It seems lately that there has been a push to get parents more involved in their classroom activities. More involved parents lead to more successful students, so in that regard, good. However, should parents have the last say in what their children learn about?

That’s an emphatic no.

So the murder rate is spiking across the country. This isn’t disputable, and has been reported across most major news sources. And it’s not specific to big cities (sorry to kill that talking point for you). The fact is, everywhere the rate is up. Partially it’s because of the pandemic, experts think. But there are other reasons. One is the gun ownership rate is spiking as well (nothing like it was before the assault weapon’s ban).

What’s more troubling?

The unsolved murder rate is spiking as well. What does that mean? Well, it means that police (who largely have the majority of local budgets) are not solving crimes. Whether this intentional or not (I have my ideas on this), this is impacting us nationally. Believe it or not, police departments are not held to the Protect and Serve standard.

In yet another case of unfounded American exceptionalism, it turns out that our “solved murder rate”, hovering somewhere around 50%, is eclipsed by the same metric in Germany (90+%).

May 4th, 1976 — Under the cover of night, a rogue power company in Texas decided that enough was enough. They wanted better than a power grid that was poorly regulated and they wanted better. On this night, they successfully proved that they could connect to the wider gride across the United States by sending people from Vernon, Texas to Altus, Oklahoma. So yes, Texas could send power and be combined into the federal power grid. So what happened?

Tis the season for…fires. Lots and lots of fires along the west coast, and we start out this episode getting caught up on the season. One of the said fires was the result of corporate malfeasance (alleged). Is anyone being held accountable for that? Well…no. However many people are killed due to these fires, nobody in the company (name intentionally withheld) will be held accountable. Let’s look just a bit to the east: Texas. In Texas, the electricity outage during a severe snowstorm led to between 264 (official number reported by the state) and 700 (outside experts have said). Who was held accountable for that? Not a single damn person. Nobody was fired, and in the meantime, Texas folks were price gouged for whatever electricity they did get. You might think we’re complaining about Abbot again. We’re not. This week, we discuss how corporations don’t pay consequences, regardless of the fact that they kill people. Got to break a few eggs to make a healthy profit, amirite?

Image by: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Balise42

The Big Lie is one way to hold power. But pushing the Big Lie is also a way to destroy a Democracy. Families are fighting right now between Russia and Ukraine because many on the Russian side only see state-owned media and think that the Russian “special operation” isn’t targeting civilians. Even family members can’t break through the fog.

Sound familiar? It should. And Texas is leading the nation more in this direction every day. Especially with these new voting laws. Listen to what’s going on in Texas, and watch what happens in the other red states. What’s happening? Corruption. Pure and simple.