Wednesday, March 18, 2009

New thought on Jessica Serafin case: old enough to drop out, old enough to vacate premises


http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

New thought on Jessica Serafin case: old enough (18) to drop out of school legally; old enough to vacate premises at will. She never returned to that school in use of her right not to.

Her being held down to be paddled therefore may be seen at the state prosecution level as an unauthorized punishment -- the school was not operating "in loco parentis" from the moment she insisted on leaving. Anytime a student is corporeally punished without authority it should be prosecuted as an criminal assault under the normal statutes.

Being criminally detained to be physically assaulted raises the issue of kidnapping/illegal detainment (there are so many legal pitfalls once you cross the line of assaulting with a weapon).

LAST THOUGHT: the school had no more legal power to hold her down and beat her when she expressed desire to vacate the premises than it would have had to visit her home or grab her on the street and beat her. Whatever legal power the school has to beat students does not exist under these three circumstances.
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Here in Chicago we have multiple incidents of teachers using corporal punishment after it has been banned in the state -- published widely in the media yet! -- and nobody thinks to prosecute every last instance.

We have to get over thinking of students as some kind of slaves to be whipped. Maybe what we need is a federal civil rights statute -- under the 14th Amendment's equal protection and enabling clauses -- to recognize that students may not be whipped without a compelling need (bringing chronic disorder to the point the institution permanently cannot function -- felony offenses -- the equivalent of self-defense). That is how far the parent's so-called "sovereignty" over children can be stretched to corporeally punish students and no more.

When I was in Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx our dean of discipline was thought the toughest in the city, Father Jablonski. But there was never any thought of corporal punishment. Priest, unlike nuns an brother, hear confessions. Priests are in charge of the Ten Commandments; they are concerned with drunkenness, pre-martial sex, stealing, dangerous violence, etc. -- the real moral struggles of Catholic school boys. Priests could care less about you being late for school -- be late every day. If you want to trade a minute in the morning for an hour after school that was your problem.


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.

For a very comprehensive treatment of school corporal punishment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Some thoughts on corporal punishment in schools -- working on a comprehensive anti position


http://nospank.net/n-u88.htm

For a more comprehensive treatment click on: Corporal Punishment in Schools: Economic, Liable, Practical, Ethical, Constitutional?



If corporal punishment is "optional" as it is in many institutions, then, by definition there must be no COMPELLING need -- overriding equal protection rights (if not humane policy). If there is no compelling need in one constitution there is no compelling need in others.

Optional above was in quotes because (outside) circumstances can coerce a student into taking a beating they never would otherwise agree to. In a Tru video a girl reportedly asks for a break because she is sick and cannot do detention Friday afternoon and cannot do it Saturday or she will miss her Junior (I believe) prom -- and opts to take a beating she may never have been willing to otherwise. A boy needs to go to work and so takes a beating instead of Saturday detention.

Her reported "offense": being caught with a cigarette pack -- his: being barely late for class for the sixth time; on a large campus he took a little too long because he dallied to talk to a girl (notify Congress!). I read somewhere that she became class president the next year -- that doesn't sound like an infant terrible.

Don't believe that a beating does less damage than a suspension. Ten years from now, a three day suspension will not have any effect on your life. Spending four years in an institution in which you may be beaten for what amounts to "office management" purposes may plausibly permanently affect your outlook on life for the worse. Paddling supporters love to cite how it did permanently affect them -- usually amounting to adopting a more obsequious attitude towards authority; which can be read as being less confident and assertive about their place in the adult world, which is not where we want our precious children to go these days.


HERE ARE MY FINAL THOUGHTS ON SCHOOL CP -- FOR NOW:

Under my notion of constitutional equal protection, before legislatures are free to exempt school discipline from conventional assault prohibitions -- to allow corporal punishment -- they ought, first, to be able to identify a compelling state interest in deterring certain misbehaviors and, second, attest to an absence of workable alternatives -- the institutional equivalent of rules of engagement.

Practical example: if Oliver were leading a charge of kids on the lunch counter day after day and no other punishment restrained him -- the institutional equivalent of self-defense.

How much offense can be caused the great commonweal – as opposed to the likes and dislikes of deans of discipline -- if, for a practical example, occasionally disorganized students arrive a few minutes late for class every couple of weeks (20 times a year! -- as I did in high school; not in my shorter stay in college)? Many colleges do even not require students to show up for classes, so long as they master course materiel. Employers of the New York City of my youth would have been happy if employees only showed up a couple of minutes late for work only every couple of weeks given the state of rush hour commuting there.

The excuse most offered for exempting schools from normal assault prosecutions – in carrying out the equivalent of everyday office management – is that school teachers act “in loco parentis”, in place of parents. And everyone knows that parents may – as long as state law does not proscribe it – legally paddle children for even minor infractions.

However, so called “parental sovereignty” itself is less a natural verity and more a legal device to insulating sacrosanct family life from potentially crackpot state interference (parents may not legally strike children for no reason)...
…which compelling family privacy interest has absolutely zero application to school administration and in no way should exempt schools from conventional criminal prohibitions. Acting “in loco parentis” may constitutionally require student obedience; it does not confer any “parental sacrament” to disobey criminal law.

Whatever about instinctive human nature teaches us – sensibly -- to treat minor children as subordinates – may less sensibly – magnify their transgressions in our (bureaucratic?) eyes, especially repeated transgressions and -- even less sensibly -- put us on the (bureaucratic?) path to discipline for its own sake: the war on the student!

Legislatures should not feel free to suspend constitutional equal protection -- against assault with an instrument designed to deliver to slaves maximum pain but with minimum injury (same physics still delivers; same biology receives) -- in carrying out our sometimes too thoughtlessly applied genetic code of child deference.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Medicare less worried about you than the IRS?


The maximum the IRS may legally garnishee Social Security benefits for owed taxes is 15% of everything over $750 a month. This recognizes basic survival needs -- if perhaps not even enough.


In this light how much sense does it make to allow Medicare Part B to deduct $96.40 a month out of retirements benefits no matter how low your monthly payments or how poor you are? Medicaid already covers the uncovered 20% of Medicare Part B doctor visit fees and all or almost all of Part D drug premiums for the very poor.

When it comes time to repair the "donut hole" in drug coverage (by permitting government back into the market to bargain for lowest prices), maybe it should also be time to look at the draconian Medicare deduction in the benefits of our poorest retirees.

Monday, March 2, 2009

My final reply on card check on Thoma


BG Feng,

Doubling the minimum wage would cause all of 2 1/2% increase in the cost of GDP output -- and presumably to direct inflation (not counting other wages going up) -- but would give 40% of American workers a raise to $500/wk. Such a small added cost to products and services compared to the (relatively) huge boost in income makes it a overall winner for the 40%. Worried? Fine, prudent; add a dollar an hour every six months and when the smoke clears add another: virtually no risk at all. We had $10/hr (adjusted) under LBJ, so the extreme is likely where we are now, not where we should go.

The next 50%-up can begin the process of "chain-shifting" back the 15% of overall income lost to the top 3% by instituting sector-wide labor agreements, etc. 90% win. 7% stay the same. 3% lose what they never should have gotten.

Since low wage workers tend to serve low wage customers (e.g., fast food), low wage business might actually benefit. My neighborhood Mac had an uptick in business -- all seemingly from the third world immigrant end -- when the Illinois minimum wage jumped from $5.15/hr to $8/hr -- and fast food uses by far the greatest ratio of labor and minimum wage labor.
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Brian G.,
Under the Employee Free Choice Act workers retain the right to a secret ballot to DECERTIFY as well as certify their union. No record anywhere of an employer making it virtually impossible to decertify.

The current so-called "secret ballot" setup is setup to allow ownership to blockade a secret ballot so automatically that it is arguable that the whole set up violates the First Amendment right to (economic?) freedom of assembly -- by government forcing the (economic) assembly process through such a narrow strainer (should the opposite interest choose to make it so) that it is impossible to negotiate (no pun). If political assembly could be as easily blocked by gov specified conditions as easily placed in the path by the opposing interest, the First Amendment infringement would be too obvious.
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Icarus,
The WE who say they don't any longer need the US middle class are outnumbered at the polls by the US middle class who can use their political leverage to keep you from flooding OUR labor market with cheap competition. WE can also raise YOUR marginal tax rate if we don't like YOUR attitude. :-)--

Posted by: Denis Drew | Link to comment | March 02, 2009 at 10:01 AM