Gloucester Girls Are Easy!

Firstly I would like to apologize for the short lapse in blogging. I have been computerless for the last week due to some technical difficulties. But, I am back on the net now and ready for business.

I have been watching the news today and saw a press conference with the mayor of Gloucester, Massachusetts talking about the "Pregnancy Pact" scandal that is taking place in that community. As I watch, I don't think that I have seen a better argument against schools and governments providing birth control to students.

Some schools and state health officials are saying that they could have prevented some of these pregnancies if only they had been allowed to provide birth control to students. But I see this as placing the school in jeopardy of liability. If I am 15 and I get a prophylactic from the school nurse and it breaks, resulting in a pregnancy, who is responsible? I did the right thing and got a condom, my parents had no clue (because it was confidential they couldn't be notified) and now my 15 year old girlfriend is knocked up because budget cuts only allowed for generic brand condoms and not the Trojan Jr. Magnums that I needed. The school has provided me with all the tools I needed to get the job done, refused to tell the folks, and now someone has to pay for this kids upbringing.

To make an analogy, if I needed a gun for "protection," and the local gun store owner gave it to me for free, and didn't tell my parents; and then I go out and shoot my best friend, who do you think is responsible. I think we could easily guess that the anti-gun lobby would be after the gun store owner quick, fast, and in a hurry! I also think we agree that sending a 15 year old boy out on the town with a rubber and just enough knowledge on how to use it to be dangerous could give new meaning to the words "loaded gun."

As a tax payer and citizen I look on myself as a shareholder in my government. And as with any company the values of my shares go up or down with the raising or lowering of my taxes. If I owned stock in a public company, and they were going to start giving free samples of their potentially harmful product to unsupervised minors I would be calling my broker telling him to sell, sell, SELL! But I can't sell my stock in my government; in fact every year I have to buy more whether I like it's value or not. I do not want any company that I own a part of to take part in any obviously risky behavior and I demand that my government not engage in these actions as well.

I think that a problem we have as conservatives is that we attack problems like this based on morals and dogma, and not simply from a fiscal standpoint. This gives liberals the opportunity to bring in their emotionally charged opinions as well and we end up with an argument based on feelings and not on facts.

The bottom line is that a school giving condoms to kids without their parent's permission opens the school (i.e. us as taxpayers) to potential liability from families faced with the expense of raising unplanned pregnancies, or worse the treatment for a dangerous STD. If the school in Gloucester did not provide pregnancy tests and stick their nose into the citizen's private business this story would be about 17 stupid teenagers in a small fishing village, but because the government got involved it is now a minor local crisis that government must spend money to solve.

As a side note, do you think there is any coincidence to the fact that Pregnancy Pact has the same initials as PP? Because that guy needs to make some kind of an agreement with someone or he will have to build an addition onto his house. Just kidding Pat!

Rusty

Scooped! Instead a Gribble of an idea: Name Your Mayor!

Last week I thought I would be breaking an interesting story about politics here in South Dakota, but as often happens my conscience got the better of me and I decided to call the subject for their permission. I got denied, only to see the story appear on another blog a few hours later; this was followed by an 11:00PM phone call to let me know I could go ahead with the story. Despite the disappointment I'm glad I asked, so as not to upset a friend; hopefully it will result in some juicy tidbits down the line.

Now I am reduced to some fluff from the Capitol Journal that I happened to catch this morning. The first annual Mayor's Race was held at the Oahe Speedway this weekend. Apparently these races between local civic leaders are all the rage in the drag racing world; but this is the first time that Oahe has hosted such an event. Mayors from Blunt, Gettysburg and Highmore were listed participants of the race as well as a sub for Pierre Mayor Dennis Eisnach. I can only assume that other mayors were present, but lacked the star power to be mentioned in the Capitol Journal.

The final was between the mayors from Blunt and Gettysburg, with Gettysburg mayor Jack Axsom winning due to a false start on the final match-up. I was really hoping that the Blunt mayor would have won, because he has a much more interesting name. Imagine how it would have spiced up the News from Blunt to have included the story:

Sunday supper guests of Mayor Dennis "Swede" Larson were Mayor and Mrs. Jack Axsom of Gettysburg. For dinner Mayor Axsom ate the dust from the tires of Swede's Monte Carlo. Following dinner, punch and cookies were served, and a good time was had by all.

Sorry Blunt, for now we can only dream about next year. Also an open question for comments:

If your mayor could have a nickname, what would you like it to be?