Here Comes Big Brother: Home Visiting Laws Threaten Parental Rights Nationwide

Now that researchers and the staunchest proponents of the progressive nanny state are starting to admit that government preschool programs are failing to improve academic achievement for poor children, the big-government Left is joining with the corporate establishment to expand the even more invasive and still unsuccessful idea of home visiting. Bills are being pushed to do so in deep blue states like Minnesota, Oregon and Washington — plus, as documented by Cheri Kiesecker, in other states like Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire and New Mexico. The many problems with these programs have been documented in-depth at The Federalist and in

Home Visits to New Parents in Oregon: Useful Resource or Government Overreach?

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has made universal home visits one of her priorities in her proposed budget. She has earmarked $4 million for the program, and Oregon Health Authority Director Patrick Allen said that the program is not just for parents who are in trouble. “This isn’t something for people in trouble. This is stuff all kids need. Stuff my kids needed,” Allen told the Beaverton Valley Times. The $4 million is a beginning investment into a six-year program to create a universal home visit program. “When the program is complete, every new parent — this includes adoptions — would

Medical Child Kidnapping: Could a Norwegian Scandal Soon Hit the U.S.?

The BBC recently did a profile piece discussing Norway’s child protection system, which is based on its strict enforcement of its United Nations-approved child development standards that include social emotional learning (SEL) standards and work via government home visits. The BBC, which is not exactly a conservative media outlet, summarized the Norwegian situation as follows: The UN rates Norway one of the best countries for a child to grow up in. And yet too many children, according to a large number of Norwegian experts, are taken into [government] care without good reason. The conviction of a top psychiatrist in the

Congress Keeps Adding to the Education Swamp with Budget Increases

Although not surprising in an election year, congressional appropriators — who are generally not known for their political courage — are not doing anything to drain the putrid, unconstitutional swamp that is the U.S. Department of Education and its related programs. Both the full House and Senate Appropriations Committees have completed their Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bills for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 that will begin October 1st. As we described a few months ago, the omnibus budget bill for FY 2018 exploded deficits and significantly enlarged the federal education footprint. Although there are some places where there are no new increases, the

Progressives Renew Push for Nanny State Programs — Despite Poor Results

Progressives in both parties are continuing to use the government-created problem of fatherless poor and minority families to peddle their schemes of expanding the role of government-as-parent yet again to create more preschool and home visiting programs. The Problem with Government Preschool Take, for example, Mississippi school superintendent Dr. Carey Wright (see here for her past exploits), who is leading a newly minted “early childhood network” that will continue working to spread invasive and ineffective pre-K programs to more states. The states currently involved, besides Mississippi, are Maine, New York, Colorado, Tennessee, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. It is also likely that

Congress Explodes Deficit, Expands Nanny State Programs with Budget Deal

Despite courageous efforts by Senator Rand Paul, other fiscally conservative senators, and the House Freedom Caucus, as well as the objections of pro-amnesty Democrat members in both chambers, Congress passed a two-year budget deal early this morning that ballooned spending by $300 billion over the next two years, significantly enlarging the deficit. The bill also ended the military and domestic sequester and raised the debt ceiling by $1 trillion. The Senate vote was 71-28, while the House vote was 240-186. The government is now funded through March 23rd, which will give the Congress time to write out a detailed budget

Looking Ahead: 4 Predictions for Education Policy in 2018

Happy New Year! Here is a brief update on federal education issues we were following before Christmas and some predictions as 2018 begins. As always, the contrast between policies that uphold the Constitution, academic excellence, parental rights, and data privacy versus those that expand big government control and corporate interests, using student as mere widgets in the labor supply pipeline, is stark. Data and Psychological Privacy Thanks to you raising your voices amidst the rush to complete work before the Christmas break, the Senate, after completing the tax bill, did not, as some had feared, take up the Orwellian, de

Dear Congress: Parents Don’t Need the Government’s Help to Raise Their Children

The progressives in the federal government are very good at “not letting a crisis go to waste,” especially in relation to the disastrous government-created crisis of single-parent families. After subsidizing illegitimacy since the 1960s, 40 percent of families in the U.S. are headed by single parents. So what is the Left’s solution? Instead of reversing those catastrophic policies by promoting two-parent family formation as welfare programs are reformed, they are sending government agents into homes to tell parents how to raise their children according to government standards. And while they are at it, they are collecting all sorts of data

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