Get the Government out of Sex Education

"It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."
Luke 17:2

The great frustration of Texas Sex Ed wars is that government schools shouldn't exist in the first place.  Government schools, by definition, erode parental jurisdiction.  By attempting to 'fix' government schools, we're setting ourselves up for failure.  As conservatives, our long-term strategic goals should be to incrementally restrict where government schools are allowed to operate.  Sex education is a fantastic place to start.

Last week, theBlaze reported on a particularly horrific sex-ed program in California.  While this website won't repeat the details, a cursory examination of the linked article illustrates the lie that sex education in government schools is "medically accurate and age appropriate."  Unfortunately, the California case isn't isolated.  Examples of government schools pushing bizarre and perverted sex "education" aren't hard to uncover.  While the specifics of these 'cirricula' are awful, the deeper issue is government coercion.  In terms of long-term strategy, conservatives will fare better if we attack the root cause.

This website's views on sexual morality aren't a secret.  We understand that the sexual revolution has been a catastrophe that has unleashed a half-century (and counting) of pathologies and perversions.  We believe any teachings about sexual morality should be biblically-based.  But we also believe this is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree.  Whatever your views, government schools aren't an appropriate forum for the discussion.

The politics of this approach are also fantastic.  One of the hidden gems of common core is the National "Sexuality Education" standards, which are built upon the ideas of Alfred Kinsey.  Federal bureaucrats pushing weird sex on innocent children should horrify both libertarians and social conservatives.  You defeat this phenomenon by shutting down the machine.  You shut down the machine by incrementally restricting the areas where it's allowed to operate.

In a 2013 interview, Abortion Barbie said: "The other part of that is getting back to a place we once were a long time ago with age-appropriate, scientifically based sex-education courses."  In a couple weeks, the Texas Democrat party will probably embrace similar language in their party platform.  At that time, this website encourages Team Abbott and the Texas GOP to tie Abortion Barbie to the California 'curriculum' discussed above.  Considering her friends, she'll certainly attempt to push something like it.  Over the long run, however, this is a scope of government issue.

One gigantic mistake social conservatives have made over the past 50 years is attempting to fix institutions that shouldn't exist in the first place.  That has produced the status quo where these institutions are bigger and more entrenched than ever.

Government schools are inherently evil.  They undermine parental authority and have no right to exist.  Unfortunately, we can't get rid of them overnight.  To dismantle government schools, you need to incrementally restrict where they're allowed to operate.  Sex education is a darn good place to start

Voice and Exit 2014 Coming to Austin!!!

"No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”
Mark 2:21-22

Our friend Max Borders is helping to organize the Voice and Exit conference in Austin in two weeks:

Voice & Exit is an event built around a simple idea: human flourishing. We want to explore, celebrate and implement ideas that enable people to find well being, life meaning and stronger connection to others. Sometimes flourishing starts with transformation: speaking up (Voice) or opting out of the status quo (Exit) and creating something new.In a world that is increasingly rife with new insights and innovations that enable flourishing, it can be hard to keep up. Voice & Exit helps navigate all these promising pathways and equips people with the tools for personal and social transformation.

Along with exploring ideas that better enable us to flourish as individuals–such as biohacking, health optimization, positive psychology and expanded consciousness–we explore ways to develop new social operating systems that support happy, healthy, and free societies.

Human flourishing ultimately depends on peaceful cooperation among individuals with overlapping values and complementary preferences. Together we can create a world that supports this vision.

The era of coercion is passing away.

The era of Cooperation and Connection has just begun.

The conference will focus on 12 dimensions of human flourishing and will feature sessions on topics such as:

• Human Wellness/Optimization
• Biohacking
• Startup Culture
• Decentralization
• Hacking Willpower & Flow
• Disrupting Education

There will also be super cool speakers like:

• Cody Wilson -- 3D printing
• Laura Bosworth -- 3D Bio Printing
• T.K. Coleman -- Disrupting Education
• Zacary Caseres -- Startup Cities

The whole event looks phenomenal; purchase tickets here.

Bless His Heart: Rusty Hardin's $1,350 E-Mail

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;
Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Isaiah 5:20

Well, it looks like the "bloody, poisoned dwarf" is up to his old tricks:

Rusty Hardin, the attorney who drew up a report on reasons to impeach University of Texas regent Wallace Hall, turned in his first invoice in more than seven months Monday, despite terms of his contract requiring monthly billing.

Hardin stopped submitting bills after his Dec. 6 invoice was widely criticized for its excesses. Newspapers around the state expressed shock that Hardin’s firm had run up more than $200,000 in charges in just 10 weeks from late August through October.

His new bill covers November 2013, and adds another $93,728.66 to the tally, keeping him on pace to bill around $700,000 for seven and a half months’ work. Hardin’s contract expired March 31.

One associate billed 18 hours over three days at $100 per hour for preparing some binders and uploading materials to Dropbox, a file-sharing service. Save the cracks about old dial-up modems. If you estimate the file size for all 150,000 pages Hardin reviewed at around 56GB, it might take somewhere around 18 hours to upload, using a 2G phone connection.

....

Hardin has accused Hall of creating a burden for the University of Texas with his records reviews, but Hall’s five public information requests have generated around 3,000 pages of paperwork. He’s also reviewed some 100,000 pages of paperwork prepared for others.

Hardin, in contrast, has needed more than 150,000 pages, by his own estimate.

 Read the whole thing here.

Austin Urban Rail: Third Most Expensive Project in History

"For all who do such things, all who behave unrighteously, are an abomination to the Lord your God."
Deuteronomy 25:16

This article, from a pro-Urban Rail website, illustrates the horrors of the current proposal:

Project Connect’s urban rail plan for Austin, if implemented, at $119 million per mile in current dollars, would be the third most costly light rail transit (LRT) starter line in U.S. history, in terms of cost per mile.

That’s a conclusion Austin Rail Now draws from results emerging from a recent study posted on the Light Rail Now blog, plus other available data. The LRN study, reported in an article titled New U.S. light rail transit starter systems — Comparative total costs per mile, researched the cost per mile of a dozen new “heavy-duty” (as opposed to streetcar-type) LRT starter lines installed since 1990. In 2014 dollars, these range in investment cost from $26.8 million per mile (Baltimore, opened 1992) to $185.6 million per mile (Seattle, opened 2009).

Project Connect’s urban rail proposal 

Project Connect revealed their proposal for urban rail (see map below) at a meeting of the Central Corridor Advisory Group (CCAG) on May 2nd. The 9.5-mile project comes with a pricetag of $1.13 billion in current dollars, escalating to $1.38 billion in Year of Expenditure (YOE) dollars by 2020, for a projected ridership in the range of 16,000-20,000 per day.

The proposal invites comparison with the plan for light rail in the Guadalupe-Lamar corridor (see Austin’s 2000 light rail plan — Key documents detail costs, ridership of Lamar-Guadalupe-SoCo route). When compared, Project Connect’s $1.4 billion plan can be seen to cost 29% more than the previous Guadalupe-Lamar line would cost today, yet provide 35% less route length, and 47% fewer riders.

To finance such a plan through general obligation bonds, according to an April 29th Austin American Statesman report, Austin homeowners would face a substantial increase in property tax, estimated to range between $77 to $153 per year for a “typical” $200,000 home. That estimate was based on financing a $965 million project, about 85% of the actual size of the project now on the table.

Even if the Federal Transit Administration agrees to fund half the project cost, city officials and civic leaders are considering “bundling” the rail proposal with several hundred million dollars for additional road projects. The result could be a substantial 67% increase in Austin’s debt load per capita.

 But it gets better, because it turns out Project Connect used a financial sleight of hand:

At the May 2nd CCAG meeting, Project Connect’s Urban Rail Lead Kyle Keahey assured his audience that the investment cost of the 9.5-mile proposal was quite comparable with recent similar projects, particularly in cost per mile, with the chart shown below as evidence:

However, there’s a serious problem with this comparison — it compares the proposed starter line for Austin with extensions of these several well-established LRT systems, each of them contending with the much more difficult urban and terrain conditions that are typically avoided and deferred in the process of selecting routes for original starter systems. A far more valid cost comparison would evaluate the cost of starter system projects, thus offering better “apples-to-apples” cost equivalence.

That’s because, in designing a starter line — the first line of a brand-new system for a city — the usual practice is to maximize ridership while minimizing costs through avoiding more difficult design and construction challenges, often deferring these other corridors for later extensions.

But what's $1.4 Billion between friends?!?

Bill Worsham Launches Austin City Council Campaing

"He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much."
Luke 16:10

Last night, Bill Worsham launched his campaign for Austin City Council.  In front of a packed house, he spoke about his background and what he hopes to achieve on the council.  His remarks below:



Highlights:

• "My name is Bill Worsham and I want to be your first city councilman from district 10."

• 19 year Austin resident.

• Aggie engineer (we won't holdit against him).

• Civil engineering project manager for 25 years.

• Has extensive experience is resource management and resource protection.

• Member of the Real Estate Council of Austin.

• 3 Campaign themes: Mobility, Utilities, Affordability.

• Personal Mobility, not one size fits all.

• "Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.
• "The big picture is that city government is too big and costs too much."
• Opportunity costs - People waste time and money dealing with B.S. from the city instead of being productive or living their life.

• Defends Jim Skaggs against attacks from the Chronicle.

• Supports Lyft and Uber.

• Plugs Max Borders and Voice and Exit.

• Told story about conflicting regulations between the code inspectors and the fire department.

After Bill spoke, his campaign manager Rachel Kania (full disclosure: A friend of this website) spoke briefly about what to expect in the coming months:

Highlight:

• First big fundraising deadline is in less than a month.

Learn more about Bill's campaign here, donate here.

Jana Duty destroys another life

"He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?"
Micah 6:8

Remember Jana Duty?!?  She's authoritarian Williamson County DA most recently seen endorsing Dan Branch.  Looks like she's up to her old tricks:



Highlights:

• It's not about marijuana, it's about another form of the same drug.

• The weight of the chocolate is part of the "weight" of the illegal substance: "The weight of the chocolate including the Tupperware container was a little more than 50 grams. That's enough for a second degree felony charge. It nets two to 20 years in prison."

-----

Concerned citizens can contact Williamson County D.A. Jana Duty:
Email: jana@janaduty.com
Phone: 512-554-5678

Rafael Cruz: How to Vet Candidates Biblically

"Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens."
Exodus 18:21

Sarah Rumpf is a good friend of this website; she had a fascinating conversation with Rafael Cruz at the GOP convention:



Highlights:

• In the U.S. there are 65 million evangelical Christians, 3 out of 4 of us don't vote. 

• The Gospel is about a lot more than John 3:16 

• The Bible talks a lot about politics. 

•  The Bible tells you exactly how to vet a candidate. 

•  Covetousness in government isn't primarily about money, it's about power and control. 

• The constitution was written on the knees of the framers. 

• "What we are seeing in America today is not something pastors can justify on a Biblical basis." 

•  We are supposed to be the light of the world and we're too often using flashlights. 

• "If we are silent, are we not justifying the wicked?!?"