Rules for Patriots: Rule #5 example

This morning I was listening to Alex Marlow hosting Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Radio.  He was talking to a guest about public schools in Los Angeles and the wokeness being taught there.  The tactic for patriots has been to either (a) put your kids in private school (which most people cannot afford to do) or (b) complain (which does nothing). A new tactic is needed to address this.

In my Rules for Patriots series, Rule #5 was improve your arsenal (of tactics). Clearly a new tactic is required.  Combine that with the Left's philosophy of never letting a crisis go to waste, during COVID there is a perfect opportunity here that is being missed. A strike.

If Patriots removed their kids from schools in protest of the agenda being taught, not just in Los Angeles but statewide in California, until the concern is addressed, it would result in an attendance drop of at least 30%, perhaps as much as 40% statewide.  That is unsustainable from a cost perspective for the schools and the state.  A few days won't matter, it would take months.

But COVID has presented an opportunity to do that with limited repercussions for parents and students. The tactic has not been tried and the opportunity is there.  It cannot work any less effectively than what has been tried so far.  So...?

Right Now, Higher Unemployment Might Be Better

This morning I was listening to P.O.T.U.S. on XM satellite radio and a guest, economist Mark Lieberman from Economics Analytics Research, put succinctly and in easy to understand terms what the lower unemployment rate of 8.6% announced today, is actually not good right now.  

It has nothing to do with what might benefit the GOP in 2012, and everything to do with the unemployment trending.

The Cain Smoking Man Ad and Rush Limbaugh

Last night on Twitter there was a brief flurry over the latest Herman Cain Ad.  The controversy is over the "smoking man" at the end of the clip.  But I really don't think that's the problem.

Earmark reform

This morning, mere moments ago, I was listening to Michelle Bachmann on POTUS Politics on Sirius/XM. She was talking about a number of issues including Medicare. What struck me though, as an important albeit brief point that she made about earmarks. She mentioned capping them.

That's an interesting take. I haven't heard her talking about them in detail before so I'm not sure if she has expounded on that thought, but I'd like to do so.

While the Tea Party candidates expect to hold firm on the elimination of earmarks, others have argued that by the Congress banning them, they are de facto ceding their allocation to the executive branch. By banning earmarks, those allocations would then fall to government agencies, ergo the President, who can direct those agencies.

Well that's not good.

But then again merely capping them is not good either. It is like using penicillin for too short a duration - it only kills the weak virus and allows the remaining germs to get stronger. What is to be done?

How about Cap and Kill?

By that I mean instead of trying to ban them in Congress, budget them out of existence. Don't just ban them in Congress, find where those allocations exist and remove them from the budget. That's the kill, what about the cap? Keep the allocation in Congress and cap the amount to be allocated for earmarks to $0. Then charge the various agencies with the task of enforcing the law that earmarks are not to be attempted or spent. Make the government agencies responsible for better accounting for their spending.

Getting rid of spending is a really tough effort but it has to be done. More importantly it needs to be done intelligently.