Sept. 11, 2013: A Muslim poem but no Pledge of Allegiance at Boston-area high school
On Wednesday, the 12th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the principal at Concord-Carlisle High School in the suburbs of Boston read a Muslim poem to the entire school instead of the Pledge of Allegiance.Principal Peter Badalament has since apologized for the oversight, reports the Boston Herald. According to school district spokesman Tom Lucey, Badalament had lined up a student to recite the Pledge on the morning of Sept. 11. However, that student turned out to be busy with an internship.
“We had the well-being of students at the forefront of our thinking when we chose to acknowledge 9/11 by reading a poem that focused on cross-cultural understanding rather than unsettling words and images associated with the event,” the principal’s apology explained. Badalament also acknowledged “all those who died and suffered loss on 9/11″ and “those who have served and continue to serve our country.”
Badalament managed to fail to schedule anyone else to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. He was also apparently incapable of reciting the short expression of patriotism himself on the anniversary of coordinated al-Qaeda terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people on American soil.
The recitation of the Muslim poem occurred later in the day, not at the same time the Pledge had been scheduled, Lucey added.
A local school board member has now stepped up to defend Badalament from the philistines who have criticized his decision.
“I’m disappointed at the reaction of some of my community,” Concord-Carlisle School Committee member Philip Benincasa told the Herald. “I think what the principal was doing was an attempt to offer young people a glimpse of what binds us together as people. This was an attack carried out by extremists, not by a religious group that is as peace-loving and valued member of our community, our culture and our world as any other.”
The poem by Syrian-American poet Mohja Kahf is called “My Grandmother Washes Her Feet in the Sink of the Bathroom at Sears.” It details the cultural collision that occurs when the author’s Muslim grandmother attempts to wash her feet in a bathroom at a Midwestern department store in observance of “wudu,” a pre- prayer ritual for Muslims.
The poem does not rhyme and has no recognizable metrical form. The word “American” makes three appearances in the work — two of them sarcastic observations by the narrator and the third a contemptuous reference to U.S. citizens by a character in the poem.
Here’s some sample verses:
She does it with great poise, balancing
herself with one plump matronly arm
against the automated hot-air hand dryer,
after having removed her support knee-highs
and laid them aside, folded in thirds,
and given me her purse and her packages to hold
so she can accomplish this august ritual
and get back to the ritual of shopping for housewares…
“You can’t do that,” one of the women protests,
turning to me, “Tell her she can’t do that.”
“We wash our feet five times a day,”
my grandmother declares hotly in Arabic.
“My feet are cleaner than their sink.
Worried about their sink, are they? I
should worry about my feet!”
The fruits of epic incompetence
By Charles KrauthammerThe president of the United States takes to the airwaves to urgently persuade the nation to pause before doing something it has no desire to do in the first place.
Strange. And it gets stranger still. That “strike Syria, maybe” speech begins with a heart-rending account of children consigned to a terrible death by a monster dropping poison gas. It proceeds to explain why such behavior must be punished. It culminates with the argument that the proper response — the most effective way to uphold fundamental norms, indeed human decency — is a flea bite: something “limited,” “targeted” or, as so memorably described by Secretary of State John Kerry, “unbelievably small.”
The mind reels, but there’s more. We must respond — but not yet. This “Munich moment” (Kerry again) demands first a pause to find accommodation with that very same toxin-wielding monster, by way of negotiations with his equally cynical, often shirtless, Kremlin patron bearing promises.
The promise is to rid Syria of its chemical weapons. The negotiations are open-ended. Not a word from President Obama about any deadline or ultimatum. And utter passivity: Kerry said hours earlier that he awaited the Russian proposal.
Why? The administration claims (preposterously, but no matter) that Obama has been working on this idea with Putin at previous meetings. Moreover, the idea was first publicly enunciated by Kerry, even though his own State Department immediately walked it back as a slip of the tongue.
Take at face value Obama’s claim of authorship. Then why isn’t he taking ownership? Why isn’t he calling it the “U.S. proposal” and defining it? Why not issue a U.S. plan containing the precise demands, detailed timeline and threat of action should these conditions fail to be met?
Putin doesn’t care one way or the other about chemical weapons. Nor about dead Syrian children. Nor about international norms, parchment treaties and the other niceties of the liberal imagination.
He cares about power and he cares about keeping Bashar al-Assad in power. Assad is the key link in the anti-Western Shiite crescent stretching from Tehran through Damascus and Beirut to the Mediterranean — on which sits Tartus, Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union. This axis frontally challenges the pro-American Sunni Arab Middle East (Jordan, Yemen, the Gulf Arabs, even the North African states), already terrified at the imminent emergence of a nuclear Iran.
At which point the Iran axis and its Russian patron would achieve dominance over the moderate Arab states, allowing Russia to supplant America as regional hegemon for the first time since Egypt switched to our side in the Cold War in 1972.
The hinge of the entire Russian strategy is saving the Assad regime. That’s the very purpose of the “Russian proposal.” Imagine that some supposed arms-control protocol is worked out. The inspectors have to be vetted by Assad, protected by Assad, convoyed by Assad, directed by Assad to every destination. Negotiation, inspection, identification, accounting, transport and safety would require constant cooperation with the regime, and thus acknowledgment of its sovereignty and legitimacy.
So much for Obama’s repeated insistence that Assad must go. Indeed, Putin has openly demandedthat any negotiation be conditioned on a U.S. commitment to forswear the use of force against Assad. On Thursday, Assad repeated that demand, warning that without an American pledge not to attack and not to arm the rebels, his government would agree to nothing.
This would abolish the very possibility of America tilting the order of battle in a Syrian war that Assad is now winning thanks to Russian arms, Iranian advisers and Lebanese Hezbollah shock troops. Putin thus assures the survival of his Syrian client and the continued ascendancy of the anti-Western Iranian bloc.
And what does America get? Obama saves face.
Some deal.
As for the peace process, it has about zero chance of disarming Damascus. We’ve spent nine years disarming an infinitely smaller arsenal in Libya — in conditions of peace — and we’re still finding undeclared stockpiles.
Yet consider what’s happened over the last month. Assad uses poison gas on civilians and is branded, by the United States above all, a war criminal. Putin, covering for the war criminal, is exposed, isolated, courting pariah status.
And now? Assad, far from receiving punishment of any kind, goes from monster to peace partner. Putin bestrides the world stage, playing dealmaker. He’s welcomed by America as a constructive partner. Now a world statesman, he takes to the New York Times to blame American interventionist arrogance — a.k.a. “American exceptionalism” — for inducing small states to acquire WMDs in the first place.
And Obama gets to slink away from a Syrian debacle of his own making. Such are the fruits of a diplomacy of epic incompetence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-fruits-of-epic-incompetence/2013/09/12/7e6771d2-1bdf-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html
The 80s Are Calling Obama
A war in the Middle East is on the horizon with the United States on one side and the Russian federation on the other, the Security Council is stuck in a stalemate, and Europe is finding itself staunchly divided between East and West. While such a description would certainly be apt for the height of the Cold War, it could just as well describe today's state of affairs.Current debate over whether to intervene militarily in Syria is only one of the many issues pitting the United States against her old rival Russia. In August, diplomatic tension between the two countries came to a crux when President Obama cancelled his visit to Moscow where he was supposed to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, rescheduling a visit to Sweden instead. According to official sources, the cancellation is due to Russia's recent decision to offer asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The 80s are calling
During the final US presidential debate between candidates Obama and Romney, the incumbent President accused Romney of shilling for a foreign policy that had no place in modern times. "The 80s called, they want their foreign policy back, he quipped." Now, however, it appears that President Obama's foreign policy is just as fitting for the Cold War period as Mitt Romney's allegedly would have been.
As the United States now appears poised to intervene militarily in Syria, many parallels can be drawn between this current conflict and the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the latter case, the USSR militarily supported an autocratic regime, that of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), while the United States covertly supplied Afghan rebels, the Mujahideen, with weapons and training. Today, it once again looks as if the United States and Russia will find themselves indirectly at arms, each supporting one side in a Middle Eastern civil war.
Indeed, many fear that the Syrian rebels of today are more similar to the Mujahideen of the 80s than most are letting on. Thirty years ago, the "brave freedom fighters" that the CIA supported against the Soviets included Osama Bin Laden and many others that ended up forming the international Al-Qaeda terrorist network. It has been widely recognized that many Syrian rebels also adhere to a fundamentalist Islamic agenda, with some militants burning Christian churches and terrorizing Shia communities. In more ways than one, history looks set to repeat itself.
The iron curtain redrawn
Moreover, the Russian Federation is looking increasingly like the empire it once was. In 2010, the Kremlin launched a new customs union with ex-Soviet states Belarus and Kazakhstan. This new union is specifically designed to prohibit member countries from signing similar agreements with the European Union, which is closely allied with American interests. Ukraine is one country that currently finds itself in a tug of war between this new East and West, with Russian President Putin daily pressuring his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych to join the customs union through crippling gas prices. Russia and her allies have also been targeting Ukrainian businesses in order to squeeze Yanukovych into compliance. In August, Russia banned all products of Roshen, a Ukrainian confectionary firm, from entering its territory, with Belarus and Kazakhstan following suit.
In many ways, Russia seems to be using this new trading bloc to recover her former territorial glory. As for Ukraine, a summit with European Union leaders in Vilnius, Lithuania this November will settle whether President Yanukovych brings his country into the Western world or pledges allegiance to Mother Russia. In the meantime, Putin's customs union, which former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has referred to as a 'new USSR', is only one more worrying sign for many that the Cold War is officially back.
Rules for Russians
Putin takes a page out of Alinsky.
Vladimir Putin's much-discussed op-ed in today's New York Times is a clever piece of work, but the conclusion is diabolical--and we mean that in the original sense of "devilish":My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States' policy is "what makes America different. It's what makes us exceptional." It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord's blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.That last line is a fallacy of composition. From the premise that all men are created equal, it does not follow that all countries are. But the rhetorical trick is clever. Putin (or perhaps a ghostwriter at Ketchum PR) rests his disparagement of American exceptionalism on its very basis--on the first of the "truths" that the Founding Fathers held "to be self-evident."
This is right out of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals": "The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more live up to their own rules than the Christian Church can live up to Christianity." (Putin also appeals to the pope's authority.)
And the Russian president applies this rule not just to America, but to Obama, whose own ambivalence about American exceptionalism is well known:
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan "you're either with us or against us."Can you think of another world leader who rode similar sentiments into office? Hint: He defeated John McCain and Mitt Romney.
Putin's piece is aimed at influencing American public opinion for the purpose of undermining the effectiveness of American power. It deviously reinforces both dovish and hawkish arguments against the administration's Syria policy. It reminds the doves that military action against Syria goes against everything they believe--and that Obama as a candidate claimed to believe. It reminds the hawks that Obama has shown no inclination or capacity to lead a serious military effort.
Washington's responses have been pitiful. "That's all irrelevant," CNN quotes a White House official as saying: "[Putin] put this proposal forward and he's now invested in it. That's good. That's the best possible reaction. He's fully invested in Syria's CW disarmament and that's potentially better than a military strike--which would deter and degrade but wouldn't get rid of all the chemical weapons. He now owns this. He has fully asserted ownership of it and he needs to deliver."
In his op-ed, Putin even disputes that the regime used poison gas. "There is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists." He isn't committed to disarming the regime but to keeping it in power--a goal that is served by undermining whatever shred of resolve America might have had to act.
"I almost wanted to vomit," the Hill quotes the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Bob Menendez, as saying. (Alinsky frequently capitalized on the reflex for physical disgust, too, as in the 1964 O'Hare Airport plan that we noted in April.)
Sen. John McCain tweeted: "Putin's NYT op-ed is an insult to the intelligence of every American." For an example of an insult to the intelligence, consider McCain's comment last week on a Phoenix radio show--noted here Monday--that "there would be an impeachment of the president" if he put "boots on the ground" in Syria. McCain assumed his listeners were too stupid to see that this was an empty threat, and that if it were not, it would be a reckless one.
Putin doesn't take his readers for idiots, he takes Obama for a fool--a bumbling improviser who can be rolled by appealing to his vanity and his short-term political needs, and whose actions have no broader purpose. Even the New York Times editorial page acknowledges that last point: "The [Tuesday] speech lacked any real sense of what Mr. Obama's long-term or even medium-term strategy might be, other than his repeated promise not to drag a nation fed up with wars into a 'boots-on-the-ground' fight."
Yet the Times ends on a hopeful note: "At least Syria has admitted that it has chemical weapons, for the first time ever; Mr. Putin has acknowledged to the world that there must be limits on the blank checks he was writing his client state; and Russia and the United States are working toward a common strategic goal for the first time in a very long time."
So America has no strategy and is "working" with Russia "toward a common strategic goal"? The only way to reconcile those two assertions is to admit that Putin has capitalized on America's purposelessness in order to advance his own purposes. As a Times news story puts it: "Suddenly Mr. Putin has eclipsed Mr. Obama as the world leader driving the agenda in the Syria crisis."
"Putin is bluffing that Russia has emerged as a major world power," argues Stratfor.org's George Friedman:
In reality, Russia is merely a regional power, but mainly because its periphery is in shambles. He has tried to project a strength that he doesn't have, and he has done it well.Because America is so much mightier than Russia, the American presidency is a much stronger position than the Russian presidency. But a strong man in a position of weakness, if he is ruthless about taking advantage of his adversary's vulnerabilities, can get the better of weak man in a position of strength. Saul Alinsky understood that, and so does Vladimir Putin.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323846504579071142312470408.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion
The Legacy of Iraq: America's Credibility Was Lost Years Ago
How many times will Americans be told that "the legacy of Iraq" has taken its toll on a war-weary country and stymied our ability to project strength and determination in the Mideast generally and military intervention in Syria specifically? Since I have yet to hear someone articulate what that legacy is, it is difficult to give credence to the concept that Bush's "wrong war" has intimidated the Obama administration into utter incompetence and complete fecklessness.Writing in The Wall Street Journal on the twelfth anniversary of 9/11, William Galston posited:
Through [the] fog of confusion [pertaining to the decision to attack Syria], we can discern some large truths. The legacy of Iraq is powerful, in political parties and in the citizenry. Most people would welcome a resolution of the Syrian crisis achieved without American military power.
The third sentence is simply a truism. We would be hard-pressed to find a significant number of Americans who relish the thought of military intervention when alternative and viable non-violent solutions are available. When civilized people go to war, they do so because attempts at diplomacy and other means to reach a peaceful resolution have failed. American military power is the last resort, not the Plan A. It never has been, including when America went into Iraq under the leadership of George W. Bush.
Galston instead falsely puts forth the notion that his second sentence is a truism (and, in his view, a large one). But he fails to articulate what the legacy of Iraq is. It cannot be that people would prefer a resolution to conflict that does not involve military power, since we have already established that that is a trait of civilized nations. So on what do he and others base this narrative that if it were not for our intervention in Iraq, we would invade Syria with the shock and awe required to bring down Assad?
When the U.S. began the military campaign against Saddam Hussein, America was united. I recall an impassioned debate with a French friend who is a career U.N. peace-keeper. He questioned the American government's commitment to see the war through and worried that we would simply dethrone Saddam and exit the battlefield, leaving the country in ruins. I argued that President Bush would ensure not only that we would win the war, but also (rightly or wrongly) take on the task of nation-building prior to pulling our troops out. Perhaps Bush was idealistic, but the hopes of bringing democracy to the region proved possible -- until he left office.
What I and others who supported the war did not anticipate was that the endeavor would take as long as it did, and that an anti-war Democrat like Obama would take over the helm. Obama inherited an Iraq that resembled a burgeoning democracy. It is now a crumbling republic that is slowly becoming yet another Iranian proxy due to Obama's premature withdrawal of our troops.
My friend and I were both correct. Notwithstanding the toll that it took on his presidency and the Democrats' desire to see him fail, Bush was determined to keep troops in Iraq until its newly and democratically elected government was stable. On the other hand, the Obama administration has proven not to have the stomach (cojones) to ensure that the blood and treasure left behind in Iraq served the purpose of winning a war, establishing a stable government under which democracy could flourish, and sending the message to the world that America's strength and resolve are second to none.
Perhaps my friend's fears have proven more accurate than my promises. I did not predict that the U.S. electorate would elevate to the highest office in the land an administration comprising of individuals who voted against the surge and who had no respect for the Iraqi people, the soldiers who fought for our country in the name of freedom and national security, or the U.S. legacy.
When people talk about our credibility as a nation in the context of Obama's Syria bungling and bumbling, they miss the point that we lost all credibility when we abandoned what we started in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It is no surprise that the mullahs in Iran, Putin in Russia, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, and even Moammar Gaddafi in Libya have not feared taking on the U.S. While Libya is seemingly an anomaly in the sense that we did provide military force in a "leading from behind" capacity, we left that country in shambles, with its stockpiles of weapons falling into terrorist hands and the Benghazi attacks on the 9/11 anniversary as the legacy of that intervention.
The result of Obama's dangerous decisions is that Iraq is turning to Iran for support in its internal struggles with al-Qaeda and regional enemies. And this is not, as Galston asserted, because Americans prefer diplomacy to military might -- we long ago had boots on the ground in Iraq and had established positive diplomatic relations with its new government. We also had a critical ally. No longer -- instead of discussing the use of Iraqi airspace for U.S. and/or Israeli fighter jets to attack Iran's nuclear installations, we are reading that Iran's jets are utilizing that prized possession in order to fly weapons to its puppet, Assad, to help him win Syria's civil war. Our legacy in Iraq -- and Obama's legacy to the world -- could very well be a Russian/Iranian/Syrian/Iraqi/Hezb'allah alliance controlling the Mideast despite decades of U.S. foreign policy that specifically and successfully worked to prevent that.
Aiding and abetting the Obama administration in our various defeats in the region are the Democratic Party, mainstream media, and liberal academia. Leading the drum beat of anti-war propaganda year after year, those segments of society may have successfully led to an American people who are war-weary. But if they are, it is not because of a failed Iraq. I recall reading the headlines of the New York Times every morning as it seemingly celebrated yet another death of a U.S. soldier in the years following the onset of the Iraqi war. (It is now ironic that the man who has opted to use drone strikes rather than boots has overseen three times as many American soldier casualties in Afghanistan in less than five years than his predecessor did during his two terms.) With no one left to message why that country is important to our national interests, no wonder Americans believe we failed there.
It is ironic that the man who loves to hear himself talk and turns to his teleprompter in order to sell his failures has failed to articulate any real policy in the Middle East. In his latest speech to the American public on Tuesday night reversing his reversal of his reversal, there was absolutely no mention of the 9/11 anniversary. But, as Victor Davis Hanson observed, there was quite a lot of "Iraq ad nauseam ... : 'we learned from Iraq,' 'an open-ended action like Iraq,' 'terrible toll of Iraq and Afghanistan,' 'our troops are out of Iraq,' etc." It is as if Obama wanted the Iraq war to fail intentionally so that he would not face a citizenry with the staying power to pursue its international responsibilities. Thus, he would be free to transform America without distraction.
How can a nation be credible when it is led by a man who fears his base more than he fears the rising hegemon of a nuclear Iran being armed by a Russian thug on the ascent? After five years in office, Barack Obama has no idea what he is doing or how to fulfill his responsibilities as leader of the free world. He does know how to run from confrontation as quickly as he can find the door, irrespective of what becomes of our national security or our relationship with our allies. And he has succeeded in destroying our credibility on the world stage.
As the 9/11 anniversary passes yet again, it is not just the memories of that fateful day that come rushing back. It is the feeling of dread that the Democrats running the foreign policy show are taking us back to those pre-9/11 days, when the terrorists were left unchecked and emboldened. And that will be Obama's legacy -- not the legacy of what Iraq could have been, but of what it turned into once Obama entered office. This legacy has nothing whatsoever to do with diplomacy versus military strength and a war-weary country. It has everything in the world to do with the evaporation of our nation's credibility and stature in the world.
The Attack on Self-Insurance
Liberals want to rewrite Erisa to save ObamaCare.
The Affordable Care Act is supposed to be a paradise for the middle class, but now that Americans are starting to eat from the tree of knowledge, the liberal deities are trying to force them to stay inside the garden. Witness their crackdown on the booming ObamaCare alternative known as self-insurance.Under this model, businesses and many unions bypass commercial health plans and instead pay directly for the medical claims of their workers. Self-insured plans enjoy lower costs and more flexibility because they are insulated from state regulations and mandates under a 1974 federal law known by the acronym Erisa.
Today a record 61% of covered workers are in a self-insured plan, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2013 survey, up from 49% in 2000. Self-insurance used to be concentrated among national companies that could spread risk over large pools of employees.
But self-insurance is now filtering down to businesses with 199 workers or fewer, as a hedge against ObamaCare's federal mandates and the danger that costs on its small-business exchanges will soar. Some insurers are now selling popular products that allow groups as small as 25 to self-insure. In a 2012 study, the Urban Institute found ObamaCare's incentives will cause as many as 60% of small firms to convert without regulatory changes.
So the White House, liberal pressure groups and state and federal regulators are trying to close what they call the self-insurance "loophole" before more escape. Their political and actuarial fear is that if enough businesses don't join, the exchanges could fail because too few younger and healthier people will subsidize everybody else.
In a June alarm titled "The Threat of Self-Insured Plans Among Small Businesses," the liberal Center for American Progress warns that "the result of this shift could cause an insurance premium death spiral." Note how businesses that pay for their workers' health care are suddenly a "threat." Wasn't coverage the point of ObamaCare?
Big business loves Erisa's freedoms, so the left's political target is so-called stop-loss insurance that is essential to the little guys. Unlike corporate America, small employers are more exposed to the risk of a single high-cost case of serious illness, so they buy this form of catastrophic coverage as a self-insurance backup.
Liberals are pushing state legislatures to outlaw stop-loss policies for small and mid-sized business. Another poison pill is fixing the dollar levels where stop-loss policies are allowed to start paying—aka "attachment levels" akin to deductibles—so high that they are too risky for small businesses to buy. The standard can be as low as expenses exceeding $10,000 per enrollee, but liberals want to triple or quadruple that, or more.
Democrats in California have been leading this effort as usual, though more than a dozen states including Colorado and Rhode Island have either passed or are moving such destructive bills. Insurance commissioners also love this because it gives them more regulatory power.
Speaking of which, another danger is that the Obama Administration may try to unilaterally rewrite Erisa. In May 2012 the Labor Department joined Treasury and Health and Human Services on a regulatory "information request" about stop-loss that is a prelude to a new rule-making.
That document muses that "It has been suggested that some employers with healthier employees may self-insure and purchase stop loss insurance policies with relatively low attachment points to avoid being subject to [ObamaCare's] requirements while exposing themselves to little risk." That sounds like a solution in search of a problem.
One threat is for the Labor Department to use regulation to define stop-loss as a "health insurance issuer," rather than financial reinsurance that all industries use to manage risk. The trouble is that stop-loss doesn't pay providers or medical claims or cover individuals—and in any case three of five self-funded plans use some form of stop-loss, not merely the new small business wave.
The double trouble is that most companies that self-insure use an add-on company such as a brand-name insurer for processing payments, building networks, etc. Once Labor starts controlling "issuers" in the name of rescuing ObamaCare's exchanges, all Erisa benefits become subject to political tampering.
That's a specialty of new Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, who has more than a few businesses worried. Mr. Perez made his name stretching the law at the Justice Department, but he cut his political teeth at HHS in the Clinton years and as special counsel to the late Ted Kennedy.
One irony in all this is that the collateral damage will include union health plans covered by collective bargaining in industries like construction and services. Thousands of small Taft-Hartley union trusts rely on stop-loss and may lose that option, along with millions of other people who don't work for the Fortune 500. President Obama famously promised that if you like your health plan you can keep it, but this Erisa gambit will also scramble the plans of the businesses that already self-insure as a safe harbor.
In 2009 we ran a series of editorials called "Repealing Erisa" that exposed new Labor Department oversight of self-insurance in the House ObamaCare bill. The controversy and business criticism forced Democrats to strip that provision out, but this latest assault shows that the threat is back. Liberals hate Erisa's pluralism in favor of total government control, and small business is merely the appetizer.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324886704579053042138004388.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Close Reading Is Close to a Con
A key component of the blitzkrieg known as Common Core Standards is something called "close reading."This is an educational activity that children are supposed to engage in. They will not merely read; they will read deeply and profoundly, like professors.
"Close reading" is not a new term. "The technique as practiced today was pioneered (at least in English) by I. A. Richards and his student William Empson, later developed further by the New Critics of the mid-twentieth century[.] ... Close reading describes, in literary criticism, the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text."
College students majoring in English literature know they must try to dive deep into famous works of fiction and nonfiction. Of course, at that point in their lives, the students have read 50 books -- probably 250. They are fast, relaxed readers. The surface of the text is like the surface of a lake for a powerful swimmer. These people are ready to plunge to deeper levels.
Hold on, says the Education Establishment. "[C]lose reading can't wait until 7th grade or junior year in high school. It needs to find its niche in kindergarten and the years just beyond if we mean to build the habits of mind that will lead all students to deep understanding of text."
Caution: now entering an alternative reality.
A serious problem at this point is that more than half our fourth graders are not proficient readers. Same with our eighth-graders. You cannot expect these children to do "close reading" because they cannot, in any real sense of the word, do "reading."
Let's pause for a moment and consider what should be going on. Reading is like learning to ride a bike. You have to be on the bike for many hours, riding over streets, grass, and curbs, until you are comfortable and riding for pleasure.
Children in elementary and middle school need quantity, not quality. Schools should use every trick to seduce children into reading lots of books. Such books do not need depth. It's enough that they have a good story or engaging information, and that children say, "That was fun. I want to read another one."
For hundreds of years, there were books written especially for children -- for example, the Hardy Boys or the Bobbsey Twins. Children who are devouring such books at a rapid rate can be encouraged to read more complex texts, and to read them more deeply. Unfortunately, such readers are the exceptions.
Many Americans, even college graduates, never reach the level of reading for fun. Millions can read in some technical sense, but the whole process is hard work. They do it on the job, if they have to.
NPR's "All Things Considered" reported: "Fewer and fewer Americans are reading for pleasure. That's the conclusion of a study released today by the National Endowment for the Arts. It tracks a decline among Americans of all ages. Here are a couple of the most striking statistics. On average, Americans spend two hours a day watching television and seven minutes reading. And only one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers."
But now, thanks to the genius of Common Core, children who may not have finished one actual book will be parsing and analyzing like a literary critic at the New York Times.
According to a Common Core website, "[e]ssentially, close reading means reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension. Close, analytic reading stresses engaging with a text of sufficient complexity directly and examining meaning thoroughly and methodically, encouraging students to read and reread deliberately. Directing student attention on the text itself empowers students to understand the central ideas and key supporting details."
This is patently unlikely for average kids. Their pulses will not quicken. A lot of this "deep comprehension" sounds boring even for literary types. Kids will never know that literature was created to be entertainment.
Some of the recommended text are clearly not what an ordinary person would curl up with on a rainy day: speeches by Martin Luther King, a Shakespearean play in the fourth grade, and the Constitution.
David Coleman, master of the Common Core and characterized as one of the "Ten Scariest People in Education," has launched a crusade against literature and narrative. Instead, he wants children to marinate in dreary, informational text. Males especially will suspect that "close reading" is merely another chapter in the war against boys. Coleman embraces insulation installation manuals, presidential executive orders, environmental programming, and federal reserve documents. In short, tough, dull text, probably with a PC spin. But in the real world, people read for story and beauty, or hardly at all. Dramatic stories are how we draw young people inside books.
There is also the question of culture, as in a shared experience. Who would want to share the fatuous, acultural experiences that Coleman is foisting on the schools?
One recalls that in New Math, children were supposed to learn matrices, Boolean algebra, and base-eight. What could be the purpose of this absurd leap into adult academic activities? For one thing, it probably intimidates parents. Are they going to admit they don't know what Boolean algebra is?
Close Reading seems to me like teaching Boolean algebra to fourth-graders -- pretentious and inane. New Math did not teach math. It's a safe prediction that Close Reading will not teach reading.
In sports, if you take children up an expert slope and turn them loose, you may end up in jail. But in education, you can put children in an uncomfortable, hopeless situation, where they can never really succeed, and you get a grant or a promotion.
Here's more shtick on an education website: "Reading Packs provide teachers with a resource that promotes careful analysis of text while building 21st Century skills of critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Students contemplate a Key Question as they participate in self-directed, small-group, and whole-class discussion following their independent reading of engaging passages on a common topic...The Teaching Tips also provide teachers with pointers for serving as discussion facilitators as they help students reach consensus on their answer to the Key Question."
Notice the phrases "small-group" and "whole-class discussion" leading to "consensus." It's possible that children murmur and stumble through text as part of a group but never engage in anything legitimately called close reading.
So, we are told, the walking wounded of the typical public school will be led to the literary promised land. People who cannot read a few paragraphs out of the newspaper without major mistakes will magically become college- and career-ready, thanks to Close Reading.
Isn't this just too creepy and unrealistic to be taken seriously? Alas, no. Common Core, as described earlier, is a blitzkrieg, a massive 2,000-mile front advancing across the United States, twisting arms and throwing cash in all directions. Common Core is being forced into life the same way ObamaCare was -- much more a political maneuver than a welcome societal outcome.
The Colorado recall was about more than gun control
There was much more going on in Tuesday's recall elections Colorado than an up and down vote on Second Amendment Issues. We may be looking at a bipartisan rebellion against a problem that afflicts both parties: lawmakers passing laws that make them feel virtuous but which are either ineffectual or actually make life worse for the voters. It was arrogance and overreaching that deposed the leader of the Colorado State Senate and a female Hispanic Democrat from a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 24 percent........The political class badly wants to believe Tuesday's election was only about gun control and the NRA's clout. But what if it was also about the abuse of the legislative process and with it the abuse of trust itself? What if voters have had enough of ineffective laws being passed just to show to talking heads that ambitious political leaders did something? What if voters have had enough of the political class dictating all the terms, always in pursuit of the media/political class agenda? What if voters have finally had it with bills becoming laws without a proper vetting in advance? What if the voters are tired of ill-informed legislators criminalizing common behavior among the country class because all they care about is the media narrative? What if voters are tired of bureaucratic obfuscation, technocrat double talk and misleading photo-ops in favor of common sense and plain speaking?
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