How can President Obama speak about guns in Mexico with a straight face?
President Obama's Mexico trip has just taken a turn for the bizarre.This is what President Obama told Mexicans:
"...I
will continue to do everything in my power to pass common-sense
reforms that keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous
people. That can save lives here in Mexico and back home in the United
States. It's the right thing to do,...." (RCP)
First,
the Obama administration put 2,000 high powered weapons in the hands
of Mexican cartels. Did President Obama forget about that little
tragic episode from his first term? We hear that 200-plus Mexicans were killed by these weapons. Why didn't President Obama apologize to the soldiers' families? Or the widows? Or the orphans?
Second,
cartel leaders, or criminals in the US, will continue to have guns
because outlaws always do. Can someone remind President Obama of what
is happening in Chicago? President Obama's hometown has very strict gun
laws but Juarez is Disneyland compared to the killings in Chicago!
How
do you say "The Twilight Zone" in Spanish? I think that it's "La
dimension desconocidad," i.e. the unknown dimension literally.
There
is a "gun problem' and lots of cartel violence in Mexico. However, it
is one of those "perfect storm" problems that won't get fixed with a
"hope and change" speech before university students.
Indeed,
many guns come from the US. They also come in from Central
America.They come in because very "liquid" cartels buy weapons in a very
big international gun black market.They
come in because of corruption in Mexico. They come in because Mexico
does not do a better job of protecting the southbound traffic on the
border.
And 2,000 high powered weapons came in because of "Fast & Furious."
Honestly, there is one thing that we could do to curtail the cartel
violence in Mexico: Stop consuming so many illegal drugs! We are
putting billions of dollars in the pockets of cartels by consuming these
drugs.
The cartels will always have guns as long as we keep filling their pockets with cash.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/05/how_can_president_obama_speak_about_guns_in_mexico_with_a_straight_face.html#ixzz2SMzQSC9j
The Long, Racist History of Gun Control in America
The purposeful restriction of knowledge has been at the heart of
untold misery and hardship in this world. Serfs were kept illiterate so
as to not jeopardize the feudal system. Slaves were kept in the dark on a
variety of subjects so as to not provide them the possibility of
escape.
Today, knowledge remains elusive to so many because the media does
not allow for facts that run contrary to the narratives they favor.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the narratives concerning gun
control. Though our supposed betters in the media see no reason to share
this with the American public, gun control, a sanitized term for the
systemic restriction of rights, has its earliest origins in racism. The
concept is simple enough: enable the selected group to remain armed
while working to disarm the unselected group. In America, this has been
mainly black, Hispanic and immigrant populations.
Long before gun control was touted as “common sense” measures, the
concept was promoted as a means to keep ethnic populations in an unequal
position while assuaging the fears of whites.
Recently, I appeared at a press conference with a dozen black
ministers and other leading members of the black community to stand
together and voice our support for our right to keep and bear arms. It
was here that I discussed the longstanding history of racism behind gun
control and discussed the infamous Dred Scott decision, where Chief
Justice Taney asserted that the Court could not recognize the humanity
of blacks. For if their humanity was fully recognized, they would be
afforded Constitutional protections, including the protections offered
by the Second Amendment.
After the Civil War, when blacks fought along whites to secure
freedom for all, southern states enacted Black Codes, laws that
restricted the civil rights and liberties of blacks. Central to the
enforcement of these laws were the stiff penalties for blacks possessing
firearms.
As these laws came under fire from federal authorities, extra-legal
groups sprouted up to terrorize and enforce these laws if not by
statute, by sheer intimidation. The most notorious, formed in Tennessee,
and was the Ku Klux Klan.
In the turmoil after the Civil War, as America tried to mend itself,
Southern Democrats aimed to disenfranchise black voters who voted
overwhelmingly for Republicans, the Party of Lincoln. To do so required
terrorism by the Klan and other similar groups. Their intimidation
campaigns required a disarmed black population.
Over the years, the Black Codes faded away and were replaced with the
racist Jim Crow laws that still sought to keep blacks as lesser
citizens. And while the black communities were bridled with the shameful
laws in the South, the North enacted laws to disarm their ethnic
populations. The infamous Sullivan Act was enacted to keep the immigrant
populations from carrying pistols and serves as the forefather of
today’s modern “may issue” gun permit laws that allow unelected
officials to decide who is and who is not upstanding enough to own a
gun.
Today, gun control efforts are not only trying to disarm the black
community; gun control efforts are creating victims in places where gun
control measures are law. Criminals, who, by definition, do not abide by
laws, remain armed having circumvented the legal means of obtaining
firearms while law-abiding citizens remain defenseless from want of
easy, legal means of obtaining guns with which to defend themselves,
their families or their homes. While black Americans in urban centers
may not be frequently terrorized by members of the Klan, we are
terrorized by armed criminal elements that, like the Klan before them,
know that the law-abiding have been disarmed for their convenience.
In celebration of the 151st anniversary of Washington DC’s
Emancipation Day, I joined several leaders of the black community to
hold a Lincoln-Douglas debate to discuss the issues affecting our
community. While Al Sharpton hailed gun control measures, he glossed
over the long and continual efforts by legislators to disarm blacks.
After the Civil War, Democrats still did not recognize the full humanity
and maturity of blacks and crusaded to deny them the rights attached to
citizenship- in particular, the right of armed self-defense.
Today, that mentality is still alive and serves as an underlying
motivation of many Democrats (both white and black) to deny the right to
self-protection in inner cities. We are still seeing this abhorrent
effort to deny Constitutionally-protected rights in the numerous
attempts to ban legal ownership of arms in federally subsidized public
housing.
Today, just as it has always been, it is immoral to force a man to
choose whether to become a criminal by obtaining the means to protect
his family or to become a possible victim of violence.
Days after my press conference with the community leaders, I returned
to the barber shop I frequent. This barbershop, decked with Obama
pictures and other assorted liberal material, is owned by a black
Democrat who I good-naturedly chide about his political leanings. He
does the same to me. Though our politics are different, as I walked
through the door, I was confronted with a mob of support from fellow
black patrons and as the owner hugged me, he explained that he had had
no idea about the history surrounding gun control. It was then that it
hit me- people needed to know.
Understanding the long, sordid history of gun control in America is
key to understanding the dangers of disarming. Free citizens of any
race, any ethnicity or background must be wary of any government that
claims, “Trust us; relinquish your means of defense.”
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/the-long-racist-history-of-gun-control-in-america/
7 Structural Problems That Are Destroying America
“And what physicians say about disease is applicable here:
that at the beginning a disease is easy to cure but difficult to
diagnose; but as time passes, not having been treated or recognized at
the outset, it becomes easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. The same
thing occurs in affairs of state; for by recognizing from afar the
diseases that are spreading in the state (which is a gift given only to a
prudent ruler), they can be cured quickly; but when they are not
recognized and are left to grow to the extent that everyone recognizes
them, there is no longer any cure.” -- Niccolo Machiavelli
One of the biggest mistakes people make in politics is believing that
if we can just "get the right people" in office, all of America's
problems will disappear. Unfortunately, that's not the case because many
of the biggest problems we have as a nation are structural and unless
we start to address those underlying issues, we're not going to be able
to get our country back on track for the long haul. So, yes, we should
still keep trying to elect "the right people," but as the late, great
Milton Friedman said, "The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing."
1) Demographics: You remember the hit our economy took when
the Internet bubble and the housing bubble popped? Well, the biggest
bubble of all is the baby bubble. The baby boom after WWII produced a
massive population bubble that convinced politicians we could afford to
be extremely generous with Medicare and Social Security benefits. In
fact, we were so generous that the average person is paying less than a third of what he will get out of Medicare over his lifetime.
"Senator Tom Coburn (a physician in private life) has
estimated that the average American couple contributes approximately
$110,000 to Medicare over their working careers and receives over
$330,000 of Medicare benefits. On Feb. 20, USA Today cited Urban
Institute data pegging those same figures at $88,000 and $387,000,
respectively."
We have been getting by with that because there were lots of workers
paying in and comparatively few retirees, but as more and more Baby
Boomers retire, workers are going to be forced to pay extravagant taxes
that they will never get back in benefits to support the people who are
already in the programs. The numbers are staggering.
"In 2010, there were 40 million Americans 65 and
older. By 2020, that number is projected to be 55 million; by 2030, 72
million."
Incidentally, if you're wondering how much longer Medicare can
continue onward without being reformed or facing massive cuts for
beneficiaries, the answer is until about 2024.
2) A Dimmer American Dream for the Working Poor: At one time,
labor in America was comparatively cheap and shipping costs were very
high. Now, because of increased government regulations and a higher
standard of living, labor is comparatively expensive while shipping
costs have dropped tremendously because of technological advances,
shipping containers, larger ships, etc. As a practical matter, what this
means is that a lot of good jobs for men with limited skills and high
school degrees have moved overseas to countries like India and China.
This has put a lot of economic pressure on the working poor, which has
been increased both by illegal immigration and by legal immigration,
which doesn't give preference to more educated, more skilled immigrants
as it should. This has stagnated wages for a lot of Americans.
"Real family income for families in the middle was
flat. Just about all of the benefits of economic growth from 1970-2010
went to people in the upper half of the income distribution."
The sad fact of the matter is that the world has just changed
economically over the last few decades and we haven't fully adjusted to
it as a society yet.
3) Debt: Despite the fact that we have a more than trillion
dollar deficit, an almost 17 trillion dollar debt and roughly 100
trillion dollars in unfunded Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
liabilities, we seem incapable of slowing down our spending. Even the
sequester, which is like taking a teaspoon out of a swimming pool of
spending, seems to be too much for our politicians to bear. This is
because we have no Balanced Budget Amendment to force our government to
restrain spending and even outside market restraints aren't working well
because we're printing massive amounts of money and loaning it to
ourselves at a low interest rate. Politically, the momentum is ALWAYS on
the side of spending more because ALMOST ANY CUTS produce a huge
backlash while any spending reductions are so comparatively small that
they tend to have minimal political benefits. Unless we can deal with
this issue, it's going to bankrupt our country
and it seems entirely possible that we could have a situation worse
than the one Greece is facing on our hands in the next 5-20 years.
4) Big Government: We live in a world where we have more
choices in entertainment, activities, news and products than ever before
while our government has become bigger, more intrusive, more
centralized and gives us fewer choices than ever before. The cost of
government regulations is growing ever higher, the difficulty of
starting a business is getting ever harder and our choices about
everything from what soda to drink to what light bulb to have in our
house are slowly, but surely being taken away from us. In fact, there's
probably no one reading this page who hasn't accidentally broken some
federal law in the last week and it's entirely possible that lawmakers
aren't aware of that since many of them don't even read the laws they
pass anymore. The more government expands, the more freedom contracts
and less vibrant and healthy our society becomes.
5) Gerrymandering and Increased Partisanship: The far
left-wing took over the Democrat Party in the early seventies and
conservatism became ascendant in the GOP when Reagan became President.
That created a large ideological gulf between the two parties.
Furthermore, although we loathe to admit it, most members of Congress
have nothing to fear from general elections because the partisan make-up
of their states or districts is such that someone from the opposing
party can't defeat them even in a wave election. In other words, once
these politicians get elected, they're in office for life barring some
sort of major scandal OR a challenge from their own party. That means
interest groups that are capable of funding a primary opponent are much
more threatening to most politicians than the voters in their district.
Nancy Pelosi could NEVER be beaten by a Republican, but if Planned
Parenthood or United Auto Workers got angry at her, either could
conceivably fund and support another Democrat who could beat her. What
all this means in practice is that politicians in both parties are far
apart ideologically and have a strong incentive (their job) not to
cooperate with each other on anything that may upset a special interest.
6) The Collapse of Traditional Marriage: Per Pat Buchanan,
"Half of all children born to women under 30 in
America now are illegitimate. Three in 10 white children are born out of
wedlock, as are 53 percent of Hispanic babies and 73 percent of black
babies."
The illegitimacy rate in America has gone up 300% since the
seventies. This might be a minor matter if children born outside of
wedlock did just as well as children in two parent households.
Unfortunately, that's not even remotely true.
According to the Index of Leading Cultural
Indicators, children from single-parent families account for 63 percent
of all youth suicides, 70 percent of all teenage pregnancies, 71 percent
of all adolescent chemical/substance abuse, 80 percent of all prison
inmates, and 90 percent of all homeless and runaway children.
7) The Decline of Christianity: In 1963, 90% of Americans said
they were Christian. Today, that number is closer to 70%. Meanwhile,
the Christian church in America has gotten older, has become more timid
and has become much less influential. As the power of the church has
eroded, moral decay has set in and has started negatively impacting our
society. In fact, the rot has gotten deep enough that we don't even like
to hear people talk about "morals" because it reminds us how badly
we've slipped in so many areas. But, we've actually dropped much farther and faster than most of us realize.
"If filmmakers in 1963 wanted the approval of the
Production Code of Motion Picture Association of America, which almost
all of them still did, the dialogue could not include any profanity
stronger than hell or damn, and there had been dramatic justification
even for them. Characters couldn’t take the name of the Lord in vain, or
ridicule religion, or use any of form of obscenity — meaning just about
anything related to the sex act….the plot couldn’t present sex outside
of marriage as attractive or justified."
The degenerate and dishonest behavior of our politicians, school
shootings, abortion, trashy reality TV, rudeness on the Internet, drug
use, gang activity, gay marriage and children being born out of wedlock,
among many, many other issues are deeply tied to morality. So as the
Christian church declines, America will decline right along with it.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/05/04/7-structural-problems-that-are-destroying-america-n1586899/page/full
Track Team Disqualified for Thanking God
A Texas high school track team was disqualified from competing in the
state championships because one of the runners made a gesture thanking
God after he crossed the finish line.
Derrick Hayes, the anchor of the Columbus High School 4×100 relay
team had just crossed the finish line when he raised his finger to the
sky – thanking the Lord for winning the race that would send them to the
state finals.
But a judge with the University Interscholastic League, the governing
body for high school athletics in Texas, ruled that the gesture was a
violation of the taunting rule – and the Cardinals were stripped of
their victory.
“I think it’s a travesty,” said K.C. Hayes, Derrick’s dad. “It’s a sad deal. Those kids worked hard.”
Robert O’Connor, the superintendent of the school district filed an appeal, but so far the UIL is standing by its rule.
“It’s a harsh consequence for what some people may deem a small
gesture,” O’Connor told MyFoxHouston.com. “The rule states no
celebratory gestures including raising your arms.”
The team was officially disqualified for “unsporting conduct.”
The UIL said they do not have a rule banning religious expression – it’s just a matter of where you express it.
“You can do
whatever you want to in terms of prayer, kneeling or whatever you want
to once you get out of the competition area. You just can’t do it in the
competition area. It goes back to the taunting rule. I can’t taunt my
opponent,” the superintendent told MyFoxHouston.com.
The Texas Tribune reports that Gov. Rick Perry has called for the UIL
to investigate the incident and take whatever action is necessary to
ensure religious freedom and expression is protected at competitions.
In his letter, Perry said he would “not tolerate the suppression of religious freedom anywhere.”
“It is unconscionable that a student athlete could be punished for an
expression of religious faith or that an act of faith could disqualify
an athlete in a UIL competition,” Perry told the newspaper.
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/track-team-disqualified-for-thanking-god.html
Academic warmists celebrate book burning at San Jose State University
At
the San Jose State University Meteorology Department, they'd rather
burn books than read them, if their faith in the gospel of man-made
global warming would be challenged by the contents. That is the message
conveyed on the Department's own website (archived here) with the picture below which was published there along with this explanation:
This week we received a deluge of free books from the Heartland Institute {this or this }.
The book is entitled "The Mad, Mad, Made World of Climatism". SHown
above, Drs. Bridger and Clements test the flammability of the book.
Anthony Watts of Watt's Up with That documented the posting, calling it something "from the Fahrenheit 451 department."
When I first got the tip on this, I thought to myself "nobody can be this stupid to photograph themselves doing this" but, here they are.
Alison Bridger, on the left, is Department Chair
of Meteorology at SJSU, while Craig Clements is an Associate Professor.
These are persons of standing, not crazy grad students pulling a prank.
No, they are making a profound statement about their intellectual
methods. The Chancellor
These
people with PhDs are indeed fools, made so by a fundamentalist faith
that offers redemption from imagined hell fires (check out the fires
burning on the wall behind them).
When
you are going to save the world from the fires of hell, that gives
meaning and purpose to your life. (It also keeps the research grants
coming.) Anything which threatens the theology providing meaning and
sustenance must be extinguished (even if the subsequent combustion
produces carbon dioxide, the very Satan of their Manichean scheme).
Guantanamo Spends $900,000 Per Inmate Every Year
The high-profile American prison camp in Cuba used to house what the
U.S. government considers to be some of the world's most dangerous
terrorists also happens to be the world's most expensive prison, as
Reuters reports:
The Pentagon estimates it spends about $150 million each
year to operate the prison and military court system at the U.S. Naval
Base in Cuba, which was set up 11 years ago to house foreign terrorism
suspects. With 166 inmates currently in custody, that amounts to an
annual cost of $903,614 per prisoner.
By comparison, super-maximum security prisons in the United States
spend about $60,000 to $70,000 at most to house their inmates, analysts
say. And the average cost across all federal prisons is about $30,000,
they say.
To a certain extent, this makes obvious sense. The U.S. government
considers the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay far more dangerous than
domestic prisoners at high-security prisons in the United States. But
it's still a fairly shockingly large amount of money to spend on
imprisoned terrorists.
President Obama also cited the cost of Guantanamo as one reason he
wants to shut it down. But remember, when he blames Congress for his own
inability to shut down the terrorist prison camp, he's lying:
In fact, Obama’s “close GITMO” plan — if it had been
adopted by Congress — would have done something worse than merely
continue the camp’s defining injustice of indefinite detention. It would
likely have expanded those powers by importing them into the U.S.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/kevinglass/2013/05/04/guantanamo-spends-900000-per-inmate-every-year-n1587109
Five Things Obamacare Won’t Do
When Obamacare was being sold
to the public, the president and his supporters made big promises
about the law. But three years later, it looks a lot more limited.
Indeed, it sometimes seems as if we’re hearing more about what
Obamacare won’t do as what it will. Here are five things we
probably shouldn’t count on Obamacare to do:
It won’t control health costs. A few months
after the health care law passed, former White House advisers
touted the law’s cost controls: The law, they wrote in
the New England Journal of Medicine, “puts into place
virtually every cost-control reform proposed by physicians,
economists, and health policy experts.” Apparently it wasn’t
enough, even for the law's backers. A group of prominent liberal
supporters of Obamacare recently launched a new effort to control
health spending. The Washington Post
reported that “While all support the Affordable Care Act, they
tend to agree that additional legislation will be necessary to
control health-care costs.”
It won’t lower premiums for everyone. During
his first presidential campaign, Obama
pitched his health care overhaul as a way to “lower premiums by
up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.” But average family
premiums have continued to rise since Obamacare passed, insurers
and actuaries are warning that they’ll rise even higher as the law
kicks in, and even Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius now
says that some premiums will rise under the law. Sen. Chuck
Schumer (D-NY) also
seems to think the law could cause premiums to spike.
It won’t reduce emergency room usage amongst the
poor. One of the arguments for the law was that it would
reduce emergency room utilization by giving low-income individuals
Medicaid coverage that would allow them to see a doctor instead.
But according to a study
published this week, a randomized controlled trial found that
giving individuals Medicaid does not reduce emergency room
usage.
It may not make low-income Medicaid beneficiaries
healthier or happier. That same study found “no
significant effect of Medicaid coverage” on any of the objective
physical health markers it looked at. The study looked at a very
poor, very sick population, and examined health markers that should
have been some of the easiest to treat. The study’s authors also
reported that they “did not detect a significant difference in the
quality of life related to physical health or in self-reported
levels of pain or happiness.” Roughly half of the law’s coverage
expansion is projected to come via Medicaid.
It won’t get rid of “uncompensated care.” This
is a little bit technical—but it’s important. Related to the
argument about emergency room usage, Obamacare supporters said the
expense of the law could be justified in part by the way it would
reduce uncompensated care—the “free” care hospitals give to those
without insurance. The federal government was already paying
hospitals for that care, the argument went, so why not just use
that money to pay for insurance instead? President Obama claimed
that the cost of uncompensated care was raising insurance prices
nby an average of $1,000. Now it looks like the Obama
administration believes that uncompensated care costs won’t go down
any time soon. The president implicitly admitted this when
he proposed
adding $360 million to a fund that pays hospitals for
uncompensated care, a bump that would effectively get rid of the
cuts the health law was supposed to enable.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/03/five-things-obamacare-wont-do
Studied Ignorance
Once again, with the atrocity in Boston, we see our government officials at all levels - the president, the administration, the judiciary - feigning ignorance as to the provenance and motivation of the bombers.
Keep
in mind that the people feigning ignorance about the hatred of Islam
militants for America are not themselves nice people. These are not some
pastoral tribe who cannot believe evil about anyone. The Dem/Left is
vitriolic about...Republicans. They have characterized the Tea Party,
as well-behaved and understandably motivated (balanced budget - free
markets - limited government) a group of people as have ever graced
politics as a radical racist insurgency.
So, the Dem/Left is perfectly capable of hatred and vitriol. Just not toward our enemies. Why is this?
This is a tapestry
with many threads, but the most important is that if the threat to our
way of life presented by Islam militant were recognized, then the entire
menagerie of the Left would be forced to concede that the historical
actions of dead white men (DWM) were, in fact, reasonable responses to
threats they faced in the past. That there is no feminist solution to somebody who wants to rape you and slit your throat; there is no multi-culti solution to barbarity; there is
no people of color approach to an enemy that escaped DWM in the past.
If someone is coming for you and your family, then either you survive or
they do. There is no New Age answer, no millenarian answer to that
problem - it is a problem of the human condition, addressed by human
beings in the past.
If
that is true then the wellspring of rage that motivates the Left is a
rage against...the human condition. That there is nothing evil about
Western culture; it is successful because it harnesses the creativity
and energy of all its people and best serves the needs of its citizens.
In
order to maintain the Left's world order, it must pretend that the
threat we face, the enmity that our simple existence generates in the
heart of an evil philosophy, is not true or else the Left is no better
than the people who built this country and who are vilified in the
hearts of radicals. The Left would cease to be the midwives of history
and have to go out and...sell insurance, work in a supermarket or
undertake some other activity of value to their fellow man. Better to
have atrocities visited on us and our fellow citizens (scroll down to picture 38) than acknowledge the enemy and destroy a world view.
The Great Education Power-Grab
Did
you know that reformers intent on implementing the Core Curriculum
(National Standards) have invaded public education? They do not care
about kids or about individuals. Armed with statistics and vast
software systems, their intent is to establish one-size-fits-all
curricula and success parameters in public education nationwide. The
scope of their ambitions leads this educator to the conclusion that
their underlying impulse is totalitarian.
These reformers are driving toward the six- or seven-class-a-day high school teaching load, the 9-5 schedule for the schools
(or longer), school provided free and compulsory for ages 2 to 22 (or
26), the six- or seven-day school week, and the 12-month school year
(with two- or three-week vacation
breaks scattered throughout the school year), all controlled by a vast
bureaucracy nationwide and justified by the implementation of "national
standards." A database of answers to 400 questions by all U.S. students
K-20 will be compiled and maintained at a tremendous cost to the
public. Forty-six states are already on board.
This 20-plus years of
control and indoctrination will, if implemented, become a cornerstone of
statist control.mic
Who's
doing it? These reforms are led by Bill Ayers, Michelle Rhee, Arne
Duncan, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York City. They are also led by
educational publishers such as Cengage, Pearson, McGraw Hill, and
McDougal Littel. They have a host of supporters including, but not
limited to, the Coalition of Essential Schools, New Visions, the Harvard
Graduate School of Education, and other NGOs that want to bring
equality and progress [sic] to institutions supposedly failing to their
very core. These "reformers" are being abetted by their so-called
adversaries, the education unions: UFT, AFT, NEA, and NYSUT. Claiming
to object to some of the teacher hostility expressed by the "reformers,"
these unions actually are 100% in tune with the political and social
agenda of those reformers. Why? Because the movement toward "national
standards" by these reformers means increased membership and dues for
the unions, consolidation of power, and national promotion of their
left-wing agenda. The education unions become junior partners in one of
the greatest power plays in the history of this country.
The key to their vision, if one can call this Brave New World and 1984
nightmare a "vision," is to bring in a whole new class of school
administrators. These administrators do not have teaching experience.
Teaching experience tends to breed respect for the individual. Instead,
the drive of national standards is to collectivize, to standardize, and
to establish one-size-fits-all educational benchmarks, goals, and
curricula. The new mandarins of education are people in their twenties
or early thirties who are to come in and uproot the supposed garbage of
the past. Likewise, pressures are being brought to bear on older
teachers and experienced administrators to get out of the way of the
"agenda of change."
A
few years ago, this writer attended a meeting to recruit teachers into
the New York City Department of Education Leadership Academy for
prospective principals, and the sophisticated and attractive hostess of
the program was asked, "When reviewing applications to the program, do
you take into account whether the applicant has written and published
any articles of books?" Without hesitation, the woman answered firmly
that she does not. Connection with the world of books is not part of
leadership in education. On another occasion, this writer even heard
one principal in the New York City Department of Education say that he
is not interested in having libraries where books just gather a lot of
dust; rather, he wants to replace all books with much cheaper and less
space-consuming CDs. He added that students do not need literature in
high school; they need only skill-sets for proper English usage. Under
the Common Core, literature is being de-emphasized in favor of
nonfiction, and excerpts will replace the reading of entire texts.
The
thrust during Bloomberg's years as mayor of New York City has been to
recruit people with little or no experience in education to teach and to
run the schools. This supposedly is to refresh a profession that has
been too insulated from accountability and new ideas for too long. We
saw this in Chicago, when Arne Duncan was the head of the schools. He
had only had a little tutoring experience, but his goal was to renovate
and revamp the failing system. As far as anyone knows, the system there
is still failing.
What,
then, do we find? From top to bottom, the NYC Dept. of Education is
replete with administrators with little teaching experience. Often
selected because they are inexperienced and willing to be as insensitive
as a cactus in order to please their superiors, they come to impose
themselves as "leaders" on those who are already making great sacrifices
as teachers.
Then
there are teaching fellows and other "career change" types who have
decided they want to begin a new career path in education. They soon
learn the realities of life in the schools, and many leave. Many
teaching fellows are also brilliant and idealistic, and they come into
education to make a difference in the lives of individuals and society
as a whole. However, they find that they not only have to deal with
incredibly complex and difficult classroom and building situations, but
many times are being badgered by clueless administrators who are the
"new breed" as described above. This author recently heard a highly
regarded principal of a New York City high school say that he considered
"classroom management" overestimated in importance. Right. Who needs
an attentive, orderly classroom? Let students have a watered down
curriculum, let them talk during class, and then give them inflated
grades to support their self-esteem. This is to be the new formula for
national "progress."
We
find people coming into education from facilities management, the
petroleum industry, pharmaceutical sales, and lobster wholesaling and
delivery backgrounds. This writer has met these people, and the
likelihood that they read even one book a year is remote. Are
non-readers and non-teachers suited to be educational leaders?
Many,
be it for money, security, ideals, or some combination of the above
seek administrative positions that they are not ready for. Why aren't
they ready? They are not ready because they have not been mentored and
inculcated with core educational values that include, but are not
limited to, focus on service and on educational values such as
curricular innovation, creativity, knowledge, teacher morale, school
tone, the family of man, student character-building, and caring/love of
all for all (said list can be summed up as "the pursuit of happiness").
The
above changes are gradually (and sometimes not so gradually) being
implemented in various school districts throughout the country, but
national standards (Core Curriculum) are the connecting mechanism
whereby the philosophy of education outlined above can be managed at the
federal level. The rationale
for this is that students in China, Japan, and Singapore regularly do
better than U.S. students on international tests of math and science.
Therefore, a more comprehensive approach (standards) needs to be taken
if we are to remain competitive in the world economy.
Even accepting the highly dubious assumption that we are falling behind those countries, should our schools become as authoritarian as those schools?
Are not the Judeo-Christian ideals of love and compassion still
valid? Do we want the drones we find in these other cultures?
About
46 states have already signed onto "national standards." There is
movement in that direction. There are not many articles in the
conservative media and blogs challenging this direction. Nevertheless,
the danger to culture, to rationality (substituting what to think for
how to think), to individuality, and to the tried and true is palpable.
My
question to the reader: Do you want American public education to become
even more of an ideological monolith than it is at present?
Foreign Aid is Immoral
Why
are so many people against Western aid being sent to Third World or to
African countries? Is it because they are "mean-spirited" or "don't like
black and brown people," as the pious liberal-left would have it?
No.
It may well be because people don't like taxpayers' money going into
the bank accounts of the rich elites of Third World countries. Because
they don't like corrupt regimes spending this money on palaces and race
courses for the rich. Because they don't like it going on 'development
projects' that are more to do with Western developers getting some of
the cash and the rulers indulging in projects that have no practical
value (other than to spend it on themselves or to boost their egos).
And
why should we aid countries run by juntas, dictatorships and whatnot?
When there are no democratic pressures on such people, then the economic
benefits from these developments projects are rarely going to amount to
much anyway.
This isn't just the view of "free market
fundamentalists" or people who are "tight-fisted about aid". The
peoples of these poor countries often agree with these analyses of the
situation in their countries. For example, this is what one Cameroonian
citizen had to say on the issue:
"The
government tells us there is no money. But there is plenty of money
coming from the World Bank and from France and Britain and America --
but they put it in their pockets. They do not spend it on the roads."
Of
course there is corruption and self-serving people in the UK and in all
other capitalist countries too. However, in a democracy there is a
whole stack of things which will put a stop to the kinds of behavior
which happens all the time in aided countries. We have laws and
regulations. Corruption and waste are discussed in the assemblies and in
the media. Not everything is solved or rectified, of course, but at
least there are systems in place to keep a fairly tight lid on things.
Not so in most aid countries.
The Aid Industry & Where the Money is Spent
The
biggest industries in the third world are often aid industries. The
biggest capitalists are aid capitalists. Aid, and development projects,
etc. are thriving businesses but often the only people who benefit are
Western aid-capitalists and third-world elites -- who may well sometimes
conspire together. The Western aid-capitalists aggrandize their pious
egos and the elites line their pockets (as the aid-capitalist often do
as well).
For
example, donor agencies -- both tied to the aiding country and to the
aided country -- often actually require expensive aid-projects because
the money they are given quite simply has to be spent. If it's not spent
that wouldn't look too good. In fact if they didn't spend all of the
aid-money, they probably wouldn't get any more. Thus they spend all of
it as a matter of necessity. This results in that money being spent on
useless projects or projects which are simply too costly for what they
actually offer.
What
is the lot of many countries that receive aid? Often the government
steals the aid for itself -- that's after stealing money from its own
people in the form of high taxes or even in more direct ways. Why aid a
regime which rules over extreme waste and regulations that are not there
to help the workers but are there as a way of rationalizing various
systems of bribes? ('You don't need to follow this rule if you pay me
100 pounds per month.')
In a corrupt and/or repressive regime, no one really monitors
the aid-money that is spent. The bigwigs and their friends both spend
the money and benefit from the spending. If money is spent on education,
for instance, staff are not recruited or paid on their merit, but on
the rulers' friends and relations. It follows, then, that if no one
keeps an eye on the ruling class and the friends-who-spend, then there
will be massive waste and much money will also be spent on various white
elephants (i.e., Third World versions of Victorian follies in the form
of massive hotels, stadiums, government buildings, etc.).
If
we forget about the self-serving nature of the aid industry on our
side, it can also be the case that Western development projects are
commissioned by people with no genuine interest in them. What they are
interested in are the bribes and the career advancements which can often
be the result of such projects.
Why
aid Ethiopia, for example, when a businessman in that country could
only start a business there after paying four years' worth of his salary
in order to get an official notice in the government's various
newspapers? That has now changed. When such corruption was partly
rectified, by the 'evil' World Bank, business registrations rocketed by
around 50% straight away. Now they may be ready for aid.
Why the Aid in the First Place?
Take a hypothetical case of a businessman attempting to start a business in some poor African country.
This
small businessman is considering an investment of $1000 in his new
business. He's expecting to make $100 a year on this investment.
However, the leader of his country will take half of that $100 in tax,
which will result in only a 5% profit on his initial $1000.
Take the actual case of Cameroon.
In 2009 the World Bank made some inquiries into the situation for prospective small businesses in Cameroon.
It discovered that in order to set up a small business,
an entrepreneur must spend six months' wages on "official fees" in
order to do so. On top of that was the problem of getting the Cameroon
courts to make people pay their so-far unpaid invoices -- something that
can take more than two years. However, the business has to pay the
courts to render this service and that will cost him half the invoices'
value. On top of all that are the additional 43 separate legal and
technical procedures; as well as the standard -- in Cameroon -- bribes.
All
this red tape will discourage all new businessmen in the Cameroon and
elsewhere. And the slow court procedures, when existent at all, will
dissuade many people from investing and building because they know they
won't be protected very well -- if at all -- by the courts.
And
precisely because of all this red tape, the waste, the regulations and
the slow court procedures, bribes are often the only solution to get
things moving in the small business worlds of the Cameroon and beyond.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/foreign_aid_is_immoral.html#ixzz2SN2Yayil
Condemning Capitalism and Freedom
The relentless assaults on American capitalism continue unabated. This week such an attack even appeared on the Wall Street Journal's website, Market Watch. Columnist Paul B. Farrell penned a column
titled, "Capitalism is killing our morals, our future." Not only is the
article devoid of any logic, but it demonstrates a shocking lack of
understanding of economics and the nature of the American economy.
The
article begins with the predictable attacks against the wealthy,
decrying the fact that the number of billionaires in the world has
quadrupled in the past 12 years. Evidently, Mr. Farrell does not
understand that the amount of money in the world is not finite; every
time you earn a dollar and put it in the bank, it does not mean that
there is one less dollar available for someone else to earn. No one on
Earth is poor because someone else is rich.
Mr.
Farrell then tells us, "For the rest of the world, capitalism is not
working: a billion live on less than two dollars a day." First of all,
"the rest of the world" does not live in capitalist society; in fact,
neither do we here in America, but more on that later. As for the
billion souls who live on 2 bucks a day, they live in socialist
countries such as China, North Korea, and Cuba, or have state-run
economies like Mexico and India. Most of the remainder live in
dysfunctional African dictatorships, or in the rain forests of South
America. Their governments are the reason why they are poor -- not
because greedy rich people are stealing their money.
The rest of the piece is dedicated to the gibberish peddled by Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, who claims capitalism has undermined American values. Sandel writes,
Without
being fully aware of the shift, Americans have drifted from having a
market economy to becoming a market society ... where almost everything
is up for sale ... a way of life where market values seep into almost
every sphere of life and sometimes crowd out or corrode important
values, non-market values."
What
Farrell and Sandel fail to recognize is that all values are market
values. Like it or not, everything among free men is traded value for
value. In the economy, we trade money for services or things we want,
e.g. money in exchange for groceries or a haircut. In societal
relationships we trade respect, admiration, friendship, and love for the
things we value in others; integrity, honesty, kindness, skill,
patience, reliability, loyalty etc...
The
article never makes clear exactly what "values" are up for sale that
shouldn't be, just that, "our new dominating capitalist mind-set is
crowding out 'nonmarket values worth caring about.'"Farrell quotes
Sandel's core message as,
The
good things in life are degraded if turned into commodities. So to
decide where the market belongs, and where it should be kept at a
distance, we have to decide how to value the goods in question --
health, education, family life, nature, art, civic duties, and so on.
These are moral and political questions, not merely economic ones.
The
collectivist mentality is here on full display: "we" do not have to
decide how to value anything; I will decide for myself and Professor
Sandel can decide for himself. That is not only the essence of
capitalism -- it is the essence of human liberty.
Farrell repeats Sandel's complete mischaracterization of economics,
...A
market economy is a tool ... for organizing productive activity. A
market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every
aspect of human endeavor. It's a place where social relations are made
over in the image of the market.
A
market economy is not a tool for organizing production; authoritarian
government, command-and-control economic planning, regulation, and
manipulative tax codes are tools for organizing production. Economics is
not merely the study of business, markets, and monetary matters, but
also how individuals make decisions. Risk and reward calculations are
made not simply in financial decisions but in all sorts of social
situations; where to socialize, whom to choose as friends, or whom to
date or marry.
What Farrell and Professor Sandel miss entirely is that the United States does not have a free market
capitalist economy. Sandel says, "The financial crisis did more than
cast doubt on the ability of markets to allocate risk efficiently."
President Obama and his cabal made great use of the 2008 financial
meltdown to condemn capitalism and tighten their grip on the nation's
economy. Anyone who cares to investigate knows that the crisis was created by government interference in the home mortgage
marketplace. Our federal masters dictate every single aspect of our
economy from how cars are built and what gas mileage they will get, to
how much workers are paid, who will get hired and fired, how many
toilets must be on hand per worker, how many hours you can work, where
production facilities can be built, what materials can be used and from
whom they will be purchased, which industries will get tax breaks and
government loans, right down to how much water our toilets and
showerheads can use. The Russians -- who created the first socialist
state and suffered under its tyranny for seven decades -- know socialism
when they see it. The newspaper Pravda, formerly the official mouthpiece of the Soviet regime, wrote in 2009 that, ."...the American descent onto Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed..."
Yet
according to Sandel, our country has a "new dominating capitalist
mind-set." If Americans have such a capitalist attitude, how does he
explain the past two presidential elections, where Barack Obama promised
to "spread the wealth around" and "make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on
their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay
for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills"? How does he
explain the existence of the Department of Labor, the National Labor
Relations Board, OSHA, the EPA, the Securities and Exchange Commission,
the Department of Commerce, the Federal Trade Commission, the FAA, FCC,
FDA, and hundreds of other federal, state, and local agencies that
micromanage every aspect of our economy?
What
collectivists like Mr. Farrell and Professor Sandel are really saying
when they condemn capitalism is that individual freedom is immoral. They
believe that everything is the province of the state to decide -- even
our personal moral values. They believe that you do not have the right
to hold your own values; "We" will decide. And by "We," they mean the
state.
Economic
and political liberty are inseparable. The right to free expression and
trial by jury is of little value to someone who is told what to do or
what products he can buy with his money. The word "capitalism" did not
even exist when America was founded; in 1776, it was simply called
"freedom." The term capitalism, as employed by authoritarian
collectivists, is simply a pejorative term for freedom. Professor Sandel
knows America is not a free-market society, and he is advocating for
not only total state control of the economy, but for every core belief
of individual citizens to be dictated by the state -- deceptively
referred to as "we."
The
Founders bequeathed to us the greatest society in human history; not
because we became prosperous and powerful -- but because we were free.
Prosperity and power were the result of human potential being released
for the first time, taking mankind from millennia of disease, ignorance,
and grueling subsistence, to electricity, indoor plumbing, organ transplants, and space flight in less than 200 years.
"We"
are never going to decide what my values are, and I have no interest in
dictating the values of others. I wish only to see America return to
the only value upon which all honest men and women can agree; freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment