Schools secretly war against parents’, taxpayers’ values by creating gender transition plans for students without parents’ consent or knowledge.

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IN THIS ISSUE:

• Schools Secretly War Against Parents’, Taxpayers’ Values
• Healthy, Wealthy, and Gone
• Fed Succeeding at Slowing Economy
• Government Death Wish
• Cartoon

Schools Secretly War Against Parents’, Taxpayers’ Values

Government schools are increasingly keeping secrets from parents regarding their children, a development suggestive of an elite ruling class that recognizes few, if any, limits on its power. A current controversy in Indiana is emblematic. A school district secretly developed a plan to encourage children to adopt the identity of the opposite sex at school without their parents’ consent or even knowledge, The Daily Signal reports:

Following the exposure of a hidden “Gender Support Plan” and policy to conceal student transgender procedures from parents, the whistleblower, counselor Kathy McCord, has been placed on immediate and indefinite leave, and could be facing termination.

McCord, a counselor at Pendleton Heights High School in the South Madison Community School Corporation in Indiana, confirmed documents unearthed by parents in Madison County showing that counselors were asking teachers not to reveal a student’s new name and pronouns to parents.

McCord had told The Daily Signal about the new policy two days before a school board meeting last December 8:

School counselor Kathy McCord went on the record with The Daily Signal to outline the shady methods the school district employed to keep the so-called Gender Support Plan away from teachers and parents. McCord also described how she was ordered to compel speech from teachers by requiring them to use one set of names and pronouns with students and another with parents. …

McCord told The Daily Signal that Assistant Superintendent Andrew Kruer, [Superintendent Mark] Hall’s subordinate, had informed all counselors that this procedure of keeping information from parents was a school board-approved policy. Kruer also told counselors that the district’s legal counsel, LGBTQ+ advocate Jessica Heiser, had informed the counseling staff it was federal law.

This effort to indoctrinate students into values antithetical to those of their parents and of the taxpayers who pay for the schools is spreading rapidly across the United States, as we have regularly reported at Heartland Daily News:

Even in strongly Republican areas where most parents are likely to be conservative, schools are implanting a radical, extremist ideology in children, The Federalist reports.

“One of the most visible ways many Idaho public schools push extremism common to far-left locales is in exposing kids to adult sexual practices and gender ideology, often without parent[s’] knowledge or consent,” writes Joy Pullman for The Federalist.

This is no minor difference of opinion. Regardless of whether one agrees with the substance of these teachings, it is a gigantic case of government overreach for schools to push on children a worldview radically different from what their parents are teaching them and what the taxpayers think they are paying for.

This puts educators, counselors, and administrators who think differently in an awful position:

The Daily Signal reported that McCord and another counselor, who chose to remain anonymous, expressed distress at the district policy. They said that they became school counselors to work with students and parents, not to come between them.

The fact that these issues are new and the required thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors are completely in opposition to those of someone as far left as Barack Obama only a decade ago means many thousands of people working in the government education system have had to change their minds radically about these fundamental aspects of life, learn to love cognitive dissonance, move to lower-paying parochial schools, or find a new line of work. Those whose values do not align with the program cannot remain. The Indiana case shows this, as The Daily Signal reports:

Amanda Keegan, a geography and psychology teacher at Pendleton Heights High School, says she resigned in part to protest this policy.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Signal, Keegan said, “When I had to look at that parent, and feel like I was lying to that parent … I was sick to my stomach. I can’t lie to parents. I can’t do that again.”

The education establishment benefits from teacher exits because it accelerates the ideological purification of its workforce. The plan is simple and obvious: indoctrinate the teachers in woke colleges and universities and push out any current teachers, counselors, and administrators who dare to differ. Then, complain teachers are not paid nearly enough, and note teacher shortages are looming, thus requiring still-higher pay. When parents and other taxpayers expose your actions in school board meetings, shut off the microphone and have the boldest ones arrested, as Heartland Daily News has reported here, here, here, and in numerous other news stories and commentaries.

The matter of choice is central here. If parents choose to hand over their offspring to people who will teach them whatever the experts care to convey and will not tell the parents what they are doing, that may be the parents’ right, however foolish it would be for them to do so.

That is not the situation in these schools. The government compels parents to send their children to school and forces taxpayers to finance the system. With that power behind it, a government-established cadre of people manipulates their captive children to question basic elements of their identity and their place in the world. Giving such power to government is obviously a gravely risky decision.

Regardless of whether one agrees with the agenda being taught in these schools, it is obvious the parents who are handing over their children to them deserve to know what their kids are being taught, and the taxpayers who fund these institutions have a right to know whether their money is being spent on what they intend it to be devoted to.

State governments have full authority over the schools they create and fund. Parents have a right to complain to the school boards and should continue to do so. Real change, however, will remain a pipedream until parents and other taxpayers punish lawmakers in the voting booth for their negligence or complicity in allowing this. Only then will the government take seriously the movement for school choice and parents’ rights.

Sources: The Daily Signal; The Daily Signal; Heartland Daily News

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Healthy, Wealthy, and Gone

California, like some of the most irresponsible members of Congress (which is saying a lot) and several other states, is considering imposing a wealth tax. The current proposal would apply only to the richest people, currently the top 0.1 percent, as the bill text states:

This bill would, for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2024, and before January 1, 2026, impose an annual tax at a rate of 1.5% of a resident of this state’s worldwide net worth in excess of $1,000,000,000, or in excess of $500,000,000 in the case of a married taxpayer filing separately. The bill would, for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2026, impose an annual tax at a rate of 1% of a resident’s worldwide net worth in excess of $50,000,000, or in excess of $25,000,000 in the case of a married taxpayer filing separately. The bill would also impose, for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2026, an additional tax at a rate of 0.5% of a resident’s worldwide net worth in excess of $1,000,000,000, or in excess of $500,000,000 in the case of a married taxpayer filing separately.

The tax would apply even after residents move out of state, Fox News reports:

The current version just introduced includes measures to allow California to impose wealth taxes on residents even years after they left the state and moved elsewhere.

Exit taxes aren’t new in California. But this bill also includes provisions to create contractual claims tied to the assets of a wealthy taxpayer who doesn’t have the cash to pay their annual wealth tax bill because most of their assets aren’t easily turned into cash. This claim would require the taxpayer to make annual filings with California’s Franchise Tax Board and eventually pay the wealth taxes owed, even if they’ve moved to another state.

Seven other states—all of them deep blue—are also considering bills to impose wealth taxes.

Proponents of the proposed California wealth tax say it will cover the state’s $22.5 million budget deficit and help pay for new spending on social programs.

The operative rule here is that when you tax something, you get less of it. A corollary is that tax increases beyond a tolerably low percentage of the source result in lower revenues, not higher takings. Tax (reported) wealth, and you’ll get less of it.

If it were not so obviously based on government greed and the politics of envy, the California bill could almost be seen as a plan to flatten taxes in the state instead of increasing their progressivity. With the wealth tax exacerbating and accelerating the ongoing exodus of wealthy Californians to other states—encouraging people to get out before the new law is enacted—those left behind will be forced to pay a higher and higher percentage of the overall tax bill.

That would undoubtedly serve to make Californians more serious about state taxes and the bloated budget they feed. Maybe this is not such a bad idea after all, for states with profligate governments: chase out everybody who creates wealth and force lawmakers to tighten the budget.

On second thought: no. They’d find some way around it. They always do.

Sources: Fox News; AB-259 Wealth Tax: False Claims Act; The Wall Street Journal; Washington Examiner

Fed Succeeding at Slowing Economy

With inflation decreasing and economic growth slowing slightly, analysts and investors are feeling more hope the Federal Reserve will decrease its interest rate hikes as it has already indicated it plans to do.

The unemployment rate remains low, however, casting doubt on the possibility the Fed will halt its interest rate increases any time soon instead of gradually raising them further for the next two or three months.

The inevitable outcome of these accumulating rate increases is a recession. People are burning through their savings and spending less, and when falling consumer demand (via less ability to buy things) meets supply constraints (via tax increases, higher interest rates, and greater regulation), the result is an economic contraction.

Source: The Wall Street Journal; The Wall Street Journal

Government Death Wish

As crime increases in cities across the country, ideologues in control of municipal governments refuse to consider proven ways to get criminals off the streets and discourage others from going into that line of business. Instead, lawmakers are doubling down on the policies that brought on the crime wave.

Washington, D.C. has just done exactly that, writes political analyst Daniel McCarthy at The New York Post:

The council passed its Revised Criminal Code Act over Mayor Muriel Bowser’s veto Tuesday, a late but very welcome Christmas present for offenders ranging from petty crooks to carjackers and rapists. The new law guts mandatory-minimum sentencing and eliminates “three strikes” provisions. Repeat offenders will have a lot less jail time to worry about from now on.

It doesn’t take much math to figure out what putting more of these people back on the street for longer periods is going to mean for violent crime in the District.

McCarthy provides some of that math:

Washington, DC is in the midst of a murder boom, with more than 200 homicides a year in 2021 and 2022. And every one of the last five years has seen more carjackings than the year before.

From 2021 to 2022, reported carjackings spiked by 36%. Nearly three-quarters of those incidents involved a firearm, and juveniles perpetrated 70%, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. …

Efforts to foster “racial justice” by letting criminals run free impose their worst effects on the very groups they are supposed to help, McCarthy notes:

The result is more murder, most of it in black neighborhoods—where black children are often the victims of the volleys of shots rival criminals aim (or don’t aim) at one another. Those men should be in jail before they can take a life. That means doing the opposite of what the DC city council has done—it means locking up offenders early and for as long as it takes to render them harmless.

It took decades for the nation to reverse the ill effects of policies such as these that were implemented during the 1960s and 1970s. It almost appears that these lawmakers have a Death Wish.

Source: The New York Post

Cartoon of the Week

via Townhall