Father spiked baby like a football

AP reports:

At least 760 children died of abuse or neglect in the U.S. in a six-year span in plain view of child protection authorities — many of them beaten, starved or left alone to drown while agencies had good reason to know they were in danger, the Associated Press has found.

To determine that number, the AP canvassed the 50 states, the District of Columbia and branches of the military — circumventing a system that does a terrible job of accounting for child deaths. Many states struggled to provide numbers. Michigan had 22 kids who died from abuse or neglect from fiscal year 2009 through 2013 (2008 was missing).

Most of the 760 children whose cases were compiled by the AP were under the age of 4. They lost their lives even as authorities were investigating their families or providing some form of protective services because of previous instances of neglect or violence or other troubles in the home.

Take Mattisyn Blaz, a 2-month-old Montana girl who died when her father spiked her “like a football,” in the words of a prosecutor.

What? CPS agents let a man spike a baby like a football? That's outrageous!

No, use some common sense. You are being manipulated. I very much doubt that the dad spiked his baby like a football. But even if he did, how was CPS supposed to predict and prevent it?

My local newspaper had this on page 3 yesterday, with the above picture and this caption:

A small urn containing the ashes of Mattisyn Blaz is displayed on a bookshelf in front of a photo of the infant girl in the home of Jennifer Blaz, 34, in Butte, Mont.

More manipulation.

This is supposed to be a neutral AP news story, but here is what the story advocates:

Also, insufficient training for those who answer child abuse hotlines leads to reports being misclassified, sometimes with deadly consequences; a lack of a comprehensive national child welfare database allows some abusers to avoid detection by moving to different states; and a policy that promotes keeping families intact can play a major role in the number of deaths.

In other words, the AP reporter wants an Orwellian nanny state where anonymous busybodies report on everything you do, the feds track it all in massive databases, and CPS busts up families at every opportunity.

All this because your emotions are being manipulated into thinking that a spiked baby is preventable.

We live in a society that is very free and open in many ways. I can download porn, smoke dope, and live as a parasite in the Obama welfare state. But once some liberal do-gooder announces that I have to forgo all my rights for the sake of the children, everyone just rolls over and concedes. The AP reporters and editors probably do not even realize that there is another side to the issue.