You know, shut it down and start it up again. Yes, we did that for an entire year but the bad
actors and slopware came back. There are
rumors we have another shutdown coming.
So this time we need to do a clean install.
Get rid of all the crap that’s insinuated itself into our
system – the parasitic stuff that bogs down everything, makes our system run
worse instead of better and drags down our overall performance. The useless, distracting stuff that always pops
up while we’re actually trying to get something meaningful done, attempts to
propagate itself everywhere and tie up all our resources.
It's time to take back control of our system.
We can safely delete most of the crap that’s accumulated
over the years. It’s garbage. Too much of it is simply redundant. Some of
this bloatware may have been useful and well meaning at first, but now most of
it’s just resource vampires that add absolutely nothing worthwhile.
Here are some things that can go. And the sooner the better.
End all programs paying able-bodied people not to work. Make
parents – not the rest of us – totally responsible for feeding and caring for
their own children. It should never be socially
acceptable to decide not to work and simply live off unearned government
benefits. Nor should it be acceptable
for parents to shirk their obligation to feed their own children.
Why are taxpayers now on the hook for feeding breakfast,
lunch and dinner to 30 million school-age kids every day – even when school
isn’t in session? Because their parents
can’t afford to feed them? Because SNAP benefits they already get aren’t
enough? No, it’s mostly because a lot of parents have decided if someone else
will feed their kids for free they don’t have to.
I feel dumb even raising these blindingly obvious
points. What genius ever thought any of
this was a good idea? Now, it’s okay to help people in need, but we’re way, way
past that now.
The longer we wait to address this, and we must, the more
painful the remedy.
An easy cut is eliminating the Department of
Education. We can easily do without it. It’s absolutely useless, except as a
mouthpiece for teachers’ unions and promoter of silly experiments dreamed up by
out-of-touch academics constantly trying to find new ways to justify their existence by paving the cow path.
Do we really need a new way to teach students how to add,
subtract, multiply and divide? Or to address
imaginary “racism” and “sexism” in math? Or to teach kids as young as six or
seven years old that gender has nothing to do with biology or what’s in their
pants – it’s entirely up to them to choose or change their gender any time they
like. Do we need any of this?
Nope. But the bureaucrats at the Department of Education think we do.
After we dump this travesty let’s drill down and decertify
the teachers’ unions.
Before we do that, I concede good teachers can
have a powerful, positive, and lasting impact on a student’s future success. They add value to our society.
But teachers’ unions don’t provide a damn bit of value. Not
a bit. If anything, they are an obstacle to reforming and improving our
dreadful public education system. These
protect bad and incompetent teachers, fight any accountability, and support
brainwashing impressionable kids with looney-tune racist ideas. Like that skin
color alone determines their prospects for success in our country. That whites
are automatically oppressors; everyone else is a victim of white
oppression. That we are a country of
racists. And that our Constitution was
created almost exclusively to protect slavery.
Teachers’ unions today are engaged in nothing less than
institutionalized emotional and intellectual child abuse. It’s long past time to bring them to
heel.
Next up: fossils in Congress. Whether you are a Democrat, a
Republican, Libertarian or whatever, I don’t believe I’m alone in thinking
Congress could use the legislative equivalent of a high colonic. At the very least we should have term limits
and enforce these retroactively. Anybody
already in the House for more than six years would have to go immediately.
Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. We should also take this opportunity to repeal
the 17th Amendment and put selection of Senators solely back in the
hands of each state’s legislature.
Then, going forward, anyone new running for a House seat
would be limited to two two-year terms.
Senators would be limited to one six-year term. This combined action on Congress alone would
fix the most grievous problems in our country. Want to reduce the distorting
impact of dark money and special interest groups on Congress? This would do that. Almost instantly.
Next, stop funding NGOs. I don’t care where they are, what
they do, or who they are supposed to be helping. NGOs serve themselves as much
as anyone else.
Think Catholic Charities is arranging housing, food, and
transportation for illegals out of the goodness of their hearts? No, they, like
all the other ostensibly “non-profit” social service NGOs are getting paid by
our government to do this and paid pretty well at that. Plus, funding to NGOs allows politicians to
secretly send our tax dollars to groups below the radar to do things they don’t
want the American public to know.
Why? Because politicians realize taxpayers
would be pissed if they did.
Like quietly arranging for the transport of Covid-positive
illegals and their families away from our borders to hide them somewhere else
in the US. Like a small town near you. Secretly housing them in a hotel or
motel in your town and providing them with spending money.
Yes, NGOs – Catholic Charities in particular, and others –
are doing that. Right now.
Next, stop sending money to “nonprofits” altogether. That
includes NPR, the CPB, PBS and any other remnants of what have devolved into
nakedly partisan “state” media.
First, these aren't actually “nonprofit.” Their
“nonprofit” status is a technicality. These all make money and pay salaries,
sometimes big, big salaries. Think anyone at a “nonprofit” works for free? Do
you believe the staff at NPR, CBP and PBS work there for nothing?
Hey, Sesame Street makes money and charges local PBS
stations to show it.
State-supported media always have an inherent conflict of
interest; now ours is just a propaganda mouthpiece for Democrats. Doubt they are biased? Just listen to the
slobbering PBS and NPR reporters kissing up at the current White House
briefings or covering Democrats in general. Do they cover Republicans the
same? Did they cover Trump the same way?
NFW.
Our public broadcasting industry really has no reason to
exist anymore with all our media options today.
They certainly aren’t providing objective news. There’s no dearth of
content elsewhere. Honestly, America can
live just fine without Downton Abbey and other made-in-UK series nestled within
the nonstop beggathons. Nor should American
taxpayers be paying for the far left’s social agenda promotions, such as the increasingly
“woke” Sesame Street adding the obligatory transgender or gender-fluid Muppet. Americans shouldn’t be paying to support any
of this.
If advertisers want to support this, fine. Let them.
Finally, get rid of the politicians on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and atop all our military branches.
Force their retirement, whatever, but get this current crop of woke
bozos away from any say over our military. They are an embarrassment to our
people in uniform, to our country, and are a laughingstock to our
adversaries. They are supposed to
protect us from threats from abroad; instead, they want to focus on mythical
threats from within our own country – that’s not their job, not now, not ever.
All of the above is just a good start. We should do it.
