Originally posted from 11-28-04 to 12-05-04
Cowboy Characteristic
by Dr. M. Sidney Wallace

Over Thanksgiving I had very little to do. I was ahead of schedule on a consulting project, which is where I like to stay. I accepted an invitation to a great cook’s home for a traditional Thanksgiving meal, which meant I would not need to cook for several days. This hostess always invited six or seven friends over and prepared enough food to feed everyone that came to the Salvation Army’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Well, as luck would have it, the guest list included mostly liberal Democrats who were still depressed and complaining about the election their candidate and party had just lost. The main comment repeated over and over about President George W. Bush was that he was a “cowboy” straight out of the old west.

This comment started me thinking about what they really meant. All the guests, except me, were northeastern “city slickers” liberals between 50 and early 60. This told me that they had grown up with early television programs like "The Lone Ranger," "Gunsmoke," "Roy Rogers," and "Gene Autry,” and movies like "High Noon," "Shane," and "The Man From Laramie." Not one of these individuals had ever been to Dodge City, Tombstone, San Antonio, or the "real" old west.

I continued to ponder the description of George W. Bush as a “cowboy” and decided to make a list of characteristic that would apply to an easily recognized American cowboy as portrayed in the media of their early childhood years. From the movies and early television programs, we saw that the cowboy hero never went looking for trouble. The trouble seemed to always find him. This seems to fit George Bush when we take into account 9/11 and the falling economy that Bill Clinton left behind.

A cowboy, when presented with a crisis, always faced it head on. He never looked to someone else to help him solve a problem. If others wanted to stand with the cowboy, he would always be grateful for their assistance, but when action was required to take care of the bad guys, he never spent days trying to build a "coalition" in the saloon. The American cowboy would seek out the individuals causing the problems, and capture or kill them.

Cowboys always had names like Will, Matthew or Cisco, but I never heard of one named François, Helmut or Kofi. It seemed like American cowboys came from a heritage that did not lead back to France or Germany. The American cowboy was never on the side of the evil villain. He could always be found on the side of honesty, integrity, and what was morally correct. Considering statements and actions from individuals like Usama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jung Il, these characteristics still seem to be fitting George W. Bush.

While you never heard the cowboys preaching religion from the pulpit or talking about their high moral values, you always saw them on display in everything the cowboy did. George W. Bush still fits this description. The American cowboy was a man of few words. He never tried to talk the villain into changing his evil ways. He said what was on his mind regardless of what was politically correct and let the bad guy decide what he was going to do. There was never any uncertainty about where the American cowboy stood.

After these few moments of reflection on the characteristic of an American cowboy, I must admit that the other dinner guests were absolutely correct. George W. Bush is a "cowboy," and I am damn glad he is.

Originally posted from 11-21-04 to 11-28-04
The Legacy of Rod Paige
by Nancy Salvato

How will education change over the next four years? That is the question on many minds upon hearing that Rod Paige will be stepping down from his position as the Secretary of Education during President Bush’s next term in office. Education Secretary Rod Paige was largely responsible for the No Child Left Behind Act; the result of which is more accountability and higher standards in public education.

However, there is a larger, much more enduring legacy which he leaves to us; the propulsion of the School Choice movement to the forefront of a much broader base of people and into the mainstream population. In and of itself, the idea of more school choice is enough reason to support NCLB. However, it must be remembered that the most important justification for NCLB is that it is now unacceptable for public educators to employ bigotry in the form of low expectations. School practices that threaten to leave children out of the education process must be addressed or parents are justified in pulling their kids out of their current educational setting and must be provided another environment –one better suited to their needs.

The idea of NCLB is simple enough, but many unforeseen complications have been the result. In some cases there aren’t enough schools meeting the minimal expectations for a public education, therefore there is nowhere to transfer if a school fails. In other instances, a family doesn’t want to pull a child from a neighborhood school. Finally, the NEA Teachers’ Union has launched a massive disinformation campaign blaming the schools’ failure to provide an adequate education on lack of federal funding, claiming that the mandate didn’t have enough dollars to fly. Defending NCLB from those charges alone has been a full time job for the Department of Education.

Because parents understand that they should be allowed all possible options when it comes to educating our most precious resource –our children, many have begun to look outside of public institutions to be assured of the highest quality education offered today.

The public education system has some options in the form of Magnet and Charter schools, however these options depend on money earmarked for neighborhood schools and that has caused fighting over the beneficiary of the public purse.

It is my hope that the incoming Secretary of Education will continue to expand school choice options by embracing Universal Tuition Tax Credits. These tax refunds would help cover the cost of an independent education when public education is not the best option for our children. Economically disadvantaged children deserve the opportunity for a good education should they choose to take advantage of all the choices being offered. Parents should not have to pay twice for their children’s education.

By expanding school choice to include independent schools, market forces will push all educational institutions to embrace best teaching practice and compete for all eligible students. Schools will have to provide the best value for the dollar.

Education should not be taken for granted. The “educrats” lost sight of the mission, Rod Paige and NCLB set the public schools back on course. This is his legacy –and it is a good one.

Nancy Salvato is a Research Associate with Americans for Limited Government. She is an experienced educator and an independent contractor with Prism Educational Consulting. She serves as Educational Liaison for Illinois’ 23rd Senatorial District. She works nationally and locally furthering the cause of Civic Education. Her writing is widely published on the internet and occasionally in print venues such as the Washington Times. Her opinions have been heard on select radio programs across the nation. Additionally, her writing has been recognized by the US Secretary of Education.

Originally posted from 11-14-04 to 11-21-04
The Black Hole of Public Education
by Nancy Salvato

Whenever I hear of a need for more money to fund public education, I envision a big black hole sucking away our tax dollars to further line the pockets of useless UniServe directors. These union employees are allegedly paid to bargain favorable teaching contracts for the overworked teachers whose subsequent contracts charge them with an impossible educational agenda based on faulty methodology and politically correct ideas.

For the most part, teachers begin their educational careers idealistic and excited about their role in the learning process. At first, money is of no concern in the mind of a person who serves in the caretaker profession. It isn’t long, though, before the rookies begin to realize that direct instruction is frowned upon and that no significant amount of learning can take place given the often impossible circumstances with which teachers are faced. Low expectations, subsequent grade inflation, misbehavior all becomes the fault of the instructor; not the students or the administration whose policy set the educational climate for the school. Only at this point do teachers start complaining that no amount of money is worth the aggravation that they are dealt while trying to do their job.

The public is catching on, though, with NCLB drawing attention to the failure of the schools to produce and the purse strings being attached to public accountability. So now the schools have to figure out alternative methods to keep the money coming in to pay for teaching methods which are cumbersome, unproven, and depend on an extremely small student teacher ratio to be effective.

In comes eminent domain. What a unique way to make money. First you grab a parcel of land with the excuse that it is for the public good (generally, building or improving a school falls under this category). You sit on the land for a few years and then sell it for much more than you paid. Even if you make a mere $12 million, you are not breaking any laws if you can prove that you didn’t purchase the property with the intention of turning it around for a profit.

The San Diego Unified School District sure got a good deal when it took possession of a piece of property formerly owned by San Diego-based West RNLN, LLC, and later deemed, “unsuitable for a school and there is no other school district use for it.”1 This is using a favored status for a very shady and completely wrong purpose—to make money. Martha Stewart just went to jail for this type of dishonesty. It is essentially “gaming the market." They used their status under the law of eminent domain to work against other people by taking their property for no other reason than to make a profit.

I’m tired of hearing how the schools need more money. I’m tired of the public paying for their “habitual problem” with mismanagement and poor educational practice. Let’s break up this monopoly.

1School district sells 24.7 acres to Home Depot for $30 million

Nancy Salvato is a Research Associate with Americans for Limited Government. She is an experienced educator and an independent contractor with Prism Educational Consulting. She serves as Educational Liaison for Illinois’ 23rd Senatorial District. She works nationally and locally furthering the cause of Civic Education. Her writing is widely published on the internet and occasionally in print venues such as the Washington Times. Her opinions have been heard on select radio programs across the nation. Additionally, her writing has been recognized by the US Secretary of Education.

Originally posted from 05-09-04 to 05-16-04
Where is the Customer Support?
by Dr. M. Sidney Wallace

There is a business in my hometown that spends literally millions of dollars each year on advertising and promoting future sales. If they would spend a few dollars to improving customer support they would increase there their bottom line revenue by a factor greater than they could ever realize.

I am talking about my area cable services provider. This company spends massive amounts of money getting new customers and then they feel that a 5+ minute hold while waiting for a representative to answer the telephone in completely acceptable.  If you hold long enough you will eventually get a representative on the line and he or she usually can only confirm that your service is not working.

Let me share with you how I am taking back my life and costing my ex-service provider a few hundred dollars a year in return. About two months ago I had a disagreement over my monthly statement. I had paid my bill, but they had incorrectly applied my payment to another account, which was subsequently over paid. The simple solution would have been to debit one account and credit the other, but that would have been too easy.

I called their "customer service" number and after minutes of listing and selecting the correct options from a myriad of choices I finally heard the familiar voice saying, “All of our customer service representatives are busy at the moment. Please hold for the next available operator." 

Minutes ticked by. I know this because I use a cellular telephone service charges by the minute, and my telephone has a timer display to show me how much I am going to have to pay for the call. After five minutes listening to the recording, “Your call is important to us. Please be patient. Your call will be answered by the next available operator,” I began to wonder just how important my business was to these folks. I held another minute and decided that my time and money was more important to me than an anonymous voice recording on the telephone. I hung up my telephone and will never look back at my decision.

I broke out my trusty old "rabbit ears" antenna and hooked them up to my television. All of the local channels came in remarkably clear. It only took me a week to realize that the local television channels have very little information programming other than their evening news programs. After the first week of withdrawals from constant news, sports, and weather information, I quickly realized how much time I had been “slaughtering” re-watching these news and information programs from all the different perspectives just to be able to say that I was informed. In reality these "news and information" programs are no more relevant than the situation
comedies on the broadcast television stations.

I looked around and found several good books that I had been saying that I wanted read. After only three weeks I have now finished four novels and am enrolling in a class from the local university. If you think I will ever go back to being spoon feed by a cable TV service you had better think again.  In summation I guess I owe my cable TV service a big thank you for being so inconsiderate. 

Originally posted from 04-21-04 to 05-02-04
Worth Fighting For
by Jack Ritchie, Jr.

I am a smoker. I also served my country during two consecutive enlistments during the Vietnam era.  The reason I joined was to preserve freedom. I was unpopular at the time because I was part of the establishment. When I left military service, it was only to find that while this rooster fought off the weasels, the chickens (draft dodgers/college students, etc.), had taken all the best perches in the hen house. I now live in near poverty and am aging. It is difficult to hold onto hope because time is running out for me.

I am, have been, and always will be a smoker. I never intentionally blow smoke in anyone's face or direction. I am cursed with a good memory when it comes to how the current anti-smoker movement started, has progressed, and is what it is today.  I remember the rat studies where they took tobacco tar and mixed it with acetone, an industrial and proven cancer causing agent. They could have just as easily mixed it with honey and screamed honey causes cancer.

Based on the anti-smoker movement I have been denied employment, fired from one job, am restricted activity-wise as to where and when I can recreate, am in the most heavily taxed group, and am strictly governed/encouraged not to smoke on workplace grounds (only with permission and in certain places if at all).

The anti-smoking movement is but one of many government sponsored efforts at behavioral control. Other examples include working to get the public to accept perverted sexual activity as normal, encourage interracial mixing (which is lowering our social status, not raising the other races like what they intended), to promote prohibitionary groups/movements, force political correctness in media, and is now promoting censorship. There are many other others I haven't mentioned as well, but government is now heavily involved in our day to day lives. 

Isn't it funny that you can watch perversion and bisexual activity on TV, but forbid an unauthorized occurance? Isn't that a dual standard? Isn't the fact that smokers have no rights a dual standard? Aren't gag rules in the courts restricting/eliminating the self defense of defendants and slanting outcomes?  Freedom cannot - and doesn't - exist in a regulated/controlled environment...

Like in Nazi Germany, we were not United. We allowed ourselves to be segregated/divided, and now group by group we are being (or will be) suppressed/oppressed unless we as a people go back and force our society to return to the philosophy of "Live and let live", "You do your thing and I'll do mine," and respect/allow each other to make their choices without fear of oppression.

Then the next step must be to tell government to downsize and get out of our personal lives.

Originally posted from 04-14-04 to 04-21-04
Generic America
 by Lewis J. Goldberg

Last week, I had occasion to travel through Tennessee and North Carolina to pick up a travel trailer that I had purchased on e-Bay. It was exciting to think of taking a road trip to States in which I had never set radials. In the week leading up to the journey I anticipated all the quaint local eateries I might sample on the way [not to mention the flea markets at which I might stop, making me run off-schedule.]

Ticking off mile after mile, I waited for all the Southern-ness and quaint-ness to hit me in the face - yet it never came. I have travelled much on the nation's highways, but somehow I expected different scenery in these occupied Confederate areas. Instead, I was subjected to an endless series of "Food Exits" and "Gas Exits" bearing the same signage to which all Interstate travellers are acquainted. Even the flea markets looked like the owners of all the local dollar stores simply brought a truckload of whatever wouldn't sell in their stores and set it out - cheap, lousy Chinese junk. Where were the local eateries? Where was the local merchandise? Not on the Interstate, that's for sure.

While our system of roads has made it cheap and easy for us to travel from place to place, it has also fostered a 'least common denominator' culture along a five mile swath wherever it runs. We seem to have made it too comfortable to get off the highway, to the point where we can eat in all 50 States without looking at the menu, and we feel a sense of injustice when any store at which we stop can't supply every little thing for which we ask.

Vehicle breakdowns normally spoil a trip, but ironically, I found blessings in mechanical failure. Besides the wonderful gentleman who sold me the trailer, the only encounter with 'real people' I had the whole trip was when my alternator failed. The three-hour layover I had in the middle of Tennessee got me out of the fast-food artery for a little while, where I could interact with the living - even the Body of Christ. The whole experience would have been poorer without the troubles.

Now, I'm all for a free-market economy, and if a man wants to get together the money to open a franchise business on an Interstate highway, and he feels that's the best way to provide for his family, then God bless him. But it does seem that the highways have become conduits of mediocrity, eating away at the distinctives that make the various parts of this land different from their neighbors. But progress, er, progresses, and complaining won't make it stop. I would have liked a real flea market with real American junk, though.

Your comments and questions are encouraged.Send e-mail to: editor@patriotist.com.

Originally posted from 03-14-04 to 03-21-04
Making Lemonade Out of Lemons:
Local Property Group Takes Its Work National
by Lisa Coles

My family and about 100 of our neighbors have been living a political nightmare for more than 12 years. Our back yards and farm fields have been bulldozed, our land forcefully occupied, and our personal property vandalized by our county park district. Erie MetroParks (EMP) is pursuing the construction of a public bike trail on private land. To make matters more frustrating, the three EMP Commissioners receive an annual budget of $2 million in county tax dollars and have the power of eminent domain, yet are non-elected officials unaccountable to taxpayers for their actions. They have all of the power, and taxpayer rights are ignored and trampled.

Our neighborhood formed a grassroots organization called Citizens for the Protection of Property Rights (CPPR) in the early 1990’s. We followed the rule of law when our group addressed the government violations in court. We had the facts on our side - we own our land and had gathered volumes of court-recorded documentation to prove it. We soon realized, however, that the outcome of the first hearing (and every one that would follow) was predetermined by the court and elected officials. The judge, with the help of EMP attorneys, took a simple black-and-white real estate case, viciously twisted the truth, and even altered court-recorded documents to benefit EMP. A later trip to an appellate court proved even more damaging. Our land was being stolen - taken without legal justification or compensation - and we had nowhere to turn for help.

CPPR was horrified. How could government officials and courts get away with this? We wondered, “Are we still in America?” Our justice system had manipulated the law to suit EMP’s agenda. Facts didn’t seem to matter any more. We live in a sound-bite society where bike trails and parks are painted with that “warm fuzzy” feeling. It seems no one considers that our constitutional rights and the rule of law are continually overruled by judges’ personal sentiments.

Our Founding Fathers devised a remarkable system with a Constitution and a civilized rule of law. Without it, our country would be in chaos. I am here to tell you that the rules do not apply to government agencies and judges who have their own agenda. Why bother to go through the process, file your deeds, court record your documents, etc., when a liberal court can decide\ your land isn’t really yours, and that it is best suited to be shared with the public under the control of the government?

CPPR continues to seek justice while under government attack.  Because of our active CPPR involvement, EMP has made several inappropriate attempts to personally “punish” and intimidate my husband and me. EMP’s county-funded web site accessed a notice to boycott our family owned business. While we were away on vacation, EMP entered our back yard with three EMP armed rangers who stood guard while 3 others took chainsaws and destroyed our back deck and 40 feet of stairway, including electric lines. (The twisted pile of lumber and metal is still lying in a pile where they left it.) My children, who had stopped by our home to care for our dogs, stood by in horror, as did the county sheriff. 

EMP came back a week later, when no one was at home, loaded up our farm tractor (they essentially stole it). When my husband was finally “allowed” to retrieve it from EMP’s garage, he told the park director that he had no right to attack our deck or to steal our tractor. Jonathan Granville’s reply: “We just wanted to get your attention.” Granville later told my neighbor that, “I have a feeling the Coles will be moving soon, and then your CPPR group will fall apart.”  We have filed a lawsuit in federal court, and are understandably concerned about getting a fair shake.

Throughout its twelve-year history, CPPR has come to discover that other innocent citizens across the country are going through a similar kind of hell. We have networked with some of those groups, and realize that there is a need to share with one another the lessons we’ve learned in this ongoing battle against property rights abuse. That is what prompted CPPR to join forces with 14 other property rights groups nationwide to host the 2004 National Property Rights Conference, which will be held from April 16-18, 2004 in Sandusky, Ohio.

If you’re interested in preserving property rights, please consider attending this important event.

For more information about CPPR, visit http://www.cppr.net.

For details about the Property Rights Conference and registration information, go to http://www.prconf.com.

Originally posted from 02-08-04 to 02-15-04
Q-wing
by Dr. M. Sidney Wallace

It has been reported that the State of Florida Department of Corrections
(the penal system) is abusing poor harmless and defenseless inmates at the Stark Florida prison. As of the first of February, eight of twenty-four
inmates in the "Q-wing" are on a hunger strike to demand better treatment.

The Q-wing is a unique group of cells that are used to "train" special
prisoners who have demonstrated problems adjusting to the extreme challenges of the inmate community. These inmates feel they have earned the right to be considered first and want the Department of Corrections to understand their place in the system. If these individuals were not in prison, they would definitely be on the front lines of crime in America. Note that I did not say which side of the line they might be on.

These eight inmates have seven basic request of the State of Florida. Let's
look and see if we can help the Department of Corrections with this problem.

They want to exercise once a week.

Why don't we let these stellar leaders of the prison system start an environmental improvement program for the Everglades? We should chain them together and let them jog across Everglades during alligator mating season. I guarantee that having a six-foot hungry alligator after them will be enough stimuli to get their blood flowing (temporarily).

They want the right to receive reading material and use their entertainment
equipment.

This is very understandable. Once an individual has gotten used to daily reading of the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Better Holmes, etc., and viewing in cell wide plasma screen cable stereo TV, it is cruel and unusual punishment to make them stop watching the MTV.

They want to have visits and make telephone calls to family and friends.

They should be allowed all the visits with the families of their victims that will come.

The inmates also claim they are not being adequately fed and they often go to bed hungry.

With Florida's humid climate, there should be no reason that the state could not provide an abundant supply of roaches and other insects to supply more than ample food to these poor souls. The state could even do a TV series and call it "Survivor Prison."

They claim that basic hygiene is being ignored and want to be able to buy
shampoo, mouthwash and body deodorant.

Why don't we ask their victims families to donate the unused items from their dearly departed? I am sure they will not be using them where they are now.

They want warmer clothing in the winter months.

On the surface, this seems to be a reasonable request. Anyone in Florida, spending all of his time inside a climate controlled cell block, during the winter, most definitely does need heavy-duty cold weather protection for when the temperature drops to at least 69 degrees on many a cold Florida winter night.

They want enforcement of the Florida Administrative Code, which states that maximum management is a temporary status.

This was only added because the inmates felt that seven items would work better than six.

The Department of Corrections should know that it is every inmate's "right" to act up until they get their way. For the State of Florida to think that these future leaders of the Florida penal system will bow down to some law is as ridiculous as thinking that Bill Clinton will tell the truth under oath.