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.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Part 6, Why The Obama Administration Deserves Its Ranking As The Worst Presidency Since 1945

A recent public opinion poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, a traditional and unbiased source of public opinion, asked a sample of Americans who they thought operated the worst Presidency since 1945. Barack Obama won a plurality of votes in that poll for being the worst U.S. President since 1945. 33% of respondents named him as the worst President over the past seven decades with George W, Bush finishing second at 28%. 

Both of them far outpolled who I generally consider the two worst Presidents of the past hundred years, Jimmy Carter (8%) for being a President who was clueless and totally ineffective, and Richard Nixon (13%) for simply being a vindictive crook. America has to be pretty disgusted with your Presidential administration when you are mentioned 2-4 more times than either Carter or Nixon as the worst president since 1945.

Over the next few days we are going to explore the overwhelming number of reasons while this result for President Obama is not only rational but is well deserved. Before anyone starts with their counter arguments or disputing my list of Obama policy failures, criminal acts, economic ignorance, violations of the Constitution, and broken promises, keep in mind the following facts:

• I have never voted for a Republican for President in my life and I am over 60 years old.
• Up until November, 2010, I had never voted for a Republican for national office.
• In the first two years of his Presidency, Obama’s party was in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate with filibuster proof majorities in both places, I.e. he could have done anything he wanted politically and legislatively without any assist from any Republican.
• I am not saying that anyone else would have resolved all of the issues listed below but it is difficult to think that at least some of these issues would have been resolved by people such as Truman, Kennedy, or Reagan. The Obama Presidency has been so bad that just about every issue and problem listed below is actually far WORST rather than BETTER since the onset of the Obama administration.
• Consider an old saying: “Don’t tell me how rough the seas were, just tell me you brought the boat safely into the harbor.” In other words, a true leader takes the blame and gives the credit. No one forced Obama to become President, he knew the situation he was getting into. He should be judged on how well he managed the situation he inherited going forward. Unfortunately, instead of leadership and looking forward, he chose instead to whine, look backwards, and to blame others for his failures rather than focusing on moving forward from whatever adverse situation he inherited.

Okay, so that sets out the preliminaries: I am not a conservative, a Republican, or a neocon trying to tear down this President. This President could have done anything he wanted in the first two years of his tenure, he cannot blame the Republicans for blocking anything he failed at since he had a historic window of political opportunity. Instead of leveraging the window and leading the country, he chose to blame the previous President, the Japanese tsunami, ATM machines, and a whole host of other factors in the absence of Presidential leadership.

Thus, without any further delay and in no particular order, consider the final nine reasons (out of 122 total reasons) why the Quinnipiac public opinion poll is probably an accurate view of why America rates the Obama administration as the worst Presidential administration in the past 70 years or so. The first set of the 122 reasons can be accessed at:

http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/07/part-1-why-obama-administration.html

The final nine reasons are a little different than the first 113. These last nine are potential reasons for impeachment and removal from office since they are currently just accusations and "what-ifs," they are not actual acts of incompetence and lawlessness that the first 113 reasons were. However, they are included since they probably also contribute to the feeling that this is an inept and corrupt administration, even if these unproven accusations turn out to be false. In life, as in politics, perception is everything, and there is a strong perception that the following accusations are indeed true, which cannot help any President's approval ratings:

114) Is the President in violation of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, i.e. is he naturally born citizen, given his application to college which stated he was foreign born, inconsistencies on his alleged birth certificate, the fact that he has a Social Security number from a dead Connecticut citizen who never lived in the President’s home state of Hawaii, and a Federal judge that has ruled an investigation into the matter can go forward? 

115) Has the President illegally violated existing immigration law by not stridently enforcing the security of our border with Mexico? 

116) Has this administration broken any domestic or international laws by spying on the government and personal phones and communications of world leaders, allies and foes alike? 

117) Did this administration and President enable illegal voting tampering since it intentionally went out of its way to gut voter ID laws for no reason, tolerated computer “glitches” that may have switched voters’ votes, encouraged people like the convicted poll worker in Ohio who cast multiple votes for the President, and other suspicious voting irregularities across the country, all of which seem to favor the President’s election chances? 

118) Was this administration behind the break in and robbery of the law office of Schulman and Mathias who were representing the legal interests of Aurelia Fedenism, a State Department Inspector who leaked embarrassing government information on State Department criminal investigations? The robbery is especially suspicious since only computers and files were taken, the robbers leaving behind many other more valuable item including high end video equipment and silver bars. 

119) Will the President eventually send U.S. military resources into battle in Syria, as he was threatened, or back into Iraq, a potential violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution? 

120) Will the President allow the U.S. government to default on its debt as he once threatened even though there is more than enough tax money flowing into the Federal government to pay off the debt, a potential violation of the Fourteenth Amendment? 

121) Will the President make good his threat to use his “pen and phone” to bypass Congress, a severe violation of the Article II, Sections 1, 3 and 4 of the Constitution.

122) Has the administration broken the law as it applies to the Posse Comitatus Law by creating a domestic military force via heavily armed Department of Homeland Security and IRS personnel or by the militarization of local police forces by providing them with military grade technology and weaponry, a scary parallel to the Nazi SS forces of Hitler's Germany.

Wow, 122 reasons, spread over six days, that pretty much makes the case that we are indeed living through the worst Presidency since 1945, as verified by a recent Quinnipiac public opinion poll. These 122 reasons lay out a systematic approach to verifying the poll's results. While many Americans might disagree with the poll's findings, they probably have not gone through the many reasons why a plurality of Americans agree with the findings.

Now, to be fair to the current President, others that came before him in the White House did not or could not fix the problems that President Obama has also been unwilling or unable to fix. Bringing peace to the Israeli/Palestinian situation has eluded every President since 1948. Wasteful and fraudulent government spending, while it has probably accelerated during the Obama administration, has been an unsolved problem with all previous Presidents. So yes, his incompetence in these areas is a shared incompetence with the last 70 years of Presidents.

 But the problems of this administration go so much further and deeper:

• Our public schools have gotten worse in educating our kids over the past five and a half years and this administration has no plans or strategy for turning that situation around.
• Our border security situation has gotten worse over the past five and a half years and this administration has no plans or strategy for turning that situation around, as witnessed by the humanitarian crisis currently going at our southern border.
• Our lost war on drugs has gotten worse over the past five and a half years and this administration has no plans or strategy for turning that situation around, as witnessed by the increased reach, violence, and wealth of the drug cartels.
• Our energy situation has gotten worse over the past five and a half years with gas pump prices almost doubling during that time and this administration has no plans or strategy for turning around that situation around, having wasted tens of billions of dollars on crony infested and failed alternative energy companies like Solyndra and having delayed the Keystone pipeline for purely election and political reasons.
• Our anemic economic growth reality and prospects have gotten worse over the past five and a half years and this administration has no plans or strategy for turning that situation around, as witnessed by record numbers of Americans being unemployed or under employed for a record amount of time.
• Out national debt situation has gotten far worse over the past five and a half years with the national debt already up about 80% during the first part of this administration, setting records for trillion dollar plus annual spending deficits.
• Our national health care costs have started to accelerate upwards again at higher rates AFTER the inept implementation of Obama Care, a piece of legislation that was supposed to reduce health care costs and increase health care quality but in reality is causing health care costs to rise while at the same time reducing health care quality.
• Our foreign policy strategies and policies have been disasters or non existent over the past five and a half years as we have alienated our allies by spying on them and their leaders or provided only weak verbal support without a strategy to back up our promises, which in turn has emboldened our strategic opponents, namely Russia, China, Iran, and others to pursue their goals of power, territory, and wealth at the cost of our allies and our best interests.

In other words, the major issues of our times, illegal immigration, healthcare costs, lost war on drugs, foregin policy, etc. have gotten far worst over the past five and a half years, they have not even stayed at their same level of crisis. And for this worsening situation, we have overextended our national credit worthiness by ratcheting up our naiotnal debt to almost $18 TRILLION, or about $57,000 for every single American citizen, from our newsest new born to our oldest senior citizen.

Just this type of inept performance by a Presidential administration is probably enough to get it the worst ranking of all Presidencies since 1945. However,  when you add in the illegality, the corruption, and the unConstitutional behavior and actions of this President, actions and deeds that are indeed impeachable and likely prosecutable in a court of law for breaking so many existing laws and statutes, there can be no doubt that the Obama Presidency is the worst since 1945. The 122 reasons we have gone over this week prove it.

We started off this series to verify the validity of the Quinnipiac finding that the Obama Presidency is the worst since 1945 with the following saying: "Don’t tell me how rough the seas were, just tell me you brought the boat safely into the harbor.” After reviewing our 122 reasons over the past week, we can pretty much conclude that not only has the Obama Presidency not gotten us safely into the harbor but in some sense it has crashed us into the rocks offshore and we are taking on water.

Despite that analogy, this President, in his own mind, is still probably blaming everyone and everything else for the rocks being in his way even though he has had the helm for the past five and a half years. The only question is can the country survive the remaining two and a half years of the worst Presidency since 1945.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w