The Peace Cross And Restoring Religious Freedom

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court is being tasked with tackling the most significant of societal issues: our freedom to worship.

This time, the argument is embodied in The American Legion v. American Humanist Association. Familiarly enough, the legal action pits the American people’s abilities to have a longstanding religious symbol remain in the public square against those of secular activists to have them forcibly removed.

The present controversy involves a cross that sits at the center of an intersection in Bladensburg, Maryland dating back to 1922 when local residents set out to build a structure honoring 49 local soldiers who died serving the United States in World War I.  The plan called for the construction of a 40-foot tall cross as homage to the fallen heroes.

The Peace Cross, as it eventually came to be known, was completed in 1925, where it has stood as a symbol of the city’s reverence and respect for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our great country. As the nation’s history progressed and America suffered through other conflicts, the Cross served as a natural gathering place to honor the fallen heroes from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and Gulf Storm, among other conflicts.

As things progressed, Bladensburg grew, and the property upon which the Peace Cross stood came to rest at the intersection of multiple growing thoroughfares. Eventually, the state bought the land upon which the Cross stood in 1961, instantly transforming it into the public domain.

Despite the change in the Peace Cross’s status, there was still no objection to its continued presence; that is until the American Humanitarian Association came along.

The Association is made up of a group of individuals who claim to be offended by the Cross’s presence and want it removed. Its argument is that the Cross represents an unconstitutional intermingling between church and state, since, according to the Association, its presence on public land represents the adoption or approval of religion by the government.

In keeping with its strong objection to the Peace Cross, the Association, along with a group of local residents, brought an action against the Maryland National Park And Planning Commission to have the cross removed. The Planning Commission fought back and was eventually granted summary judgment by the district court and told that the Cross could remain. The case was subsequently appealed to the Fourth Circuit, which disagreed and ordered that the Cross be removed. The case is now being argued before the Supreme Court.

The Peace Cross case is a manifestation of the many problems of American jurisprudence in the way it handles cases of religious freedom.

The issue of public worship and respect for our religious freedoms is of elemental importance to all Americans. Religious liberty is at the very root of the nation’s foundation, and its scope and ramifications are fundamental to what it means to be human. Without the direct relationship between our Creator and each one of us, there is no limit to the intrusion government can theoretically have upon the individual. In fact, the only factor placing a limit upon government’s authority over each person is the individual’s greater allegiance to God. Absent this, government may logically run rampant over man.

It is for this reason that the acknowledgment of man’s divinity is so important in a democratic society as it is a constant reminder that both government and man are limited in their scope and power by a greater being, our Creator. Conversely, removing such reminders, like the Cross, serve to diminish the role of religion and worship in people’s daily lives and makes it that much easier for government to intrude upon our freedoms.

Sadly, whereas symbols like the Peace Cross were rarely disturbed during the nineteenth century, beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, they were openly assaulted, not only culturally, but by jurists and advocates.

One of the defining moments of the assault came in a case called Lemon v. Kurtzman involving a state’s ability to apply tax money in support of private schools, many of them religious. Here, the Court prohibited such an association as an intrusion upon the wall of separation between church and state. More importantly, the Court created a three-pronged test it would apply in order to determine whether an action or a law offended the Constitution. In short, the Court said that in order to have a law stand constitutional scrutiny related to religious freedom, the government would have to show three things: 1) a secular purpose; 2) that the law or act did not act principally to advance or inhibit religion; and 3) it did not create an “excessive entanglement with religion.”

Under these requirements, secularists have met with great success in attacking public expressions of worship, religious symbols, and prayer.  Since the Lemon test, secularists have been able to force courts to order the removal of crosses and Ten Commandment tablets from public lands, prevent prayer in schools, keep people from praying at commencement ceremonies, and erase Christmas symbols from municipal seasonal celebrations. If your city no longer calls its December tree a Christmas tree, or now calls its Christmas parade a Holiday parade, there is a big chance it is due to the fear of the Lemon test.

But the Lemon test has not escaped criticism. Many, including renowned law professors and jurists have argued that the test allows absurd outcomes and does not properly reflect the wishes of the American people. Some have even called for the test to be displaced. In fact, in a case questioning whether the Ten Commandments should be removed from the Texas Capitol, Justice Stephen Breyer opted not to use the test. In upholding the ability of the tablets to remain, Breyer suggested an approach different from the one used in Lemon. Breyer acknowledged that the Ten Commandments were openly religious, but despite that, he maintained that the tablets should remain because it was “part of what is a broader moral and historical message reflective of a cultural heritage.”

The fact is that if Breyer had employed the Lemon test, his conclusion would likely have been opposite of what he felt was the more correct posture, and we would have witnessed yet another situation where religion and religious freedom would have been beaten down.

Enter the 2018 conservative Supreme Court. It is interesting that the Supreme Court decided to hear the Peace Cross case. Indeed, the lower court applied the Lemon test and arrived at the conventional position. The Supreme Court could have passed on this case and let it stand. But it did not.

The fact that the Court opted to hear this case is an opportunity for it to enter the arena of religious freedom and religious worship. What the Court actually does with this case, of course, remains to be seen. In the end, it could use the Lemon test and provide further clarification on its application.

It could, on the other hand, do something truly innovative. It could review the assault that has taken place upon religious freedom with the Lemon sword and take the future of the First Amendment in a more permissive direction.

For our posterity’s sake, let’s hope that it does the latter.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act. It is republished with permission. The featured image is from the Save The Peace Cross Facebook page.

Universal Basic Income Is a (Costly) Socialist Pipe Dream

It is the height of hypocrisy to ask the United States government, already USD $22 trillion in debt, to fund handing out free money to the entire nation.

Universal basic income has had a phenomenal year in 2018 when it comes to publicity. Silicon Valley billionaires, academics, and leftist politicians are raving about the brilliant new scheme, which we are told will prevent a Social Darwinist dystopian future in which average Joes everywhere stand to lose their low-functioning blue collar jobs to the grave perils of automation.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO and one of the three wealthiest individuals in the world, is a big fan. He has emerged as a high-profile public cheerleader for the universal basic income scheme. During last year’s Harvard commencement address, the fanciful concept featured prominently: “We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas.”

Zuckerberg seems to miss something on a basic human nature level. It may be fashionable to promote a philosophy of egalitarianism. The reality, however, is that human beings are not equal in terms of ability or anything else. Under our constitutional system, human beings enjoy equal protection of our constitutional rights, but that hardly means we should expect equality of outcomes. And that is something the Silicon Valley pseudo-socialists will never understand.

It would be nice to believe that a universal basic income program would allow human beings to fully realize their potential. Young people with few opportunities would enjoy the economic freedom to become captains of industry, technological pioneers, and inventors, perhaps learning how to code in their free time, developing software programs, and founding the next major social media platform to compete with Facebook.

To say this is a fanciful notion is an understatement. There are human beings who are highly motivated. There are human beings who are incredibly lazy and unproductive. There are human beings with IQs of 130, and there are human beings with IQs of 70. What message will human beings take away from receiving a monthly check, with no strings attached, for USD $1,000…or $2,000, or $5,000? Will this usher in some golden new age of invention, of technological wonder, of allowing the teeming and downtrodden masses to realize their full potential?

Such a program has never been tried on a large scale, so there are no empirical results, except for small-scale test runs. A basic understanding of human nature, coupled with common sense, however, suggests that the UBI is not the golden panacea that a few starry-eyed Silicon Valley billionaires make it out to be.

Why should we reward human beings for doing nothing? Mark Zuckerberg is the rare technological genius who would spend his free time coding and developing his own social media platform. What about typical human beings? With a check in the mail each month for doing nothing, how many are now going to be “liberated” to work in what they really love, and how many are going to be encouraged to do nothing?

Setting aside human nature, for a moment, let’s take a look at the economics of a UBI program.

Surprise, surprise. They are phenomenally expensive to implement. Just doling out USD $1,000 a month to Americans would cost USD $3.8 trillion a year, according to a recent study by Bridgewater Associates. Well, golly, that’s a tab even Zuckerberg can’t pick up.

National and local governments across the world have been cutting funding for UBI programs in droves. They are expensive and wreak havoc on local budgets. Unsurprisingly, taxpayers (one would presume even of a left-wing bent) don’t take too kindly to funding such pilot programs, especially when they are not the beneficiaries of this state largesse.

Programs in both Canada and Finland have been shut down under political and budgetary pressure, which brings us to the point.

Zuckerberg can champion the idea of a UBI all he wants, but unless he and his Silicon Valley brethren are prepared to fund them personally, they will remain pipe dreams.

Even with an incredibly low-brow American public, ever more eager to get something for nothing through the smoke and mirrors of big government socialism, I believe Americans are intelligent enough to see through the farce of the basic income.

I have no problem with Mark Zuckerberg or other wealthy benefactors funding such programs and showing us their data—holding up the great successes for all the world to see. But it is the height of hypocrisy to ask the United States government, already USD $22 trillion in debt, to fund handing out free money to the entire nation.

This article was reprinted from PanAm Post.

COLUMN BY

David Unsworth

David Unsworth is a Boston native. He received degrees in History and Political Science from Washington University in St. Louis and subsequently spent five years working in real estate development in New York City. 

EDITORS NOTE: This column by FEE with images is republished with permission. The featured image by geralt on Pixabay.

The New Congress Is Here. 4 Debates to Monitor.

Democrats take control of the House of Representatives Thursday, starting a new era of divided government.

Here are four things to watch as the 116th Congress begins Thursday amid a government shutdown.

  1. Tension Between Progressives and Other Democrats

Democrats are set to vote Thursday on a rules package. While it’s supported by incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it’s already causing waves of opposition among other House Democrats.

The rules package would allow people to keep their religious headwear on in the House chamber as well as prohibit discrimination in regards to gender identity and sexual orientation.

It also contains a “pay-as-you-go” provision. Pay-go  “requires that any new legislation that increases deficits (whether through an increase in mandatory spending or decrease in revenues) must be fully offset by other increases in revenues or decreases in mandatory spending so that the new legislation does not add to the budget deficit,” according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

Both Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have said they would vote against the rules package because of the pay-go element.

“I will be voting NO on the Rules package with #PayGo,” Khanna tweeted Wednesday. “It is terrible economics. The austerians were wrong about the Great Recession and Great Depression. At some point, politicians need to learn from mistakes and read economic history.”

After Khanna’s tweet, Ocasio-Cortez also went public with her opposition.

Dani Doane, congressional programs director at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that the tension between progressives and other Democrats against Pelosi is only just beginning to surface.

“The challenges to Nancy Pelosi’s speakership will be greater in the 116th Congress compared to her last tenure,” Doane said. “The incoming Democrat class includes a small but vocal wing of hard-core progressives that will cause headaches across the Congress in their efforts to drag America to the left.”

But according to Pelosi’s daughter, she’s not one to flinch from fights.

Talking about her mother’s leadership style, Alexandra Pelosi, a filmmaker, told CNN Wednesday, “She’ll cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re bleeding.”

“That’s all you need to know about her.”

2. Will Mitt Romney Be ‘a Flake’?

After Mitt Romney published an op-ed in The Washington Post on Tuesday voicing his disappointment in the Trump administration and saying his presidency made a “deep descent,” last month, Trump fired back at Romney Wednesday.

“Here we go with Mitt Romney, but so fast,” Trump tweeted. “Question will be, is he a Flake? I hope not. Would much prefer that Mitt focus on border security and so many other things where he can be helpful. I won big, and he didn’t.”

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who chose not to run for re-election in 2018, was often very critical of Trump. The Arizona senator has said the president “cannot take criticism,” and “is charting a very dangerous path” for the country. Flake also refused to confirm judicial nominees at the end of 2018 unless the Senate had a vote on a bill that would protect special counsel Robert Mueller.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said he thinks Romney’s issue with Trump is personal.

“I can’t figure out why, strategically, he thought that was helpful to him. … I think Romney would like to be president now,” Gingrich said.

“Stylistically, they’re so different. I suspect every morning when Romney gets up he gets angry, just because Trump is so different than he is.”

Romney’s new colleague, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also weighed in with a tweet Wednesday:

3. Will Trump Get His $5 Billion for the Wall?

Trump is blaming the shutdown, which started at midnight on Dec. 21, on the Democrats.

“We are in a shutdown because Democrats refuse to fund border security,” Trump said Wednesday.

He also tweeted Wednesday that the “$5.6 billion dollars that House has approved is very little in comparison to the benefits of national security,” and that the country would see a “quick payback” if given funding for the wall.

During part of an interview released Wednesday with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi promised “nothing for the wall.”

NEW: “We can go through the back and forth. No. How many more times can we say no? Nothing for the wall,” Rep. Pelosi tells @SavannahGuthrie amid the government shutdown, as Democrats prepare to retake control of the House on Thursday.4,3904:18 PM – Jan 2, 20191,911 people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

4. More Investigations Into Trump

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has promised to investigate Trump regarding “illicit foreign funding or involvement in the inauguration,” per The Washington Post,

“Whenever a foreign nation uses its financial wealth to violate the laws of our country, it undermines our democracy,” Schiff said in a December statement. “When another country does so in concert with U.S. persons, it carries the additional risk of compromising them and presents a particularly acute counterintelligence risk.”

Schiff even went so far as to say Trump could potentially spend time in jail.

“There’s a very real prospect that on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him. … He may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time,” Schiff said Dec. 9 on “Face the Nation.”

Rep. Elijah Cummings, who will head the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Trump needs more accountability.

“Right now, we have a president who is accountable to no one,” Cummings, D-Md., told CNN.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel. Twitter: @LRacheldG.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by The Daily Signal is republished with permission. Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters /Newscom.

Healthcare Professionals: The world’s greatest mass murderers

The media uses barrels of ink and tons of airtime to talk about deaths caused by guns, or illegal alien deaths on the U.S. Southern border but ignore the world’s greatest mass murderers – healthcare professionals.

There is growing evidence that it is doctors who have the dubious honor of being killing machines.

Doctors have outdone noted mass murderers and in most cases legally.

Erin McCann in a HealthcareITNews article titled “Deaths by medical mistakes hit records” wrote:

It’s a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year. At a Senate hearing Thursday, patient safety officials put their best ideas forward on how to solve the crisis, with IT often at the center of discussions. 

Johns Hopkins University published a May 3, 2016 report titled “Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S.” which concluded:

  • 10 percent of all U.S. deaths are now due to medical error. – Click to Tweet
  • Third highest cause of death in the U.S. is medical error.- Click to Tweet
  • Medical errors are an under-recognized cause of death. – Click to Tweet

Opioid addiction is another leading cause of deaths on a massive scale. Many of people get their opioids from medical professionals. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports:

70,237 drug overdose deaths occurred in the United States in 2017. The age-adjusted rate of overdose deaths increased significantly by 9.6% from 2016 (19.8 per 100,000) to 2017 (21.7 per 100,000). Opioids—mainly synthetic opioids (other than methadone)—are currently the main driver of drug overdose deaths. Opioids were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017 (67.8% of all drug overdose deaths).

In 2017, the states with the highest rates of death due to drug overdose were West Virginia (57.8 per 100,000), Ohio (46.3 per 100,000), Pennsylvania (44.3 per 100,000), the District of Columbia (44.0 per 100,000), and Kentucky (37.2 per 100,000).1

States with statistically significant increases in drug overdose death rates from 2016 to 2017 included Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. 2

Finally, it is reported that abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide in 2018, killing 42 million people. Breitbart contrasted the abortion numbers to other causes of death, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, traffic accidents and suicide, and found that abortions far outnumbered every other cause.

Abortions are, by enlarge, conducted by a healthcare professional.

The Hippocratic Oath reads:

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.

I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.

I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.

I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.

I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

—Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna, Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University, and used in many medical schools today.

Sadly, too many healthcare professionals ignore their solemn oath to their patients.

RELATED STUDY: Death by Medicine by Dr. Gary Null

RELATED ARTICLE: Abortion As Self-Harm: The Human Element

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Luis Melendez on Unsplash.

OPEN BORDERS FACILITATE AMERICA’S RACE TO THE BOTTOM: “Cheap labor” is anything but cheap.

For decades the United States government, on all levels, has betrayed its own citizens, promoting open borders policies that have come to undermine national security, public safety, public health, and jobs and wages for American workers.

The massive influx of alien children who lack English language proficiency also has a profound impact on the education of American kids.  Increasingly schools across the United States are forced to provide costly ESL (English as a Second Language) services draining funds that could and should be used to provide quality education for American children.  Additionally, as autism rates soar and with it the growing need for special services and early intervention for such learning challenged children, money that should be spent on those vital programs that could help so many of those children live better and more productive lives is being used, instead, to fund those ESL programs for illegal aliens and frequently the children of illegal aliens who do not speak English in their homes.

When early intervention is withheld from at-risk students, the results are frequently catastrophic, yet with all of the emotional arguments posed by the immigration anarchists who call for compassion for illegal aliens, their calls for compassion utterly disregard the plight of American children. 

Open borders policies permit huge numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States and displace American workers, not because American’s “won’t do these jobs” as claimed by the duplicitous politicians, but because these foreign workers are willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than would the American workers whom they displace.

We can all think back to the days when we were growing up and sought our very first jobs to provide us with some spending money, enabling us to put our foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

We often encountered the conundrum of not being able to get a job without a reference.  In order to get a reference we had to have a previous employer vouch for us.  This made getting that very first job all the more difficult and, at the same time, all the more important.

I remember my first job, when I was 14 yeas old, working during my summer vacation in a Kosher delicatessen, a short bike ride from home in Brooklyn where I washed dishes, fried potatoes and served hot dogs at the counter, waited on tables and delivered sandwiches to the women who spent hours at the nearby beauty parlors.

It was exciting and empowering to be earning money instead of asking my parents for an allowance.  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, that job also provided me with an education in life lessons, teaching me to be responsible, punctual and take instructions from an employer.  That job also taught me the value of money, I was far less likely to squander money when I had to work so hard to earn it.

Finally, that job provided me with that important first reference that helped me get other jobs in the future as I climbed the economic ladder to a successful life.

Many of my friends also worked in nearby restaurants. Brooklyn has no shortage of great places to eat, often small “mom and pop” restaurants and everyone of those establishments routinely hired teenagers and college students who were desperate to earn money.

Today most of those jobs in all too many local restaurants and other businesses are not taken by teenage American kids, but but illegal aliens, thereby shutting out Americans.

Consequently, these American kids are often unable to get that first job that would mean so much to them and provide them with important life lessons including a sense of self-worth and empowerment.

Unable to find legitimate employment, some kids, particularly in the poor neighborhoods, resort to committing crimes to get their hands on some money to take a girl on a date or make purchases.  This often puts these teenagers on a trajectory that does not end well for them or for their communities, or for America.

Illegal alien day laborers often displace construction workers, resulting in massive unemployment for American and lawful immigrant workers, boosting the profits of their employers who hire them “off the books” and pay them extremely low wages.

The open-borders/immigration anarchists are quick to invoke arguments about the need for compassion.  The reality is that there’s no compassion in the exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers nor is there compassion in the destruction of wages and jobs for Americans.

Now with the legalization of marijuana in many cities and states across the United States the issue not being raised in the media is that inasmuch as many companies test their employees for illegal drugs, it is likely that those who are encouraged to smoke marijuana will lose their jobs, perhaps leading to the globalists claiming that not only are lazy Americans not willing to take physically demanding jobs, and too dumb to take hi-tech jobs but are now too stoned to take any jobs.

The displacement of American workers is not limited to the economic bottom rung jobs.  America has been increasingly importing computer programmers and other hi-tech workers from India and other countries to displace Americans.

The Democratic Party used to act in the interests of American workers and, as a part of their efforts to protect the jobs and wages of Americans, opposed the importation of foreign workers.  Today, the Democratic Party no longer represents American workers and, in fact, has come to betray American workers and their families.  Today’s Democratic Party insists on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour to achieve “wage equality.”  This works out to an annual wage of slightly more than $30,000.  The question that is never asked, particularly by the mainstream media is: “with whom would these workers become equal?”

It would be one thing if they insisted on a $15.00 minimum wage to help America’s working poor.  But to tout that wage as a means of achieving “wage equality” should give all Americans cause for pause.

As I noted in an article I once wrote about the veiled attack on the middle class,

The Wage Equality Deception, Alan Greenspan the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, invoked the notion of wage equality way back on April 30, 2009 when he testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship that was, at that time, chaired by Chuck Schumer.

The subject of the hearing was “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?”  Greenspan’s prepared testimony included this assertion:

But there is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy. Between 2000 and 2007, for example, it accounted for more than a sixth of the increase in our total civilian labor force. The illegal part of the civilian labor force diminished last year as the economy slowed, though illegals still comprised an estimated 5% of our total civilian labor force. Unauthorized immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce, often a safety valve when demand is pressing and among the first to be discharged when the economy falters.

Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.

Greenspan must not have gotten the memo- when America’s poorest workers suffer wage suppression they are likely to become homeless and, indeed, across the United States, homelessness has increased dramatically.  This not only creates chaos in the lives of the homeless and their children, but imposes severe economic burdens on cities that have to cope with this disaster.

Greenspan went on to state the United States must accede to Bill Gates’ demand for more H-1B visas as Gates noted in his testimony at a previous hearing, that we are “driving away the world’s best and brightest precisely when we need them most.” 

Where I come from, “the world’s best and brightest” are AMERICANS!  This is what is commonly referred to as “American Exceptionalism.”

Greenspan supported his infuriating call for many more H-1B visas by the following “benefits” for America and, as you will see, the last sentence of his outrageous paragraph addresses the notion of reducing “wage inequality” by lowering wages of middle class, highly educated Americans whom Greenspan had the chutzpah to refer to as “the privileged elite”!

Consider this excerpt from his testimony:

First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.

Generally, the prospect of high-paying jobs incentivized American students to go on to college and acquire costly and time-consuming educations to be qualified to take those exciting and well-paying jobs.  If wages for high-tech professionals are slashed, those jobs will no longer be attractive to Americans.

Greenspan, Schumer and their cohorts are determined to create a $15.00 per hour “standard wage” to be paid to all workers irrespective of education or the nature of their jobs.  This is called Communism! 

Many have said that the Democrats want to import immigrants who will vote for their candidates.

What is often overlooked is that the downward economic spiral caused by the massive influx of cheap alien labor pushes ever more beleaguered Americans to vote for the Democrats who promise to help the hapless, financially strapped Americans for whom, no matter how hard they may strive, the “American Dream” has become an unattainable dream.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared in FrontPage Magazine. It is republished with permission.

Are “New American” Doctors Fueling the Opioid Crisis?

Surely some of the doctors who prescribe unnecessary pain medications and hook hundreds of thousands of Americans on drugs are American born and bred, but check out this story from Michigan in December.

Screenshot (821)

No bond for Dr. Rajendra Bothra

Not only did these ‘new American’ doctors and health professionals turn unsuspecting Americans into drug addicts, but they did it by using your taxpayer dollars in multi-million dollar fraud schemes involving Medicare and Medicaid.

They got rich destroying lives!

And, when they got caught, many fled the country!

From the Detroit News:

Rich and on the run: Doctors flee country amid fraud, opioid crackdown

Detroit — More than a dozen doctors and medical professionals charged with federal crimes locally have fled the country in recent years amid a federal crackdown on illegal opioid use and health care fraud.

Prosecutors used the fugitive status of 16 medical professionals who have fled since 2011 to keep Dr. Rajendra Bothra jailed Wednesday while he awaits trial in a nearly $500 million conspiracy, one of the largest health care fraud cases in U.S. history.

Here is a bit more, but please read the shocking story!

The medical professionals who have fled for overseas destinations including Jordan, Pakistan and Egypt in recent years have two things in common: foreign ties and big bank accounts that have financed flights from justice. In Bothra’s case, he has eight siblings in India and amassed a $35 million fortune and vast-real estate holdings, including a $1.99 million island estate.

Screenshot (822)
The Detroit News did a great service by publishing this list of Detroit doctors/medical professionals who have left the country to avoid prosecution. Too bad those last two columns are blank!

More here.

In case you have forgotten, last summer then Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the largest healthcare bust of Medicare and Medicaid fraud scammers in US history and linked it to the opioid crisis.

Medicare Fraud Strike Force

To help find and prosecute frauds and crooks, the feds established the Medicare Fraud Strike Force involving a coordinated effort between the Fraud Section of the US Justice Department, US Attorney’s offices, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General and local law enforcement.

I bet you’ve never even heard of it because the national media rarely (if ever!) mentions its work, which the Strike Force says has resulted in successful prosecutions of 4,000 defendants who have collectively billed the Medicare program for more than $14 billion.

In addition to the Detroit area, the Strike Force is operating in 12 locations around the US: Miami, FL, Los Angeles, CA, Houston, TX, Brooklyn, NY, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, LA, Tampa and Orlando, FL, Chicago, IL, Dallas, TX, Washington, DC, Newark, NJ, Philadelphia, PA and the Appalachian Region.

question mark

I wonder why these huge Medicare and Medicaid fraud stories never seem to be front page news across the country and why aren’t they widely reported by cable news?

RELATED ARTICLE: Delaware: Largest “Known” Food Stamp Fraud Bust in State’s History

EDITORS NOTE: This column by Frauds, Crooks and Criminals with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by rawpixel on Unsplash.

We Need Two Way Border Security

America needs two way border security. It will save American lives and American dollars.

Most people think of border security for keeping bad people from entering the U. S. A. That is important. The recent murder of a police officer in California by an illegal alien during a traffic stop is good evidence of that.

Several years ago in my hometown, an illegal alien talked his way into a woman’s home and then raped and murdered her. When her sister came to check why the first sister was not answering the phone, the illegal alien raped and murdered the second sister.

A few years ago, near Valparaiso, Indiana, an illegal alien ran a stop sign and killed himself and other people in another car. So, preventing bad people from entering the U.S.A. is very important.

But, stopping bad people from leaving the U.S.A. is another important part of border security. Over 20 years ago, I visited relatives and friends in California. One friend who owned a construction firm showed me articles about heavy equipment at construction sites being stolen and taken to Mexico. In Mexico, the equipment was put on ships and sent to other parts of the world. Construction companies, insurance companies, government roadway projects, and taxpayers suffered financially because no one stopped the thieves from taking the expensive equipment to Mexico.

I lived in Las Vegas but made a point not to drive a new car because so many nice cars were being stolen from Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tucson. The nice cars were being driven to Mexico to be sold for profit to criminal gangs. Again, the thieves succeeded and made millions of dollars because no security was at our border with Mexico to stop them. People lost cars and insurance companies raised rates to cover their losses.

Lack of border security costs lives and money. Investing in border security will be worth every penny spent.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Amber Wolfe on Unsplash.

Here Are Six Republican Women To Watch In 2019

  • A number of Republican female candidates enjoyed success in 2018.
  • Three women became the first elected female governors in their states during the 2018 midterm elections.
  • Members of Congress Liz Cheney and Elise Stefanik are continuing to raise their profiles in the GOP.

2018 was a year with plenty of firsts for Republican women — Marsha Blackburn became the first woman to represent Tennessee in the Senate, Kristi Noem was elected South Dakota’s first female governor and the list goes on.

Republican women will be carrying that momentum into 2019. Here are six GOP women to watch in the coming year, from the governor’s mansion to Capitol Hill.

Liz Cheney

Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney will hold the same seat her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, held nearly 40 years ago. She achieved the party’s third-ranking leadership position after just one term in Congress, while her father achieved it after four. (RELATED: Great Americans We Lost In 2018)

She will succeed Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers as Republican conference chair in 2019. The position puts her in the running for even more prestigious GOP spots in the coming years.

Cheney has served on the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Natural Resources since 2017.

Rep. Liz Cheney, who was elected House Republican conference chair, talks to reporters following House GOP leadership elections with (L-R) Rep. Jason Smith, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill November 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Rep. Liz Cheney, who was elected House Republican conference chair, talks to reporters following House GOP leadership elections with (L-R) Rep. Jason Smith, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill November 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Elise Stefanik

New York Rep. Elise Stefanik won re-election to her third term in Congress during the 2018 midterm elections. She held the record for youngest woman elected to Congress until Democratic New York Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29, broke Stefanik’s record in 2018.

Stefanik has long been vocal about her belief that Congress needs more women.

“I think women speak to hard working families,” she told The Daily Caller in a 2013 interview. “The people that balance budgets for their families are often women. Women are small business owners. Women increasingly are the higher dollar earners in families. I think it is important to represent their perspective.”

She also clashed with other Republicans in recent days. Stefanik had been the first woman to head recruitment for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) but stepped down in December, reported The New York Times. She said she wants to focus on her leadership political action committee, E-PAC, to help more Republican women succeed in primaries.

The New York Times wrote:

Ms. Stefanik said she recruited more than 100 women to run this year, and only one won a seat in Congress; she said she grew frustrated by the party’s reluctance to back the new candidates she had helped recruit.

Some of her congressional colleagues did not like her decision. Incoming NRCC chairman Tom Emmer, a Minnesota Republican, called it a “mistake.”

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik speaks onstage during Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit - Day 1 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on October 12, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune/Time Inc)

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik speaks onstage during Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit – Day 1 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on October 12, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune/Time Inc)

“If that’s what Elise wants to do, then that’s her call, her right,” Emmer told Roll Call. “But I think that’s a mistake. … It shouldn’t be just based on looking for a specific set of ingredients — gender, race, religion — and then we’re going to play in the primary.”

Stefanik has served on the Committee on Armed Services and Committee on Education and the Workforce since 2015, according to Ballotpedia. She’s served on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence since 2017.

Kristi Noem

Outgoing South Dakota Rep. Kristi Noem outraised her Democratic rival for the governor seat in 2018 and won a race classified as a “remarkable” toss-up by Cook Political Report. Noem became the first female governor of South Dakota without much media fanfare.

She ran on a platform of keeping taxes and regulation down. Noem also banked on her down-to-earth image as a rancher who helped run the family operation when her father died unexpectedly.

Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis (R) sits next to U.S. President Donald Trump and Governor of South Dakota-elect Kristi Noem during a meeting with Governors elects in the Cabinet Room at the White House on December 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Florida Governor-elect Ron DeSantis (R) sits next to U.S. President Donald Trump and Governor of South Dakota-elect Kristi Noem during a meeting with Governors elects in the Cabinet Room at the White House on December 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Noem discussed her experience as a congresswoman in a legislative body that’s roughly 80 percent male.

“I was expected to help with the chores, even though they were tough and they were often dirty ones,” Noem said during a 2011 floor speech, according to The Hill. “I grew up thinking that I could do anything that the boys could do, and that way of thinking has certainly stayed with me.”

Kay Ivey and Kim Reynolds

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds are is the first woman to be elected governor in her state, and Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey is the second in hers — the key word being “elected.” Ivey and Reynolds were both lieutenant governors who stepped in when their respective governors could no longer serve in office. Now they have cemented their positions in elections.

The two former second-in-commands became state executives for very different reasons. Ivey replaced former Republican Gov. Robert J. Bentley, who resigned in the wake of a sex scandal, in 2017. Reynolds replaced former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad when he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to China that same year.

Alabama has not had a female governor since Lurleen Wallace died in office in 1968. Ivey, a former teacher, wants to raise pay for state education employees as well as focus on “early childhood education, computer science in middle and high school and workforce preparedness,” reported CBS 42.

President-elect Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, left, poses for photos with Alabama Lieutenant Governor Kay Ivey during a thank you rally in Ladd-Peebles Stadium on December 17, 2016 in Mobile, Alabama. (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, left, poses for photos with Alabama Lieutenant Governor Kay Ivey during a thank you rally in Ladd-Peebles Stadium on December 17, 2016 in Mobile, Alabama. (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)
U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during a campaign rally at the Mid-America Center on October 9, 2018 in Council Bluffs. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks during a campaign rally at the Mid-America Center on October 9, 2018 in Council Bluffs. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Reynolds straddled the conservative and moderate factions of her party during her 2018 run for governor. She broke with the Iowa GOP’s stance against same-sex marriage during summer 2018 when she said the issue was settled because state and federal courts had ruled in favor of it, reported the Des Moines Register.

However, Reynolds also faced criticism when she kept Republican Iowa Rep. Steve King as a co-chair of her 2018 campaign, despite remarks King had made that many deemed racist, reported the Des Moines Register.

Mia Love

Unlike the other politicians on this list, outgoing Republican Utah Rep. Mia Love won’t be sworn into any office in 2019. She lost her re-election bid to Democrat Ben McAdams during the 2018 midterm election.

Love has not said what her next step will be, but there have been reports she will not try to retake her seat on Capitol Hill and might instead try her hand as a political commentator, reported Utah Policy in the wake of her concession.

Love went after President Donald Trump and the Republican Party for shunning “real relationships” and opting for “convenient transactions” during her concession speech in Salt Lake City on Nov. 25.

Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) speaks at an event honoring the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass' birth on Capitol Hill on February 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Rep. Mia Love (R-UT) speaks at an event honoring the bicentennial of Frederick Douglass’ birth on Capitol Hill on February 14, 2018 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Trump had slammed Love for distancing herself from him and his policies during her campaign when it appeared likely she would lose her re-election bid after Election Day.

“The president’s behavior towards me made me wonder,” Love said during her concession speech, according to CNN. “What did he have to gain by saying such a thing about a fellow Republican? … However, this gave me a clear vision of his world as it is. No real relationships, just convenient transactions. That is an insufficient way to implement sincere service and policy.”

Democrat Ben McAdams defeated Love by 0.2 percent — 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent — according to The Times.

“Mia Love gave me no love and she lost,” Trump said Nov. 7. “Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia.”

COLUMN BY

Evie Fordham

Evie Fordham

Politics and Health Care Reporter. Follow Evie on Twitter @eviefordham. Send tips to evie@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

VIDEO: Triple-Amputee Veteran Brian Kolfage Delivers An Inspirational Message for 2019

WATCH:

The Purple Heart recipient who started the GoFundMe page to fund President Trump’s border wall shared his New Year’s Resolution with The Daily Caller and offered some inspirational words and encouragement to everyone in 2019.

Brian Kolfage, a triple-amputee shares how he overcame adversity after his life-changing injury that occurred while he was deployed in Iraq in 2004.

Kolfage hasn’t let his injuries get in the way of his life – so much so, you can catch him snowboarding, scuba diving and even water skiing.

COLUMN BY

Stephanie Hamill

Stephanie Hamill

Video Columnist

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Good News From Trump-Graham Discussion on Syria

Senator Graham (R-SC) said he felt better about the President’s plan to withdraw from Syria after he met with Mr. Trump on December 30.  Graham sent this tweet on his meeting with the president:

Graham also said, “We talked about Syria. He told me some things I didn’t know that made me feel a lot better about where we’re headed in Syria.”  Graham’s meeting and subsequent press reports suggest President Trump has reconsidered his December 19 decision to quickly withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria but also that there is more to the President’s decision than his detractors are aware of.

Some thoughts on this development.

First, the President did the right thing by adjusting his plan to quickly withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.  This shows that he is listening to experts, members of Congress and foreign leaders.

Second, whether or not one believes Mr Trump made a mistake in announcing the quick withdrawal of U.S. troops last month, it was irritating to watch some of the President’s former supporters run to Twitter and cable news to bash him for this decision.  Many of these condemnations represented people trying to score points with the mainstream media and the foreign policy establishment at the President’s expense.  Meanwhile, those of us who had problems with this decision but want President Trump to succeed worked behind the scenes to help his administration get this policy right.  

Third, President Trump has raised legitimate concerns about the U.S. troop deployment in Syria.  He is right that the U.S. worked with its allies to drive ISIS from 99% of the territory it once held.  He’s also correct that the mandate for the U.S. force is unclear and has no exit strategy.  While the U.S. force has a counterterrorism mission, American troops in Syria are not charged with stopping Iran and Russia from expanding their control in Syria.  Contrary to the President’s critics, it was President Obama who handed Syria to Iran and Russia by his “leading from behind” strategy.  The U.S. force of 2,500 is too small to undo this even if it was part of its mandate.

Fourth, if there must be a Western troop presence in Syria, it should be a NATO presence.  The U.S. force in Syria benefits Europe since defeating ISIS stems the flow of refugees and jihadists from Syria to Europe.  While several European states continue to participate in airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Europe should be sharing more of the burden in Syria by deploying ground troops through NATO.  

I know President Trump has good advisers around him who are working hard to get his Syria policy right.  The Center for Security Policy has been in touch with some of these advisers and we are optimistic about the outcome of this policy.

About Fred Fleitz

Fred Fleitz is President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He recently served as a Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Chief of Staff to National Security Adviser John Bolton. He previously worked in national security positions for 25 years with CIA, DIA, the Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff. Follow Fleitz on Twitter @fredfleitz. View all posts by Fred Fleitz →

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column with images is republished with permission.

Despite Senator Schumer’s Assurances, Democrats Do Not Support Border Security.

On November 27, 2018, Senator Chuck Schumer stood in the Capitol before a crowd of reporters and reassured them that Democrats favor border security.  Sadly, the overwhelming evidence points to the contrary.  

Democrats have long been engaged in a battle to dismantle America’s border defenses.  On November 8, 1971, Berkeley, California became the first city in the United States to offer itself up as a sanctuary city. Many municipalities followed in the 1980s such that today, a host of local jurisdictions are refusing to cooperate with ICE.  (To access ICE’s list of sanctuary jurisdictions click here.) 

To a tee, these municipalities are democratically controlled, and in 2017, California, a Democratic stronghold, became the first and still only sanctuary state.

As we know, imparting sanctuary status upon a jurisdiction serves to protect the illegal inhabitant from detainment by ICE, as the jurisdiction will not cooperate with such detainers.  Such a permissive policy serves as a magnet for illegal immigrants who stand a significantly lower chance of being turned over to federal authorities should they break the law.  

Democrats have also proclaimed their support for open borders.  Ignorantly, Democrats have repeatedly argued that the unencumbered flow of people across the border, including that of the United States, is a human right and should be allowed as a matter of justice.  They voice disdain at the Trump Administration’s reticence in cooperating with the United Nation’s global migration pact.  Specifically, in 2017, when President Trump said he would not be sending American representatives to the United Nations’ conference on migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Democrats attacked him over the decision.

It likely bears no need for explaining, but a no-borders policy by the United States and the world stands in direct opposition to efforts at securing America’s borders.  

In 2018, when the caravan was headed north to America’s southern border, Democrat elements denied the caravan’s existence maintaining that it was a fabricated problem used by President Trump only for political expediency.  Today, these are the same Democrats decrying the horrible conditions of these migrants in the hopes that they are given free passage into the United States.

With few exceptions, the party leading the charge to maximize the standing for asylum seekers to gain legal entry into the United States is the Democratic Party.  The party that dismisses the injustice of having those same asylum seekers enter the United States, remain there for over three years before their case is evaluated by an immigration judge, and then not show up for the hearing is the Democrat Party.

The Democrats support catch and release and want to abolish ICE.  They oppose allocating $5.7 billion of the national, multi-trillion dollar budget to the construction of a wall at our southern borders despite the fact that the President has compromised on his initial ask of over $20 billion and despite the fact that the difference between the two parties is $3.3 billion. And when Senator Schumer repeatedly goes to the airwaves and says that the President will never get his wall despite risking a government shutdown, it is clear that Schumer could not care less about border security.

Adding to the evidence of their contempt for border security is the Democrats’ ire towards any attempt at keeping illegal immigrants out of the United States and their repeated misrepresentations of both the demographics of the problem and America’s justifiable response to it.

And let’s not forget, it is the Democrat Party that remains silent when an illegal immigrant guns down an American citizen while ignoring the grave and unpalatable injustice of having had that illegal immigrant previously released by a sanctuary jurisdiction.

No.  Despite Schumer’s reassurances, the Democrats are not in the least bit interested in border security.  They have never made it a driving issue for their party nor have they supported it actively in their daily undertakings.  Schumer’s claim to the contrary represents a mere, disingenuous capitulation to the fact that the majority of Americans find controlling our borders fundamentally important to our security, our economy, and our safety. 

Sadly, and despite the fact that every major American political party should be lock-step on this issue, if an American citizen values border security (and the rule of law for that matter) he or she cannot stand with the Democrats despite the Schumer’s fake assurances.  

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Federalist Pages. The featured photo is by Radek Homola on Unsplash.

7 Reasons to Say Goodbye to Teachers Unions

I stand with teachers—not unions.

Every year, my school district hosts a beginning of the year meeting with every employee in the district. Amidst all the pomp are 15 minutes during which my school district provides a platform for the head of the local teachers union. He doesn’t say much, keeping it vague and general. He says the union works with the school board and other leaders to fight for both teachers and students.

He also spends time in the teachers’ lounge occasionally, handing out pamphlets. A note in defense of unions was left at a table in the lounge recently. It details accomplishments of unions past and the evils of corporations. This note and this speech are a nice review of a high school civics course, but they have one glaring flaw: they focus entirely on the past.

Contexts change. For instance, the necessity of stationed US troops in Germany has shifted since the Cold War. The same goes for unions at large as the US reaches historical levels of prosperity. We can appreciate the accomplishments of the past while still reconsidering the utility of unions in the present. There are of course defenses of unions within a modern context. That said, they are ultimately lacking. Here are seven reasons why we should support the dissolution of teachers unions in 2019.

Two years ago, while I was a first-year teacher, I mistakenly stumbled into a members-only meeting in my school’s library. Before being shooed away and denied a scone with coffee, I saw pamphlets in stacks next to the treats. One column was topped by a glowering Donald Trump over a dark red background like a Sith lord; the other had a smiling Hillary Clinton.

While teachers are stereotypically liberal, a survey done by Education Week found that 43 percent of educators define themselves as moderate, with a near equal number identifying as conservative or liberal. In 2016, 50 percent of teachers voted for Hillary Clinton and 29 percent for Donald Trump. Teachers are a moderate and politically diverse crowd.

That being said, in the past 28 years, teachers unions have given 96 percent of their funding to Democratic candidates. In the agenda from the National Education Association (NEA)’s most recent annual meeting, the business items include a commitment to:

  • Responding to the “heartless, racist, and discriminatory zero-tolerance [immigration] policies of the Trump administration”
  • Supporting Black Lives Matter
  • Opposing arming teachers in schools
  • The removal of Confederate leaders from school monuments
  • Posting a public list of individuals who have refused service to LGBTQ people
  • The postponement of the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh
  • The prohibition of private jails
  • Opposing charter schools and voucher programs
  • Describing and deconstructing “the systemic proliferation of a White supremacy culture and its constituent elements of White privilege and institutional racism”

Regardless of your views on all of these, there is a clear disparity between the agenda of the largest teachers union in the nation and the views of its teachers. Perhaps even more glaring, many of these issues have only a tangential relation to education, if that. While they speak of defending teachers, much of their energy is spent advocating for various, non-educational political initiatives.

Both Republicans and Democrats complain about money in politics. Both sides have their boogeyman: George Soros and the Koch Brothers. And yet, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the NEA was the second largest contributor to political campaigns of any individual, corporation, or union in 2014. In 2016, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and NEA collectively gave $64 million in political contributions compared to only $11 million and $28 million by the Koch brothers and George Soros, respectively.

Unions fight for increased funding with the intent of raising teacher pay and purchasing better academic materials. Some research shows that it is beneficial. Other papers don’t. An analysis by Johns Hopkins finds a synthesis between the two, arguing that how school achievement is defined and how money is spent determine whether funding correlates with improvement. Until structural reforms are put in place to apply market pressure to the schools, any funding increase will be little more than waste.

At the first school I worked at, the book room had thousands of books, worth thousands of dollars, and I was one of the only teachers in our building who used them. My department had a supply closet filled with toys and gadgets no one used. There are curriculum teams and staff members collectively paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a curriculum that is either followed without fidelity or ignored entirely.

Per pupil spending, school achievement, and teacher pay give data to substantiate this claim. In current dollars, school spending has increased by roughly $3,000 per pupil since the early 1990s; yet teacher pay has declined or remained flat in most states, while student achievement on test scores has remained stagnant or even decreased in some states. Money is increasing, but it isn’t creating results.

More generally, teachers unions promote a strict pay scale that rewards any teacher for years taught—be they exceptional or mediocre or lousy—incentivizing longevity, not performance. They also make it nearly impossible to fire teachers, taking up to two years and $200,000 according to Stanford Professor Terry Moe. Social stances, funding, and strict pay scales just won’t do in the face of crumbling urban education.

Unions block the reforms that will structurally change a broken system and in return, promise increased funding, which will, in turn, be drained away by the broken system. Namely, they oppose school choice, merit-based pay, standardized tests, and the Praxis, an entrance exam for teachers.

School choice, while not a panacea, is one reform that has tremendous potential for improving schools. Research shows that the pressure this funding structure places on schools increases student performancesaves money, and improves students’ mental health.

Educational reform has been stymied. Across the board, Republicans have advanced comprehensive reforms from charter schools to more stringent teacher evaluations and merit-based pay. After a blue wave, many fear that the growth it has enacted may be at an end.

I allow my students to set some classroom rules to provide a sense of ownership. One student expressed that he didn’t want a star or candy simply for following directions. It’s condescending, he said, to praise a student for the minimum. That assumes you only expect the minimum.

In my role, I watch many teachers teach, and not everyone necessarily deserves a star. I have heard teachers tell their kids to ask fewer questions. I have seen teachers celebrate over pregnant students. I have heard teachers speak of students using language one would expect from the villain in a Scorsese movie. All the while, teachers denigrate any test that shows stagnant scores or an administrator who questions their efficacy.

The unions tell us that we, the teachers, deserve our jobs and better pay regardless of the success of our students, but in reality, we deserve more money and respect only if we do our job well. To suggest anything else is a disservice to the profession.

I was new to teaching and sat across from the school’s manager of our 403(b) plans. I asked if the school district would match my contribution. They don’t, because the district pays toward our pension. I rolled my eyes, and so did she.

Chad Aldeman, a former analyst at the Department of Education, explains the problem well. He says that “states are paying an average of 12 percent of each teacher’s salary just for debt costs. If states didn’t face these large debts, they could afford to give that money back to teachers in the form of higher salaries—an average of $6,801 for every public school teacher in America.”In education, teachers receive retirement benefits based on a formula, unable to invest any more than the predetermined amount.

Under a 401(k) plan, any employee could choose to be frugal and invest more, as well as receive more from their employer and thereby more from their retirement plan. In education, teachers receive retirement benefits based on a formula, unable to invest any more than the predetermined amount.

That $6,800 dollars could go to much better use. For those of us who choose to save, we would end up with a retirement portfolio that would outdo most teacher pensions. Others may counter that some do not have the disposable income to save for themselves, but even in this case, those teachers should be allowed to keep their money and spend it on whatever medical bill or child care they need.

Factory workers during the Industrial Revolution were expendable. They had no specialized skills or education with which they could bargain in a labor-flooded market. Conversely, teachers are a highly-skilled and educated workforce in a market where they are in short supply.

A friend of mine, one of the best teachers at our school, was falsely accused of hitting a student. Under convoluted district rules, the principal wanted to fire him. This teacher walked into the office with test scores, student testimonials, projects demonstrating mastery by some of our school’s most difficult students, and hallway video records that proved him innocent. We can bargain for ourselves.

As a rule, I try not to stand in opposition to things. It breeds resentment instead of changing minds and casts no vision for a way forward. I’m not against unions. I’m for teachers. For us to flourish financially and professionally, we need the freedom to bargain for ourselves, the respect that comes with accountability, and meaningful reform. Therefore, I stand with teachers—not unions.

COLUMN BY

Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck is an educator in an urban school in Wisconsin with a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an editor for the website Lone Conservative.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images by FEE is republished with permission. Image credit: Max Pixel.

Virginia: Alexandria “Man” Arrested on Christmas Eve for Filming a Minor in Mall Dressing Room

Ladies beware!

The “man,” Mumtaz Rauf, 39, was arrested at Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia after a sharp-eyed teen saw what looked like a camera peeping down at her while she was trying on clothes in a mall shop.

Mumtaz Rauf
Mumtaz Rauf

The incident is alleged to have happened at Forever 21 in the late afternoon of Christmas eve.

The girl reported her fear about someone possibly filming her to a store clerk who then spotted a man hurrying from the store.

Rauf was arrested in a dressing room in another store a short time later.

NBC Washington reported (see the video too!) that when police arrived Rauf had a pinhole camera on him, some black tape and a Bluetooth transmitter.

Rauf “was charged with unlawful filming of a minor, which is a felony because of the victim’s age,” continued the NBC report.

Mumtaz rauf gear
Rauf’s tools of the trade from INSIDENOVA story

Rauf was previously a bartender in Alexandria and had been profiled almost a year ago to the day in the Old Town Crier.

In the interview Rauf was asked, “How did you get started in the bartending business?”

His reply: “High hopes of money, women and fame.” (Hmmm!)

Fairfax County Police believe that this was not a one-time event, so if you think you may have been filmed in a dressing room at Fair Oaks Mall, call police at 703-591-0966.

The story was reported by other local news outlets here and here.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images originally appeared on Frauds, Crooks and Criminals. It is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Alex Bocharov on Unsplash.

What is Fake News? How can you recognize it?

Shevon Desai, Hailey Mooney and Jo Angela Oehrli from the University of Michigan have created a Fake News Guide. The guide provides extensive data on what is fake news, how to recognize its various iterations and provides information on bias in the media.

Included in their guide is Claire Wardle, of FirstDraftNews.com, visual image below to help consumers of news think about the ecosystem of mis- and disinformation. Wardle provides seven general categories of fake news.

7 types of mis/disinformation

What Is Fake News?

Desai, Mooney and Oehrli state:

“Fake news” is a term that has come to mean different things to different people. At its core, we are defining “fake news” as those news stories that are false: the story itself is fabricated, with no verifiable facts, sources or quotes. Sometimes these stories may be propaganda that is intentionally designed to mislead the reader, or may be designed as “clickbait” written for economic incentives (the writer profits on the number of people who click on the story). In recent years, fake news stories have proliferated via social media, in part because they are so easily and quickly shared online.

Desai, Mooney and Oehrli also define mis and dis-information. Authors of mis- and dis-information include:

  • Someone wanting to make money, regardless of the content of the article (for example, Macedonian teenagers)
  • Satirists who want to either make a point or entertain you, or both
  • Poor or untrained journalists – the pressure of the 24 hour news cycle as well as the explosion of news sites may contribute to shoddy writing that doesn’t follow professional journalistic standards or ethics
  • Partisans who want to influence political beliefs and policy makers

The Fake News Guide is helpful in recognizing fake news.

What can I do about “fake news”?

Shevon Desai, Hailey Mooney and Jo Angela Oehrli suggest consumers of news:

  • Think critically. Use the strategies on these pages to evaluate the likely accuracy of information.
  • Think twice. If you have any doubt, do NOT share the information.

The Bottom Line

After reading the Fake News Guide I have determined that it is the individual reader who must decide what is fake news. It is not up to any social media site’s “community standards” to make this judgement. Why? Because they can be, and in many cases are, themselves biased.

In America an informed and educated citizenry is necessary to be able to think critically and think twice.

Fake News is the enemy of the people.

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is courtesy of the University of Michigan. The featured photo is by Elijah O’Donnell on Unsplash.

Antisemitic Doctor Who Said She’d Give Jews The Wrong Medication No Longer Employed At Ohio Hospital

An Ohio hospital confirmed Monday that it no longer employs a doctor who made anti-Semitic comments and promised to give Jewish patients the wrong medication.

The Cleveland Clinic said in its statement that it became aware of the social media posts by Lara Kollab, 27, who worked at the clinic from July to September 2018, and that her beliefs conflicted with those of the clinic. The hospital did not state, however, whether Kollab had been let go as a direct result of her tweets.

Kollab had a history of making violently anti-Semitic comments on social media. An online compilation of Kollab’s tweets showed she often referred to Jews as “dogs,” invoked Allah to kill them, and denigrated both Israel and the U.S.

“Cleveland Clinic was recently made aware of  comments posted to social media by a former employee,” the hospital’s Monday statement reads.

“This individual was employed as a supervised resident at our hospital from July to September 2018. She is no longer working at Cleveland Clinic. In no way do these beliefs reflect those of our organization. We fully embrace diversity, inclusion and a culture of safety and respect across our entire health system,” the statement adds.

Kollab since deleted her tweets, but Canary Mission, a website devoted to exposing those who openly support antisemitism or terrorist organizations, compiled, translated and took screenshots of some of them. They show calls for violence against the Jews, claims that the Holocaust is exaggerated, and open support for terrorists.

She also reportedly tweeted:

“@ShabanSalya Allah yo5od el yahood 3ashan enbattel nettar nroo7 3nd hel wes5een -___- [May Allah take back (end the lives) of the Jews so we stop being forced to go to those unclean ones].”

“shoof, ah 7efa 7elwe bes 7efa kolha yahood klab w looks like America, ya3ni wasn’t that special to me [look, Haifa is sweet (nice), but it’s full of Jewish dogs, and it looks like America, meaning, it wasn’t that special to me].”

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive but I have a REALLY hard time feeling bad about Holocaust seeing as the ppl who were in it now kill my ppl.”

She also reportedly tweeted in praise of terrorists like Khader Adnan, a senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“#KhaderAdnan is dying so we can live. #Palestine #KhaderExists,” Kollab wrote.

Kollab also expressed support for the the Palestine Right to Return Coalition and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israeli businesses.

Strangely, Kollab graduated from Touro College Of Osteopathic Medicine with a D.O. in 2018, which is an expressly Jewish Orthodox institution.

While Kollab is no longer employed at the hospital, her medical license is still active until 2021, according to Cleveland 19 News.

COLUMN BY

Joshua Gill

Religion Reporter. Follow Joshua on Twitter.Send tips to joshua@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

RELATED ARTICLE: New York Times Publishes Author’s Recommendation For An Anti-Semitic Book By Known Conspiracy Theorist

EDITORS NOTE: This column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.