Rhode Island’s Road to 2020 Part II: What About the Children?

Allan Giberti

200 plus days until the November election and leading up to the big day, Rhode Island voters should ask themselves “What about the children?”

​It’s also an all too familiar chant from the Rhode Island Democrat lawmakers when they’re trying to evoke an emotional response in order to ram some piece of feel good legislation down our throats. It’s often followed by the equally overused phrase, “Think about the children,” which is probably the more accurate of the two since that’s all it ever amounts to. Thoughts, not action.

Rhode Island is nicknamed, “The Ocean State” but given our track record perhaps we should look ahead to renaming it “The Childless State,” because when you get down to it, we’re not that child friendly. In fact, we can be downright hostile.

On June 19, 2019 Governor Gina Raimondo signed the Reproductive Privacy Act into law and while it sounds innocuous enough it does in fact legalize abortion procedures to take place after fetal viability and right up until the moment of as long as a doctor says the mother's health is at risk. The definition of health is not restricted only to physical health as one would think and leaves the door open to other health concerns, such as mental health.

Even right up until the vote, Democrat lawmakers swore up and down that abortions couldn’t happen right up until the moment of birth. However after its passage, Democrats admitted that you could in fact kill the baby right up until delivery for any medical health reason.

Another horror that occurred were amendments that would deny abortions if they were based on the unborn child’s gender, race or sexual orientation (in preparation for when the technology is available to make such a determination) or if the child was diagnosed with Down Syndrome was also voted down. Not only was it voted down, but the Democrats ridiculed it as if abortions based on sex (see China), race (see Margaret Sanger) or Down Syndrome (67 percent of babies diagnosed with Down syndrome in the United States are aborted). When it came to enacting protections for babies who have the “gay gene,” jokes and laughter fluttered throughout the Gallery from Democrats despite decades of concerns by the gay community over the slaughter of gay children due to eventual DNA screening.

Many of the Democrats in favor of this extreme late term abortion also voted against anesthetizing the unborn baby, but when surgery is performed on a 21-week old baby it is anesthetized because it feels pain. Yet they would have you believe that ripping apart a 24-week old baby is painless.

Why? To “codify” Roe v. Wade of course but if you believe that then I have a lovely wind farm I’d love to sell you at a really good price. In the end, it was all a lie. Even an amendment that would enact the law if Roe. V Wade was ever overturned, was voted down because it was never about codifying Roe v Wade.

For children in RI who are lucky enough to make it being born, don’t expect the state to make growing up, getting an education or preparing to make your way in the world any easier.
Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) mission is “to partner with families and communities to raise safe and healthy children and youth in a caring environment." The reality is that since January of 2016, RI DCYF has had at least 23 near fatal incidents and nine fatalities of children in their “care”.

Don’t expect RI schools to be a positive experience for our most precious treasure. In 2017, RI students from grades 3 through 8 took the standardized Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System test or RICAS and the results came out in October 2018 but were not released until after the November 2018 election. These results were only one indication of how shameful RI’s education system is. The report revealed that among 8th graders only 23% were proficient and in Math, English, Literature and the Arts. As a result, that report triggered another comprehensive review of Providence schools in April and on June 25, 2019 experts at Johns Hopkins University released a 93-page report which drew even more attention to RI’s failed education system. Unfortunately, that’s all it did.

Now add to the poor educational performance deteriorating school facilities, crumbling floors, rodents and bathroom stalls with no locks. Teachers reported the presence of asbestos, lead paint and raw sewage in school buildings.

The solution? The state will take over Providence schools for the next five years and in charge of those changes will be an unelected education commissioner. What could go wrong? Other than what has already gone massively wrong of course.

Yet another failure by the state of Rhode Island is to adequately prepare our children for the future is the lack of civics education. A class-action lawsuit was filed last December by both students and parents against Gov. Gina Raimondo and other state officials arguing that Rhode Island violates students’ constitutional rights by leaving many of them without the skills and knowledge to exercise such basic civic responsibilities. Simply put, it’s easier to take away one’s rights if they don’t know they exist.

As if this wasn’t enough Rhode Island’s Democrat leadership continues to not only deprive our children of basic educational tools, they continue to put in place policies and practices that put our children in harm’s way.

Governor Raimondo has never missed the opportunity to turn a mass shooting into a propaganda tool to further push the Democrats radical agenda. While she will use every opportunity to invoke the shootings at Sandy Hook or the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, she will not consult with any of the experts from the MSD Commission who were tasked with analyzing “information from the school shooting and other mass violence incidents in the state and address recommendations and system improvements,” or implementing any of their recommendations such as utilizing armed resource officers and school personnel.

Instead, Gov. Raimondo’s solution is to do the opposite and ban all guns from schools. Perhaps in Gina’s world, Parkland didn’t implement a “gun free zone” correctly, but our all knowing Governor apparently knows better because the very Obama era policy that created the Parkland shooter is also in place in Rhode Island schools despite warnings from not only the MSD Commission, but warnings from the parents such as Andrew Pollack who lost his daughter, Meadow Pollack, that day.

The Promise Program, also known as Restorative Justice, was hailed as the solution to ending the school to prison pipeline. Instead, this policy gave rise to the Parkland shooter and this same policy is in place in many schools across the United States, including Rhode Island.
The policy that allowed the Parkland shooter to terrorize students and teachers and eventually take seventeen lives is in place in our schools.

If the children in RI are lucky enough and able to navigate the obstacles placed in front of them by the RI progressives their future isn’t secure here in RI. Last year when RI was ranked the worst state to do business in for the fifth year in a row, one of the metrics used to calculate it was Education.

“Higher education institutions offer companies a source to recruit new talent, as well as a partner in research and development. We consider the number of higher education institutions in each state as well as long-term trends in state support for higher education. We look at several measures of K-12 education including test scores, class size and spending, and we look at technology infrastructure in the schools. We also look at life-long learning opportunities in each state.” Out of 175 points, RI scored only 95 points earning only a C+.

Companies want to draw from an educated pool of workers. Unfortunately, the Democrats are not allowing our children to wade past the low end of the pool.

Now two RI Democrat lawmakers are proposing legislation that raises taxes on residents earning more than $500,000 annually to pay for funding education from kindergarten to grade 12.

Why would anyone suggest such a thing? The answer is obvious… they’re thinking about the children.

​We have only 245 days until the election and I hope you ask yourself at least one question before you cast your vote for your favorite progressive Democrat… What about the children?

​Allan Giberti is the host of RI Red Radio on 990WBOB.com. You can listen to Allan live on Mondays and Tuesdays at 7pm Eastern.

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