Children Are Our Future: Lock 'Em Up Edition

Loyal readers of the blog know quite well that Willie Mays Haze,much like ODB before him, loves the children, but definitely not in that creepy R. Kelly kind of way. Some of my finest work has been on the subject of how to properly protect our children in the shooting galleries we in America call schools. By cop or by chimp, we must find a way to defend children's right to an education.

But what happens when it is our children themselves that become an obstacle to their learning? Even if we secure them from external threats in my proposed prison-schools, how do we protect them from the most dangerous threat of all, themselves?  Simple, we arrest the little buggers.

For too long schools have been havens for druggies, bullies and thieves. The liberalization of the school system has effectively castrated whatever terror-bred authority teachers once had. Today they are no longer able to mete out physical and emotional abuse just to teach a lesson. There no longer exists a rampant fear of embarrassing and possibly debilitating corporal punishment to keep them in line and without a rigid punishment system directing their behavior, children have become unruly and feral.

With no threat of recourse or punishment schools have become hives of scum and villainy. Theft has become common in classrooms. Bullying goes unchecked in the hallways. Opium dens take root in school kitchens long closed due to poor test scores.

As always, the NYPD is willing to venture into uncharted waters and be proactive about cleaning up our schools, weeding out of future criminals.

Instead of leaving the matter to the incompetent school administrators, the NYPD recently spent ten hours questioning a third grader who was accused of stealing $5 from a fellow student, going so far as threatening to put him in "with the big boys" in hopes of producing a confession.

Of course the bleeding hearts have come out and decried this incident as yet another example of blatant abuse from one of the more infamous police forces in the country. They maintain that the hours the young lad spent hand-cuffed to a chair only taught him to fear the police, nothing more. But if lasting psychological scarring and a healthy fear for authority figures aren't the building blocks to a model citizen, then I surely don't know what are.

I think we should be praising the NYPD, not calling for their heads. Afterall, if they had not taken such measured steps, they boy would think there is no consequence for being accused of stealing $5. But after this show of force, and use of threats, I do believe the boy has a healthy fear, if not respect, for the criminal justice system.

 Plus he now knows he's in the system, and if he slips up in the least at any point in the future he knows it won't just be threats to send him in with the "big boys", they'll actually do it. That knowledge alone should keep him out of trouble, drive him to succeed. And if that is the case, then the lesson's learned. Mission accomplished.

And even it isn't, at least he'll know what to expect.

Protection of the Innocent

Due to a continuing series of shocking mass-shootings, 2012 may very well go down as the year of the lone-nut-gunman-mowing-down-innocents. The most shocking of these incidents occurred in Newton, Connecticut two short weeks before Christmas, when a shooter entered Sandy Hook Elementary before gunning down 20 children and 6 adults. It is not surprising that this incident sparked much debate not only on the place of assault rifles and extended clips in civil society, but more importantly there was much needed discussion on how best to keep this nation's children safe.

Head of the NRA and maligned wingnut, Wayne LaPierre, posited the classic truism of "the best defense is a good offense" as the key to securing schools. Following his speech, some suggested teachers be allowed to carry a loaded firearm with them throughout the school day. These armed stewards of knowledge would then be the first line of defense between any deranged gunman and the targeted youth.

Roundly mocked for his counter-intuitive solution of solving gun violence with more guns, LaPierre was depicted as a man out of touch with the realities of society, concerned only with protecting the gun lobbies that pay his salary. However, it was not his suggestion of more guns as a cure-all that troubled me, but his reliance on public school teachers being mentally and physically fit enough to conduct a gun battle in close quarters.

Based on my own experiences, I can't say I had a single teacher throughout my years in public education that I would feel comfortable defending my life if a marauder came to school with lethal intentions. I recall teachers who were unable to manage a class of seventh graders without a nervous breakdown, and these are the public servants in whom I am to entrust with child safety? I think not.

Teachers can't even manage to prepare their students for standardized tests, let alone prepare them for an armed assailant. That is why we need to continue the demolition of the teachers' unions, remove them from the educational apparatus and insert people who know a thing or two about keeping our citizens safe.

In this struggling economy, too often soldiers come home to few job prospects, and even fewer relevant to the training they received in the armed services. In an example of American ingenuity, the government can kill two birds with one stone by replacing our outdated educators with the protectors of knowledge from our armed forces. Jobs will be created and the children will be protected.

Now there may exist some trepidation about the ability of trained killers to properly educate our children with the knowledge requisite to survive in 21st century America, and those worries are not without merit. The current academic system reduces the value of real-world knowledge, exemplified by returning veterans, in favor of vague terms like "problem solving" and "lateral thinking", but it does not have to be so if we just revise the system.

With the decline of quality careers in this country, combined with the burgeoning school to prison pipeline, point to the need to seriously revamp our school systems. Education in abstract areas like the arts provide nothing to the factory worker of tomorrow, and as IKEA showed in Danville, VA, manufacturing jobs can be the backbone of this economy once again. If we make our schools as secure as our prisons, there could be a stronger focus on preparing our students for the real world and far less on safety. Let those with experience in defense be the ones to guard our most precious natural resource, cheap manual labor.

With a little innovation we could structure our schools to have our children more corporate ready. Shop class could be sponsored by Nike, and students could get used to the pleasures from a day of good manual labor. Social studies could be farmed out to companies as market research programs, breeding a familiarity between the students and the products they will produce. In my mind, such an idea is win-win. And behind the bars and armed guards of their local public school, students would be guarded from the harsh realities of the outside world.

This is the future of our country, the ugly necessity of our times. Let us not turn away in revulsion from the task ahead of us, but instead accept the fate of this proud country, and work to get her back to where she needs to be.

Where Do We Go From Here: A Final Solution To The Debt Ceiling Debates

After cutting a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff", Obama has come under much criticism from the left for his dubious bargaining posture. By making permanent the Bush-era tax cuts on those making under $450,000, pundits like Paul Krugman, have lamented that the President has painted himself into a corner.

With little room to negotiate on revenue increases, and even less credibility on standing firm, there seems to be a resignation that this next round of negotiations over the debt ceiling will force Obama to concede massive cuts to social services. There is fear that in doing so the President will only embolden an already brazenly out of touch GOP, and only further weaken his bargaining positions going forward. This does not have to be.

President Obama, despite his concessions, is playing a game of ninth dimensional chess so complicated that even the most experienced pundits have trouble divining his strategies, let alone his endgame. To the linear-thinking old media, the president has few options other than to make a signature post-partisan "grand bargain". But to those with an eye toward history see that our President still has an ace in the hole, and he plans to use it.

There are a number of archaic political tactics that fall into disuse, and either because of impracticality, or in certain cases, illegality, these strategies are tossed into the waste bin of time and are forgotten about. But lest we forget, Barrack Obama is a former constitutional lawyer, and a major history buff, so it stands to reason he has at least a passing familiarity of some of these retired tricks, and he most likely possesses a working knowledge of them as well. I believe it is in these long-abandoned tactics that salvation lies.

Infrequently used since its inception in 1904, there exists a controversial political maneuver that I believe Obama will use to instill a new respect for the office of the President. Named after an incident in which Ol Bull Roarer Taft himself, then Secretary of War, ended an attempted coup in the Philippines by shooting the ambassador whose captivity provided leverage to the rebels, the "Shoot the Hostage" strategy could be a major boon for Obama going forward.

By ending funding for anything not directly tied to defense, the President can cut a wide enough swath through domestic spending that almost any Republican target for cuts can be preemptively dismantled, thus nullifying their tactical advantage. Cuts to education spending? Nope, the department of education has already been dissolved. Changes to Social Security and Medicare? Too late, neither exist any longer. Withholding funding from Planned Parenthood? No go, Planned Parenthood has been erased from the cultural landscape as even an abstract idea. Talk about heading them off at the pass.

I believe that by removing the bargaining leverage used to pry concession from the President, the Republicans will have no choice to drop their obstructive legislative positions, and work to enact the rest of Obama's post-partisan plan for America; expanding the security state, and appointing corporate interests to be stewards of the public good.

President Obama can expect a lot of flak for his invocation of such a drastic political measure. After all, no one likes cuts to vital social services like Medicare, not even libertarian tea-baggers. But here's the rub, and what really makes this strategy such a winner, Obama has a built in excuse from the get, "The Republicans made me do it!" And that is a statement you just can't argue with.