Today I received an email from my son’s school district informing me of some classes being provided by the Davis School District Parent Information Resource Center. Through the spring and summer, nine different classes will be provided for men, women and children. All of the classes are free, unless, of course, you are over the age of 17 years and have XY chromosomes.

That’s right, the two classes that are for men (“Tools To Effective Fathering” and “Anger Management”) cost money. In the case of “Tools To Effective Fathering,” I can maybe see why they charge for that one. There aren’t corresponding “Tools To Effective Mothering” or “Tools To Effective Childing” classes, so maybe that one is different enough that they have to charge for it. That being said, men are such idiots and poor at parenting (according to some parts of society, anyway) that you’d think they’d want to make that class free so that we poor men could be less lousy parents.

Regardless, the one that really gets me is “Anger Management”. There are four classes with that title. Two are for children of various ages, one is for women, and the other for men. The ones for women and children are listed as “No Charge”. The one for men is listed as “Call for details”! WHY?!? Are the classes being taught at a singles bar?

I can understand why children wouldn’t be charged, as it is a school district thing and the education of children is already being paid for by our tax dollars. But why would women get a free pass on the anger management class when men have to pay? Are women anger free? That can’t be the case since they have an anger management class. Or maybe their class is to teach them how to manage the anger of the men they know.

If that isn’t frustrating enough, what really ticks me off is that they school district would be affiliated with providing these classes at all after this last legislative session. The Davis district may not be hurting as bad as some of the other school districts in Utah after the spending cuts, but they are making changes due to the decreased budgets they are facing. And yet they have money to provide and/or support free optional classes to the community? Maybe they should be more focused on their charge to educate the children of the district and less concerned with extraneous classes, no matter how well intentioned they might be.

If you’d like to see it, here is a link to the copy I received via email: DSD PIRC Spring & Summer Class Schedule 2010.

*The answer is that women are slow and hard to teach, so it takes more effort, thus it costs more.**
**JUST KIDDING!

People have different perceptions of what is or is not constitutional. Some people believe that the Constitution explicitly lists everything the federal government is authorized to do, and thus if it is not listed (health insurance legislation, a census that asks for more than a count of people living at an address) then it is not constitutional. Others embrace a broader interpretation, using things like the “promote the general welfare” text from the preamble as justification for federal government involvement in these areas.

In my opinion, the best claims of unconstitutionality are related to the absence of any explicit reference to health insurance in the Constitution (or subsequent amendments) and the ninth and tenth amendments.

Ninth amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Thus a right to choose for yourself or your family health insurance would seem to me to belong to the people, not the government. In fact, if the Massachusetts plan requires all to have insurance as I’ve heard recently, I don’t know why this amendment couldn’t be used to rule it unconstitutional. There is quite a big step from regulating business for the common good and requiring private citizens to purchase a product (even one as intangible as insurance).

Tenth amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The history of health insurance in this country is that it is regulated by state governments, not the federal government. I believe that provides at least a de facto basis for a claim that health insurance regulation is not a power of the federal government. Note: The Supreme Court rarely if ever uses this amendment to rule anything unconstitutional, so I’m not holding my breath.

Regarding the preamble text: two phrases appear immediately next to each other. One is “provide for the common defence”, and the other is “promote the general welfare”. I have always found it interesting (in the context of those who would use the “promote the general welfare” phrase to justify something like health insurance reform by the federal government) that the Constitution says to *provide* *for* defense but to *promote* *general* welfare. The most appropriate definition I found for “provide” would be “take measures in preparation for”. “Promote” is most appropriately defined as “to advocate or urge on behalf of something or someone”. If the federal government was meant to provide things necessary for the general welfare of the people of the United States, why wouldn’t the Constitution say so? It had no problem using the word “provide” in the context of defense. Thus I believe the choice of “promote” in the context of welfare to be a deliberate effort to differentiate the concepts.

Finally, requiring all people to buy health insurance doesn’t seem to be an effective way to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves or our posterity. Though I guess an argument could be made that it liberates us from crushing expense due to health care costs, but that just doesn’t feel to me to be the type of liberty they were aiming for.

Ultimately, there are exactly nine people that will have a say into whether or not this legislation is constitutional. In the meantime we all get to rant about how evil it is or how much of a blessing it is or sit back and watch all the wacky people on both sides. :)

One of the best explanations of how Obama won the election.

From a teacher in the Nashville area.

We are worried about ‘The Cow’ when it is all about ‘The Ice Cream.’

The most eye-opening civics lesson I ever had was while teaching third grade this year.

The presidential election was heating up and some of the children showed an interest.

I decided we would have an election for a class president.

We would choose our nominees. They would make a campaign speech and the class would vote.

To simplify the process, candidates were nominated by other class members.

We discussed what kinds of characteristics these students should have.

We got many nominations and from those, Jamie and Olivia were picked to run for the top spot.

The class had done a great job in their selections. Both candidates were good kids.

I thought Jamie might have an advantage because he received lots of parental support.

I had never seen Olivia’s mother.

The day arrived when they were to make their speeches.

Jamie went first.

He had specific ideas about how to make our class a better place. He ended by promising to do his very best.

Everyone applauded and he sat down.

Now it was Olivia’s turn to speak.

Her speech was concise.

She said, “If you will vote for me, I will give you ice cream.”

She sat down.

The class went wild. “Yes! Yes! We want ice cream.”

She surely would say more. She did not have to.

A discussion followed. How did she plan to pay for the ice cream?

She wasn’t sure.

Would her parents buy it or would the class pay for it?

She didn’t know.

The class really didn’t care. All they were thinking about was ice cream..

Jamie was forgotten. Olivia won by a landslide.

Every time Barack Obama opened his mouth he offered ice cream and 52 percent of the people reacted like nine year olds.

They want ice cream.

The other 48 percent know they’re going to have to feed the cow and clean up the mess.

This is the ice cream Obama promised us!

Remember, the government cannot give anything to anyone that they have not first taken from someone else.

In any case, my friend Jim Sumpter (host of a nationally syndicated radio show) asked me to come on the air for a few minutes on December 9 to talk about the case (not as an expert, but as a person in the area that had been listening to news and talk radio reports on the subject).

If you’re interested in listening, you can access the file via the link below. Note: This is not an example of my best radio work ever, but it is also not my worst (if you can believe that after listening). :)

JSS-2009-12-09-segment-with-SDR.

Click on the image to see a larger (legible) version of the page.

A letter from Representative Rob Bishop dated 13 Oct 2009

Back already? That was fast!

I finally received a response yesterday to my previous inquiry regarding illegal immigration. I’ll scan and post a copy of the letter later, but I didn’t want to wait to address the latest letter.

This letter did address my primary point:

I’d really like to know exactly where you stand on this issue [of illegal immigration] and if you would sponsor or support legislation to amend where necessary and require enforcement of our immigration laws.

To summarize, he acknowledged that my topic was illegal immigration (a big step forward from the original response), stated that immigration law is the responsibility of the federal government, and pointed out an amendment he offered to a piece of legislation (the Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area Act) that would ensure that immigration enforcement would not be restricted in the National Heritage Area created by the act (3,325 square miles in Arizona according to the best information I can find on the subject). He also stated he was in favor of making it possible for state and local law enforcement personnel to assist in the enforcement of immigration law.

How do I feel he did in addressing the point? I felt the letter was somewhat political double talk. He seems to make clear that he stands on the side of enforcing immigration law, and that he has sponsored amendments to ensure immigration enforcement would not be restricted by specific pieces of legislation. Unfortunately, I feel his letter falls short of a commitment to actively pursue immigration legislation.

Note: I’ve paraphrased and summarized the latest letter above because I don’t have it in front of me at the moment. I plan to scan it tonight or tomorrow and post a ‘final’ update (including the scanned image of the letter) on this subject so you can read his words for yourself. If, in reading it again, I determine I was unfair above, I’ll address it at that time. That being said, I believe what I wrote above to be an accurate portrayal of the contents of the letter. You can make your own determination once I post the image of the letter.

1. This one is a little bit of a stretch, but: There are multiple people that I’ve tried to friend (because in the world of Facebook, friend is a verb as well as a noun) that have ignored the request for whatever reason. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons to not want to be my Facebook friend, some of them having to do with me, others having to do with one’s standards for accepting friend requests. Those are all fine. What bugs me in the case of one person in particular is that he rejected my friend request because he believes stories told by mutual acquaintances over my description of events. Whatever, it’s not like I’m lacking friends in the world, I just hate that he’s using bogus reasons to reject me over the many perfectly valid reasons for rejecting me.
2. Some time ago, I friended someone on Facebook that I knew from another forum. We were certainly not friends in real life, but Facebook doesn’t have an option for “acquaintance” or “someone-I-barely-know” so I went with the only option available to me. He accepted my request and I followed his updates and made the occasional comment. After one of those comments, I noticed “Add as Friend” on his page when I tried to read a response to the thread. This was for daring to state an opinion that there are nutjobs at both ends of the political spectrum, not just on the right. How Dare I!
3. Then today, I responded to a status update from another ‘friend’. He’d stated that Glenn Beck & Dan Rather were equally bad / evil / nutty / some-such. I commented that I thought Dan Rather edged Glenn out because Glenn is upfront about his conservative bias and doesn’t try to hide behind journalistic integrity or ethics or sanctity or some such, as Dan Rather does (IMO). He winds up ‘apologizing’ with a sarcastic ‘sorry but you are wrong’ which I chose to treat as sincere in my response with a “don’t be sorry, we just disagree, nothing to be sorry about”. Lather, rinse, repeat. When he decided to point out his sorry was sarcastic, I might have crossed the line with a comment about how I understood his sarcasm, but just thought “don’t be sorry” was easier to type than “be careful, you’re sounding like a right wing always right never wrong can’t respect a difference of opinion radio host!”

Okay, that last comment certainly did nothing to elevate the conversation. To be fair, I originally friended him to snipe at him a little (he’s the guy that wrote a parody based on an idea I had and then didn’t even credit me for it … until much later, then he gave me more credit than I expected, but whatever), so it is not like I’m blameless in this or anything. I am however tired of his constant complaining about talk radio hosts (Glenn Beck in particular) when it seems obvious to me that his real problem is jealously that he can’t get a long lasting talk radio gig (which means he isn’t getting the ratings management thinks are possible with some other host or show) when all these commercially successful yet oh so inferior hosts are drawing huge ratings on hundreds of radio stations.

I wound up writing him a parting message after he unfriended me:

Nice job. You’re a very talented guy, but just as big an ass as those you sit around being so sanctimonious about. Sorry that a difference of opinion makes you feel you need to talk down to me (your “hope that clears things up” comment), and that my final comment made you feel that you needed to unfriend me. Oh, and I’m not being sarcastic in my use of the word sorry.

Have a good life … and I hope something comes along to make you feel better about yourself so you can do more than whine on Facebook about those radio talents you’re so jealous of.

I really mean what said about being sorry. It is regrettable that someone with so much talent (and he is a very talented guy) is so threatened by a difference of opinion that he needs to condescend and finally just block the source of the disagreement.

I guess I’m just an awful person.

PS It turns out that he’s spoken to a mutual friend and complained about my mouth. The only thing I can think of is that I said “ass” in my email above. Which is really funny since he called a bunch of people assholes earlier in the day in another status update. Of course, his comment was directed toward an anonymous group of people that would likely never read his comment, whereas I directed my comment at someone who would actually read it. How politically incorrect of me!

I just got off the phone with a staffer in Rep. Bishop’s Washington, D.C. office. She looked up my original comments and acknowledged the response sent didn’t make a lot of sense.

The explanation is that they are using some new software to manage the correspondence and it is glitchy.

She said she would mark it for another response, so we’ll have to see what happens.

Stay tuned!

Click on the image to see a larger (legible) version of the page.

Page 1 of letter from Representative Rob Bishop dated 9 Sep 2009

Page 2 of letter from Representative Rob Bishop dated 9 Sep 2009

We can’t catch all speeders, but we haven’t stopped ticketing the ones we can. We can’t solve all crimes, but we still have police out there trying to catch criminals. Why then do so many of our federal politicians throw their hands in the air and just give up on the enforcement of immigration law, specifically the deportation of people in the country illegally?

If we assume for a moment that those people are right, we can’t send all illegal immigrants home, why can’t we also make a determination that we will enforce the law to the best of our ability? How difficult is it to put 55 people on a bus and send them back where they came from? If we can do that, why not two buses? If that, why not four, or eight, or sixteen? So we can’t send back every offender; let’s send back the ones we can.

We can stop cars at interstate border crossings to ensure ag products aren’t smuggled in that might result in economic ruin to a region. Why can’t we ensure people seeking government benefits are in the country legally (either a citizen or on a visa)? So many of our government institutions have policies that they won’t confirm eligibility for benefits or that employees can’t act on knowledge of illegal immigrants.

I’d really like to know exactly where you stand on this issue and if you would sponsor or support legislation to amend where necessary and require enforcement of our immigration laws.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Scott Dale Robison

I sent this email on August 27, and within 15 minutes of clicking send, I had received an automated response:

from Congressman Rob Bishop
date Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:40 PM
subject Thanks for writing

I appreciate you contacting my office. Your opinion is important to me and I will respond directly to your concerns as soon as possible.

Today when I checked my mailbox (not my email, but my actual physical United States Postal Service snail mailbox) I had received a response from Congressman Bishop’s office! How exciting! Allow me to share with you the first little bit of it, okay?

September 9, 2009

Dear Scott:

Thank you for your letter regarding universal health coverage. …

What the <expletive deleted>?!? In no way shape or form was my message about universal health coverage! Imagine, a politician that doesn’t listen to what you have to say. What are the odds?

I realize that our congressmen are very busy people, and they don’t personally read every piece of correspondence that crosses their desks. I realize my email was quickly glanced at (if that) by some staffer whose job it is to organize correspondence into categories for form letter responses. I realize in that sort of environment, mistakes will be made.

All that being said, I’d like to offer my services to the Congress of the United States. It seems to me that rather than having staffers reading messages and putting them in the wrong response pile, it would be much more efficient, at least for the messages which are delivered via email, to have a computer program classify them. It has the potential to be far more efficient and cost effective for the American people, and even if it incorrectly classifies a message, how is that any worse than what just happened to me, and has happened to countless others?

We are tired of not being listened to. This is not about Republicans, it’s not about Democrats, it’s about the status quo. Something must change, and it must change soon. Here are some suggestions:

1. We need a mandate that political parties do not have access to the ballot. By this I mean that people are free to join political parties, and parties are welcome to nominate and support candidates, but at no point should a person’s party affiliation appear on the ballot. We are electing candidates to office, not political parties.
2. In like fashion, there should be no option on any ballot for a straight ticket vote for all candidates of a single party. A voter should know who they are voting for before entering the voting booth, or at least know the candidates and their stance on issues. Why should those of us who cast considered votes for any candidate have our votes diluted by others that don’t think about what or who they are voting for?
3. A different apportionment of electoral votes to cut down on the winner take all system that focuses so much attention on swing states with relatively large electoral vote counts. If we had a system that awarded one elector for each congressional district won, plus two for the state at large vote, the system would be considered more reasonable by many who currently are calling for it to be abolished. Note: I realize the presidential election is actually a vote for electors, and those are state by state votes, so a change like this mandating how electors are to be apportioned would require an amendment.
4. While we’re at it, we all need to focus less on the president. The real power lies with the legislative branch through which all legislation flows. The president certainly has a lot of influence, but he gets too much blame when things go wrong and too much credit when things go right.
5. Term limits of some sort, though I’m somewhat fuzzier on this concept. I was thinking of perhaps a single term limit for any office, followed by at least one term out of that office. Professional politicians are going to be the ruination of this country. Well, professional politicians and an electorate that is always looking to feed at the government trough.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of reforms we should implement. Just a few things off the top of my head.

I have nothing personal against Rob Bishop. I think he’s an okay guy, and I don’t have any huge policy complaints with him. What I am is tired. I’m tired of not being heard. This last weekends rally in Washington shows that I am not alone. It is something all politicians need to think about.

Note: When I have a chance, I’ll have the letter scanned and post a copy of it. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow.