“Paid Family Leave” Is a Great Way to Hurt Women by Robert P. Murphy

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In an article in the New Republic, Lauren Sandler argues that it’s about time the United States join the ranks of all other industrialized nations and provide legally guaranteed paid leave for pregnancy or illness.

Her arguments are similar to ones employed in the minimum wage debate. Opponents say that making particular workers more expensive will lead employers (on aggregate) to hire fewer of them. Supporters reject this tack as fearmongering, going so far as to claim such measures will boost profitability, and that only callous disregard for the disadvantaged can explain the opposition.

If paid leave (or higher pay for unskilled workers) helps workers and employers, then why do progressives need government power to force these great ideas on everyone?

The United States already has unpaid family leave, with the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) signed into law by President Clinton in 1993. This legislation “entitles eligible employees … to take unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons with continuation of group health insurance coverage under the same terms and conditions as if the employee had not taken leave.” Specifically, the FMLA grants covered employees 12 workweeks of such protection in a 12-month period, to deal with a pregnancy, personal sickness, or the care of an immediate family member. (There is a provision for 26 workweeks if the injured family member is in the military.)

But “workers’ rights” advocates want to move beyond the FMLA, in winning legally guaranteed paid leave for such absences. Currently, California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have such policies.

The basic libertarian argument against such legislation is simple enough: no worker has a right to any particular job, just as no employer has the right to compel a person to work for him or her. In a genuine market economy based on private property and consensual relations, employers and workers are legally treated as responsible adults to work out mutually beneficial arrangements. If it’s important to many women workers that they won’t forfeit their jobs in the event of a pregnancy, then in a free and wealthy society, many firms will provide such clauses in the employment contract in order to attract qualified applicants.

For example, if a 23-year-old woman with a fresh MBA is applying to several firms for a career in the financial sector, but she has a serious boyfriend and thinks they might one day start a family, then — other things equal — she is going to highly value a clause in the employment contract that guarantees she won’t lose her job if she takes off time to have a baby. Since female employment in the traditional workforce is now so prevalent, we can expect many employers to have such provisions in in their employment contracts in order to attract qualified applicants. Women don’t have a right to such clauses, just as male hedge-fund VPs don’t have a right to year-end bonuses, but it’s standard for employment contracts to have such features.

Leaving aside philosophical and ethical considerations, let’s consider basic economics and the consequences of pregnancy- and illness-leave legislation. It is undeniable that providing even unpaid, let alone paid, leave is a constraint on employers. Other things equal, an employer does not want an employee to suddenly not show up for work for months at a time, and then expect to come back as if nothing had happened. The employer has to scramble to deal with the absence in the meantime, and furthermore doesn’t want to pour too much training into a temporary employee because the original one is legally guaranteed her (or his) old job. If the employer also has to pay out thousands of dollars to an employee who is not showing up for work, it is obviously an extra burden.

As always with such topics, the easiest way to see the trade-off is to exaggerate the proposed measure. Suppose instead of merely guaranteeing a few months of paid maternity leave, instead the state enforced a rule that said, “Any female employee who becomes pregnant can take off up to 15 years, earning half of her salary, in order to deliver and homeschool the new child.” If that were the rule, then young female employees would be ticking time bombs, and potential employers would come up with all sorts of tricks to deny hiring them or to pay them very low salaries compared to their ostensible on-the-job productivity.

Now, just because guaranteed leave, whether paid or unpaid, is an expensive constraint for employers, that doesn’t mean such policies (in moderation) are necessarily bad business practices, so long as they are adopted voluntarily. To repeat, it is entirely possible that in a genuinely free market economy, many employers would voluntarily provide such policies in order to attract the most productive workers. After all, employers allow their employees to take bathroom breaks, eat lunch, and go on vacation, even though the employees aren’t generating revenue for the firm when doing so.

However, if the state must force employers to enact such policies, then we can be pretty sure they don’t make economic sense for the firms in question. In her article, Sandler addresses this fear by writing, in reference to New Jersey’s paid leave legislation,

After then-Governor Jon Corzine signed the bill, Chris Christie promised to overturn it during his campaign against Corzine. But Christie never followed through. The reason why is quite plain: As with California, most everyone loves paid leave. A recent study from the CEPR found that businesses, many of which strenuously opposed the policy, now believe paid leave has improved productivity and employee retention, decreasing turnover costs. (emphasis added)

Well, that’s fantastic! Rather than engaging in divisive political battles, why doesn’t Sandler simply email that CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research) study to every employer in the 47 states that currently lack paid leave legislation? Once they see that they are flushing money down the toilet right now with high turnover costs, they will join the ranks of the truly civilized nations and offer paid leave.

The quotation from Sandler is quite telling. Certain arguments for progressive legislation rely on “externalities,” where the profit-and-loss incentives facing individual consumers or firms do not yield the “socially optimal” behavior. On this issue of family leave, the progressive argument is much weaker. Sandler and other supporters must maintain that they know better than the owners of thousands of firms how to structure their employment contracts in order to boost productivity and employee retention. What are the chances of that?

In reality, given our current level of wealth and the configuration of our labor force, it makes sense for some firms to have generous “family leave” clauses for some employees, but it is not necessarily a sensible approach in all cases. The way a free society deals with such nuanced situations is to allow employers and employees to reach mutually beneficial agreements. If the state mandates an approach that makes employment more generous to women in certain dimensions — since they are the prime beneficiaries of pregnancy leave, even if men can ostensibly use it, too — then we can expect employers to reduce the attractiveness of employment contracts offered to women in other dimensions. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Mandating paid leave will reduce hiring opportunities and base pay, especially for women. If this trade-off is something the vast majority of employees want, then that’s the outcome a free labor market would have provided without a state mandate.


Robert P. Murphy

Robert P. Murphy is senior economist with the Institute for Energy Research. He is author of Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action (Independent Institute, 2015).

Labor Unions Create Unemployment: It’s a Feature, Not a Bug by Sarah Skwire

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Did the labor unions goof, or did they get exactly what they want?

Los Angeles has approved a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour. Some of the biggest supporters of that increase were the labor unions. But now that the increase has been approved, the unions are fighting to exempt union labor from that wage hike.

Over at Anything Peaceful, Dan Bier has nicely explained why the unions would do something that seems, at first glance, so nonsensical. But what I want to point out is that this kind of hijinks is not a new invention of 21st century organized labor. Instead, it’s pretty much what labor was organized to do. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Part of the early reasoning for the minimum wage — which originated as a “family wage” or “living wage” — was its intent to allow a worker to “keep his wife and children out of competition with himself” and presumably to keep all other women out of the workforce as well.

Similarly, the labor movement, from the very beginning, meant to protect organized white male labor from competition against black labor, immigrant labor, female labor, and nonunion labor. There are subtleties to this generalization, of course, and labor historian Ruth Milkman identifies four historical waves of the labor movement that have differing commitments (and a lack thereof) to a more diverse vision of labor rights. But unions — like so many other institutions — work on the “get up and bar the door” principle. Get up as high as you can, and then bar the door behind you against any further entrants who might cut into the goodies you have grabbed for yourself.

Labor union expert Charles Baird notes,

Unions depend on capture. They try to capture employers by cutting them off from alternative sources of labor; they try to capture workers by eliminating union-free employment alternatives; and they try to capture customers by eliminating union-free producers. Successful capture generates monopoly gains for unions.

Protection is the name of the game.

Unsurprisingly, the unions made sure to be involved when, about 50 years before the 1970s push for an equal rights amendment, there was another push for an ERA in the United States. Written by suffragist leader Alice Paul, the amendment was an attempt to leverage the newly recognized voting power of women into a policy that guaranteed men and women “shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place under its jurisdiction.” This amendment would have prevented various gender-based inequities that the courts supported at the time — like hugely different hourly wages for male and female workers, limits on the number of hours women could work, limits on when women could work (night shifts were seen as particularly dangerous for women’s health and welfare), and limits on the kinds of work women could do.

Reporting on the debates over the ERA in 1924, Doris Stevens noted three main objections to the amendment:

First, there was the familiar plea for gradual, rather than sweeping change.

Second, there were concerns over lost pensions for widows and mothers.

And in Stevens’s words,

The final objection says: Grant political, social, and civil equality to women, but do not give equality to women in industry.… Here lies the heart of the whole controversy. It is not astonishing, but very intelligent indeed, that the battle should center on the point of woman’s right to sell her labor on the same terms as man. For unless she is able equally to compete, to earn, to control, and to invest her money, unless in short woman’s economic position is made more secure, certainly she cannot establish equality in fact. She will have won merely the shadow of power without essential and authentic substance.

Suffragist Rheta Childe Dorr (in Good Housekeeping, of all places. How the mighty have fallen!) pointed out again the logic behind labor’s opposition to the equal rights amendment:

The labor unions are most opposed to this law, for few unions want women to advance in skilled trades. The Women’s Trade Union League, controlled and to a large extent supported by the men’s unions, opposes it. Of course, the welfare organizations oppose it, for it frees women wage earners from the police power of the old laws. But I pray that public opinion, especially that of the club women, will support it. It’s the first law yet proposed that gives working women a man’s chance industrially. “No men’s labor unions, no leisure class women, no uniformed legislators have a right to govern our lives without our consent,” the women declare, and I think they are dead right about it.

Organized labor — founded to ensure the collective right to contract — refused to stand up for the right of individual women to contract. From their point of view, it was only sensible. And, perhaps most importantly, women in organized labor refused to stand up for the women outside the unions.

Organized male and female labor’s fight against the ERA was at least as much about protectionism as it was about sexism. Maybe more. Women’s rights and union activist Ethel M. Smith attended the debates on the ERA to report on it for the Life and Labor Bulletin, and found that union workers did not even attempt to gloss over their protectionist agenda:

Miss Mary Goff of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, emphasized the seriousness of the effect upon organized establishments were legal restrictions upon hours of labor removed from the unorganized. “The organized women workers,” she said, “need the labor laws to protect them from the competition of the unorganized. Where my union, for instance, may have secured for me a 44-hour week, how long could they maintain it if there were unlimited hours for other workers? Unfortunately, there are hundreds of thousands of unorganized working women in New York who would undoubtedly be working 10 hours a day but for the 9-hour law of New York.”

So labor unions excluded women as long as they could, then let in a privileged few and barred the doors behind them. And they continue to use the same tactics today in LA and elsewhere.

How long can they keep it up?


Sarah Skwire

Sarah Skwire is a senior fellow at Liberty Fund, Inc. She is a poet and author of the writing textbook Writing with a Thesis.

The World According to UK’s National Union of Students

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Some scripts are so perfect and so perfectly predictable that they write themselves. One such example cropped up this week.

Of course the National Union of Students (NUS) in the UK can be relied upon to be predictable, if nothing else. Far from representing students, the organisation some time ago fell back onto only representing students of the hardest of hard left views. They have spent recent years attempting to subvert the counter-extremism efforts of consecutive governments, whether Labour, coalition or Conservative. And only recently did they decide to do a number of events in conjunction with CAGE, the radical Islamist organisation with which ‘Jihad John’ (Mohammed Emwazi) was associated.

That said, the NUS does sometimes do things that even its supporters are embarrassed by. For instance last year the NUS refused to issue a motion condemning Islamic State (IS). To do so, the delegates argued, would be ‘Islamophobic’. Our Associate Director, Douglas Murray, among others, made hay with this in the national media at the time. After all, if condemning IS is ‘Islamophobic’ what is one to do? Roll over and let them chop everyone’s heads off? Or issue a call for mutual understanding to the head-choppers (perhaps with a dose of apology for colonialism by way of appeal to the slave-keeping colonialists of IS).

So far, so ridiculous. But this week the NUS showed that there is always further to go. For this week the group that would not condemn IS chose to pass a motion condemning and calling for a boycott of the world’s only Jewish state. It didn’t occur to them – or didn’t bother them – that this might be Judaeophobic. Such concerns are apparently only in one direction. But it did provide a moment of clarity.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was among those who pointed out the extraordinary double standards of the NUS. There are those who think he should not have spoken about this – that it is somehow beneath a Prime Minister. But it is not. Today BDS activity is a strategic threat to the State of Israel. The NUS may only be one group of far-left anti-Israel agitators, but they are having success with that campaign. Such success that in 2015 it almost seems normal – indeed predictable.

Of course the representative body for students in Britain wouldn’t even use words against IS. Of course they are willing to use not just words but actions such as boycotts against Israel. This is a sickness, a perversion of our time. But it should have a light shone on it, from the highest possible positions of power. Because it is only by shining a light on this modern mode of acceptable bigotry that the world has any chance at all of seeing the real darkness it contains.

mendozahjs

FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK 

Having just returned from a trip to the USA this week, I have been struck by the much greater attention being paid to foreign and international security policy by our American cousins at present than we see on the UK political scene.

Our General Election last month was a case in point. Foreign policy did not emerge in any of the televised debates and discussions, nor intrude upon the concerns of the public in the endless polls run during the campaign. It was as if threats such as Islamic State (IS), Russian expansionism and Iran’s nuclear programme were of interest neither to those who govern, nor the governed themselves. Perhaps this can be explained by the old adage that there a no votes to be won in foreign policy. Or just reflective of the inward looking nature of our political dialogue today when compared to Britain’s glorious and internationalist history.

The same – fortunately given the importance of these issues to our security and wellbeing – cannot be said about the forthcoming US presidential election. Putative candidates have been falling over themselves to declare that they are the candidate best placed to protect the US in an uncertain world. We even had a Republican contender, Senator Lindsey Graham, declare his bid this week by putting foreign policy at the front and centre of his campaign, saying “I have more experience with our national security than any other candidate in this race. That includes you, Hillary.” Whether true or not, that makes for an increasing contrast with our own politicians.

However, as I pointed out to the many American interlocutors I engaged with during my visit, it is one thing to speak about foreign policy, and quite another to actually practice it. We have heard lots from the Obama administration for years about its vision of the world. Yet it has done exceedingly little to create alliances or push policies that will actually turn visions into reality.

It is tempting to muse that given some of the views emanating from the White House, that may not have been a bad thing. But the fact remains that the world is an indisputably better place when it has strong and clear leadership from the USA. We should therefore hope not only for a profound debate on foreign policy during the presidential campaign, but also for a candidate – from whichever party – willing to once again occupy the ‘bully pulpit’ of the presidency.

Dr Alan Mendoza is Executive Director of The Henry Jackson Society

Follow Alan on Twitter: @AlanMendoza

FLORIDA: 25 Reasons NOT to Take Federal Dollars to Expand Medicaid

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Monday, The Florida Legislature opened a special session to decide on the state budget and debate how Florida should move forward in regards to our healthcare future. The Senate offered a plan that supporters, including many business interests, sugarcoated in conservative buzzwords such as “a free market approach,” even though the plan is anything but. As we say here at The James Madison Institute, pro-business isn’t always pro-free market. House Republicans and Governor Rick Scott, for good reason, oppose expanding federal control and a flawed program in our state. The Senate approved its plan Wednesday and the House is set to debate the bill today and vote on it this Friday [May 5th].

The Tampa Bay Times recently released an editorial giving 25 reasons Florida should take the money and encouraging Floridians to “tell (lawmakers) to listen to the powerful moral and financial arguments for taking the money and providing access to affordable health care.” Yes, there is a powerful moral and financial argument to be made. Yes, solutions exist to provide access to affordable healthcare. No, the Times does not have the right answers for either.

As Forbes opinion editor, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and friend of JMI, Avik Roy points out, “Progressives have long enjoyed wielding the straw man. “If you oppose expanding Medicaid,” they say, ‘you oppose health care for the poor. Plain and simple.’ But the truth is, if you support expanding Medicaid, you’re doubling down on a failed system, one that shuts the door on real reforms that could provide quality health care to those who most need it.”

The James Madison Institute offers “25 Reasons NOT to Take Federal

Dollars to Expand Medicaid.” Share our infographic today and tomorrow through social media. RT on Twitter here. Share through Facebook here. Find on our website here.

  1. Medicaid already takes up more than 30% of Florida’s budget: Currently, Medicaid takes up more than 30 percent of Florida’s budget and crowds out other public priorities such as education, public safety and infrastructure.
  2. Medicaid payment rates are well below market rates:Payments to healthcare providers under Medicaid are well below market rates. Exasperating this system would be anathema to free-market reforms in healthcare.
  3. The federal government is already $18 trillion in debt; Obamacare costs rise daily:The federal government is $18 TRILLION in debt with the cost of Obamacare rising daily, requiring even more money from taxpayers to feed the beast.
  4. The supply of doctors accepting Medicaid is shrinking: As a consequence of federal Medicaid price controls, the supply of doctors that will accept Medicaid patients is shrinking — this shrinkage will become more rapid under an expansion of Medicaid.
  5. Medicaid expansion leads to greater use of ERs, not less: A March 2015 survey of 2,098 emergency-room doctors showed Medicaid recipients newly insured under the health law are struggling to get appointments or find doctors who will accept their coverage, and consequently wind up in the ER.
  6. Arkansas’s “private option” costs state taxpayers tens of millions: Medicaid expansion is not working in Arkansas. The Arkansas legislature passed a “private option” healthcare plan similar to what the Senate in Florida is proposing and the price tag is rising by the month under Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and state taxpayers will now have to pay tens of millions to cover the unexpected costs. The proposed plan in Florida could cost far more than projections indicate.
  7. Mandated premiums create inefficiencies in supply and demand for healthcare services: When premiums for healthcare plan participants are mandated and set by legislative action, it is nothing more than market distorting price controls, which ultimately create inefficiencies in the supply and demand for healthcare services
  8. Feds won’t approve Senate’s special waivers; Florida left with traditional Obamacare expansion: The Senate’s plan includes a requirement that enrollees work, attend classes or prove they are seeking work in order to maintain eligibility for healthcare coverage. However, to date the federal government has rejected all state-run expansion plans with a work requirement. They will deny this special waiver and we’ll be left with traditional Medicaid expansion.
  9. Oregon study revealed Medicaid enrollees hardly better off than uninsured: Medicaid expansion is not working in Oregon. In Oregon, a study was conducted among Medicaid enrollees that found Medicaid “generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes.”
  10. Medicaid Expansion will do nothing to lower cost of overall healthcare delivery: Medicaid expansion would not lead to any type of price transparency in healthcare delivery, which does nothing to help lower the cost of healthcare delivery.
  11. Medicaid expansion does not lead to better health outcomes for the poor: Research consistently shows Medicaid patients frequently receive inferior medical treatment, are assigned to less-skilled surgeons, receive poorer postoperative instructions, and often suffer worse outcomes for identical procedures than similar patients both with and without health insurance.
  12. New Hampshire feels the financial burn and is reconsidering Medicaid expansion: Medicaid expansion is not working in New Hampshire. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers’ annual report, in New Hampshire Medicaid grew from 24 percent of the overall state budget in 2012 to 27 percent in 2014. In January 2015, the state’s Department of Health and Human Services announced that it was $82 million over budget, thanks to Obamacare, Medicaid expansion and to the original Medicaid program expanding with additional enrollees. Lawmakers are now deciding whether to continue the expanded Medicaid program which sunsets in 2016.
  13. The federal government’s promises aren’t reliable: The U.S. Supreme Court told the federal government mandating Medicaid expansion was unconstitutional. However, they admitted this year that if Florida didn’t expand Medicaid under Obamacare, they would not be incentivized to continue the Low Income Pool funding. If they would pull funding from some of the most vulnerable in the system, what wouldn’t they do?
  14. Florida taxpayers will foot the bill for billions: Florida taxpayers will be responsible for a tab of billions of dollars as the federal government requires increasing shares from Florida’s budget after a certain point if the state expands Medicaid under Obamacare. Even if the federal government keeps its “promise” on the funding percentage, Florida taxpayers will be responsible for 10 percent of the total cost of expansion, a tab that will run into the billions based on even the most conservative estimates.
  15. Having health insurance isn’t the same as receiving healthcare:Medicaid is socialized health insurance, not access to healthcare. There is no guarantee that just receiving socialized insurance means an individual receives quality service.
  16. The majority of the Medicaid expansion population consists of working-age adults: The overwhelming majority of the Medicaid expansion pool are made up of childless, able-bodied, working-age adults. Expanding a failing entitlement program for this population will only lock people into the cycle of dependence.
  17. Medicaid expansion creates a perverse disincentive to improving one’s financial status: In many cases, making just a few more dollars per year will actually cost a person thousands in copayments, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses resulting in being pushed out of Medicaid rolls.
  18. Illinois faced unanticipated cost increases in the billions:Medicaid expansion isn’t working in Illinois. Forbes’s Akash Chougule reports, “Health officials originally estimated it would cost $573 million from 2017 through 2020 when the state’s funding obligation kicked in. But nearly 200,000 more people enrolled in the program in 2014 than originally projected. State budget officials were forced to revise their cost estimates to $2 billion—more than triple initial estimates.”
  19. Medicaid will cost Florida way more than anticipated: The cost projections for a Medicaid expansion in Florida are unreliable and grossly underestimated. Several states are experiencing the financial strain of Medicaid enrollment figures well higher than initial projections.
  20. Medicaid expansion wouldn’t necessarily result in more coverage or access to care: Florida’s own Medicaid director stated that he couldn’t guarantee the expansion would result in more coverage or access to care.
  21. Medicaid expansion increases private insurance rates: Expanding Medicaid rolls will inevitably distort the risk pool causing private insurance premiums to rise, effectively shifting more of the cost of expansion onto taxpayers and those not receiving Medicaid benefits.
  22. Ohio taxpayers face a $400 million bill: Medicaid expansion isn’t working in Ohio. Ohio’s Medicaid expansion is expected to be nearly $1 billion over budget in June. With Ohio on the hook for 10 percent of the expansion’s cost by 2020 (if the federal government keeps its promise) that will result in an annual cost of over $400 million for Ohio taxpayers.
  23. Expanding Medicaid will likely increase fraud: Medicaid expansion will increase the amount of fraud and abuse within an already strained government program
  24. The systemic issues in the healthcare system will not go away:Expanding Medicaid does absolutely NOTHING to address systemic issues facing Florida’s healthcare system that impact everyone.
  25. Dependency cycle will expand beyond true safety net intent: 
    The idea behind the safety net programs has always been to serve individuals in need, while providing mechanisms to pull out of dependence into productivity, not to create generations of citizens who know nothing except government reliance. By expanding Medicaid to populations that are outside the typical safety net composition, we effectively enlarge and encourage the cycle of dependency to grow and become more ingrained in our culture.

EPA: Hydraulic Fracturing is No Threat to Drinking Water

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Hydraulic fracturing, when done correctly, is safe and saves Americans money. The science says so.

EPA looked at scientific studies, government, NGO, and industry data and concluded that hydraulic fracturing has not had “widespread, systemic impacts on drinking water.”

For those of us closely involved in the debate over shale energy, this report simply reaffirms what previous science has shown, as Katie Brown explains at Energy In Depth:

EPA’s study actually builds upon a long list of studies that show the fracking process poses an exceedingly low risk of impacting underground sources of drinking water.  It corroborates a “landmark study” by the U.S. Department of Energy in which the researchers injected tracers into hydraulic fracturing fluid and found no groundwater contamination after twelve months of monitoring. It is also in line with reports by the U.S. Geological Survey, the Government Accountability Office, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Groundwater Protection Council, to name just a few.

“The results of EPA’s exhaustive new analysis of hydraulic fracturing should not come as a surprise,” Christopher Guith, senior vice president for policy at the Institute for 21st Century Energy, said. “As the scope of America’s shale oil and gas opportunities have become understood, states and industry have developed regulatory environments and practices that ensure that hydraulic fracturing is done safely.”

In light of EPA’s study, some people have some reevaluating to do:

This study shows that states are successfully regulating hydraulic fracturing and duplicative federal rules aren’t needed. “Shale energy development continues to be a major economic driver of our economy, and it is critical that the federal government does not layer on duplicative and unnecessary regulations,” said Guith.

As for hydraulic fracturing opponents, they need to stop denying the science.

Meet Sean Hackbarth @seanhackbarth Follow @uschamber

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of a hydraulic fracturing site located atop the Marcellus shale rock formation in Pennsylvania. Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg.

Why is Boston the Hub of Violent Islamic Extremism?

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Boston terror hub Hi Res jpeg

For a larger view click on the image.

When we posted on ISIS-Inspired terrorism in Boston and vicinity, we wrote:

Two news stories have suddenly brought attention to ISIS-inspired terrorism in Boston and vicinity. One involved ISIS –inspired suspects plotting to behead police officers resulting in one killed in a shooting incident and two others arrested by Boston area police. The second involves the death of an American citizen in an air attack in Iraq’s Anbar province who was technically educated and radicalized at Mosques in the Boston area. He fled the US to ultimately become one of the top leaders in ISIS running their highly effective social media propaganda arm.

The second story demonstrated why, in the opinion of colleague Ilya Feoktistov of Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), the Boston area has nurtured dangerous Jihadis fomenting violent “Islamic” extremism.  We included in our post a YouTube video with APT Research Director Feoktistov interviewed on these emerging story on New England Cable News (NECN) with particular attention to the late  ISIS top social media expert, Ahmad Abousamra, a dual Syrian American citizen and educated computer science professional who fled to join the Islamic State.  Feoktistov connected the dots between Ahmad’s father, Dr. Abdulbadi Abousamra, an endocrinologist, who established a network of Muslim Brotherhood controlled mosques radiating from the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, including the Islamic Center of New England in suburban Sharon, Massachusetts.  We noted the father recruiting Mohammed Hafiz Masood, a Pakistani Imam with radical extremist vie to become the Imam at ICNE. Masood had family connections to the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba  that perpetrated the 2008 Mumbai Massacre. The Imam may have been responsible for radicalization of Islamic State top social media expert, the late Ahmad Abousamra.  Masood, who graduated from Boston University with a degree in Economics, was subsequently deported to Pakistan for immigration visa violations.

Watch the NECN interview with APT Research Director Feoktistov:

During the NECN interview, a poster of a dozen Muslim Brotherhood (MB) extremists connected with both the ISBCC, its affiliated Cambridge Mosque was flashed on screen to make a point of “connecting the dots”.  The APT graphic displays those members and trustees of the ISBCC and ICNE who were trustees or Members of the MB and ISIS, convicted or killed or still at large.  The Cambridge Mosque, affiliated with ISBCC, was attended by convicted terrorism felons including Pakistani Al Qaeda bio warfare expert, Aafia Siddiqui, Tarek Mehanna and the Chechen refugee Tsarneav Brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon Bombing.

 Our colleague, Jonna Bianco of the Tennessee Task Force on National and Homeland Security (TTFNHS) sent our post on the Boston web of violent Islamic extremism via email to every member of the Tennessee Assembly with this   statement:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The incident yesterday is its own Security Brief.  If measures are not currently being taken to deal with these kinds of “connect the dots” dangers, we will be experiencing the same sorts of incidents right here in our state.  These same organizations exist in Tennessee connected to some of these same people. You should read this article and note how the people who lead and protect bad actors are not poor people just needing a job.  The father of the ISIS leader killed recently overseas is an Endocrinologist.  The ISIS leader himself had a degree in Computer Science.  These folks do not need jobs.  They need deportation papers, if not prison for material support of terrorism in the United States.  We have some of the same people right here in our state.

If you think this is much ado about nothing, then please contact the Task Force for a personal Security Briefing.  We’ll show you a lot of ‘nothing.’

Ms. Bianco and colleagues at the TTFHNS found the evidence of violent extremist jihadism spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood mosque network in Boston, with evidence of connections to the Islamic State, compelling enough to notify all state legislators in Tennessee.  Other likeminded groups should consider sending this post to every legislator in their respective home states.  FBI Director James Comey should task every Joint Terrorism Task Force across the country to investigate extremist Mosques and Imams.  Especially Muslim Brotherhood controlled Mosques indoctrinating American Muslim youths to join up and fight with the Islamic State, only to return and wreak havoc in our midst.

RELATED VIDEO:

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

The Idiocy of Modernity

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President Obama proves over and over again how the idiocy of modernity is utterly jaw dropping.  The president recently stated that the United States is now the “most respected country in the world.”  I had to review that statement several times over and over again, just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.  First of all, from the outset of his first term in office, the White House Occupier has seen fit to purposefully disrespect our allies.  Not since the 1938 Munich Conference, where First Lord of the admiralty Duff Cooper resigned in protest from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s cabinet has there been a leader of a nation so adamant to appease enemies of his country, until now.

Prime Minister Chamberlain believed in bending over backwards to try and please Herr Hitler through the language of sweet reasonableness.  History unfolded and fully exposed the folly Chamberlain’s day dream of being buddies with Hitler, by making nice and granting hideous concessions which eventually proved dreadfully harmful to Great Britain.  While Neville Chamberlain sought a favorable position in the eyes of Hitler, Sir Winston Churchill rightfully bristled with much concern and anger that heated to the boiling point.   He called Chamberlains appeasement effort “A misplaced belief in sweet reason and a moral fiber as stiff as two overripe melons crushed together.”

Much like Chamberlain, who granted more favor toward Hitler’s demands than the safety of Great Britain at the onset of World War Two, so is President Obama today consistently more concerned with enemy demands and desires than our national security.

Yet in stark contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been openly vocal about his refusal to give in to unreasonable demands of those who have vowed to destroy his delightful nation.  The idiocy of president Obama’s refusal to govern on behalf of the best interest of the United States, has resulted in America now teetering on the brink of tumbling down from her lofty perch as the world’s number one nation, militarily, morally, economically and socially.  Mr. Obama has methodically created a level of Allied nations distrust of the United States never experienced before in the history of our dear republic.

To gain a full grip on how idiotic President Obama’s policies are (at least from the angle of the rational self- interest of America) I watched a recent episode of an Egyptian television talk show.  The host and his guests were actually lamenting over the various economic, social, military, and moral decisions the president of our nation has made and are literally killing our country.  The Egyptian talk show participants laughed hysterically about Obama’s anemic approach toward ISIS, which is sweeping through the Middle East like a plague of murdering locusts.

The United States was founded upon the greatest set of national principles ever assembled, other than what is found in the Bible.  Yet, she like a drunken idiot of modernity, the government continues to write and enact mountains of laws and regulations the create lack of function.  Thus, America is taken further and further away from the mighty foundational rock the made our republic, the greatest nation ever.  The ever growing system of unlawful laws and regulations are turning America into a self-destroyer of her economy, military, educational system, churches and even our constitutionally limited republic way of life.

Under the idiocy of today, America has devolved from a nation where the government was of by and for the people into of by and for the elite progressives, who now live to destructively lord over “We the People.”  As I have state3d before in The Edwards Notebook radio commentary, wisdom has sprouted wings and flown back to the Father, or God.  The evidence is almost everywhere.  How else can one explain the stupidity of instructing the police to no longer approach suspicious looking characters?  To magnify the problems, the know it all city governments refuse to allow the police to reestablish a more aggressive posture towards potential criminals despite major spikes in the street cretin activity. Simply check out statistics in Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo.  Cleveland may soon be added to the list of cities with a dramatic increase in crime. Thanks to the Department of Justice hamstringing police officers with extraneous overbearing regulations that will make it impossible for them to be a real force against thug activity.

Dear reader, the idiocy culture now strangling the life out of our overburdened nation is obviously destructive indeed.  But the good news is that this tragedy by design can and I believe, will be overcome.  That is, if we are willing to put aside petty differences and decide that America is worth rescuing and rebuilding.  Those of us who desire authentic life liberty and the pursuit of happiness must look to the same providential provider who granted great wisdom and overcoming power to many great Americans of the past and present.  The likes of which include the founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglas, Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan and the founders of Women Defending America.

I firmly believe that wisdom returning from the Father will soon resonate in the minds of those with the heartbeat of Christ and the iron are going to reconstruct this sweet land of liberty.  The really good news is that we are obligated nor should we be willing to sit idly by and watch our America be swept away by those who hate her.  Victory is achievable.  So let us take hold of it and win.

Poll Finds No Clear GOP Front-runner Yet

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PITTSBURGH, PRNewswire/ — Republican voters remain divided over which candidate they prefer in the 2016 presidential race, with three polling over 10 percent and four others close behind, according to a nationwide poll by the Robert Morris University Polling Institute Powered by Trib Total Media.

The poll showed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (15.4 percent), Florida U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (14.6 percent) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (13.8 percent) contending to lead a crowded field. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (7.5 percent), former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (7.5 percent), Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (7.1 percent) and Dr. Ben Carson (6.7 percent) — polled within 10 points of the leader.

“The big loser in this poll is Rand Paul, who only received 2.0 percent of the Republicans surveyed,” said RMU political scientist Philip Harold.

Among Democrats polled, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (55.8 percent) held what would seem to be an insurmountable lead over Vice President Joe Biden (8.0 percent), Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (4.8 percent) and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (2.9 percent). The poll was completed before former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley announced he would seek the Democratic nomination, but he nonetheless registered support at 0.6 percent.

METHODOLOGY: The poll sampled opinions of 1,003 adults approximately proportional to state population contribution nationwide. The survey was conducted May 8-16, 2015 using an online survey instrument. The poll has a +/- 3.0 percent margin of error at a 95 percent confidence level on a composite basis.

ABOUT ROBERT MORRIS UNIVERSITY: 

Through 60 undergraduate and 20 graduate degree programs across five academic schools, Robert Morris University (RMU) in Pittsburgh, Pa., works to change its students’ lives so that they can go out and change the lives of others for the better. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate, nontraditional and online students from 47 states and 39 nations are enrolled at RMU, just 20 minutes from downtown Pittsburgh. Learn more at rmu.edu.

ABOUT TRIB TOTAL MEDIA

Trib Total Media is a multimedia network of daily and weekly newspapers, weekly shoppers, and websites delivering news, information and advertising to over 1.2 million readers across Western Pennsylvania every week. Trib Total Media also provides targeted direct mail, commercial printing and promotional item services. Visit us online at tribtotalmedia.com.

Ideology, hidden obstacle to reason

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I was recently surprised to note that a prominent British libertarian had sent out a bulk email suggesting that leaving the EU would not be much of a boon to the UK since such would not necessarily provide more “liberty” for Brits. Thus, he contends that UK “leaders” have the same totalitarian mindset as the EU “leaders” and the Brexit (exit of the UK from the EU) would not help matters. He mentioned that the UK government has at times exceeded even the legal limitations on power provided by the authoritarian EU and that offended Brits may occasionally benefit from European Court decisions that overturn excesses of UK authorities and judges. Since the European Court is an essential component of the EU, leaving the EU would therefore supposedly remove this supposed benefit.

This email did not contain the words Muslim or Islam. Yet the Islamization of the UK is one of the main concerns of those who support the Brexit.

I had tried to show my UK reader list how simply rolling over and playing dead, ie, not voting in the upcoming referendum or voting YES to stay in the EU was not an option, for one thing because it sends a signal to the EU top rank that the people of Europe have finally given up and are willing to acquiesce to total tyranny.

An article in The Atlantic reveals one very important reason why EU membership is a bad deal for the UK and all other industrial members, to whit:

“EU countries are legally barred from limiting immigration from other member states, a decision that has had a great effect on migration patterns on the continent.”

Now it is certainly true that the usurpers who have seized the internal UK reins of power (essentially Parliament and Downing Street) by deceit are, like the EU bureaucrats, also inclined to flood the UK with still more Muslims, a rapidly growing group that receives an inordinately high percentage of social assistance or welfare (as reported here and here) and which in polls is found to favor sharia law and jihad.

In 2014, Daniel Greenfield, discussing a recent poll in London, wrote:

“There are about 1 million Muslim settlers in London where they make up 12 percent of the population. These figures suggest that the vast majority of them, perhaps as high as 80 percent, support ISIS.”

A NO vote on the referendum would be a signal to the Brussels oligarchs that the people are no longer the lemmings they once were and will not take rampant Islamisation lying down.

It should not surprise anyone that libertarians tend to be more liberal on the issue of immigration. Their ideology teaches essentially that all humans must have the maximum freedom possible and is refractory to considerations of reality. The freedom to cross someone else’s border and gain access to another country’s welfare rolls could be seen as the ultimate in libertarian policy. US libertarians counter the fears of ordinary mortals by contending that welfare would be forbidden in a libertarian society, but their immigration positions ignore the fact that welfare is part of the current US reality, over which libertarians have little or no control, and the current socialist context is the one in which they propose to implement their immigration positions. Like their British counterparts, they therefore generally see even illegal immigration as either a non-threat or a boon. They believe that they could soon operate in a perfect world with no impediments whatsoever to individual freedom.

The trouble with this thinking — in case you are one of the few who need this pointed out to you — is that there really are two kinds of freedom, or liberty (liberté) as the French revolutionaries, ideological second cousins to today’s libertarians, called it.

ONE kind is individual freedom.

The SECOND is more subtle and easier to overlook, and that is, national sovereignty, ie, the freedom of a nation to chart and navigate its own course without interference from other nations or entities.

Today’s libertarians almost never talk about the second kind of liberty because to them, national sovereignty is an obstacle to individual liberty at all costs, which is the non-negotiable centerpiece of their creed. And non-negotiable here means reality be damned.

Ironically, however, this neglect of national sovereignty actually severely curbs individual liberty as well, at least in the real world down here beneath the rarefied stratosphere in which libertarianism thrives.

For example, if 80% of an indigenous population desires freedom of choice in its national lawmaking, then a rigid libertarian policy of legal residency for all and sundry may well lead to veritable inundation of this indigenous population with hordes of people who tolerate and even welcome totalitarianism. After all, to them, totalitarianism is their free choice. Once these hordes reach a critical percentage of the population, the tipping point will be passed and that one-time majority will now be subjected to the will of the newly arrived hordes. And here’s the real kicker: the libertarians who persuaded their unsuspecting countrymen to accept these hordes will now also be enslaved along with the rest. So much for liberté.

Worst of all, the above is not by any means just a hypothetical example. There is a projection that the UK will become a Muslim state by 2050, and while this has been poo-pooed by the Establishment media, The Commentator writes:

“This projection is based on reasonably good data. Between 2004 and 2008, the Muslim population of the UK grew at an annual rate of 6.7 percent, making Muslims 4 percent of the population in 2008. Extrapolating from those figures would mean that the Muslim population in 2020 would be 8 percent, 15 percent in 2030, 28 percent in 2040 and finally, in 2050, the Muslim population of the UK would exceed 50 percent of the total population.”

Thus the rigid and doctrinaire libertarianism with liberty as its Grail, is from the outset on a course of ineluctable self-destruction.

History presents us with a parade of ideologies, all of which have failed one after the other. Yet some flaw in the character of Homo sapiens leads us invariably to put aside our perception of reality, our built-in logic and reason, and even our sense of self-preservation in favor of untested ideologies propped up by high-sounding rhetoric. Somehow, our species never seems to notice that, precisely because ideologies supersede and subtly supplant reason and the perception of reality, all ideologies will eventually fail, always, just as they always have in the past.

The question is: Can we ever come to understand this simple fact and overcome this flaw in our DNA?

Senator: Bring RICO Charges Against Climate Wrongthink by Walter Olson

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It’s another step toward criminalizing advocacy: writing in the Washington Post, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) urges the US Department of Justice to consider filing a racketeering suit against the oil and coal industries for having promoted wrongful thinking on climate change, with the activities of “conservative policy” groups an apparent target of the investigation as well.

A trial balloon, or perhaps an effort to prepare the ground for enforcement actions already afoot?

Sen. Whitehouse cites as precedent the long legal war against the tobacco industry. When the federal government took the stance that pro-tobacco advocacy could amount to a legal offense, some of us warned tobacco wouldn’t remain the only or final target.

To quote what I wrote in The Rule of Lawyers:

In a drastic step, the agreement ordered the disbanding of the tobacco industry’s former voices in public debate, the Tobacco Institute and the Council for Tobacco Research (CTR), with the groups’ files to be turned over to anti-tobacco forces to pick over the once-confidential memos contained therein; furthermore, the agreement attached stringent controls to any newly formed entity that the industry might form intended to influence public discussion of tobacco.

In her book on tobacco politics, Up in Smoke, University of Virginia political scientist Martha Derthick writes that these provisions were the first aspect in news reports of the settlement to catch her attention.

“When did the governments in the United States get the right to abolish lobbies?” she recalls wondering. “What country am I living in?”

Even widely hated interest groups had routinely been allowed to maintain vigorous lobbies and air their views freely in public debate.

By the mid-2000s, calls were being heard, especially in other countries, for making denial of climate change consensus a legally punishable offense or even a “crime against humanity,” while widely known advocate James Hansen had publicly called for show trials of fossil fuel executives.

Notwithstanding the tobacco precedent, it had been widely imagined that the First Amendment to the US Constitution might deter image-conscious officials from pursuing such attacks on their adversaries’ speech. But it has not deterred Sen. Whitehouse.

Law professor Jonathan Adler, by the way, has already pointed out that Sen. Whitehouse’s op-ed “relies on a study that doesn’t show what he (it) claims.”

And Sen. Whitehouse, along with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA), has been investigating climate-dissent scholarship in a fishing-expedition investigation that drew a pointed rebuke from then-Cato Institute President John Allison as an “obvious attempt to chill research into and funding of public policy projects you don’t like…. you abuse your authority when you attempt to intimidate people who don’t share your political beliefs.”

PS: Kevin Williamson notes that if the idea of criminalizing policy differences was ever something to dismiss as an unimportant fringe position, it is no longer.

This post first appeared at Overlawyered.com.

Walter Olson

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

“Madness”: The Netherlands spent nearly $1 Billion on Asylum Seekers

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Our article in the June NER, Trojan Horse Federal Refugee Program Brings Jihadi Threat to America: An Interview with Ann Corcoran,  spoke about the secretive billion dollar U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (U.S. RAP). We noted:

More than 1.3 million Muslims have been brought into the U.S. via the billion dollar U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (US RAP). Annually the U.S. RAP brings in 70,000 refugees allotted by the UN High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR). These annual USRAP allotments are virtually controlled by the UNHCR, which designates refugee populations most at risk. The current USRAP allotment exceeds that of all other countries combined. Separate from the US RAP are other legal avenues for Muslim immigration that include the asylum program that converts illegal border crossers into legal immigrants with benefits equivalent to refugees, the Diversity “Green Card” Lottery and the investor EB-5 Visa Program.

According to Ann Corcoran, editor of the Refugee Resettlement Watch (RRW) blog, this UN refugee agency “virtually calls the shots” for the U.S. RAP that provides legal refugee immigrants with a veritable smorgasbord of cash welfare, Social Security benefits for elderly refugees, Medicaid, educational  assistance and a pathway to ultimate citizenship. Including both federal and state level benefits; some experts estimate that the annual total cost of the U.S. RAP could be upwards of $12 to $20 billion annually.

Geert Wilders was appalled today, when he learned that the Dutch immigration authorities spent nearly $1 billion (868 million Euros) on support of asylum seekers in 2014 reported by the NLTimes:

 The Netherlands spent 868 million euros ($972.2 million) on services for roughly 24,000 asylum seekers last year, according to figures Security & Justice Secretary Klaas Dijkhoff provided to …Freedom Party (PVV). The party leader, Geert Wilders, blasted the amount, saying it translates to roughly 36 thousand euros ($40, 320) per asylum seeker.

“Madness!” Wilders proclaimed on Twitter, in a call to shut Dutch borders.

The government spent 485 million euros ($542.3 million) on the COA, the Dutch agency responsible for the reception and placement of refugees. Another 200 million ($224 million) went to the Immigration and Naturalization Office, which all immigrants entering and residing in the Netherlands are required to contact. Over 70 million ($78.4 million) went to the Repatriation and Departure Service, which also handles the extradition of criminals to other nations.

It was not immediately clear if the amounts provided to those agencies are only for their work directly related to asylum seekers, or if it is broader budget data.

Also, while some 56 million ($62.7 million) went to investigative and research services, about 26 million ($29.1 million) was earmarked for free legal representation of asylum seekers.

Dutch NGO Nidos also received 24 million euros ($26.9 million) to provide education, welfare and guardianship services to youth refugees. Another NGO, Vluchtelingenwerk (Refugees), received 6.3 million euros ($7.6 million) to help with integration, reunification, and asylum service. Other organizations received 700 thousand euros ($784,000).

Those amounts cited by Wilders are just for asylum seekers in the Netherlands. Expenditures for  legal migrants under the liberal Dutch immigration programs may be several magnitudes greater than that. That could raise this year’s allocations by the EU, dealing with the flood of illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean. Moreover, there is the allocation of thousands of Syrian refuges escaping the civil war and ISIS conflicts.  This is the latest revelation by the Freedom Party.Wilders is endeavoring to rein in out of control spending for what amounts to mass Muslim and other EU immigration.

Note that like the U.S. RAP, the Dutch use a network of NGOs, equivalent to voluntary agencies here in the U.S., to provide processing and support for asylees. Time to roll back the Islamic Dir al Hijra (migration) strategy both in the Netherlands and here in the U.S. costing billions of dollars bringing jihadis to foment Islamic terrorism both at home and abroad.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of asylum Seekers in Amsterdam  protesting, April 15, 2015. Source: Wij Zijn Hier Facebook.

Transforming Education Beyond Common Core: Crony Capitalists Promote Gaming in the Classroom

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It is true: the technology can offer promising results in many applications, for example in medicine or flight simulation. But the overall thrust was that games provide advantages in “cultivating dispositions” – games for “social change,” as the name of the group and festival indicates. As for such subjects as history, one wonders: can we really go back in history, or just the history that the game designer decides to create for us?

The Games for Learning Summit, part of the four-day Games for Change Festival, began with opening remarks by Richard Culatta, director of the Office of Education Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, and then by industry representatives.

This event came two weeks after the annual ASU+GSV Summit (Arizona State University and GSV capital investment firm) in Arizona.  Arne Duncan himself addressed the 2,000-strong meeting of investors and technology start-up companies.

In New York City, the Games for Learning keynote speaker, Michael Gallagher, President and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the trade association representing U.S. computer and video game publishers, acknowledged the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, and the sponsorship of Glass Labs (Games, Learning, and Assessment Lab, which ESA co-founded).  According to the company bio, since Gallagher joined the organization in 2007, “ESA has heightened awareness and appreciation of the value of video games as next-generation teaching tools.”

The site also reveals the intricate connections between profit and nonprofit organizations and government.  ESA’s spin-off, Glass Labs, boasts “a ground-breaking collaboration among ESA, Institute of Play, Electronic Arts, Educational Testing Service [producers of AP and SAT tests], Pearson’s [the multi-billion dollar international textbook publisher], Center for Digital Data, Analytics & Adaptive Learning as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – to research and develop game-based learning and assessment tools.”

Gallagher heralded the industry’s progress, as evidenced by 5,000 teachers using “[Common] Core curriculum-compliant games,” in over 10 million learning sessions.  The technology will create the “workforce of tomorrow,” as kids, naturally drawn to video games, will be even more so as they learn about the $100,000 wages.  The eight-billion-dollar textbook industry is sure to grow, as books are adapted to the game format.

After his speech, Gallagher took questions with Rafranz Davis, an “instructional technologist and educator.”  Davis attested to the wonders of gaming, and to those who might feel threatened said it is “our responsibility to change how we teach.”  Teachers are “saying” that games are a better assessment tool than multiple choice questions.  She suggested letting students be “advocates” to overcome parental resistance.

A question about the lack of evidence for claims of educational attainment was met by Davis’s testimony about learning about football by playing the game Madden with her 15-year-old son.  Gallagher disputed the negative claim, although he did not go into any detail.

When a concern was expressed about supporting students of color, Gallagher replied that the industry-aligned ESA foundation awards 30 scholarships a year for young women and minorities, supports making games for “social purposes,” and gives challenge grants to teachers doing “pioneering things.”

Another keynote speaker, Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and professor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon University, then looked to the future, 2025, which is “coming at us faster and faster.”  Although the marketplace for educational games is terrible, game sales for preschool and SAT preparation are “vibrant,” as parents seek to ensure children’s readiness for school and college.  He suggested developing teacher networks in the manner of music social networks to provide a way for teachers to buy games.  Gaming’s advantages include immediate feedback on homework and better assessments as teachers become empowered as “dungeon masters,” able to see which student is falling behind.

On Day Two, Gallagher continued his pitch, even though the official collaboration with the Department of Education was over.  He noted that ESA represents 146,000 employees of an industry that has been growing at four times the rate of the U.S. economy.  Located in Washington, D.C., ESA has access to policy leaders and opinion makers, such as Debbie Wasserman-Schulz.  He encouraged audience members to apply for grants for “social impact” from ESA’s non-profit.

This invitation for grant applications came on the heels of the first day’s to apply to the Small Business Innovation Program at www.tech.ed.gov-developers.  For such things as demonstration prototypes, attendees were directed to www.edprizes.com, a Department of Education site that offers a sign-up form for announcements about competitions for prizes for helping students compete in the “global economy.”

One of the reasons for the widespread opposition to Common Core has been the cost of buying new Common Core-aligned textbooks.  But the speakers enthused about replacing textbooks with games, and not only to teach such subjects as science, but also history and civics.  Games would “transform” education, taking the idea of “flipped classrooms,” where students watch videos at home and do homework in class, to a whole new level.  Virtual reality and augmented reality would produce amazing results.

It is true: the technology can offer promising results in many applications, for example in medicine or flight simulation.  But the overall thrust was that games provide advantages in “cultivating dispositions” – games for “social change,” as the name of the group and festival indicates.  As for such subjects as history, one wonders: can we really go back in history, or just the history that the game designer decides to create for us?  As proponents discuss taking “textbook educational content media” to the next level of “interdependent simulation,” one wonders about students’ reading skills and abilities to contemplate and think independently.  Proponents, insist on the value of such technology-based learning even though the one controlled study by Kaplan showed that videos were less effective than text-based problems.

But there is money to be made in developing games for “social change.”  The kinds of lessons to be imparted through this interactive learning are scarier than the biased textbooks and teacher harangues we’ve become used to seeing in the news.  These lessons will be described in the next installment.

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

Stalinism and the Destabilization of America

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Stalin’s policy of Divide and Conquer has been implemented in many different areas and aspects of our society, including a racial division. The events in Ferguson, Baltimore, Wisconsin and Cleveland had confirmed it. It is a continuation of WWIII against America the Beautiful designed by our Founding Fathers. There are several factors that inflamed the predicament, yet nobody is talking about the major one–Stalin’s ideology of Soviet Fascism to obtain control of the local law-enforcement to nationalize and federalize it, like Stalin did in the Soviet Union. Obama began this policy within his first five years–dozens of agencies are being investigated. To know the source of that policy, the Stalin’s era must be studied by the next generations, as Stalin’s socio-political idea impacted the world during the last hundred years. Be prepared for the open season on the policemen and remember the definition of the Soviet Mafia, where politics intertwine with organized crime. The police already feel under the siege. Be prepared for a lot of killings and mob rules in America.

Blacks vs. Whites

It is for a reason, I have started this series with Marxist ideology. Karl Marx’s theory of Socialism and Communism is both a fraud and a utopia. Yet…the idea in the beginning of his historical research of socio-economic stages within the development of civilization was a logical one. While teaching in New York City, I have presented the idea to my students. Baltic Winds, Xlibris, 2002. In short, Marx as a historian was searching for productive forces in history. I accept his theory of history up to his fantasy of Socialism and Communism. As a matter of fact, his idea of productive forces in history maybe actually presents a factual development of the stages within our civilization. It sounded logical and reasonable to me. But I am not a philosopher or sociologist and I will present it in a possibly simplistic way. So…

The primitive men had difficulties in finding food alone. Therefore, human beings created rudimentary form of organization known in the modern terms as tribes to ease their existence. Marx called it the first stage of the human civilization. To achieve more productivity greater numbers of people were organized to create and improve a more productive force. The second socio-economic stage of civilization Marx identified as a slavery. Please keep in mind, the slavery took place worldwide at a certain time, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity. For your information: slavery or serfdom in Russia was abolished by Alexander II- Liberator in the exact time slavery was abolished by President Abraham Lincoln in the U.S. The next stage of civilization was supposed to provide the huge number of people with food. Marx called the third stage of civilization feudalism–the interactions or contracts between land-lords and vassals in developing the agricultural productive forces to provide the populace with the food. The fourth stage of human civilization was capitalism. To me those stages sounds logical, as they reflect the world history.

The word slavery has been forgotten in Russia, Brazil, and in the rest of the world with homogeneous populations. In America, contrary to the rest of the world the notion of slavery intensified the racial hostility. My explanation is a simple one: None of the other countries of the world had such a visual difference as a COLOR. The COLOR is the inflammatory factor. In addition to that, the majority of the Blacks were brought to America from the second stage of civilization to the forth one, from slavery to capitalism, missing one stage in the development of civilization–feudalism. This is a very important factor. Do not talk to the Black crowd in Ferguson and Baltimore, including the prosecutor of Baltimore, they can’t understand this factor, they need time and the civic education, which Europe went through during 500 years. For them it is easy to destroy, loot, and burn cars than to create and produce. Look objectively at the statistics of crime among Blacks in America. Our homicide rate is equal to that of Yemen. The picture will confirm my point—Blacks are killing Blacks—11 percent of Blacks commit 70 percent of crimes. The role of the police becomes even more significant under these circumstances. Obama’s actions against the police are totally contradictory and inconsistent with the American national interests.

There is another factor that aggravates the racial hostility as well– Stalin’s ideology of Divide and Conquer. With the lack of the historical development in America, Blacks have some resemblance to the Muslim world that has not been reformed since the seventh century. This resemblance is very important as Stalin’s ideology and strategy have been applied to all minorities within Russia and outside the country. The KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, a devoted Stalin’s disciple created the myth of a “Palestinian Nation” against Israel. One of his statements illustrated it the best: “the Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch. Terrorism and violence against Israel and her master, American Zionism, would flow naturally from the Muslims’ religious fervor.” Russian Footsteps, by Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online, August 24, 2008.)

A couple of days ago, I heard Dr. Ben Carson, a Black candidate of the Republican Party for the presidency of the United States, who said: “My Mother did not want to be a victim.” A victim and victimology are the key words in the resemblance of the big group of the Blacks with the Muslims. The Blacks were indoctrinated by the ideology of Soviet Fascism the same way that the part of the Muslims were indoctrinated for several decades. Ben Carson is a uniquely qualified for the presidency of our country–he is a contemporary Uncle Tom and the majority of Blacks will not vote for him. Of course, there are some differences between the large group of Blacks and Islamic Jihadists, yet both, for different reasons are fighting America the Beautiful. Have you heard the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi? He, a Muslim himself had admitted that Islam itself has a problem and should be reformed. Have you heard any similar statements from the Black leaders of America? No, on the contrary—division is the only their motive.

Some Blacks called the White people the Oppressors, some are talking about “White Privileges” some “wanted to see cops dead.” I saw them all in Ferguson and Baltimore and I am glad that the notions of “the agents of influence” and the Soviet Mafia, designed by Soviet Fascism are already known to you. If you dig deeper the backgrounds of Sharpton and J. Jackson, you will find their quite strange political connections. Just think and research the root causes and history of the Black movement and you’ll be able to see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I did it in my books discussing Soviet Fascism. All factors mentioned by me, are reinforce one another. Only actual knowledge can solve the problem—both the Blacks and the political Islamite are indoctrinated with totalitarian ideology, I called Stalinism or Soviet Fascism. Knowledge of this ideology is a must.

As a young girl, I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the slavery in the far away America, it disgusted me, though it was a story of the past. Yet, it was something, I had never imagined and the negative feeling for slavery was left in my memory forever. Then I did not know that driven by a passionate hatred of slavery, “Bitchier Stow found time to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which became the most influential novel in American history and a catalyst for radical change both at home and abroad.” Living in America I found a complete revers of her ideas. Today,” the book has a decidedly different reputation, thanks to the popular image of its titular character, Uncle Tom — whose name has become a byword for a spineless sellout, a black man who betrays his race.”

What do you think? Who divided Black Americans on the crowd of Blacks and a group of Uncle Toms? The crowd of the Blacks, as a rule are not well educated supporters of the Democrats. Who did give the name of the other group of the Blacks Uncle Toms? Who are Uncle Toms? The answer is in the encyclopedia– “A black man who will do anything to stay in good standing with “the whites.” For me it is a good characterization of the group, the group is for unity with the rest of America. The group comprised of the educated Blacks is predominantly Republican. The unity bequeathed by the Founding Fathers is a must for them. Yet our Unity is the crux of the matter for those who are implementing the ideology of DIVISION. The division is not only racial, but more of an ideological one. “Black citizens appear to conclude that they do not share common political values with Republicans, whether black or not,” said the study. “As a consequence, black Republican candidates simply do not evoke the same response from black citizens as black Democratic candidates.” Do you recognize the division, the ideology of Soviet Fascism perpetrated by the Democrats making Blacks the victims of the society? Read more here.

Cuba mi Patria que AdoroExcerpts from Cuba Mi Patria Que Adoro, Amazon.com, 2012, P. 108. Translated by. Angela M. Aguirre, Ph.D.:

Those unsuspecting Cubans
That helped the traitor Fidel
They brought together with him
The horrendous communism….
He [Castro] urged blacks to start a fight
Against white with such hatred
Thus turning the whole society
Into a racial war.

The jackal came out of Oriente
To disunite all the Cubans
That were like brothers and sisters
Blacks and whites, all united.

We all lived in harmony
Like lawful citizens should.
But he brought much more:

He brought many criminals
From Russia and other countries,
To govern in our Cuba.
In his intent in punishing us,
He destroyed our nation.

Imposing a firing squad
That is always in action,
Killing blacks and whites alike
Without any distinction.

Media That Serves One Party System

Somewhere in 2011, I wrote an article titled The Communist Ideological Department; The Art of Brainwashing. I did it to acquaint you with the atmosphere of the life under Soviet Fascism. We, the former citizens of the socialist countries are constantly finding the events in America that resemble the ideological proceedings in our native countries: Cuba, the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria or Venezuela. We often call mass media in America a leftist one. Alas, it is more than that. Just look at the recent article published in Huffington Post: Scientists Find Alarming Deterioration in DNA of the Urban Poor, by Nico Pitney, 05/08/02015.

I am not a scientist, but I have already written about the Soviet pseudo-science as an element of Soviet Fascism. The article in Huffington Post is attempting to explain that environment causing and changing human DNA. I think that this is the Stalin’s trick, promoted by the Democrats in their arguments for the redistribution of wealth in America. Fighting poverty have already cost American taxpayers $12-22 trillion with no result. I have already written about the same ideological trick in the Stalin’s Russia in the 1930s. Here it is: “I can’t omit another significant feature of the Soviet Socialism—pseudo-science. Have you ever heard about Academician Lysenko? To perceive all the agricultural troubles of the Soviet Union and the essence of the pseudo-science you have to know that name. A mediocre intriguer, a biologist from Ukraine, Trofim Lysenko had been building his career on the corpses of civilians dying from starvation in 1930.

“He led the campaign against geneticists of the world and exploited the ideological tenets. Stalinists had undermined the entire Soviet agriculture. In cahoots with the party bosses on the wave of Stalinist repressions and using the Marxist-Leninist ideology, he had begun a slanderous and vicious campaign against the geneticist’s scholars worldwide who proclaimed, ‘No ideology and politics in science.’ Of cause, the first were the Soviet Geneticists of the Soviet Academy of Science. Academician Vavilov was the main target of Lysenko’s campaign.” What is Happening to America, pp.80-81.Doesn’t it also remind you of the “climate change” hysteria in America?

This is not the only example of ideological infiltration into our American soil and culture. Have you heard about “bikes gangs” in Texas and killing of people there? I have addressed the issue of gangs 20 years ago when I saw two American movies of how gangs of different ilk, including drug-trafficking gangs and street gangs, are working in coordination with the political mafia, growing on our soil since the ‘50s. Stanley Kramer had warned Americans about the danger of gangs in his marvelous movie The Wild One, 1953. Nobody took it seriously. I did, watching the movie, I had sensed “an enemy’s sub-culture.” No American could conceive the situation where mobsters, gangs of organized crime, and political party would have shared a common purpose and agenda. Americans had no idea of Stalinism, Soviet Fascism, and WWIII.

Times have changed: We live in a more threatening atmosphere fifty years later and we should learn that the policy of containment we had always hoped for has never worked. It failed at its inception. The Soviets/Russians had not always moved their army of gangs into a foreign territory, they were infiltrating and using the American ones. And we gave the Soviet mafia the time to polish their criminal skills on our land. Do you remember the Soviet document of 1955? I have introduced it several times in this series. Organized crime as conceived by Stalin’s ideology has become a formidable force to fight Western civilization since the 1955. Beside organized crime, infiltration of the enemy forces was spread into different areas and aspects of life in America.

I had predicted in 1999 that the scale of Russian crimes against the world will quadruple, especially in the cyber space. Here it is: “Watch also for the further assaults on the regions rich with oil and attacks on our cyber systems, especially in California, to undermine our communication and economic power. Yet oil remains the first target—the lines for gasoline in the ‘’70s are still vivid in the mind of our enemies to create a raging and chaotic situation in America again.” The Russian Factor, Xlibris, 2006, pp.103-104. Today we found out that Russia infiltrated the cyber space of out IRS. I was talking about IRS in connection with Russia years ago. To win a war on terror we must know Russia and its Stalinist ideology, because Russia is the Evil Empire of Global Terrorism. Wake up America, we live in the 21st century!

I’d like to end the column with two interesting stories of the year 2015. One is about President Obama. He received an offer from a young Kenyan man, a proposal to marry Obama’s daughter Maliyah. The Kenyan man saw her when she was ten years old and fell in love with her. He promised to give for her 50 pigs and 100 cows. I do not know the Obama response yet. The second story is a simple one. Western civilization commemorates 800 years of Magna Carta in the year 2015.

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com.

EDITORS NOTE: To read all of Simona Pimko’s columns on Soviet Fascism in the 21st Century click here.

Obama’s Unrealistic View of Israelis

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General Kuperwasser

Israel Gen Kuperwasser (Ret.) Former Director General, Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Source: Honest Reporting

Gen. (Ret.) Yossi Kuperwasser is an  Israeli Intelligence expert and former Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. He wrote Jeffrey Goldberg, these remarks following the latest Atlantic interview and Obama’s appearance at Goldberg’s synagogue in Washington, Adas Israel on Friday morning, May 22nd. The President  received applause from the 1,200 who attended  his address, a day prior to the Shavuot Jewish holiday. Shavuot  celebrates  the  reading of the law by “Moshe rabbenu’ (Moses the teacher) before the assembled Exodus multitude  gathered under the Mountain. Perhaps the President had that it mind on the occasion of his address to the assembly of Washington Jewish notables at Adas Israel who like Goldberg profess to be “progressives” like the President. After all, Obama said that many in the audience considered him  the equivalent of “the First Jewish President.”

Others distant from Washington, like our colleague  Dr. Richard l. Rubenstein; noted theologian, former university president ,author of seminal works on post holocaust period,including  Jihad and Genocide  consider Obama “the most radical President ever.”  To Goldberg’s credit, he published  in the latest edition of The Atlantic  Kuperwasser’s ‘realistic” views, as an Israeli expert of record, contrasting them with the President’s “optimistic” views . I have to thank my friend Pat Rooney here in Pensacola for sending me them.  Coming as they do before tonight’s airing of an interview with the President of Israel Channel 2 extolling  his view why the P5+1 deal with Iran is in Panglossian terms – the best of all possible options. A deal considered a bad one by a bi-partisan panel of former Senators, ex-CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and experts from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in an update from the Iran Task Force on Capitol Hill, yesterday.  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius ‘considers  the current P5+1 deal  “useless” as both he and Gen. Hayden know that nothing will be verifiable as the fissile material will be hidden at military sites that Iran’s Supreme Ruler has denied access to UN IAEA inspectors.

I posted on my Facebook page yesterday this comment that may reflect  what many Israelis and Gen. Kuperwasser may believe about the President:

Obama says there is no military option, but a tough verifiable deal for Iran’s nukes. When asked if PM Netanyahu would exercise a military option, he said “I wouldn’t speculate.” He also suggested he “understood the fears and concerns” of Israelis. When this airs on Channel 2 in Israel Tuesday night the silence will be deafening. This President does not have either Israel’s or this country’s back in dealing with an untrustworthy Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Goldberg prefaced Kuperwasser’s response by offering that he agreed with less than half of them.  Here are excerpts from The Atlantic article, A Critique of Obama’s Understanding of Israel.

President Obama’s anger toward Netanyahu is misplaced, especially given his extraordinary lack of criticism of Palestinians for far more egregious behavior. The Palestinians, after all, are the ones who refused to accept the president’s formula for extending the peace negotiations. It is Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) who have called for “popular resistance,” which has led in recent years to stabbings, stonings, and attacks with cars and Molotov cocktails against Israelis. Since the PA ended the peace negotiations, there has been a sharp increase in attacks and casualties in Israel. Hamas, for its part, openly calls for the extermination of Israelis and sacrifices a generation of children towards that goal.

In response to these threats, all the president had to say at Adas Israel was that “the Palestinians are not the easiest of partners.” Rather than recognizing how fundamentally different Palestinian political culture is, the president offered slogans about how Palestinian youth are just like any other in the world. This is a classic example of the mirror-imaging—the projection of his own values onto another culture—that has plagued most of his foreign policy.

This excerpt from the president’s speech in Jerusalem in 2013 is emblematic of his mirror-imaging, and the problems with that perspective:

“… I met with a group of young Palestinians from the age of 15 to 22. And talking to them, they weren’t that different from my daughters. They weren’t that different from your daughters or sons. I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those kids, they’d say, I want these kids to succeed; I want them to prosper. I want them to have opportunities just like my kids do. … Four years ago, I stood in Cairo in front of an audience of young people—politically, religiously, I believe that they must seem a world away. But the things they want, they’re not so different from what the young people here want. They want the ability to make their own decisions and to get an education, get a good job; to worship God in their own way; to get married; to raise a family. The same is true of those young Palestinians that I met with this morning. The same is true for young Palestinians who yearn for a better life in Gaza.”

Yes, we want a prosperous life for our neighbors, but unlike the president’s daughters, there are some Palestinian children who are educated to have a completely different set of priorities. Our core values are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this world, but Hamas proclaims “We love death more than you love life.” Happiness will be reached in the next world, according to the Hamas ideology.

So why does Obama pick on Netanyahu and not on Abbas? The most likely reason is directly related to a conflict in the West between two schools of thought, both dedicated to defending democratic and Judeo-Christian values: Optimism and realism. Obama is a remarkable proponent for the optimist approach—he fundamentally believes in human decency, and therefore in dialogue and engagement as the best way to overcome conflict. He is also motivated by guilt over the West’s collective sins, which led, he believes, to the current impoverishment of Muslims in general and Palestinians in particular. He believes that humility and concessions can salve the wound, and Islamists can be convinced to accept a global civil society. “If we’re nice to them, they’ll be nice to us,” Obama thinks.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, is a realist. Due in part to Israel’s tumultuous neighborhood, he has a much more skeptical attitude of Islamists, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian President Rouhani’s government. Netanyahu does not see these groups as potential moderates, willing to play by the international community’s rules; instead, he acknowledges their radicalism, and their intent to undermine a world order they consider a humiliating insult to Islam. The major difference between the Islamists and the extremists, according to Netanyahu, is one of timing. The Islamists are willing to wait until the time is ripe to overthrow the existing world order.

Western realists worry that optimists are actively aiding Islamists in the naïve hope that they will block out the extremists. The realists believe that a resolute stance, with the use of military force as an option, is the best way to achieve agreed-upon Western goals. Obama both prefers the optimist approach and believes that his hopeful dialogues will achieve the best possible outcome. Netanyahu, on the other hand, whose nation would feel the most immediate consequences from Western concessions, does not have the luxury of optimism.

This helps explain why Obama targets Netanyahu for criticism. The prime minister’s insistence on the dangers of the optimist approach threatens to expose the inherent weakness of Obama’s worldview and challenge the president’s assumption that his policy necessarily leads to the best possible solutions. For Netanyahu and almost everybody in Israel, as well as pragmatic Arabs, the president’s readiness to assume responsibility for Iran’s future nuclear weapons, as he told Jeffrey Goldberg, is no comfort. The realists are not playing a blame game; they are trying to save their lives and their civilization. To those who face an existential threat, Obama’s argument sounds appalling.

          […]

Does it make sense for Israel—in the face of an aggressive Iran, the rise of Islamic terror organizations across the Middle East, and the fragmentation of Arab states—to deliver strategic areas to the fragile and corrupt PA, just to see them fall to extremists?

Should Israel at this moment aid in the creation of a Palestinian state, half of which is already controlled by extremists who last summer rained down thousands of rockets on Israel, while its leaders urge their people to reject Israel as the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people? Should it aid a movement that follows these five pillars: 1) There is no such thing as the Jewish people; 2) The Jews have no history of sovereignty in the land of Israel, so the Jewish state’s demise is inevitable and justified; 3) The struggle against Israel by all means is legitimate, and the means should be based simply on cost-benefit analysis; 4) The Jews in general, and Zionists in particular, are the worst creatures ever created; And 5) because the Palestinians are victims, they should not be held responsible or accountable for any obstacles they may throw up to peace?

In short, even though Israel, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, remains committed to the formula of “two states for two peoples, with mutual recognition,” the implementation of this idea at this point is irrelevant. The PA’s poor governance and the general turmoil in the Middle East render any establishment of a Palestinian state right now unviable. President Obama admitted as much, reluctantly, but continued to criticize Netanyahu instead of betraying his optimist paradigm. Netanyahu’s realism would stray too far from the path Obama, and other Western leaders, have set in front of them. But while Obama and the optimists offer their critiques, Netanyahu and the realists will be on the ground, living with the consequences the optimists have wrought.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Barack Obama = World Chaos

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We told you so! Yep, starting way back in 2007 we told you that if Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America that he indeed would radically CHANGE our country (and the world) into a place with little HOPE and much despair.

Take a look around you, our inner cities are exploding, our enemies are laughing and the Obama’s are livin’ large like some kind of European Royalty in the 1800’s, completely detached from the chaos they have caused. Join our show today as I and The United West team detail the horrible situation before us and provide actionable ways that Americans can recover from a Post-Obama America.

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