Catching Up with some Common Core Profiteers: Beyond the Project Veritas Videos

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The Big Government-Big Education alliance has also had positive trickle-down effects for professors, who have benefited with publishing contracts and grants for their institutions.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest funder of Common Core, continues to support universities that help in implementing their education initiatives.  Professors hopped on the Common Core gravy train at the get-go. There was the curious fact that Bill Ayers gave a keynote address at the 2009 convention of the Renaissance Group, “a national consortium of colleges, universities and professional organizations” dedicated to teaching and education.  Now if we could only learn how much Bill Ayers was paid for that keynote speech in Washington in 2009.

James O’Keefe’s undercover videos reveal what activists have been saying for years: Common Core is a set of standards written not for the benefit of students, but to enrich crony capitalists, such as mega-curriculum companies, Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt, Pearson, and National Geographic Education.

The latest, the fourth video, records former Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt executive Gilbert Garcia describing the constant “politicking” among school board members and superintendents, and former Pearson employee Kim Koerber describing how the 2013 $1.3 billion contract for supplying I-Pads to the Los Angeles school district was “written for Pearson to win.”  After an FBI investigation into bid-rigging, Pearson, in 2015, agreed to pay the district $6.4 million in a settlement.

Pearson issued a statement calling remarks in the videos “offensive,” asserting that they do not reflect the values of the company’s 40,000 employees.

But the Big Government-Big Education alliance has also had positive trickle-down effects for professors, who have benefited with publishing contracts and grants for their institutions.  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest funder of Common Core, continues to support universities that help in implementing their education initiatives.  To name a few, in November, the Foundation announced a grant of $34.7 million for “transformation centers” to improve teacher preparation programs on the campuses of the University of Michigan, Texas Tech University, and the Relay Graduate School of Education, as well as at the National Center for Teacher Residencies, and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.  That same month, a grant of $1,799,710 was awarded to “support collaboration between Vanderbilt [University] and the Tennessee Department of Education in the area of education research and improvement,” and $764,553 was awarded to the University of Florida for “teacher leader fellows.”

Professors hopped on the Common Core gravy train at the get-go, as I described in 2012, in my report for Accuracy in Media, “Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama’s Federal School Curriculum.” There was the curious fact that Bill Ayers gave a keynote address at the 2009 convention of the Renaissance Group, “a national consortium of colleges, universities and professional organizations” dedicated to teaching and education.  Of course, I made no claim that Ayers wrote the standards; I just noted that he appeared at this conference in Washington with then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, his under secretary, and a representative from Achieve, the company that orchestrated Common Core.  Ayers’s close colleague, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, led Obama’s education transition team and oversaw one of the two national Common Core tests.

Less well-known professors, who had bristled at the imposition of “standards,” suddenly began embracing Common Core standards.  This was the case with education professor Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at Columbia Teachers College, Bill Ayers’s alma mater, long a bastion of anti-testing/anti-standards.  These professors began writing teacher guidebooks, and presenting talks and workshops.  Since co-authoring Pathways to the Common Core, Calkins continues to do work for the publisher, Heinemann, a part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  Her “Units of Study” curriculum is described by the publisher as a bestseller.  She also writes performance assessments, including the Grade 1 “Units of Study” in “Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing.”  (Yes, students in first grade are expected to write op-eds.)  In a short video, Calkins explains her teaching philosophy that involves mini-lessons and group work.

In 2012, Marc Aronson, a lecturer in communications and information at Rutgers University, was advertising himself as a “Common Core Consultant,” speaker, and author.  Today, he describes himself on his personal website as an “author, professor, speaker, editor and publisher who believes that young people, especially pre-teens and teenagers, are smart, passionate, and capable of engaging with interesting ideas in interesting ways.”

Aronson apparently believes that pre-teens and teenagers are smart enough to weed out the lies in his Common Core-compliant middle school and high school textbook, Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies.  As I noted in my report, Aronson presents the KGB-fabricated lies about the FBI director’s homosexuality as probable.  For the benefit of 11-year-olds, he posits that photographs of Hoover with his friend Clyde Tolson “might be seen as lovers’ portraits.”  The book is filled with sexual innuendo and dwells on such irrelevant details in order to ascribe motives to Hoover for his presumably unfounded fears about the communist threat.  The accompanying discussion guide is a masterpiece of disguise: as ideological questions bearing their own answers.

It is therefore not surprising that Aronson would now write an article in the School Library Journal casting a skeptical eye on O’Keefe’s undercover videos and asking readers to “consider the source,” as the subheading to the headline, “Is Common Core Just a Scam to Sell Books?” asks.  He distances himself from the sales executives but never directly names the “source” that one should “consider.”  (Innuendo seems to be his modus operandi.) The implication is O’Keefe.  Aronson admits, “As a nonfiction fan, author, and editor, I have a stake in this.”  He denies that his stake is in the rise in nonfiction sales that have come as Common Core standards have edged out literature in favor of “informational texts.”  No, Aronson fell “in love with the standards” when he first read them, “years before they had any impact on royalty statements.”

Aronson also claims to have served recently on the New Jersey team that evaluated that state’s English Language Arts (ELA) and Math standards.  Contrary to the executives’ statements captured in the videos, his “team” carefully examined the standards “one by one, grade by grade, and listened to extensive comments from teachers, administrators, parents, professionals, and business leaders.”  He claims that he saw “commitment, not greed.”

He presents a “guiding principle” that sounds very familiar to those of us whose eyes have glazed and brains have flopped like dying fish from the Common Core sales literature: “From the first, our guiding principle was this: What will someone awarded a high school diploma be ready for? The group looked at each educational stage and benchmark to consider what students would need to know to be ready for the next step, and the next, so that after graduation they would have the skill set to begin the next phase of their lives.”

Aronson’s team included comments by Amy Rominiecki, a Certified School Library Media Specialist, on behalf of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians, in their report. (He links back to her statement when she testified in support of Common Core.)  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also funded studies for the American Library Association (the parent organization of the American Association of School Librarians) on such things as Technology Access, training, and participation in the federal E-rate program.

Aronson attributes the continuing low performance of 12th graders in math and reading to economic inequality, stating, “If more students had more resources (social, emotional, financial, cultural, and technological), more would be ready to meet the challenges and opportunities that follow after secondary education.”

Of course, this author and educational entrepreneur has only the purest motives: “the children.”  Money may be important, “yet, there is a role for standards to play.” To that end, “as educators and communities who care about our nation’s youth, it is necessary we establish a path that’s best for as many students.”

Such bromides bring big bucks in the education world.  I am reminded of words by Bill Ayers at an education conference in 2013, something about being finite creatures hurtling through infinite space.  Now if we could only learn how much Bill Ayers was paid for that keynote speech in Washington in 2009.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research website.

Why Bernie Sanders Has to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class by Daniel Bier

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Willie Sutton was one of the most infamous bank robbers in American history. Over three decades, the dashing criminal robbed a hundred banks, escaped three prisons, and made off with millions. Today, he is best known for Sutton’s Law: Asked by a reporter why he robbed banks, Sutton allegedly quipped, “Because that’s where the money is.”

Sutton’s Law explains something unusual about Bernie Sander’s tax plan: it calls for massive tax hikes across the board. Why raise taxes on the middle class? Because that’s where the money is.

The problem all politicians face is that voters love to get stuff, but they hate to pay for it. The traditional solution that center-left politicians pitch is the idea that the poor and middle class will get the benefits, and the rich will pay for it.

This is approximately how things work in the United States. The top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 19 percent of total income and pay 38 percent of federal income taxes. The bottom 50 percent earn 12 percent and pay 3 percent. This chart from the Heritage Foundation shows net taxes paid and benefits received, per person, by household income group:

But Sanders’ proposals (free college, free health care, jobs programs, more Social Security, etc.) are way too heavy for the rich alone to carry, and he knows it. To his credit, his campaign has released a plan to pay for each of these myriad handouts. Vox’s Dylan Matthews has totaled up all the tax increases Sanders has proposed so far, and the picture is simply staggering.

Every household earning below $250,000 will face a tax hike of nearly 9 percent. Past that, rates explode, up to a top rate of 77 percent on incomes over $10 million.

Paying for Free

Sanders argues that most people’s average income tax rate won’t change, but this is only true if you exclude the two major taxes meant to pay for his health care program: a 2.2 percent “premium” tax and 6.2 percent payroll tax, imposed on incomes across the board. These taxes account for majority of the new revenue Sanders is counting on.

But it gets worse: his single-payer health care plan will cost 80 percent more than he claims. Analysis by the left-leaning scholar Kenneth Thorpe (who supports single payer) concludes that Sanders’ proposal will cost $1.1 trillion more each year than he claims. The trillion dollar discrepancy results from some questionable assumptions in Sanders’ numbers. For instance:

Sanders assumes $324 billion more per year in prescription drug savings than Thorpe does. Thorpe argues that this is wildly implausible.

“In 2014 private health plans paid a TOTAL of $132 billion on prescription drugs and nationally we spent $305 billion,” he writes in an email. “With their savings drug spending nationally would be negative.”

So unless pharmaceutical companies start paying you to take their drugs, the Sanders administration will need to increase taxes even more.

Analysis by the Tax Foundation finds that his proposed tax hikes already total $13.6 trillion over the next ten years. However, “the plan would [only] end up collecting $9.8 trillion over the next decade when accounting for decreased economic output.”

And the consequences will be truly devastating. Because of the taxes on labor and capital, GDP will be reduced 9.5 percent. Six million jobs will be lost. On average, after-tax incomes will be reduced by more than 18 percent.

Incomes for the bottom 50 percent will be reduced by more than 14 percent, and incomes for the top 1 percent will be reduced nearly 25 percent. Inequality warriors might cheer, but if you want to actually raise revenue, crushing the incomes of the people who pay almost 40 percent of all taxes isn’t the way to go.

These are just the effects of the $1 trillion tax hike he has planned — and he probably needs to double that to pay for single payer. Where will he find it? He’ll go where European welfare states go.

Being Like Scandinavia

Sanders is a great admirer of Scandinavian countries, such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and many of his proposals are modeled on their systems. But to pay for their generous welfare benefits, they tax, and tax, and tax.

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all capture between 20-26 percent of GDP from income and payroll taxes. By contrast, the United States collects only 15 percent.

Scandinavia’s tax rates themselves are not that much higher than the United States’. Denmark’s top rate is 30 percent higher, Sweden’s is 18 percent higher, and Norway’s is actually 16 percent lower — and yet Norway’s income tax raises 30 percent more revenue than the United States.

The answer lies in how progressive the US tax system is, in the thresholds at which people are hit by the top tax rates. The Tax Foundation explains,

Scandinavian income taxes raise a lot of revenue because they are actually rather flat. In other words, they tax most people at these high rates, not just high-income taxpayers.

The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent. …

Compare this to the United States. The top marginal tax rate of 46.8 percent (state average and federal combined rates) kicks in at 8.5 times the average U.S. income (around $400,000). Comparatively, few taxpayers in the United States face the top marginal rate.

The reason European states can pay for giant welfare programs is not because they just tax the rich more — it’s because they also scoop up a ton of middle class income. The reason why the United States can’t right now is its long-standing political arrangement to keep taxes high on the rich so they can be low on the poor and middle.

Where the Money Is – And Isn’t

As shown by the Laffer Curve, there is a point at which increasing tax rates actually reduces tax revenue, by discouraging work, hurting the economy, and encouraging tax avoidance.

Bernie’s plan already hammers the rich: households earning over $250,000 (the top 3 percent) would face marginal rates of 62-77 percent — meaning the IRS would take two-thirds to three-quarters of each additional dollar earned. His proposed capital gains taxes are so high that they are likely well past the point of positive returns. The US corporate tax rate of 40 percent is already the highest in the world, and even Sanders hasn’t proposed increasing it.

The only way to solve his revenue problem is to raise rates on the middle and upper-middle classes, or flatten the structure to make the top rates start kicking in much lower. You can see why a “progressive” isn’t keen on making more regressive taxes part of his platform, but the money has to come from somewhere.

The bottom fifty percent don’t pay much income tax now (only $34 billion), but they also don’t earn enough to fill the gap. Making their taxes proportionate to income would only raise $107 billion, without even considering how the higher rates would reduce employment and income.

The top 5 percent are pretty well wrung dry by Sanders’ plan, and their incomes are going to be reduced by 20-25 percent anyway. It’s hard to imagine that there’s much more blood to be had from that stone.

But households between the 50th and the 95th percentile (incomes between $37,000 to $180,000 a year) earn about 54 percent of total income — a share would likely go up, given the larger income reductions expected for top earners. Currently, this group pays only 38 percent of total income taxes, and, despite the 9 percent tax hike, they’re comparatively spared by the original tax plan. Their incomes are now the lowest hanging fruit on the tax tree.

As they go to the polls this year, the middle class should remember Sutton’s Law.

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier

Daniel Bier is the editor of Anything Peaceful. He writes on issues relating to science, civil liberties, and economic freedom.

Three Men Standing: The race to 1,237 delegates has begun

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The people of Iowa have spoken. The race for the GOP nomination for President of the United States has begun. The race to 1,237 delegates starts now.

delages iowa

race for gop nomination

 

Obama to Visit U.S. Mosque Tied to Extremism

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On February 3, President Barack Obama will visit a U.S. mosque for the first time during his presidency. Curiously, the president chose a mosque to visit that is deeply tied to Islamist extremism and terror funding.

The Islamic Society of Baltimore, the mosque Obama will visit, is part of a network of mosques of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In 1991, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo placed ISNA at the top of a secret list of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The document said the organization’s “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within…”

In 2007, federal prosecutors named ISNA an unindicted co-conspirator in the terrorism-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation, another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity housed in the ISNA building.

See Clarion Project’s profile of ISNA

The U.S. government’s identification of ISNA as a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity was upheld in 2009 due to “ample” evidence linking ISNA to Hamas.

As if the Islamic Society of Baltimore’s association with ISNA wasn’t bad enough, the mosque’s imam for 15 year, Mohammad Adam el-Sheikh, also has deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, el-Sheikh served as the regional director of the Islamic American Relief Agency, a group which, according to the U.S. Treasury, funneled funds to Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda and Hamas, among other terrorist organizations.

El-Seikh is on record as defending and justifying Palestinian suicide bombing against Israelis.

This is not the first time Obama endorsed and supported the Brotherhood-linked ISNA. In 2013, Obama addressed the 50th annual ISNA convention via videotape, praising ISNA for its partnership with his administration.

To the conference participants, Obama said, “Over the last half-century, you’ve upheld the proud legacy of American-Muslims’ contributions to our national fabric and this gathering is a testament to that tradition.”

Yet, the gathering was anything but a testament to American tradition. A Clarion Project report showed the convention’s roster of speakers included many known extremists, including Zaid Shakir and Siraj Wahhaj.

Shakir has preached that the U.S. Constitution is flawed because it grants equality to Muslims and non-Muslims and Wahhaj, a main speaker at the conference, has a history of anti-American preaching and envisions the day when sharia law will control America. As a current strategy, he advises Muslims to avoid discussion of Sharia because “we are not there yet.”

Ironically, the White House said one of the purposes of Obama’s visit to the Baltimore mosque is to “reaffirm the importance of religious freedom to our way of life.”

Religious freedom is hardly a concept promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood and those associated with it.

In fact, Muslims who are genuinely interested in religious freedom for all people have found Obama’s visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore highly offensive.

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and vice chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, called the visit was “insulting.”

“It’s disgraceful that this is the mosque he’s picked to be the first to visit,” Jasser said on “Fox & Friends” Sunday. “This mosque is very concerning…Historically, they are basically a radical, extreme mosque and not representative of the modern Muslims in America.”

Jasser is right. According to a 2011 Gallup poll, only 4% of Muslim-American males and 7% of females chose ISNA as the organization that most represents their interests.

If one of the purposes of visiting a U.S. mosque is to “celebrate the contributions Muslim Americans,” as stated by the Obama administration, he could have started by choosing a mosque and its congregants that are have truly done so.

Meira Svirsky is the editor of ClarionProject.org

RELATED VIDEO: Truth About Shariah: Gay Oppression

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EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of the Obamas with the grand imam of the Istiqlal Mosque in in Jakarta, Indonesia (Photo: © Reuters)

Refuge Resettlement Watch: Monthly Roundup — January 2016

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Longtime readers know that previously we provided a weekly roundup of top stories and top countries (from which visitors arrived at RRW) so that you would know what other followers were most interested in, and where they came from, but I’m thinking once a month is enough.

This roundup also gives me an opportunity to bring new readers up-to-speed on what we have published here over the years and how to find useful information.

Top Three Posts:

Here then are the Top Three posts for the month of January 2016 (top daily posts are in the right hand side bar):

  1. Amarillo, Texas being destroyed by refugee overload
  2. Merkel on Cologne sex assaults: don’t blame refugees
  3. More evidence that big business is a driver of refugee resettlement in America

The Top Ten Countries from which visitors arrived at RRW in January (excluding the U.S.) are in descending order:

  1. United Kingdom
  2. Canada
  3. Australia
  4. Germany
  5. South Africa
  6. Sweden
  7. Netherlands
  8. Norway
  9. France
  10. New Zealand

For new readers!  Here are some things you need to know:

I’ve started a new blog so that I can write about Election 2016 and immigration (the only issue that matters!).  See it here: American Resistance 2016!

We have over 7,300 posts archived at RRW extending back to the summer of 2007.  Use the search window with a few key words to look for information (LOL! before you send an e-mail asking me to find things for you!).  Also, see our Frequently Asked Questions and our fact sheet (out of date but still useful) in the header.

I’ve been tweeting a lot and sometimes if I can’t write about a story you send, I tweet it.  See our twitter feed in the right-hand side bar. Even if you aren’t on twitter, you should be able to open the links to the news embedded in the tweet.  I am @RefugeeWatcher.

Likewise you might want to ‘like’ and follow RRW’s facebook page, here.  See it also in the left-hand side bar.

All previous round-ups and this one are archived in a category simply called ‘blogging.’

My video about how the refugee program works is here (over 2.3 million views as of this writing).

All comments you submit are screened and we don’t post threats of violence, most foul language, or ad hominem attacks on other commenters.  Sometimes I am away from the computer for many hours, so you may not see your comment posted quickly.  And, lately I’ve noticed a delay by wordpress in sending me your comments.

As much as I would love to see you all in your hometowns, I simply don’t have the time to travel.  Right now I have a few engagements I committed to sometime ago, but am not taking any more right now.  I think I am more useful right here researching and writing.  I am thinking of a project for this summer that might take me to other states, but that is still in the ‘dreaming’ stage.

Refugee Resettlement Watch is an entirely volunteer project by me—we don’t raise funds or advertise.  Therefore, I have no staff, no help, and so if I don’t answer the hundreds of e-mails I get every day, you know why!  And, I do apologize!

P.S.  There is so much happening on this subject that I would welcome (I encourage!) others to start blogs on the topic, either to cover your local and state issues or even to pick up more of the load nationally!  It does your community no good if you research, find important information (perhaps damning information) and then don’t share it widely!

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VIDEO: INFILTRATION — Thousands of young Communists have infiltrated Catholic seminaries

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TRANSCRIPT:

During the early years of Communism in the 1920s and 30s, the evil was being spread worldwide as the Blessed Mother had predicted at Fatima in 1917. Communist parties were being formed in various European countries and in American cities as well. They were already attempting to upset the political and cultural order.

alice_von_hildebrand-255x362

Alice von Hildebrand

But what only a very small number of people knew was that the top dogs of Communism had already released the hounds on the Church. The carefully organized plan was to recruit young men who were loyal Communists and get them placed in seminaries. This was carried out by various agents during the 1920s and 30s.

Fast forward 30 years to the 1960s, and the fruits were beginning to be seen. Learned, dedicated, faithful men and women in the Church were looking around and fretting, not sure from what framework they should understand the demolition of the Faith they were witnessing. At one point, Pope Paul VI even said that it appeared the Church was in auto-demolition.

One of those deeply distressed was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, the brilliant theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand. He and his wife Alice were sitting down one day with a friend, a woman by the name of Bella Dodd. Bella Dodd had been received back into the Catholic Church by Abp. Fulton Sheen in April of 1952.

This particular day, von Hildebrand was lamenting the state of affairs in the Church and said “It seems like the Church has been infiltrated.” To the shock of both Dietrich and Alice, Bella Dodd, former Communist agent, confessed that it had been infiltrated — and she had been one of the Communists ordered to organize it.

Read more.

Please watch this excerpt of the interview with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand:

RELATED ARTICLE: Politics and Pope Francis: What is the role of the Catholic Church and the State?

EDITORS NOTE: The Vortex has more of their interview with Dr. von Hildebrand available for Premium viewers. They are offering a 15-day free trial. Please consider signing, up at no cost, and watch the whole von Hildebrand interview. You may also explore all the other programs — hundreds of hours.

Bloomberg for President?

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Amid reports that the FBI is close to recommending that the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified materials, and that FBI Director James Comey and other agency personnel investigating Clinton may resign if the DOJ refuses to do so, sources close to Michael Bloomberg say the billionaire former mayor of New York City may run for president if Clinton appears unable to win the Democratic Party’s nomination.

CBS New York reports, “[t]hey say Bloomberg would strongly consider running if the general election looked like it would be a contest between Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.” Bloomberg, who has let on that he would be willing to spend 1 billion dollars on a campaign, is expected to make his decision by March. Four states are holding their presidential primaries and caucuses in February, and another 14 will do so on Super Tuesday, March 1st.

Appearing unfazed by her troubles, Clinton insists “nothing that I did was wrong” and said of the Bloomberg news, “the way I read what he said was if I didn’t get the nomination, he might consider it. Well, I’m going to relieve him of that and get the nomination, so he doesn’t have to.”

Unfortunately, from Clinton’s perspective, that may be a fairly big “if.” Polls show her being trounced by Sen. Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire and also losing Iowa, where the country’s first presidential primaries and caucuses will be held, and that her national figures are dropping. Other polls show that more Americans view her unfavorably than favorably.

Fox News reports, “[t]he FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible ‘intersection’ of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws.” Fox followed up on the story on Tuesday, saying, “The security investigation is now part and parcel with the criminal [public corruption] investigation.”

Bloomberg must theorize that he could appeal to voters on the basis of his success as a businessman and his time as the mayor of the nation’s most populous city. But he faces a difficult “if” of his own. Clinton been casting herself as the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history, a distinction Bloomberg would certainly want to challenge if he threw his hat into the ring. Also, and perhaps for the same reason, a Morning Consult poll released this week found Bloomberg at 13% in a hypothetical three-way race against Donald Trump and Clinton, 11% when the Republican candidate is Sen. Ted Cruz, and down to 10% when the Republican is Sen. Marco Rubio.

Bloomberg might be able to bump those numbers up among Democrats a bit, if he promised to pardon Clinton on the first day of his presidency. That would not only endear him to Clinton’s most fanatical supporters, it would wipe the slate clean, at least legally-speaking, for someone who shares his deep antipathy for guns. With public opinion trending steadily against gun control, a President Bloomberg couldn’t afford to have one of his strongest anti-gun allies in court or in prison.

Online Survey: Do you support the proper vetting of refugees coming to the U.S.?

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I have been invited to be part of a panel discussing bringing Syrian refugees from the Middle East to the United States.

The panel will be hosted by the Manatee Tiger Bay Club. The event will be held on March 3rd, 2016 beginning at 11:30 a.m. at the Pier 22 Restaurant located at 1200 First Avenue West, Bradenton, Florida.

In preparation for this event I am soliciting your input on the vetting of refugees in general and those specifically coming from Syria.

Please take this short confidential survey prior to March 3rd. I will be posting a full column on this event.

EDITORS NOTES:

For those interested in reading more on the immigration/refugee issue please click here.

Our resident expert on the refugee issue is Ann Corcoran. To read Ann’s columns please click here.

Girl faces charges for protecting herself against Muslim sexual attack

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Why don’t they just install a Muslim migrant as Prime Minister and declare their willingness to submit and pay the jizya now? Why drag out the process?

Denmark refugees and police

“Outrage in Denmark as 17yo girl faces fine for using pepper spray against sex attacker,” RT, January 27, 2016:

A Danish teenager who said she was sexually assaulted now faces a fine for using pepper spray against her attacker. The man who pulled her to the ground and tried to undress her fled the scene without any charges.

The incident took place in the center of the small town of Sonderborg in southern Denmark at about 10 p.m. local time Wednesday. She told police that an English-speaking man knocked her to the ground, tried to unbutton her pants and undress her.

However, she was apparently able to protect herself as she pulled out pepper spray and used it against the man, who escaped the scene and hasn’t been charged.

Police say that the girl may face a fine.

“It is illegal to possess and use pepper spray, so she will likely be charged for that,” local police spokesman Knud Kirsten said, as cited by TV Syd.

According to The Local, the girl’s fine could be about 500 kroner ($72) and that has sparked outrage on social media.

Readers of the story on TV Syd’s website said they were ready to pay the girl’s fine.

“It is so completely and terribly wrong with the Danish system… Self-defense is a human right,” wrote one user, while another ironically added: “Perhaps the offender must seek compensation…Have we become mad in Denmark?”…

Yes, quite mad.

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1 in 3 Americans Say Donald Trump Is the No. 1 Presidential Candidate for Their Money

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LA86996LOGOLOS ANGELES, CA /PRNewswire/ — In anticipation of the upcoming presidential primaries for the 2016 presidential election, leading personal finance website GOBankingRates.com surveyed nearly 8,000 Americans to find out which candidate they think will be best for their money.  Although Donald Trump was the top pick overall from those surveyed, nearly 50 percent of millennials ages 18 to 24 said Bernie Sanders’policies would be best for them financially.

The survey posed the question, “Which presidential candidate would be best for you financially?” and is representative of the U.S. online population with a margin of error of 3 percent.

Respondents’ Answer Choices:

  • Donald Trump — 29%
  • Bernie Sanders — 26%
  • Hillary Clinton — 20%
  • Ted Cruz — 9%
  • Marco Rubio — 8%
  • Ben Carson — 8%

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Of those surveyed, 37 percent of the respondents answered “none of the above,” indicating that their favorite candidate was not listed or that they had not yet decided. The percentages listed above were taken from the remaining population of respondents.

See the full survey findings here.

“The economy is growing, but many Americans are still dissatisfied with slow-growing wages, high taxes or other fiscal policies that affect their bank accounts,” said Elyssa Kirkham, the GOBankingRates finance writer on the study.

“In the 2016 election, voters should be looking for a candidate who can help them build greater financial security as individuals, families and communities,” Kirkham said. “But opinions on the best way to do this are very divided, and this survey shows that many candidates are offering solutions that voters find favorable.”

Additional Findings:

  • 49 percent of millennial voters (ages 18 to 24) say that Sanders would be best for them financially, most likely because he supports free college and a $15 minimum wage.
  • Two-thirds of adults age 65 and older chose either Clinton or Trump as the candidate who would be best for them financially. Those two candidates have said they won’t cut Social Security.
  • For fiscal policy, women favor Democrats, whereas men favor Republicans.

To see which presidential candidate Americans in your state think is best for their money here.

Methodology: Through a Google Consumer Survey, GOBankingRates surveyed 7,728 respondents online from Dec. 10-16, 2015. The survey posed the question, “Which presidential candidate would be best for you financially if elected?” and offered the following six candidates as options, displayed randomly: (1) Ben Carson, (2) Hillary Clinton, (3) Ted Cruz, (4) Marco Rubio, (5) Bernie Sanders and (6) Donald Trump, along with the option to select “None of the above.” The survey has a margin of error of 3 percent, and answers are representative of the U.S. online population.

About GOBankingRates

GOBankingRates.com is a leading portal for personal finance and consumer banking information, offering visitors the latest on everything from finding a good interest rate to strategies for saving money, investing for retirement and getting a loan. Its editors are regularly featured on top-tier media outlets, including U.S. News & World Report, Forbes, Business Insider, Daily Finance, Huffington Post and more. It specializes in connecting consumers with the best financial institutions and banking products nationwide.

VIDEO: If you think Jew hatred ended with the Holocaust, think again!

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auschwitz holocaustThe Jewish Federation of Sarasota/Manatee produced a video showing that Jew hatred is alive and well in Florida. The student senate at the University of South Florida voted to divest from the state of Israel for “humanitarian reasons.” Since that vote the student body president vetoed the resolution.

Hate groups such as CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), Students For Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Association, Jewish Voices For Peace and others are the NEW ANTI-SEMITES.  These groups have “crept” into University of South Florida Tampa campus in a major way.

One group is fighting to protect Jewish students on America’s campuses. The group is called the AMCHA Initiative. It is an on-line data base reporting anti-Semitic incidents occurring with rising frequency  on U.S. college campuses. The Initiative was created to protect Jewish students  and  staff on campuses. The 2015 AMCHA report cite more than 302 anti-Semitic incidents at 109 campuses in more than 28 states, among them are five colleges in Florida.

Click here to view the U.S. campus anti-Semitic tracker.

Those behind the resolution to divest from Israel failed to mention that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East or that the other Arab states are at best theocracies that deny basic human rights or are failed nations controlled by terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.

The video below tells the story of Jew hatred, which is alive and well in Florida and across the United States:

RELATED VIDEO: Crossing the Line 2: The New Face of Anti-Semitism on Campus:

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Is Trump the First ‘European-conservative’ American Presidential Candidate?

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Ever since Donald Trump’s rise to 2016-contender prominence, the rap on him, and perhaps part of his broad appeal, has been that he’s not a conservative. And he’s not — he’s a nationalistic populist. Yet there’s another way to understand The Donald’s professed politics: as that of the first prominent “European-conservative” American presidential candidate. He’s not so much America’s next Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, but her first Marine Le Pen.

A prerequisite for grasping this is understanding the true natures of liberalism and conservatism.

While many have their own definitions of the latter — and will stubbornly insist they’re correct — the truth is that both political terms are provisional, meaning different things in different times and places. The term “conservative” in the 1970s referred to a communist in the USSR and someone staunchly anti-communist in the U.S.; and a European conservative today, such as Britain’s David Cameron, is well to the “left” of our conservatives. Many other examples could be provided, but the point is this: liberalism and conservatism are not ideologies as much processes. Liberalism is the process of inexorably trying to change the status quo; conservatism is the process of trying to preserve the status quo. Thus, the actual positions the terms are seen as representing will vary depending on the status quo in question.

And when analyzing the Trump phenomenon, it’s clear that it’s roughly the same one evident in much of the West, the one fueling the fortunes of Le Pen in France, the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders (who has endorsed Trump), Britain’s Nigel Farage and Sweden’s Jimmie Åkesson. He also bears much in common with those figures.

Consider the qualities these European politicians share: they’re socially quite liberal. Their views on abortion range from indifference to tolerance to mild skepticism, on faux marriage they range from mild opposition to acceptance. In general, they say as little about these matters as they can and are willing to play to their audience. But then there’s their real passion, about which they generally seem sincere: nationalism, limiting im/migration, fighting Muslim terrorism and stopping Islamization. Sound at all familiar?

It’s also common (though not universal) among such figures to talk about preserving their nation’s “Christian heritage.” Now, it’s unimaginable that Le Pen and Wilders spend much time at an altar rail, and were Christian piety the order of the day in Western Europe, it would be easy to see them taking up the cudgels for secularism. But with already sclerotic Christian culture further threatened by a confluence of secularization and Islamization — and with Muslim chauvinists providing stark reminders of a very unappealing alternative — they’re inspired to become Crusaders protecting their nation’s Christian veneer.

Likewise, Trump cannot be mistaken for a desert mystic; he stated last summer that he never sought forgiveness from God (doing so is a Christian tenet), and hasn’t demonstrated much acquaintance with the faith. Yet he has also said he’s proud to be a Presbyterian, sometimes attends church and has bemoaned how Christianity is under attack in America. And whether you believe this is piety or posturing, for certain is this: it’s no surprise coming from an apparent nationalist. For being so means defending your nation’s culture, as it is, which in the West includes superficial Christianity. It means wanting to see church steeples and not minarets, crosses and not the star and crescent, and to hear church bells and not the Adhan — even if you talk more about the Easter Bunny than Jesus.

So what accounts for the popularity in the U.S. of a “European conservative”? The same things accounting for it in across the pond. First, like Western Europe, we’re beset by a political establishment that encourages a culture-rending invasion by unassimilable peoples. And it’s just as with a “hot” invasion: all other problems are put on the back burner when barbarians are at the gate. Have you ever seen a guy wringing his hands about his daughter’s sleazy boyfriend while home invaders are busting down his door?

This helps explain why Trump is attracting support from groups most wouldn’t expect, such as evangelicals. Some find it inexplicable, but I think these believers’ attitude was reflected well by a devout Catholic man I know — a truly faithful fellow — who said some years back that he considered immigration an even bigger issue than abortion. His point was that all else is for naught if you’re subjected to demographic genocide and lose your nation.

Then there’s the second reason a European conservative would play well today: the US is becoming more like Europe. A not widely understood phenomenon is that the positions we generally associate with traditional American “conservatism” correlate with Christian belief. This is why church attendance is one of the best predictors of voting habits. Consider: in socialistic Western Europe, more than 50 percent of the population identifies as “irreligious.” Not surprisingly, this reaches a Richard Dawkins Award high in what’s perhaps the world’s most “liberal” country, Sweden, where 76 percent of the citizenry identifies as “not religious” or “atheist” (and how many of the rest are Muslim?). And in once-Marxist, now-fascist China, 90 percent thus label themselves.

The US isn’t yet that far gone, but we’re on the same road. According to Pew Research Center, Americans identifying as Christian declined from 78.4 percent to 70.6 percent of the population in just 7 years (2007 to 2014), and the religiously “unaffiliated” now account for almost a quarter of our nation. This just reflects the increasingly secular nature of succeeding generations: Among those born 1928 through 1945, 85 percent identify as Christian. But there is a steady degeneration of the generations, with only 56 percent of “Younger Millennials” (born ‘90 through ’96) labeling themselves so.

Yet even this paints too optimistic a picture. As this must-read Barna Group research company study found in 2002 already, only 22 percent of adults believed in Absolute Moral Truth while 64 percent said matters were “always relative to the person and their [sic] situation.” And they were practically the “wise elders”: 83 percent of the teenagers subscribed to relativism — which is the antithesis of Christian belief — and only 6 percent believed in Truth.

And as Barna head George Barna put it, “[T]he alarmingly fast decline of moral foundations among our young people has culminated in a one-word worldview: ‘whatever.’ The result is a mentality that esteems pluralism, relativism, tolerance, and diversity without critical reflection of the implications of particular views and actions.” Put simply and as I’ve explained many times, the notion that there is no Truth means that, in essence, there are no moral rules governing man. It is then that everything boils down to occultist Aleister Crowley’s maxim, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

Thus does lacking the yardstick of Truth lead to, as Barna also found, people making decisions based on what “feels right.” And now we see the rise of relativistic moderns to whom nationalism and their own culture feel right, which is certainly preferable to the dominance of relativistic moderns to whom internationalism and multiculturalism feel right. Absent acquaintance with and adherence to Truth, however, a civilization will always descend into some kind of lie. So the most we can perhaps hope for is that, to quote Yogi Berra, we won’t one day have to say, “I think I made the wrong mistake.”

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com.

Notorious Pro-Bernie Sanders PAC Strikes Back with Political Satire Comic Series

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bernie sanders comic book coverWASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire/ – Hands down Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders is leading in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, which may have Hillary Clinton’s team on the edge of their seat. Nonetheless, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) remains abundant with support from a political committee Americans Socially United that started this time a year ago before he announced his official candidacy for the presidential race.

Americans Socially United Director Cary Lee Peterson talks with PoliWatch about 2016 PAC activities leading to Primary Election.

The pro-Sanders PAC had scrutiny for its stance in September from a political journalist, which led to a convoluted state of opinion about the PAC and why it chose to support Bernie Sanders’ run for presidency. They’ve since restructured and are aiming back at the media with a political satire comic placed on a digital billboard in New York Times Square, a secondary jab since their first media billboard blitz in New York Times Square last April.

Americans Socially United chief director Cary Lee Peterson comments, “We were there this time a year ago. We’re still here now. You don’t like it, go start your own PAC or join a campaign committee of another candidate; we’re here and going nowhere.”

The billboard ad displays a character that portrays Bernie Sanders as a super hero flying into the scene amongst other 2016 presidential candidates with a caption that says ‘I see through you’. Ironically this billboard ad holds a handful of hidden messages that only the creators can describe.

PoliWatch spoke with pro-Bernie Sanders billboard comic artist Harrison Wood (41), currently a Las Vegas radio personality and freelancer of independent comic book series Thunder Frogs, who stated “I like what he [Bernie Sanders] stands for and I am happy to contribute to the 2016 presidential election campaigns. Every candidate out there deserves an opportunity to prove themselves and I’m glad I can use my talent to be involved in some way.”

ASU director Cary Peterson tells PoliWatch that the comic billboard ad is only the beginning of a series of political satire stokes at 2016 U.S. presidential candidates. At the end of the day the art of the pen is mightier than the sword.

New reforms give Muslim migrants with more than one wife extra benefits

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Paying for something will only encourage more of it, and there will even be conversions to Islam by people who want to take advantage of this. Britain’s Islamization is proceeding nicely, and anyone who raises a dissenting voice is ruthlessly silenced, so all is well and all manner of thing shall be well.

“Wives With Benefits: Immigrants With More Than One Spouse Win EXTRA Payments Under New Reforms,” by Simon Kent, Breitbart, January 24, 2016:

Immigrants with many wives stand to make substantial financial gains under looming changes to Britain’s welfare system.

Polygamous marriages, which form a common thread in Islam, are recognised in Britain but only if they take place in countries where they are legal. Now a House of Commons library paper, published earlier this month, has highlighted a loophole that will allow additional wives coming to the UK to claim a full single person’s allowance while the husband and his first wife still receive their respective benefits.

At present additional wives receive reduced individual income support, meaning the husband and his first wife receive up to £114.85. Subsequent spouses living under the same roof receive a reduced allowance of about £40 each.

The foreshadowed changes mean some polygamous households may receive more under universal credit than under the present benefit and tax credit system. The paper said:

“The Government decided that the universal credit rules will not recognise additional partners in polygamous relationships,” the paper states.

“This could potentially result in some polygamous households receiving more under universal credit than under the current benefit and tax credit system.

“Treating second and subsequent partners in polygamous relationships as separate claimants could in some situations mean polygamous households receive more under universal credit than they do under the current rules for means-tested benefits and tax credits.

“This is because the amounts which may be paid in respect of additional spouses are lower than those which generally apply to single claimants.”

The news comes as universal credit (UC), introduced in April 2014, is applied to more Jobcentre areas, including Kent and Leicestershire, from tomorrow. More, including Cambridge and Hull, are set to introduce it before April this year.

UC is to replace all means-tested benefits and tax credits for families of working age and is gradually being introduced to new claimant groups and areas including those in polygamous unions.

This is not the first time that Islamic marriage traditions have been highlighted in the UK.

As Breitbart London reported, last year Britain’s first female sharia law judge stated that the “government cannot ask Muslims not to have more than one wife”.

That revelation came on the back of a report by the Times newspaper which claimed that Britain is experiencing a “surge” in Sharia marriages, as young British Muslims adopt a more hardline religious stance than their parents.

According to The Times:

“As many as 100,000 couples are living in such [sharia] marriages, which are not valid under UK law, experts said. Ministers have raised fears that women can be left without the right to a fair share of assets if the relationship ends, while others are forced to return to abusive “husbands”.

“A leading Islamic family lawyer warned that the increase in Sharia ceremonies among the 2.7 million-strong Muslim population in Britain was also behind a growth in ‘secret polygamy’.

“Probably a quarter of all couples I see involve polygamy issues,” Aina Khan told The Times. “There has been a huge rise in recent years because people can have a secret nikah [Islamic marriage] and no one will know about it.”

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions told the Daily Express: “The previous system accommodated polygamous marriages but this Government has done away with it. Under new rules any additional partners who are unemployed have to claim benefits independently and will need to sign a claimant commitment, and look for work like anyone else. They will also not get benefits for housing costs if they are living together.”

It has been claimed that Muslim men are having up to 20 children each because of polygamy and the rise of “religiously-sanctioned gender discrimination” under Sharia Law.

Baroness Cox, a cross-bench peer, has highlighted a series of “shocking” examples of the impact of Sharia law on Muslim women in Britain as she called for them to be given greater protection.

Bigamy in the UK is a crime under Section 57 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 however in 2008, the Blair government gave the go-ahead for husbands with multiple wives to claim extra welfare benefits, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal (as is permitted under Islamic law).

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Muslim ‘Migrants’ not finding Germany to their liking and want to go home!

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Invasion of Europe news….

In this story (burly fighting age) Iraqis are getting ready to make their move to Germany. One of the best things the EU could do (to save itself) is to craft a PR campaign to be broadcast in the Middle East and N. Africa featuring unhappy “refugees” who say they are sorry they came and want to go home!

Just as U.S. federal refugee resettlement contractors are gearing up their massive PR campaign that America should embrace a hundred thousand Syrians and bring them to your towns, thousands of those (supposedly seeking asylum) who flooded into Germany in the last year want to go home!

Why? To put it simply:  Not enough welfare goodies and culture shock (“open attitudes” about sex).  So much for fear of war.

Be sure to see a post we wrote last August where a Syrian American says that many of those fleeing Syria see Europe as El Dorado (a mythical city of gold) and don’t want to be left out of the gold rush.

The Wall Street Journal has a really good story yesterday:

BERLIN—In October, Amer sold all his belongings in Syria and took his family to a safer life in Germany. Four months later, he wants to return to a country still at war.

Once in Germany, Amer discovered an unexpected reality: Instead of the small house he was hoping for and money to help him open a business, he was given a bare room in an old administrative building turned into an emergency shelter. Now he is packing his bags again.

“I came to Germany because everyone was saying it was heaven. Now I regret that decision,” said the 30-year-old from Damascus.

[….]

But many who arrive find the country doesn’t match their often inflated expectations. They balk at modest benefits, poor job prospects, and harsh treatment at immigration offices, and voice other complaints ranging from bland food to Germans’ open attitudes about sex.

The Merkel myth about jobs, just that, a myth (or, how the greedy globalists are destroying western civilization).

Ms. Merkel has said the best path to integration is through work, but most migrants face a long road from the cots of emergency shelters to finding housing and employment.

Economists have warned that migrants with low skills, like Amer, stand little chance of ever finding jobs. While some political leaders say the new migrants will help offset a dearth of German workers in the future,critics say they could become a long-term burden on German taxpayers.

Read it all.

Maybe the fighting back home isn’t so bad after all!

See our complete ‘Invasion of Europe’ archive here.  And, read all about Germany and crazy Mama Merkel, by clicking here.