Month: July 2024

Uncategorized

School Choice Could Revolutionize Homeschool

Katrina Russell

I love memes. I scroll them and laugh at them. I share them and discuss them. I think they are a very important part of today’s society. Meme’s are the current day jesters poking fun at society around us and sometimes informing us of things we didn’t know.

A bit ago I came across an interesting meme about the cost of education in the US. Everyone always complains about how horrible the public school system is, how little teachers are paid, and how over crowded the classrooms are. They are a few of the criticisms that lead to so many people wanting school choice in their area. They want the ability to send their children to whichever school they choose regardless of whether or not they live in the district.

I understand why certain people are opposed to this. It’s not because they are afraid that standards would drop. As it is more than half the population can’t read above a 6th grade level and many of the urban areas have poor graduation rates and even worse literacy rates. In fact the US is ranked 125th in the world on literacy. So if it isn’t keeping standards up, what else could be the reason why some don’t want parents deciding where, and how to educate their children? I think the bigger question is what are the schools educating the children on if not how to read, write and do math.

I can tell you that they are not teaching basic life skills. Even those in good schools with high graduation and literacy rates complain they aren’t being taught the basics of personal finance, how to make and stay on a budget, or how to do their own taxes, or even what taxes are used for. Civics itself has gone straight out the window in order to teach opinions of the day.

The meme in question that I came across (pictured to the left) had another idea. Instead of paying for administrators and union dues, and DEI programs, how about we give them money to the parents to decide who they want to teach their children? Homeschooling would be transformed by this. Pods is a form of homeschooling in which a parent who knows a little something about a subject creates/or buys a curriculum and teaches a group of children who sign up for the pod. There are also online programs and curriculum on sale everywhere to help just the regular parents who wants to teach their children themselves.

Imagine if parents were given the $15,424 per child to be able to stay home and teach their children the kinds of things they wanted taught. The kinds of things that would be necessary for the child’s actual future. Imagine if they could find a few teachers in the area with their own expertise and work out a schedule with other pods and create a whole network of homeschoolers with access to different teachers, different subjects, and different ideas not offered in the current system. Imagine being a mother of 3 who now gets to stay home and be the person who helps her children grow into the amazing people they are going to be without worrying about the violence, the bullying and the indoctrination that happens in the local school system. Imagine being an inner city mom who gets a check for $46,272 to be able to stay home with your kids and not send them through the metal detectors of an institution that isn’t even going to teach them to read.

Every day I hear parents wishing they could stay home with their kids, but they just can’t afford it. Well, to quote Good Will Hunting “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.” Imagine being a mom who could take your kids on field trips everyday, and read to them snuggled on the couch instead of heading out into the cold to drop them off to a building you don’t know, with people you don’t know to learn about things that you don’t know. Imagine having your kids be yours instead of the institutions.

Politics

Saving Democracy… by Destroying it

Katrina Russell

Everyday I see headlines about how the Republican party is trying to destroy democracy and that the only way to save it is by voting for which ever Democrat is running. The problem with this concept is that the Democratic candidates are being chosen democratically.

Back in 2016 I remember voting in the primary and everyone I knew was up in arms because Bernie Sanders kept winning the popular vote but somehow “super delegates” were changing the way democracy was handled and were putting into place Hillary Clinton. In 2020 Bernie was back to making trouble for the Democrats taking way too many of the regular delegates for comfort so again the super delegates stepped in to save the day.

The Republican have their own set of super delegates but they are pledged to vote the way the people have voted. They are not entitled to change the direction of the party on their whim. They follow a little thing called democracy and letting the people decide.

Now I know lots of people are going to say that we are a democratic republic and not a straight democracy, and I understand that. That is the reasons for the delegates in the first place. It’s not a straight popular vote. The votes are based more on the area themselves choosing a candidate than the individual people but if, for instance there are 2 candidates and neither has enough votes to be considered the all out winner of an area, and the super delegates come and and just throw all of their support behind which ever candidate they choose then the people and the states have not chosen. What should happen is a runoff election in which the two main candidates run against each other without 3rd party options. Then maybe someone would have enough votes, and if not then the super delegates get behind which candidate the state voted for, not having super delegates choose their own candidates for their own reasons.

So in both 2016 and 2020 the Democratic party used super delegates to choose who the party wanted instead of listening to the voters. Flash forward to 2024 and now the Democratic party basically held a closed primary saying that they are running the incumbent and not willing to put any money behind any other candidate. They quickly moved to keep RFK jr. out of the running and secured all the delegates to vote for their man that was already in office….

EXCEPT now their man is not the one on the ticket. They have manipulated the system again and put a woman that was unable to win her own state or obtain 1 delegate in the last primary straight into the official candidate running. No one voted for her… I mean ever. No one agree to this. The people had zero say in who their candidate was. All the people who donated for “Uncle Joe” are now having their donations transferred over to the woman who manipulated the system. (And I don’t just mean the justice system to keep innocent people in prison for slave labor like she did in California). The Democrats usurped the democratic system and installed their own person again.

How is any of this democracy?

cancel culture, Mental Health, Politics, school shootings, Uncategorized

The Impact of Hateful Rhetoric in Political Discourse

Katrina Russell

In case you missed it. The ex President and current front runner to be the next President of the United States just had his life almost taken by an attempted assassin. This is not the 1st time, and it probably won’t be the last when someone crazy decides to listen to the hateful rhetoric by their party and the legacy media to cast an opponent as evil and worthy of death. Obviously the only person criminally responsible for the attempted assassination was the trigger man himself, but he is not the only one responsible morally.

There was a time in political debate when people argued the issues. When people discussed why taxes should be higher or lower, whether Medicare/Medicaid/ social security was a drain or wasn’t enough, whether we should put more money into schools or infostructure. Now people are arguing about who is more of a dictator and who wants to destroy the whole country, and who is just plain evil.

When you spend all day every day calling your opponent “Hitler” it shouldn’t be a surprise that someone wants to kill him. Everyone wants to kill Hitler. If given the chance I’m sure it would be on almost every bucket list, so calling your opponent Hitler every day for a decade… what could you possibly have expected?

I understand trash talk. I understand inflammatory speech like, “Let’s get out there and kick some a**!” or “We’re going to fight like He77!”. What I don’t understand is how anyone can go around spreading lies about the competition, and brainwashing an entire community because you don’t want to “fight” on the issues.

If they actually believed he was the next Hitler then they would be praising the shooter. A lot of people are. A lot of people do believe the rhetoric and honestly believe that their “enemy” should be eliminated, but those in charge know they are lying. They know he’s just a guy that wants different policies and procedures than they do. But they are sill responsible for their words and actions. We all are.

Motivation, parenting, Politics, Uncategorized

How is it Progressive to Destroy Everything?

Katrina Russell

All I hear from progressives every single day is about how bad everything is. They say the police are bad and need to be defunded, yet call them on everyone all the time. They say the government is bad, and racist, but they want to give the feds more and more power. They say that every institution in the country is racist and sexist, that personal isms has lessened, but institutional isms are still strong, but can’t point to one policy which supports this, it’s all about the people who are instituting the policies.. even though personal isms are down.

They want to end wars by supporting terrorist. They want to fight fascism by taking away individual rights. They want to celebrate diversity, by stopping people from disagreeing with them. They want to sexualize children and murder babies before they’re born.. all in the name of rights for people who aren’t capable of picking out what they want for breakfast… or, you know… haven’t taken their first breath yet.

These people think that immediate self gratification is more important than human rights. They think the rights of women to have indiscriminate sex with no repercussions are more important than the rights of people who are conceived by this random hook-up culture. They think people should be allowed to rob local stores for whatever they could possibly need, because it’s their human right to have stuff, but it’s not the store owner’s human right to protect their own property.

These people want to destroy everything that we’ve all worked so hard to build up, because they think it’s unfair that people have to work for things. They think it’s unfair that those who have accomplished things in the past have the right to help their family in the present. They are mad that they’re bad choices have consequences and blame people 100 years ago fort their failures today. They want to destroy everything that they see, because today’s progressives are like toddlers who don’t like that their friends built a higher tower than they did and rather than asking for help or trying harder they just knock down their friend’s . They’d rather everyone be miserable than have to put in the effort to try to be better.

Uncategorized

Culture is Creating a Bigger Generational Gap

Katrina Russell

I remember seeing someone that I watch on my podcast talk about how culture is dying. He commented that there is nothing new coming out, and everything is just a rehash of everything old. I found that interesting, and wondered what that all meant.

I had noticed that all of the magazines and movies still had actors and actresses in them that I grew up with. In the last 10 years the People’s Sexiest Man Alive have been from my generation or at least older Millennials.: Patrick Dempsey, Chris Evans, Paul Rudd, John Legend, Idris Alba, Blake Sheldon, Dwayne Johnson, David Beckham, Chris Hemsworth, and Adam Levine.

When we talk about the top grossing movies and who stars in them most of them are Marvel movies that are predominately Gen-X and older millennial stars, There’s some Harry Potter movies based on books that came out when Millennials were kids, and then a lot of remakes like The Fast and the Furious, Despicable me, and Jurassic Park… again. The best movies are still the cult classics like the John Hughes films and pop culture has created merch around my childhood.

I recently started to listen to the radio again and I noticed in my area, which is the Boston area, not some hick county, there are now 3 stations with K-Love (a Christian radio station), and most of the others play hits of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. That’s 50 years ago! I remember when they got rid of the “Oldies” station because it’s original intent was to play music for the Boomers from when they were kids and at the time it was 20-30 years old.

The average age of the best actor that one the Oscar this year was 53. The average age for a woman was 45 . It is hardly a young person’s game anymore. Growing up most of the big actor were in their 30s. Names like Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Tom Hanks.. they were the young people when I was growing up, and they are still the ones on the cover of all the magazines and TMZ follows around like puppies.

I was starting to think that the guy in the podcast was right. Until I went to the movies with my kid. When I was younger going to the movies was what everyone did. Every Friday and Saturday night the place was packed. We always walked to the theater which was best because there was never any parking. Even when my goddaughters were young and I’d take them to the movies there was always a line for popcorn and the bathroom. One of them is a young Millennial the other a Gen-z.

Now when you go to the theater it’s empty. Now everyone stays home and streams movies. They stream movies and videos and shorts on their own devices. When I was little everyone watched the one TV in the house with their whole family. Now I have to check my kid’s YouTube history to see what he’s watching. Though he and I do have our shows that we watch together on the apps. I’m looking at you Father Brown.

Kids today don’t listen to the radio in the cars with their parent. They are plugged into whatever device they have through Bluetooth headphones and have no idea what’s going on around them. And the adults have no idea what the kids are watching. There is no shared culture because no one shares anything. Everyone is in their own bubble. The new generation doesn’t have a favorite actor. They have their favorite influencer or gamer. My kid is all about Unspeakable and .. I wanna say Ubb.. but part of me feels like that can’t be real.

If we want to have a future and a community and culture that we all share. We have to start unplugging and start communicating again.