I Pledge Allegiance to the Flag…Oh Yeah!?!

Warning: If you are a student or a minor, please leave this blog NOW!

I Was Struck By an AHA! Moment When Reviewing the Video of the June 5 RCS Board of Education Meeting, and Wonder If Any Of Our Readers Are as Awed As I Am With this Observation

New Sign On Entering Coeymans

The president of the board of education announces the meeting and asks the assembly to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence. Everyone accepts the invitation, rises, and recites the words, then stand in silence. Happens every time that way. But it struck me that you pledge like you pray: MEANINGLESSLY. If it weren’t meaningless, you’d take that moment of silence and think about what you just pledged. But isn’t it kinda silly you’re pledging allegiance to “the flag?” Not to the Constitution, not to the People, Not to the Nation–and if your recitation of the so-called pledge is sincere, how do you explain your behavior after the pledge and the moment of silent reflection that should follow that recital?

Lynch Mob

Well, all you patriotic, loyal, pledge-spewing dyed-in-the-wool Americans, almost immediately after the pledge you turned like a pack of rabid rats on each other! On the board one evil twin continues the attacks of the ostracized other evil twin and demands the resignation of the board president! Others disrespect, insult, and interrupt other residents’ exercise of freedom of speech! Still others complain that they voted for something but aren’t getting it (Perhaps because they didn’t know what they were voting for?). Maybe you’re all in the wrong country, the wrong world, maybe the wrong universe. But one thing is damned certain: You are wrong-headed!

Did you know that Francis Bellamy (1855 – 1931), a Baptist minister, wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. He was a Christian Socialist. Yes! A Socialist!!!!

Francis Bellamy in his sermons and lectures described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex.

In 1892 Francis Bellamy was also a chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education in the National Education Association. As its chairman, he prepared the program for the public schools’ quadricentennial celebration for Columbus Day in 1892. He structured this public school program around a flag raising ceremony and a flag salute – his ‘Pledge of Allegiance.’

In 1940 the Supreme Court, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, ruled that students in public schools, including the respondents in that case, Jehovah’s Witnesses who considered the flag salute to be idolatry, could be compelled to swear the Pledge. A rash of mob violence and intimidation against Jehovah’s Witnesses followed the ruling. In 1943 the Supreme Court reversed its decision, ruling in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that public school students are not required to say the Pledge, concluding that “compulsory unification of opinion” violates the First Amendment. In a later opinion, the Court held that students are also not required to stand for the Pledge. That’s democracy for you! Sounds a bit like RCS doesn’t it?

One objection states that a democratic republic built on freedom of dissent should not require its citizens to pledge allegiance to it, and that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects one’s right to refrain from speaking or standing (also a form of speech). Another objection lies in the fact that the people who are most likely to recite the Pledge every day, small children in schools, even many adults, cannot really freely give their consent, and many adults don’t completely understand the Pledge they are taking.

Now back to YOU! How do you reconcile your Ravena village slogan “The Friendship Community” (we’ll have more on this when we publish our “Incest and Better than Banjos” geneology of corruption article this weekend), the principles of the Pledge, and your behavior in the community and at public meetings, a right and a privilege of freedom of assembly to exercise the right of freedom of speech (a freedom interpreted to be limited by what you say and how you say it in the company you say it in)? And what do you reflect on during that holy moment of silence? Murder? Mahem? Hate? How you’re going to degrade or shame your neighbor? Whose resignation you’re going to demand tonite? Or how to justify the LIE, “It’s for the kids!”

I have a pretty robust GI tract but watching that video and listening to some of you people made me pretty much physically SICK!

Just a couple of closing observations:

• You who think that you’re getting short-changed by finding that class sizes are being increased or classes merged and the number of classes reduced have no basis on which to complain. In the Superintendent’s budget presentation at the May 1 board of education meeting there was nothing said about not reducing the number of classes or increasing class size. In fact, those were options that were being considered as austerity measures, and no statement was made that they were somehow connected with a defeated budget nor that they would not happen if the budget were accepted by the vote. The superintendent, in fact, opened her presentation by stating that the budget is a “financial roadmap” but that the “road is uncertain.”
• The 2012-13 budget was NOT accepted unanimously by all board members at the April 17 board meeting! Be clear on that point. So don’t go lumping the entire board into one box and don’t attack the very board member(s) who opposed the budget. The ones you need to go after are the members of the teachers’ clique on the board who voted to accept the 2012-13 budget and put it on the ballot (H. Engel (teacher and husband of a teacher), J. Latter (husband of teacher), J. O’Connor (wife of teacher and whose tenure she voted to approve), T. Traver (evil twin of J. O’Connor), A. Whalen (retired teacher)) and those in the community who did everything conceivable to get you to vote YES!
• If I’m not mistaken, those of you who are now complaining about class sizes and class reductions are the very ones who voted YES! You jumped on the propaganda wagon and sucked up all the pretty, soppy slogans, and condemned those of us who were urging caution and prudence! You don’t present a very pretty or happy picture now in the video, especially you Ms Hommel…you seem a bit unhappy, if you’ll allow us the observation.
• Did any of you read your dear teachers association’s  Memorandum of Agreement, written by your double-dipping atheist darling Matt Miller? Did any of you listen to the Superintendent’s budget presentation? Most of you agreed to it all with your vote. The actual promise made in the Superintendent’s presentation was: No reduction that impacts students or programs, and jobs were protected. Nothing more. In fact, she actually outlined possible austerity measures. Go back and review the video; it’s still available on line. It is purely ignorant and baseless to argue that a modest increase in class size will adversely affect students. So Shut Up! It’s your behavior that’s adversely affecting the students!
• The Superintendent emphasized that to make things work the district needed the help of the community. So far that’s not happened. All the district has gotten has been complaints and insults. And all the abuse is coming from the YES! voters. Funny, that. The same people urging consensus and collaboration before the vote are still appealing to the trouble makers to stop the infighting, make peace, and work together. But there’s still so much unhappiness. That may be because certain of those people who before the vote urged acceptance of the budget are the same ones who after the vote  have been very busy crucifying others and creating all sorts of lunatic distractions and chaos. But they’re a bunch of nut cakes! Why aren’t the rest of you getting your heads together and getting the real work done? Let the Coeymanazis and the Deluca Losers Club do their looney tunes. They’ll soon fizzle if you learn to ignore and shun them. You don’t have to dance to their tune! Even if you have made your bed and your neighbor’s bed by voting Yes! you don’t have to be so damned disgruntled. You don’t have to dance to the Coeymanazi tune!
• And stop being so damned complacent. You don’t have to give a standing ovation for Cathy Long Deluca’s proposal of a Bottle Campaign!
  

  Be Bad! Be Bad, Little Monkey!

  Most of you just voted to accept a more than $41 million school budget with a 6.8% tax increase and now they want you to go out and pick up bottles to support programs you still want to keep!? At 5 cents a bottle…Good Lord! Did you all flunk math!?! Tell Cathy Deluca to pick up her own damned bottles, cash them in, and write a check. You have to take a third job to pay your school taxes, and she wants you to pick up bottles! You’ll be doing that soon enough just to put food on the table! Has she no shame? (She doesn’t, we know that!) Or maybe Deluca Public Affairs can help out. Or maybe Jerry Deluca can use his “political connections” with the DEC to get some help for the Bottle Campaign. “Come little monkeys, my pets, let’s collect bottles!” Our advice: Be bad, little monkeys, be very bad! Tell her where to stick her bottles!

There are some real problems and you’re not dealing with them:

• Get the loonies off the board of education (luckily Traver and O’Connor are soon to leave). Don’t wait til the last minute. Start looking for intelligent, honest candidates to run (No teachers or teachers relatives, please! Your love affairs with teachers has caused enough problems already.). Protect and support the good ones you have on the board.
• Deal with the bullying in the schools, especially the RCS High School. If you don’t there’s going to be a rash of lawsuits! There’s the Dignity Act now to deal with, and it’s going to open a number of cans of worms. You wait and see!
• If you feel you have a gripe, there’s FERPA, The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a Federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education. (Read more about FERPA at Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act).
• There’s too much power and too little accountability. Teachers and coaches have a long history of abuse. Administrators have a long history of brushing off parents and concerned residents. Make them accountable.
• Stop being SHEEPLE! One of the major reasons this community is in the dire straits its now in is because too many of you have been sitting back, riding the waves, and delegating your power and rights. The police and courts are corrupt because you let them become corrupt. Clean them up. If you don’t like the corrupt power structure that’s been in the community and operating  behind the scenes for more than 30 years, boot them out. We’ll be telling you who they are in future articles.
• Most importantly stop being led around by your nose rings and spoon fed by the mouthiest and loudest cows in the community, and get the facts. That means not relying on the crappola that sells newspapers but doesn’t educate you, like the Times Union (a.k.a. Times Useless) that rag tears down and destroys more than it has ever built in the past 25 years. Its journalism stinks. Unless you make the local rags more reliable and less beholding to their drinking buddies (Ravena Halfway House crowd) you’ll never know the truth! It’s been legend for years that the local politicos and godfathers get to read the Ravena News Herald before it goes to print and decide what goes in and what goes out! Maybe legend but all legend is based on some truth! Collect the news yourselves! Make sure it gets into print. Or don’t subscribe or cancel your subscription to make your voice heard!
• Complain! Comment! Compliment good work! Reward good! Complain and then compliment and reward; don’t just be negative!
• And, of course, READ THIS BLOG 😉
• And the next time you recite the Pledge of Allegiance, think about what you’re saying and what it means; then, in your moment of silent reflection, think of how you can make things work in your community, one community under God!
  

  Stop Being Village Idiots!

Reminder: Stay Tuned for our Geneology of Corruption Series

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