* I have zero sympathy for those Wall Street firms that accepted bailout money. And, I also have zero sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street leftists, who pretend to be peaceful but engage in the initiation of force by blocking traffic from using the Brooklyn Bridge. A pox on both their houses.

* The horrendous grandfather who drove his 13-year-old granddaughter to New York so that they could join the violent Occupy Wall Street mob — all so she could experience leftist activism, such as one loser “trying to put a cigarette out on [her] face” — is a perfect symbol of the lunacy supported by prominent Democrats including Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama.

* A hard-working, peaceful American who loses his job responds to this unfortunate circumstance by trying to get another job. Not so “Robert, 47 of Pennsylvania,” who has joined the violent Occupy Wall Street movement. Robert sneers, “I lost my job of 22 years, and someone has gotta pay.” This foul thinking is the essence of a mob: something bad happened to me, so in response I will hurt others. Potential employers beware.

* The New York Post notes that the violent Occupy Wall Street movement’s occupation of Zuccotti Park has led to it “smell[ing] like an open sewer,” in part due to “people urinating and defecating in public.” For the slow learners who haven’t figured out yet that Detroit’s multi-decade collapse has been due to leftist lunacy, perhaps this new socialist hellhole in downtown Manhattan will prove enough of an example to suffice.

* It’s no surprise that Democratic politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama voice empathy with and support for the violent Occupy Wall Street movement. After all, the Wall Street Occupiers love defecating in public, and Pelosi and Obama love defecating on the U.S. Constitution. Defecators of the world, unite!

* The following is taken from a draft of “The American People’s New Economic Charter,” a project of the violent, Pelosi- and-Obama-supported Occupy Wall Street movement: “Impose universal morality for parents who do not participate in raising their children. Remove children from households with parents who refuse to educate them properly.” Get that? If you teach your children ideas with which the hippies pooping in the streets disagree, then the hippies want to use government’s guns to forcibly remove your children from your home. This is nothing but pure evil.

* Brittini Gray, a participant in Occupy Wall Street, whines that “They need to redistribute the wealth in America” from those who have earned it to those who have not. Actually, what America needs is much better respect for individual rights, including the moral right to not have one’s hard-earned money stolen by the government for the sake of moochers such as Brittini Gray.

* It’s unsurprising that a dopey Occupy mother of four would abandon her children — after all, she’s already abandoned logic and personal responsibility. I encourage her husband to divorce this 38-year-old child who is so utterly divorced from reality.

* Occupy Boston participant Martin Dagoberto is unemployed. Small wonder why: he calls “many” corporations “oppressors” and “categorically psychopathic.” In reality, many corporations are smart enough to avoid hiring whiny troublemakers such as Mr. Dagoberto.

* What exactly about the various Occupy protests leads elected Democrats to gravitate toward it? Is it the pooping on a police car? Perhaps the pooping on the American flag? What about the spitting on a member of the Coast Guard? Considering the complete lack of denunciations from the likes of Obama and Pelosi, I can only conclude that it’s all of the above.

Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights
By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks — no matter where you live — to join the official Facebook page for the North Jersey Tea Party Group.

In honor of economist and political commentator Thomas Sowell, here are some random thoughts from the passing scene:

* Some people express outrage that the terrorist al-Awlaki was killed without a trial. Yet most of these people expressed meaningfully less outrage when nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered without a trial on 9/11.

* The New York Post writes that “The Arab Spring is the focus of speculation over who will be rewarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.” Really? After this so-called prize has been granted to godfather of terrorism Yasser Arafat, man-made global warming zealot Al Gore, and incompetent leftist Barack Obama, does anybody with even half a brain take this award seriously any longer?
* Bill Clinton claims that “there is not a single, solitary example on the planet, not one, of a country that is successful” because of its utilization of a tea party economic philosophy. But when English colonists first settled North America, it was a third-world backwater. They later created an entirely new country — the United States of America — based on the tea party philosophy: liberty. Within 150 years (over which time the principle of liberty was better understood and better implemented; for example, by outlawing slavery), the U.S. had become the greatest economic success of any country in history. Perhaps Mr. Clinton ought to familiarize himself with this country, since he seems so utterly unfamiliar with it.

* The American “hikers” that Iran’s evil dictatorship released are nuts. Upon returning to the U.S., the “hikers” thanked anti-American leftists including Sean Penn, Hugo Chavez, and Cindy Sheehan. And, the “hikers” criticized the U.S. for imprisoning terrorists. If you ever wondered what type of wackjobs would go “hiking” on the Iraq/Iran border, now you know.

* Things Palestinians cheer for: when they petition the United Nations to be recognized as an independent nation, and when madmen yelling “Allahu Akbar” fly hijacked jets into American workplaces, murdering thousands of innocents.
* It is beyond absurd that Obama proposes raising taxes on millions of hard-working Americans — many of them in the middle class — based on the specific tax situation of Warren Buffett, whose net worth places him in the top 0.000001% of wealthiest Americans.

Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights
By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks — no matter where you live — to to join the official Facebook page for the North Jersey Tea Party Group.

In honor of economist and political commentator Thomas Sowell, here are some random thoughts from the passing scene:

* Obama’s stubborn refusal to condemn the hate rhetoric of Jimmy Hoffa Jr. indicates Obama’s tacit approval of Hoffa’s vile speech.

* Obama giving lessons on civility is like a cockroach giving lessons on how to fly an airplane.

* Obama proposes to forcibly take billions more of Americans’ hard-earned money, so that he and his cronies can spend it. The Dow sinks by over 300 points the next day. Coincidence? Of course not.

* When the gay-hating bigots from the Westboro Baptist Church visit Manhattan, will America’s most notorious bigot — Al Sharpton — meet with them to form a Bigots’ Legion of Doom?

* MSNBC’s moral bankruptcy is epitomized by its decision to give a TV show to America’s most notorious bigot, Al Sharpton.

* Obama hasn’t a clue how to improve the economy. This is what he gets for — as he proudly proclaims — seeking out the Marxist professors in college, which is like proudly seeking out witch doctors in medical school.

Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights

By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks — no matter where you live — to to join the official Facebook page for the North Jersey Tea Party Group.

To be honest, I was never really a Christine O’Donnell fan. I met her at the Right Online conference in Las Vegas in 2010, and she was a very nice lady. In my 5 minutes with her however, she didn’t strike me as someone that might be a United States Senator one day. Possibly an unfair measurement, but it was my first impression, and at least in my experience, those observations are usually right. As a result, I never fully understood the frenzy of the supporters of her campaign to unseat Mike Castle in the GOP primary in 2010. Sure Mike Castle was a RINO in the mold of Sen. Snowe and Sen. Collins, but at least it would flip a seat from a Democrat in a blue state to a Republican. Who knows what crazy things Joe Biden might have said about his former seat being taken by an “R” and how it would affect his gaffe track record.

Christine, of course, went on to get trounced by Coons in 2010 by a country mile. Now to be fair, I have talked with many people who get paid big money in politics, that say Mike Castle would not have been a slam dunk, even in the Red Tide that occurred in the last election. Christine still had a future with the Tea Party peeps who would have whole heartedly supported her if she chose to run again–or maybe just do speaking events. That future looked bright… until last Wednesday.

The back and forth that went on in the press over whether Governor Palin had cancelled her speech, or just put it on hold, was fortunately overshadowed by President Obama and Speaker Boehner stealing the spotlight from the silliness happening outside of Washington with a squabble of their own. The truly confusing thing about this is that the main sticking point was that O’Donnell speaking was not a problem with the Palin camp, so they had no problem with it before they had a problem with it. Confused yet?

Why would there be a problem with a former candidate (who was endorsed by Sarah Palin, and a Tea Party favorite a lil over a year ago) speaking at a Tea Party event? Even if it is true that Christine’s people lied about her speaking with Palin via text, I think it might be a lil harsh to threaten to pull out of an event that possibly thousands of people are going to attend because you’re speaking. Just put O’Donnell at the beginning of the program, and usher her off stage before Palin speaks later. Problem solved.

Instead, we had all this calamity and confusion, and once again it looks like Governor Palin has rank amateurs surrounding her and handling her affairs. One of the results of this being a former candidate for office that was beloved by the same people who adore Palin, now is in a very public way thrown under a bus and used as a speed bump on the road to…?

Christine O’Donnell deserved better.

We deserve better.

I happened to come across a interesting article by Andrew Malcom from the L.A. Times about the declared GOP Presidential hopefuls. What I found most interesting is that Sarah Palin is included in this poll but has not declared she is a candidate. Now I know that there is a healthy faction of conservatives who are anxiously awaiting Governor Palin’s inevitable announcement in their opinion but in all fairness to her she should be allowed to declare or not in her own good time. Putting her in a poll as if she has declared is rather disingenuous and misleading.

If Governor Palin does decide to declare at some point and end the non stop speculation among her supporters and non supporters alike  her numbers would no doubt improve in a poll among the declared candidates.  She would be a top 3 contender immediately   crippling  any chance that the Bachman campaign has and putting a merciful end to the circus acts that candidacies of Ron Paul , Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman have become.

As for now she is not a candidate and with each passing day it becomes  less of a issue if whether or not she ever declares her intentions. Let’s deal with the reality of how things are not how we wish they would be.

This week they discuss was Hurricane Irene over-hyped, the dust up between Red State and Jamie Radtke and what in the hell will Palin supporters do if she does not run.
Also a tribute to Tom Kowalski who was a Detroit Lions beat writer for 30 years who passed away suddenly.

All this plus the “Ronald Reagan Shut Up Award” for the last week of August 2011

I would have probably never had heard of Tom Kowlaski though.

Tom was a beat writer for the Lions for 30 years and passed at the age of 51 on Monday. He was not the official voice of the organization or a broadcaster like Ernie Harwell was in Detroit for the Tigers but he was a voice for the fan. For as long as I can remember Killer Kowalski was writing about or talking the Lions and football on some media outlet in Detroit. He was a contributor at Fox 2 Detroit and on WDFN 1130 AM. There has not been a Sunday or Monday after a Lions game the past 20 years that I have not felt the game has wrapped up in my mind until I had heard what Killer’s take on the game was. I knew that if my take was close to his that even through the haze of beer ( being a Lions fan the past 10 years has not been easy) I had seen the game correctly.

While he was a great football beat writer from all the tributes pouring in today from all over Detroit and the country he was with no doubt a better person. I wish I would have had a chance to have met him and grabbed a beer and talked some Lions football with him.

On the show that he co-hosted Mon thru Fri on WDFN “Sean, Terp & Killer” his two partners carried on today without their friend and did a great job and tribute today to him by showing up for work and getting the job done. One caller summed it up quite well I thought, ” Tom Kowalski was the best friend I had that I have never met”. I couldn’t agree more and I have a sneaking suspicion that thousands of people all through out Detroit feel the same way today about our friend Tom “Killer” Kowalski. Even though we never shook his hand we are all better off or having had him blast through our car speakers and visit us via our TV and breaking down the Lions latest effort.

Today I am pretty damn glad to be a Lions fan and glad the family never made the jump to Chicago. For if we had I would have never met my friend Tom Kowalski.

Rest in Peace Tom, you will be truly missed

Continued from part one…

In New Jersey, this holds especially true, because of what are termed “Abbott districts.” These districts have been in existence since 1985, and are named after the first ruling of the Abbott v. Burke court case. As a result of some exceedingly harmful judicial rulings, in New Jersey, taxpayers are forced to fund not only their local government schools, but also 31 inner-city urban school districts. (This is one key reason that New Jersey suffers under the highest – or depending on how one measures, second-highest – taxes of all 50 states: taxpayers are forced to fund over 30 school districts, not merely their own local school district.)

Also as a result, on average, Abbott districts spend more money per pupil than even those New Jersey-based school districts classified by the state as being affluent. For example, in 2005, New Jersey noted that “Last year [2004], the average spending per pupil in the Abbott districts ($13,258) was higher than the average spending in the most affluent (I and J) districts.”

As of May 2011, New Jersey’s state government notes that “… total spending per pupil in the 31… Abbott districts averages $20,859 compared to average total spending per pupil of $17,051 in the other 500-plus school districts in New Jersey.” More information can be obtained through the following link:

Link: Taxpayers’ Guide to Education Spending May 2011

And unsurprisingly, even though meaningfully more money per pupil is spent on average in the Abbott districts than in the non-Abbott districts, the Abbott districts’ schools are generally terrible. We see this in numerous ways. One way is in the rankings of all government high schools in the state, published every two years, by left-leaning New Jersey Monthly magazine. Unsuprisingly, Abbott-district high schools dominate the bottom of the list of 322 government high schools:

* rank #322 of 322: Camden (Abbott district)
* rank #321 of 322: Camden Woodrow Wilson (Abbott district)
* rank #320 of 322: Jersey City James J. Ferris (Abbott district)
* rank #319 of 322: Newark West Side (Abbott district)
* rank #318 of 322: Perth Amboy (Abbott district)
* rank #317 of 322: Trenton Central (Abbott district)
* rank #316 of 322: Lakewood
* rank #315 of 322: Orange (Abbott district)
* rank #314 of 322: Newark Malcolm X Shabazz (Abbott district)
* rank #313 of 322: Passaic (Abbott district)
* rank #312 of 322: Jersey City Henry Snyder (Abbott district)
* rank #311 of 322: Newark Barringer (Abbott district)
* rank #310 of 322: Newark Weequahic (Abbott district)
* rank #309 of 322: Winslow Township
* rank #308 of 322: Jersey City William L. Dickenson (Abbott district)
* rank #307 of 322: Plainfield (Abbott district)
* rank #306 of 322: Millville (Abbott district)
* rank #305 of 322: Jersey City Lincoln (Abbott district)
* rank #304 of 322: Newark Vocational (Abbott district)
* rank #303 of 322: Bridgeton (Abbott district)

In other words, according to the methodology employed by left-leaning New Jersey Monthly magazine, 17 of the 20 worst government high schools in the state of New Jersey are in Abbott districts.

So the schools and districts with the most government involvement, and with meaningfully more government-provided funds than the average school/district, provide the worst performance. Ayers was told this multiple times by folks in the audience; for example: “In the state of New Jersey, the highest amount of money spent per student are the inner-city schools, and they have the lowest achievement rates.” Ayers – who isn’t a New Jersey resident, but who is a retired “Distringuished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar” from a government-run university in the midwest — didn’t seem aware of this fact prior to being told it (and probably still refuses to acknowledge this fact even after being told it).

But of course, Ayers didn’t call for less (or – dare I say it? – no) government involvement in education, he called for much more government involvement. And he did this in many ways:

* The oh-so-predictable appeal to the so-called “public good”: “And I think there are certain things – maybe some of the tea party folks in the room disagree – I but think certain things are a public good, and ought to be paid for by public money.” 

* The oh-so-predictable (and false) claim that education is a moral right: “But since education is not a product – but rather it’s a process, and a human right – then it seems to me that the whole notion of education as a product is backwards and destructive.”

* The oh-so-predictable call to pay for all this by confiscating wealth from those who have peacefully earned it: “You may style yourself against Big Government. So I hope you agree with me. We ought to cut the Pentagon down to zero. That’s a trillion dollars right there… Who do you want to tax, and what do you want to spend on? I want to tax the rich, and spend on the public good.”

* The oh-so-predictable call for vastly more government spending: “We ought to invest in more teaching. We ought to invest in smaller classes – exactly as the Obama kids have, that should be the standard for what all kids should have – 15 kids in a classroom, and so on.”

In other words, Ayers’ viewpoint is that the enormous problems caused by our government-run educational system would be solved through – you guessed it – enormously more government involvement.

Ayers takes this view even though he admits that he doesn’t trust the federal government, and doesn’t trust state governments: “I don’t trust the states, and I don’t trust the federal government. So, we can go over the fine points as how to spend it, but what I do believe, is that as a community, as a community in this wildly diverse, weird democracy [sic] of ours, we have a responsibility to educate all of our children up to the standard of what the privileged and, you know, the most powerful have.”

So the government has screwed up education for tens of millions of Americans. And government is untrustworthy. What’s the solution, according to Ayers? More government!

Such unbridled idiocy should never be taken seriously.

But Ayers was far from the only idiot in the room – his talk took place at a government university campus, after all.

Ayers was asked by some of the tea partiers present about his self-admitted communist beliefs. Ayers was at first reluctant to address this issue, but was prodded “You didn’t answer the communist question.” Ayers then responded, “Oh, the communist question. Yep. You know, I mean, these labels are all suspect. But I’ll say this. On the First Amendment I’m a fundamentalist, on the [unintelligible] I’m an abolitionist, on the economy I’m a socialist, and on the government I’m an anarchist.”

It’s bad enough that Ayers describes himself as a socialist and an anarchist. But what was worse – I was thoroughly appalled – was that dozens of the teachers in training (and some of their professors who also attended) cheered these remarks. And these are the people who want to have my children in their classrooms?!? You have to be kidding me!!!

And this wasn’t the only time these teachers in training revealed their classlessness (and worse). In the wake of the education reforms being enacted into law in Wisconsin, numerous government-sector union members have whined that “teachers don’t get any respect” and the like (apparently not understanding that nobody is criticizing teachers for teaching, but rather, plenty of pro-liberty folks are rightfully standing up against legalized extortion engaged in by government-sector unions and their cronies in government). And during the evening of March 24th, Ayers and several of the teachers in training did indeed complain about alleged “teacher bashing.”

But what happened when one of the tea partiers present stated “I’m a product of the Catholic schools.”? Ayers cracked, “My sympathies.” This was followed by gales of laughter from the teachers in training and their professors. I guess they are actually for teacher bashing, when the teachers in question aren’t government-sector union members.

To sum, Ayers may be a well-known leftist, but he is at core just as predictable as any garden-variety leftist is. No doubt some of the teachers in training will follow that same path, and become just as predictable. Predictable or not, though, these are the folks who will attempt to poison my children’s minds – and your children’s minds. We must not let that happen.

Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights

By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks — no matter where you live — to to join the official Facebook page for the North Jersey Tea Party Group.

For those of you unfamiliar with Bill Ayers, he engaged in numerous terrorist activities when he was younger, such as bombing the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol building in 1971, and the U.S. Pentagon in 1972. For more information on another bombing, check out the following video on YouTube, which shows a clip from Fox News in which one of Ayers’ victims is interviewed:

“Child Victim of William Ayers Nail Bomb Speaks Out”

While leftists dismiss this activity as having happened decades ago, up to the very second you read this, Ayers has never publicly apologized for his initiations of these violent acts. In fact, in an infamous interview published on – I am not making this up! — September 11, 2001 by the New York Times, Ayers defiantly defends his terrorism: “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers also calls himself a “small ‘c’ communist,” and chortles that “maybe I am the last communist willing to admit it.” Also of relevance to today’s politics is that Ayers was one of Obama’s mentors – in fact, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate in Bill Ayers’ living room.

Ayers showed up flaunting his communist beliefs by wearing a black t-shirt that prominently featured a large red star in the middle of it. As even left-leaning Wikipedia notes, “The five-pointed red star… is a symbol of socialism as well as communism…. It was one of the emblems, symbols, and signals representing the Soviet Union under the rule of the Communist Party, along with the hammer and sickle.” As a reminder, the Communist Party that ran the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was one of the largest mass murderers in history, killing an estimated 20-30 million of its own citizens, mostly under the terror-filled reigns of Lenin and Stalin. By wearing the communist red star, this is exactly what Ayers tacitly – and disgustingly — endorses.

Ayers was invited to campus by the Montclair State chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, which passed out fliers prior to the speech shamefully excusing Ayers’ past violence. For example, the flier reads in part, “It’s true that Professor Ayers participated passionately in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, as did hundreds of thousands of Americans. His political activity 40 years ago is history…” This cowardly glosses over an activity in which Ayers engaged, that 99.9%-plus of Americans did not and do not engage in – the violent use of bombs against a major American city’s government and against the U.S. (federal) government. And, of course, while Ayers’ bombing activities are decades old, his refusal to apologize for this violence continues to this very day. Ayers’ supporters no doubt understand this, which is why they avoid bringing it up.

Within the first ten minutes of Ayers’ talk, he conveyed his viewpoint that “In a democracy [sic], we take as an article of faith that all human beings are of incalculable value. Every human being is valued. We also take it as an article of faith in a democracy that the fullest development of all is the condition for the fullest development of each, and conversely, the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all. That has huge implications for policy.”

This commentary does have huge implications – for revealing how wrong-headed Ayers is.

First, for somebody who claims to be pro-education, Ayers should recognize that the form of government of the United States of America is not a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic. Founder Benjamin Franklin famously remarked that our form of government is “a republic, if you can keep it.” Founder John Adams detested democracy: “Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” One can easily Google numerous other quotes from our Founders that disfavor democracy – a fancy term meaning “mob rule” – because our Founders favored an inherently moral concept: individual rights. (That the Founders did not perfectly implement this principle in no way takes away from their rightful recognition of it. And besides, the Founders did a much better job of implementing it than most folks give them credit. The leftists who hate the Founders cite their inability to outlaw slavery at the federal level as the foremost example. Left unsaid by those who hate the Founders is that they successfully outlawed slavery in eight states over 1780-1804, including New Jersey in the last of those years. In addition, it was President George Washington that signed into law the bill – authored by signer of the Constitution Rufus King — that outlawed slavery in the territory now encompassing Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. If you weren’t previously aware of these facts, and you attended public school as a child, “thank” a leftist government-union member for your prior ignorance.)

Second, in no way, shape, or form do I advocate faith as a means to acquire knowledge. I advocate reason. I take nothing on faith. My view that every human being as the inherent and unalienable moral rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness does not depend on faith at all. So Ayers can talk of “we” all he wants, but in reality regarding this matter, I quote Ronald Reagan: “What do you mean, ‘we’?!?”

Third, Ayers goes on the explain the “huge implications for policy” of his views: “What are the implications of this notion that every human being, including every child, is of incalculable value? Well, the policy implications include that we can’t tolerate in a democracy a school system in which some kids go to schools where the basic situation is that the system spends $40,000 per kid per year to education them, and other kids – just four to five miles down the road – go to schools that spend $5,000 per kid per year to educate them. That makes a huge difference in terms of the outcomes that those kids are likely to have. It makes a huge difference. And we should be intolerant of that kind of disparity.”

In other words, Ayers takes the predictable leftist position: more money (read: a meaningful part of your hard-earned income) should be confiscated through the initiation of force by government, and spent on public schools (read: government indoctrination centers) that are attended by millions of children for whom you have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever.

I could not disagree more with Ayers’ collectivism. As it so happens, I am the proud parent of two wonderful children, and I have worked hard for decades (including many years before my children were born) to ensure that I will be able to spend the time and resources (including but not limited to money) necessary for them to receive the best education I can possibly provide. I enthusiastically take on this responsibility — in part because it was my choice to become a parent. I do not want, and I do not expect, other Americans to pay as much as one cent for my children’s education. My children’s education is the sole responsibility of my wife and me.

Likewise, I absolutely reject the notion that I am responsible for anybody else’s children. It is an infringement of my unalienable rights to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness to be forced to provide schooling for children not my own. (And to be clear, my rights are not unique; they are the same as all other individuals’ rights. No individual should be forced to pay for another person’s child.)

To put it another way: Ayers’ use of the phrase “incalculable value” implies a valuer. And it would be exceedingly cruel and irrational for me to value my children to no greater degree than I value millions of children I’ve never met – and never will meet. Similarly, the parents of those millions of children most definitely should value their own children more than they value my children. To act otherwise would be a monstrous injustice against their own children.

Folks who greatly value education – including myself – should be left free to spend as much money as we want on our own children’s education. We should not have our liberties infringed upon by the entity entrusted to protect them, simply because there exist some parents out there who do not value education, or who value it far less than I (and many others) do. But of course, the leftist Ayers excuses parents who value education a lot less than I (and many others) do, to the point where he wants to punish us — via government confiscation of even more of our hard-earned income — for having the audacity to peacefully plan ahead for our childrens’ educations.

Ayers was not above engaging in blatant contradictions, either. For example, he regularly bashed the American education system, with comments such as “Americans – as you may know – are known the world around as being both geographically challenged and historically [below average].” (One wag in the audience responded, “Speak for yourself.”) Another of Ayers’ remarks bashing the American education system was “National Geographic did a survey of 18-to-25 year-old American kids… 80% of American kids couldn’t find Iraq on a map, 80% couldn’t find Israel/Palestine, 40% couldn’t find Great Britain, and an astonishing 10% couldn’t find the United States.” (18-to-25 year-old… kids? Funny, but I’ve always used another term to describe 18-to-25 year-olds: adults.) Another Ayers comment: “It’s absolutely a criticism of the schools to say we stopped teaching geography 40 years ago. We stopped teaching history 20 years ago…. social studies; even that has become wondering and strange.”

I have no problem with folks who point out the gigantic flaws in the American system of education. But one must recognize what this system is: a largely government-run system, in which a clear majority of American children attend government schools – a statement which holds true today just as it did 20, 30, 40 years ago.

To be concluded in part two…

Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights

By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks — no matter where you live — to to join the official Facebook page for the North Jersey Tea Party Group.

* Obama’s view that “The vast majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill would prefer to do nothing on entitlements” isn’t quite true. Democrats remain eager to legalize trillions more in theft from millions of hard-working Americans, so that Washington D.C. can give that plunder to those who did not earn it and therefore have zero moral claim to it.

* Of the 454 White House staffers, 41 of them owe back taxes. No doubt Obama views these 41 as potential appointments to his cabinet, and the remaining 413 as suckers.

* New York City threatens to fine a beekeeper $2,000 for failing to provide water for a beehive — even though the hive is next to Little Neck Bay’s 13 trillion gallons of water. Sounds like someone is intent on challenging Mayor Grey Poupon for the title of Most Ridiculous Petty Tyrant.

* Every one of the fire-union officials on New York City’s Fire Department Pension Fund Board voted that a firefighter who retired on disability in 2003 — but has no disability today, as evidenced by his competition in mixed-martial arts tournaments — should continue to collect $74,624 annually for doing no work. As such, they have disgraced the noble profession of firefighter. Taxpayers should wise up and demand that all government-sector unions be outlawed, as their core activity is legalized extortion.

* Obama threatens that Washington D.C. may not have enough money to send out Social Security checks if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Why hasn’t somebody asked Obama the following: after decades upon decades of Social Security payments by tens of millions of Americans, how is it even possible that Social Security is in such horrendous financial shape? Of course, those of us who understand Ponzi schemes already know the answer.

* Washington D.C. wants us to believe that it’s perfectly OK for TSA agents to fondle females’ breasts — but an alleged felony for a woman to do the same to a TSA agent? I guess in government’s eyes, some people really are more equal than others.

Mark Kalinowski
North New Jersey Tea Party Group
Liberty, Free Markets, and Individual Rights

By the way, I encourage ALL liberty-minded folks — no matter where you live — to to join the official Facebook page for the North Jersey Tea Party Group.