Important headlines for February 23rd
Bottom Line: These are stories you don't want to miss and my hot takes on them...
Stoneman Douglas cop resigns; Sheriff says he should have 'killed the killer' Stephen Hobbs and Scott Travis
The police officer assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School resigned Thursday, under investigation for failing to enter the building as a gunman opened fire and killed 17 people.
PB Post Poll: Should teachers be allowed to carry guns in schools?
Yes. 56%
No. 41%
I don't know. 2%
Other 1%
Hot Take: Whatever this online poll ultimately produces there's an important point to all of this. First, there are many teachers who are capable and willing owners and want the opportunity to be able to potentially defend students and their own safety. The FEA and those with a staunch, non-factually based, narratives about how this would create less safety in schools stand in opposition. Once again, the parents, and the rest of us tax paying shlubs, who all public officials and employees work for aren't even part of the conversation. What's wrong with this picture.
Now for the facts omitted by the teacher's union and others who place politics above the people the work for and the truth. There are 18 states that enable teachers and school officials with legal permitting to carry on campus. How many times has that created a safety issue? Oh right. Zero. Btw, we'll never know if the ability for staff in these states has prevented an attack by not representing a "soft target" but since we've also never had a school official engage an attacker with a weapon we know those schools/officials haven't been targeted either.
Small Businesses Are Booming Under Trump Tax Cuts Gary Rabine, USA Today
Hot Take: Just yesterday Goldman Sachs said that US economy data is as "good as it gets". Now imagine this for a moment. We'd never gone more than four years in US history, including during the Great Depression, without a year of 3%+ growth. Under the Obama administration we went eight years (plus three preceding him for a total of 11). With the election of President Trump doomsday economic stories ran rampant. The New York Times top economist Paul Krugman said the markets would never recover from this election. A year ago, at this time economists, and their willing lemmings in the media, were still making fun of President Trump's assertion that the economy would grow at 3% or greater. We were told it couldn't happen. Then it did in the President's first full quarter as President after cutting thousands of Obama era regs and we never looked back. Just months before the tax cuts were passed we were once again told that they'd hurt the average person and the economy. Now you see it in your paycheck and Goldman Sachs acknowledges that the economy couldn't be any better.
The question, at some point, is why and how anyone could continue to go back to the dishonest, partisan media hacks that have continued to lie and mislead people being provably wrong every step of the way. The only way that happens is if one's so driven by partisan angst that they're rooting for the county to suffer just because of their political preferences and those outlets articulate what they wish were true. Which by the way is a pretty awful thing...