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EppsNet Archive: Kids
Morality of Student Loan Debt
I saw a post on LinkedIn in which the poster shared that his son got a college acceptance letter, but the son felt guilty about how it might affect the family finances. The poster shared the following question: Parents and Students – how have you managed this experience, dealt with any guilt, and yet maintained your excitement for the incredible experience ahead of you? My answer: How did we manage the experience? We always emphasized education in the Epps household. My son worked very hard in high school, got admitted to his dream college. What would we say at that point? “Congratulations, son! As a reward for your efforts, we’re going to allow you to take on student loan debt that will haunt you for the rest of your life”? Maybe “immoral” is too strong a word for that but I have a deep negative feeling about parents letting kids… Read more →
A Few More Reasons Teachers Don’t Want Parents to Know What Their Kids Are Doing at School
Newlywed Iowa Teacher, 24, Accused of ‘Engaging in Sexually Oriented Acts’ With 3 Students as Young as 13 Special Education Teacher Charged With Sexually Touching 7 Boys at New Jersey Elementary School Teacher Charged With Raping Child Under 13 Says She’s Pregnant Teacher, 33, Charged With Raping Student She Met at 14 and Who Fathered Her Baby at 17 Read more →
Secretive Transgender Policies in California Schools
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has defied a court order by directing school districts to adopt policies that allow them to hide a student’s claimed transgender identity from parents or guardians, despite a federal judge’s ruling that such policies likely violate the U.S. Constitution, lawyers say. Bonta sent a letter to school districts across California, encouraging them to adopt secretive transgender policies. When my son was younger, my hottest hot button was “Do not fuck around with my kid.” Now that my son is an adult, I don’t know if I have a hottest hot button, but one of my hottest hot buttons is “Don’t fuck around with other people’s kids.” I absolutely believe in the right of parents to direct the education, health and upbringing, and to maintain the well-being of, their children. Do I think a lot of parents do a poor job of that? Yes. But I… Read more →
Failing To Notify Parents When Their Child Changes Gender Is ‘The American Way’?
Dem Governor: Failing To Notify Parents When Their Child Changes Gender Is ‘The American Way’ — freebeacon.com The Democratic governor is Phil Murphy from New Jersey, who says that “outing” LGBTQ students to their parents is a violation of the child’s constitutional rights. Thus, opposing parental notification is “the American way.” “Listen, we took these actions because it’s the right thing to do,” Murphy said. “Let’s protect the rights of these precious kids. Let’s do things the right way, the American way.” I wasn’t even aware that constitutional rights apply to children. Without researching it, I suspect they don’t. I also don’t think that children have the cognitive maturity to make decisions on their own about sexuality and gender identity. Transgenderism, for example, is a mental disorder: gender dysphoria. It’s a diagnosis obtained via medical care and therapy, not obtained via the internet. There almost certainly is not someone at… Read more →
Supreme Court Kills Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier. — thenation.com The author of that piece really hates white people. I don’t recommend reading it, you will not be a better person for having done so, as it consists solely of sweeping generalizations, broad judgments, unfounded inferences and racial insults. Even if five points (out of a possible 100) were deducted for each verifiable fact, it still scores at least a 95. Grammar and spelling are passable. The only “fact” I remember being cited in support of affirmative action is actually false: In California, which ended its affirmative action policies over 25 years ago, the studies show that, without affirmative action, Black enrollment plummets, Latino enrollment plummets, AAPI enrollment goes up a little bit, and whites flood the remaining opportunities. The article that the author links to doesn’t even say that. Black and Latino enrollment in the… Read more →
Far-Right ‘Moms for Liberty’ is a Hate Group?
Moms for Liberty, the far-right parental group known for protesting at school board meetings, has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group” for the first time ever. — msn.com “Far-right” is an empty phrase assigned to, as far as I can tell, people who do not subscribe to neoliberal orthodoxy and who question U.S. institutions of power, like government and teachers unions. And the lead paragraph, quoted above, indicates that “protesting at school board meetings,” which is actually a right protected by the Constitution of the United States, will earn you an SPLC designation as a “hate group.” The SPLC also labeled 11 other “right-wing ‘parents’ rights’” groups as extremist groups. The use of quotes in the story is noteworthy. The author has scare-quoted “parents’ rights” and labeled the parents’ rights groups en masse as right-wing, as though the idea that parents have rights is… Read more →
Parents Should Be Jailed as a Threat to Democracy?
Believing Children’s Gender Identities
The woman above is Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan of the state of Minnesota, who said at a press conference, “When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them. That’s what it means to be a good parent.” If it wasn’t already obvious from the way she’s dressed, this woman needs to be institutionalized. My son, when he was much younger, told me he was Thor, he told me he was a gorilla, he told me he was a dinosaur . . . I didn’t believe him in any of those cases. Am I a bad parent? He never said he was a girl, but at that time he wouldn’t have been continually propagandized on the topic by “grown-ups.” Read more →
Who Is Deserving of Dignity and Respect?
The Independent reports that the White House has called for Mike Pence to apologize for what it called a “homophobic” joke about Pete Buttigieg’s decision to take paternity leave when his twins were born. Pence said Buttigieg, who is the first openly gay Cabinet secretary, took “maternity leave” while airline problems happened in 2021. “Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression,” Pence said at the annual Gridiron Club dinner in Washington on Saturday. That’s a good joke. What a nation of whiny crybabies we have become. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “He should apologize to women and LGBTQ people, who are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.” The White House recently gave a “Women of Courage” award to a man so they have no moral standing to talk about treating women with dignity and respect.… Read more →
The Problem With Education
The problem with education today is too much emphasis on academics and not enough emphasis on transitioning 13-year-old girls into boys without telling the parents. Read more →
A Parkland Parent on Permitless Carry
Hey Gavin, my daughter Alaina was killed at Parkland and I support permit-less carry in Florida. If my daughter were alive she’d be carrying, because she would be defenseless in a gun free zone. Sit this one out. https://t.co/htDcUnVK73 — Ryan Petty (@rpetty) February 1, 2023 Mr. Petty went on to make some cogent points in a subsequent interview: “California has suffered some horrific tragedies over the last couple weeks in mass shootings and gun control advocates promise that if we just implement their preferred policies, we’ll be safer as a nation. “California has enacted what you could only call ‘the dream’ for gun-control advocates, and it is not proving to make Californians any safer. The reason is simple. “Criminals don’t obey gun laws. “The only thing Gavin Newsom and the California legislature have accomplished is curtailing the rights of law-abiding Californians, and in doing so they have made no… Read more →
California Teacher Helps Change Students’ Gender Identity Without Parents Knowing
California teacher helps change students’ gender identity without parents knowing — torontosun.com The biggest problem in education is too much emphasis on academics and not enough emphasis on teachers changing students’ gender identity without parents knowing. Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on the Midterm Results
My fellow Americans – I thought Republicans would fare better than they did in the recent midterm elections. My reasoning was that Joe Biden and his administration have taken so much away from us that Americans would never vote to continue down the same path. Some of my readers may be financially well-to-do. If you fall into that group, I ask that you consider some of what I’m about to say from the perspective of the majority of your countrymen who live near, at or below the median level of income. Biden has taken away the ability to buy a tank of gas at an affordable price. the ability to buy groceries without gasping in shock at the total cost. the ability to retire comfortably. Retirement accounts have been drained due to the performance of the investment markets and inflation rates have gone through the roof. The ability to retire… Read more →
Messaging vs. Reality
I live in California. Gavin Newsom’s main flaw is that he’s very stupid. Democrats are not getting destroyed on messaging. I don’t even know what the Republican message is. I know the Democratic message is “MAGA Republicans, extreme MAGA Republicans, fascists.” Now that is a losing message, I grant you, because Democrats who aren’t insane, for whom politics does not play a destructive force in their life, have friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members, etc., who are Republicans and understand that while Republicans have different political views, they aren’t trying to put Democrats in gulags. Democrats are getting destroyed by reality. Republicans are running on GDP, inflation, lying about inflation, recession, lying about recession, gas prices, food prices, stock market, crime, border security, fentanyl deaths, energy independence, foreign policy, supply chain, social corruption, silencing, lies, pronouns and fucking with children. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the Republicans could… Read more →
Arrested and Conceivably Killed
To be fair, the plan to kill children is still under review. 🙂 Michael Beschloss on MSNBC warns America is just "six days away" from the end of democracy, historians, and the rule of law. And the start of a brutal GOP dictatorship in which our children could be "arrested and conceivably killed." https://t.co/4kFJuORA8r via @mediaite pic.twitter.com/SPByfPIV1k — Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) November 3, 2022 Read more →
20 Things You Don’t Have to Apologize For
You Never Have to Apologize For… 1. Removing someone from your life that repeatedly crosses your boundaries. ~Bonnie Romano 2. Being who we are, and feeling our feelings. ~Courtney Redd-Boynton 3. Trusting your instincts, even if you can’t explain it. ~Kate Willette 4. We should never apologize if we’re not truly sorry. I don’t believe in apologizing because someone ‘demands’ an apology. ~Olga Baez Rivera 5. Quality “me” time (taking care of ourselves). ~Nath Ray 6. Your opinion—there is no right or wrong opinion, and there’d be a lot less arguments if more people could just respect and appreciate different insights. ~Jennifer Werner Mader 7. Standing up for what you believe in. ~Michelle Galyon-Stallings 8. Living life the way we choose to, regardless of fitting in with other people’s norms. ~Tanya Johns Emery 9. Making decisions about your own future that don’t do any harm to anyone. No one should… Read more →
Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen File for Divorce
I may be ignorant about crucially important details obviously but it seems like the main problem from Ms. Bündchen’s point of view was that her husband had a job. First, I’m super against divorces for people with minor children. Second, there are just few if any people who are as physically attractive as Tom Brady, have the charisma of Tom Brady, have as much money as Tom Brady, and are as good at their job as Tom Brady. So if she’s thinking she’s going to upgrade her spouse, she’s almost certainly deluded or getting bad advice. On the other side, I can’t help thinking that Tom Brady would be able to choose from any number of fabulously attractive women to enliven his social life. Read more →
A Couple of Thoughts on Student Loan Debt
I’ve taken out mortgage loans, auto loans, acquired some credit card debt . . . am I forgetting anything? But I’ve never acquired debt and not paid it back. It never occurred to me to do that. Transferring student loan debt seems like subsidizing irresponsibility. What happens when you subsidize something? You get more of it. I saw the Secretary of Education being interviewed and although I don’t remember his exact words, he seemed to blame the whole thing on the COVID pandemic. He said it was his job (or the government’s job) to make sure that people can bounce back from that and not be crushed by their student loan payments. I’d like to ask him where he got the idea that it’s the job of the federal government to make sure that citizens don’t suffer financial hardships. In the early days of our country, many people… Read more →
More Words and Phrases I’m Sick Unto Death Of: Assigned at Birth
As in, “He was assigned male at birth.” It sounds like other options were available, doesn’t it? Like a child being assigned a name or a house at Hogwarts. Is there any plausible scenario where the child would be assigned anything other than male at birth? Suppose the doctor said, “I assign this child as female.” And then the parents freak out and say “Are you fucking nuts?! He’s not female, he’s got a penis.” “Hmmm,” says the doctor. “Well . . . you’ve got me there.” If it wasn’t so easy to determine the sex of a newborn at a glance — it doesn’t require a medical degree — you could go with a DNA test, since every cell in the human body is marked male or female. That never changes, no matter how many hormones you take or how many surgeries you have. It’s biological and permanent. In… Read more →