Here is a great short video explaining how to take a community, unincorporated, from being taxed nearly out of existence, Sandy Springs, Georgia, to an efficient and workable situation for everyone simply by using good common sense, intelligent historical facts for a sound financial agenda to bring success to the community.
The incorporation Sandy Springs and success didn't start happening until the Republicans took control of the state legislature. Light came on and the people prospered.
Yeah gotta loves this community of 100 thousand citizens that actually voted for change, and how it works so much better the old ''swamp'' way of doing things and knowingly failing, then demand that the failing idea continue as so many people and organization depend on the failures for their existence.
Why is this so hard for others to understand. Yikes!
Live life like was the only thing worth living for is smart and wise. Don't despair the things you don't have or who you think you aught to be by now, you are exactly where you should be given your desire to grow and prosper.
Your going to grow old and wiser, so why fret over something that is inevitable and good?
If you think you are not where you want to be, then it's clear you are on the road to be better. Some great buddha or what ever said, 'life is a journey, enjoy the ride'.
Don't know who actually wrote this, Franklin Graham might have but in the ''new wave'' of social media where everyone can say and do anything, about anyone or any situation without responsibility for it's content or debate, and readily accepted as truth, one must step back from the precipice, take a deep breath before continuing.
But the meat of this below is surly worth considering as the amount of hate that exists today for people that believe our country is indeed the greatest country on earth and worth saving from extinction is so destructive and despicable, it boggles the mind of ordinary people who work and live lives of compassion and truth who believe God is our benefactor and guide for liberty and prosperity.
What exactly is the plan for America that the progressive socialist liberals have for America's future?
Why we must even consider and debate this fact of greatness in America is outrageous on it's face. Given America is truly that ''shining city on the hill'' that Ronald Reagan said we are living in and that everyone wants to live in and prosper, and yet there are those among us that find it necessary to do what ever they can to turn off the lights, plunging this great country into a darkness so great that as this author states we can never find a way to turn the lights of that city back on.
Who are these people and where do they come from? Surly they are not from around here but from some other dark and desperate place where they rage against the darkness of despair and ignorance. They are not happy. They cannot be happy.
And they will never be satisfied unless and until everyone is as depressed, angry and haplessly lost in despair as they are. And why do so many among us believe destruction is the okay?
BILLY GRAHAM'S SON IS TELLING THE SAD TRUTH - NEVER SAID BETTER
Time is like a river. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Franklin Graham was speaking at the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, when he said America will not come back. He wrote:
"The American dream ended on November 6th, 2012. The second term of Barack Obama has been the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest republic in the history of mankind.
A coalition of blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays, government workers, union members, environmental extremists, the media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the "forever needy," the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow travelers" have ended Norman Rockwell's America.
You will never again out-vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take zealots, not moderates and shy, not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.
People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will probably never again be able to legally comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.
The Cocker spaniel is off the front porch, the pit bull is in the back yard The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and the likes of Chicago shyster David Axelrod along with international socialist George Soros have been pulling the strings on their beige puppet and have brought us Act 2 of the New World Order.
The curtain will come down but the damage has been done, the story has been told.
Those who come after us will once again have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to white guilt and political correctness.."
Here is a great video explaining how immigration effect the United States and the rest of the world. Just how effective in solving world poverty with immigration into the US and other advanced cultures.
This has been around for a while but it seems today it's more appropriate and to the point for Republicans in Congress.
INTERESTING OBSERVATION
1. The sport of choice for the urban
poor is BASKETBALL. 2. The sport of choice for maintenance level
employees is BOWLING. 3. The sport of choice for front-line workers is
FOOTBALL. 4. The sport of choice for supervisors is BASEBALL.
5. The sport of choice for middle management is TENNIS. And... 6. The
sport of choice for corporate executives and officers is GOLF.
THE amazing fact is,
The higher you go in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls
become.
There must be a boat load of people in Washington playing
marbles.
Roberts history of bias will follow him to the end of his days.
It's clear Justice Roberts is not unbiased. He for all intentions is a porgressive democrat that operates from a position that is left of center, not so much a socialsit liberal type democrat but still a liberal that sees himself as a warrior for the cause of equal outcomes.
OgbjmaCare? Justice Roberts single handedly got that legislation passed even though Justice Scalia angerly said to Roberts face it was Unconstitutional.
But no matter, being the good warrior for the cause, he did what was necessary to get the bill passed. And the other judges Steven Breyer, Ruthie Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kegan are not biased though they have a history of vote against nearly every issues that details individual liberty and the freedom to chose.
If there is one issue to identify a progressive socialist liberal ideology it's the freedom to chose. Socialsit believe that is something too difficult for the average individual. And of course it makes it very difficult for people that have a choice to control.
Chief Justice John Roberts has been drawn into President Donald Trump’s web. Last week the president criticized the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, calling it “a lawless disgrace.”
The New York Times writes, “Trump’s remarks came after a federal trial judge ordered the administration to resume accepting asylum claims from migrants no matter where or how they entered the United States.”
The judge issuing the ruling was Jon S. Tigar, of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, whom Trump quickly singled out as an “Obama judge.” This prompted a rare pushback from Roberts, who said in a statement:
We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.
The problem, as the president correctly sees it, is that the judiciary in too many cases appears to have become independent of the Constitution, making laws and reading liberal policies into the document that are not there. If all judges thought the same, as Roberts seems to suggest, why are there so many 5-4 rulings by the high court?
Conservatives have long complained that liberal judges advance policies that would never get through Congress. Besides, if there are no Trump, Obama, Bush, or Clinton judges, then why the battle over every candidate nominated by a Republican president? Have we already forgotten the recent all-out war mounted by the left against Justice Brett Kavanaugh?
In a Thanksgiving Day tweet, the president claimed:
''…the 9th circuit has a horrible reputation. It is overturned more than any circuit in the country, 79 percent, & is used to get an almost guaranteed result…Judges must not legislate security and safety at the border or anywhere else. They know nothing about it and are making our country unsafe. Our great law enforcement professionals must be allowed to do their job! If not there will be only bedlam, chaos, injury and death. We want the Constitution as written.
In fact, the 9th Circuit’s rulings are not the most overturned. According to data compiled by the U.S. Supreme Court blog, that particular distinction goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which is in Ohio.
But that last sentence is at the heart of a debate that has been going on at least since the 1960s, and centers on what standard should be used to interpret the Constitution. Does the Constitution speak for itself, or does it say only what judges say it says, as the late Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes contended a century ago?
The president is on solid footing when he argues to preserve the prerogatives of his office. In 1950, the Supreme Court said, “The exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty … inherent in the executive power.”
Congress increased that power in 1952, passing legislation declaring the president “may by proclamation and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens and any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants whenever he thinks it would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
President Harry Truman vetoed the measure, but Congress overrode him. It is the standard that ought to be employed today.
This debate is more than a legal squabble between politicians and judges with differing points of view. It is about the character and makeup of our country and whether we who are now living will bequeath to our descendants something resembling what our predecessors passed to us.
Most immigrants in the past wanted to learn English, embrace the culture, and become fully American, not hyphenated Americans with agendas and policies brought from their homelands.
The back and forth between Trump and Roberts has brought the real issue to the forefront again where it is likely to remain through the next election and, depending on the outcome, for elections after that until it is resolved either to the benefit or detriment of the nation.
What's really amazing here is that the state legislators, actors in Hollywood, find nothing wrong with making a law to stop individuals from making personal decisions that effects them directly and that doesn't fit the popular narrative as understood by a very small community of people.
Do what we tell you or be demonized and or destroyed by government legislation.
This is not just Unconstitutional, this is a crime against humanity.
Hollywood’s One-Sided Narrative on ‘Conversion Therapy’
Hollywood is presenting only one side of the debate over counseling for those who experience unwanted same-sex attraction, and it is seeking to silence those who can offer help to the struggling.
Recent films like “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” and “Boy Erased”—both based on true stories—tell the stories of individuals who had negative or even abusive experiences in these kinds of therapies. Activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD are pushing these films to argue for so-called “conversion therapy bans” for minors and for adults.
However, these kinds of laws fail to take into account important concerns about individual freedom—particularly the freedom of patients to have access to all available information that can help them. Absent from Hollywood’s portrayal of these therapies are the stories of people who actively sought out counseling and had positive experiences.
Take Ken Williams. He bravely shared his story with the California state Legislature earlier this year when the state considered an expansive bill that banned “sexual orientation change efforts,” with expansive and often unclear implications for freedom of speech.
Williams was attracted to men for most of his life, but wanted to change. So he found a therapist and a support group who helped him to pursue that. “Some of us experienced the change we were looking for in that group, but not everyone did,” he shared. “Despite years of homosexual identity and behavior, my sexual desires did change. I am no longer sexually attracted to men,” he said.
Williams soon met a girl he was attracted to, and they married in 2006.
“Not everyone who finds themselves with same-sex desires [wants] to pursue that,” he said. “So I am trying to understand why people would want to take away the rights of my [group], which is people finding themselves with desires they would like to see changed.”
The California bill would have defined sexual orientation change efforts as “any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
Such broad terminology that includes not only attractions, but actions, has drastic implications for individual freedom.
Such counseling bans completely dismiss the needs of individuals who genuinely desire to pursue counseling, sometimes because of inner conflicts. It also limits the speech of counselors or ministries that support individuals in their personal choice not to act on these desires.
This bill, and others like it, would have granted state government the power to punish counselors or religious leaders acting as licensed counselors who counsel patients who do not wish to act upon their same-sex attraction for legitimate personal reasons—for example, someone who wants to live by their religion’s teachings on sexuality or to remain faithful to their spouse and children.
Ultimately, the representative who introduced this bill into the California Legislature pulled it due to its overly broad language and sweeping implications. But this will unlikely be the last time state lawmakers consider an outright ban on counseling that they do not consider sufficiently LGBT-affirming.
No one is in favor of allowing any kind of abuse to masquerade as “therapy.” But counseling bans are the wrong tool for addressing actual cases of abuse. Silencing speech only limits the options of people who wish to live consistent with what they believe about sexuality.
Banning one side’s speech is not the solution. Unfortunately, the incomplete narrative offered by Hollywood only buttresses these efforts.
We should take into account the legitimate needs of those who wish to pursue therapy that supports their lifestyle choices, even if they don’t conform to the latest cultural trends. Only then will our public policy simultaneously protect and respect the freedom of everyone.
Another way to look at this is making sure the black population never has options for success.
The black pupation must always be held in place as a helpless group to ensure progressive socialist democrats have election insurance by blacks voting to maintain just their personal survival.
democrats promised they will take care of them if they just vote like they are told. The democrats promised a life free from responsibility, They promise everything except pride in a job well done. And that's the foundation for personal success in life.
Explain something that needs clarity. What is the difference between what the elites among the blacks and whites are doing to the black communities and what the progressive socialist liberal democrats agenda and ideology are doing to the entire nation?
How Liberal Policy Keeps Black Kids From Succeeding
What do you think of the proposition that no black youngsters should be saved from educational rot until all can be saved?
Black people cannot afford to accept such a proposition. Actions by the education establishment, black and white liberal politicians, and some civil rights organizations appear to support the proposition.
Let’s look at it with the help of some data developed by my friend and colleague Thomas Sowell.
The Nation’s Report Card for 2017 showed the following reading scores for fourth-graders in New York state’s public schools: Thirty-two percent scored below basic, with 32 percent scoring basic, 27 percent scoring proficient, and 9 percent scoring advanced. When it came to black fourth-graders in the state, 19 percent scored proficient, and 3 percent scored advanced.
Sowell compared 2016-17 scores on the New York state ELA test. Thirty percent of Brooklyn’s William Floyd elementary school third-graders scored well below proficient in English and language arts, but at a Success Academy charter school in the same building, only one did.
At William Floyd, 36 percent were below proficient, with 24 percent being proficient and none being above proficient. By contrast, at Success Academy, only 17 percent of third-graders were below proficient, with 70 percent being proficient and 11 percent being above proficient.
Among Success Academy’s fourth-graders, 51 percent and 43 percent, respectively, scored proficient and above proficient, while their William Floyd counterparts scored 23 percent and 6 percent, respectively, proficient and above proficient. It’s worthwhile stressing that William Floyd and this Success Academy location have the same address.
Similar high performance can be found in the Manhattan charter school KIPP Infinity Middle School among its sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders when compared with that of students at New Design Middle School, a public school at the same location.
Liberals believe integration is a necessary condition for black academic excellence. Public charter schools such as those mentioned above belie that vision.
Sowell points out that only 39 percent of students in all New York state schools who were recently tested scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100 percent of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy tested proficient. Blacks and Hispanics constitute 90 percent of the students in that Success Academy.
There’s little question that charter schools provide superior educational opportunities for black youngsters. In a story The New York Times ran about charter schools earlier this month, “With Democratic Wins, Charter Schools Face a Backlash in N.Y. and Other States,” John Liu, an incoming Democratic state senator from Queens, said New York City should “get rid of” large charter school networks. State Sen.-elect Julia Salazar, D-Brooklyn, said, “I’m not interested in privatizing our public schools.”
The New York Times went on to say, “Over 100,000 students in hundreds of the city’s charter schools are doing well on state tests, and tens of thousands of children are on waiting lists for spots.”
One would think that black politicians and civil rights organizations would support charter schools. To the contrary, they want to saddle charter schools with procedures that make so many public schools a failure.
For example, the NAACP demands that charter schools “cease expelling students that public schools have a duty to educate.” It wants charter schools to “cease to perpetuate de facto segregation of the highest performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious.” Most importantly, it wants charter schools to come under the control of teachers unions.
Charter schools have an advantage that some call “selection bias.” Because charter schools require parents to apply or enter lotteries for their children’s admission, they attract more students who have engaged parents and students who are higher-achieving and better behaved.
Many in the teaching establishment who are against parental alternatives want alternatives for themselves.
In Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, 25 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools. In Philadelphia, 44 percent of teachers do so. In Cincinnati, it’s 41 percent. In Chicago, 39 percent do, and in Rochester, New York, it’s 38 percent.
This demonstrates the dishonesty, hypocrisy, and arrogance of the elite. Their position is, “One thing for thee and another for me.”
Good one Victor! But the only caveat to our modern society that might be held here, is it the majority that lives the life of sanity and the minority that demands rules regulations to change civil society the insane?
Who elected Donald Trump? And who elected to change the House of Representatives from sanity to insanity? Why the change from ''majority rule and minority right'' to search and destory all opposition?
Who is actually in charge? The radical wing or the passive wing? Burn and destroy or live and let live? It's nearly impossible to tell given the radicals own the main stream media controlling information for the most part, or are the radicals actually the media that run the show? It appears chaos and conflict is the order of the day for the minority that are driving the narrative, but with the majority sitting on the sidelines wondering what to do now. Who will win the war for America's survival? The outcome is in question.
Fifty years ago this year, the ’60s revolution sought to overturn U.S. customs, traditions, ideology, and politics.The ’60s radicals eventually grew older, cut their hair, and joined the establishment. Most thought their revolution had fizzled out in the early 1970s without much effect, as Americans returned to “normal.”
But maybe the ’60s, not the silent majority, won out after all. The world a half-century later looks a lot more like 1968 and what followed than what preceded it. Most of the political and cultural agenda from that turbulent period—both the advances and the regressions—has long been institutionalized.
The military draft, for good or bad, has remained defunct. There is greater transparency in politics, fewer smoke-filled rooms. Disabled children, once ostracized and/or dismissively labeled “retarded,” are now far better integrated into society and treated more ethically as special-needs kids. The rights of women, minorities, and the LGBT community are now widely accepted.
Yet lifestyles have been radically altered—and often not for the good. Before the late ’60s, most Americans married before having children; afterwards, not so much. One-parent households are now far more common.
Other legacies of the ’60s include couples marrying later and having fewer children. A half-century later, these social inheritances often mean prolonged adolescence, older parents, delayed or nonexistent home ownership, and more emphasis on leisure time than on household chores.
Fashion remains ’60s-influenced. There are few dress codes left. Even billionaires now dress in jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers rather than slacks and wingtips. Wire-rim glasses of the 1950s were considered old people’s spectacles. Then they became hip, and now they are standard. The iconic drug of the ’60s, marijuana, has been legalized in many states and soon may be decriminalized at the federal level.
Post-’60s movies routinely include the sort of profanity, nudity, and graphic violence that was unknown in 1950s cinema. Big-screen romance is often no longer about courtship, romance, and mystery, but lots of on-screen sex.
Promiscuity and hookups were redefined in the ’60s as norms. They are now, too—but with lots of ensuing psychological, social, and cultural damage.
Before the campus turmoil of the late ’60s, there were almost no “studies” courses in the college curriculum. The ancient idea still persisted that the university was obligated to teach philosophy, literature, languages, science, math, and the professions—along with the inductive method to use such knowledge to make sense of things.
Yet the impatient ’60s threw out that disinterested notion as quaint, naïve, and a roadblock to utopia. The campus instead became a center of deductive progressive activism. Updated studies courses now train students to think politically correctly rather than empirically.
Other pernicious ’60s ideas survived and got worse. The notion of shouting out in campus free-speech zones now means shouting down those with whom students disagree.
The street-theater antics during the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings, the violence of Antifa, and the disruptions of Black Lives Matter were all birthed in the ’60s as legitimate means of obtaining supposedly noble ends.
Progress in civil rights has veered from Martin Luther King Jr.’s integrationist idea of a color-blind society emphasizing the content of our character to racially segregated dorms and rampant identity politics. The current tribal notion that we are defined forever by our DNA, not our character, is also a ’60s legacy.
The freewheeling habits of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are ’60s carryovers. So is the hard-left sermonizing and preachy, nonstop hectoring of Al Gore and Barack Obama. The new faddish socialism of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is merely the old socialism of 1968.
Could the good of the ’60s have been accomplished without all the bad? The answer is still debated. Unfortunately, the wounds of the ’60s have not healed with the graying of the 1968 generation.
Now, Americans increasingly self-select geographically. Those who prefer stronger religious life, smaller government, fewer taxes, more liberty—and who desire to keep traditional American values alive—tend to gravitate to our nation’s rural and red-state interior.
The blue-state coasts seek to keep the spirit of the ’60s alive with hip urban culture, bigger government, higher taxes, greater emphasis on identity politics—and a constant effort to radically change America.
So who won the ’60s?
Republicans would claim that they have won more presidential elections since 1968. They would argue that the silent majority eventually saved much of what was still traditional America. Radicals of the ’60s such as Bill Ayers and Jane Fonda were never widely popular.
But turn on the television, watch a movie or an NFL game, listen to popular music, visit a campus, notice how crowds dress and speak, walk down a sidewalk in a major city, and examine the behavior of our celebrities and political class: It’s hard not to conclude that the ’60s won out.
Professor has the audacity to explain reality clearly enough
that even the most weak minded understand. Liberals are
furious and so must be cast into the outer darkness..
Mygoodness, what a breath of fresh air. Any time a person can read and hear speech that by instinct known it is the truth because, again by instinct, it makes sense, common sense.
Being in a debate with a progressive socialsit labral activist is like being trapped in lunatic asylum. People screaming loudly trying to convince everyone that will listen they are right because of who they think they are and you are wrong because he knows who you are. When fantasy is all a person knows, little is left for the argument for the meaning in reality.
Professor Thinks Banning These Words Would Fix Free Speech on College Campuses
University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax is accustomed to political wrong-think.
Wax has a bachelor’s degree from Yale College, a medical degree from Harvard, and a law degree from Columbia. But none of those was enough to exempt her from being on the receiving end of a full-fledged campaign to get her fired. Nor was arguing 15 cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the Justice Department, but that’s beside the point.
Wax doesn’t fear being called racist, sexist, or xenophobic, probably because she’s been called many of those names before. Instead of retreating to the safety of her tenure when things get tough, she doubles down—demanding debate, evidence, and accountability.
Students and colleagues alike have attacked Wax for making the apparently offensive case that traditional marriage values lead to better results for children, and for putting forth the radical argument that many of the country’s problems are a symptom of the breakdown of the “bourgeois culture” (the 1940s and ’50s way of life).
In making that argument, Wax addressed the fact that things weren’t perfect back then, but like clockwork, her critics called her “racist and classist” anyway.
The straw that really broke the camel’s back, however, happened when student activists searching for dirt on Wax unearthed a 2017 podcast interview she did with economist and Brown University professor Glenn Loury.
In the interview, Wax said this when addressing the issue of affirmative action: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black student graduate in the top quarter of [my] class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half. I can think of one or two students who scored in the first half of my required first-year Civil Procedure course.” Grades at the University of Pennsylvania are name-blind (meaning the instructor covers up students’ names prior to grading), so Wax says it’d be impossible to discriminate.
Critics jumped on her statement, interpreting it to mean “Amy Wax said black students can’t excel in law school.” Eventually, the University of Pennsylvania Law School relieved Wax of her teaching duties for first-year law students.
In a Nov. 8 speech at The Heritage Foundation, Wax talked about the fallout of her politically incorrect statements in depth, and put forth tangible ideas about how to counter a radical, identity-based grievance culture that’s now rampant in university life.
Watch the video : https://youtu.be/KEmPLWzc4N8
First and foremost, Wax said, “Remind students that one of the central missions of the university, which justifies its existence, is to get at the truth.” She said:
''That requires honest debate, patience, intellectual honesty, investigation, and a lot of hard work. But it also is not for the faint of heart. And that is a lesson that is almost never transmitted today. That offense, bruising thoughts, and unpleasant facts simply go with the territory. They are an intrinsic feature of an open society, and they never can be entirely avoided.''
Next, Wax argued for censorship of speech—but not in the way you might think.
Here are her ideas, implemented as guidelines in her seminars and upper-level classes, lightly edited for clarity:
''No one can be heard to say, ‘I’m offended.’ They all have permission to be offended. But they just can’t express it.
''No one is allowed to accuse anyone else, in the classroom or out, dead or alive, of being racist, sexist, xenophobic, white supremist, or any other derisive, identity-based label. No slurs or name-calling. These don’t enlighten, educate, or edify. They add nothing. Give us an argument. Tell us why the other person is wrong.
''No one can complain to administrators—those officious thought police—about anything said in class.
''Finally, both the government and private donors need to rethink the lavish financial support for higher education, and especially for elite and selective institutions, which serve only a teeny-tiny portion of our population and which in many ways, I’m afraid, have become an anti-Western and anti-American liability.
''How can we get the rich to see that supporting elite universities today might not be the wisest and more fruitful uses of their hard-earned money? What we need is a list of alternative causes and alternative institutions and goals for their money that help ordinary, average, unspecial people who have been unduly neglected by our elites and our increasingly walled off from them.''
Wax expressed doubt that classrooms on college campuses would adopt these guidelines anytime soon. “The question is whether there’s any hope of such protocols being implemented on a wide scale. In the current climate, I doubt it,” she said.
Until then, she expects the threat against politically incorrect professors will get worse. “Professors who hold unpopular positions or state inconvenient facts are now considered psychologically toxic,” Wax said, adding:
''If their presence causes offense, distress, feelings of insult, fears of ill treatment, that is enough to eject them from the classroom. And of course, these perceptions and feelings are subjective, they are self-confirming, they are immune from challenge. It’s all in the mind of the beholder. And the beholder’s mind reigns supreme.''
Hear more from Amy Wax in The Daily Signal’s upcoming edition of “Problematic Women,” where we ask her about #MeToo, feminism, and gender roles.
Here a 9 year old says Americans use 500 million straws
a day and no one questioned this? The media all ran
with the story.
First, it's just assumed that the environmentalist are telling the truth about plastic waste in the oceans. And given what the history of environmentalist have for managing the facts to meet the agenda and ideology, we have to cast a jaundiced eye on where the ''facts'' are coming from and their total validity. Much like the fraud that man-made climate change is and has been for decades, the problem of the actual amount of plastic in the oceans and dumps is just another fraud to demand compliance to multiple laws and regulation for control of the population. The progressive socialsit liberals really have no idea what the plastic problem is and don't care. It's the narrative that matters. Oh, and at the same time the environmentalists extract resources for the taxpayers to fatten their personal bank accounts just like they do for the climate change psychosis. And for further exposer of the fraud here is to understand that it all started in Washington State, Seattle, speaks volumes about mindless and corrupt ideologies. Sadly though the mindless ands easily duped as one might expect, are flocking to be counted as believers. The rest of us, by instinct know a criminal activity when we see one and call it out as such.
Plastic Straw Ban Crusades Are About Progressive Virtue Signaling, Not Practical Solutions
The anti-straw movement has come to the nation’s capital. The District of Columbia recently passed legislation that would enforce a ban on plastic straws, among several other similar utensils.
The law is set to take effect on Jan. 1, with enforcement mechanisms—such as hefty fines—being implemented in July. As Tristan Justice reported in The Daily Signal, the ban extends not just to restaurants, but to bars, churches, and day cares as well. As the anti-straw crusade appears to gain steam, it’s worth stopping for a moment to examine why such a seemingly trivial matter has become such a big deal.
The movement began in earnest in Seattle back in 2008, when it became the first major city to create a plastic straw ban. That ban went into full effect this year, and similar bans have since been popping up across the U.S. One issue with the anti-straw movement is that it has magnified the straw problem beyond reality. While there is a general issue with plastic buildup in the ocean, just a tiny amount of it is composed of straws.
According to one study, straws make up only 2,000 tons of the 9 million tons of plastic waste that hit the oceans every year. And most of the garbage that ends up in the ocean doesn’t even come from the United States. China and a few Asian countries are the main source of plastic waste polluting the oceans.
Unfortunately, there have been some suspect statistics floating around the internet, including one that claims Americans use 500 million straws a day. But this number came from an informal phone survey of a 9-year-old boy-turned-activist, according to a report by Reason.
Angela Logomasini, a researcher at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a pro-free market nonprofit, said that while plastic buildup in waterways and oceans is a problem, it’s not one that will be affected by straw bans.
“The problem is a disposal problem,” Logomasini said, according to The Washington Times. “Most of it is in Asia and Africa because they have open dumps and they pour tons of trash into the ocean. They don’t have the proper disposal methods. If you dispose of something properly, it’s not a problem.”
Given the lack of evidence that the world will soon be covered in straws or that straw bans will make a dent in the more serious problem of plastic waste in the ocean, why is this movement still a priority for progressive activists?
It’s to spread “awareness,” apparently.
Progressive website Vox.com admitted: “Banning plastic straws won’t save the ocean. But we should do it anyway.” “Our straw campaign is not really about straws,” said Dune Ives, the executive director of Lonely Whale, a pro-straw ban organization, according to Vox. “It’s about pointing out how prevalent single-use plastics are in our lives, putting up a mirror to hold us accountable. We’ve all been asleep at the wheel.”
This is quite revealing. A leader of the movement has admitted that it’s not really about finding practical solutions to real problems.
Washington, D.C.’s plastic straw ban, like all of the various other straw bans, amounts to little more than a progressive piety project of little utility and much inconvenience. Progressives are quick to use the blunt instrument of the state to try to solve the world’s problems, no matter how serious or trivial.
But as John-Michael Seibler, a Heritage Foundation fellow in legal studies, wrote, there are more reasonable ways to reduce plastic waste than by passing blanket bans and heavy fines for straw usage.
This can include working with local volunteers and businesses to clean up waste and promote it as a public issue, or simply enforcing strict littering laws that already exist in many cities. Seibler noted the way New York City dealt with litter on the subway:
When New York’s subway system experienced an uptick in fires and floods due to litter buildup, officials doubled littering fines and transit authorities increased enforcement. If plastic straws and stirrers are now plaguing the Big Apple, city authorities can again emphasize enforcement of existing littering rules.
So instead of punishing everyone—in particular disabled people who need straws to drink—with a blanket ban, it seems reasonable for local governments to find less intrusive methods of fixing what is ultimately not a huge problem.
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