Because It’s Illegal

There are a number of us in my community who are working at improving our school district, trying to get more parent-responsive schoolboard members, trying to get more school choice, trying to get rid of SEL, CRT,and sexualizing materials from our schools. One person in the group pointed us to a video clip from a Michael Knowles show, in which Knowles highlights a dad in upstate New York who addresses his school board in an exemplary way.

 

Michael Knowles highlights a parent addressing a school board,
screenshot from here

The dad sets up a scenario: your 15-year-old daughter’s birthday party. Would you give her this particular book—it was Girl in Translation—and he reads a passage from it. [This book is in my school district's libraries, by the way.] The passage depicts a sex scene in graphic detail. Then he asks, in the same level, unemotional tone, would they give that book to their daughter? Would they read that to her? He notes that their reaction of revulsion shows they would not. And yet the book is in the schools for 10^th-graders, coinciding with that hypothetical 15-year-old daughter.

Then he read them the US Department of Justice’s statement on their website concerning laws on obscenity. He simply points out that having the book available to minors is in violation of the US code, implying to those with ears to hear that, if they don’t clear up this problem, they will be liable and should maybe lawyer up.

Here in Texas we’ve been working through the legislature—without success thus far—to eliminate the “obscenity exemption,” which allows images or descriptions that would otherwise be considered pornographic to be allowed for educational purposes. The intention of the exemption has been to allow diagrams, etc., for health science and sex education. But it has been used as a cover for anything; once a book is in the school, you call it educational, even if it would get you charged elsewhere.

Novels, including graphic novels, are not used for science and sex ed. In our school district, those particular books are disallowed from use for sex ed by the SHAC committee (school health advisory committee).

So this got me thinking: we don’t have to depend on getting rid of that obscenity exemption. The schools are already in violation of US federal laws against providing porn to minors. And they’re against the Texas code as well.

Maybe we could use this law approach to get rid of these books in schools—starting with speaking up at school board meetings. And I would assume that might need to be followed up with lawsuits—criminal prosecutions, or civil suits wherever local prosecutors fail to follow through with criminal prosecutions.

To that end, I’m looking at what could be said at school board meetings. And maybe this can be a template for parents of other school districts to use.

In our district, community members get typically two minutes to speak, so what I have below may need to be divided up for multiple speakers. I’ll be showing materials related specifically to my district. But the books mentioned are widely used across the country. You should be able to go to your school district website and find out what books are available in the libraries. And you should also be able to track down your district’s policies for getting obscene books removed from libraries.

So, consider what is below to be addressing the local school board.

 

The Law

Suppose some nefarious person decided to illustrate a classic piece of literature—let’s say a collection of Keats poetry—with pornographic images. Would the book qualify as literature because of the literary value of the poems? Or would it qualify as pornographic because of those images?

The answer is, literature does not elevate the pornography to the level of literature; the pornography degrades the otherwise inspiring poetry into a work of pornography.

This is a matter of law.

According to the US Department of Justice website, which I’ve included in your handout: 

“transmitting obscenity and child pornography, whether via the Internet or other means, is…illegal under federal law for both adults and juveniles.”

Obscenity is not protected speech under the First Amendment. Violations are criminal offenses. Also, the standard for what is harmful to minors may be different from the standard for adults, and offenders convicted of obscenity crimes involving minors face harsher penalties than if the crimes involved only adults. I suggest you read the statement in your handout.

Department of Justice information page on Obscenity

The Texas Penal Code, also in your handout, explicitly defines obscene as depicting “offensive representations of ultimate sexual acts, normal or perverted, actual or simulated.” Also included are depictions or descriptions of other lewd acts. I’ll let you read the details.

Texas Penal Code 43:21

Note that none of these defined violations is allowed if you just couch it in enough non-sexual material. One example in one book is enough to be in violation of the law.

 

Process for Removing Obscenity from Schools

I understand that Cy-Fair ISD has a process called “Request for Formal Reconsideration of Library Materials,” which was updated in November 2022 and put into use January 2023. 

After identifying yourself and your relationship to the district, and the particular book in question, the first question on the request form is: 

“Have you reviewed the resources in their entirety? (If not, please do so before completing and submitting this form.)”

If a book is 150 pages long, and you’re reading through and find one example of explicit sex—which meets the statute’s definition of pornography—you do not need to read the remaining pages to know that the book contains material that should not be made available to minors.

If someone made a cake with excrement in it, would you require that a person eat the entire cake before they can speak to complain about the foul ingredient? If there is obscenity in it, it does not matter what else is in it; you cannot justify providing it to minors.

This is not merely an assumption. We have had brave parents who have read the materials in full, filled out all your forms for the formal request for reconsideration, and then patiently waited.

The chart included in your handout shows seven books that have been through the process. All of these contain multiple, pervasive examples of obscenity, some in written form, some in graphic illustrations. The examples are unmistakably inappropriate for children. But the response from the review committees, expressed by letter from the school principals, is that each of these examples is “educationally appropriate” and will be retained in the schools where our children can access them. I’m unaware of any obscene books that have been removed via this process.

The chart is a compilation of materials provided by Bethany Scanlon in multiple blog posts
at the Conservative CFISD volunteer blog, where there is a post for each of these seven books,
including multiple photos of examples from each book, as well as the letters of response.

This is not something we can agree to disagree on. It is illegal to provide pornography to minors. You are doing so. You have librarians who choose and acquire these books. You have committees of people justifying them—in private meetings without minutes, in violation of the open meetings act, despite the AG’s directive that you provide names and minutes.

These hidden committees seem to be misunderstanding the law. They disregard the obscenity, because they like the gritty realism, or they don’t think there’s enough to call it pervasive, or they offer some other justification.

These books do not qualify as sex ed; the district’s SHAC committee has ruled against using them for that purpose, so you cannot hide behind an obscenity exemption.

 

Damage to Children

Another question on your Request for Reconsideration form asks how we found the problem book, as if hearing about it from another community member is some sort of campaign you can ignore, and you only have to listen if our own child found it in the school, meaning damage is already done to our child.

Yet another of your questions asks what damage we see could result from the book—as if we have to come up, from scratch, with the arguments that led Congress to outlaw giving porn to children. We already know it does harm.

It is disingenuous for the proponents of providing pornography to children to claim we concerned parents are the book banners—as if we were trying to eliminate Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird from our libraries. We are not talking about First Amendment freedoms. We’re talking about illegal materials that we all know are harmful and cause trauma to children; that is why the laws are written to particularly protect children.

If the Cy-Fair ISD schools that have refused to remove these materials from their libraries are following your own policy requirements, they are providing the complaint, the book, and their response to the superintendent and the school board, which must mean the superintendent and school board can call into question the final decision. That also means this superintendent and school board can be held liable for breaking the law—in addition to the librarians and staff who procured the materials for the purpose of making them available to minors, and the principals who approved their retention.

Your process for reconsideration has provided evidence. Failure to immediately correct these serious errors puts you personally at risk of prosecution.

The Answer to Whodunit

Colonel Mustard with revolver image found here

Suppose you had a murder take place, and you want to know "Whodunnit" (who done it). You gather a whole lot of evidence, and nearly all of it points to a particular perpetrator: Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the revolver, say. But what you don’t have is Colonel Mustard coming out and verifying your findings. He’s not willing to show you evidence that it was him; he’s not even showing you evidence that would give him an alibi. As the detective, do you make an arrest and bring forth the case, or do you shrug your shoulders and say, “Well, I guess we’ll never know for certain, because he’s not giving us the final proof"? In just about any crime novel—as well as any real life case—you bring forth the overwhelming evidence you’ve got and see if it convinces a jury beyond reasonable doubt.

For reasons that we can only speculate about, the intelligence community—that mixture of three-letter agencies involved in gathering information and figuring out what’s happening in the world—can’t seem to tell us basic things like where the COVID-19 pandemic started. Despite all the evidence.

A couple of major pieces of information came out this week. One was a Congressional hearing, in the now-GOP-led House. Another was a committee report from a Senate investigation. Both say approximately the same thing: this was a virus created in a lab in Wuhan, China, where gain-of-function in viruses were being worked on, and that leaked from that lab.

Here is what former DNI John Ratcliffe said in his opening statement at the hearing, in its entirety, because this about says it all (I got it from a Robert Gouveia video; the link is queued up to where he starts speaking; Gouveia makes some good commentary here and there):

It’s a pleasure for me to be back in the House of Representatives, where I spent six years serving on the House Intelligence, Judiciary, and Homeland Security committees before leaving Congress when I was confirmed by the Senate to serve as the Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration.

My confirmation was actually the first in-person Senate hearing after the COVID-19 pandemic began, and during it I promised to ensure that the intelligence community would be laser focused on getting answers to the virus’s origins and spread.

What follows is a brief unclassified overview of what the intelligence community learned and knows, a synopsis of the relevant challenges that I encountered during this effort, and where I believe we must go from here.

First, let me state the bottom line up front. My informed assessment as a person with as much access as anyone to our government’s intelligence during the initial year of the pandemic has been and continues to be that a lab leak is the only explanation credibly supported by our intelligence, by science, and by common sense.

From a view inside the IC [intelligence community], if our intelligence and evidence supporting a lab leak theory was placed side by side with our intelligence and evidence pointing to a natural origin or spillover theory, the lab leak side of the ledger would be long, convincing, even overwhelming, while the spillover side would be nearly empty and tenuous. Were this a trial, a preponderance of circumstantial evidence provided by our intelligence would compel a jury finding of guilt to an accusation that coronavirus research in the Wuhan labs was responsible for the pandemic. And likewise, the Chinese Community Party would be guilty of going to great lengths to cover up the virus’s origins—from destroying medical tests, samples, and data to intimidating and disappearing witnesses and journalists, to lying and coercing global health authorities, even spreading propaganda that the virus originated here in the United States by the US military.

Their efforts continue to this day, as the Chinese Embassy has formally objected to this hearing and this committee’s efforts to ascertain the truth. And the Chinese government has done all of this while proving itself incapable of offering even a shred of exculpatory evidence.

The intelligence community’s sources on this issue are numerous, diverse, and unassailable. And I hope that the recent unanimous Congressional ??? to require the declassification of our COVID origins material will make some of this available to you and the American people.

Right now, a few of the intelligence community’s agencies are publicly assessing that the COVID-19 virus originated from a lab leak in Wuhan. And as this shift continues, the day will come when every single agency in the IC will make the same assessment. Which begs the question: Why have they not? It’s a simple and obvious question that does not have a simple answer.

The challenges that I and other senior Trump administration officials encountered while in office included legitimate concerns about our closely held sources and methods of intelligence, as well as illegitimate roadblocks that related to professional conflicts of interest and partisan politics. These included the headwinds created when a lab leak assessment was initially labeled falsely and falsely reported with near unanimity as a conspiracy theory by conflicted science, scientists, and by mainstream press, while also being censored as disinformation by social media giants.

Internally, national and electoral politics were also influencing the analysis of our intelligence on China within the IC, as reflected in the January 6, 2021, report by the intelligence community’s analytic ombudsman. As a career non-political official, the ombudsman found, “Analysts appeared reluctant to have their analysis on China brought forward, because they tend to disagree with the Trump administration’s policies, saying in effect, ‘I don’t want our intelligence used to support those policies.’”

To this day, the CIA, which I believe is unquestionably the world’s premiere spy agency, with an unrivaled capacity to acquire information, has continued to state that it does not have enough information to make any formal assessment. To put it bluntly, I think this is unjustifiable and a reflection, not that the agency can’t make an assessment with any confidence, but that it won’t.

Some three and a half years later, the only plausible assessment the agency could make with any level of confidence is that a virus which killed over a million Americans originated in a Chinese lab whose research included work for the Chinese military. And such an assessment would obviously have enormous geopolitical implications that I believe the current administration does not want to face.

Let me close by saying that I think that the search for the truth should drive where we go from here. And everyone, from our intelligence agencies to members of the administration to members of Congress, to public health officials, should put politics aside and let our intelligence speak the truth about what happened—speak the truth to the Americans, who deserve that truth, deserve justice, and deserve accountability. And only by seeking truth, justice, and accountability for this pandemic can we achieve the other equally important goal of preventing the next pandemic.

Former DNI John Ratcliffe, at House investigation hearing,
screenshot from here

He goes on to answer questions, but that will do for now. The other main information source this week was the Senate special committee’s Muddy Waters: The Origins of Covid-19 Report. For a little light reading, you can find the 21-page executive summary here.  And for the full 300-page report, go here. 

Dr. John Campbell goes over the report, in his usual calm and businesslike style, highlighting the details without too much commentary, which has allowed him to report things without getting banned on YouTube through the duration.

By the way, he’s willing to say he believes the leak was unintentional, and that the coverup has mainly to do with the Chinese desire to save face. He doesn’t think they would have leaked it on purpose, allowing the world to see them in a bad light. The Muddy Waters report also calls it unintentional: “The preponderance of circumstantial evidence supports an unintentional research-related incident.” I haven’t read the totality yet, but there’s the additional behavior of the Chinese allowing travel in and out of Wuhan—but not allowing travel into the rest of the country—causing the spread to the rest of the world. It also appears that the infection began to spread at least a month before originally reported.

Another interesting Dr. Campbell video this week related to a German report on the weird fibrous clots being found in corpses in the last couple of years. They have traced them to the vaccine and ruled out the virus as a cause.

There’s more. On Wednesday, Judicial Watch said it has received documents showing that the NIH granted funding “for experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that sought to create mutant coronavirus variants.” Just the News story here. You can find the 552 pages of documents here. 

The details and documentation are mounting. But these are things we “knew” early on. That is, we had enough evidence to suppose we knew. The documentary Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus, done by Epoch Times reporter Joshua Philipp in April 2020, lays out the case for the lab leak and hasn’t been refuted.

What seems puzzling is why it isn’t obvious to more people—regardless of the media and political lies. There’s a good discussion of this (on American Though Leaders with Jan Jekielek for EpochTV) by Debbie Lerman, a self-described “socialist liberal Democrat,” who saw the falsehoods pretty much from the beginning, by reading the research and asking questions. Her friends refused to even allow her to ask questions without the accusation that she was suddenly a MAGA Trump supporter.

She refers to four things that had to be aligned for the deceptive story to spread: “panic, politics, propaganda and profits, the four P’s.” She walks us through those four, and how they each played out.

Debbie Lerman, screenshot from here

I wondered how those would compare to the four things that played into mass formation, described by Mattias Desmet:

1.       a lot of people experiencing a lack of social bonds, a lack of social connectedness.

2.       a lot of people who experience a lack of meaning making.

3.       a lot of people who experience a lot of free-floating anxiety.

4.       a lot of free-floating frustration and aggression.

It seems to me, his four things had to be in place for the four P’s of Lerman to play out. Because we had a lot of people lacking social bonds and meaning making, with anxiety and frustration, then the perpetrators of the pandemic mass formation were able to cause the panic, tie it to politics, control the message with censorship, and allow profits to flow in.

Speaking of profits, the 4^th “P,” the WHO, one of the perpetrators of the deception, is attempting to amend its treaty of 2005. Not good. (Another good Dr. John Campbell video about this here.) It is to give them greater unaccountable power over all the nations of the earth. Supposedly they are supported by funding from the various nations. But right now two of the top donors, one of which is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, combine to be the highest donor. And donors get to say what the WHO policies will be. After the manipulations we’ve been through in the last few years, this absolutely must not happen.

So, we have more information. And truth is powerful. It eventually wins. We can hope that, as people wake up from the mass formation, or deception, we can provide them with a huge supply of truth. Other than succumbing to the tyranny, it’s the only way to get through such times.

Stop Paying for Failure

Wednesday night I got to hear from our three newest, conservative school board members. One of them told this story:

I’ve got a friend of mine. He and I went to school together. He was the failure in our class. That man today owns a barbershop three blocks from my school. Right down the road. He was the number one problem kid in my class. Two years behind me. Number one problem kid. Today he owns a barbershop.

Today, the number one problem in my 7^th grade wanted to work for him. And when he went, and he had a failing grade in that school, on his report card, that man said, “You cannot work for me until you pass.” That young man got his grade to passing. The second he got his grade of passing, he ran the three blocks—left school, ran three blocks—to get to that barber shop and hold up his report card and say, “I passed!” (applause. Someone calls out “Expectations!”)

Expectations. Because that man, being in that young man’s life, said, “I will not allow you to continue to fail yourself—until you get that straight….” And the young man figured it out.

I want to come back to this story.

Scott Henry, Luke Scanlon, and Natalie Blasingame,
three of our school board members,
at a community gathering Wednesday, April 12, 2023

On Monday night our school board met. I watched it online while finishing my work for the day. Near the end they held a vote related to the board’s support of a position to oppose any state funding going to any voucher or school choice program.

During their discussions, one of the board members asked for clarification. There’s already a limited ESA [education savings account] program in place for certain special education students; the way this is worded, would it include eliminating that funding? It would have, so they reworded to carve out that exception. He has a special needs student himself and has a special place in his heart for their care.

Once that exception was made as an amendment, that left him with no visible reason to go against the policy—which the board’s discussion had made clear was wrong on its face, because it could divert funds from public schools, which already need more funding. So they held the vote. Five voted in favor, including two of our new conservative board members. One abstained, and one was absent. So it passed. Since I strongly favor school choice, and have been following the legislature, I was disappointed to see this.

Wednesday night I had a brief moment to talk about this with the board member who abstained. She said not to worry about it; the bill is very likely to pass in the legislature. This was just a game the board is playing, I think she meant, to try to force conservative members to oppose school choice.

There are plenty of questions about the legislation. There are bills related to employing an ESA program, with limited funds that would affect maybe 60,000 students statewide. Small school districts would be paid, I think for up to three years, for any student that leaves to take advantage of the program. This is to calm rural district fears that they would lose school funding that they have no way to make up—rural districts whose legislators have consistently shut down any possibility of school choice over many legislative sessions. So this might work to get through the limited trial.

Meanwhile, in the budget bill in the legislature, opponents to school choice stuck in an amendment saying no state funding could go to any schooling except public schools. (This amendment is what the local school board was supporting.) I’ve been assured that this will get taken out during reconciliation. I hope that’s true, because it’s in direct opposition to the other ESA legislation that is likely to pass. 

The same school board member who told the story above, also pointed out this statistic for our district: only 44% of 3^rd graders are reading at grade level. This is the average across the district, including all demographics. Far below half can read at the minimum level required to be considered acceptable for their grade level.

Teaching reading is not that difficult an undertaking. All but the most severely disabled can learn to read. Nearly all Down Syndrome kids learn to read. Some take longer than others. But, without some interference or neglect, most kids can learn to read. In fact, most kids can figure out the phonetic code well before the end of first grade—unless they’re not taught the phonetic code.

But not in our public schools in this relatively prosperous suburb of northwest Houston. Here, far under half are reading at a 3^rd grade level in 3^rd grade—probably because they didn’t figure it out in 1^st grade.

The one basic thing we expect from schools is that kids learn to read. Our school board  pointed out that math is reading. Every problem is a word problem. If you don’t learn to read, you also fail math.

By the way, another school board member said that across the state, across all our curriculum, only 19% meets grade level. Our district, Cy-Fair Independent School District, has an A rating, even though it's teaching less than half of students to read. But I guess the rest of Texas is failing even more catastrophically.

One more story. I’ve told this in more detail. But I had three kids in this district. Two of them had already been functioning well in a gifted magnet school in the state we moved from. This district thought they might not qualify (they did). And our daughter qualified as well. But this exclusive program the district thought they probably wouldn’t qualify for was essentially nonexistent.

Back in the day, I got a year of calculus in high school. We had two classrooms full of calculus students, close to 8% of the graduating class. Here in Texas there wasn’t a track my kids could get on that would allow them to take calculus in high school. Advanced math, by that point in high school, was considered an elective. So were foreign language, music, and PE. They offered one gifted class, a different version of world history—also elective. A kid was only allowed up to two electives in their four-year high school plan, and the district’s recommended plan was zero electives.

The basic education I got back in the 70s, before a Department of Education even existed, with three AP classes and plenty of options, simply wasn’t available for gifted students in this district. So, after two frustrating and stultifying years, we pulled them out and homeschooled.

Private school wasn’t an option. We didn’t have the additional funds for one student, let alone three. That was for the best, since homeschooling—and later combined with dual credit classes at the community college—was the best fit for our family and our kids with their particular quirks. Gifted kids are special ed, I think I mentioned. They need to be taught differently. We could accommodate that. It can be done in a classroom; we saw that in our previous state. But nobody here seems to know how or care to bother. After all, those kids are smart enough to learn to read and do math no matter how little you offer them, right?

Right. In this case because our kids had parents who cared and took on the responsibility. What did that mean for the schools? They didn’t have to bother with our kids anymore—but they still get our tax money. They get a per-student amount of money, so they didn’t get to count our three kids. But the overall amount is budgeted based on taxes. And they got ours. Meanwhile we paid in addition for the education of our children. No tax break to us. No stipend.

The purpose of education is to prepare the next generation of students to be good, contributing community members—not to preserve a particular government institution called public schools. So their failure to teach my kids is a mission failure. It's not about the money; it's about the principle.

What happens to them when they fail? They claim they need more money in order to improve.

Over the years the per-child amount has tripled or more—since my kids were there. It has grown much faster than inflation. And yet the results are abysmal. It looks as though the more money you give them, the more they will fail.

Is it possible that, at some upper backroom level, the plan is to fail? In the case of my kids, the more they fail them, the less is required of them and the more money they get. And the more money it costs parents who take responsibility for the education of their children.

Back to that story I told at the beginning, of the boy who was failing. He was told he couldn’t have the paying job he wanted until he stopped failing himself in school. That was the incentive he needed. He needed someone who cared to hold him accountable.

Maybe our failing schools shouldn’t be paid for failing. Maybe they need to have an actual and real threat of loss of money when they fail. Maybe then they would focus on the basics that are essential: reading, writing, math—and, as is required of homeschoolers, good citizenship. Schools don’t need to teach sex education at all. We can argue in favor of science, music, arts, PE—when a student is a successful reader.

How do we pull the funding for failing schools? ESAs might be a way. Thirty-two other states have tried some form of ESAs, in some 72 programs, and the result has been—not a sudden exodus from the local public schools, but an improvement in public schools.

Prager U has a video, explaining why public schools should favor school choice. This is the best 5-minute video you’ll watch today.

The video highlights Texas. Will this be the year we finally get a tiny amount of “the money follows the child” in Texas? We’re so far behind where we should be, we ought to abandon any fear that schools might lose the funding they need. Funding they need to do what? Keep failing? The status quo is absolutely unacceptable. Other states have tried this, and the result was significant improvement—in their public schools, not just for individual students.

The state is not the parent. The state should get out of the way of parents who are responsible for the education decisions for their own children. The bonus is that doing so will improve the educational outcomes for the whole state.

The Politicization of the Judicial System

A New York court indicted former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday, March 30, 2023. That’s historic. A former president has never been indicted.

Trump speaks at rally in Waco, TX, March 25, 2023.
Getty image by Brandon Bell, found here

You’d think for this historic moment to happen, it would be for some extremely nefarious act, like using his influence with foreign nations for profit in ways that hurt the United States (like Joe Biden has actually done). But no. It’s for a non-crime. It’s for what appears to be a possible error in bookkeeping, which couldn’t be more than a misdemeanor, and on which the statute of limitations passed years ago.

However, there’s some loophole, if they can connect the dots, claiming that the misdemeanor was committed with the intention of being able to accomplish a federal criminal act, then they can extend the statute of limitations. However, it’s a state misdemeanor and state court; they do not typically adjudicate federal crimes. Not to worry. They’re just glad to be of service—by prosecuting this “crime” that multiple federal and state officials have passed on, because it takes some contortion to frame it as a crime at all.

 

What Was the Crime?

What are the details? Well, the indictment is under seal and hasn’t been leaked yet, so we don’t know all the counts. But the prosecutors claim that Trump paid hush money to a porn star just before the 2016 election to keep her from talking about a long-ago supposed affair, and that he did that to affect the election, and then he called it legal fees.

So the underlying misdemeanor is calling something legal fees instead of hush money. Hush money, by the way, is not illegal. In this case both Trump and the porn star calling herself Stormy Daniels say that the affair never happened. Despite Trump’s history as a lothario, committing adultery during previous marriages, this particular affair seems implausible to people who know him. It supposedly happened when his wife, Melania, was pregnant with son Barron, who is now in his teens and taller than his dad. So Trump was younger enough then for more plausibility. However, people who know him point out both that he is a germophobe and that he has a certain style preference, and a porn star is not that style nor level of cleanliness. A more likely story is that lawyer Avenatti, who has specialized in blackmail for a living and is currently serving a 14-year prison term, threatened put out the story, releasing it to the media right before the election when he wouldn’t have time to defend himself—unless he paid. Blackmailing is a crime; paying a blackmailer is not.

Trump’s lawyer/fixer, Michael Cohen, probably said he could take care of it. He may or may not have gotten instructions from Trump on how to do that; he may not have asked for instructions. The easiest and quickest way, and possibly even the cheapest way was to pay her off. It was $130,000. To a billionaire, that is probably in the range of worth it to make a problem disappear. Cohen paid the fee—the blackmail—out of his own funds and then charged Trump for the legal services—time and expenses.

Did it help with the election? Maybe, but not necessarily. Just before the 2016 election, the tapes of him in locker room talk about women practically throwing themselves at people like him came out. But they made nary a blip in the polls. That kind of past was baked in with Donald Trump. He had a reputation as a billionaire playboy, not a churchgoer. Second, the tape didn’t say he actually took advantage of women in that way, just that it was possible to. Anyway, the public didn’t seem to care. Chances are this Stormy Daniels thing would have been dismissed in much the same way, as irrelevant to the current election.

And it is just as likely—or more so—that Trump would not want Melania to have to hear the accusations, from years ago, with someone so inferior to her in beauty and class.

Then there’s the fact that Trump paid Cohen with his own money. He is allowed to use unlimited funds of his own in a campaign. But he’s also allowed to use his own money to “make problems go away,” as in paying off a blackmailer if it’s not worth going through the alternatives.

So there is no federal crime for the supposed state misdemeanor to connect with, and that means the state misdemeanor passed the statute of limitations and shouldn’t be prosecuted at all. And if it hadn’t passed that deadline, it would be worthy only of a fine, not a big news indictment, perp walk arrest, jail time, and eventual show trial.

So why are they doing it? We call it Trump Derangement Syndrome, and that seems to be quite a real affliction. But it’s more than that. Trump represents us, the people of the United States who do not easily submit to the tyranny of the elites. He’s just the symbol. They hit him; that is how they hit us—and warn us that, if they can do it to him, they can do it to us, so we’d better learn to shut up and submit.

As President Trump puts it, “They’re not coming after me; they’re coming after you. And I’m just standing in their way.”

Trump’s refusal to submit galls them. They think that with him out of the way, the rest of us would fold. Because they do not know the real American people.

 

The Talking Point Giveaway

There’s a talking point the opposition to freedom is using—that no one is above the law, which we can agree with, even though we know they don’t mean it; and that it was on a small crime, like tax evasion, that they finally got Al Capone, even though they knew he was guilty of a great many heinous crimes that they couldn’t prove. There’s a difference. They haven’t got something as big as tax fraud here. And they don’t have a long list of heinous crimes they can’t prove because of reasons like no one willing to testify against Capone. So those using this talking point are giving themselves away as Deep Staters, which may be relevant when power shifts back to the American people.

These Deep Staters do have a list; it’s just not of real crimes:

·        He colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election—actually that was a lie paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

·        He had a phonecall with the president of Ukraine asking for dirt on his opponent, Joe Biden, for which he was impeached and acquitted—actually, when we all heard the phonecall, it was obvious he hadn’t done what they had accused, but was warning the Ukrainian president about possible corruption, for which there is now proof on the Hunter Biden laptop.

·        He is a racist who said white supremacists were good people—actually, in reference to the conversation about the confederate flag he said there were good people on both sides, which was obvious to anyone who heard what he actually said instead of what they claimed he meant.

·        He cleared protesters from a church for a photo op—actually that never happened. The police cleared the area earlier, where there had been some violence. It was clear already, and his going there later that evening had nothing to do with its being cleared.

·        He refused to accept the results of the 2020 election—this is true, but it is not illegal. A candidate can question the results and ask for remedy. There are many possible ways for that to be handled. In this case, some legal means were tried, but for reasons we don’t yet understand the courts refused to see the evidence. Most of the country looks at Biden winning and asks, “How could that have happened?” The final remedy was to be at the counting of conflicting slates of electors on January 6, a legal means the Democrats had attempted several times this century.

·        He made a phonecall to the Georgia Secretary of State asking him to “find more votes” related to the Georgia Senate runoff. This one is in court. But the call was recorded, and it appears to a fair-minded person that he was trying to get an accurate count of the votes, not get fake votes added in.

·        He instigated an insurrection on January 6, 2021—actually, he encouraged people to come for a peaceful rally. He was still speaking a mile from the capitol when some violence started. His speech was on video and recorded, and we can all witness that he never called for violence, only peaceful protest. When he later became aware that there was some rioting, he tweeted a message for everyone to go home; we need peace—Twitter deleted it, and deleted his entire account. His press secretary then put out a video message letting people know the President was calling for peace and for people to go home; it was deleted as well.

o     Even though he was out of office, they impeached him for this, but failed in this second impeachment—again for lack of evidence that he had done anything wrong.

o     Trials are ongoing for people who entered the capitol that day. It seemed likely from the beginning and is becoming clearer that this was likely a false flag operation; agent provocateurs were instigating violence. There were many paid confidential human sources (essentially FBI agents and/or informants) were involved and actually trying to increase the violence.

o     It was not a violent insurrection. There was no insurrection—no takeover of the government. No one has been charged with insurrection. The very few who have been charged with seditious conspiracy are beginning to appear to be victims of a setup. No police officers were killed by the rioters. It may be that no officers were severely injured. One protester, Ashli Babbitt, was killed at point blank range by a capitol police officer, while she was unarmed. Another woman appears to have been beaten to death by police, but other protesters along with other police tried unsuccessfully to revive her; her death is called natural, possibly because of a drug overdose.

o     Additional security was offered by President Trump, knowing the crowd was going to be very large, but refused by Capitol Police, Nancy Pelosi, and DC Mayor Muriel Bowser.

o     There are multiple anomalies, like the planting of the bomb at DNC headquarters not showing up on the surveillance video. And the more capitol surveillance video that comes out—which was withheld from defendants—the more it seems obvious the police allowed people in, they walked through peacefully, and then they left. Very little damage was done. Business continued that evening. There was no insurrection. There were no arms. And there was no planning for an insurrection.

·        He had classified government documents in his possession after leaving office—actually, as president he had the unilateral power to declassify; also, he does not lose his top secret clearance upon leaving office. Also, he was cooperating with Archives to return any documents they asked for. They knew where he was keeping them—locked, under video surveillance and his secret service detail. Yet they raided Mar-a-Lago and tried to claim he was illegally holding classified documents, possibly for the purpose of betraying the country. It has been very inconvenient for them that Joe Biden has documents stashed all over the place, from as far back as his days as senator. And former VP Pence also has some. Neither of them had power to declassify.

These things they’re accusing him of aren’t just hard to prove—like Al Capone calling for a hit on someone; these things never happened. They can’t seem to come up with anything heinous. In fact, for someone involved in real estate in New Jersey, where a person might have had to deal with crime bosses, Trump has an astoundingly clean record. He might be right; he might be the most innocent person they’ve ever accused. Well, with the exception of all those J6 “insurrectionists” languishing in solitary confinement for taking a tour of the capitol on the wrong day.

 

What Next?

What is going to happen from here? I expect the New York jury will find him guilty, even though the evidence will prove that he is not. Then there will be appeals, eventually to a level that is not replete with people suffering from TDS, and then he will be exonerated.

I expect other cases to continue as well, with similar results.

By the way, indictment in these cases does not mean he cannot run for president. So I guess they’re hoping that just the stain of being indicted will be off-putting enough for him to lose support.

The airport rally crowd at Waco, TX, March 25, 2023
image from Donald J. Trump for President campaign, found here

But it might be the opposite. It might be that there are voters who are tired of the drama surrounding Trump and were willing to be looking at other candidates. But now they see that this is a line that cannot be crossed without consequence. The only way to protect all of us from these evil tyrants is to fight them, to vote for the one person who will stand up to them—stand up to them for us. So it’s likely to backfire and actually strengthen support for him. In between his announcement and the indictment, he had his first official campaign rally, in Waco, Texas, last Saturday, where the worst thing the media could say about it was that the crowd wasn’t as big as he claimed—their usual. (Epoch Times places the crowd count at around 25,000.) By the way, the rally was on the 30^th anniversary of the Branch Davidian standoff, at which law enforcement burned the place down, killing women and children inside. Some say that’s a call to right-wingers to revolt; or, it could be a way of pointing out who the tyrants are.

I’m wondering about the announcement Trump made about the indictment ahead of time. He gave people a chance to find out the details of the case and prepare. He put the accusers in a bad situation. First they claimed he didn’t know what he was talking about; they had no definite plans to indict—because they didn’t want him to be right. But then they were setting up barricades as though expecting (hoping for) large protests or riots in the streets. Then they sent the grand jury home. And we thought maybe they realized their case was too weak to move ahead. But then they felt like they had to move ahead or lose face. So they indicted. In other words, was Trump controlling the entire situation?

One more thing. They have set a precedent: a former president can be indicted. While some people express concern that this will cause a tit for tat political prosecution the other way when power eventually changes parties, it is also possible that actual crimes will be revealed and prosecuted—no matter how high up the perpetrator might be. That will be a good thing. But it will also be ugly and messy and very full of drama. As the scriptures say, with much “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Resources

News will continue to come out. My commentary is mainly to help me think through and try to understand this history as it’s happening. Here are a few sources I went to the first day:

·        “Trump indicted by N.Y. grand jury, first ex-president charged with crime” story by Shayna Jacobs, Jacqueline Alemany, Josh Dawsey, and Devlin Barrett for the Washington Post, March 30, 2023. 

·        “Former President Donald Trump indicted by Manhattan grand jury” by Carlos Garcia for The Blaze, March 30, 2023. 

·        “TRUMP INDICTED” Robert Gouveia podcast, March 30, 2023. 

·        Bourbon with Barnes livestream March 30, 2023. 

·        “Ep 3033b – [DS] Lost The Court Of Public Opinion, The Bait Has Been Set, Years Of Planning” X22 Report, March 30, 2023 (before the indictment). 

·        “Ep 3034b – Bait Taken, Hunters Now Become The Hunted, Precedent, Pandora’s Box Has Been Opened” X22 Report March 31,2023. 

 

Real Parental Choice in Education

Whose responsibility is it to educate the children of the rising generation? The parents. That is the most local level—the family, the basic unit of civilization.

It is not the responsibility of the state, and certainly not of the nation. It is not even the responsibility of the school district. Letting those other levels grasp responsibility has caused the problems our schools are in.

Let’s start with making sure we're talking about the same thing. What is the finished product when we educate a child?

Aristotle says we educate a person to produce a great soul. That’s still pretty vague. Joe Harless, in his book The Eden Conspiracy, is a bit more specific. He says we are producing an accomplished citizen. We should teach the knowledge, skills, and information relevant to becoming accomplished members of society. The attributes of such a person include:

•             Being obedient to the law.

•             Making informed voting decisions.

•             Contributing to stability.

•             Resolving interpersonal conflict.

•             Contributing to community improvement.

These are what an accomplished member of society does regardless of how that person makes a living.

Do we need to teach ways to make a living? Yes, but that is incidental. What we’re doing is providing the knowledge, skills, and information a good citizen will need in order to work out their own way to make a living that sustains themselves by making a contribution of worth to someone willing to pay for it.

So producing that civilized person, that contributing member of society, is the mission. That is the mission of the parents.

Back in 2008 a bunch of us homeschoolers put on Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a park. We did a Shakespear play annually.

But what options—parent choices—are available to do that? In theory, the choices today are wide open. Information is everywhere. Much of it is free. You could guide your child through a series of elementary through high school-level learning with resources available for free or very low cost. Excellent resources. Better than you got when you were a student.

You could even guide your child through college level learning through online mostly free resources. You can give them great opportunities for learning, if you and the child are willing to put in the effort. You can do everything but give them the college diploma.

In reality, however, there is a monopoly. It is the public school system, controlled by the teachers’ unions, which are about making money for the teachers’ unions, not about improving teaching for teachers, and certainly not for improving the education of students.

There are a couple of basic things in the way of breaking free from the monopoly: availability of the parent, and money. And they are related. If a family can make enough money while allowing at least one of the parents to be with the student, overseeing the education, then total homeschooling is an option. But it is very difficult to homeschool while committing an eight-hour day to an employer—even working from home. You can’t sit down to do math with your child while you’re writing a report for your boss.

And private school is expensive, while public school is “free.” It isn’t really “free,” though. That has always been a trap.

The providers of whatever is “free” always want something. In the case of schools, it is money and control—control of how your children are raised and what kind of citizen—or subject—they are formed into.

If we and those providers of “free” education were of the same mind, this wouldn’t be so bad. But we are not of the same mind. And that has become abundantly more clear in the past few years. Parents are waking up. They’re expressing their disapproval with what has been going on. And they’re being insistent that they are not abdicating their God-given role as decision-maker in the care and upbringing of their children.

We’re seeing that play out in school board meetings, in school board races, and in legislation.

And one big way we’re seeing it is in the debate over school choice.

Stephanie Lambert, speaking at Cypress Texas Tea Party, March 16, 2023
screenshot from here

Last week at our Tea Party meeting we heard from Stephanie Lambert, daughter of Tim Lambert, founder and head of Texas Home School Coalition, talking about their two prongs: educational choice and parental rights. And we got some interesting statistics concerning school choice, particularly Education Savings Accounts, or “the money follows the child”:

·        There are currently 72 such programs in 32 states, some of them with long years of data we can look at.

·        Whether in high-regulation or low-regulation states, these programs have not led to increased regulation.

o      In fact, regulation for homeschooling has plummeted.

o      In no state has regulation of homeschooling increased in the past two decades.

o      Also, here in Texas we saw a three-fold increase in homeschooling since the pandemic shutdown.

·        71% of Texas homeschoolers support ESAs. Only 20% oppose.

So let’s take a look at that opposition. Last year, at the state GOP convention, testimony from these opponents of school choice lined up and took the public comment slots before the Platform Committee. They seemed a much stronger force than they actually are, and very nearly got the Committee to strike the language “money follows the child” from the platform plank. A good speech from a Committee member rescued it at the last moment.

I have noticed a fair amount of pressure from these opponents on social media sites where conservatives communicate. They’re forceful and insistent. I’ve collected some of the arguments to try to understand them and possibly express the choice side better.

One early clue was their accusation, “Look where the money is coming from.” They claim the choice side is funded by people who really want to gain control over homeschooling families. Since I’m one of these pro-choice people, and I know that my voice is independent and absolutely not connected to any money, that does not ring true.

And since I have been a member of THSC while homeschooling, and continue to follow them, particularly during the legislative session, I’m also aware that THSC is very grassroots, not a big money outfit, nor is it controlled by some nefarious higher elites. I have reason to trust them. So that first opponent argument doesn’t fly with me.

They linked to this article in the past week: “School Choice: Are We Willing to Sell Our Children for a Pittance?” by Tiffany Boyd, a Tennessee homeschooler opposed to school choice. This is from the article:

She [Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, author of The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America] predicted that all types of “school choice” will eventually be tax-supported, with the tax money following each child.

“Each child, regardless of type of ‘choice’ education, will have an individual education plan (IEP). This will be determined by decisions made by the school/business partnerships (for which kind of workforce training they have determined your child’s intelligence/talents are best suited, for their own profit-seeking purposes). This is the failed communist/socialist job quota system from which millions of foreigners escaped. These immigrants, the backbone of our nation, made enormous sacrifices to come to the United States of America in order to enjoy the upward mobility guaranteed by our free (unplanned) economic system.”

I haven’t read the book quoted from, written originally in 1999. But we can look at this quote with some hindsight now—and the data we mentioned above. Do you know where you will have an individual education plan (IEP)? In a public school. Any student with a special need will have one. It isn’t determined by the parents, although the parents may be pressured to comply with the school’s plan.

You know where you don’t have one imposed by any outside entity? A homeschool. You, as a parent, plan or go by the seat of your pants as you see fit, and as seems to fit your particular child. Our family had a moderate amount of structure (I needed it, and so did the kids), but we bristled at anything beyond our plans being messed with by anyone. We got to decide everything—except these particular requirements: we had to teach reading, math, spelling, and good citizenship, all of which we were glad to do. I can attest that we did all of those things—and quite a lot more—better than the public schools we pulled them from when they were failing us.

My experiences are anecdotal. But the data about the various places that have implemented ESAs is telling: regulation of homeschooling plummets, and no increased regulation of homeschooling is even tried.

ESAs, by the way, are similar to a medical savings account. You get to choose the doctor and the service that you want. But the money can only be used for medical purposes. There are some purposes that might be excluded from your account—certain alternative therapies, for example—but you’re free to pay out-of-pocket for those extras. There isn’t a huge amount of oversight; you simply can’t use your HSA for a vacation (for your mental health, you claim) or something most people would see as quite a stretch to call it a medical service.

ESAs would be limited to educational purposes. But that can be a lot broader than tuition or textbooks. This is the point at which people worry, however. Someone makes the decision of whether a service applies or not. But, again, that hasn’t been a big issue with HSAs; they provide greater freedom, not less. And they are similar to a GI bill, which is used for any type of education, at any institution, including religious, that the veteran chooses to use it for.

Did I mention, ESAs can roll over the money to the following year, so there's incentive for the parents to find cost-effective resources. In some programs the leftover upon graduation can be used for college tuition.

Here’s another part of the article—about those evil, selfish parents who resent having to pay taxes for a school system that doesn’t serve them:

I often hear parents say, “It’s my money and I want it back.” My retort to that statement is, “What is more important to you, your freedom or your money? What is more important to you, your child or the money?”

That is usually met with the following: “I want freedom to choose.”

The truth is, parents already have the freedom to choose. They can choose public school, private school or home school. With school choice, you are simply choosing more of the same. It’s still the same system parents insist is failing, funded by government. The teachers are still all trained the same and the state controls the curriculum. So, what would they be choosing that is any different?

This is where the catch is: the choice shouldn’t be between two forms of public school, regular or private; and two forms of private school, high-tuition classrooms or homeschools. What a bogus limitation!

There was a video these opponents on social media linked to of how “school choice” ruined education in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. The hurricane had devasted entire areas, so many schools were literally wiped out. So they created a Recovery School District, which they claimed was completely free choice for all parents. Since there was no local school to choose, it allowed the parents to send their child to any other school they wanted. But the parents had plenty to complain about: the schools they wanted didn’t always have openings; the schools they wanted didn’t always provide transportation; they schools they wanted ended up being whatever they could scramble to get, of whatever quality, at whatever location. Some parents ended up sending each of their kids to a different school, with all the transportation and confusion that would entail. What these parents wanted to choose was a free school down the street that actually educated their child—like the parents had had growing up. But that wasn’t an option.

Let’s just point out that this wasn’t exactly putting the free market to work in education. It was a shoddy approach to dealing with a catastrophe.

image found here

What does real choice look like? How about if that ESA can go to multiple different approaches and places for each child. Maybe the local school has a good drama program—fine, put the student there for those hours. Maybe the local community college is a better fit for math. Maybe a nearby private school has a really good history teacher. Maybe private music lessons are worth using part of the allotment for. There could be online courses for special interests of the student. Part of the allotment could go to that.

Homeschoolers have been finding these sorts of combinations for decades. Before we moved to Texas—so, well before we homeschooled—we had homeschooling neighbors who sent their kids to an hour for one subject in one school district and an hour for another subject in the next school district over, and then did some other subjects at home. While there were more regulations for homeschoolers there than here in Texas, the schools themselves were actually more flexible. Here the public schools are all or nothing.

The image I've painted, with all those options, looks like it would be parent intensive, just providing transportation. Until you’ve got a student who drives and has a spare car, that’s true. But what if the local public school allowed private vendors to use their rooms, perhaps for a fee to cover maintenance costs, etc., and parents could have their child at the same general location all day, but with multiple educational opportunities there?

In an actual free market, where there’s a need, an entrepreneur steps in to fill it. Transportation between educational locations could become a thing. Maybe there could be an educational "mall," a general location with lots of options, and you can easily walk from one to another, like you walk from class to class on a college campus.

There seems to be a fear that, if you allow any money to go beyond the current status quo public school, you’re harming public schools—and by extension putting the education of all children in jeopardy. Gasp! But is maintaining public schools—at the expense of the students they are failing—the ultimate goal?

Public schooling is a relatively new experiment. In 1910, when UIL was established for extracurricular competitions, private schools and homeschools were the norm, the vast majority, while public schools covered only a relatively small percentage of children. By the 1940s, compulsory education laws were put in place, not for improving education, but for controlling thought, using a uniform factory model. 

Since public schools have already failed, I would indeed like to see public schools as we know them done away with. But that does not mean I want there to be no teachers or opportunities for educating our next generation. I want ALL the choices to be available to ALL the children. The only ones stuck in the monopoly then would be those whose parents won’t take responsibility for even the decision-making.

Some of the opportunities, of course, are going to depend on location. In Houston, we can find plenty of resources. In a small town with one public school and no private school, choice might need to include options that homeschoolers do and have done for millennia: teach them yourself; combine with others to pay for a private school, or hire private tutors, which today includes access to the internet, so it’s pretty unlimited, depending on availability of the parents and some common technology.

Educating our children will require a new way of thinking. Public schooling as it is done now has failed to meet the mission and has subjected kids to indoctrination of things parents absolutely oppose. ESAs might not be the final solution. I think a fully free-market education, with scholarships provided by local businesses (and maybe willing taxpayers) could do an even better job. But ESAs would be a step toward injecting actual free market choice into schooling.

And we know what we get from a real free market: better quality at lower cost.

Legislation This Session

 

Texas Senate Committee on Education, March 22, 2023
screenshot from here

This legislative session in Texas, we have a number of bills trying to protect children, regain parental rights, and allow school choice. There are two I’m looking at: SB 8, Bettencourt, Creighton, et al (including Middleton); and SB 176, Middleton (with Bettencourt as a co-author). Both bills are long and attempt to accomplish a lot. I trust both Senators Bettencourt and Middleton; both have a record of being pro-school choice. Bettencourt is my state senator. Both bills do two main things: codify a Parents Bill of Rights and implement an ESA program. They are not, however, considered companion bills.

Friends tell me Senator Middleton and crew have spent 18 months carefully crafting the wording of their bill, SB 176. My friends were disappointed to have Bettencourt’s bill come in and seem to replace all their work. But I didn’t get from my friends any specific problems with SB 8. I’ve only just scanned both of them. SB 8 is 50+ pages, and SB 176 is around 36 pages. There may be very similar sections. The low bill number on SB 8 means it is a high priority and is more likely to see movement.

If you click on the bill numbers above, I’ve linked to the Bill History page for each. From there you can see what movement the bill has had so far, and you can click on Text to get the wording of the bill and any amendments that may come.

Public testimony was heard in committee for both bills on Wednesday, March 22, and both were left pending in committee. That means there will likely be another day of public hearings before they take a vote.

It will take more time for me to determine what to recommend or amend. But I do hope we get a bill passed here in Texas that will do what parents have been calling out for.