Tag Archives: responsibilities

Is the Question Irrelevant for Children?

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Toothpaste manufacturers put fluoride in their toothpaste and market that as good for tooth health. They also recommend, through their toothpaste labeling among other pathways, to use only “pea-sized” dabs for children under six and “rice-sized” dabs for children under three.

Associated with all of that are concerns that too much fluoride can negatively impact IQ scores. My question: are fluoride and the question of IQ impact really relevant for children?

For one thing, those tiny dabs are extremely hard to dole out in any consistent fashion, especially as children are taught to brush their own teeth (and to apply their own toothpaste to their brushes), and it’s easy to err by adding increasingly larger dabs.

For the more important thing, though, children’s teeth are impermanent and start to fall out and be replaced with adult, permanent teeth around six and a little older. Maybe the answer, at least regarding children, is to duck the question altogether and use non-flouridated toothpaste for these. At that age, the important task is to train them in tooth hygiene and regular brushing. Any toothpaste adequate to the task of cleaning teeth would serve.

An Example of Global Warming

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This one comes from a remark in an article centered on a partially built and then abandoned US military base in the frozen north of Greenland.

The base was part of an ambitious and clandestine Pentagon plan, known as Project Iceworm, to build a network of nuclear-missile launch sites beneath the Arctic ice. The underground site, which was designed to store 600 medium-range ballistic missiles, reveals the extent of US involvement in Greenland going back over half a century.

What happened to it, then?

Camp Century, as the outpost was called, was partially constructed in 1959, and abandoned in 1967 after the ice sheet was deemed too unstable to support the proposed missile-launch network.

Then this happened:

Over the years, ice accumulated and the facility is now buried under at least 100 feet of ice.

“Over the years” is 58 years (57 at the time it was rediscovered), and in that short time all that ice—not snow—built up over the site.

Oh, wait—that’s not an example of global warming, it’s an example of the foolishness of the “global warming” mantra of the mainstream Left.

Another Privileged University Entity?

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The subheadline says it all.

Members of Kappa Alpha Theta, one of the country’s oldest sororities, are fighting for their chosen philanthropy to get its federal funding back

“Their” Federal funding isn’t theirs, or their charity’s, at all. It’s our money, which our elected representatives are pleased to send to them. This is the entitlement attitude of far too many entities associated with our higher education institutions.

According to an April 23 statement by CASA/GAL [KAT’s charity partner], the organization lost its funding because its work did not uphold the department’s new priorities.

That’s reason enough to stop the taxpayer dollar transfers. Donors get to call the shots on how their donations get used, and if the recipient doesn’t want to align, the donations should stop. That includes the Federal government with our money.

Privileged or entitled—or both. It needs to stop, and one way to do that is to withdraw our tax dollars from these spoiled Precious Ones.

Price Fixing

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And this time it’s by the Republican caucus in the House. Among the moves they’re making in the reconciliation bill currently being debated in the various House committees is a badly needed move to reform the cost of college/university education and so improve the value of that education. The goal is to hold colleges accountable for student outcomes and curb the open-ended loan buffet.

The specific plan under consideration, though, is a terrible idea.

The House would reduce the aggregate limit for undergraduate loans to $50,000 from $57,500. The bill would also impose a $100,000 borrowing limit for master’s degree and doctoral programs and $150,000 for professional programs like law degrees. Graduate student loans are currently uncapped.

This is just price-fixing by another name, though, and worse than not addressing the underlying problem, it hides—like any price-fixing scheme does—the true costs and gains of the services being offered.

Better, and more efficient, would be to let free market forces solve the problem. I’ve offered this alternative before; it bears repeating, with a couple of additions.

• statutorily require colleges and universities to publish the average, median, and range of income at the five years employment mark for their graduates in each of the major fields offered
• [added] statutorily require colleges and universities to publish their graduates’ employment percentages at the five year post-graduation mark for each of the major fields’ graduates
• statutorily require student loans to be originated by private lenders or colleges and universities
• statutorily require colleges and universities to guarantee at least 50% of each loan granted their students [added:] by private lenders
• [added] bar any government or government-affiliated entity from guaranteeing any part of any student loan
• statutorily allow current and future student loans to be discharged in “ordinary” bankruptcy proceedings

With private lenders and colleges/universities having skin in this student loan game—and being the only players in the game—loans and their borrowers would be carefully screened for repayment risk. Just as importantly, prospective students and parents could better evaluate which majors to pursue and which schools best teach those majors. A happy side effect of that will be better use of us taxpayers’ money.

Demonstrating her Naked Bias

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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is at it again. At a recent “judges’ conference” in Puerto Rico, she said this about “relentless attacks” on judges “designed to intimidate:”

The attacks are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity. The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.

So far, so good. She’s decrying attacks by the likes of then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) on two Supreme Court Justices he specifically named. She’s decrying the smear campaign against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Right?

No. She went on, speaking to judges, not those who threaten them:

I urge you to keep going, keep doing what is right for our country, and I do believe that history will vindicate your service[.]

There it is. Jackson has prejudged cases currently before activist (my term) district judges who’ve overstepped their roles and are looking to dictate foreign policy from their benches, presaging how she’ll rule when any of those cases come before the Supreme Court.