Wednesday, November 19, 2014

November, 2014, Part 1, Will The Center Hold: Common Core, School Lunches, and Border Sedurity Unrest

We are going to spend a few days visiting an occasional recurring topic in this blog, namely whether or not the country can hang together, given the growing resistance around the nation to an overreaching and increasingly repressive Federal government. Previous discussions on this topic can be accessed by typing in the phrase, “will the center hold” in the search box above.

The growing grass roots resistance against the Federal government covers a wide range of topics including gun control, Obama Care, Common Core, warrantless spying on citizens, and other topics important to the American people. The resistance ranges from individual citizens to state legislations and really raises a basic question: what happens to the country if Washington issues a decree or law and the rest of the country simply ignores it or aggressively resists it? Will the center hold?

The latest resistance efforts start below and will likely go on for a few days after:

1) It is not just adults who are resisting the overreach of Washington. A Wisconsin high school senior is tired of being force fed tasteless and inadequate school lunches as a result of Washignton’s and Michelle Obama’s ill conceived and ill thought out school lunch guidelines. She doing something about it. Meghan Hellrood of D.C. Everest High School in Schofield, Wisconsin, is tired of the sub-par quality food and the one-size-fits-all mentality that the new school lunch regulations have produced.

She has organized a boycott to draw attention to the new regulations and show politicians in Washington that students don’t agree with the act and its one size fits all mentality and that students want something better: “I love my school. My school is fantastic. And I know that they’re not the ones that have started this entire regulation. So what I really want is for this to go to Washington, basically. We can’t just depend on our local schools, because there’s thousands of other schools that also comply with this act. So if we go to Washington, maybe they’ll see that so many kids are upset with this and that there needs to be a change.”

Hellrood points out that the logic of how the one size fits all mentality of the law is not realistic for all students. She points out the following facts in a very logical manner:

- Even at 90 pounds and 4 feet 11 inches, she says the food provided is not enough to fill even her up: “I’m served the same amount of food that the 220-pound senior football star is,” commenting that she can’t even imagine how hungry the athletes must be.

- She also points out that her peers at school complain that they are not performing as well in the classroom or on the field because they are hungry and “out of energy." 

- Athough some students who can afford it often bring food with them to supplement what they are getting in the cafeteria, or run to a convenience store after school to grab something to eat before practice or a game, many other students are going hungry.

- According to her experience, at her school, rather than providing higher quality, healthy foods, her school is providing smaller portions of the same processed foods they were serving before in order to keep them within the new Washington nutritional guidelines: “The whole point of it was to get healthier foods, but instead of healthier foods, we’re getting smaller portions of more processed foods.”

Good for her, speaking up and taking action against another Washington disaster that is causing more pain and heartache than it is curing.

2) States across the country have decided that having Washington dictate the educational standards in their state, another Washington one size fits all disaster, via the so-called Common Core program is not for them. Many of them have opted out of all or parts of the program and have told Washington they will educate their kids the way they see fit, not the way the Washington political class sees fit.

The Medina (Ohio) Gazette recently ran an article that showed that not only are state governments fed up with Common Core but an individual local mother is also. Rene Antonio of Harrisville Township said she’ll withdraw her second grade daughter by December 15 from the local public school and either place her in a private school, if she can find one that hasn’t also adopted the Common Core educational standards, or home-school her.

She has started a Facebook page called “Ohio Students Strike Common Core,” that has already accumulated more than 400 likes: “I’m trying to be unbiased on my page because everyone has different reasons for not liking it. Children’s minds don’t adapt to the Common Core like they’re expected to. It takes away from the child’s ability to explore.”

Not only does it take away the child’s ability to explore, it also is not a good way to educate, as we have discussed previously. Consider what happened to test scores in Maryland after Common Core had been in place for a few years:



















Thus, you can see why a mother like Ms.Antonio would be concerned about the welfare and education attainment of her daughter.

Fortunately, there may be help on the way for her and other concerned Ohio parents. Ohio House Bill 597 is pending in the Ohio state government legislature. If passed, it would repeal Common Core in the state, a reality that would make Ms. Antonio and many other parents in Ohio quite happy: “Everyone I’ve talked to about it are against the Common Core. We are the parents, we have a say, and if enough people pull their children out of school, they’re going to have to do something about it. These aren’t the government’s children, and they aren’t the state’s children.”

Good for her, standing up like millions of others across the country, fighting an overreaching and incompetent set of Washington politicians who saddle us with outrageously bad programs such as Common Core and Obama Care. Programs that are ineffective, expensive, and affront to liberty and personal freedom.

3) It is no secret that our southern border security is a joke. There is very little security, it is porous which allows illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and it is a gateway for terrorists to enter the country without much threat of being apprehended.

However, rather than sitting back and allowing the Federal government to continue is mishandling of border security, a group of sheriffs from across the country are taking action to prod the Washington political class to actually do their job. A letter being circulated by Bristol County, Massachusetts Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, is attempting to organize American sheriffs to march on the capital on December 10, in order to “encourage immediate action by Congress and the Administration [sic] that will secure border security once and for all.”

According to the letter, the effort will be joined by U.S. Senators Jeff Sessions and David Vitter as well as “other members of Congress” as they publicly seek redress at the Capitol Building. According to the letter, the effort seeks to achieve border security “as the first step in achieving legitimate immigration reform in the future.”

The letter goes on to state: “As you know, the policies of recent years that encourage immigrants to illegally enter our country have created serious threats to our domestic… security. The citizens of our nation are counting on [sheriffs] to fulfill our oath to preserve law and order and live up to our responsibilities as guardians of the United States Constitution.”

According to the contents of the letter, Sheriff Hodgson hopes to get at least 200 sheriffs to come to Washington for the protest and to make the point that Washington has failed to 1) secure the border and 2) develop and deploy an effective and fair immigration policy, something it should have done decades ago.

That will do it for today but more backlash and fight back against the Federal government activities will be discussed in the next few days. But today we learned that concerned citizens across the country, from a high school kid in Wisconsin to a concerned mother in Ohio to a sensible and concerned sheriff in Massachusetts, are telling Washington to either back off or how they should be doing their job.

As always, if enough of America does the same, will the center hold? If enough Americans ignore the failed school lunch policies of Washington, if enough Americans ignore the Common Core mandates of Washington, if enough sheriffs ignore the failed immigration policies of Washington, what happens? Interesting times we live in.


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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w







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