Government Intrusion

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A particularly bad effort by the Progressive-Democratic Biden administration, this one attempts to insert Government between parents and their children, have the children engage directly with Government persons, and block the parents from participating or any sort of oversight at all.

The proximate subject is a CDC-generated

private chat platform that enables teens to discuss—without parental oversight—a range of highly fraught issues, including LGBT challenges, occult topics, dealing with difficult relatives or even finding an alternative “family” through communities that are more accepting.

This Q Chat Space

includes features that enable its teen users to evade parental scrutiny and oversight.
For example, the platform offers two options for text reminders of upcoming chats—discreet or detailed. Detailed reminders include a “Q Chat Space” tag and other identifying information. Discreet reminders, however “are private, they do not include ‘Q Chat Space’ or the name of the chat,” the platform explains. “They only say ‘Reminder: You have an online discussion in about 1 hour.’ or ‘Reminder: You have an online discussion in about 24 hours.'”
At the bottom of the Q Chat Space website, there is a bar with a button reading “Click/tap here for a quick escape…” accompanied by a picture of a person running towards an exit door. Clicking on the button changes the screen to Google’s website.

Jaco Booyens has the right of it:

It is not the role of the CDC or any school environment to educate Americans’ children on gender, sex, sexual conduct, or sexual preference. In fact, this particular site is highly deceiving, encouraging children to hide their activity on the site from their parents by giving them an easy exit button.

There are two major Government crimes in Booyens’ objection: one is that intrusion of Government into parental responsibilities. The other is Government teaching children to not trust their parents, to hide important family matters from them, functionally to lie to their parents, if only by omission.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party is trying to do to traditional family structure. We must start the removal process this fall.

Lawlessness

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Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is busily mandating prevailing-wage requirements for contracts let by the State’s government. Never mind that she’s defying the will of the legislature—and in the present case, the will of the citizens of Michigan—in doing so.

…a citizen initiative under the Michigan Constitution. We collected tens of thousands of signatures, sending the issue straight to the Legislature. Lawmakers overwhelmingly stood with taxpayers, bypassing the governor [then-Governor Rick Snyder (R)] and ending prevailing wage for the whole state.

It hardly matters, though, since Progressive-Democratic Party politicians like Whitmer think petty laws don’t apply to their august selves.

Jimmy Greene, Associated Builders and Contractors of Michigan President, who spearheaded that citizen initiative, isn’t done, though, and neither are the good citizens of Michigan.

So with the help of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, we’ve filed a lawsuit asking state courts to throw out the prevailing wage.

The fight still won’t be done, though. The suit is a necessary step, but even with a victory in the courts, there’s no reason to believe Whitmer’s bureaucrats won’t tacitly enforce the union wage business simply by which companies they select for contract award and the weasel-worded pseudo-rationales those bureaucrats provide.

It’s necessary to take the next couple of steps, also: vote the Progressive-Democrats out of office en masse in Michigan, and then the newly installed Executive Branch politicians will need to follow through and fire the bureaucrats, also en masse.

They’re Both Wong

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A Washington Post columnist wrote Thursday, regarding the Wuhan Virus (my term, not hers) lockdowns and the impact they had on our children,

I am basically totally uninterested in who was right and who was wrong in the summer of 2020. Kids don’t need adults’ self-justifications. They need us to get moving and looking forward.

The thrust of her justification centered on

It’s time to start thinking about how to pay them back[.]

That’s mistaken. Blowing off who made the mistake goes too far.

There was a fair amount of demurral regarding her position. A Deseret News contributor offers what I think is the canonical objection.

I am very interested in who was right and who was wrong because we need to make sure that the people who made bad policy will never make policy affecting children again[.]

She’s wrong also, but from the opposite side. Emphasizing fixing blame goes too far in the opposite direction.

Finding out who made the error matters to the extent that it’s important to track trends of good and bad performance so we can emphasize the successful and lessen the impact of the unsuccessful. Mistakes occur, including serious ones, but if those are not part of a pattern, the corrections still need to be made and the lessons learned, but the individuals, in the main, should be continued.

The most important aspect of a mistake, though, especially the large ones like these lockdowns, is the fact of that mistake. Investigations into the mistake need to focus on how the mistake occurred—its mechanics—so efficient, focused corrective action can be taken and the likelihood of that mistake recurring greatly reduced, if not prevented altogether.

If that investigation into the mechanics of the mistake leads the investigators to a who as the what that led to the mistake, that’s when who did it becomes important. That’s when responsibility (not blame) can be attached and personnel-related corrective action, as efficient, focused corrective action, can be taken. And not before.

Another CFPB Overreach

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Now it’s preparing to force banks to make whole those their customers who are conned by money-transfer service scams, regardless of whether the bank had anything to do with the scam.

Bank customers no longer should be responsible for their own decisions, even their foolish ones. We average Americans, holds the CFPB and its MFWIC, Rohit Chopra, are just too grindingly stupid to be responsible for ourselves.

Currently, banks must repay customers for charges they did not authorize. Chopra and his CFPB want banks, in addition, to have to refund these third-party transfers, done on the banks’ systems, if the customer authorizes the transaction and later changes his mind and cries foul. Customers are no longer expected to do their own due diligence regarding their money. That’s too much responsibility, you see.

This is one more reason this creature of Elizabeth Warren, this Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, needs to be disbanded, the law creating it wholly rescinded, and metaphorical salt poured on the pages of the Code of Laws of the United States of America, our USC, and the child pages in our Code of Federal Regulations, our CFR, that contained it.

In a Nutshell

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In a Wall Street Journal article on the rising price of natural gas resulting from the current spate of hot weather, there’s this regarding the broader role of natural gas prices in inflation.

Pricier natural gas adds not just to the cost of dialing down the thermostat but also to that for making fertilizer, steel, cement, plastic, and glass.

And, through that fertilizer price increase, the cost of food—directly in the cost of wheat-, corn-, soya bean-based foodstuffs, and indirectly in the cost of beef, chicken, and other meat animals that are fed these plants.

And, through corn’s role in ethanol production, the cost of fuel.

Which is pretty much the full reach of our economy.

The inflation resulting from limits on natural gas production also results from similar limits on oil and coal production.

But hey, we can all just go out and buy electric cars….