During the recent CPAC meeting held last weekend in Texas, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) was one of the conservative speakers (7/11/21). During her talk, she made a passing reference to “The 1776 Pledge to Save Our Schools.” Being unaware of the pledge, I decided to look it up. It was developed by a group called, “1776 Action,” an organization dedicated to “Stopping the Anti-American Indoctrination of our Children and Grandchildren.”
I am told, this is a by-product of the “1776 Commission” as established by President Trump to support “Patriotic Education.” The Commission was quickly dissolved following the inauguration of President Biden.
There are actually two pledges listed in the “1776 Action” web site; one for citizens and one for candidates, such as school board members.
CITIZEN PLEDGE
As a citizen, I believe that:
The United States of America is an exceptional nation whose people have always strived to form a more perfect union based upon our founding principles.
Our Founding Fathers – including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson – as well as leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. were among the greatest Americans to ever live, and they deserve to be honored as heroes.
Our children and grandchildren should be taught to take pride in their country, to respect our founding principles of liberty and equality, and to have a sense of American history that is both truthful and inspiring.
Civics education should focus on the serious study of our founding documents and principles – not coerce students into engaging in extracurricular political action on behalf of contemporary policy positions.
Our young people should be taught to view one another not according to race or gender, but as individuals made in the image of God.
Teaching children to hate their country and each other is immoral and deeply harmful to our society and must be stopped.
THEREFORE, I PLEDGE to help replace elected officials, school board members, education commissioners, principals, deans, and university presidents who promote a false, divisive, and radical view of America and our fellow citizens with new leaders who respect our history, our values, our rights, and the God-given dignity of every person.
THEREFORE, I PLEDGE to the voters of (enter District/location name) that I will take concrete steps to do the following in our K-12 public schools:
Restore honest, patriotic education that cultivates in our children a profound love for our country.
Promote a curriculum that teaches that all children are created equal, have equal moral value under God, our Constitution, and the law, and are members of a national community united by our founding principles.
Prohibit any curriculum that pits students against one another on the basis of race or sex.
Prevent schools from politicizing education by prohibiting any curriculum that requires students to protest and lobby during or after school.
Frankly, I see nothing wrong with either pledge as this is how things worked years ago when I went to school. In essence, it is a throwback to another era.
As I interpret the pledges, this is obviously a reaction to today’s perception of academia which appears to be more interested in indoctrination as opposed to education. Case in point: a Virginia school district who recently came under fire for allegedly teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) and promoting transgender policies. Other school boards are also coming under fire for similar policies. Not surprising, attendance at school board meetings by concerned parents are increasing dramatically across the country, thereby denoting the politics involved.
If all citizens and School Board members signed these simple pledges, it might very well quell the uproar at such meetings. Then again, if they do not, the intensity may increase. It is simply a matter of whether you agree with the pledges or not. As for me, I agree.
CLICK HERE to visit the 1776 Action site to take the pledge.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Tim Brycehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngTim Bryce2021-07-15 05:29:112021-10-07 20:23:11PODCAST: Take ‘The 1776 Pledge’ To Save Our Schools
Cuba has made less educational and health care progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years, data show.
On CBS’s 60 Minutes, Senator Bernie Sanders recently praised the achievements of communist Cuba. An interviewer asked him about his 1985 comments that Cubans supported communist dictator Fidel Castro because he “educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society.” In response, Sanders defended those comments, by stating that when “Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program.”
But Castro did not give Cubans literacy. Cuba already had one of the highest literacy rates in Latin America by 1950, nearly a decade before Castro took power, according to United Nations data (statistics from UNESCO). In 2016, the Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler debunked a politician’s claim that Castro’s rule significantly improved Cuban healthcare and education.
In today’s Cuba, children are taught by poorly paid teachers in dilapidated schools. Cuba has made less educational progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years.
According to UNESCO, Cuba had about the same literacy rate as Costa Rica and Chile in 1950 (close to 80 percent). And it has almost the same literacy rate as they do today (close to 100 percent).
Meanwhile, Latin American countries that were largely illiterate in 1950—such as Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic—are largely literate today, closing much of the gap with Cuba. El Salvador had a less than 40 percent literacy rate in 1950, but has an 88 percent literacy rate today. Brazil and Peru had a less than 50 percent literacy rate in 1950, but today, Peru has a 94.5 percent literacy rate, and Brazil a 92.6 percent literacy rate. The Dominican Republic’s rate rose from a little over 40 percent to 91.8 percent. While Cuba made substantial progress in reducing illiteracy in Castro’s first years in power, its educational system has stagnated since, even as much of Latin America improved.
Contrary to Sanders’ claim that Castro “gave” Cubans healthcare, they already had access to healthcare before he seized power. Doctors frequently provided free healthcare to those who couldn’t afford it. As the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler noted:
As for health care and education, Cuba was already near the top of the heap before the revolution. Cuba’s low infant mortality rate is often lauded, but it already led the region on this key measure in 1953-1958, according to data collected by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh.
Cuba led virtually all countries in Latin America in life expectancy in 1959, before Castro’s communists seized power. But by 2012, right after Castro stepped down as Communist Party leader, Chileans and Costa Ricans lived slightly longer than Cubans. Back in 1960, Chileans had a life span seven years shorter than Cubans, and Costa Ricans lived more than two years less than Cubans on average. In 1960, Mexicans lived seven years shorter than Cubans; by 2012, the gap had shrunk to just two years.
(Today, life spans are virtually the same in Cuba as more prosperous Chile and Costa Rica—if you accept the rosy official statistics put out by Cuba’s communist government, which many people do not. Cuba has been credibly accused of hiding infant deaths, and exaggerating the life spans of its citizens. If these accusations are true, Cubans die sooner than Chileans or Costa Ricans).
Cuba has made less progress in health care and life expectancy than most of Latin America in recent years, due to its decrepit health care system. “Hospitals in the island’s capital are literally falling apart.” Sometimes, patients ”have to bring everything with them, because the hospital provides nothing. Pillows, sheets, medicine: everything.”
Reporters have also documented that Cuban hospitals are ill-equipped. A 2004 series on Cuba’s health-care system in Canada’s National Post said pharmacies stock very little and antibiotics are available only on the black market. “One of the myths Canadians harbor about Cuba is that its people may be poor and living under a repressive government, but they have access to quality health and education facilities,” the Post said. “It’s a portrait encouraged by the government, but the reality is sharply different.”
Under communism, Cuba has also fallen behind on more general measures of human development. As the progressive economist Brad DeLong pointed out:
Cuba in 1957—was a developed country. Cuba in 1957 had lower infant mortality than France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had doctors and nurses: as many doctors and nurses per capita as the Netherlands, and more than Britain or Finland. Cuba in 1957 had as many vehicles per capita as Uruguay, Italy, or Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had 45 TVs per 1000 people—fifth highest in the world …Today? Today the UN puts Cuba’s HDI [Human Development indicators] in the range of … Mexico. (And Carmelo Mesa-Lago thinks the UN’s calculations are seriously flawed: that Cuba’s right HDI peers today are places like China, Tunisia, Iran, and South Africa.) Thus I don’t understand lefties who talk about the achievements of the Cuban Revolution: ‘…to have better health care, housing, education.’
As Michael Giere notes, Cuba was prosperous before Castro’s communists seized power:
A United Nations (UNESCO) report in 1957 noted that the Cuban economy included proportionally more workers who were unionized than in the U.S. The report also stated that average wages for an eight hour day were higher in Cuba than in “Belgium, Denmark, France, and Germany.”…PBS explained in a 2004 retrospective, that
“Havana [prior to Castro] was a glittering and dynamic city. Cuba ranked fifth in the hemisphere in per capita income, third in life expectancy, second in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones, first in the number of television sets per inhabitant. The literacy rate, 76%, was the fourth highest in Latin America. Cuba ranked 11th in the world in the number of doctors per capita. Many private clinics and hospitals provided services for the poor. Cuba’s income distribution compared favorably with that of other Latin American societies. A thriving middle class held the promise of prosperity and social mobility.”
But after Castro took over, the prosperity came to an end:
Castro’s destruction of Cuba cannot be over dramatized. He looted, murdered, and destroyed the nation from the ground up. Just one factoid explains it all; Cubans once enjoyed one of the highest consumption of proteins in the Americas, yet in 1962 Castro had to introduce ration cards (meat, 2 ounces daily), as food consumption per person crashed to levels not seen since the 1800s.
Hunger became so widespread that a visiting Swedish doctor, Hans Rosling, had to warn Cuba’s dictator in 1992 about widespread protein deficiency among Cubans. Roughly 40,000 Cubans had been reported to have been experiencing “visual blurring and severe numbness in their legs.” Rosling investigated at the invitation of the Cuban embassy in Sweden, and with the approval of Castro himself. Rosling travelled to the heart of the outbreak, in the western province of Pinar del Río. It turned out that those stricken with the disorder all suffered from protein deficiency. The government was rationing meat, and adults had sacrificed their portion to nourish children, pregnant women and the elderly. Dr. Rosling told Fidel Castro about this.
During this period of widespread hunger, Bernie Sanders was peddling the myth that hunger was non-existent in Cuba. In 1989, he published a newspaper column claiming that Fidel Castro’s Cuba had “no hunger, is educating all of its children and is providing high quality, free health care.”
Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-07-14 06:55:342021-10-07 20:23:15No, Fidel Castro Didn’t Improve Health Care or Education in Cuba
Today’s article comes from Amac and is written by Daniel Roman. My neighbor Steve directed me to it. Please read it then SHARE it using the share on this blog far and wide! It is a longer read than normal but so worth it.
The Graph That Shatters CRT: July 4, 1776 Set Slavery on the Path to Worldwide Extinction
As America celebrates the 245th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this July 4, the legacy of the Declaration is under attack like perhaps never before. Much of the American left has adopted the view—one even espoused by Joe Biden’s Ambassador to the United Nations—that the Declaration is a “white supremacist” document. This is among the central notions of what has become known as Critical Race Theory. Yet this idea, so crucial to the thinking of the modern left, is not only not true, but the clear historical record shows that the exact opposite is true. The Declaration of Independence did not forever enshrine slavery and racism into the soul of America—it set slavery on the path to inevitable global extinction.
The question goes to the heart of the faith which has animated liberal thought toward race since long before it was formalized in the New York Times’ 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory—a belief not just that America has sins, or was imperfect, but that America was and is uniquely sinful and worse than everyone else.
In this version of American history, the truth of 1776 is not merely that the Founders were forced to make pragmatic compromises with reality and take time to achieve the aspirations they set themselves. It is not simply that Thomas Jefferson, despite his repeated personal desire to do so, failed to see the elimination of slavery in his lifetime.
No, the 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory’s historical claim is much bigger than that. They claim that Jefferson and the Founders never cared to see the end of slavery at all, and above all, they claim that the American Revolution itself was fought specifically to entrench slavery, driven by fears that Britain might abolish it.
As has been noted even by a number of liberal and partisan Democratic historians, these claims are total nonsense.
The abolition of slavery in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia followed rather than preceded the Declaration of Independence and it did so for a simple reason. The British, far from being a force for emancipation, were a force against it. In fact, they opposed any move toward emancipation for the same reason the American Revolution was necessary in the first place. London sought control of all trade and economic activities in the colonies for revenue raising purposes. The British Exchequer profited from the buying and selling of slaves in American ports, and British banks invested heavily in loans to slave trading firms. Any attack on the slave trade would have been as much an act of rebellion against Britain as the attack on the tea trade was.
Reality is the inverse of the 1619 Project’s thesis. Rather than being an effort to avert any moves toward emancipation or restrictions on slavery, American Independence was a prerequisite for any legal limitations to it.
And the evidence is that far from being empty words, many of those who signed their names to the Declaration in 1776 meant what they said about all men being created equal. In 1776, slavery was legal in every single colony. In the years to come it was outlawed in Pennsylvania in 1780, New Hampshire and Massachusetts in 1783, and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. After the Constitution was ratified, it was abolished in New York (1799) and New Jersey (1804).
Indeed, the period around 1776 marked a pivot point that set off a wave of abolitions around the globe. In his 2011 book Better Angels of our Nature, scholar Stephen Pinker illustrates this trend perfectly with a graph charting the progress of abolitionism worldwide:
One answer is that the ideas of the American Declaration of Independence did not emerge out of thin air. As countless scholars have argued, and Pinker explained in his 2018 book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, America’s founding document represented an encapsulation of the ideas and values of the European Enlightenment, which challenged certainties about the social order and the world. All institutions—monarchs and Popes, empires and even slavery—were forced to justify themselves based on reason. In other words, simply having existed for centuries was no longer enough.
That’s one reason why the Declaration of Independence stood out at the time – its language was a radical departure from what had come before.
Previous British and European rebellions had generally tried to contest that they were in fact rebelling at all. Their proclamations often read like complex legal briefs, referencing obscure land rights cases from 1231. When America’s Founding Fathers issued their declaration, however, they did something different. They made bold appeals to Enlightenment ideas such as universal rights. In their declaration, all men were equal not because a royal charter said so, but because God created them that way. Their rights existed not because a King granted them or a Parliament passed them into law, but because they were unalienable.
These Enlightenment ideas generally, and the American Revolution specifically, set the end of slavery in motion in several very practical ways.
As we have seen, no territory in America outlawed slavery under British rule, and the British in fact did not allow any territory they ruled to exercise that sort of autonomy in any other case either prior to that point or subsequently. Meanwhile, every northern U.S. state was able to outlaw slavery by 1804, yet the British Empire did not do so until 1833.
“Aha” the leftists will say, “but slavery remained in the American South until the Civil War was over in 1865.” This is true, of course, but there is no reason to believe the British would have tried to abolish slavery if it would have risked conflict or cost.
On the contrary, it is almost impossible to imagine that there even would have been an abolitionist movement anywhere in the world without the success of the American Revolution.
For one thing, the British abolitionist movement itself emerged as a propaganda move during the wars against Napoleon. The French Revolution, which by the way was directly inspired by the American example, had abolished slavery throughout French territory. French slaveholders in the Caribbean resisted these decrees, and when slaves and supporters of the French Revolution tried to enforce them, the French slaveholders called in the British Royal Navy, which happily seized French sugar islands under the pretext of “suppressing a slave rebellion.” Public revulsion against this use of British military force to reintroduce slavery spread in Britain, driven by those who had sympathized with or supported the American cause. The first British abolitionists overlapped with the American sympathizers of the 1770s.
On a wider level, the abolition of slavery anywhere was the clear and direct consequence of those enlightenment ideas which inspired the American Declaration and which the American Revolution had given real credence in a non-theoretical sense for the first time, transforming the relationship between governments and the governed.
For centuries, political thought in Europe had been defined not in terms of the “rights” of individuals as people, but rather through the privileges of classes and offices. The Magna Carta of 1215 might have been progressive in that it restricted the power of the English King, but it restricted the power of the King over a class, his nobles. The right of nobles to govern their estates as they saw fit, to avoid taxation without their consent, and to be guaranteed a jury of their peers in any legal proceeding, meant that peasants unlucky enough to live on their estates, or Jews living in their towns, lost the ability to appeal to the King for protection.
In this environment—the pre-American Revolution environment—any effort by a King to abolish slavery would have been seen as an act of tyranny, one in which a despot stripped the property of “citizens” without their consent.
It is thus no coincidence that when slavery was abolished in U.S. states, it was done not by a King, but by governments that could claim to be elected by the people. In the new American republic, elected officeholders who abolished slavery were exercising the people’s sovereign right to self-government to fulfill the moral imperatives of the Enlightenment. It was the ideas and institutions put in place by the Revolution that made this possible at all.
Before the Revolution, no state had ever abolished slavery, and arguably no state could. After it, the pressure was irresistible, and it became seen as a requirement of republican self-government not just in America, but everywhere.
The authors of the American Declaration intentionally lit a beacon for the world, an example for other nations and peoples to follow. Nonetheless, unlike the French Revolution, the American Founders pursued their radical and uncompromising goals through conservative means, protecting property, respecting the rule of law, and giving American society enough time to actually realize the rights of human equality and freedom far beyond the dreams of the Founders.
The survival of their republic two and a half centuries later, and the total equality under the law of all men and women, races, and religions is a testament to that approach.
In time, America was able to abolish slavery in the 1860s in the bloodiest war of its history, and a century later bring to about a civil rights movement which brought this final measure of equality. These events stand out as among the only times in human history when a society has drastically reformed itself, as opposed to being transformed by foreign invasion or a murderous dictator.
The historical fact is that the American project launched on July 4, 1776 was a work in progress which took time to reach its full potential. But if the American Declaration of Independence did not abolish slavery overnight, or bring about racial equality the following day, it set the nation on the path that made those things inevitable. In fact, it set the entire world on a path where they seemed only a matter of time.
Contrary to the claims of the 1619 crowd and the Founding’s other detractors, it is impossible to see how slavery or racial equality would have developed in a world in which the Americans failed, the authors of the Declaration were hanged, and the British proved that rights and power did not derive from the consent of the governed or God, but from what Kings felt inclined to grant. In that world, everyone would have remained slaves.
COLUMN BY
DANIEL ROMAN
Daniel Roman is the pen name of a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Save America Foundationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngSave America Foundation2021-07-09 14:04:142021-10-07 20:23:27Shattering Critical Race Theory!
AFT’s five-day conference will also spotlight addresses by first lady and Vogue token cover model Jill Biden, and voter fraud proponent Stacey Abrams. The union lauded what it called a “galvanizing national speech” by its president Randi Weingarten, who vowed to defend any teacher who is prevented from teaching “honest history” in states that have banned the teaching of CRT.
“We have a legal defense fund ready to go,” Weingarten threatened. “Teaching the truth is not radical or wrong. Distorting history and threatening educators for teaching the truth is what is truly radical and wrong.”
Critical Race Theory is not honest or truthful history, nor is it, as Weingarten also misrepresented, “a method of examination… that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists.” It is a poisonous, Marxist ideological weapon, the very purpose of which is to inculcate racial division and anti-Americanism.
“Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools,” Weingarten continued. This is a complete lie. Apart from the fact that CRT was already spreading like wildfire throughout grades K-12 in America, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, proudly announced just last week that Critical Race Theory would be incorporated into the curricula of K-12 schools all across the country.
The field of education has become Ground Zero in the nation’s battle for the future of America. And the enemy is Critical Race Theory and its propagandists.
Critical race theory holds that because racism is so deeply ingrained in the American character, classical liberal ideals such as meritocracy, equal opportunity, and colorblind justice are essentially nothing more than empty slogans that fail to properly combat—or to even acknowledge the existence of—the immense structural inequities that pervade American society and work against black people. Thus, according to critical race theorists, racial preferences (favoring blacks) in employment and higher education are not only permissible but necessary as a means of countering the permanent bigotry of white people who, as Bell put it, seek to “achieve a measure of social stability through their unspoken pact to keep blacks on the bottom.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2021-07-08 06:06:462021-10-07 20:23:30Teachers Unions Go All in For Spreading Critical Race Theory
This is a stunning indictment of the left’s takeover, takedown of the American public education system.
Look what they wrought…..
Treasonous Schools: Only a Third of American Students Proud to Be American
A recent poll revealed just how treasonous our schools have been by showing that only a third of students saying they are proud to be an American.
By Warner Todd Huston, July 6, 2021:
A recent poll revealed just how treasonous our schools have been by showing that only a third of students saying they are proud to be an American.
Once again, we see leftists are winning the culture war by warping the minds of our children in government schools. The poll found that only 36 percent of the respondents of the poll felt they were proud Americans.
Only 36% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said they were very or extremely proud to be American, a new Issues & Insights/TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics survey found. That made the age group the only tracked demographic in which pride falls below 50%.
The poll found an almost identical percentage (35%) of the 18-24 group saying they are only slightly or not proud at all to be an American.
The question was as of 1,424 adults:
Among age groups, those 65+ (86%) had the most people who responded favorably, followed by 45-64 (75%) and 25-44 (59%).
Overall, 68% of respondents said they were extremely or very proud to be an American. Another 15% were “moderately” proud.
Only 6% say they “aren’t proud at all,” being an American, and 8% say they are only “slightly proud.”
In what tippinsights said was somewhat of a surprise because of universities having become bastions of the left, the poll found that 75% of college graduates are extremely/very proud to be an American, compared with 62% of those with only a high school diploma.
Naturally, conservatives were far prouder (at 81 percent), while moderates were proud at 66 percent and Democrats only 55 percent.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-07-07 07:06:492021-10-07 20:23:34TEACHING HATE: Only a Third of America’s Students Proud to Be American
The Zinn Education Project, inspired by the late anti-American propagandist Howard Zinn, is calling upon all teachers to pledge to instruct students in the racist, neo-Marxist concepts associated with Critical Race Theory – even if it is banned.
Zinn was the author of A People’s History of the United States, published in 1980, a subversive book that became ubiquitous in American high schools and universities across the country. It has done more than any other single book to convince American youth that their country’s history is nothing more than a litany of racism, imperialism, hypocrisy, and genocide.
The Zinn Education Projects urges teachers to pledge to defy any laws that ban teaching that America is systemically racist. In addition, the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, announced it plans to join with the domestic terrorists of Black Lives Matter and the Zinn Education Project “to call for a rally this year on October 14 – George Floyd’s birthday – as a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”
“From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression,” the Project claims. “To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them — not educate them.”
Completely false race-mongering. The real deception is in indoctrinating — not educating — students to believe Marxist lies about the freest, most diverse and prosperous country in history.
Asserting that “There is no such thing as pure fact,” Zinn maintained that the proper role of educators was not to teach objective truths but rather to lead “social struggle” by promoting student collectivism and emphasizing “the role of working people, women, people of color and organized social movements.” In 2008 he helped launch the so-called Zinn Education Project (ZEP), a collaboration between Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change. The initiative was designed to incorporate Zinn’s writings and worldview into all aspects of K-12 school curricula.
The ZEP lessons reinforce Zinn’s presentation of the United States as redeemable only through a socialist revolution. Major historical events are replaced with instances demonstrating relentless oppression. For example:
Searching the ZEP curriculum for lessons on the December 7, 1941 attack on “Pearl Harbor” leads mostly to lessons about the internment of the Japanese. “This Day in History” for the date of December 7 marks not the attack on Pearl Harbor, but the 1874 Vicksburg Massacre, described as a massacre by whites of between 75 and 300 African Americans defending black sheriff Peter Crosby, a former slave and Union veteran. The point is that Vicksburg, as “one of many massacres in U.S. history,” was “designed to reassert white supremacy during Reconstruction.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2021-07-07 06:54:442021-10-07 20:23:34Zinn Education Project Urges Teachers to Defy Laws Banning Critical Race Theory
Sometime ago, I asked my blog readers to take a simple quiz regarding American government and history. I wanted to see just how well we knew some of the basics, such as our governing docs and some historical events. Nothing elaborate, I just wanted to take a pulse of our knowledge in general. 134 brave souls took the quiz for which I give my thanks. I didn’t want the quiz to be complicated which is why I tried to keep it as simple as possible. I could have asked for such things as age and political party affiliation, but I didn’t want to muddy the waters and turn people off.
Out of those who took the test, probably 25 people got a perfect score. I was not surprised by this as I didn’t try to invent a complicated quiz, just something that could give us some fundamental idea of what we know and what we don’t.
The quiz was far from scientific, yet I believe I can draw some conclusions from it based on the input. But first, let’s review the responses to each question. I’ll show both the number of responses and the percentage of the total, followed by my comments.
PLEASE ANSWER ALL 10 QUESTIONS – AMERICAN CITIZENS ONLY
1. Signed in 1620, it is the first governing document of Plymouth Colony as written by the colonists, later known to history as the Pilgrims. It was in essence a social contract in which the settlers consented to follow the document’s rules and regulations for the sake of survival.
Comment: I considered this a tricky question as most people are unaware of any American history prior to 1776. I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people got it right. Those that answered “Magna Carta” disappointed me; even though it is an important document that influenced others, it was still developed in England, not America. I consider it significant that people recognized its name though. By the way, the last three, Pilgrim Declaration, Plymouth Compact, and Standish Consent and Degree were figments of my imagination.
2. How many “separate but equal” branches are there in the U.S. Federal Government?
Comment: People may have gotten other parts of the quiz wrong, but somehow the concept of “three separate but equal branches of government” representing the checks and balances of government has been successfully stamped into our brains. Only three people missed this.
3. What is the following quote from? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
27 – 20% – Bill of Rights
94 – 70% – Declaration of Independence (CORRECT)
06 – 05% – Gettysburg Address
00 – 00% – Oath of Office
07 – 05% – US Constitution
Comment: The lion’s share of answers went correctly to the Declaration of Independence, but I was surprised to see how many people picked the Bill of Rights. As an aside, many of us had to memorize this section of the Declaration in elementary school.
4. Which U.S. President was NOT impeached?
34 – 25% – Bill Clinton
20 – 15% – Andrew Johnson
80 – 60% – Richard Nixon (CORRECT)
Comment: I expected this kind of response to the question. Richard Nixon resigned before impeachment proceedings could begin. The other two were impeached, meaning to hold trial in the Senate, yet were found not guilty. No U.S. President has ever been forcibly removed from office through peaceful means (assassination is another matter altogether).
5. What is the following quote from? “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,…”>
04 – 03% – Bill of Rights
32 – 24% – Declaration of Independence
02 – 01% – Gettysburg Address
00 – 00% – Oath of Office
96 – 72% – US Constitution (CORRECT)
Comment: Most people got this correct, but notice how many confused it for the Declaration of Independence. This particular quote is from the Preamble of the Constitution. Like the Declaration, many of us had to memorize this in grade school, but I don’t think they do so anymore.
6. What U.S. President served as commander-in-chief during World War I?
Comment: I expected this question to be a little tougher as a lot of us have forgotten the events of nearly 100 years ago. Baby boomers may still be familiar with World War II, but I thought they would surely have problems with the first war, “The War to end all Wars.” I wasn’t surprised that Teddy Roosevelt captured the number of responses that he did simply because of his strong name recognition. By the way, William Howard Taft was the only President who also became Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (and the first to throw out a baseball on opening day).
7. What is the following quote from? “…and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
001 – 01% – Bill of Rights
000 – 00% – Declaration of Independence
000 – 00% – Gettysburg Address
127 – 95% – Oath of Office (CORRECT)
006 – 04% – US Constitution
Comment: I was flabbergasted that anyone got this wrong. The six who answered “US Constitution” should have read the question more carefully.
8. What is the following quote from? “…that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
005 – 04% – Bill of Rights
002 – 01% – Declaration of Independence
122 – 91% – Gettysburg Address (CORRECT)
000 – 00% – Oath of Office
005 – 04% – US Constitution
Comment: I was pleased to see most people remembered Lincoln’s speech. Interestingly, Lincoln was not the keynote speaker that day and, because of this, his words were almost overlooked by reporters in attendance. Thank God somebody was paying attention.
9. It stated that further efforts by European countries to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention. It asserted that the Western Hemisphere was not to be further colonized by European countries but that the United States would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries.
Comment: I was pleasantly surprised by this one as I had assumed many people had forgotten about the Monroe doctrine, an important document which, to this day, is still in effect. I wonder if those who answered “Emancipation Proclamation” really understood the significance of that document. Probably not.
10. Which U.S. President was NOT directly involved with the Vietnam War?
81 – 60% – Dwight Eisenhower (CORRECT)
49 – 27% – Gerald Ford
01 – 01% – Lyndon Johnson
03 – 02% – John Kennedy
00 – 00% – Richard Nixon
Comment: This was perhaps my most controversial question as some of you argued that Eisenhower sent advisers to Viet Nam. True, but we send advisors to a lot of places. Viet Nam was Kennedy’s “line in the sand” to stop the proliferation of Communism. As to Ford, he inherited the Paris Peace talks from Nixon following his resignation and was in charge when we finally pulled out in 1975. Interestingly, I find younger people have no clue about this war whatsoever.
Conclusion
A few things occurred to me as I was compiling the results. First, the Gettysburg Address is better known than the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The Gettysburg Address is a moving speech but it certainly doesn’t bear the significance of our governing documents.
Second, it seemed to me that a lot of people cannot distinguish between the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. They view them as synonymous documents. For what it’s worth, the Declaration was used to sever Britain’s authority over its American colonies. The U.S. Constitution specifies how the government is to operate. The Bill of Rights is an attachment to the Constitution and specifies the basic rights of the citizens, specifically the first ten amendments. It was greatly influenced by such documents as the “Magna Carta.” All three documents, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, are important reads that all citizens should be familiar with, not just students in grade school.
Finally, here are the number of correct answers versus incorrect answers submitted on the quiz:
In most schools, a 77% would represent a “C” which is probably not as bad as we think. Actually, this number is probably higher than the national average as I like to believe my readers are smarter than most.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Tim Brycehttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngTim Bryce2021-07-06 07:43:042021-10-07 20:23:36PODCAST: My American History Quiz
Media Matters for America, the George Soros-funded smear machine that lies about conservative media, whined Thursday that the late Andrew Breitbart’s prescient 2012 criticism of Critical Race Theory “appears to be working” this time around.
Media Matters’ Spencer Silva wrote Thursday that today’s backlash currently sweeping across America against the Marxist ideological weapon known as Critical Race Theory (CRT) began with conservative media revolutionary Breitbart drawing attention to the doctrine as far back as 2012, the year of his untimely death.
At that time, Breitbart News founder Andrew Breitbart had linked then-President Barack Obama with Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell, the race-mongering anti-American “godfather” of CRT, whom Obama admired.
Silva recalls: “As Joel Pollak, then-editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, would tell CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, ‘Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia. He passed away last year, but during his lifetime, he developed a theory called critical race theory which holds that the civil rights movement was a sham and that white supremacy is the order and it must be overthrown.’”
Silva claims that Breitbart’s “smear attempt” — i.e., his warning about a president whose radical beliefs had been ignored by the media — failed. But now, he says, “[r]ight-wing media and activists, as well as their peers at conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute, seem to know exactly what they are doing because they have dusted off the same playbook from 2012.”
He concludes: “Nearly a decade later, Breitbart News’ failed smear of critical race theory is back — and this time it appears to be working.”
It’s working not because conservative think tanks are ginning up a “smear” about CRT, but because Americans themselves are waking up to the truth about the left’s weaponization of race and their subversive, Marxist agenda.
Media Matters’ Influence on the Obama Administration
A February 2012 Daily Callerexposé revealed that Media Matters had “regular contact with political operatives” inside the Obama White House, in part through its weekly strategy calls with members of the administration. In June 2010, for instance, David Brock and Media Matters president Eric Burns met at the White House with Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett and the President’s former communications director, Anita Dunn, who had recently (in November 2009) stepped down from that post amid controversy. Dunn, for her part, parroted Media Matters’ claim that Fox News is “more a wing of the Republican Party” than a media outlet. When Fox News host Glenn Beck had accurately revealed, in 2009, Dunn’s self-professed admiration for Mao Zedong, Media Matters condemned the broadcaster for what it called his “ridiculous smear of Anita Dunn.”
Collaborating with NOW, Against Rush Limbaugh
In early May 2012, Media Matters and the National Organization for Women held a secret, narrowly focused strategy session to brainstorm ways of getting the conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh off the air. According to Media Matters online outreach director Jay Carmona, the key would be to target Limbaugh’s advertisers in local radio markets. “[M]ost local station affiliates make the bulk of their profit off of these local advertising dollars,” said Carmona, “so targeting your local advertisers really is how you get those local stations to drop Rush.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Discover The Networkshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDiscover The Networks2021-07-03 07:36:002021-10-07 20:23:44Media Matters: Andrew Breitbart’s Attack on Critical Race Theory ‘Appears to be Working’
Public schools destroy our children, smash their ability to think, render them miserable jackboots for hard left. Look what they’ve done to our children. Think Hitler youth.
Poll: Support for School Choice Growing
As three quarters of voters support the idea, according to a RealClear Opinion poll. Also from the story: …a majority of voters (66%) say that some or all of the COVID funds the federal government set aside for K-12 education should be directed by parents. Most voters in both parties agree parents should direct all or some of the funding.
Support for school choice in America continues to soar.
According to a June poll from RealClear Opinion Research, polling more than 1762 registered voters, a majority support school choice (74% vs. 16% opposed) while 10% are unsure. This is true across party lines, with 83% of Republicans, 69% of Independents, and 70% of Democrats saying they strongly or somewhat support school choice.
Additionally, a majority of voters (66%) say that some or all of the COVID funds the federal government set aside for K-12 education should be directed by parents. Most voters in both parties agree parents should direct all or some of the funding.
These results represent a marked increase in support for school choice since similar polling was conducted in April 2020. Overall support has increased from 64% to 74%; public school parent support has increased from 68% to 80%; Democrat support has increased from 59% to 70%.
Major Findings:
· 74% of voters support school choice
· 66% of voters believe parents should have access to COVID education stimulus funds
Statement from Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children:
“Public support for school choice is at an all-time high. And, as the nation recovers from unprecedented, nationwide school closures, a new story is unfolding. Parents are rising up and demanding the freedom to choose the best educational environment for their children. Thankfully, more and more lawmakers are listening. Already in 2021, seventeen states have passed legislation to improve, expand, or create new school choice programs.
For thousands of children, this means new opportunity and new hope for a brighter future. While we celebrate these transformative policy wins for kids, the work continues. We at AFC will continue fighting for every child in the country to have access to the American Dream through educational choice and opportunity.”
Full details:
Question: School Choice
Generally speaking, would you say you support or oppose the concept of school choice – which gives parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child’s education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs.
Support:
All: 74%
Race & Ethnicity:
Asian: 70%
Black: 73%
Hispanic: 69%
White: 76%
Party ID:
Democrat: 83%
Republican: 70%
Question: Funding Students over Systems
On average, American taxpayers spend $15,946 per student nationwide on K-12 public education. Would you support giving parents a portion of those funds to use for home, virtual, or private education expenses?
Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permanently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Help us fight the great fight.
And if you can, please contribute to Geller Report. YOU make the work possible.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-07-01 05:45:442021-10-07 20:23:54Poll: School Choice Support at All-Time High As Government Schools Abandon Education For Hard Left Indoctrination
Princeton University admitted an incoming class with 68 percent of students who self-identify as a person “of color” after nixing its standardized testing score requirement.
The Ivy League institution announced in April that it admitted 1,498 students for the class of 2025. A full 22 percent of admitted students are first-generation college students and 68 percent self-identify as “people of color.”
The record number of racial minority admittees comes after the school removed its standardized testing requirement citing a “lack of access to testing sites.” Students were allowed to submit their standardized test scores, though they allegedly play a limited role in the admissions process.
“Please know that standardized testing is but one element of our comprehensive and holistic application review process,” the university announcement reads. “We employ no minimum test scores for admission; rather, the entirety of a student’s background is considered in context. Additionally, we do not require applicants to submit the optional writing section of the SAT or ACT.”
In 2019, students, advocacy groups, and mostly minority Los Angeles-based school districts filed a lawsuit against the University of California system claiming that standardized testing discriminates against applicants based on their race, wealth, and disability. The lawsuit alleged that tests created a test-prep industry that favored wealthy families.
Quick note: Tech giants are snuffing us out. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense permanently banned us. Facebook, Twitter, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. Help us fight. Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW more than ever. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Help us fight the great fight.
And if you can, please contribute to Geller Report. YOU make the work possible.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-06-30 05:31:592021-10-07 20:23:58Princeton Boasts New Class Is 68% ‘Of Color’ After Waiving SAT Score Requirement
Massachusetts School District Segregates Students/Staff Based on Race.
One by one, school districts across the country are being overcome by a racist madness, and we are doing everything we can to expose this leftist totalitarian assault on children and teachers. The latest horror story occurs in Massachusetts.
We received 111 pages of records from Wellesley Public Schools in Massachusetts which confirm the use of “affinity spaces” that divide students and staff based on race as a priority and objective of the school district’s “diversity, equity and inclusion” plan. The school district also admitted that between September 1, 2020 and May 17, 2021, it created “five distinct” segregated spaces.
We obtained the records after filing a May 17 Massachusetts Public Records Law request for records concerning the number of affinity spaces, the policies regarding their creation and use, the topics discussed, and any analysis of whether affinity spaces that exclude certain races are consistent with state and federal law, which would include the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the MA Equal Rights Amendment and/or the MA School Attendance Law.
The Wellesley Public School records include a document detailing the school district’s “Equity Strategic Plan 2020-2025,” which includes a “District Equity by Design” plan with the stated goal of amplifying student voices by providing “opportunities for affinity spaces for students with shared identity.”
In a section of the document titled “Diversity Staffing,” a stated goal is to “Provide resources for affinity spaces for specialized populations within the wider Faculty/Staff (ie. ALANA, Admin Leaders of Color, LGBTQ+, White Educators for Antiracism, etc.)”
Wellesley Public Schools states in its plan for “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:” “We will practice risk-taking and challenge one another to continuously examine systems of privilege and bias, and work collectively to disrupt and dismantle inequity in all its forms.”
In an email on March 18 to Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Charmie R. Curry, the day of the so-called “healing space,” a Wellesley High School fitness & health teacher writes: “I wanted to check first, is it appropriate for me to go to this healing space?” Curry responds: “This time, we want to hold the space for Asian and Asian American students and faculty/staff. I hope this makes sense.”
In an April 12 email to school district colleagues, Curry notes that “Equity Literacy” is required coursework in the district. Curry writes: “There is still plenty of time to enroll in the two required courses – ‘Understanding Equity and Inequity’ and ‘Learning to Be a Threat to Inequity.’ These courses, with a keen focus on helping us to build/sharpen our structural ideological lenses, are essential to our ability to address inequities in our community. Our students who are being impacted by inequities such as racism, homophobia, ableism, etc. need to be equipped to respond today to their needs in order to positively impact their experiences.”
In addition, the school district admitted that it does not have any records analyzing whether such segregated spaces violate the U.S. Constitution, the Massachusetts Constitution or any other law.
These documents confirm how Wellesley Public Schools segregated students and staff by race in pursuit of extremist critical race theory agenda.
Wellesley marks the latest battle in our fight to expose the hard-left “Critical Race Theory” agenda being pushed nationwide.
In May, we obtained records from Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) which include documents related to their “Anti-racist system audit” and critical race theory classes.
The documents reveal that students of “Maryland’s Largest School District” who attended Thomas Pyle Middle School’s social justice class were taught that the phrase “Make America Great Again” was an example of “covert white supremacy.” The phrase is ranked on a pyramid just below “lynching,” “hate crimes,” “the N-word” and “racial slurs.” They were also taught that “white privilege” means being favored by school authorities and having a positive relationship with the police.
The documents show that Montgomery County Public Schools allocated over $454,000 for an “Anti-racist system audit” by The Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, a company that claims that their “expertise in using intersectionality as part of its theory of change makes us uniquely positioned to conduct the Anti-Racist Audit and mitigate the root causes of systemic barriers.”
In February, we filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of David Flynn, the father of two Dedham Public School students, who was removed from his position as head football coach after exercising his right as a citizen to raise concerns about his daughter’s seventh-grade history class curriculum being changed to include biased coursework on politics, race, gender equality, and diversity. You can watch our video presentation on the Flynn case here.
This is work is significant but more is coming. Our children are under assault. Our military is being targeted. Our tax dollars are being abused and our rights are being attacked as the left pursues their radical agenda. Judicial Watch has been exposing and litigating over critical race theory and its progenitors for years – and our efforts will expand, with your support, to meet the increased threats to our Republic.
Virginia Gives Illegal Aliens Tuition at Public Colleges, Aid for Private Universities
Here’s a losing idea for taxpayers and the rule of law: Let’s make it easier for people to live here illegally. Our Corruption Chronicles blog takes a look at such a scheme in Virginia.
Starting this fall Virginia will offer illegal immigrants discounted in-state tuition at taxpayer-funded colleges as well as financial aid to attend private universities. This month the state’s governor, Ralph Northam, signed the new law during a heavily publicized visit to Marymount University, a private Arlington college with an enrollment of about 3,200.
“These students have grown up in our communities across Virginia,” the Democrat lawmaker said during the signing. “They’ve attended the same schools as their classmates and neighbors, they have taken the same tests, they have played on the same teams, eaten in the same lunchrooms and even gone to the same dances. They are valued members of our communities, and they are Virginians in every sense of the word except for immigration status – something that was chosen for them, not by them, by families just wanting a better life for their children.”
Virginia has 15 public four-year universities, according to its State Council of Higher Education, and dozens of private institutions that will help educate illegal immigrants on the taxpayer’s dime. While more than a dozen other states offer illegal aliens discounted tuition at public universities, Virginia is taking it a step further by also doling out money for private education. The money will flow through a special program called Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant (TAG) that annually provides tens of thousands of legal state residents with grants to attend private institutions of higher learning. To be eligible, candidates must be a domiciliary resident of Virginia as defined by the state code, which essentially says individuals shall establish by “clear and convincing evidence” domicile in the Commonwealth for a period of at least one year immediately succeeding the establishment of domiciliary intent. It is not clear what if any changes will be made to the code so illegal immigrants meet the criteria.
More than 12,370 undocumented students are enrolled in higher education in Virginia and the state sees 2,000 illegal immigrants graduate high school annually, according to the Higher Ed Immigration Portal, a platform that tracks and supports undocumented and international students in the U.S. Additionally, Virginia has an illegal immigrant population of 265,830, the group’s figures show. The nonprofit claims that its mission is to build a diverse movement of partners and stakeholders advocating alongside immigrant and international students. Its goal is to expand access to higher education, degree completion, and post-graduate career success. “The U.S. is home to more than 427,000 undocumented students enrolled in higher education,” the portal states. “In their pursuit of higher education, undocumented students actively ready themselves to fill critical skill shortages and become better positioned to support their families, communities, and the U.S. economy.”
At least 19 states offer illegal immigrants discounted tuition typically reserved for legal residents, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Seventeen of them— Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington—passed laws to offer the perk. In two states—Oklahoma and Rhode Island—the Board of Regents allows it. In 2013, the University of Hawaii’s Board of Regents and the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents adopted similar policies granting illegal aliens in-state tuition at their school. A year later Virginia’s attorney general enacted a policy giving in-state tuition to illegal immigrants protected by a controversial Obama amnesty program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). At the time more than 8,000 illegal immigrants qualified for the taxpayer benefit. The attorney general proclaimed that it was the right thing to do because the illegal immigrants are “Virginians” and the state “should extend them an opportunity for an affordable education.” Three states—Arizona, Georgia, and Indiana—have passed laws prohibiting illegal immigrants from receiving discounted in-state tuition rates.
Last year Virginia passed a law granting illegal immigrants special driver’s licenses. The measure directs the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to provide driver’s licenses to applicants without a Social Security or taxpayer identification number if they submit a certified statement that their information is true. Democrat legislators introduced the law after promising an influential group known as the Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights that they would “fight hard” for immigrant rights, according to a local news report. The same immigrant rights coalition has long demanded legislation to give illegal aliens discounted in-state tuition at Virginia public colleges and universities. One of the lawmakers behind the driver’s license measure, Senator Jennifer Boysko who represents Fairfax, calls it an “economic justice issue.”
Judicial Watch Sues HHS for Information on Covid-19 and Illegal Immigration
The Biden administration’s secrecy on its border crisis includes stonewalling on the issue of Covid-19 and illegal immigration and controversial refugee resettlement programs.
That’s why we filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for COVID-19 technical guidance provided to the Office of Refugee Resettlement relating to illegal aliens released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-01514)).
We sued after HHS failed to respond to an April 15, 2021, FOIA request seeking access to:
All technical guidance provided to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement related to the transmission, testing, mitigation, and/or treatment of COVID-19 for undocumented immigrants who are in or are released from Department of Homeland Security and/or Customs and Border Patrol custody.
Our FOIA request was prompted by the April 15 congressional testimony of Dr. Rochelle Walensky[TF1] , director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. In her testimony, Dr. Walensky said: “The CDC is providing technical assistance to the Office of Refugee Resettlement for the people who are leaving the DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and Customs and Border Protection.”
On April 30 we filed a FOIA lawsuit against HHS for records about assaults on and abuse of unaccompanied alien children in its custody.
Jailed Murderer Wins Office in D.C. Election with Five Inmate Candidates
Your nation’s capital is controlled by leftist politicians who often experiment with extremist policies, such as allowing incarcerated criminals to vote. Our Corruption Chronicles blog has a report on the foreseeable outcome of this contempt for the rule of law:
As the homicide rate hits a record high in Washington D.C. the city elects a convicted murderer to public office in a unique election featuring all inmate candidates. The freshly elected public official, Joel Caston, has been in prison for 26 years and is currently incarcerated at the District of Columbia Jail. In 1996 Caston was convicted by a jury of first-degree murder for ambushing and killing a man in the city’s Anacostia neighborhood. Court records obtained by Judicial Watch indicate that a 2016 appeal was denied. In the document, Caston’s attorneys name the victim, which is not common practice today. Court records also reveal a “speed loader”—a device used to rapidly load ammunition into a firearm—was found by police under Caston’s mattress after the shooting. It contained six rounds of 44 caliber ammunition as well as additional rounds of ammo.
Now Caston is a commissioner on D.C.’s Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC), which advises the D.C. Council and other local government entities involving matters ranging from liquor license applications to public safety. Commissioners serve two-year terms and are elected in even-numbered years. The ANC was established to bring “government closer to the people, and to bring the people closer to government,” according to its website. Caston was chosen by voters to represent Ward 7, one of D.C.’s most crime-infested areas. It is represented by Councilman Vince Gray, an ex-D.C. mayor who was embroiled in a campaign finance scandal. The Ward 7 ANC seat has never been occupied and D.C. officials conducted an unprecedented election earlier this month to fill the post. All five candidates and the majority of voters they courted are incarcerated at the same prison with Caston, according to a local news report.
Last year the D.C. Council passed legislation allowing incarcerated convicted felons to vote. Besides D.C. only two states—Maine and Vermont—let imprisoned criminals cast ballots, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. After the measure was enacted in D.C., a group of commissioners and a nonprofit called Neighbors for Justice launched an effort to fill the empty ANC seat and pressure the local Department of Corrections to notify inmates they qualified to run for the post. Neighbors for Justice was founded in August 2020 by residents near the D.C. prison who want to support “neighbors at the jail during COVID and beyond.” The group offered all the felon candidates a forum to deliver their campaign message from their cell clad in orange prison uniforms. In the promotional campaign videos, Caston is the only candidate who is not wearing the orange uniform. Instead, he appears in a white sweatshirt with a logo that reads “credible messenger.” In the short segment, Caston says “my platform would be used to restore the dignity of incarcerated people that we would no longer be judged by our worst mistake and establish equality for both the male and the female population that has often been overlooked inside this space.”
Caston will be issued a laptop or tablet, an electronic mail account, and a workspace in the prison where he can dedicate eight hours a day to his duties as commissioner, the founder of Neighbors for Justice said in a local newspaper article. “It’s not just about a historic election, with a first-ever ANC commissioner who is incarcerated,” said Julie Johnson, the group’s founder. “It’s about giving a voice and visibility to a population that is unseen.” In the same story, Caston says that he feels “presidential” after winning the election. On its website Neighbors for Justice congratulates Caston, writing that he will serve as the ward’s inaugural commissioner and confirming that the murderer received 48 of the 142 votes cast in the “historic election.” The note proudly announces that “all five candidates in this election are in residence at the DC jail.”
While they celebrate the election triumph of a convicted murderer, homicides in D.C. are on pace to shatter records. Last year the rate hit a 16-year high and in 2021 it is expected to be worse, according to Metropolitan Police Department data. The figures show homicides are already up 13% from last year. A few months ago, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared that gun violence is a public health crisis. Weeks later she clumped her city’s pervasive gun violence with the COVID-19 pandemic, saying this in a statement: “Many communities across the nation, including Washington, DC, continue to be burdened by two simultaneous public health emergencies. The first is the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit our Black and Latino communities the hardest. The second is the gun-related violence that continues to devastate many of those same communities. Even in 2020, when much of the country shut down for weeks at a time, deaths from gun violence reached historic levels.”
New York Votes Amid Crisis of Crime and Disorder
Crime in our nation’s big cities is out of control, and ordinary citizens are caught between leftist politicians running these cities and criminals. New York City’s mayoral is showing that public safety is a concern of both Republican and Democratic voters, as Micah Morrison, our chief investigative reporter, details in his Investigative Bulletin.
New Yorkers went to the polls Tuesday amid a spiraling crisis of urban violence. In a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one, Tuesday’s primary voting will effectively decide the elections. Up for grabs are the office of mayor, city comptroller, public advocate, the majority of the city council, and the powerful office of Manhattan district attorney.
The candidates felt the heat. Crime and disorder are sharply up in the city, and the issue has dominated the last months of campaigning. The numbers tell the story: for May 2021, the overall crime rate rose twenty-two percent, compared with May 2020, according to NYPD statistics. Robberies increased forty-six percent. Assaults increased twenty percent. Shootings increased seventy-three percent.
The city’s iconic Washington Square Park has become a nightly battleground between lowlifes and police, with horrified local residents clamoring for more security. Open drug use and drinking are widespread. On a typical recent Saturday night, protestors hurled objects at police, a woman was assaulted, two men were slashed with a razor, and a 77-year-old cook was hurled through the window of a nearby diner.
The subways—an economic lifeline for the city—have become a danger zone. “Minor” crimes such as turnstile-jumping, drinking alcohol, and public urination are commonplace. Assaults, rapes and murders are up. Overall, subway crime has jumped ninety-three percent from the previous year, according to NYPD statistics.Our friends at the Wall Street Journal remind us that after inheriting a prosperous, safe city from mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio squandered the legacy. “Crime and disorder have returned amid progressive assaults on police and anti-crime strategies that worked. Bail reform let repeat offenders free. The mentally ill homeless attack subway riders and pedestrians. The mayor had his police chief disband the anti-crime unit that searched for illegal guns, and shooting have soared.”
Crime is up in cities large and small across America. In Miami, murders are up thirty percent year over year. In Chicago, 294 people have been murdered as of June 12—that’s twenty-one more than the same period last year. In Jackson, Mississippi, homicides are up nearly seventy percent year over year. In Lubbock, Texas, homicides doubled from 2019 to 2020. In Atlanta, murders, rapes, and assaults are rising. In Denver, murders are up twenty-three percent and shootings sixty-two percent.
The New York races were populated mostly by the progressive Left. The candidates’ platforms continue the policies of the de Blasio years or take the city even further down the progressive path with plans to shift funds from the NYPD and empty the jails. A handful of relative moderates, such as mayoral candidate Eric Adams and Manhattan DA contender Tali Farhadian Weinstein, made aggressive crime reduction centerpieces of their campaigns.
New York has instituted a program of complex ranked-choice voting and absentee ballots are still to be counted. But preliminary election returns show Adams in front, with a strong lead over far-left candidate Maya Wiley, thirty-two percent to twenty-two percent. In the Manhattan DA race, which does not use ranked voting, center-left candidate Alvin Bragg holds a narrow lead over Farhadian Weinstein, with absentee ballots still to be counted. Radical progressive candidates in a handful of races appear to have fended off ranked choice challenges and captured City Council seats and the comptroller’s office.
Adams—a former cop and former Republican—has caused much hand-wringing among the New York cognoscenti. Left-wing hopes were high for a successor to de Blasio, and an Adams victory will be widely interpreted as a setback for progressives. With ranked-choice still to play out and absentee ballots to be counted, final results won’t be announced until July.
More free-market principles could soon take root in college sports.
Two-thirds of Americans now say they believe student athletes should be able to profit off their names and likeness. And 51 percent of those go even further, stating that they should be paid for their labor above the cost of free tuition and board.
But schools have been slow to respond, and rules by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) have a lot to do with that. The NCAA prohibits schools from competing for student talent by offering better benefits — a rule that the US Supreme Court unanimously struck down this week.
While the case was not broad enough to address issues surrounding student pay and compensation, the justices did rule that the NCAA must allow schools to recruit athletes by offering additional benefits tied to their education.
What does that look like? Scholarships for graduate or vocational programs, technology equipment, study abroad programs, internships, and at times, small cash rewards for those who excel in the classroom.
The move follows a wave of laws at the state level that are poised to allow student athletes to make endorsement deals, and comes as the top athletic conferences and schools within them are preparing to meet to handle such developments.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the decision, and in it he noted that, as The Wall Street Journalreported, “while the NCAA is entitled to some leeway to administer the college-sports landscape, that didn’t mean the association enjoyed de facto immunity from the Sherman Act, the central federal law barring anticompetitive conduct…”
But Justice Brett Kavanaugh signaled there could be more legal problems for the NCAA ahead, writing in a concurring opinion that the remaining rules limiting compensation “raise serious questions under the antitrust laws.”
“Traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate.”
Though the current ruling does not go as far as many wish it to, it could, as the Journal explains, “have a wide impact because it dealt a considerable legal blow to the NCAA’s ability to use amateurism as a shield against efforts by athletes to share in the successes of a multibillion-dollar industry built on their labor.”
The NCAA’s Rules Are an Affront to the American Dream
The athletes have sympathetic supporters among both Democrats and Republicans, who also may choose to take on legislation to address the issue. It seems wide swaths of the American public still believe people should be paid for their labor and that they should be able to negotiate their pay in a free market—and thank God for that. These are important principles for a free society.
In a free market, when a person excels in their work, competition would drive their salaries up. To remove this opportunity for growth is an attack on the American Dream and frankly, unethical.
Compounding the ickiness factor of this entire scenario is the racial component present in many of the league’s dynamics. A large percentage of student athletes are black, and the programs that bring in the most revenue for schools (traditionally basketball and football) are predominantly led by black athletes. The revenue made from their work is used to fund programs and scholarships for lesser-watched sports, like golf or swimming—which have higher participation rates of white students. This means that the work of black athletes is not only paying for the school’s administration, but also funding the tuition and scholarships of other students.
Not a good look.
Capitalism Is the Counter to Inequality
It is not uncommon to see anti-competitive and anti-capitalist policies produce racial disparities such as this. In fact, government interventions into the market have a long history of creating scenarios with racial inequalities. Capitalism is actually the solution to such problems as a free market produces equality of opportunity and merit-based rewards.
Milton Friedman once said, “Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the chief sources of danger….Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy.”
So, it isn’t surprising in the least that schools wish to shield themselves from competition or that they wish to pay their employees as little as possible. What prevents a business from being able to get away with that is competition in the free market.
Anti-trust policy is highly problematic from a libertarian perspective, and the rights and responsibilities of the NCAA are a murky matter, given its mixed public-private status. But whether this Supreme Court decision was the right call or not, a freer market in college sports would be a more just one.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2021-06-25 15:40:012021-10-07 20:24:15The Supreme Court Just Struck a Blow for Student Athletes Against the NCAA. Here’s One Reason to Cheer
Robert Charles is also a spokesman for AMAC, as well as former Assistant Secretary of State. He also served in the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, and counsel to the U.S. House National Security subcommittee for five years. Additionally, he ran a major portion of the U.S. House Oversight Committee for five years during which time he ran the joint committee in the Waco investigations.
TOPIC: Watch Out for Iran – No Appeasement!
TYLER O’NEIL
Tyler O’Neil Senior Editor of PJ Media and conservative commentator. He has written for numerous publications, including The Christian Post, National Review, The Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Signal, AEI’s Values & Capitalism, and the Colson Center’s Breakpoint. He enjoys Indian food, board games, and talking ceaselessly about politics, religion, and culture. Tylers latest book is.. Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
TOPIC: Senate Democrats Rally Behind Critical Race Theory Promoter!
Parents across the country are waking up to the indoctrination happening in public schools. Whether it’s over the top LGBTQ+ lessons as social and emotional learning or racism promoted as racial justice, parents are not about to accept the status quo for their children. Washington elites may try to explain it all away, as Chuck Todd did on Meet the Press, but this outpouring of anger is not just “manufactured.”
NEA President Becky Pringle doubled down on protest as education with her interview on CBS News. She believes that students need to “actually confront the injustices that have been built into every social system within this country.”
Pringle went on, “We should never underestimate our students’ ability to not only learn about the complete and rich history of this country, but to come together with their shared stories and make sure that they have the opportunity to be those problem-solvers we need them to be so we can confront the institutional racism that this country lives with every single day. And it’s not just about history. It’s about right now, as we very well know.”
Statements like that encapsulate the ideology that most parents don’t want their children taught anywhere, especially not at school. Surveys have shown that overwhelming majorities of parents oppose schools teaching that America was founded on racism and is structurally racist.
It’s no wonder, then, that Loudoun County parents turned out yesterday by the hundreds to offer their commentary on what that school system is promoting to students. Not only were many parents supportive of Christian PE teacher Tanner Cross, they were outraged by unfair treatment of a student whose parents opted him out of LGBTQ+ lessons for Pride Month. They also overwhelmingly oppose a proposed policy to allow opposite sex students access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms.
And while conservative and Christian parents are painted as “out of order” or “unruly,” it was the “screaming” parent of a transgender student who accused the “followers of Jesus” of “dripping with hate.”
We don’t expect a truce anytime soon, and in the meantime we need parents and concerned citizens to start running for school board and winning elections. Join us for FRC Action’s School Board Boot Camp on Tuesday, June 29 from 12:30-4:30 p.m. where we will train a new generation of school board officers to save America’s schools.
Also, watch this week’s edition of Pray Vote Stand. We tackle the pushback in America’s school districts and share how you can join the fight to stop the indoctrination. Watch on-demand now.
Are you concerned about an assignment your child has from school? Have you overheard political or inappropriate conversations between your child and others during virtual learning? Do you have ideological or politicized curriculum to share? Please report it using FRC’s tipline@frc.org. Together we can work to save our schools. Our children deserve the very best.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2021-06-24 06:14:242021-10-07 20:24:19Schools vs. Parents: Va. Locals Expelled from School Board Meeting
DeSantis is on fire. He puts every RINO and establish GOPers to utter shame and on notice. This is true GOP – this is us, the party of freedom.
How many American students know that a hundred million people were slaughtered under communism (outside of war)? How many know of the unimaginable suffering and violence? When the left seized the DoE, we lost our young people. DeSantis means to change that.
FL students will learn about patriots who come to America after fleeing communist regimes. Our students will learn from an integrated civic education curriculum that compares our rights & freedoms to places where they don’t exist like China & North Korea. https://t.co/8CCweFQhwD
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed legislation that he said will push schools to support “intellectual diversity” while expanding civic education and adding more focus against communism and totalitarian governments.
In the three bills the Republican governor signed on Tuesday, public universities and colleges are also now required to survey their faculty, staff, and students about their beliefs and viewpoints to determine “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented” and to determine if they “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom,” reports The Miami Herald.
DeSantis, while signing the bills at a Lee County middle school, said about the measures on civics education, “it’s important that students understand” the evil nature of communist and totalitarian governments.
“Why would somebody flee across shark-infested waters, say leaving from Cuba, to come to southern Florida?” he said. “Why would somebody leave a place like Vietnam? Why would people leave these countries and risk their life to be able to come here?”One of the bills requires developing a new K-12 civics curriculum that will also include the use of “portraits in patriotism” that tell stories of people who have been civic-minded, and will include “first-person accounts of victims of other nations’ governing philosophies who can compare those philosophies with those of the United States.”The new legislation also requires state university students to be required to take a course on civic literacy and pass an exam on the topic before they can graduate.
Meanwhile, the college diversity of opinion bill, which will go into effect on July 1, does not say what will be done with the survey, but both the governor and bill sponsor Sen. Ray Rodrigues suggested that schools can face budget cuts if it is determined they are “indoctrinating” students.
“That’s not worth tax dollars and that’s not something that we’re going to be supporting moving forward,” DeSantis said.
He also said that the law for colleges and universities is intended to keep them from becoming “hotbeds for stale ideology.”
“It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where you’d be exposed to a lot of different ideas,” DeSantis said. “Unfortunately, now the norm is, these are more intellectually repressive environments. You have orthodoxies that are promoted, and other viewpoints are shunned or even suppressed.”
Democrats have argued that the bill could allow politicians to regulate campus speech, while some university faculty members are saying they fear the legislation will hinder their freedom of speech.
The University of Florida said it believes the survey will reflect that it offers a “marketplace of ideas where a wide variety of opinions are expressed and independent inquiry and vigorous academic deliberation are valued.”
Other major universities like Florida State University have not immediately commented on the new legislation.
State GOP lawmakers on Tuesday spoke out in favor of the bill and slammed state universities for not having a “diversity of thought.”
Senate President Wilton Simpson, R-Trilby, told a state university systems Board of Governors meeting Tuesday in St. Petersburg that there are “socialism factories.”
“We always hear about the liberal parts of the university system, and we don’t hear so much of that from the college system,” Simpson said.
State House Speaker Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, was at DeSantis’ press conference, and said that the lack of intellectual diversity on university campuses “have decided that one ideological standard will win the day, but the thing is we’re losing because we’re not having real conversations.”
DeSantis is busy this week signing bills, after having signed 44 measures into law on Monday alone, according to a press release from his office.
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
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http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2021-06-24 06:05:022021-10-07 20:24:20VIDEO: Governor DeSantis Signs Education Bill Requiring Students To Learn About ‘Evils of Communism’
