D.C. unions harm public education
Re: “D.C. teachers union to file suit over firings,” July 27
The D.C. teachers union would be amusing were it not so pathetic and obscenely deceitful. Children have not been learning in the public schools. This is proven by a virtually unbroken line of SAT scores since 1963. The National Education Association and several other teachers unions have been attempting to make America’s youth so brutish and decadent that they will not resist a treasonous attempt to incorporate the U.S. into a world government when the time comes. The unions, politicians, lawyers and liberal teachers always lie about this.
My ex-wife would lie in saying that the public schools are criticized for having low SAT scores when, by law, they must admit black and Hispanic students. Black and Hispanic students learn just fine when they are taught by competent teachers who are willing to make the students learn despite pressure not to teach from principals, public school superintendents, shrinks and others (“the people that matter.”) None dare call it treason. We say “hurrah” for Michelle Rhee so long as she brings in competent, dedicated teachers who are American and is not fulfilling some “minorities” quota.
Rocky Drake
Manassas
Alcohol control is a battle between two big businesses
Re: “Liquor wholesalers cash in on sobriety rules,” July 14
The rationale behind all alcohol control policies since the 18th Amendment, which established Prohibition, is governments’ attempt to balance the overwhelming economic good of the legal manufacture, distribution and sale of alcohol versus any negative unintended consequences that occur as a result. The most important word is “control.” With the 21st Amendment, the U.S. created a regulated, “controlled,” tiered system of state regulation where each state has the power and authority to protect the health, safety and welfare of its citizens. This model, by intentional design, is supposed to interfere with the Commerce Clause because the economics of commerce alone cannot and will not balance the two issues.
All of Timothy Carney’s arguments against H.R. 5034, the Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Effectiveness Act, are based on the economics of the wholesale tier and the assertion that the present proponents of destroying this control mechanism are not doing so for their own financial gain as they try to make the wholesale tier the villains. Carney asks “Who is getting rich?” off of the legislation. The answer is that anything that has to do with alcohol at the supplier, wholesale and retail level is big business. A check of all three tiers’ financial statements should offset his wholesale-greed argument alone. Unfortunately, medical cost, insurance and other expenses along with death, destruction and heartache are big businesses also. States allow the wholesale tier protection and guarantee their economic success by statute in exchange for a balance.
History has shown that cheap, abundant, unregulated alcohol does not benefit a society. It does, however, benefit the alcohol retail and manufacture/supplier tiers at the expense of society as a whole. These suppliers and retailers are not “bad people.” They just need to be controlled. As long as the wholesale tier is being controlled also, for the right reasons, this model is valid public policy.
Murphy J. Painter
Gonzales, La.
Vatican ban on immodest dress is appropriate
I commend the Vatican for banning immodest dress inside Vatican City. Other cities and churches in the world should do the same. Women should be decently dressed, adorning themselves with modesty and dignity, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but with good works, such as become women professing Godliness.
The Blessed Virgin warned Jacinta of Fatima while she was dying in a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1920 that “Certain fashions will be introduced which will offend Our Divine Lord very much. Those who serve God ought not to follow these fashions … the sins that lead most souls to hell are the sins of the flesh.”
Ladies, men, girls and boys should always wear clothing that they would not be ashamed of in the sight of God. They may not be finely dressed or pretty and graceful; they may not have those attractions which are most admired by the world; but if they have the virtues of modesty and purity, they have something that money cannot buy and an ornament that will outlast all the fading treasures of Earth.
Paul Kokoski
Hamilton, Ontario
