Big Brother, stop trying to be a parent

When are newspapers editorialists and legislators going to learn you can't legislate morality?

The latest media darling - “sexting” - is today’s excuse for more government interference into private lives and government control of the masses.

What the media herd is calling “sexting” is the fault of parents who won’t control their kids’ activities. The cure is for parents to confiscate their kids’ phones, not try to get laws to determine what kids may or may not do with their cell phones.

Anyway, why should a youngster believe that seeing nude pictures of anyone of any age is a bad thing? On television they see nude pictures with only the nipples, penises and butt cracks fuzzed out; on television see women preaching that “size DOES matter;” in magazines see older adults patting each other down because Viagra rules, also with ads for videos teaching the “art of oral sex;” and they’re only a mouse click away from reading about the “top lesbian sexual fantasies.”

All this government and media involvement should be aimed, instead, at the huge and all-pervasive sex-oriented industries which are in everyone’s face at every turn. As for children, they are still the responsibility of parents, not government.

Kids don’t need cell phones. Recognize that and you’re halfway there.

Butt out, Big Brother.

Remove the tools for inappropriate behavior

It may have been only inappropriate behavior, but the student who recently distributed nude photos of herself via cell phone has called into question the Ohio law under which she was threatened as a sex predator, which is a good thing.

Still, what she did - and what lots of other kids are probably doing - is inappropriate behavior made possible by having access to the right tools.

So why are today's children permitted to have cell phones anyway? Particularly, why do they have them at school?

But if cell phones open doors to inappropriate behavior, what about home computers? How do you solve that one?

Well, what you do is put the kid's home computer in the living room or kitchen with the monitor in plain view to the rest of the family.

Another major facilitator of inappropriate behavior is the automobile. I had three children and the oldest one taught me about that at age 16. The second two did not get licenses until they were almost 18, proving it can be done.

Parents who know what their kids are doing - and with which tools - can head off much of their inappropriate behavior, even if it requires constant attention and lots of effort.

Shall we buy another false sense of security?

The most certain way to riches is to invent something that plays on fear, then get the government to make people use it.

Such a maneuver is in the works by a company in Chargrin Falls which manufactures a device "that would warn people when a sex offender is approaching," according to an article in the Cincinnati Post.

Convicted sex offenders would be locked into a monitoring ankle bracelet equipped to set off vibrations in small devices to be carried by folks who want to be alerted when a predator approaches.

Fear of sexual predators creates a ready market. The idea is being pushed by Ohio Senator Tim Grendell, who chairs the state Judiciary Committee on Criminal Justice. He wants a law requiring the existing GPS ankle bracelets to be modified for this purpose.

But even a spokesman for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center says it won't help because nine in 10 sex crime victims are assaulted by a person they know or trust. "This just plays on the great myths out there, such as the stranger danger myth that's not true," the newspaper quoted her as saying. "It's sending the wrong message and setting people up with a false sense of security."

She's right. Protection from predators should be provided by other family members, mostly moms and dads or guardians. Knowing where kids are and what they are doing and with whom would virtually wipe out this awful problem that has resulted from the breakdown of the family and the refusal of parents and relatives to be responsible.

I don't think legislators can remedy stupid and irresponsible parents; I'm also pretty sure these electronic gimmicks will do no more than make yet another company rich by giving it my tax money.

Now for some good news ...

Among the things government workers have done right is the remodeling of Ohio 13 through the north end of Newark. Beautiful new sidewalks, pavement, and clearing away old stuff make a world of difference.
.....
Randy Lamb, bless him, is retiring as Newark Schools band director. Count my kids as among the thousands of students who became better individuals because of his influence. Randy is a genius - as band technician and role model and I will always be grateful for his career-long contributions to this community.
.....
The book Judith Waite Allee co-authored - "Homeschooling on a Shoestring" has been getting more good reviews. If the subject of home schooling interests you, check it here
and here.
.....
Judith is the wife of John Allee who has a Newark Tea Party gallery.
Here's the link.

Couples don't need two incomes and they don't need government baby-sitting services

All-day kindergarten is a gift to parents who want baby sitters and to teachers who want more work. It's a feel-good, government-paid, baby-sitting, make-more-government-work project, compliments of Newark property owners.

That's been my thesis all along, most recently in this journal at this link.

A reader of that journal entry asked: "For parents who support this (all-day kindergarten) because they 'must' work full time outside of the home what is your response?"

For the one or two other persons who might care what I think about that, here it is:

First, there are few, if any, couples that must have two incomes. The reason I know this is because my wife and I made it with me working outside the home while she worked inside. I never had great paydays, and some months during those years we never had any paydays, but we spent only what we could afford and kept our appetites under control. Nevertheless, we raised three babies to adulthood. If we did it - being no more blessed with brains than anyone else - any couple can do it.

Second, even if both parents think they must work (because they will not control their appetites) it is their own responsibility to pay for baby-sitting services, not their fellow citizen-taxpayers.

And third, the kind of education a small child needs is not from teachers and books. It is not from strangers. It is not from society. It is from home and family.

The expectations by the state for little children to perform at at a government-set level is pure crap. It is artificial crap manufactured by bureaucrats and teachers for the greater glory and make-work of bureaucrats and teachers.

My own education began with first grade at age six. Except for the increasing interference by government upon my life - and the associated costs thereto - I haven't done badly.

Parents apparently at fault in tragic shooting incident

The Columbus Dispatch told in detail on 7/15/07 what happened when a few Worthington high schoolers when out to harass Allen S. Davis, a recluse, and his mother, and about events leading up to one of the youngsters getting shot in the head.

Davis was sentenced to 19 years and the youngster was sentenced to lots of medical procedures and will maybe never fully recover. It's a tragedy resulting from foolish behavior on both sides.

I am pleasantly surprised that many who commented on it in the letters column were sympathetic with Davis, this nobody who, however wrongfully, tried to end the years of bedevilment he'd received from kids trespassing on his property. Most of the time, or so it seems to me, a guy like him is just a schmuck who is used as a whipping boy by grieving family members with help from over-zealous and too-accommodating courts, as may be the case here.

According to the Dispatch report, the parents knew what their kids were going to do, and - by the way the article was written - it seemed that they were okay with this "sport." After all, they had done similar things when they were young.

Now these parents and the child-victim remain unforgiving of Davis, though he did say he was sorry. But no place in this extensive report did I read that these parents regretted their foolishness for letting their child participate in this activity, nor were they the least apologetic to the recluse, the other victim.

Were they honorable enough to shoulder some the blame, perhaps other parents might prevent their kids from harassing people who've done them no harm.

Kindergarten: Government's all-day baby sitting service

With the implementation of all-day kindergarten, the responsibilities of motherhood hit a new low, school employees are are blessed with more government-designed make-work, and tax payers start bankrolling an all-day baby-sitting service.

The only losers are the little kids being trucked off to spend more time in the care of strangers when they should be home playing.

The plan fits well with the description given to government-induced education 3/20/07 when I wrote that school tax money is Ohio's big breast.

Boy abused for 4 years: Where were his parents?

There is a boy in Licking County who was abused, it is charged, more than 200 times over a period of four years, beginning when he was 10.

A Plain City man, David Arthur Meadows, has been charged, according to The Advocate's news report.

Likely he'll get jail time. But just as likely, the cooperators, the other perpetrators, will escape blame or punishment.

Society and the law should ask: How could even one such incidence occur without the knowledge and intervention of this boy's parents or guardian?

They are a root cause of all such recurring incidents. Without parents, guardians, relatives, neighbors who care, there is just a kid by himself against a pervert.

How can these "parents" not be held legally - not just morally - guilty of rape and perversion?

Ask not what your school district can do for you ...

WCLT's report on the considerations for switching Newark students from one school to the other demonstrates to my satisfaction one of the problems with community support and harmony between students, parents, and schools.

In the words of Superintendent Keith Richards, from a WCLT report: "We had all of Ben Franklin going to Wilson next year. We need a substantial portion of Ben Franklin to go to Heritage School next year and not to Wilson. That almost by itself balances out the middle schools. The elementary, we had too few a students planning to go to Cherry Valley, too many going to the new Legend school and about the ‘right number going to Miller, but if you take some away from Miller and put them at Cherry Valley, you have to make some adjustments. There is a change between Cherry Valley, Miller and Legend Elementary."

I grew up in an old-time small school district. The kids I entered first grade with were pretty much the same students I graduated with 12 years later. Parents almost universally supported the schools because teachers were close to families and the school system was the center of community affairs.

Modern methods of operating schools have changed all that. It's an impersonal matter now, machine-like and bureaucratic to the core. That is precisely why the community at large no longer feels responsible for them.

In the good old days: What privacy?

In the good old days all we worried about was Big Brother government watching us, wrote Maria Puente for USA Today But now, she said, we have to contend with folks who are using camera phones.

The problem is that these folks upload to the Internet visual records of just anyone's irresponsible moments. "Here in YouTube world, whether you're a celebrity or a nobody, privacy can be a disappearing luxury, thanks to the technology in every pocket. ... In the old days, kids would go on spring break, get drunk, take off their clothes, and few people would know. Now those kinds of pictures flicker 24/7 on the Internet ..."

But this is where USA Today and Maria need to be reminded that "the old days" is a relative term. In my "old days" - in small-town Ohio - there were no spring breaks where parents would finance their college kids' drunken irresponsibility in some far-off state.

That didn't stop drunken irresponsibility, of course. The difference is that most people didn't make damned fools of themselves in public. Most did it in private.

In the old days parents were watching their kids. So were the neighbors. So were the old people who hung out at the post office. Do it in public and everyone who populated your part of the world knew - and they let you know they knew. This is privacy?

That's exactly why, in the old days, public displays of annoying behavior weren't common, as they are today. For those of us who desperately want to - but can't - ignore people pushing their insipidity in our faces, this new technology, cell phones in particular, is a good thing. It may inspire them to perform behind locked doors, as in the good old days.

Parenting skills you won't believe

If you have several minutes, go learn about one of the greatest stories of parenthood you'll ever read. This is not a new story. Likely, sports fans have known about it all along. But when it was referenced by one of the on-line journals I read, I went to it and was mightily impressed. If you haven't read about Dick Hoyt's parenting skills, check it out. The link below will take you to a story reprinted from Sports Illustrated that I guarantee will jerk your heart strings, and especially if you're already a parent. There's also a linked video that demonstrates what words cannot. Read it here and bring your hanky.