The Fraud of Government Indoctrination

From KYTV, Springfield, MO

The Arkansas Department of Education says 58 public high schools inflated Algebra I and geometry grades last year.

The action means graduates of those schools face additional requirements to qualify for the new Arkansas Academic Challenge Scholarship. The scholarship is funded by the lottery and could be worth up to $5,000 a year.

Graduates of the 58 schools will have to earn more than the minimum 2.5 grade point average or earn more than the minimum 19 on the ACT college entrance exam.

The inflation report compares the grades of students who made an A or B in Algebra I and geometry in the 2008-09 school year - but scored at below-proficient levels on state exams.

The way I read this it sounds like some local schools bumped up their students math scores. B's became A's and C's became B's. Even more likely, the students were given grades for showing up and "completing" work rather mastering the material. The standardized, state-wide test exposed the problem.

But I'm sure all those students have high self-esteem, and they probably aced the plays-well-with-others, social entrepreneurship, and sex education sections.

I would estimate that Arkansas has somewhere between 250 and 300 high schools -- not counting junior highs. I will hazard a wild guess that most if not all of the 58 offending schools have a higher than average number of minority students. I'm not a racist -- but the teachers and, especially, the loathsome administrators who perpetrated this fraud on their students are quite possibly racist. Again, it will be a case of government educrats failing, and students, forced into unionized government schools, suffering.

Whether my suspicion about the racial aspect is true or not, these schools have denigrated excellence and achievement while doing their collectivist best to sentence those in their charge to a life of mediocrity, if not failure. Mediocrity is, after all, the monopolists' standard.

There are two easy steps that would go a long way toward reversing the downward spiral of America. One is simply to require a photo ID for voting. The other is to allow school choice through vouchers.

Achievement is not a zero-sum game.

For the Greater Good. Of course.

Have you ever seen one of those cartoon speedometers that will spin all the way around, and it keeps spinning faster and faster until it flies apart? If I had one of those on my forehead, that's what it would be doing.

But, I've finally managed a brief midnight respite with warmed over coffee and dropping humidity such that I have the window open after the storms have passed. While wolfing down an evening meal, I caught the new health-scare ad that Obama's cronies are funding in an attempt to stampede the sheep in the direction of the plantation.

Here is a perfect example of the government in action. Imagine similar state-employed cretins making decisions about whether you can have access to a doctor.

It seems that a lot of rain fell in Missouri this spring resulting in lots of run-off into the Lake of the Ozarks, a primary tourist destination for folks across the Midwest. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources -- the folks who would put a meter on my private well if they had the nerve -- decided that elevated levels of E. coli didn't need to be reported.

Here's the text of the story linked above on ky3.com from the Kansas City Star via the AP:

A state agency acknowledges it withheld a report for four weeks that showed the Lake of the Ozarks had E. coli above safe levels. The Missouri Department of Natural Resources said it withheld the report around Memorial Day because of concern that releasing it would hurt tourism and businesses around the lake.

Heavy rains in May washed the bacteria into the lake, which has since returned to safe levels. For a month, the DNR refused to show the report to residents who were demanding to see it.

DNR spokeswoman Susanne Medley said the agency wanted to make sure it didn't panic the public. Some critics say the decision not to release the report immediately was a cover-up that put the economy above public health.

But, but, it's the government. They're all good -- not like those eeeVille corporations. How could this be?

Our lesson for today, boys and girls, is, "Do not trust the government with anything". All bureaucrats and politicians want is to: a) line their pockets with our money; b) control us because they are control freaks; c) keep their cushy, low-stress, welfare-lite jobs; d) build weird little empires on the public dime; e) all of the above.

As you can see the "greater good" argument really is a question of the greater good for whom. Does it serve the greater good for children swimming in the lake to get sick and perhaps die? Death is not that uncommon with little ones (the ones perhaps most likely to ingest lake water while swimming). They can't handle the extreme dehydration resulting from an E. coli infection. Or perhaps DNR thought "greater good" meant more tax revenue from the businesses at the Lake.

Give me free market greed over government control any time. Cut DNR's funding and I can use the tax money I save to test the water myself.