Author: Matt Margolis

Newt Gaining Ground

Matt Margolis47 Comments

I hope this trend continues. As of right now, I’m mostly leaning towards Newt.

After his presidential campaign got off to a bumpy start, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says the campaign’s on solid footing, and it appears to be showing in the polls.

Just days after his May entry into the race, Gingrich took heat for referring to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare overhaul plan as “right-wing social engineering.” Then there were the questions about at least one six-figure credit line at Tiffany’s.

In early June, most of Gingrich’s staff resigned. At the time, sources said staffers disagreed with Gingrich’s strategy of maximizing social media and debate performances instead of traditional campaigning. Of those who departed, Gingrich now says, “They were wrong, making assumptions that just were not right.”

Fox News polling may vindicate the plan. In July, when potential GOP primary voters were asked who they’d like to see as the nominee, 9 percent picked Gingrich. He has steadily crept to 12 percent in polling released just days ago. “Every week we do a little better,” Gingrich says.

Thoughts?

Because Legal Abortions Are So “Safe”

Matt Margolis114 Comments

Yup.

Two employees of a Philadelphia abortion clinic where live, viable babies were allegedly killed and a patient died after being given on overdose of painkillers pleaded guilty on Thursday to murder.Guilty pleas to third-degree murder were entered by Adrienne Moton, 34, and Sherry West, 52, who both worked for Dr. Kermit Gosnell at what prosecutors have described as a decrepit and unsanitary clinic known as Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia.

Due to a court-issued gag order, attorneys declined to comment on reports that no plea agreement was reached in the case.

Sentencing was set for December 2 by Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner. The maximum penalty for third-degree murder is 40 years in prison.

Seven more defendants face charges in the case, including Gosnell, who a grand jury in January said, “killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors.”

 

Wow, This Is A Dumb Idea

Matt Margolis83 Comments

As Obama acts more like a dictator every day, he’s looking for new ways to energize potential voters to save his 2012 prospects. His latest trick is a “student stimulus” of sorts.

But Obama is now seeking to use that new power to obtain a taxpayer-financed stimulus that Congress won’t approve. The idea is to cap student loan repayment rates at 10 percent of a debtor’s income that goes above the poverty line, and then limiting the life of a loan to 20 years.

Sounds awfully nice, doesn’t it? I would say awfully stupid. It doesn’t take an economics degree to figure out that this would essentially amount to taxpayer-funded college education. Here’s one example from the story.

If Suzy Creamcheese gets into George Washington University and borrows from the government the requisite $212,000 to obtain an undergraduate degree, her repayment schedule will be based on what she earns. If Suzy opts to heed the president’s call for public service, and takes a job as a city social worker earning $25,000, her payments would be limited to $1,411 a year after the $10,890 of poverty-level income is subtracted from her total exposure.
Twenty years at that rate would have taxpayers recoup only $28,220 of their $212,000 loan to Suzy.

This may well be an extreme example, but it hardly off base when it comes to demonstrating the flaw with this idea. For one thing, the snowball effect would make this worse. If students know that they’ll only end up paying a small portion of their education costs, they’re more likely to choose a school with tuition costs well above their means because they know they won’t have to foot the bill later. This does nothing to address reasons why education costs are so expensive, and will actually make them more expensive, as schools will figure out that free market rules no longer apply to them, they’ll jack up tuition rates even more.

This is a dumb idea by a dumb administration. A sad attempt to energize young voters on his behalf.

Sex Ed In Schools: Good or Bad

Matt Margolis38 Comments

It seems like everyday I find new reasons to want to send my own kids (when I have them) to private school one day. In a time when teachers aren’t adequately teaching kids the stuff they should learn (reading, writing, math, history, etc.) it’s hard to imagine why any parent would want their kid to go through sex ed in school.

But to me, there’s a bigger problem. Sexual education is no longer about the basics for sake of having the knowledge… there’s actual incidents where there’s a clear violation of parents’ rights and the sexualization and indoctrination of young kids.

IMAGINE you have a 10- or 11-year-old child, just entering a public middle school. How would you feel if, as part of a class ostensibly about the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, he and his classmates were given “risk cards” that graphically named a variety of solitary and mutual sex acts? Or if, in another lesson, he was encouraged to disregard what you told him about sex, and to rely instead on teachers and health clinic staff members?

That prospect would horrify most parents. But such lessons are part of a middle-school curriculum that Dennis M. Walcott, the New York City schools chancellor, has recommended for his system’s newly mandated sex-education classes. There is a parental “opt out,” but it is very limited, covering classes on contraception and birth control.

Observers can quarrel about the extent to which what is being mandated is an effect, or a contributing cause, of the sexualization of children in our society at younger ages. But no one can plausibly claim that teaching middle-schoolers about mutual masturbation is “neutral” between competing views of morality; the idea of “value free” sex education was exploded as a myth long ago. The effect of such lessons is as much to promote a certain sexual ideology among the young as it is to protect their health.

So, what do the parents in our readership think? What do you about things like this. Is sex ed good or bad? Is it the job of the school (read: the government) to determine what your kids should and shouldn’t know about the facts of life?

We Have Bigger Issues Than Bullying To Deal With

Matt Margolis120 Comments

Actually, enough with any anti-bullying laws.

You know how bullying was handled when I was in school? It wasn’t by an act of Congress. You either stood up for yourself, or you didn’t. Your choice.

I’m not saying bullying should be tolerated, but it’s not a Washington issue. It’s a parent issue. Parents have to either teach their kids to stand up for themselves, or take up the issue with the school.

But, what’s really bugging me these days is how a single incident can cause a national movement (so to speak) to curb anti-gay bullying in schools.

A history teacher amends his lessons on the civil rights movement to include the push for gay equality. A high school removes Internet filters blocking gay advocacy websites. Six gay students sue their district, saying officials failed to protect them from bullies.

After anti-gay bullying led to a spate of teen suicides last year, school districts across the country are stepping up efforts to prevent such incidents, while more students are coming forward to report bullies.

“It’s an issue that has taken over the public consciousness since last fall,” said Jill Marcellus, spokeswoman for the Gay-Straight Alliance Network. “People realize it doesn’t have to be this way. We can make it better.”

Awareness of anti-gay bullying is increasing as acceptance of gay people has grown in society. Gay marriage is legal in several states, gays are now permitted to serve openly in the military and, in California, schools will soon have to teach gay-rights history.

Kids, even as young as middle school age, feel more emboldened to openly express their sexual or gender orientation, but many are not prepared for a possible backlash, gay-rights advocates say.

As much as I hate all this attention being given to curb bullying, it really bugs me that there are apparently enough people who seem to think anti-gay bullying is the only bullying that is worth addressing. You know what, school sucks for a lot of people. Kids get picked on for all sorts of reasons, but you don’t see such specific attention being given to bullying based on social or economic factors, fashion, or weight, etc. etc. etc.

When did we get so soft that the immediate response to an act of bullying is community action, and inevitably government action?

I’m not a parent yet, but when I am, if my kid gets bullying, my response would be to teach him to stand up for himself. Bullies prey on the weak because they feel they can manipulate them. If we teach kids that they don’t have to handle their own problem, that the government will come in and solve it all for them, then things are just going to get a lot worse. It’s bad enough so many rely on the government for monetary handouts… do we really need the government fighting our schoolyard battles too?

Reflecting on the GOP Primary So Far

Matt Margolis31 Comments

So, we have some time before the next GOP debate, so I thought it be a good time discuss the debates in general. For one thing, have you changed your mind on who you are currently supporting based on the debates, whether in on a substantive issue, or just on performance.

Myself, I’ve been so disappointed in Rick Perry’s performance, that I just feel uneasy about him debating Obama. Granted, Obama without a teleprompter is like a third grader in a school play, I have higher expectations for whomever the GOP nominee will be.

I have consistently been impressed by Newt Gingrich’s debate performances, and his strategy of keeping the eye on the ball: Obama.

Herman Cain has banked his entire campaign on this 9-9-9 plan, yet fails to adequately explain his plan, which is a problem. His lack of foreign policy knowledge also leaves him in the “Potential Vice-Presidential Nominee” column.

There is a good chance that at least three candidates will dropout before the next debate. Santorum, Johnson, and Huntsman have to go. I like Santorum. I’ve met him. But his campaign isn’t going anywhere.

Bachmann and Paul also have to go, but I don’t see either of those two dropping out before the primaries.

I see the real contenders as being Perry, Romney, Cain and Gingrich. I hope between now and the next debate the candidates without a chance stop wasting our time and we are allowed to focus on the candidates who have a chance to win the nomination and the presidency. While polls have shown Newt to not do as well against Obama as other candidates, I think that will change when more people see him in action.

I used to lean towards Perry, but now I’m officially undecided again. But Newt looks better to me all the time, even the polling says he’ll have the hardest time winning in November 2012.