Tag Archives: politics

No Patriotism?

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The planning board for the upstate town of New Paltz has voted against saying the Pledge of Allegiance at its meetings after one of its members called it a “total waste of time.”

Because it’s such a waste to honor one’s country.

Board Member Amy Cohen wanted the board to recite the pledge at its bi-monthly meetings.

This is a government building, we have a flag here. Personally, coming in off the street to do our governance…I feel that it helps me kind of transition.

Vice Chair Lyle Nolan demurred.

It’s a pressure type of thing, because if you don’t stand, it looks like you’re against it and I don’t think we need that. We’re all adults. We’re all here to do a job[.]

Imagine that.  Government officials—all adults—feeling pressure over an expression of patriotism.

And this from Board Member Lagusta Yearwood:

…reciting an oath to the US flag “goes against the principles this country was founded on.”

Because patriotism has nothing at all to do with this country.

This has been another story in the annals of the Nanny State.

Precious Snowflakes

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A four-month investigation into a University of Kansas professor who used a racial slur in class has concluded the word was used in an educational context and not intended to be racist.

Assistant communication studies professor Andrea Quenette has been on paid leave since November, when a group of eight graduate students filed a discrimination complaint after she used the slur in response to a question in class.

Graduate students, no less.  Do they really let children into graduate school these days?

Quennette used whatever word it was—even Fox News shied away from saying what the word was as it reported the simple fact of its use in the article at the link (honky?  whitey? ??)—in the course of discussing events at another school in her—get this—communications class.

But the graduate school’s children—some of whom weren’t even present—spent their energies not on learning but on seeking out an excuse to feel offended.  They wrote in their…complaint…that

Dr Quenette’s deployment of racially violent rhetoric not only creates a non-inclusive environment in opposition to one of the University of Kansas’ core tenets, but actively destroys the very possibility of realizing those values and goals[.]

Apparently deploying actual education, arraying actual discussions of events, doesn’t produce safe spaces, but rather destroys the very possibility of realizing a serious education for these precious little ones.

Now the Bill Must Pass?

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The Georgia legislature has passed a bill and put it in front of the governor that would

protect pastors from performing same-sex marriages and give “faith-based” organizations permission to deny use of their business for anything they find “objectionable.” Businesses wouldn’t have to hire anyone whose religious beliefs are different from theirs[.]

The NFL doesn’t like that.

“NFL policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness, and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other improper standard,” league spokesman Brian McCarthy said. “Whether the laws and regulations of a state and local community are consistent with these policies would be one of many factors NFL owners may use to evaluate potential Super Bowl host sites.”

So, what else does that mean?  Would the NFL then require the Atlanta Falcons to leave Georgia, too?  Sounds like this is a dare that Georgia must accept: the governor must sign the bill.

Too Far

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In New York,

Instead of handing patients slips of paper, physicians soon must electronically send orders directly to pharmacies for everything from antibiotics to cholesterol pills to painkillers, with some exceptions. Otherwise, prescribers face the possibility of fines, license loss or even jail.

Because New York’s Know Betters know better.

However.

Digital prescribing thwarts prescription-slip forgery and theft….

They also expose the patient, the doctor, and the pharmacy to hacking.  Sort of like an IRS or an OMB hack we all know and love.

There are other downsides.

Patients, for instance, could accidentally have prescriptions sent to the wrong pharmacy or to one that has closed or out of stock by the time they arrive. Instead of taking a piece of paper to another pharmacy, patients have to get the doctor to re-issue the prescription or the pharmacy to transfer it.

It’s also harder for patients to shop around for medication deals when a script is in a pharmacy’s system instead of in hand, says Dr. Joseph R. Maldonado, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

And there’s the business of government meddling in a private enterprise’s internal affairs and here interfering with a doctor-patient admin function.

No matter how well intentioned, government cannot be allowed into a private business’ concerns.  New York still is being a nanny state.

In Which Mr Pollock Is On The Right Track

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Alex Pollock is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the R Street Institute, and he had a suggestion regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack.

The moment Fannie and Freddie have returned to the government cash equal to all the principal and a full 10% annual return [a goal to which F&F are very close], Congress should declare the Treasury’s senior preferred stock as retired,….

Following this, Fannie and Freddie would be very close to the non-government controlled private enterprises they should be.

But then Pollock veered off the track.

…and simultaneously that these companies be treated as systemically important financial institutions.

In a truly free market economy, there is no such thing as a systemically important financial institution; the very concept is a complete non sequitur.

Aside from that, designating these as SIFIs both would keep taxpayers on the hook to bail these institutions out the next time their poor judgment or bad luck straiten them, and it would increase the likelihood of their bankruptcy by reducing risk and thereby removing incentives to behave more cautiously and fiscally responsibly in that free market.