TOPS has lost it way

It is obvious that our state legislators lack spines when it comes to making recommendations about TOPS.  Perhaps a solution to the problem would be to treat the review of the program as a murder trial.

The first step would be the selection of an unbiased jury (committee).  No one selected could have any connection with the program.  Members could not have benefited from TOPS with their own children, grandchildren, or have any relatives or friends that benefited. They also could not have dealt with any legislation involving the funding or defunding of TOPS.

Furthermore, members of the committee would only be permitted to pass judgement on TOPS based upon facts relating to its initial historical creation.

If held to these standards I’d bet we’d be lucky to find even one legislator that could serve on the committee, and therein lies the problem with any group of legislators summoned to make recommendations about changes to TOPS, total bias.

TOPS was created and paid for by Mr. Patrick Taylor as a reward for low income children performing well above average academically.  The reward was a paid college education.  He chose an inner city school population in New Orleans to implement his program. 

Over the years the program was bastardized when funding was taken over by the state and turned into a college welfare program for the masses.   The demonstration of high academic achievement has been intentionally pushed to the side and discussions now are totally focused on providing the greatest number of students possible with a free college, jr. college, or trade school education at the taxpayers’ expense.  There are other options for the masses including student loans, grants, work study subsidies, etc.

If one examines the FACTS, this was never the intent or mission of Mr. Taylor’s program.    Its factual intent was crystal clear, to be privately funded and serve low income students demonstrating high academic performance.

Sadly, even the Taylor Foundation has lost sight of this intent by repeatedly backing the current structure of TOPS and resisting any changes which would return TOPS to its true mission.

Quantity vs quality is now the motto for a great deal of the products and services we as a society now rely on.  Let’s  not permit TOPS to be just another example of that paradigm; TOPS needs to be returned back to its roots, private funding for lower income, high performing students. The problem is who will have the courage to do this?

First Lady's Baggage Weighs Heavily on her Cause

With the continual media drama that has surrounded our TV reality star President since the first day of his inauguration, there appears to be little room for others in the White House to establish themselves as important voices in shaping America.   I am referring to the position of First Lady.  Over the years the presidents’ wives have always served as strong advocates for change in our society.

However, our present First Lady, Melania Trump certainly deserves all our sympathy as she struggles to establish her role as a social advocate.  It must be an extremely difficult task for her in light of the extra baggage she has inherited by having Donald Trump as her husband.  She really can’t pursue advocacy for the empowerment of woman as Michelle Obama did, for she is married to a repeated adulterer who continually objectifies women.  Being an immigrant she might have even pondered advocating for this group in our society, but with all the stereotyping and demonizing of immigrants by her husband’s tweets she must have thought better of it.

This week the media reported that our First Lady has finally settled on an advocacy cause, the problem of cyber bullying of children. While this is certainly a much needed advocacy, it may prove to be an extremely risky choice.

Everyone is well aware of President Trump’s illustrious tweets and I have to shamefully admit I have laughed at a few of his belittling tweets.  However, in reality, these tweets by the leader of the most powerful nation in the free world are a blatant form of cyber social bullying.  The extend of this bullying far exceeded  even my wildest imagination when it was reported last week that our president has maligned over 425 people, places or things since beginning his run for the office of president and his year in that capacity.   He would have obviously made it into the Guinness Book of Records if such inane, aberrant behavior was categorized by that group.

So I guess First Lady Melania will have her work cut out for her.   She will have to advocate for the stoppage of childhood cyber bullying, while at the same time accepting cyber bullying by her husband

To use a term recently thrown around by our Republican members of Congress regarding the recent school gun violence in Florida, she has my “prayers and deepest sympathy.”

Gun Rights ??

I came across an interesting quotation the other day.  The first part of it stated, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.”  It seems to be referencing some historical times when the infancy of some type of government was being established.   Actually it refers to the birth of our nation, during Revolutionary War times and its exact meaning was clearly defined for 70 years prior to 2008.  During that time the Supreme Court and federal courts held that the statement only applied in the context of militias, the rights of states to protect themselves from federal or international interference by the formation of such entities. 

However, most scholars agreed that as our nation continued to evolve this statement had outlived its usefulness and was no longer relevant.  For most, the notion of formulating militias to protect states from federal government interference had no relevance in the 19^th, 20^th, or 21^st centuries.

By now I’m sure those astute readers have guessed that I have quoted the first part of the Second Amendment of our nation’s Constitution which is the sacred cow of all gun advocacy groups.  Unfortunately this part of the Second Amendment is curiously seldom quoted in the defense of an individual’s Constitutional right to own a firearm.   Instead only the last part “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed upon” is the supportive evidence professed as justification for the right to gun ownership. 

So basically what we have is a Constitutional amendment written almost 250 years ago, which most scholars agree is now totally irrelevant, but according to the NRA, and other gun advocacy groups is relevant based upon only its second part which advocates the right of gun ownership even though that second part is intrinsically connected to the previous irrelevant part.  In fact, the entire amendment reads, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed upon."  You cannot selectively take parts of the Second Amendment out of context.  It must be applicable in total.

I have no problems with some gun ownership but let’s stop tying it to the Constitution as God given justification for that right.  It was, in fact, the 2008 Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision, in the case of the District of Columbia vs Heller, which attempted to interpret the original intent of the Second Amendment and apply it to an individual’s right of gun ownership.

In that 2008 decision, the conservative justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in which for the first time in this country’s history, the Second Amendment was systematically altered by separating the possession of a firearm from the requirement of being a member of a militia and the Supreme Court explicitly affirming an individual’s right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense.

Gun advocates need to stop hiding behind the Second Amendment as justification for gun ownership for in reality the justification comes from the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 OPINION, not an amendment that is clearly archaic.