Tag Archives: Equality

Public school suspends 5-year-old girl for making threat with soap bubble gun

Fox News reports.

Excerpt:

A 5-year-old Pennsylvania girl who told another girl she was going to shoot her with a pink Hello Kitty toy gun that blows soapy bubbles has been suspended from kindergarten.

Her family has hired an attorney to fight the punishment, which initially was 10 days for issuing a ‘terroristic threat.’ But her punishment was reduced to two days after her mother met with school officials and had the incident dropped to ‘threatening to harm another student,’ which apparently carries a lesser punishment.

“It’s laughable,” Robin Ficker, the girl’s attorney told FoxNews.com.

[…]Ficker says Mount Carmel Area School District officials said the girl made the threat on Jan. 10 as she waited for a school bus with friends. A school official overheard the remark and searched the girl’s backpack and did not find the Hello Kitty gun, he said.

The next day, the girls involved were ‘interrogated’ by school officials, Ficker said. By the time the girl was done speaking to administrators about the incident, she was crying, he said. A teacher called out the girl in front of her class and told her police may get involved, he said.

Ficker called the girl “the least terroristic person in Pennsylvania.”

“What parent that you know would want their 5-year-old questioned about making terroristic threats without them in the room?” Ficker asked.

A 5-year-old girl with a toy gun that shoots soap bubbles is a terrorist, according to these government-run public schools.

And this is not an isolated incident, here’s another one from last week.

Excerpt:

A lime-green Nerf toy gun caused an hours-long lock-down at a Long Island school on Tuesday.

A 911 caller told Nassau County Police she saw a suspicious teen at about 7:38 a.m. Tuesday wearing a black jacket and carrying a black backpack at Elmont Memorial high School in Elmont.

The caller said he was also carrying a lime green gun.

A SWAT team searched the school room by room.  Parents were allowed to pick up their children early Tuesday afternoon.

They eventually found the toy lime green and yellow lever action Nerf gun in a student locker.  Police did not make any arrests and the lockdown was lifted.

School officials confiscated the toy gun and say it will be returned to the parents.

Inspector Kenneth Lack says the heightened response was due to “an abundance of precaution.”

That’s another public school, run by the government.

If you have a job, some of the money you earn is taken by the government to pay for this worthless public school monopoly. There is no opt-out from this stupidity.

The US postal service and Amtrak: which one will go bankrupt first?

Will it be the USPS? (H/T Wes)

Excerpt:

Inspector general David Williams says cash-strapped service, saddled with debt and low revenues, is in ‘very serious trouble’.

The chief postal watchdog has warned that the troubled US Postal Service will go out of business this year unless Congress acts to rescue it.

David Williams, the inspector general of the USPS, says the service is in “very serious trouble”, after five years lumbered with heavy debt and falling revenues.

In an interview with the Guardian, Williams warns that Congress, which has been distracted by November’s elections and the fiscal cliff crisis, must act this year to save the service.

The USPS lost over $16bn last year, and has lost about $41bn over the past five years, according to Robert Taub, a vice-chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Or will it be Amtrak?

Excerpt:

Amtrak triumphantly proclaimed 2012 to be a success. The reason? It posted a loss of only $361 million for the year. That’s its smallest operating loss since 1975, amid growing ridership along the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston. Although this represents progress in the right direction, Amtrak is still not worth what it costs American taxpayers.

Amtrak has never been profitable. From its outset in 1971, it has been backed by taxpayers with billions of dollars in direct aid and loans. Over the past three years alone, Amtrak has received more than $4.4 billion in federal aid, and it still was not able to finish any of those years in the black.

[…]But after more than 40 years of government funding, $4.4 billion in aid over the past three years should be particularly disconcerting. Rail transportation is not becoming cheaper because of government investment in the market; to the contrary, the price has gone up, especially as compared with other major public works projects.

[…]Rather than successfully spurring on American business, Amtrak provides slower trains at higher prices. It is a symbol of government waste because it fails to make any progress toward self-sufficiency and fails to innovate.

It is time to admit this train has left the station. Amtrak cannot and will not be run efficiently with the backstop of government funding behind it. Someday, a public-private partnership on railroads could be in the American interest, as it has been in the past. But for Amtrak, the government should shut off the spigot.

Or will Obama just borrow a few more trillion from your children, so that his public sector supporters in USPS and Amtrak can continue to vote for socialism?

The funny thing about this is that we could sell these wasteful government-owned organizations and privatize their functions. Then we wouldn’t have to sink more and more taxpayer money in public sector boondoggles.

Teachers face termination for refusing to promote gay marriage

From the UK Telegraph. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

Primary school teachers could face the sack for refusing to promote gay marriage once same-sex unions become law, a minister has signalled.

Liz Truss, an education minister, refused to rule out the possibility that teachers, even in faith schools, could face disciplinary action for objecting on grounds of conscience.

Miss Truss said simply that it was impossible to know what the impact of the legislation would be at this stage.

Her admission came in a letter to a fellow Conservative MP, David Burrowes, last month.

[…]Mr O’Neill, an expert on human rights, was asked to advise on the impact redefining marriage to include same-sex couples could have on schools, churches, hospitals, foster carers and public buildings.

Among his conclusions was that schools could be within their statutory rights to dismiss staff who wilfully fail to use stories or textbooks promoting same-sex weddings.

Parents who object to gay marriage being taught to their children would also have no right to withdraw their child from lessons, he argued.

And, in theory, the fact that a school was a faith school would make no difference, he added.

Read the rest, because our country just voted for Barack Obama, and he supports gay marriage.

How would gay marriage change your life?