Tag Archives: ethics

Transparency in Schools

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Florida now has a significant measure of some.

As a part of the “Year of the Parent,” a commitment [Florida Governor Ron (R)] DeSantis has made to prioritize parental rights, DeSantis signed HB 1467, which includes several protections for parents, such as requiring school districts to allow parents to review all books in the school library, all required classroom book lists, and any instructional materials teachers use.

And

The new law requires school districts convening for the purpose of selecting instructional materials to post meeting notices and make them open to the public. They must also provide access to all materials at least 20 days prior to the school board taking official action on instructional materials, according to the new law. The Department of Education will also be required to publish a list of materials that have been removed or discontinued by school boards as a result of an objection and disseminate the list to school districts for their consideration.

Transparency—what a concept. We all still need, though, a resumption of the practice of parents occasionally sitting on a class their children are taking.

Tear It Down and Start Over

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It turns out the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control acted enthusiastically and frequently in the absence of data on the outcomes of its diktats guidelines. In particular, the CDC chose to act even though it lacked—and knew it lacked—

data on students’ learning loss when the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its COVID-19 school reopening guidance[.]

Even that early icon of medical sensibility, Anthony Fauci (of d National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases directorship and Wuhan Lab gain of function infamy) was warning the CDC of the uselessness of such things as six feet of separation requirements.

The CDC also was freely influenced by teachers union demands.

…NEA and the American Federations of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, influenced last-minute changes to the school guidance and received a copy before its public release.
The emails [at the link above] followed a New York Post report showing close coordination between the teachers unions and the CDC. APT [Americans for Public Trust] also obtained those emails through the Freedom of Information Act.
Before releasing the reopening guidance, the Biden administration considered teachers unions’ labor disputes

We need a function like that which the CDC used to serve, was designed to serve. The CDC no longer is that agency; it has become a science deficient, political, and union-influenced agency rather than a medical science advising agency, and it needs to be disbanded and dissolved, its personnel returned to the private sector.

A new facility needs to be set up in its place, with all new personnel, all drawn from the private sector—including the management team—all with practical, life-death, decision-making experience. No politicians, no dilettantes, no corporate executives need apply.

Idiocy

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David Cameron, once (and future?) British Prime Minister, thinks that if Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the upcoming G-20 meeting, everyone else should boycott the meeting.

Cameron griped, among other things that when Putin and then-President Barack Obama (D) attended the G-20 meetings in ’14 and ’15,

the conversations with Mr Putin were worse than pointless.

Then Cameron gave the game away, amusingly, without recognizing it.

What does or doesn’t happen at the G-20 won’t change the world.

Indeed. The G-20 is a coffee klatch wherein previously and behind the scenes decisions are announced. Otherwise, the gathering is just a see-and-be-scene show for the political glitterati of the developed world.

Conversations with Putin are, indeed, worse than pointless, but avoiding the G-20 because Putin shows up is the wrong answer.

Instead, boycott Putin, don’t waste time on conversations with him. Don’t interact with him at all. For those two seated next to him at dinners, they should turn their backs on him and converse with the dinner companions on the other side.

Boycotting the G-20 if he shows up would be just a toddler-ish face-spiting nose-cutting temper tantrum. Or a cowering away from the Big Bad Man.

A Campaign Issue

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Republican candidates for Senator Dr Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker (Pennsylvania and Georgia, respectively) have been ordered by President Joe Biden (D) to resign from their positions on President’s Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition “by the end of the day” or “face termination.

Both have refused.

Both, also, should wear their terminations as the badges of honor they will be, and they should use their terminations as campaign issues. Oz has the right of it:

Clearly, Joe Biden can’t be around anyone who doesn’t completely fall in line with his fear-mongering authoritarian one-size-fits-all COVID handling. I am proud of my service and will not resign.

It’s illustrative of Biden’s timidity and slowness to react to much of anything that he’s only now getting around to “ordering” the resignations. Did he truly think campaigning while serving was a problem, he would have made a request for their resignation the day after they announced their candidacies.

Biden did not.

Oblivious

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Nero fiddled, but in the modern world, President Joe Biden (D)…bicycles. And he’s not even doing it in the capital like Nero did; he’s ducking out to Delaware to take his rides. Meanwhile, Kyiv burns, Kharkhiv burns, Kherson burns, Mariupol is being razed to the ground, Lviv is getting missiles and bombs dropped on it, barbarians are bombing women, children, hospitals, schools, refugee convoys on routes the barbarians pretended to agree to leave alone. Much of Ukraine burns.

And then other nations that Russia President Vladimir Putin wants to conquer in order to reconstitute the Russian empire will burn. And the conflagration is likely to grow from there.

Bicycling is good exercise, and the physical effort is good for clearing the mind and momentarily relieving the stress of office, even for one who so dedicatedly ducks out on those stresses at every opportunity.

However, Biden doesn’t need to run off to Delaware’s coast every time he takes the notion to go for a bike ride. There’s a nice, five-mile circuit closer to home that he could use to his heart’s content, if he weren’t so insistent on getting out of town.

He could ride his bicycle from the White House up Pennsylvania Avenue to Constitution Avenue, then take 23rd Street NW to loop the Lincoln Memorial, then return along Independence Avenue to Maryland Avenue, and finish back at the White House.

Easy peasy.

But easier for this president [sic] to hie off to Delaware to duck away from the stresses of office. And to avoid facing the world.

Oh, yeah—there is this on his calendar for tomorrow:

Biden is slated to travel to Brussels, Belgium, this week for the March 24 NATO summit on Russia’s war in Ukraine[.]

No plans, though, to travel to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, like some eastern European heads of state did a few short days ago.

That would be a bicycle ride too much.