This morning I spoke at the Young America’s Foundation conference at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California on Trump’s immigration ban and why the judicial blocks on it are illegitimate.
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The debate over the construction of a wall along the U.S. Mexican border is heating up even as the infamous leader of the Mexican Sinaloa Drug Cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman awaits his trial in the Eastern District of New York for smuggling billions of dollars of heroin, cocaine and other illegal drugs into the United States across that border.
The DOJ press release, “Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera Faces Charges in New York for Leading a Continuing Criminal Enterprise and other Drug-Related Charges” provides the salient facts concerning this case.
On March 13, 2017 Bloomberg Business reported, Schumer Warns of Government Shutdown Over Trump’s Border Wall.
That report began with the following:
Senate Democrats warned Republicans Monday that attempts to take funding away from Planned Parenthood or pay for President Donald Trump’s border wall in a stopgap spending bill that must pass by late April would result in a government shutdown.
The threat from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democratic leaders sets up a climactic first showdown with the president, particularly with their inclusion of Trump’s signature border wall proposal.
“If Republicans insist on inserting poison pill riders such as defunding Planned Parenthood, building a border wall, or starting a deportation force, they will be shutting down the government and delivering a severe blow to our economy,” Schumer said in a statement.
Aliens trespassing into the United States poses a serious threat to national security and public safety yet while Mr. Schumer has proposed making trespassing on landmarks or critical infrastructure a federal crime with a five year jail sentence to deter this dangerous criminal conduct, he refuses to take the necessary measures to prevent aliens from entering the United States illegally by trespassing and/or violating our immigration laws within the United States.
Yet Schemer and his fellow Democrats are so diametrically opposed to securing the treacherous U.S./Mexican border against illegal (un-inspected entry) and mounting an effective law enforcement effort to identify, locate and arrest illegal aliens who have entered the United States without inspection, often aided by smugglers, that they are willing to shut down the federal government to prevent these critical enforcement efforts.
In Mexico aliens smugglers are referred to as “Coyotes” and a smuggled alien is referred to as a “Chicken” or in Spanish, “el Pollo” because coyotes eat chickens. This is why it might be time for the Democrats to change their mascot to a coyote- they are certainly aligning themselves with the smugglers.
Constructing a wall along the southern border would help our valiant but beleaguered Border Patrol Agents to secure that violent border.
Enforcing our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States is another component of what I have come to refer to as the “Immigration Law Enforcement Tripod” (The third leg of that enforcement tripod concerns the inspections conducted at ports of entry by CBP (Customs and Border Protection) inspectors.
When I was an INS agent I was assigned for a couple of years to the INS Anti-Smuggling Unit in NYC. The alien smugglers we encountered were among the most vicious, violent and pernicious criminals I have ever encountered in my 30 year career. They often smuggle narcotics as well as humans. They frequently use violence, including rape, to control the aliens that they smuggle and to extort additional fees for their “services” from their victims or their victims’ families.
By arresting illegal aliens who had been smuggled into the United States and transported to the New York area, my colleagues and I convinced these illegal aliens to provide us with vital information so that we could identify, arrest and successfully prosecute the smugglers in Los Angeles who had smuggled them into the United States. We shut down that smuggling organization by using the information we obtained from the illegal aliens.
The key to combatting human trafficking is effective immigration law enforcement.
On October 5, 2015 Senator Chuck Schemer posted the following press release on his official website:
Here is how the press release began:
Schumer, Gillibrand Announce Federal Grants Will Be Used To Fund Task Force to Develop & Implement Strategies to ProsecuteSex- and Labor-Traffickers and Help Human-Trafficking Survivors
U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand today announced $2,070,022 in federal funding allocated through Department of Justice (DOJ) for four New York City based organizations. Specifically, the funding will help recovery for survivors of all types of human trafficking by survivor-centered services and interagency communication.
“With this critical federal funding, these organizations will be able to continue their important work, prosecuting vile sex- and labor-traffickers and serving the survivors of human trafficking in New York City,” said Senator Schumer. “It is important that we work to both eliminate human trafficking through prosecution and help survivors obtain the comprehensive services they need and deserve.”
“This critical federal funding will allow these organizations to facilitate a wide range of programs to combat human trafficking and provide assistance to survivors,” said Senator Gillibrand. “New York City will now have additional resources to identify and respond to the needs of human trafficking survivors. I will continue to push for funding to help keep our families safe and better protected.”
While not all human trafficking involves smuggling aliens into the United States a significant proportion of such criminal activities involves the smuggling of aliens across international borders for a variety of illegal purposes that include sex trafficking and the importation of aliens trapped in virtual servitude to the alien smugglers.
Schumer may talk about prosecuting human traffickers but has done everything possible to impede the work of the DHS to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws.
The primary opponents of these human smugglers are our Border Patrol agents and our ICE agents. Yet, the Democrats in Congress as well as the mayors of Sanctuary Cities who are dead set against securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States.
To make this point succinctly, those who oppose the enforcement activities of immigration law enforcement officers are the best allies human traffickers could ever hope to have.
Human smuggling activities occur around the world and occur across our southern and northern borders as well as along our 95,000 miles of coastline and through our international airports.
Back on May 18, 2004 I was invited by Rep. Shiela Jackson Lee as her witness, to testify at a hearing conducted by the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims on the topic, Pushing The Border Out On Alien Smuggling: New Tools And Intelligence Initiatives.
At my insistence, Rep. Jackson Lee agreed to broaden the focus of the hearing and acknowledge that alien smuggling is not limited to the U.S./Mexican border but also includes those who provide aliens with counterfeit or altered identity documents and engage in schemes that involve visa fraud.
That hearing convinced her and then House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner to work cooperatively to draft legislation to create a fraud task force.
It is worth noting that the 9/11 Commission determined that fraud documents and fraud schemes were vital to the success of terrorists.
One of the issues that was addressed during the hearing was the use of visas to protect illegal alien victims of human trafficking and alien criminals to create incentives for those illegal aliens to provide vital actionable intelligence about such vile criminals.
Of course the mayors of Sanctuary Cities refuse to discuss this critical issue. If they were truly concerned about illegal aliens living in their towns, they would make certain to provide the ethnic immigrant communities with information about how they can come forward to assist law enforcement to identify, locate and arrest the alien criminals who live among them and prey upon them.
However, this would go against the narrative that immigration law enforcement personnel are the “bad guys” and the immigration law violators are the “victims.”
In fact, on March 13, 2017 The Hill reported, Dems back body cameras for ICE agents, noting:
Democrats in the House want to require immigration agents to wear body cameras amid concerns over increased immigration enforcement and the hiring of new agents.
Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill to that effect Friday, with 18 Democratic co-sponsors.
Clarke said the measure is necessary to protect those targeted by immigration enforcement from potential abuse.
I was interviewed on Newsmax-TV on March 14th about the threats by the Democrats to shut down the government over the border wall and the proposal to require ICE agents to wear body cameras.
As I noted during my interview, President Trump is determined to prevent the un-inspected entry of aliens into the United States in order to prevent the entry of terrorists and criminals and to protect the lives and livelihoods of Americans.
How could any American politician be opposed to those important goals?
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You probably heard on the news over the weekend that the Department of Justice sought clarification from Obama’s friend, Judge Derrick Watson, in Hawaii and asked if he really meant to include a stop order on the President’s 120-day moratorium on refugee admissions and the FY17 ceiling reduction when he was aiming at the travel freeze.
Imam Ismail Elshikh
The travel issue and the refugee admissions issue are two separate things. For the time being, take the so-called ‘travel ban’ from six countries out of your mind. It is not the main subject of this blog or what I want to try to make clear to readers (and the lazy, ignorant press).
BTW: A co-plaintiff in the case is Imam Ismail Elshikh. Question: Is he even a U.S. citizen? The story is here at a very unusual blog that I had never heard of.
The confusion comes from the fact that the first judge on the original order left the refugee admissions pause and ceiling portion of the EO intact and so did the Maryland judge last week.
It appears that Judge Derrick Watson believes he has the authority to set the ceiling for refugee admissions each year.
He emphatically does not have that authority. He can’t make the Department of State resume overseas processing of refugees. He can’t make the Administration and Congress spend money on refugees.
The President has the explicit power in the Refugee Act of 1980 to set the CEILING (as we said here). In most years the President (Bush and Obama) has been well under the CEILING!
As I have said recently, the big mistake the Trump team made was putting the refugee pause into an Executive Order.
They have the power to slow the flow and stay under a proposed CEILING without an explicit order. The only thing I can see that they should have done (maybe they did it) was to notify the House and Senate Judiciary Committees that they were lowering the ceiling. However, the original act only gave Congress the power to ‘consult’ not stop the President. (In 1980, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter put a lot of power in the President’s hands when it comes to refugee admissions!)
If the controversy continues, more taxpaying Americans will be educated!
That said, there could be a silver lining. The Trump State Department can keep the flow low (or at zero) for months to come, and because the refugee ceiling is in Watson’s case (a case that surely will now work its way through the courts), the subject of the US Refugee Admissions Program will continue to be in the national news. Thus more and more Americans will be learning the facts about what they have been paying for since 1980!
Bill Frelick of Human Rights Watch
As for the contractors (see list below), they would have been better off just shutting up and taking the 120-day (16 week) pause because 7 weeks have already passed since the original EO was announced on January 28th and they would be on their way through the slowdown.
Before you read the latest news about the Judge sticking by his original decision last week, see what refugee advocate and longtime expert Bill Frelick (Human Rights Watch) said in November after Trump was elected and the refugee industry went in to shell-shock:
“In the U.S., there’s not a quota that has to be filled. The U.S. has a budgeted amount of money to do refugee resettlement, but there’s no requirement that the U.S. resettle a single refugee, and there’s no legal obligation to do it.”
Here is one of many stories (this one at Fox News) this morning about Judge Watson telling the DOJ—no way, not changing a thing!
The federal judge in Hawaii who halted President Trump’s new, revised travel ban denied the administration’s request for him to limit the scope of his ruling Sunday so that the United States can immediately stop taking in refugees worldwide.
U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order on Trump’s order that prevents travelers from six mostly-Muslim countries entering the U.S. and suspends the United States’ worldwide refugee program.
Justice Department attorneys argued in a motion Friday that Watson’s temporary restraining order was essentially based on the argument that the ban appears to unconstitutionally target Muslims.
They questioned whether his ruling was limited to the part of Trump’s March 6 executive order that temporarily bans visas to travel from the six countries into the U.S., and not to the temporary refugee ban.
Watson responded Sunday by saying there was nothing unclear about the scope of his order and that the ruling remains unchanged.
As I said above, keep it up! The more public controversy surrounding the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program the better because then more American taxpayers will be educated!
For a laugh, don’t miss the news that Hawaii has taken only a tiny number of refugees for the last 14 years!
*** Here (below) are the nine major federal refugee contractors who now will see their budgets slashed (because they are largely funded by you, the taxpayer). They know this judge is on thin ice on the President’s power to determine the number of refugees being admitted to the US.
Are they hoping that Watson can bully his way through and singlehandedly re-write the Refugee Act of 1980 turning a ceiling in to a target/goal—something the refugee industry has wanted for a long time!
By the way, for new readers, you need to know that your local resettlement agency will be a subcontractor of one of the nine fake charities that monopolize the federal refugee contracting system listed here:
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The Alex Jones Channel reports, “A new release of documents now shows that Donald Trump was completely correct about him being surveilled by Barack Obama.”
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EDITORS NOTE: Please help us spread the word about the liberty movement, we’re reaching millions help us reach millions more. Share the free live video feed link with your friends & family: http://www.infowars.com/show
From Fox News March 17, 2017
The city low-balled the cost and construction is five years late; William La Jeunesse has the story for ‘Special Report’.
SA: Under earlier plans rail was supposed to have started running from East Kapolei to Aloha Stadium in September 2016, but that interim opening has now been pushed to July 2020….
More than $6 million will go to Kiewit Infrastructure West, as the firm building the system’s first 10 miles continues to make revisions to its columns and elevated guideway so it will support the load of the rail stations…..
The city awarded Kiewit contracts to design and build the guideway in 2009 and 2011 — before the contracts to design the stations went out.
Those station and guideway contracts should have been awarded together, former HART Executive Director Dan Grabauskas said in 2014 when the rail agency approved an earlier $6 million additional payment to Kiewit to address the issue. (Grabauskas joined HART in 2012 and resigned in August.)….
Kiewit’s latest $6 million will also go toward reinforcing underground sections of the West Oahu guideway near a channel that’s more susceptible to erosion than originally thought, HART officials said.
The remaining $8.7 million awarded Thursday will cover delay impacts to Ansaldo Honolulu JV, the firm contracted to design and build the train cars as well as the communications and controls system. Delays in building stations have kept the firm from running the proper tests, and delaying those tests then pushes back rail’s opening, Deputy Director for Core Systems Justin Garrod said in his board presentation Thursday.
The $9 million is a preliminary figure that’s expected to grow, rail officials said.
The project’s contingency fund, with a reported balance of more than $450 million, will cover all of the costs, officials say. HART has already approved more than $284 million in change orders to Kiewit to build the first 10 guideway miles and an operations and maintenance center, according to the agency’s most recent reports. The agency has approved nearly $27 million for Ansaldo in change order increases, the report further stated…..
A former rail consultant who left the project last year amid disagreements with HART has said that Kiewit expects to lose about $100 million on its contracts to build the first 10 miles of guideway….
The consultant, Bart Desai, questioned how those overseeing the project handled the early contracts.
“One could ask a question: Could HART have designed stations without much or no impact to the guideway elements? Or should HART have waited to delay issuance of Notice to Proceed (NTP) of the guideway project and give time to complete 75-90 percent design of station structure elements?” Desai, who dealt with claims on the project through subcontractor PGH Wong Engineering Inc., wrote in his letter. “Such option(s) would have saved the taxpayers multi-million dollars.”….
Hanabusa, then a rail board member, said, “Maybe we didn’t have a clear enough idea what we were doing”….
For the next stretch of rail construction, from Aloha Stadium to Middle Street, the stations and guideway are being designed and built as part of the same $875 million contract. The joint venture Shimmick/Traylor/Granite is expected to start that work later this year….
On, February 1, 2017, Canada held public events celebrating the hijab, Islam’s physical repression of women.
The City for All Women Initiative (CAWI) organization, backed by the City Council of Ottawa, is hosting the Ottawa Hijab Solidarity Day celebration, also called “Walking with Our Muslims Sisters,” at City Hall. According to CAWI, the main purpose of this event is to encourage non-Muslim women to wear a hijab to understand life as a Muslim woman.
The outrage is that such an event will be taking place under the auspices of the City of Ottawa, the capital of Canada. Under Islamic Shari’a law, the hijab is an expression of the suppression of women and is used as a tool to persecute women by their male counterparts.
For many secular and former Muslim women, the hijab is anything but a symbol of freedom. The hijab serves as a physical daily reminder that they, women, are second-class citizens in the eyes of Islam.
Proponents of the hijab threw me into an Iranian prison for 18 months when I was 16, for protesting Islamic extremism. My family and I were forced to flee; we finally found refuge in Canada.
I have since worked to expose the truth about the Shari’a-guided regime of Iran, as well as advocating for the emancipation of minorities and women.
While critics of CAWI’s event, including myself, have been wrongfully characterized as “Islamophobes,” this could not be further from the truth. A woman in Canada has the right to wear what she chooses — but why celebrate the hijab, any more than the crucifix or a skullcap? It is not the place of government to do that.
In Iran, where I was born, women are slowly beginning to stand up against the regime’s Shari’a-minded repression. One group, My Stealthy Freedom, describes itself as “an online social movement where Iranian women share photos of themselves without wearing the hijab.”
The fact that Muslim women in Iran go to such dangerous lengths, risking arrest and even death, to take a stand against their own religion’s oppression is in itself a significant act.
Forcing women to wear a hijab is not unique to Iran. In Afghanistan and some parts of Saudi Arabia, women face beatings, fines and even worse outcomes for showing their hair. In 2002, in Saudi Arabia, “religious police stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing correct Islamic dress… the headscarves and abayas (black robes) required by the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islam.” Fifteen girls died in the fire and more than 50 others were injured.
In a practice inaugurated by Muslims, purdah, women are shut away from society, literally imprisoned by their own families.
While one may assume that the persecution of Muslim women by Muslims does not take place within Canada’s borders, facts state otherwise. In 2007, Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim living in Toronto, was strangled to death by her father. Her crime was that, as a free woman in Canada, she chose not to wear a hijab.
In another case in Canada, in 2012, Afghan-born Mohammad Shafia, his wife and their son were found guilty for the honor killing of the Shafia’s three daughters – Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13 — as well as Mohammad’s second wife, Rona Mohammad Amir, 50. All four women were murdered by their own family for refusing to wear a hijab and preferring Western clothing.
In 2007, Aqsa Parvez, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim living in Toronto, was strangled to death by her father. Her crime was that, as a free woman in Canada, she chose not to wear a hijab.
The municipal government’s acceptance of an Ottawa Hijab Day amounts to accepting a radical legal system that is completely contrary to Canada’s democratic values, and crosses the line that separates Church and State. Endorsing the wearing of the hijab is endorsing the first step of an extremist ideology that leads to and condones honor killings, female genital mutilation (FGM) and the oppression of women.
When this author wrote an open letter written to Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, by way of response, his spokesman told the Ottawa Sun that the mayor will not intervene “in this difference of opinion between this individual and the event organizers” since the event “conforms with relevant policies… It is not my role to tell people what they should wear.” And it is not the role of a democratic government to celebrate religious symbols or to help religions proselytize.
Perhaps the Ottawa government would like to hold celebrations for “Ottawa Crucifix Solidarity Day,” “Ottawa Kippah Day” and “Ottawa Parsi Turban Day”?
The City of Ottawa, the capital of Canada, seriously needs to reconsider its support for CAWI’s event.
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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on the Gatestone Institute website and has been updated. Please follow Shabnam Assadollahi on Twitter. © 2017 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
Invasion of Europe news….
I’m not going to let you all forget that it was Hillary and her girls who were responsible for the overthrow of Libyan strongman Muammar Ghaddafi that resulted in the opening of the flood gates from Africa to Europe for tens of thousands of mostly economic migrants from the heart of Africa to countries like Italy geographically on the frontline of the invasion.
Left to right – Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power
Even Obama didn’t have the stomach for the slaughter of Ghaddafi. I followed the whole sorry tale from its earliest days here at RRW.
Of course the Europeans made that fatal mistake in the earliest days of the invasion by not turning back (using safe methods) the first boats that were launched from the Libyan coast. Now they rescue each one sending a signal to people smugglers to keep ’em coming!
Susan Rice, Hillary and Samantha Power. Hillary admitted that in 2011 Obama was reluctant to follow Europe’s lead and get involved in Libya, but that she marshaled the forces (including Susan Rice and Samantha Power) to persuade Obama to help overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Ultimately, she said, it was the President’s decision thereby tossing blame back on Obama when the results of her actions have proven so disastrous.
Here is the latest news from Middle East Monitor:
Italy panics as North Africa migrants surge
Italy will host a meeting between European and North African countries next week in a bid to strengthen support for an agreement it struck with Libya to fight people smuggling as migrant arrivals surge.
The prime minister of the UN-backed government in Tripoli, Fayez Al-Seraj, will meet with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and interior ministers from eight European countries including Germany and France on Monday.
Last month, Italy pledged money, training and equipment to help Libya fight people smugglers, a deal that was endorsed by European Union member states.
But Libya is still far from stable. Two governments are vying for power – in Tobruk to the east and Tripoli to the west – and the country remains mired in factional fighting and lawlessness.
The authorities in eastern Libya have rejected the deal struck between Rome and Tripoli.
“I’m not so naive as to not understand the situation there,” Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti told reporters. “But we cannot remain immobile and wait for the country to stabilise.”
He said the Libya agreement and next week’s meeting were not just “talk”, but strategic steps toward managing mass migration to Europe.
So far this year more than 16,000 migrants – a 36 per cent increase on the same period last year – have been rescued at sea and brought to Italy after Libya-based people smugglers piled them onto flimsy boats.
Don’t miss Hillary cackling about her success in killing Gaddafi. She looks like an absolute loon here:
Another version of Hillary’s looney laugh, is here. Don’t you think it might be too early for her to come out of the woods!
Our archives on the ‘Invasion of Europe’ are here.
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Graham Spanier
On Monday, March 20, 2017, Graham Spanier, past president of Penn State University, is scheduled to go to trial on charges of criminal child endangerment and conspiracy related to former football coach Jerry Sandusky’s rapes of little boys. At issue is whether Spanier, who was president of Penn State at the time, failed to investigate or covered up Sandusky’s crimes.
Unfortunately, there has been of late a spate of highly educated authorities, from the Pentagon to other government workers, teachers, doctors, etc., who have been arrested and even convicted for child sexual abuse, including possession of child pornography. Dr. Lori Handrahan’s publication of “Professors & Staff Arrested for Trading in Child Rape,” has sparked public outrage as the report has been shared more than 390,000 times in a few weeks. People are asking, how is this happening?
Spanier is academia sexual liberalism writ large
In fact, Spanier’s story exemplifies the consequences of sexual liberalism in academia. During his 16 years at Penn State, Spanier oversaw a number of questionable sexually charged activities. For example, Spanier apparently had no problem with Patrick Califia-Rice, a transgender sadomasochism and pedophilia advocate who keynoted a speech at Penn State in 2002. The president likewise supported an on-campus Sex Faire sporting fun for all such as “orgasm bingo” and “the tent of consent.” When asked if the fair was morally wrong, Spanier said, “It depends on what your definition of immoral is.” Given his moral confusion, would reports of Sandusky’s child rapes have elicited concern?
That was one of the questions I was asked to answer in 2014, when an investigator for Pennsylvania’s attorney general asked me to study Spainer’s scientific writings to determine whether there was a factual trail pointing to his not taking child sexual abuse allegations seriously.
My investigation first confirmed that Dr. Spanier held himself out as a sexuality expert. His 1973 doctoral dissertation was titled “Sexual Socialization.” It focused on adult sex with small children. His most important foundational work – his Ph.D. thesis – opens the door to his pedagogical philosophy, which is currently shared by a multitude of similarly educated and credentialed men and women.
From page 3 of Spanier’s dissertation:
To study this relationship, data collected by the Institute for Sex Research will be used. … To the best of my knowledge, this is the first study that attempts to investigate empirically how the sexual socializing experiences of childhood and adolescence influence the nature and extent of subsequent sexual behavior during high school and college.
Spanier covers up Kinsey’s timed child ‘orgasms’
Spanier’s “objective” research was guided by Kinsey Institute/Playboy magazine writer, Dr. William Simon. Similar to the current charges of a cover-up of Sandusky’s child sex crimes, Spanier’s dissertation covered-up Alfred C. Kinsey’s criminal child sex abuse atrocities, instead skimming over Kinsey’s “data” of timed child “orgasms” for his doctoral thesis. He writes, “we” think:
… before age 12 or 13, the [sex assaults] experiences in question would not be interpreted as sexual. … [S]exual assault before ages 12 or 13 was not related to sexual behavior …. whereas sexual assault after ages 12 or 13 was. … [A] child’s sex education, sex knowledge, sexual values, and sexual behavior from adolescence onward will not be influenced by childhood [sex abuse] experiences since as a child he or she is not capable of interpreting sexual information and experiences in the same way an adult would. (:373)
It is likely that Spanier would not “label” Sandusky’s rapes as deviant, but rather as simple sex socialization of boys. That is illustrated further in a later article in which he found sex acts “deviant” only if we “labeled” them so. The observation below from his paper on one type of sexual deviance, “mate swapping,” could apply equally to child sex abuse.
We choose to view deviant behavior simply as behavior that some value and others consider wrong. An individual’s behavior becomes deviant only when others define it as deviant. Much of an individual’s behavior can be viewed as a response to this “labeling.” (:145)
According to that logic, Sandusky’s violent oral and anal sodomy of 10- and 11-year-old boys would not be viewed as “deviant” in and of itself.
Shortly after receiving his Ph.D., Spanier landed a Penn State professorship in 1977 and later served as vice provost at State University of New York at Stony Brook, provost at Oregon State University and chancellor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1991.
Spanier is representative of almost three generations of leaders who have embraced the mantra of Kinsey (a sadomasochistic, pornographic producing, pedophile professor), that “children are sexual from birth and unharmed by sex with adults.” Between justification by “science” and rampant pornographic stimuli, is it any wonder that so many of our leaders have succumbed to sadomasochistic pedophilia documented by Dr. Handrahan?
Spanier is credited with making Penn State “an internationally recognized institution.” The same claim was made for American University’s past president Richard Berendzen – until he was caught seeking sex with children, even telling Susan Allen, a day care owner, he had a 4-year-old “sex slave” imprisoned in his basement. Spanier, like others, is still a tenured professor at $600,000 a year.
So again, the question is what/when did Dr. Spanier know of Sandusky’s child sex assaults? And, how many other high-level authorities were trained by a similar sexual worldview as the football coach and the president?
Ladies and gentlemen, an investigation of Kinsey and the Kinsey Institute waits in the wings. It almost happened under President Reagan in 1995 with H.R. 2749, “The Child Protection and Ethics in Education Act.” With President Trump, that window into child sex crimes as the basis of false and damaging research and education can be opened once again. Let those who believe that the truth must be revealed and all children protected gather together to join in the demand to revisit H.R. 2749!
EDITORS NOTE: Readers may see all of Dr. Reisman’s books on sexual fraud at the WND Superstore. This column originally appeared on World Net Daily.
For background see our earlier post, here. And, take note that the Obama U.S. Attorney who sided with the mosque builders was one of those asked to resign by President Trump a few days ago.
From Leo Hohmann at World Net Daily (Christians who escaped persecution in Iraq are fighting back!):
The saga of the 21,000-square-foot mega-mosque in Sterling Heights, Michigan, is not over yet.
The mayor and city council voted Feb. 21 to settle a lawsuit by a Shiite Muslim group and allow it to build a mosque in a residential neighborhood populated largely by Chaldean Christian refugees who escaped Islamic persecution in Iraq.
Nahren Anweya
A companion suit against the city by Barack Obama’s Department of Justice alleging the city had denied the mosque a permit based on “anti-Muslim” sentiments in the community was also settled at the Feb. 21 meeting, paving the way for the mosque to start construction.
But the counter-lawsuit filed Monday argues that city officials were actually favoring the Shiite Muslims of neighboring Madison Heights while ignoring the wishes of its own citizens who were overwhelmingly against the mosque.
If built, the American Islamic Community Center, or AICC, will become the third mosque in Sterling Heights.
Second DOJ-imposed win for Muslims in less than year
It was the second bitter mosque battle in Southeastern Michigan in less than a year.
Obama’s DOJ forced a madrassa on Pittsfield Township, near Ann Arbor, and that town had to pay out $1.7 million to the mosque while sending township employees to be trained on how not to discriminate against Muslims.
After the contentious Feb. 21 meeting in Sterling Heights in which the mayor ordered police to empty the city-hall chambers before the council took a vote on the mosque deal, WND reported that the Chaldean Christians were upset and talking about a counter-lawsuit.
On Monday, they acted. They had Ann Arbor-based American Freedom Law Center, or AFLC, file a civil rights suit on their behalf against the city and Mayor Michael C. Taylor, alleging violations of state and federal law.
“The mayor and the corrupted personal interests behind him have outraged a community which is comprised of the largest minority Assyrian/Chaldean Christians from Iraq,” said Nahren Anweya, spokeswoman for the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Sterling Heights. “This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam.”
Nahren Anweya, “This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam.”
CAIR crows and threatens:
Dawud Walid, CAIR Michigan.
When the city agreed to settle the suit and allow the mosque to be built, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, said the victory for the mosque should teach Michigan cities a lesson.
“We hope that this settlement, along with last year’s settlement in Pittsfield Township regarding a previously blocked Islamic school project, sends a strong message to city governments in Michigan seeking to deny zoning of religious institutions simply because they are led by Muslims,” said CAIR-Michigan Executive Director Dawud Walid.
An attorney for the AICC mosque, Azzam Elder, threatened to “monitor” local residents he felt were Islamophobic.
“Moving forward, we’re very concerned about some of what you’ve seen at the public hearings with some of the residents,” Elder told the Detroit News. “We’ll be monitoring what we feel (could be) potential hate groups.”
Hohmann’s story is very thorough. I have only snipped a small portion of it, go here to learn more.
Besides the lawsuit, I’m thinking that the citizens there might follow the Rutland model and work very hard to remove (at the ballot box!) the elected officials who caved!
One of the great and lasting legacies of a naive federal refugee program is that the US State Department and its contractors have placed Middle Eastern groups who have been in conflict for centuries in close proximity to each other in American cities assuming, we can only presume, that their religious conflicts will melt away in the great (mythical?) American melting pot.
Learn more about CAIR Michigan’s Dawud Walid here: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2438/dawud-walid-unhinged#
RELATED ARTICLE: Michigan: Muslims fear “undercover” Christian missionaries in Dearborn coffee shop
The people had finally found their leader, a champion for those who had built the country with their hard work and yet now believed themselves to be silenced and ignored—left behind by the artificial currents of contemporary life. He would make their voices heard again. They didn’t think of themselves as angry—at least not without a good cause—but they were no longer going to go gently into that political good night.
The year was 1896, and a new century loomed just four years away. They believed they had one last chance to change the errant course on which the country was set, and William Jennings Bryan was ready to lead them.
With the triumph of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, magazines from Vanity Fair to The Economist suddenly began writing about populism and trying to analyze that amorphous identity that periodically returns to American politics. Far less defined than a political movement or agenda, American populism is an impulse, rooted in Jeffersonian individualism and animated by a conviction that something essential in our culture is under siege by powerful currents in the wider world.
While politicians may choose to use populist rhetoric to rally their voters, it’s not an identity that many would choose on their own because it’s borne of crisis, understood by those who take it up as being nothing less than a state of emergency. Populism amounts to a last desperate manning of the barricades, when all others have decided to jettison something that, in a significant number of hearts, is still worth fighting for.
The populism of the 1890s came at a crucial moment of transition from one economic framework to the next, as an America of farmers and craftsmen was giving way to an America of industrial workers, leviathan corporations, and new immigrants.
Today, the country faces another transition to a more interconnected and, some say, post-national world, and populists have again reappeared, fearful of rocky shoals along the passage. The impulse is no longer tied to the agrarian identity and way of life that was so tenaciously defended by populists at the close of the 19th century, but it is now expressed by those for whom something just as sacred is at stake.
More than economic or political power, cultural power—the power to define what ought to be the true iconic representation of America, from which comes ideas of right and wrong—has always lain at the heart of populism, even if more specific economic concerns are easier to identify. This is why the emergence of a multi-billionaire as populist champion isn’t as baffling as it would be if the primary engine was class-based resentment of the wealthy (and it’s why Bernie Sanders is actually less of a populist than Trump).
As historian Alan Brinkley showed in his book Voices of Protest, despite the ways that the populist impulse has varied among its adherents throughout the decades, its “central, animating spirit” remained the determination to restore “to the individual the control of his life and livelihood.” Brinkley notes that Depression-era rousers like Huey Long and Charles Coughlin connected “their messages so clearly with the residual appeal of the populist tradition,” and future historians will undoubtedly note the same about Donald Trump.
But his current success shows that its appeal is not merely residual but continues to animate millions of people. The lesson of Trump’s surprise victory is that populism remains at its core an evergreen cultural force that is as intertwined with our ideas about democracy as notions about voting, representation, civil rights, or economic fairness.
Today’s drive toward populism is not primarily because of big business or big banking, but because of a perceived threat of similar size and danger to the concept of Jeffersonian individualism. Now it is the cultural triumph of identity politics that’s pushing people toward populism, as surely as monopoly and industrialization did 120 years ago. Ascendant globalism is another: just as the farmers of the 1890s felt displaced from what they considered their time-honored position within the country’s culture and economy, those who recently rallied to the populist tone of the current president felt much the same.
In his 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Age of Reform, Richard Hofstadter mused that,
While its special association with agrarian reforms has now become attenuated, I believe that populist thinking has survived in our own time, partly as an undercurrent of provincial resentments, popular and ‘democratic’ rebelliousness and suspiciousness, and nativism.”
Indeed, Hofstadter’s account of those who flocked to William Jennings Bryan in 1896 is a caustic one and caused an outcry among historians who had long looked upon the populists as virtuous Jeffersonian Democrats. But Hofstadter substantially changed the way the mainstream thinks about our periodic outbursts of populism, and today, charges of nativism, provincialism, and intolerance are even more commonly attributed to Trump’s supporters than to Bryan’s.
I don’t believe populism is inevitably as xenophobic as that, but I do believe the impulse is inherently defensive. The Economist recently reported that populism in Alabama “has not always been driven by prejudice, as might be supposed.” Rather, explained the former director of the Alabama state archives, populism is always and everywhere fired by fears of “the rise of a new aristocracy,” and Alabamans who turned to populism were “not simply emotional victims of demagogues.”
Contemporary ideologies that divide people into grievance groups are a cultural echo of the process of industrialization that once divided people into competing economic classes. In both, the deck is stacked against the individual.
The proper response to populism isn’t to dismiss it as fringe, bigoted, or anti-intellectual, but to remember that threats to individualism come from every angle, sometimes in unexpected ways. Populism is the canary in our political coal mine—a warning that individual liberty may be having its oxygen drained away. Those who are concerned about freedom should pay attention to it.
Reprinted from Learn Liberty.
Dr. David A. Smith is a senior lecturer in American history at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He received his undergraduate degree from what is now Texas State University in San Marcos, and his Ph.D. in modern American history from the University of Missouri.
The healthcare debate in D.C. is following predictable form: Miles off track with the media hyperfocused on the politics, rather than the substance. The coverage focuses heavily on the daily ins and outs of the political struggle, the D.C. winners and losers.
Will Republicans be able to placate the Freedom Caucus and still keep moderates? Will they put together something that can get through the House and have any life in the Senate? Is Ryan back-peddling? Is Trump? Will McConnell detonate the nuclear option? Is it Trumpcare or Ryancare?
The thing is, most Americans outside of political junkies don’t really care about that.
They do care about whether they will be able to afford health insurance. They do care about whether our country will drowned itself in unsustainable debt. They do care about their children’s future. But those are rarely the story. Because the truth is that in Washington, D.C., Americans are basically pawns to be played in the furtherance of personal agendas.
On the rare occasions when the substance of the proposal is actually explored, it is mostly along the lines of how many people are covered, will be covered, won’t be covered, how much it will cost, how the changes will play out politically for each party, etc. Those are fine in their place, and should be regularly reported on. They are not.
What Washington and the media never, ever talk about is the principle of American freedoms, which is at the heart of this. Virtually no one wants to talk about it.
So, status quo in the swamp. And for Americans.
But here is the whittled down nub of the issue: How much personal freedom are we willing to give away to get a little healthcare security? Because the reality of the human condition always and forever is that some people will be irresponsible with their life decisions — from relationships to finances to health.
So there will always be a percentage of Americans who do not want to purchase, or simply will not purchase, health insurance. Here’s the thing: They should be free to not and that point of freedom should be argued strenuously.
Because the only way to stop that dynamic is to give government total authority to force every single person to have health insurance. That was what Obamacare attempted to do, require every American to either buy a product — health insurance — or be fined increasing amounts by the government to financially force them to to buy it.
In an enormously tragic precedence, the Supreme Court made a political calculation and approved the forcible purchase requirements under Obamacare by calling it what it was not, what is authors including President Obama argued it was not, so as the court could rule it “constitutional.” Truly, a constitutional travesty.
Among the many things wrong with Obamacare, this was perhaps the most egregious because it went to undermining fundamental freedoms. It wasn’t just bad policy, or inefficient, or expensive — which are all true. It was a denial of basic liberty, the concept upon which our nation was founded and thrived to be what she is today.
Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” Franklin was looking at the real physical and economic threat of a distant tyrant.
And so are we, though not so distant.
Obamacare undoubtedly reduced the percentage of uninsured Americans, or more accurately, uncovered Americans. This was accomplished by expanding Medicaid — direct welfare — subsidizing plans in the state exchanges — indirect welfare — and forcing every American to participate — coercion. Even then, the total number of Americans not covered in some fashion, only declined a few percentage points.
Trillions of dollars, catastrophic rises in premiums and deductibles, loss of health care insurance options — often down to one in an entire state — all to pick up a few percentage points. About 9 percent of Americans remain without health insurance.
If Republicans did nothing more than simply repeal the Obamacare mandate, at least 10 million people would no longer have coverage, according to the Office of Management and Budget estimate of the repeal measure. The media reports this as Americans who will “lose” their coverage, but this particular 10 million will actually choose not to have coverage.
Whether that is a good idea or not is debatable. What is not debatable is what it represents: Freedom.
Because unless the government forces people by law to have health insurance, some will not. Freedom calls us to allow them to not and accept the consequences. Otherwise, with this precedent in place, the government could also make the case for regulating what we eat (because eating healthy is good for us) and forcing us to exercise (because exercising is good for us.) It could also require us to buy, say, solar panels and electric cars, because it deems those to be a good thing like health care insurance is a good thing.
You see the problem here. There is really no end to it, which is why it was a line that should never have been crossed.
So yes, Obamacare is costing hundreds of billions of dollars and would continue to until its complete failure. But it’s real cost is the loss of American liberty. And precious few seem to care.
Republicans however, will not fight this on the grounds of freedom, the high ground and the right ground. They allow Democrats and the media to define the terms and put Republicans on the defensive on bad ground.
Republicans are doing what they always do, and part of it is the swampy D.C. mentality. Republicans end up abandoning conservative principles and going with Democrat-lite. They are willing to expand government, just less so. They are willing to raise taxes, just not as high. They are willing to trade rights for securities, just not as fast. But inexorably this moves in the same direction: More government control, more “free” giveaways, fewer American freedoms.
The health care coverage debate is a perfect example.
Democrats built it on the Democrat ground of heavy-handed government control and giveaways, and dared Republicans to come after it. To boil it down, in Obamacare, Democrats gave more Americans more free stuff that was not their’s and that we cannot afford — at the cost of lost freedoms — and Republicans now want to take some of that free stuff and restore those freedoms.
Meanies.
This of course is rough politics for Republicans, as so many Americans have lost the sense of liberty, self-reliance and personal responsibility. Too many are willing to trade a lot of liberties for a little security. But part of the reason for that is that no one is making the case for this and other issues on the grounds of freedom.
But in reality, Republicans aren’t even making the freedom case — or do so rarely. They want to make sure enough Americans get enough free stuff so they can be re-elected.
Taking away an entitlement once in place is just never done, and Democrats knew that in 2010. A big part of Obamacare is the entitlement portion. But that is only a problem if Republicans fight this on the grounds of coverage and giveaways, and not on the grounds of essential liberties.
Republicans hold every nationally elected office of power and there is one window for fixing the Obamacare debacle. If it does not happen now, Obamacare will be a permanent fixture of our health care system until it totally fails, and sucks the healthcare system into its death swirl.
The final step will be nationalized healthcare.
And the result will be an even greater loss of freedoms, and precious little in the way of securities. The worst of trade-offs.
RELATED ARTICLES:
GOP leaders unveil changes to healthcare bill
Nearly 200 State Lawmakers Are Pushing for Changes to GOP Obamacare Repeal Plan
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in The Revolutionary Act.
Very good news is coming out of Canada, despite the forcefulness of the “anti-Islamophobia agenda” and the slackness of Liberal immigration policy, which has led to unvetted asylum seekers streaming into Canada from the U.S.
A new poll out by Forum Research reveals that only 14% of people support M-103, the anti-discrimination motion put forward by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid that singles out so-called Islamophobia.
Another poll has shown that 74 percent of Canadians want to see a “Canadian values” screening test for immigrants.
Any truly reformist Muslim should reject “anti-Islamophobia” initiatives, which are an element of the stealth Islamization of the West. Canada’s anti-Islamophobia motion M-103 is a follow-up to another motion, e-411, which was passed in parliament in October. E-411 “suggests that attributing terrorism to Islam is Islamophobia.” It stated:
We, the undersigned, Citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to join us in recognizing that extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia.”
No one should be making declarations in the Canadian parliament about who represents Islam. Motion e-411 omits discussion of Muslim Brotherhood strategies for the Islamization of the West via peaceful means. For instance, Dr. Ewis El Nagar’s preaching that the Islamic ruling on slave girls was not abrogated would not appear to place him into the category of “extremist individuals” as defined by e-411, yet preaching such Sharia doctrines clearly is calling for violation of Western laws.
Liberal MP Raj Grewal revealed an ominous intention of the “anti-Islamophobia” motion during the M-103 parliamentary debate of February 15, 2017:
“One of the most important things about the motion that Canadians should understand is that it encourages a committee to collect data and to present that data in a contextualized manner so we, as members of Parliament elected to this chamber, can study it and propose laws.”
“Propose laws.” Part of the argument in support of M-103 was that it was not in the form of a bill, but Grewal has now clearly stated that it is intended to guide attitudes and help in formulating policies that lead to legislation.
Western nations should not be allowing the imposition of religious edicts upon its citizens. The “Islamophobia” scheme of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to silence the freedom of speech in the West and impose Sharia blasphemy laws is no secret.
“Nobody likes M-103, new data reveals”, by Anthony Furey, Toronto Sun, March 13, 2017:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is crying “Islamophobia” after his government ministers weren’t allowed to campaign in the Netherlands over the weekend in support of his bid to expand his presidential powers.
It’s just another reminder of why this vaguely defined buzzword should never be officially recognized by Western governments.
Thankfully, the vast majority of Canadians also see it this way. A new poll out by Forum Research reveals that only 14% of people support M-103, the anti-discrimination motion put forward by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid that singles out so-called Islamophobia.
Most respondents want to see some sort of change to the wording that brings it in line with suggestions made by Conservative MPs to either mention all religions or none. When broken down by political support, even 71% of Liberals are against the motion’s wording.
Nobody seems to like M-103. And you can’t blame them.
The main argument I’ve made against it is that the term is ripe for abuse. In many countries, “Islamophobia” is criminalized, used to punish apostates or critics of Islam.
Every year, Canada welcomes tens of thousands of people from these countries. While many are coming to escape such nonsense, others will be acclimatized to a broadly-defined “Islamophobia” and support its aggressive application here.
Erdogan’s use of the term is nowhere near as robust as how some Middle Eastern countries employ it.
But it’s still troubling given the context. Turkey has become increasingly Islamist in recent years. Since Erdogan first became prime minister over a decade ago, the federal religious affairs directorate has greatly expanded its budget and overseen the construction of 10,000 new mosques.
While the headscarf was once banned in the public service, it’s now encouraged and even worn by women for career advancement. The Economist notes the governing party has a “subtle but relentless Islamising influence”.
Last summer’s coup, if it had been successful, would have likely put an end to this religious encroachment. Previous coups, like the most recent in 1997, had similar goals.
Instead, Erdogan is now consolidating and expanding his powers. Government ministers are flying around Europe to cities with significant dual national populations, who are eligible to vote in next month’s constitutional referendum, to hold pro-Erdogan rallies. This understandably makes European politicians a tad bit nervous.
The Netherlands incident is far from the first time Erdogan has cried the “I” word. Last year he told CNN he supported “an official declaration that Islamophobia is a crime against humanity”. And right after Brexit he said it was Islamophobia that was keeping Turkey out of the EU.
A couple of weeks ago, German police conducted raids on the homes of four Muslim clerics who were accused of spying on behalf of the government. Religion was only a peripheral component in the police action, yet that didn’t stop the head of Turkey’s religious affairs directorate from denouncing it as “Islamophobia-based hatred.”
Make no mistake about it: There is a correlation between Erdogan’s stance against alleged Islamophobia and his power play to expand Turkey’s Islamist agenda. And it’s not a pleasant one.
Islamophobia is weaponized language and, whether this was Khalid’s intention or not, Canada’s legislators are being asking to give it a stamp of approval.
One of the biggest arguments the motion’s enablers push forward is that M-103 is no big deal because it’s just a motion. Yes and no. It does call for a committee study that creates a pathway to legislation……
RELATED ARTICLES:
Paris: Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” slits throats of father and son, cops search for motive
Quebec imam says Islamic ruling allowing slave girls is still in force
“You are the future of Europe”: Erdogan urges Turks in EU to have at least 5 kids
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on Jihad Watch.
For the last several years we have worked on creating the most effective messaging strategies, content, and training to:
After working with dozens of companies and other organizations and studying many more, and testing/refining our approach in every medium imaginable with the general public, I am confident that we have developed a system that, if widely adopted in the industry, would transform it from a national thought follower to a national thought leader in the energy debate.
After spending just a few weeks meeting with top executives in Houston, the energy capital of the world, I realize that I have not done nearly enough to share our system and how well it works.
Thus, I have decided to do two things.
First I am explaining our system to a degree I have never done publicly.
Second, I am making a standalone version our system available, for free, to every organization—so that they can use it to create better communications strategies, persuasive messages, employee training, and executive advocacy.
Today, I want to share our methodology for communications strategy.
At CIP, we are known for our pro-human, big-picture messaging, which we believe is unmatched in neutralizing attackers, turning non-supporters into supporters, and supporters into champions. But for that message or any message to be used effectively, it must be part of a broader strategy—a results-based communications strategy based on clear metrics and proven methods of persuasion.
Too often, organizations use hope-based communications strategies with little/no ROI-related measurement using traditional, ineffectual messages and methods of persuasion. For example, it is common practice to delegate the task of persuasive energy messaging to agencies who are not even themselves convinced of fossil fuels’ goodness. It is also common practice to default to television ads instead of looking at far more cost-effective options.
I have found that every strategy must carefully consider a set of questions I call “the 10 Ms.”
I ask these questions in our Stakeholder Strategy Sessions to elicit all the relevant goals and facts needed to make a results-based communications strategy.
Now I want to encourage teams throughout the industry to use these questions themselves on any project at any time with what I call the Stakeholder Strategizer tool.
You can download it here in Word format so that it’s easy to fill in.
If you’re not in energy communications you still might find it interesting. And if you know anyone in energy communications, please forward it to them.
If you fill one in and want my feedback, just email me.
Children should not be measured like products of “factory style” schools, where we sort out the “defective” student products and throw them away. They should be educated based on their individual, God given spark of genius, to be the best they can be. When you test a monkey, a fish, and an elephant on their ability to climb a tree, the elephant and the fish will be left behind, but they, too, have unique talents.
“Holding teachers accountable” is a popular phrase. I am not supporting unions, but the design of incentives based on student scores is the major flaw in this plan. You get what you reward. Teachers (and administrators) will only teach to the test and game the system any way they can. Curriculum is narrowed, and cheating is rampant.
Teachers no longer control of what they teach and how they teach it. Administrators are openly calling them “facilitators” and not teachers. They are unfairly measured on elements out of their control.
Learning is clearly in decline, so well-meaning legislators want a means of escape from failing public schools, strangled in bloated bureaucracy, by creating vouchers or charter schools.
But unless we remove Common Core and the federal monopoly, the focus on charter schools and vouchers is meaningless, as all education is the same, with the same tests, the same curriculum, and the same counterproductive incentive system. When federal and state dollars are used to bludgeon schools to conform or lose funding, there will be no real education.
The move toward home schooling shows that parents are awakening to the fact that the legislature has sold our children down the river for the age old motives, MONEY and POWER. Tallahassee and DC are the swamps of education lobbyists selling their new testing and conformity toys to ignorant and/or greedy legislators who don’t understand or don’t care why our children are learning less every year.
We must break that mold and end Common Core and high stakes testing. We can use nationally normed testing on sample groups or even infrequently to determine progress without wasting SO much money and time that we have no time to learn. Teachers used to give tests, correct the tests and give a grade at the end. They were trained and certified to do that. They were managed, promoted and fired by locals who could observe their skills.
Unions and bad education schools made this difficult and the legislature responded by taking away their control. To get at this problem, other countries are good examples. Finland, with the best education results, trains their teachers better and longer. They are paid more and are well respected. Children do not waste their time on standardized testing until they are 16. They don’t even start school until they are 7. There are 15 minute breaks between classes in high school so that students can stretch and be prepared for learning. There is more recess in lower grades. All this and their results are outstanding!
Then there is the “annoying” US Constitution which is violated daily by the very people who have taken an oath to protect and defend it at all levels, from school boards to the President of the United States. The Constitution is crystal clear about the duties of the federal government in Article 1 section 8. They are “clear and defined.” There is NO mention of any duty whatsoever in the area of education. Then the “capper” is the 10th Amendment, which simply states that anything NOT identified in Article 1, section 8 belongs to the States or to the People. Our founding fathers had good reason for designing our federal government to be the servant and not the master of the sovereign states.
People who solve their problems and define their own success are more likely to achieve great things. Our country grew great because individuals were free to determine their own destiny. We must unleash that human potential once again by freeing our children from the slavish conformity now demanded through illegal and unconstitutional federal control of education.
Our state legislators were supposed to guard us against an intrusive federal government. They need to stand against unlawful overreach. They need to nullify laws that violate our Constitution such as the ESSA, No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Instead, they crumble under the fear of “loss of federal money.” Their knees buckle when the USDOE coerces them with dollars and then they end up with unintended consequences and unfunded federal mandates like Common Core.
News Flash! Federal money comes out of my left pocket and State money comes out of the right. The federal government is taking money from my right pocket to the left and then keeping their cut like a mob protection racket.
Where is our Eliot Ness? Who in our state legislature will stand up to the “mob” in Washington D.C.?
It only took a while for two real men to do a parody of those who seek comfort in “safe spaces” whether it be on a college or university campus or perhaps in your local Starbucks or Wicked Grounds coffee shop. Steve McGrew and Chad Prather, using the music Darth Brooks’ “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places” melody redid as “I’ve Got Friends in Safe Spaces.”
A Los Angeles Times Op-Ed “Campuses are breaking apart into ‘safe spaces’” notes:
The meaning of a “safe space” has shifted dramatically on college campuses. Until about two years ago, a safe space referred to a room where people — often gay and transgender students — could discuss problems they shared in a forum where they were sheltered from epithets and other attacks.
[ … ]
Safe space activism stems primarily from the separatist impulses associated with the politics of identity, already rampant on campus.
[ … ]
In 2015 and 2016, students of color at many colleges called for segregated safe spaces.
[ … ]
It seems the cultivation of identity has encouraged such a psychic and emotional distance between people that some prefer to stay in their bubble everywhere they go.
[ … ]
Encouraging students to engage with the unfamiliar and account for their ideas used to be one of attributes of a vibrant academic institution. Today’s university managers, however, are more likely to be complicit in relieving students of the uncomfortable burden of “being interrogated.”
[ … ]
There are worrying signs that future undergraduates will be even more disposed to embrace such self-segregation than their predecessors. The campaign for establishing a Queer Housing Program at Haverford College expresses the spirit of the times. [Emphasis added]
The LA Times op-ed concludes with this statement, “The popularity of identity politics among insecure millennials threatens to fracture campus life to the point that undergraduates are inhabiting separate spaces and leading parallel lives.”
Now I don’t know about you but safe spaces have become the pacifier for sissies, don’t you think?
WARNING: If you’re a liberal, listening to this music may trigger you to run, don’t walk, to your safe spaces.
LYRICS
By Steve McGrew and Chad Prather
Blame it all on our roots we never wore boots
and never once played in the street
We feel very bitter
get our news off of Twitter
And we just can’t handle defeatYou saw the surprise and the fear in our eyes
When Donald became president
Screamed this can’t be true
Americas through
And to the safe spaces we wentI’ve got friends in Safe Spaces
And If you don’t go with us
Then you must be racist
That is our catch phrase
Where is my latteCome on in and let’s get cozy
Showing off participation trophies
Watching CNN
In Safe SpacesWell we all get along
And sing happy songs
And watch movies by Michael Moore
We hate the alt right
We’ve got puppies on site
And we lay around on the floorOh there’s coloring books
And sad long faced looks
And tears just explode from our face
But give us an hour we’re delicate flowers
We just need an embrace…..Oh I’ve got friends in Safe Spaces
If you don’t go with us
Then you must be racist
That is our catch phrase
Where is my latteCome on in and let’s get cozy
Showing off participation trophies
Watching CNN
In Safe Spaces
RELATED ARTICLE: Loyola Has Safe Space For Self-Identified White Students | The Daily Caller
