The death of our two-party system ...

Republicans are doing this. Democrats are doing that. 

It’s the same thing every day. 

One party proposes something; the other opposes whatever that is.  It makes little difference whether that something is good or bad for us, the people they’re supposed to represent. In many cases, perhaps most, it has absolutely nothing to do with us.

It’s about settling scores. Gaining an edge for the next election cycle.  And of course, raising money by rewarding big donors and appeasing each party’s more extreme bases.

Each party’s primaries are a circus. Insignificant state or local races cost potential candidates far in excess of what the jobs pay. When the stakes are a Senate or House seat, primaries to win the nomination can attract millions in outside money.  When primary winners from each party face off for a Senate or House seat the outside money can hit tens of millions or more. 

And for what? To put or keep some party hack in office who almost as soon as they are sworn in will start selling out to get money for their next campaign and to move up in their party’s hierarchy. They’ll fully immerse themselves in the same petty politics they promised to avoid. 

They’ll suddenly forget all their campaign promises and blissfully ignore what their constituents elected them to do. Until, of course, the next election cycle begins in earnest.

It’s long past time for us to end this insanity.

The traditional two-party system of Republicans and Democrats simply isn’t working. The leaders of both parties can thank themselves for this. The two parties don’t act as checks against each other. Neither is frankly interested in solving problems.

It’s all elaborate kabuki to make it appear that it’s one side versus the other, yet in reality both parties are essentially the same.

They want us to believe there’s a difference.  One is good; one is evil. Republicans are good and Democrats are evil.  Or Republicans are evil and Democrats are good. If you are a registered Republican or Democrat you, too, are either good or evil by association.

However, neither party is worth a damn when it comes to running the country honestly and efficiently. Republicans act like Democrats and Democrats like Republicans once elected. They both want to spend money we don’t have, enrich their friends and big donors, increase the size of government, make a show of punishing those their special interest supporters dislike, and then blame the other party for doing exactly the same things.  

Meanwhile, virtually nothing positive gets accomplished. That’s by design. 

The minority party always moans and groans about how they are fighting the good fight but need more of their party’s members elected to make big changes.  As soon as they become the majority they forget about making all those big changes and blame the now minority party for being obstructionists. 

Truth is, they don’t want to make changes. At least not changes the voting public wants, like passing term limits, God forbid. Shrinking government, cutting waste – neither side wants those things either. Although that’s what most voters really want.  

Both sides claim to need a majority to make big changes, but there’s too much value – especially in campaign fundraising – to be in opposition rather than in charge. Plus, when you’re in charge, you’re supposed to accomplish something; something for which you might be held accountable when the next round of elections come up.    

And make no mistake: it’s all about the money, elections, and avoiding accountability. 

So they fight with each other to get to a standstill. That’s the real goal.  That’s also why more and more voters aren’t registered Republicans or Democrats these days. They don’t see any meaningful difference between the two. Neither party works for them.       

Now the most powerful and influential group of voters in America don’t “belong” to either party. The media like to refer to them as “Independents” but in truth this large body of voters, usually more than 40% of all voters, don’t like the Republican or Democrat parties. The most extreme elements of both parties – far right or far left – turn them off entirely.

In many states, unless you are a registered Republican or Democrat you can’t vote in those parties’ primaries. That makes matters worse, since primary voters tend to reflect the most extreme elements of each party. Which means the extremists pick the candidates. 

So every election the unaffiliated voters have to hold their noses and vote for who they see as the least objectionable choice. Or not vote at all, which is what happens a lot, too.

They usually determine who wins or loses. Party affiliation means little to them. 

Think of it this way: about 27% of voters identify as Democrats; about 25% identify as Republicans. Add those two and it’s only about 52% of all voters. Even if both sides turn out 100% of their respective bases, neither party can win without non-affiliated voters.

Yet almost nobody in either party speaks to them, except when another election rolls around. Then you see a race to the middle by both parties to win them over. 

That’s sad.    

Both parties make a big deal over what they “stand for.”  Mostly what they really stand for is themselves, plain and simple. They manufacture meaningless issues to whip up their bases. Instead of creating and passing real legislation to fix real problems, they set traps for each other.

Like attaching amendments to defund Planned Parenthood to a defense bill with pay raises for vets so when Democrats withhold votes Republicans can say Democrats voted against increasing pay for “our men and women in uniform.” Or when Democrats attach amendments to protect DACA recipients and to eliminate funding for a border wall to unrelated bills in the hope that Republicans will have to be on record as opposing help for “the Dreamers.”

It’s the same with passing a Federal budget. Each side hopes the other will force a government shutdown, so they can blame the other party. But the impasses are baked into the budget on purpose.  Both sides lard up the budget legislation with specious crap they know will inflame the other side.  In the end, both sides agree to give in, and total crap gets funded. 

It’s all bullshit. It’s a waste of our time and money. There’s no point. 

If either side were truly interested in solving problems they’d separate the hot-button issues and deal with those individually.

If Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood, bring legislation just about that to the floor and have a straight up or down vote.  If Democrats want to give a path to citizenship to all the illegals here already, bring that legislation by itself to the floor and vote on it. If anyone is serious about legislating term limits, bring that by itself to a straight up or down vote. But stop the gamesmanship of hiding things within other bills – get people on record, yes or no. 

Then voters can decide who best represents their interests and the interests of the country. 

The two parties don’t want that. Voters do. 

It’s only a matter of time before the unaffiliated voters of this country decide enough is enough.  With the power of social media nobody needs millions of dollars anymore to run for office, or major party backing, or even establishment media support – Trump proved that. 

They simply need excellent, thoughtful, innovative ideas that speak to what the overwhelming majority of American voters actually want.

Neither of the two current parties seem capable of doing that.

That’s why they are doomed.   

What they should do is merge into one party.  The honest way of naming it would be the "Establishment Party." Its campaign promise would be to maintain the status quo.  

But they won't do that. They'd lose every election. As they should.   

Why school voucher programs mostly work ...

Teachers’ unions hate them.

Democrats hate them (mainly because the teachers’ unions hate them).

Big city mayors – mostly Democrats – typically hate them. (See above.)

Yet parents who use school vouchers generally praise them. Vouchers allow parents to take their kids out of failing and/or dangerous public schools and move them into better performing and safer schools.  Many parents report their kids seem to do better in those schools.

That’s not to say there aren’t problems.

Critics claim vouchers rob the worst and poorest public schools of funding. That’s true.  Then again, maybe those schools should be closed anyway.

Teachers’ unions are especially opposed because they claim it’s an attack on public education; what they are really afraid of is that teachers currently protected by union rules in those bad schools could lose their jobs. Again, maybe they should. Maybe they are part of the problem. 

If an ordinary business – even unionized – fails to adequately serve its customers, it will lose those customers to businesses who will. And that failing business may close. Just pumping more money into this failing business can’t alone change things unless the root causes are addressed. If it fails, employees will lose their jobs, but the good ones will likely find work elsewhere.     

There’s no demonstrable proof that giving really bad public schools more money improves anything. There’s a point when no amount of increased funding for facilities, for special programs, for larger staffs, or for better teachers’ and aides’ salaries, accomplishes anything.

Some of the worst inner city public schools, academically and in terms of violence, routinely get roughly double the funding per student of public schools outside the cities. But these are still awful, with poorer test scores and more daily violence against students and teachers than their suburban or rural counterparts who accomplish better results with far less money.

Another problem is fraud.

When school voucher programs started, so did a variety of charter schools; some were naked for-profit hoaxes designed to enrich the politically connected.

The original idea of charter schools was good – schools without all the burdensome regulations and union rules that stifled innovation and accountability for results. Charter schools could become a hands-on laboratory to find new and more efficient ways to teach kids, maybe saving taxpayer money, too.

However, with the lure of easy money, hucksters arrived.  They often clothed their money grabs in pseudo religious or ethnic garb. There was a surge in proposed new charter schools of dubious merit that never opened, or closed quickly, which, nonetheless got billions in grant money. Some that stayed open produced laughable results, worse than the public schools they challenged. 

Parents got sucked in with the promise of better education for their kids. And a lot of charter schools simply failed to deliver.  Meanwhile the operators got rich. 

The problem was not school vouchers, but bad charters. It’s important to separate the two, because on the whole school vouchers work for many parents and their kids. 

So why do school vouchers work? And I have to add “mostly” because of bad charters. 

There are three reasons, I believe.

First, there’s the Hawthorne effect – which in simplest terms means that performance often improves when there’s a change coupled with consistently applied measurement. People tend to perform better when they know something has changed and that someone is measuring the effect of that change. When a student is transferred to a “better” school and knows someone is actively keeping track of how well they will do, such as their parents, they’ll often do better.

It’s also why public schools that now require their students to wear uniforms see a boost in performance.  It’s not about eliminating competition over designer fashions, or helping poorer families; it’s about a change in the environment and measurement. 

Next, teachers who believe they work in a “better” school – affirmed by parents using vouchers to enroll their kids – are more likely to do their jobs more enthusiastically. Teachers may feel they have students who want to learn, who want to be there, instead of students who see school as a purgatory they must endure until they are old enough to drop out.   

Finally, and most importantly, parents who use vouchers to move their kids to what they think is a better school are taking a proactive role in their kids’ education. They don’t want their kids to fail.  They want them to get an education, graduate, and move up. This desire alone is often powerful enough to push their kids to perform better in schools. Unfortunately, it’s too rare in some places. 

Dedicated teachers in bad public schools often lament that the real problem in their school is not poor facilities or insufficient funding as much as parents who don’t seem to care whether or not their kids learn anything. Or even go to school.  Too many parents simply don’t take any responsibility for their kids – they expect teachers to do the parents’ job of raising their child. These parents don’t know, or much care, how or what their kid is doing in school. 

In the end, vouchers only really help parents who give a damn about their kids.

If parents aren’t interested enough in seeing their kid get a good education in a safe environment, there’s nothing anyone, or any government program, can do to make them care and take a more active role. It’s a lost cause.

Vouchers alone can’t save and repair bad public schools. But these can draw attention to the cause of the real problems that foster bad public schools.

Parents who don’t care. Administrators more interested in promotions and higher pay than running successful schools that produce properly educated kids.  And too many teachers who have simply given up and are just marking time until retirement.              

Arrested development …

Every generation thinks every following generation is not as good – not as smart, not as tough, not as disciplined, not as self-reliant. In short, not up to their standards.   

I once thought that was nuts. Of course, that was when I was in the generation they were talking about. Sure, my parents’ generation lived through the Depression and fought and won a world war. Okay, they'd been through a lot.  

But my generation was going to change the world for the better. We were smarter than our parents. We were revolutionaries. We were going to create a brighter future. And we couldn’t wait to get out on our own, away from our parents’ rules, and build a life of our own. 

Then we grew up. We got jobs. Many of us married and had kids. Suddenly we were adults, with adult responsibilities, not just to ourselves but to families, jobs, and community. 

We finally understood what our parents had learned. At least most of us did.  

The lesson was simple: you can’t be a kid forever.  At some point, you have to take responsibility for your own actions. There’s nobody to bail you out when you do stupid stuff.

As you get older the stupid stuff has greater consequences.  Do something dumb at work and you could get fired; without that paycheck, you struggle to pay rent and buy food or even gas for your car, if you’re lucky enough to have one.  Do something dumb in your marriage and you could get divorced, lose half your personal property – assuming you have anything – and end up paying alimony for years.  Smart mouth a cop and you could end up in cuffs. 

When you’re over 18 the world changes.  Turn 21 and your world has changed even more dramatically in just three short years.  Next thing you know, you’re 30 and you’d better have your act together or you’re in serious trouble in terms of your career and long-term prospects.    

If you haven’t grown up by then, too bad. The challenges are only going to get harder, the competition more intense, and the work more demanding. 

Now in my mid-60s, born in the middle of the Baby Boomer generation, I find myself wondering how the latest generation will survive. I hope I’m wrong – and maybe just repeating the same misconceptions our parents thought about us – but I really don’t think so. 

I’m certain our grandparents thought our parents were spoiling us rotten. I suspect that’s what most of our grandparents felt, especially those who raised families during the Depression.  However, my fellow Boomers did a much worse job with their own children, in my opinion. 

My parents’ generation had lived through a lot. It’s not surprising that so many of them wanted to make up for lost time. They partied. They had fun. They drank. They smoked.  They lived as if there were no tomorrow. Who can blame them?

They cared for and loved their kids, but they had their own lives to live. They were interested in what we did, but only up to a certain point. As long as we made good grades, didn’t embarrass them, didn’t cause problems at school, didn’t get arrested, get pregnant or get someone pregnant, we were pretty much okay. They were content to leave us alone. 

When we turned 18, they were happy to see us leave home – either to go to college or to a job, or in some cases to join the military. Their work was done. 

So what happened to Boomer parents? I think too many of them decided to take way too much interest – and control – in their kids’ lives.

Where we were raised as somewhat “free-range” kids whose main parental directions were to go play outside, don’t get hurt, and be home when the streetlights came on, Boomers’ kids were smothered with attention. Boomer parents micromanaged every aspect of their kids’ lives, from scheduled “play dates” to a variety of music, dance, computer skills, sports and other lessons. 

Every child of a Boomer was a genius.  A prodigy.  a superstar. The next pro athlete. And Boomer parents were dedicated to pushing their child to his or her full potential. 

That included boosting their child’s self-esteem; something many Boomers perhaps felt their own parents neglected to do enough for them.  Self-esteem became more important than a child’s actual, objective performance.  Failure was hurtful to self-esteem, so Boomer parents fought hard to prevent their children from ever experiencing failure – at anything. 

If that meant intimidating and threatening teachers to give their kid a better grade, so be it. If that meant leaning on a coach to make sure their kid got on the team, regardless of his or her ability, so be it. If that meant demanding their kid be given special treatment, special classes, special exemptions in his or her school, so be it. If that meant getting lawyers involved, so be it

The parents of Boomers would never dream of doing any of that.  The only time they went to our schools was when they absolutely had to.  Those “had-to” moments were fairly limited: a call from the school nurse or principal would do it; you being disappointed wouldn’t.  

To our parents, if you got a bad grade it was your fault, not the teacher’s. If you got detention you probably deserved it.  If you didn’t make the team, it probably was because you didn’t work hard enough or should try some other sport or activity.  If you were on a team and lost a game, get over it and learn from it.

There were no T-Ball moments I could remember. Not everybody made the team. Not everybody got As. Not everybody got into accelerated courses.  Not everybody made the Honor Roll, much less the Honor Society. Not everybody got to be Prom King or Queen, either.

And nobody I knew got promoted to the next grade simply because their parents complained enough, or it would make them feel better about themselves. 

Boomers succeeded or failed largely on their own. This was a valuable lesson.

Our parents’ benign indifference meant they were always there to comfort us when necessary, patch us up when we got hurt, but they never promised we’d get everything we wanted. If anything, they taught us that there were no guarantees everything would always turn out the way we wished.

That’s just the way things are, they’d say.  Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose.  And sometimes things just don’t go the way you planned. Get used to it.     

Stunningly, many Boomer parents failed to pass this along to their own kids. 

They protected their kids from everything. They constantly intervened. They made sure their kids felt nothing was ever their own fault.  They took charge of every decision their child should make, and managed every outcome, so their child would never, ever feel the sting of failure. 

Or get the valuable lessons failure provides.   

So what we have now is a generation – the offspring of those Boomers – who don’t know how to fend for themselves. They don’t know how to manage their money or their financial obligations. They don’t know how to manage their careers. They don’t know how to manage personal relationships. They don’t know how to deal with adversity. They don’t know how to do any of these things because their parents always managed everything for them.   

They also don’t know how to recover from failure – personal or work-related – because they’ve never really experienced it thanks to their parents.  

Instead of solving their own problems and making their own decisions, many still rely on their parents – who are now in their 50s or 60s – for practically everything.

Some of them never left home or have moved back in after college, or supposedly to “save money for a house.” In the meantime, mom is cooking their meals, making their bed, doing their laundry, and in many cases mom and dad are still buying the groceries and paying their health and car insurance for them.   

To me that’s pretty weird when your children are in their mid-20s and even weirder still when they’re in their 30s or 40s, often with kids of their own and full-time jobs, and they’re still living in your house rent free. When they’re that old, they’re supposed to have their act together. They’re supposed to be able to take care of themselves and make their own decisions. 

Many Boomer parents apparently don’t see anything wrong with having their adult offspring back at home.  Continuing to be totally dependent on mom and dad.

Maybe that’s what those Boomer parents always wanted. I sure hope so. Because it’s too late to teach those kids how to be responsible adults who can survive on their own. 

I shudder to think how these Boomers’ kids will raise their own children. I could be wrong, and they could decide to raise their own kids more responsibly to prepare them for the real world. 

We can only hope. 

If this were your home …

Imagine for a moment that people you didn’t know, people who didn’t speak your language, just broke in and moved into your house. 

They then proceeded to eat your food, take your money, remove the locks on your doors and move more of their friends and family in. They didn’t ask your permission. They demanded you make space for them, provide them with an income, pay for their healthcare, and pay for their education. They also wanted a voice in how you ran your house and defied you to kick them out. 

Every day you find more and more of them in your house. The more there are, the more brazen they become.  Their demands continue to escalate. They tell you that you don’t have a choice – it’s your responsibility as the homeowner to make them comfortable.        

You contact the local police and they say there’s nothing they can do. So you contact the media, and they tell you you’re a heartless monster. You contact your representatives in Congress and they tell you their hands are tied; some even call you a bigot. The courts are no help, either.  

Welcome to America. And yes, this is your home.    

This is where we are today. 

Illegal immigrants from Central America and elsewhere are flooding across our southern border. There are an estimated 11-12 million of them here illegally already.

They’ve broken into our collective home and have absolutely no intention of ever leaving.  Instead, they are demanding that we give them citizenship, full benefits from our social welfare system – which they’ve paid nothing into, scholarships to public universities, and soon the right to vote.  If they succeed in getting the right to vote, you can be assured they will push to eliminate any immigration restrictions in the future. 

Despite liberal talking points, they haven’t come here to escape oppression or persecution, but for the money. That’s the real reason. Many send the lion’s share of whatever they earn off the books, or by using fraudulent Social Security numbers to claim benefits, back to their native country. And they figure there are so many of them we can’t do anything to kick them all out. 

Recently, we’ve learned that as many as a thousand more mostly from Honduras are planning to crash our southern border any day now to prove we are powerless to stop them. The leaders of this group have instructed those on the march to claim asylum when they hit our border, knowing this will cause a massive surge in our already backlogged immigration court system.

Their leaders have also promised “mass violence” if they are turned back at our border.   

The problem with the asylum pitch is that they’re crossing through Mexico to get here. Mexico is waving them through. If you really are pleading for asylum on humanitarian grounds, you have to request that in whatever country you get to first. Which, in this case, is Mexico.   

Which, of course, none of them have. Nor does Mexico want them. I suspect Mexico is all in favor of this attack on our border, if for no other reason than to thumb their nose at Trump.

This is a stupid decision on the part of Mexican leaders. It’s also a stupid decision on the part of the leaders of this onslaught. 

This just gives more credence to Trump’s claim that we need an impenetrable wall on our southern border, and more border agents and resources to prevent illegal crossings. His opponents are misreading how Americans generally feel about illegal immigration; the majority of Americans are in favor of immigration – that’s how most of us over the generations got here – but overwhelmingly opposed to illegal immigration. 

Stunts like this only serve to harden the position of illegal immigration opponents. If immigrant-rights advocates want to see public support swing toward building the wall, deporting illegals, and cracking down on immigration in general, this will do it.

Somehow, I don’t that’s what they expect. I think they’ll be unpleasantly surprised. 

As a nation, we’ve always welcomed immigrants seeking a better life.  We’ve opened our doors and our hearts, and often our purses as well. 

But if you break down our door to get in, that’s a different matter altogether. 

This will not end well.  For Mexico. For the thousand would-be invaders planning to breech our southern border.  Or for proponents of relaxing our immigration policy. 

They have no idea of the consequences.