribly backfired, for the much-prophesied Election Day 2022 “Red Wave” merely eroded the Democrats’ stranglehold on unified government. 

Washed away, instead, is the idea that Democrats truly fear these “mega-MAGA Republicans” or care about democracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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