Tag: Melissa Harris-Perry

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

No Humans Were Harmed

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-​Perry says “no one was fundamentally harmed” by the IRS’s targeting of Obama-​unapproved applicants for tax-​exempt status. (Go to 4:00 of the video to skip the preceding lies.)

Elsewhere, detestable Bill Maher inquires: “Is it unreasonable [for IRS] to target an anti-​tax group?”

Good lord.

I’ve discussed the case of Frank VanderSloot, a wealthy businessman minding his own business preferring Romney to Obama when the Obama campaign attacked him for being a wealthy discredit-​worthy Romney supporter. VanderSloot’s operations were forthwith audited by several government agencies.

VanderSloot is a big fish. Catherine Engelbrecht is not.

Engelbrecht is one of many right-​leaning applicants for tax-​exempt status forced to deal with endless intrusive questions, the ostensible result of innocent mismanagement by harried low-​level IRS clerks. Her two political organizations are True the Vote, which combats voter fraud, and King Street Patriots, a discussion group.

As soon as Engelbrecht applied for tax-​exempt status, the FBI began investigating King Street Patriots. Then the IRS audited the couple’s tax returns. Then the agency began its rounds of grilling about True the Vote and King Street Patriots. Then the ATF audited the machine shop. Then OSHA came.

“No one was fundamentally harmed”? Do we need corpses?

Reports about the IRS’s special targeting of non-​liberal applications for tax-​exempt status indicate that many folks gave up on forming their organizations. Other attempts have been delayed for years. Such time-​wasting, money-​wasting, action-​stopping obstructionism makes it harder to pursue one’s mission during the run-​up to a national election, nyet?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling ideological culture

It Takes a Collectivist

First they told us that we didn’t build our businesses. Now we learn that our kids aren’t ours.

“We have never invested as much in public education as we should have,” TV talking head Melissa Harris-​Perry argues in the latest MSNBC “Lean Forward” propaganda spot, “because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children: Your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We haven’t had a very collective notion of these are our children. So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility, and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.”

Yeah, better investments. Like Solyndra. Or … the K‑12 public education system for which, since 1970, the federal government has increased per-​pupil spending by roughly 190 percent, only to flatline test scores in math, science and reading.

“When the flood of vitriolic responses to the ad began, my first reaction was relief,” Perry writes on her blog. “I had spent the entire day grading papers and was relieved that since these children were not my responsibility, I could simply mail the students’ papers to their moms and dads to grade!”

Doesn’t Tulane University pay her for grading those papers?

Claiming to “double down” in her defensive blog post, she actually admits that, “Of course, parents can and should raise their children with their own values.”

Of course.

What does Melissa Harris-​Perry not get? That children belong, not to the state or the collective, and not really to their parents, but to themselves.

Is that much individual freedom leaning too far forward?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.