Voters Reject the Green Political Agenda

What the midterm voters wanted was an economy that returned to its average 3.3% annual growth since the end of World War II. For six years of the Obama presidency, growth has all but disappeared. In 2013, as measured by the World Bank, it was barely 1.9% That translated into a lack of jobs, stagnant middle class income, and what Obama correctly called the Great Recession, but could not end.

Instead, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, he was still talking about “climate change” as the greatest threat to the nation and the world. For the voters, however, climate change wasn’t even on its list of priorities and with good reason, there is nothing anyone or any nation can or should do about the great forces of nature that determine what the Earth’s climate will be; starting with the Sun.

The day after the elections two major environmental organizations, the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth (FOE), wrote to their members. Their message was similar and their conclusions were absurd.

“The election’s over and the planet lost,” wrote Erich Pica, FOE president. “The next Congress will be controlled by politicians elected with millions of dollars of the Koch brothers’ oil money—putting at risk the vital environmental protections we’ve fought so hard to achieve.” FOE has more than 2 million activists in 75 nations including the U.S.

What Pica does not mention in his letter is the estimated $85 million spent on six Senate races by what The Hill described as “the nation’s top environmental groups including the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and billionaire Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate…”

So the Koch brother’s money is evil, but environmental organizations’ money is okay?

As far as FOE’s Pica is concerned, “The truth is, President Obama hasn’t always done the right thing for the environment. He should have denied the Keystone Pipeline years ago, he should be rolling back unchecked fracking, and he should have taken stronger action on climate both at home and in international negotiations.”

FOE could care less about the thousands of jobs the Keystone pipeline would create, plus the revenue from refining the oil it would transport to the Gulf States. As for fracking, it is not “unchecked.” It has to be done within the context of safety and environmental laws. As for the climate, China and India are just two nations increasing the use of coal to generate the electrical power they need to stimulate industrialization and improve the lives of their citizens by bringing power where he has never been before.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, wrote that “Friends of Big Oil have taken control of the Senate” claiming they have “a 100-day action plan that reads like Big Oil’s wish list. Our opposition is about to have free reign to implement their anti-environment agenda. And approving the Keystone XL pipeline and destroying proposed environmental regulations top their list.”

Oh, really? If the polls and elections are any indicator, a lot of Americans want to see the pipeline construction. As for the “anti-environment agenda”, that too is pure fiction. What Americans oppose is the forced closure of electricity generation plants in the name of a global warming that is not happening. Or a climate change over which no government has any role or control.

To drive home his doom-and-gloom message, Brune added that “Rare species of wildlife already hanging by a threat will not survive this onslaught.” Consider the absurdity of the claim that a Republican controlled Congress will be responsible for species extinction. For good measure, Brune, like the FOE, mentioned the Koch brothers, labeling them “big polluters.” Since when is drilling for oil and providing it to a world that runs on it “pollution”? It’s not. It’s progress that benefits humanity.

Commenting on the elections, Dr. Jay Lehr, the Science Director of The Heartland Institute, a free market think tank, characterized them as “the repudiation of the President’s policies” and the nation’s political pundits all agree. Dr. Lehr called for “a bill to require the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline which has bipartisan support and has passed every environmental test.”

Dr. Lehr called on Congress to “require the government to open up public lands to environmentally safe mineral and energy exploration as well as speed up approval of permits to drill and mine for resources on already approved lands. This will ensure our resource independence in both areas for centuries to come.”

High on my list of priorities was reflected by Dr. Lehr’s call for Congress “to take charge of the funding of the Environmental Protection Agency which has gone rogue in efforts to impede virtually all economic development in our nation, and eventually phase out the EPA, passing on its responsibilities to a committee of the whole of our fifty state environmental protection agencies.”

A November 6 article, “Climate change supporters suffer losses”, published in The Hill, reported that “Despite millions spent to make climate change a wedge issue during the midterms, environmentally friendly candidates didn’t fare well on Election Day.” Even so, the Sierra Club’s Brune was quoted saying, “Public support is solidly behind action to tackle the climate crisis. While we have lost friends in Congress, we are gaining them in the streets, as our movement grows stronger and broader.” NOT!

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, echoed Brune’s empty boasts. “Whatever may have driven individual races, the American people want action on climate change.” NOT!

As far as the environment is concerned, it is way down on the list of the voter’s priorities and the change of leadership and control of Congress reflects that. The voters don’t want a lot of vapid, idiotic talk of climate change and other environmental fantasies. They want jobs. They want an economy that will provide them. They want a better future for themselves and their children. And whether they know it or not, they want a conservative approach to government.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Unprofessional conduct complaints filed against Florida Attorney John Morgan

A Florida lawyer and two Florida citizens filed complaints against trial attorney John Morgan, of Morgan & Morgan, for unprofessional conduct (view the complaints here and here). The complaints referred to a video of Morgan at a pro-Amendment 2 rally where he appeared with supporters. Morgan makes comments that are profane, while holding a drink in his hand.

In the video Morgan states, “I’m just scared sh*tless of [Polk County Sheriff] Grady Judd” to which the crowd chants “F*ck Grady Judd.”  On Amendment 2 Morgan states, “I’m not just here to do it, I’m here to F*cking do it” and “If you Mother-F*uckers don’t get up and vote, F*ck it all we can’t win I’m telling you.” On November 4th Amendment 2 failed to garner the 60% of votes needed for a Florida constitutional amendment.

Morgan appears to refer to Sheriff Grady Judd and to those working against Amendment 2 as “professional whores” and mother-f*uckers.” At the end of his diatribe Morgan states, “I do, I do have, I do have some money. And let me tell you what [to the chanting crowd]. Everyone of you mother-f*uckers can get sex on the beach. I’m… I’m going to buy it for you.”

The full public comments of John Morgan (with captions) are captured in the video below:

In June 2013 the Florida Supreme Court established a Code for Resolving Professional Complaints based upon recommendations of a commission on professionalism for those in the legal profession. The Code recognizes, “[T]hat professionalism involves principles, character, critical and reflective judgment… unacceptable professional conduct and behavior is often a matter of choice or decision-making. Therefore, we accept the proposal of the Professionalism Commission to create a structure for affirmatively addressing unacceptable professional conduct.” Subsequently Chief Judge Belvin Perry, Jr. of the Ninth Circuit Court of Florida established by administrative order the Ninth Circuit Court Local Professionalism Panel. Judge Perry, Jr.’s administrative order states:

2.  PURPOSE OF LOCAL PROFESSIONALISM PANEL

The purpose of the Local Professionalism Panel is to receive, screen, evaluate and act upon such reasonable complaints of unprofessional conduct as may be referred to the Panel asserting improper behavior of attorneys who may have conducted themselves in contravention or disregard of the standards of professionalism as set forth in the Oath of Admission to The Florida Bar, The Florida Bar Creed of professionalism, The Florida Bar Ideals and Goals of Professionalism, the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, the decisions and administrative directives of the Florida Supreme Court, professional standards of the Osceola County Bar Association and the Orange County Bar Association’s Professionalism Guidelines – all of which are hereinafter referred to collectively as “Ideals and Standards,” and resolve those complaints informally, if possible, or refer the complaints to The Florida Bar, if appropriate or necessary. The conduct of the attorneys who are the subject of such complaints shall be reviewed and addressed in a prompt, informal, respectful, non-punitive, educational and constructive  manner, as may be appropriate.

John Morgan practices law in Florida’s Ninth Circuit Court. Fourteen months before Morgan’s diatribe the Code and Procedures were established.

Understanding the Code and Ninth Circuit Court Procedures the complaints were filed using the proper forms. However, none of the complaints were referred to the Ninth Circuit Court Local Professionalism Panel for review and action. Rather the Florida Bar reviewed the video above. A letter from the Florida Bar’s Shanell M. Schuyler, Director of Intake, ACAP Hotline 866-352-0707, states:

The Florida Bar has carefully reviewed the videos of Mr. Morgan which were posted on YouTube following his recent debate with Sheriff Grady Judd over the use of medical marijuana. While The Florida Bar does not condone Mr. Morgan’s conduct, there is insufficient evidence of a violation of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar. Consequently, this file is closed and the computer record will be disposed of one year from the date of closure pursuant to the Bar’s record retention policy.

Chapter 4 of the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar states:

A lawyer’s conduct should conform to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer’s business and personal affairs. A lawyer should use the law’s procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others. A lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers, and public officials. While it is a lawyer’s duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action, it is also a lawyer’s duty to uphold legal process.

After the defeat of Amendment 2 Morgan appeared at a press conference on November 5th. The presser was captured in the video below. Again Morgan uses profanity. He begins the presser by saying he was stopped by the local police on the way to his office and thought to himself that the police would plant marijuana on him.  Watch the full presser:

Perhaps the Florida Bar needs to follow the Code established by the Florida Supreme Court and refer the case to the Ninth Circuit Court Professionalism Panel? Just thinking out loud.

EDITORS NOTE: One of the 51 members of the Board of Governors Florida Bar is Paul Louis SanGiovanni (09-02) from Morgan & Morgan, P.A.

Scary News about Common Core Education

Irony Alert, Grit, True Grit, Academic Politboro Punishing Bill Maher.  The release of the Department of Education report “Promoting Grit, Tenacity, and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century” in 2013 seems to have had a residual effect.  The report claimed that strictly academic factors were not as important as certain personality traits, like “grit,” for success in school–and life.  At the risk of suffering the same opprobrium as British English professor Thomas Docherty for being too “ironic,” and “sighing and using negative body language,” Dissident Prof (former English professor, who like other English professors specializes in “irony”) will be ironic about “grit.”

“Grit” is now a part of Common Core and college entrance evaluation, replacing old-fashioned criteria, like knowledge.

True, True GritTrue, True Grit Most people of a certain age will associate “grit” with the 1969 movie True Grit, about the Wild West and revenging a girl’s father’s killer, starring John Wayne. John Wayne would be surprised that the word is used in the context of education, including fashion education.

Fashion education was the focus of a recent White House event.  First Ladies have always focused on fashion, of course.  Think of Jackie O and Chanel and Dior, and Nancy Reagan and Oscar de la Renta.

But fashion has entered a new era in the current White House, with student-designers credited with “imagining” a dress.  Washington Post writer and fashion critic Robin Givhan led her article earlier this month with the news about a fashion education event at the White House focusing on the newsworthy topic of …. ba da dum, drum roll…the First Lady’s shoulders.  Dissident Prof is being serious and not ironic.  She is quoting the first paragraph in full:

For a Wednesday afternoon luncheon in the State Dining Room, first lady Michelle Obama wore a sleeveless navy dress with a full skirt and a fitted bodice. It had a racer-style back and a sensuous front that showed off her shoulders. The relatively simple frock didn’t carry the weight of an inaugural gown but it was particularly significant nonetheless, because it was the dress she chose to wear to the first White House fashion education workshop.

The event was educational in nature, intended to give “a leg up to aspiring fashion designers and stylists, writers and entrepreneurs from 14 East Coast high schools and colleges.”  Dissident Prof does not recognize the names of most of the designers–and also does not follow the logic of Givhan’s sentence, “But Obama’s dress made it clear just whom she wanted to be the stars of the day: the students.”  She supposes, though, that that’s because she is still used to the old-fashioned linear literacy and has not become used to “visual literacies,” including clothes.  Alas, Dissident Prof cannot read the “fashions” that WP’s fashion critic can read.

New Verb Form: Or maybe Dissident Prof has trouble recognizing new verb forms, as in this sentence: “Her dress was imagined by Natalya Koval, a student from New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology, who was the winner of a design competition.”

What does it mean that a dress is “imagined”?  Is it sewn? Is it designed?  Is it drawn?  Does the student-designer imagine it and then somehow transfer the imagined image by osmosis?  Is any skill even involved?  (Although she excelled in English, Dissident Prof also had her sewing handiwork displayed in the Home Economics hall of Benjamin Franklin High School: Her 5/8-inch seams were always 5/8-inches!)

Are the fashion imaginers even expected to be able to draw or sew?  Dissident Prof is perplexed.  The First Lady, in prepared remarks, said that “the clothes you see in the the magazine covers are really just the finished product in what is a very long, very complicated and very difficult process.”

Vogue editor Anna Wintour is quoted as crediting Obama with changing the perception of fashion as being “unserious.”  Said Wintour:

Fashion can be a powerful instrument for social change. . . . It allows us to think about who we are as individuals and as a society.

Wintour failed to explain how fashion can be a “powerful instrument for social change.”

Dissident Prof declares right off the bat that there shall be no jokes, smirks, or comments, though, about irony.  To wit, the concluding paragraph of this very important article about education:

Spanx and confidence: And as for the first lady, who named Cornejo as one of her favorite designers and declared her affection for Spanx: “Fashion plays an important role in my confidence.”

We turn now to new college entrance criteria and “grit” and similar hallmarks.  At the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, as reported in USA Today recently, personality tests now are being administered for college entrance. Jeff Fuller, director of admissions at the University of Houston, says colleges are looking “for reasons to admit a student.”  No doubt.

It’s not only happening at small technology institutes.  Purdue University admissions director Pam Horne is quoted as saying,

I think that there are many of us who are very interested in the noncognitive factors that can help predict a student’s success. And we know what some of those might be: perseverance, goal orientation, maturity in general, time management, self-determination — which are difficult to measure.

The courage of hunting down your father’s killer in the Wild West pales in comparison.

Speaking of courage, remember when comedian Bill Maher called the 9/11 terrorists “courageous”?  Well, Mr. Maher has now joined company with those like Condoleeza Rice and George Will.  Yes, formerly favorite comedian of the college set has now found disfavor and been “disinvited.” University of California/Berkeley chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks, in a rare administrative move, however, overruled the student group that blocked Maher’s invitation as commencement speaker for December.  Maher is known for his vicious attacks on conservatives and Catholics, but now finds himself exiled for deviating from the politically correct path of the university Politboro.

Will this end when one of the professors espousing ever more refined standards of political correctness in the classroom finds himself or herself as the object of disinvitation by students?  The irony of all this is that one can never be politically correct enough.  Perhaps, we need to start teaching about the history of communism and worry less about “grit.”  One of the fundamentals would be the government’s obligation to enforce contracts, and not allow student “loan forgiveness” for “public service” workers.

Obama’s Revenge

The Democratic Party that supported President Obama’s agenda for the past six years was dramatically rejected in the midterm elections and the message for the new Republican-controlled Senate and House is to aggressively take action on stalled legislation to improve the economy and address other issues that have suffered neglect.

The GOP is going to be up against the revenge Obama will take on America in the remaining two years. The midterms will not generate any humility in Obama; only anger and resentment.

Republicans were not elected to “work with” Obama. They were elected to stop his agenda and actions that have been harmful to the nation. The big question coming out of this electoral mandate is whether the inside-the-beltway Republicans in Washington will do what the voters want.

Obama promised a “transformation” of America, a nation dedicated to individual freedom and liberty, and it has taken this long for many to realize that his definition of transformation was an ever-increasing Big Government to control every aspect of our lives:

  • the education of our youth who lack knowledge of civics, math, and science,
  • the deprivation and reduction of access to vital sources of energy,
  • the refusal to protect U.S. sovereignty by ignoring our immigration laws and border security,
  • the reduction of our military power to levels rivaling pre-World War Two,
  • the failure to resist the growth of Islamic fanaticism,
  • the historic and dangerous increase of our national debt,
  • the failure to take fundamental steps to revive the economy by cutting taxes and reducing regulations,
  • the destruction of our market-based healthcare system.

Obama will take the electoral rejection very personally and, as we have seen in his contempt for working with Congress and his smears of the Republican Party, no one should doubt he will use the remainder of his term in office to wreak as much damage as possible; to prove he is right and the rest of the nation is wrong.

Much of what he will do was put off until after the midterm elections because he knew the level of rejection would be even greater. Now he is free to misuse “executive orders” unless the new Congress takes steps to defund and legislatively stop them. Investigations into the scandals that have become synonymous with his administration must be vigorously pursued.

What can we anticipate?

Obama will do everything he can to leave American vulnerable to increased illegal immigration including a rumored amnesty that would provide work permits and green cards to millions who would compete with jobless natural born and naturalized Americans. He has already refused to spend funds that have been allocated to secure our borders.

When Attorney General Eric Holder exits the Department of Justice expect Obama to nominate someone even more radical and divisive.

In the next two years you can expect the Environmental Protection Agency, already producing more regulations than any other element of the government, to go into overdrive to shut down as many power plants as possible, reducing the production of electricity on which the nation depends.

Obama has done little to respond to the growing global Islamist movement, showing favor to terrorist groups such as Hamas, but his greatest effort has been to provide Iran with the approval to advance its nuclear weapons capability by opening negotiations that, if agreed to, would put it within mere months of being able to put nuclear warheads on missiles and in bombs. It would change the balance of power in the Middle East and threaten the rest of the world.

Expect Obama to try to close Guantanamo despite legislation forbidding this action. In keeping with his tilt toward Islam, he has already released five Taliban leaders in exchange for an alleged U.S. Army deserter. Others who were released rejoined the Islamic holy war.

He will, of course, do everything he can to protect his namesake legislation, the Affordable Patient Care Act otherwise known as ObamaCare. It must be dismantled before it does even more harm to the nation’s healthcare system. He has waited until after the midterms for Americans to learn that their ACA premiums will rise dramatically. Ultimately, it must be repealed.

In these and many other ways, he can continue to harm our national interests. The one prediction that can be made with certainty is that he will spend even more time playing golf and indulging the many perks of the office.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Sarasota School Board member Caroline Zucker politically attacks fellow board member during public meeting

open school board meetings

For a larger view click on the infographic.

Sarasota County Florida School Board member Bridget Ziegler introduced board agenda item # 7 for discussion during the official Sarasota County School Board workshop meeting held on October 21st, 2014. The item addresses the workshop meetings the school board holds off camera in a small room to discuss specific agenda items (see infographic on right). Ziegler wants the entire meeting, including workshops, televised in the name of government transparency. The meeting and discussion quickly turns political.

During the off line, but public, workshop board member Caroline Zucker attacks fellow school board member Ziegler about her campaign contributions. In the room during the workshop was Ken Marsh, Ziegler’s opponent for the District 1 seat. Marsh was subsequently defeated during the November 4th mid-term election. Ziegler stresses (multiple times) that the workshop is an inappropriate venue for conversations about her campaign while they are supposed to be discussing taxpayer issues concerning education.

Many question what does a discussion about school board transparency have to do with Ziegler’s campaign?

Board member Brown then says being away from the cameras is “the only way to have a candid conversation.” Brown talks about Ziegler’s campaign website. Zucker and Brown appear not to want to meet in the sunshine, i.e. be live on television for their “candid discussions.” Brown states 30% of Sarasotans don’t care about public schools. Superintendent Lori White does not want these meetings televised because “staff can’t get lunch or take a break.” White says “we don’t have enough staff to do the two shifts.” White says she likes it the way it is.

Brown then attacks Ziegler because the issue of holding workshop meeting in public is on her campaign website as an issue of concern. Brown then accuses Ziegler of wanting transparency from the board but not herself, because she will not release her donor list. Brown states sunshine laws “tie her hands.” Brown wants the board to come together, but does not want to do it in the open, live and on air.

Brown wants the board to come together but bullies a school board member at this meeting. Are diverse views not welcomed by Brown and Zucker?

Brown, Zucker and Superintendent White do not appear to want government transparency. Ziegler does. Listen to the entire discussion of the meeting:

Florida Pastors go to Houston to fight for religious freedom

AndersonDavidB

Pastor David B. Anderson, Faith Baptist Church, Sarasota, FL.

A group of seven ministers from Florida decided to stand up for religious liberty and went to Houston to see what can be done to protect their brethren. Pastor David Anderson, from the Faith Baptist Church in Sarasota, FL, was on of those who flew to Houston to meet with Democrat Mayor Annise Parker. This issue was personal for Pastor Anderson as he faced a similar attack on his religious freedom when a judge ruled that he could not speak out against abortion from the pulpit. After a two year court battle, he won.

This group of Florida pastors may have been the catalyst for the Mayor of Houston, who is an openly lesbian activist, to withdraw the subpoenas asking for private information from five Houston pastors. The following is a letter Pastor Anderson sent to his congregants about his mission to Houston titled “What Happened in Houston?”:

What Happened in Houston?

The Mayor of Houston, an open LGBT activist, has successfully advanced an aggressive gay rights agenda for five years, all the while being fervently opposed by evangelical pastors in the area. From all indication, there is palpable ill will between her and the pastors opposing her initiatives. After these pastors succeeded in compiling 50,000 signatures on a petition to overturn the new Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (which forbids public and private buildings from restricting the use of restrooms on the basis of gender when it comes to transsexuals) the city council disqualified the petition for irregularities.

In response to that disqualification, a group of pastors filed a lawsuit against the city for violating the voting rights of Houston citizens. The mayor responded to the lawsuit with the power of subpoena – demanding that the five pastors prominent in the petition drive surrender personal information relating to their activities during the petition drive, including; sermons, speeches, notes, emails, texts, tweets, and diaries.

It was this use of subpoena that generated my response. I joined a delegation of six other ministers on a mission to Houston. Our hope was to hold a press conference at City Hall, conduct a prayer service on site, and then have a meeting with the Mayor. We left for Houston by faith, with none of those plans confirmed.

Our goal was not to comment on gay rights or the Mayor’s ongoing struggle with these pastors, but to openly and aggressively oppose her use of the power of subpoena to control, interfere, restrict, and intimidate, a pastor’s right to freely exercise his/her faith with the threat of fine and imprisonment. The Texas Constitution actually guarantees freedom of religious communication in stronger and more specific language than does the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

By God’s grace, we had a successful press conference and a beautiful prayer service on the entry plaza of City Hall. Each of us spoke for 2-3 minutes and each of also prayed. All of it was recorded by the CBS Houston affiliate KHOU, Telemundo and NPR. The reporters asked thoughtful follow-up questions. The Mayor’s staff was in the audience, right in front of us. After prayer, we went up stairs to the Mayor’s office to inquire about having a meeting. We were met by the Mayor’s Chief of Staff and invited into the waiting area while he spoke with her. He came out to tell us she had agreed to meet with us if we could come back a few hours later. This was an unprecedented development because her interactions with the ministerial groups and Christian activists groups had turned so unpleasant she had not met with any in a very long time.

We left her office rejoicing that God had answered our prayers. We had no idea to what extent until we came back later for the meeting. She invited us into her personal chambers where we all set around a conference table. It began tense and terse. She was defensive and her staff was ready to protect her should they deem she was being overwhelmed. We took turns sharing our concerns with her. Within a few minutes the tension melted and we had a truly open-hearted and open-minded discussion. It was a respectful dialogue and exchange of ideas. The content of which must remain confidential.

In that hour each of us implored her to withdraw the subpoenas and we each gave a rationale for doing so. She gave us the very strong impression that she would seriously consider our words and get back to us. We thanked her for listening and departed. As we were walking out, most of the team went to the cameras and reporters, but the Chief of Staff called me aside to continue the discussion with his staff. This discussion, too, was informative, open, honest and enlightening – but again confidential. We thanked each other and said our goodbyes.

As we drove off, we marveled together that the mayor of the fourth largest city in America gave us more than an hour of her time, listened intently, seriously pondered our words – even though we represented her “enemy.” She is a powerful and highly placed homosexual activist, but she let down her guard to us and hinted that she may do the politically inconceivable act of admitting she was wrong and reversing her decision. We prayed and thanked God for using us for reasons we do not know, and for purposes we could not foresee.

About 30 minutes later, we got a call from the Chief of Staff telling us that if we would be willing to stand with her at the press conference as she would withdraw the subpoenas. We were flabbergasted. What an answer to prayer! Half of us agreed to do so after a quick discussion and the other half chose not to. I thought it was the best tact for me, and the most reflective of Spirit of Christ, since I was there in a pastoral role, trying to show her His love. I believed my church family would support this decision to set aside my concerns about the homosexual agenda since she would be doing what I (and the others) had asked her to do. It was going to cost her dearly with her LGBT supporters. I had assured her that I was there for one reason only, to stand up for the freedom of speech and free exercise of religion in a godly and Christ-like manner. I first and foremost saw her as a woman in need of Christ – as did our whole delegation.

However, after we met with some local pastors, we concluded it would be best for her to make her announcement on her own. We explained that assessment to her Chief of Staff and he graciously received it, but made no promise that the Mayor would still withdraw the subpoenas without our presence. We prayed for the Lord to move her to do what she knew was right (at least on this issue) and remove this threat to the free exercise of religion.

We were grateful to watch live on TV, early the next day, the Mayor holding a press conference to announce her decision to withdraw the subpoenas. She said that after numerous meetings, but particularly the one she had with seven pastors from out of town, she had come to accept that the subpoenas were inappropriate and that she was withdrawing them! A reporter asked her who the seven pastors were and she read off our names. I immediately sent her and her staff an email thanking her for courageously doing the right thing.

I know it sounds odd for an evangelical Baptist pastor to work with, encourage and thank a LGBT activist, but what she did prevented a terrible and dangerous precedent from being set. We went there to accomplish one immediate purpose (the withdrawal of the subpoenas) and one long-term purpose (be a testimony of Christian character and love). I am not saying that the believers in Houston had not done so previously, but it appeared that their relationship with her had so deteriorated that love was no longer being perceived.

It is hard to put the magnitude of what happened into words. I think it is unprecedented in recent times and certainly as it relates to powerful LGBT activist politicians. I am humbled to have played a small part in this exchange and my prayer is that it is represents only a small part of something much bigger that God is doing in Houston. Those pastors have taken a strong stand, and we hope our contribution proves to be a blessing in their lives and ministries and makes their love more apparent to those they oppose culturally or politically.

I also want to thank each of you who invested money and/or prayers in this endeavor. I want to thank my church family for allowing me the freedom to participate even though there are BIG issues here at Faith requiring my attention. My prayer is that God will bless FBC for its willingness to let me take part in ministry opportunities that have no immediate numerical or financial profit for our local church. I thank God our church family sees a bigger picture than just the here and now, and that its concerns are not restricted to our ministry’s welfare only.

I am also thankful that I knew my church family would want me to follow the dictates of my heart and prompting of the Spirit. I felt no hesitation to be kind and helpful to a woman diametrically opposed to our theological beliefs, my personal political bent, and our church’s position on homosexuality. I knew FBC would want me to. I returned home exhausted, exhilarated, humbled, thankful and inspired.

May God bless you all, and may God work in and through His church in Houston,

Pastor Dave

See you Sunday

RELATED VIDEO: SNN: Sarasota Pastor reasons with Houston Mayor on Sermon Subpoenas – Herald Tribune

Predicted Voter Fraud Underway on a Massive Scale — With Examples

In the 2008 Presidential election, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) had 1200 neighborhood chapters with 500,000 members  in 100 major cities across the nation; ACORN was funded by Congress to register voters.  ACORN employed massive  Voter Fraud to get Obama elected.  In 2009, in the wake of the production of video tapes portraying members of ACORN engaged in the registration of illegal aliens, a nationwide controversy erupted.  ACORNwas found to be falsifying then filing voter registration forms in Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, California, Wisconsin, Washington, New York, and Illinois, resulting in felony convictions in Federal Court in those states for Voter Fraud.   As a result, millions of illegal votes were cast by illegal voters, and the previous funding for ACORN to register voters was terminated by Congress.  ACORN was disbanded following multiple convictions for felony Voter Fraud in Federal courts  in multiple states.  The Obama administration morphed the 1200 ACORN chapters into many newly named organizations in 50 states, and those newly named organization employed the same ACORN operatives who are being well funded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, as they continued perpetrating massive Voter Fraud in the 2012 Presidential election.

It was reported in the below listed article, that in the 2012 Presidential election, that 6.4% of the 124,026,000 votes cast by voters, or 7,937,664 vote cast, were cast by illegal aliens.  For 6 years Holder, following Obama’s instructions, has been aggressively filing law suits against any state that passes a voter photo ID law to preventthem from opposing the massive Voter Fraud again in 2012, like they did in 2008 and the number of illegal aliens voters grew in to over 7 million voters in 2012.  States have been passing voter ID laws requiring that voters present a photo voter ID, in order to vote at the polls for comparison to the list of registered voters.

Even when states offered to  pay for the issuance of those voter photo IDs, Holder still filed suits against the states to oppose the requirement for a photo voter ID, by saying those ;laws were designed to suppress minorities from voting. The long term goal of Obama and his leftists and Marxist supporters appointees in the bloated bureaucracy is to CHANGE the Republic into a one party Socialist State.  Obama’s leftist supporters are continuing the employment of Voter Fraud to register more illegal aliens than the 7.937,644 illegal aliens that voted in 2012.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL-Senate) addressed the US Senate in a 30-minute floor speech and alerted the nation to the fact that after the November 4th election, Obama is preparing, once again, to unilaterally circumvent Federal Immigration Laws by issuing an Executive Order in order to violate Federal Immigration Law and the US Constitution, without the consent of Congress.  Obama had previously violated Federal Immigration Laws, without the consent of Congress, by issuing an Executive Oder to prevent ICE from deporting nearly 1 million illegal aliens, termed Dreamers, who are now protected from deportation by the Obama administration’s ill-conceived Deferred Action-Childhood Arrival Program (DACA).

Obama gave temporary lawful status to those illegal aliens in the DACA program, up to age 31, and provided them with identity documents, expediting their rapid pathway to citizenship, without so much as a face-to-face interview with ICE or Immigration officials.  The Obama administration has made it very easy for another 1 million Illegal aliens to obtain drivers licenses and register to vote, when those 1 million Dreamers are added to the 7,937,6644 illegal aliens who violated Federal Lawby voting in 2012, there will be nearly 9 million Illegal aliens violating Federal Law and voting on November 4th.   The Obama administration knows the thatImmigration Service does not have the resources to conduct field investigations of the 1 million DACA Illegal aliens, in order to check their applications, so the Immigration Service could uncover fraud, determine if they have criminal records, or determine if they might be listed in the CIA terrorist data base.   Although Congressional leaders have the power of the purse, they have done absolutely nothing to cancel the funding required to expedite the pathway to citizenship for the DACA program.

After the November election, according to Senator Sessions, Obama is planning to issue another Executive Order, that will provide legal status and work authorization cards to an additional 5 to 6 million illegal aliens in the United States.  Obama plans to issue those work permits to 6 million illegal aliens at a time when 44 million American citizens are unemployed & on food stamps, all American citizens would be required to compete for jobs with the 6 million Illegal aliens Obama plans to issue work permits to.  When those 6 million illegal aliens, are added to the 1 million DACA illegal aliens previously provided with legal status, and the 7,937,664 illegal aliens who illegally voted in 2012. Obama will have been behind and responsible for helping nearly 15 million illegal aliens to register to vote for President in 2016.

Current examples of the massive Voter Fraud:

  • Maryland–Massive voter fraud in Maryland has been uncovered where illegal aliens who say they are not citizens on jury duty survey forms are found to have registered to vote by the thousands.  Early voting just started in Maryland, but there are already accusations that some voting machines are changing Republican votes to Democrat  Now Republicans are calling for an investigation by the State Board of Elections.
  • Illinois—Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start last Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats.  Republican state Representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote at the Schaumburg Public Library.  “I tried to vote for myself and instead it cast a vote for my opponent.”  Moynihan said Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director, Jim Scalzitti, told Illinois Watchdog, the machine was taken out of service to be tested
  • North Carolina—The North Carolina Board of Elections has found 1,425 registered voters who likely are illegal aliens.  The audit sample 10,000 registered voters in with data provided by the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles and the US Department of Homeland Security.
  • New York—A single Bronx voter listed in official records as being 164 years old led to the Board of Elections officials to review their files—–where they turned up another 849 New Yorkers who were supposedly alive when Abraham Lincoln was President.

Examples of Voter Fraud in Connecticut, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia, Minnesota, Alabama, Texas, Massachusetts, Tennessee, California, Idaho, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Michigan, Hawaii, Maryland, Rhode Island, etc. can be reviewed by clicking on the link: https://www.rnla.org/votefraud.asp

To prevent the massive scale   Voter Fraud underway being perpetrated by the Obama administration, every state should pass laws to require voters to show a photo ID in order to cast a vote at the polls.  The Republicans in Congress must use the power of the purse to shut down the issuance of legal documents to provide legal status for DACA illegal aliens and the 6 million Illegal aliens that Obama plans to provide legal state to.  The Governors of every state should close down the issuance of drivers licenses for illegal aliens, so they cannot use their drivers licenses as proof of residence, so they can register to vote.

We encourage voters to volunteer to be poll observers or poll workers to assure Federal voting laws are observed on November 4th.

RELATED ARTICLE: WaPo Publishes Scientific Evidence of Voter Fraud on a Massive Scale — As Previously Predicted By This Here Very Blog

RELATED VIDEO: Multiple NC Campaign Workers Willing to Aid Non-Citizen With Felony Kay Hagan Votes

“Tanscending” the idea of “American History” and Forgetting D-Day

Recently, Cal Thomas, in what has become a journalistic ritual, bemoaned the loss of knowledge about American history in a column titled “D-Day=Dumb Day for Many.” This historical occasion was the 70th anniversary of D-Day on June 6. Thomas cited a study by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni that showed only 70 percent of recent college graduates knew that D-Day occurred during World War II. This and other dismal statistics revealing historical ignorance were attributed to the fact that very few colleges require survey courses on American history.

But Thomas, and others similarly concerned, might be surprised to learn that not only is American history being overlooked, but that a movement among many history professors has been underway to eliminate the very category of “American history,” and even the idea of the United States as a legitimate nation. While attending the annual conference of the Organization of American Historians, I learned about such “reframing of history.”

The OAH claims to be “the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history,” but its members seem to have a limited view and that is of the United States as an overwhelmingly oppressive, unjust – and illegitimate – nation.

This year’s conference theme, “Crossing Borders,” focused on slavery and segregation in the past, and on supposed persecution of “immigrants” (illegal aliens) in the present. Assumptions reigned among the panels I sat in on: ACORN was good, objections to forced busing for school integration were bad, the 1964 presidential election that allowed Lyndon Johnson to institute metastasizing federal programs was a positive counterforce to the election of Richard Nixon and the rise of the “right-wing.” The Plenary Session, “Remembering and Reassessing the Mississippi Summer Project” included activists from that summer of 1964, Dorie Ladner, Rita Bender, and Charles E. Cobb, singing praises to Julian Bond, Stokely Carmichael, Tom Hayden, John Lewis, Harry Belafonte, Noam Chomsky, and Frantz Fannon. In the sprawling vendors area, publishers plied books for high school and college, including the graphic adaptation of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of American Empire, Eric Foner’s Who Owns History?, and paeans to Margaret Sanger, Mother Jones, Hugo Chavez, and Earth Day.

The strategies for teaching to the new A.P. U.S. History exam, discussed in one panel, were in keeping with the conference’s theme. But the genesis for such anti-Americanism became apparent in another session called “Internationalizing American History: Assessment and Future Directions”; it focused on the deliberate effort to teach American history from a “cosmopolitan” perspective, with that meaning incorporating the views of foreigners who do not believe in the legitimacy of this nation. At that session, I heard the phrase “what used to be called” prefacing “Early American History,” “the American Revolution,” and the “creation of the American republic.” The promotion of Common Core as presumably “internationally benchmarked” is no coincidence: historians have been working on imposing the “cosmopolitan” perspectives of history, a specific aspect of Common Core criticized by George Will.

The Prevailing View

Panelist Jane Kamensky of Brandeis University started off by declaring that American history needs to be “rescued from not only the national but from the nationalist framework” and that we must study a “diasporic” revolution involving “freedom struggles against imperial masters” of indigenous peoples.

Johann Neem of Western Washington University dissented by offering Hegelian theories about particularity and relationships as an argument for retaining the category of “nation.” He noted that works of the eighteenth-and-nineteenth-centuries are filled with “tolerance” for diversity, even though our national identity is mostly white Protestant. Neem is author of Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts.

The next panelist, Kristin Hoganson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, challenged the idea that American history should be a national history. She cited three books that reveal how “partial” our histories have been: Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism, 1915-1940, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States & the Philippines, and Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State. Apparently, no history of “what used to be called the United States” is complete without a reference to occupation, imperialism, blood, and empire. Hoganson gave credit to Thomas Bender (New York University), the commentator on the panel, for making a “powerful case” for the “need for more transimperial history,” with his book, Rethinking American History in a Global Age.

Kiran Klaus Patel of Maastricht University in the Netherlands suggested a more European, “transnational” approach to the study of American history, and destabilizing boundaries. Fortunately, to him, in the 1980s and 1990s cultural history transformed all of history, including diplomatic history.

Judy Tzu-Chun Wu of The Ohio State University, where she has a joint appointment in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, asserted that there is need for more “global, gendered analysis,” for example, of how women opposed the Vietnam War, the subject of her second book, Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era. Her first book was Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity.

Thomas Bender, considered the founder of the “transnational turn,” approvingly asserted, “The panel has embraced the international historiographical approach”– “except for one skeptic on the panel” (Neem). Bender suggested pushing students in the new direction of “entanglement with the planet, people, and nations,” requiring them to learn foreign languages like Arabic and Chinese. Jobs in the future, he said, will be in history that transcends the idea of “American history.”

The History of the Transnational Turn of History

I was shocked that history professors would want to eliminate American history as such. But then I learned that this “transnational” effort began in 1996. Under the direction of Bender, the Organization of American Historians and New York University’s International Center for Advanced Studies jointly established the Project on Internationalizing the Study of American History. They then met in Villa La Pietra, New York University’s Center in Florence, Italy, in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000.

According to “The LaPietra Report,” the historians spent the first year at the Villa planning, then the next discussing “the theoretical issues that attended the project’s reconsideration of the assumptions that determined the temporal and spatial scales of conventional national historical narratives.” The third conference resulted in “exemplary” essays “probing either particular themes or reframing conventional historical movements or periods from a more international perspective.” The final meeting, in 2000, put attention on the “practical implications of the intellectual agenda.”

The Practical Implications

The practical implications include a “reframing of American history” in college and in K-12 education.

Such reframing includes preparing “globally competent citizens,” the aim of Common Core. The as-yet voluntary “College, Career, and Civic Life (c3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards” replace knowledge about American history with activism and follow those set for college in the Department of Education’s 2012 report, “A Crucible Moment” (roundly criticized by the National Association of Scholars in a special issue of Academic Questions). Replacing factual questions of traditional “national historical narratives” are loaded questions, as high school, and even younger, students are asked to evaluate primary and secondary sources, think “critically” and “deeply,” and “grasp the relevance of widening the lens of social analysis.”

It is no wonder that History Literacy rates continue to plummet.

Unlike the vast majority of professors at OAH, Robert Paquette, Hamilton College History Professor who co-founded the independent Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, teaches his students “that the United States was founded on the principles of limited government, voluntary exchange, respect for private property, and civil freedom.” In a recent SeeThruED article, he criticized the neglect of American history, noting that not one of the eleven New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) schools requires that undergraduates attend a single course in American history and “a substantial majority of these eleven elite colleges do not even require of their majors in history as many as one American history course.”

Paquette warns, “The United States cannot survive as a nation if the traditions and principles that made it cohere as a prosperous and distinctive country are distorted and marginalized.”

Cal Thomas makes a similar point in his column, remarking poignantly about the World War II veterans visiting the beaches of Normandy, probably for the last time in their lives: “if they could have foreseen what America would become and how little their descendents know, or care, about their sacrifice, would they have done what they did?”

But student ignorance is the aim of professors and teachers meeting at conferences that we pay for in taxes and tuition. While the Greatest Generation remembered D-Day, influential professors spent summers in an Italian villa discussing how to destroy the very idea of the United States in history classes. And then they congratulated themselves at a conference in Atlanta in 2014.

Eye on U.S. Education: The Complete Parent’s Guide to Common Core

For a few years, people and organizations throughout the State of Florida have been fighting the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  For the most part, focus has been on trying to convince legislators in the House and Senate – along with the Governor – to remove these Standards or to, at least, “pause” its implementation until there is further analysis.

Unfortunately, informing the parents about CCSS has been almost completely ignored.  Ask a parent what they think about Common Core and you will probably get a “blank expression”.   What they may know about CCSS is what the backers of these Standards have been providing to the media.

The POWER to make a change lies with the PEOPLE.  If legislators think that their constituents are not concerned about an issue (and their elected position is not in jeopardy), they may not take any action.  Also, they are continually influenced by lobbying organizations and political/financial pressure.

Eye On U.S. Education (EUSE) has decided that parents need to be informed about the “Florida Standards” – which is really another name for CCSS.   We have made up a PowerPoint presentation called “The Truth About the Common Core State Standards”.    This presentation, although written for parents in Florida, can easily be edited for those in other States.  We also have made up an initial Announcement Notice and hand-outs for use after the presentation.

To obtain your free downloadable copy of The Complete Parent’s Guide to Common Core please click here.

If you have a website, EUSE gives you permission to upload it.  The object is to get the word out to as many people as possible.

RELATED RESOURCES FOR PARENTS, GRAND PARENTS AND CONCERNED CITIZENS:

 A Closer Look at Common Core

What You Can Do to Fight Common Core

A Common Core Flyer

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Common Core Math Instructor: Kids Are ‘Clean Slate,’ Parents Must Be ‘Retrained’ (+video)

IRS: ‘The Odor Of Extortion’

“People say the government makes no money, but that’s not true. They make money like any bandit or robber does.” – Jarod Kintz

You know him or her. They are honest people who work hard and pay their bills. He or she is a small business owner who accepts a mix of cash and credit cards for payment. Each day, they faithfully deposit that day’s cash into their bank account. This is the money that will be used to pay their employees and their bills.

Imagine the shock when they log on to their bank account and find that their bank balance has been wiped out – zero – nada – nothing. Thinking there must be some mistake, because they know generally what their balance should be, they immediately call their bank.

What they hear brings them to near collapse. They’re not the victims of hacking, at least not in the traditional sense; they’re the victim of what Forbes contributor Rick Ungar has aptly labeled “grand larceny.” And the perpetrator: the U.S. Government, specifically, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

This week The New York Times and the Institute for Justice (the Institute) blew the lid off how the IRS uses civil forfeiture laws to steal cash from innocent Americans’ bank accounts: no criminal charges, no investigation – just an ex parte warrant and the IRS’ “suspicion” that you might be up to something nefarious like tax evasion or drug laundering.

According to the NY Times, the Institute analyzed  “structuring data from the IRS, which made 639 seizures in 2012, up from 114 in 2005. Only one in five was prosecuted as a criminal structuring case.”

And once they steal your cash, get ready to shell out upwards of $20,000 or more in legal fees and even then you may get less than 20 percent of your money back. 

That’s why Ungar, a left-leaning senior political commentator and host of Sirius XM’s Steele & Ungar, lamented in Forbes that the IRS’s actions were “nothing short of grand larceny,” adding, “how does that not have the odor of extortion?”

Ungar’s blistering commentary concluded, “Whatever you think of the IRS scandal of recent years, it pales in comparison to what we are seeing take place here. …if the President fails to publicly condemn this, he will have given those of us who believe in government as a tool to greatly benefit the people every reason to feel betrayed and left to be defined as fools.”

Thus far, the President has remained silent. And while the IRS issued a typical double-speak statement, they offered no apology or reimbursement to the victims of their fully sanctioned theft operation.

What’s most perplexing, however, is the deafening silence from Congress.

When the IRS comes like a thief in the night and steals our cash (with full impunity), our top law enforcement agency (Department of Justice) refuses to investigate the IRS’ partisan targeting and illegal release of taxpayer records, and our elected officials sit in stone cold silence, where do We the People turn for justice?

There are only two solutions to this problem. One is the ballot box andTuesday is Election Day.  Will you continue the status quo or will you have the courage to stand up and finally say, “enough is enough” – regardless of party? That decision alone could initiate seismic waves of change.

The second answer is the ultimate enactment of the FairTax® Plan. The FairTax is the only tax plan that replaces the income tax and eliminates the IRS. In a way, you hold the key to both solutions.

As Mike Huckabee writes in his latest article, “…as Americans, we are all guilty of one inexcusable sin: continuing to tolerate this out-of-control rogue agency that thumbs its nose at us even as it’s trampling our constitutional rights. It’s long past time for the Fair Tax.”

Finally, as candidates go into the final days of the 2014 midterms the mud’s slinging and the vitriol is erupting. And candidates who stand FairTax strong are fighting mistruths, half-truths and outright falsehoods.

One such candidate in the Georgia Senate race, David Perdue, is defending his FairTax support against opponent Michelle Nunn. And wouldn’t you know Neal Boortz has something to say about it! Like him or despise him, he always has an opinion. Click here to see what Neal’s saying now.

Common Core Architect David Coleman’s Imperial College Board

What happens when a school board decides not to implement the new AP U.S. History standards wholesale and insist that such courses not present a distorted anti-American version of history?  Common Core is creeping into college, taking over the rightful role of professors, as I report at the Selous Foundation, in my article, “Common Core: K-16 Education.”  It’s also creeping in via the AP exams that give students college credit.  The College Board, which directs the AP coursework and exams, under the direction of its president David Coleman, “architect” of Common Core, is now using its muscle to usurp local boards of education.  The most recent example comes from the Denver area, in Jefferson County.

Several days ago, the teachers union, objecting to the school board’s decision to review the standards, manipulated high school students into staging a multi-day walkout.  While most newspapers simply reported that students objected to “censorship” or a biased “conservative” version of American history, Michelle Malkin reported the real story of teachers using the controversy to recruit students to protest for their own aims, keeping the leftist history standards and doing away with teacher evaluations.

The teacher union activists’ agitation has had its effect.  It’s chilling to the idea of local representative government. USA Today reports that the review of the standards has been shelved for a compromise proposal, which will now include administrators, students, and parents.

Flannery-OConnor 1947

Fannery-O’Connor 1947

 Dissident Prof reminds readers of Flannery O’Connor’s famous essay about allowing eight-graders to choose the literature they’d like to read, “Total Effect and the Eighth Grade,” wherein the wise woman reminds the adults, “Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning. . .”

The Devil of Educationism: This is a problem of “Educationism,” a “devil” which can be “‘cast out only by prayer and fasting.'”  She notes that at one time children’s attention was held by Homer and Virgil, but “our children are too stupid now to enter the past imaginatively.”  What would she say now that school board members, parents, and teachers are asking students what they want to learn in history?  Back then, 50-some years ago, O’Connor posed, “No one asks the student if algebra pleases him or if he finds it satisfactory that some French verbs are irregular, but if he prefers Hersey to Hawthorne, his taste must prevail.”

The taste for takin’ it to the streets has prevailed, and it seems that protest, or mob action, has had the intended effect.

What also probably “helped” was the directive last Friday from the College Board, under the leadership of David Coleman.  It began:

The College Board’s Advanced Placement Program® supports the actions taken by students in Jefferson County, Colo., to protest a school board member’s request to censor aspects of the AP U.S. History course. The board member claims that some historical content in the course “encouraged or condoned civil disorder, social strife, or disregard for the law.”

Do these minors have the maturity and judgement to make decisions about protesting?  Well, if they agree with the College Board’s radical agenda, yes.  In fact, their lawlessness is cast as being the pinnacle of patriotism:

These students recognize that the social order can—and sometimes must—be disrupted in the pursuit of liberty and justice. Civil disorder and social strife are at the patriotic heart of American history—from the Boston Tea Party to the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement. And these events and ideas are essential within the study of a college-level AP U.S. History course.

Are “civil disorder and social strife” at “the patriotic heart of American history”?  Many would differ.  Many would take issue with aligning students skipping class with the brave men facing possible death in a war.  The opinions on civil disobedience are not unanimous.  But in the classroom, it is now taken as doctrine that mob protest, shouting, placard-carrying, and civil disobedience are the highest forms of civic action.  This is no accident.  Teachers and textbooks have been promoting this line for decades, and Common Core is accelerating this view, much of it through substituting group work and social justice activity for reading and writing.  So the students are right because they agree with the College Board’s view of history.  Did I mention that logic is also being shirked under the Common Core conglomerate?

Ignoring evidence and the historical record of its work, the College Board then presented an altered version of its own history:

The College Board will always listen to principled concerns based on evidence—and in fact has announced a public-review process for the AP U.S. History course framework. But in light of current events, an important policy reminder is in order:

Insisting that teachers and college faculty “collaborate” in designing the AP courses and exams, while allowing them “flexibility” to examine local topics, the College Board reminds those who resist the detailed 98-page directive,

To offer a course labeled “AP” or “Advanced Placement,” a school must agree to meet the expectations set for such courses by the more than 3,300 colleges and universities across the globe that use AP Exam scores for credit, placement, or consideration in the admission process.

The final boot comes down with a threat:

As vital context for the courageous voices of the students in Colorado, the AP community, our member institutions and the American people can rest assured: If a school or district censors essential concepts from an Advanced Placement course, that course can no longer bear the “AP” designation.”

The bold is in the original.  Perhaps a review of some texts from the Soviet Union might be in order in this curriculum in order to give students some perspective.  With video games, informational texts, such as EPA directives, and Common Core comic books replacing foundational works like the Federalist Papers, and, fiction, such as Animal Farm and 1984, students might be misled into believing that those who toe the line of a powerful agency, supported by millions of dollars of government funds, and federal diktats over “equal access” are really “courageous voices.”

Making It Easy to Predict the Next Financial Crisis

It is a cliché, but true, that history repeats itself. This is largely due to the failure of each new generation to learn anything from the past as well as the human tendency toward the bad habits of greed and power-seeking. Only the names and faces change.

That is why the next financial crisis is entirely predictable.

On October 23, The Wall Street Journal had an article, “Relaxed Mortgage-Lending Rules Clear Final Hurdle.” The financial crisis in 2008 was the direct result of relaxed mortgage-lending rules. Indeed, it was the result of government pressure on banks to make “sub-prime” loans to people who any bank might sensibly conclude could not replay them. Those loans, in turn, were sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises, who then bundled and sold them as mortgage-backed assets.

As Wikipedia notes, the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, was founded in 1938 during the Great Depression to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgages by issuing mortgage-backed securities, allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending. In 1970 the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, whose nickname is Freddie Mac, was created for the same reason. Both are overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Authority. Neither issues mortgages. As noted, they buy them from banks, bundle them as securities, and resell them.

Getting the government involved in the housing market has been a supremely bad idea, much as getting the government involved in education and, as we are learning, involved in the nation’s healthcare insurance sector. There are only a few things the Constitution authorizes the government to do and none of these are mentioned. That has never stopped politicians.

The Wall Street Journal article reported that “Three U.S. agencies signed off on relaxed mortgage-lending rules, helping complete a long-stalled provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial-overhaul law.” Two commissioners of the Securities and Exchange Commission “warned the rules would do little to prevent a return to the kind of lax mortgage underwriting that fueled the financial crisis.”

The Economist also took note, saying “When politicians bashed Wall Street for its reckless mortgage lending in the wake of the subprime crisis, bankers retorted that it was the politicians’ enthusiasm for expanding home ownership, even if it meant small deposits and low credit standards, that had really fomented the disaster.” Suffice to say there is plenty of blame to spread around, but the banks had to play by the rules the government had put in place.

In the wake of the financial crisis “many banks have stopped lending to riskier borrowers” but the new rules simply recreate the conditions that led to it, although “the rules only affect the tiny market for securities issued without federal backing, less than 2% of the $1.58 trillion in mortgage securities issue in 2013…”

The rule changes are being hailed as an example of the how great the “reform” implemented after the financial crisis was in the form of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and Orderly Liquidation Authority, otherwise known as the Dodd-Frank Act.

Suffice to say it is a regulatory nightmare of several thousand pages of rules, often quite vague, that are still being interpreted. That said, its purpose, to prevent predatory mortgage lending, improve the clarity of mortgage paperwork for consumers, and reduce incentives for mortgage brokers to push home buyers into more expensive loans was needed. It also changed the way credit card companies and other consumer lenders had to disclose their terms to consumers.

As The Economist noted, the agreement regarding mortgage-lending rules “would permit banks to securitize and sell mortgages without retaining a 5% stake—leaving them little incentive to maintain high lending standards.”

That needs repeating: little incentive to maintain high lending standards, the very reason we had a financial crisis in 2008.

All this is largely due to the progressive notion that everyone, no matter how little they earn, should be able to purchase a home. In reality, those at the low end of the economic ladder should not be encouraged or seduced into taking on such debt. When they do and the economy goes south, leaving them unemployed, they just walk away from the debt.

Why should the rest of us—taxpayers—bail out the mortgage sector as we did in 2008 with huge loans to the banks and insurance companies that had purchased mortgage-based securities? The government had to step in with the complete government takeover of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We got stuck with the bill.

It also drove up our national debt, leading to the first reduction in the nation’s credit rating in its history.

There is already talk on Capitol Hill that, should Republicans take control of the Senate and retain it in the House, they are likely, as Reuters reported, “to target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and capital requirements on insurance companies.” To put it another way, the Republicans are the adults in Congress while the Democrats, liberal to the core, will never admit we are being set up for another financial crisis.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

How Far Can the P2P Revolution Go? Will the sharing economy replace the State? by Jeffrey A. Tucker

How far can the peer-to-peer revolution be pushed? It’s time we start to speculate, because history is moving fast. We need to dislodge from our minds our embedded sense of what’s possible.

Right now, we can experience a form of commercial relationship that was unknown just a decade ago. If you need a ride in a major city, you can pull up the smartphone app for Uber or Lyft and have a car arrive in minutes. It’s amazing to users because they get their first taste of what consumer service in taxis really feels like. It’s luxury at a reasonable price.

If your sink is leaking, you can click TaskRabbit. If you need a place to stay, you can count on Airbnb. In Manhattan, you can depend on WunWun to deliver just about anything to your door, from toothpaste to a new desktop computer. If you have a skill and need a job, or need to hire someone, you can go to oDesk or eLance and post a job you can do or a job you need done. If you grow food or make great local dishes, you can post at a place like credibles.co and find a prepaid customer base.

These are the technologies of the peer-to-peer or sharing economy. You can be a producer, a consumer, or both. It’s a different model — one characterized by the word “equipotency,” meaning that the power to buy and sell is widely distributed throughout the population. It’s made possible through technology.

The emergence of the app economy — an emergent order not created by government or legislation — has enabled these developments, and they are changing the world.

These technologies are not temporary. They cannot and will not be uninvented. On the contrary, they will continue to develop and expand in both sophistication and in geographic relevance. This is what happens when technology is especially useful. Whether it is the horseshoe of the Middle Ages or the distributed networks of our time, when an innovation so dramatically improves our lives, it changes the course of history. This is what is happening in our time.

The applications of these P2P networks are enormously surprising. The biggest surprise in my own lifetime is how they have been employed to make payment systems P2P — no longer based on third-party trust — through what’s called the blockchain. The blockchain can commodify and title any bundle of information and make it transferable, with timestamps, in a way that cannot be forged, all at nearly zero cost.

An offshoot of blockchain-distributed technology has been the invention of a private currency. For half a century, it has been a dream of theorists who saw that taking money out of government hands would do more for prosperity and peace than any single other step.

The theorists dreamed, but they didn’t have the tools. They hadn’t been invented yet. Now that the tools exist, the result is bitcoin, which gives rise to the hope that we have the makings of a new international currency managed entirely by the private sector and the global market system.

These new P2P systems have connected the world like never before. They hold out the prospect of unleashing unprecedented human energy and the creativity that comes with it. They give billions of people a chance to integrate themselves into the worldwide division of labor from which they have thus far been excluded.

With 3-D printing and computer-aided design files distributed on digital networks, more people have access to become their own manufacturers. These same people can be designers and distribute the results to the world. Such a system cuts out every barrier that stands between people and their material aspirations — barriers such as product regulation, patents, and excise taxes.

It’s time that we begin to expect the unexpected. What else is possible?

Entrepreneurs are already experimenting with an Uber model of delivering some form of health care online. In some areas, they will bring a nurse to you to give you a flu shot. Other health services are on the way, causing some to speculate on the return to at-home medical visits paid out of pocket (rather than via insurance).

What does this innovation do for centralist solutions like Obamacare? It changes the entire dynamic of service provision. The medical establishment is already protesting that this consumer-based, one-off service approach runs contrary to primary and preventive care — a critique that fails to consider that there is no reason why P2P technology can’t provide such care.

How much can things change? To what extent will they affect the structure of our political lives? This is where matters get really interesting. A feature of P2P is the gradual elimination of third parties as agents who stand between individuals and their desire to cooperate one to one. We use such third parties because we believe we need them. Credit card companies serve a need. Banks serve a need. Large-scale corporations serve a need.

One theory holds that the State exists to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. It’s the ultimate third-party provider. We elect people to serve as our representatives, and they bring our voices to the business of government so that we can get the services we want. That’s the idea, anyway.

But once government gets the power to do things, it expands its power in the interest of the ruling elite. The taxicab monopoly was no more necessary than the government postal service, but the growth of P2P technology has increasingly exposed the reality of how unnecessary the State as a third-party mediator really is. The post office is being pushed into obsolescence. It’s hard to see how the municipal taxi monopoly can survive a competitive contest with P2P technology systems.

Policing is an example of a service that people think is absolutely necessary. The old perception is that government needs to provide this service because most people cannot do it for themselves. But what if policing, too, could employ P2P technology?

What if, when there is a threat, whether to you or to others, you could open an app on your phone and call the private police immediately? You can imagine how such a technology could learn to filter out static and discern threat level based on algorithms and immediately supplied video evidence. We already see the first attempts in this direction with the Peacekeeper app.

Rather than a tax-funded system that has become a threat to the innocent as much as the guilty, we would have a system rooted in consumer service. It might be similar to the private security systems used by all businesses today, except it would apply to individuals. It would survive not through taxation but subscription — voluntary and noncoercive.

How much further can we take this? Can courts and laws themselves be ported to the online world, using the blockchain for verifying contracts, managing conflicts, and even issuing securities? The large retailerOverstock.com is experimenting with this idea — not for ideological reasons but simply because such systems work better.

And here we find the most compelling case for optimism for the cause of human liberty. These technologies are emerging from within the private sector, not from government. They work better to serve human needs than the public-sector alternative. Their use and their growth depend not on ideological conversion but on their capacity to serve universal human needs.

The ground really is shifting beneath our feet, despite all odds. It is still an age of leviathan. But based on technology and the incredible creativity of entrepreneurs, that leviathan no longer seems like a permanent feature of the world.

20121129_JeffreyTuckeravatarABOUT JEFFREY A. TUCKER

Jeffrey Tucker is a distinguished fellow at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events.

A Revelation Regarding the Common Core Sale: Evidence is needed.

On October 22, 2014, the corporate-reform-friendly think tank, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), hosted a panel discussion entitled, What Now for the Common Core? Below is the description of the panel participants and the *implementation-focused* conclusion is actually what should have happened before the Common Core (CCSS) was adopted by any state and certainly before CCSS was ever proclaimed as “ensuring college and career readiness for all students:

Evidence that it works.

A profound revelation, no?

Here is AEI’s entire event summary spiel:

What is the current state of the Common Core, and what is its future? Moderator Michael McShane of AEI posed these questions to a group of experts at an AEI event on Wednesday. Frederick Hess of AEI, Chris Minnich of the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Catherine Gewertz of Education Week largely agreed that districts and schools are at very different stages of the implementation process, that the public is still underinformed, and that the Common Core comprises more states and has been more federally driven than anticipated.

Hess and Minnich dove into the issue of federal involvement, with Hess emphasizing that the effort should focus on ensuring comparability and rigor across states, not on recruiting as many states as possible. Minnich agreed that governors and school chiefs must take the Common Core out of federal hands.

Gewertz said that most teachers focus on making the Common Core work in their classrooms, not on debating its political implications. One of the biggest impediments has been finding high-quality, Common Core–aligned materials.

To conclude, McShane asked panelists what must happen for the Common Core to be successful. All of the panelists focused on outcomes: there needs to be evidence that students are performing better and that this progress translates into greater college and career readiness. [Emphasis added.]
–Jenn Hatfield

A couple tidbits: First, “moderator” McShane co-authored a CCSS-promo book with Hess in November 2013, entitled, Common Core Meets Education Reform.

That title is redundant.

Second, it is interesting that the above AEI panel summary includes zero discussion of the public rejecting CCSS because CCSS is a top-down, imposed product that teaching practitioners and parents, among other stakeholders, genuinely do not want. Period.

No, no. According to the three non-teacher-practitioner individuals on this panel, what CCSS needs in 2014– four years after it was rushed to its hardly-transparent finish in 2010– is “evidence that students are performing better.”

The horse continues to push the corporate reform cart.

Indeed, the CCSS Promise of College and Career Readiness as being “research and evidence-based” goes back to before CCSS was written. That term– “evidence based”– is a term that can easily serve as a bait-and-switch for what should have happened given the very-high-stakes nature of CCSS: a subjecting of the CCSS product to empirical testing.

Here is the full CCSS announcement from July 4, 2009:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a joint effort by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in partnership with Achieve, ACT and the College Board. Governors and state commissioners of education from across the country committed to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. These standards will be research and evidence-based,internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills. The NGA Center and CCSSO are coordinating the process to develop these standards and have created an expert validation committee to provide an independent review of the common core state standards, as well as the grade-by-grade standards. The college and career ready standards are expected to be completed in July 2009. The grade-by-grade standards work is expected to be completed in December 2009. [Emphasis added.]

Yeah, the top-downers “jointing this effort” thought they would be done six months before they actually were– and even with the delay in completion until June 2010, this CCSS product has “rush job” stamped all over it.

In June 2010, America got a press release.

In place of empirical evidence, America received a short list of endorsements.

Endorsements are not evidence.

No readily available site or search engine to offer the public a comprehensive view of that supposed “research base,” and no empirical “evidence” because, well, there just isn’t any.

Now, this Hunt Institute set of CCSS talking points for governors to use in promoting CCSS– a doc that happens to be posted on the USDOE website (hmm…)– states that there is “evidence.” However, nothing listed includes any practical, real-world testing of CCSS to demonstrate the proclaimed “ensuring” of “college and career readiness.

What is offered is a lit review justifying the idea of CCSS, not its actual utility.

No evidence prior to the June 2010 proclamation that CCSS was a product ready to be used and guaranteed to deliver.

But in 2014, the AEI panel states that evidence is needed. 

Meanwhile, the CCSS website continues to advertise the CCSS Guarantee. Here it is, on a page entitled, “What Parents Should Know”:

Today’s students are preparing to enter a world in which colleges and businesses are demanding more than ever before. To ensure all students are ready for success after high school, the Common Core State Standards establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12thgrade. [Emphasis added.]

What complicates the “evidence is needed in 2014″ issue is that one month after CCSS was released, in July 2010, the standards-grading Thomas B. Fordham Institute proclaimed CCSS as “the winner” despite its own grading of CCSS as lower than or equal to existing state standards– a grading that is further complicated by an utter lack of any logical connection between state results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)– and a proclamation that CCSS were “clearly superior to those currently in use in thirty-nine states” based upon the *evidence* of “our observations.”

And when a state such as California had highly-esteemed standards in Fordham Institute’s view yet low NAEP scores– former Fordham Institute President Chester Finn blamed (go ahead and guess)– faulty implementation.

For any CCSS supporter, the “faulty implementation” card is the gift that keeps on giving.

But if California has great standards and poor NAEP scores, and other states have “poor” standards and above average NAEP scores, then is it possible that the entire standards-driven idea is too rudimentary to capture the education enterprise?

Here is another hard-hitting question: Is it possible that CCSS cannot be “properly implemented,” period?

Anyone who answers definitively that CCSS is fine and that “implementation is the problem” is only offering an opinion. It might be a fiscally-fueled, ego-stroking, well-publicized opinion, but no number of high-profile endorsements or USDOE talking points will transform it into empirical evidence.

Know who wins in the absence of empirical evidence to support a standards-to-promised-CCSS-results connection given that the nation is now in the middle of the CCSS mud?

For one, the peddlers of CCSS materials– tests, curricula, professional development, and (let us not forget) data collection.

Pearson wins.

AEI panelist and Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) CEO Chris Minnich has Pearson connections… and his CCSSO is one of the CCSS owners.

A thought with which to leave readers.

There is much more that I can write about this AEI meeting of the pro-CCSS minds (yes, Hess, that includes you), but I will save it for another post.

Obama’s War on U.S. Energy

September 19th was an anniversary you did not read or hear about in the nation’s news media. It marked six years—2008—since the first permit application for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline was submitted to the federal government. Can you imagine how many jobs its construction would have created during a period of recovery from the 2008 financial crisis? President Obama is universally credited with delaying it.

Thomas Pyle, the president of the American Energy Alliance, pointed out that World War II, the construction of the Hoover Dam, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition all took place in less time. In a September Forbes article, he noted that “Earlier this year a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 65 percent of Americans support building the pipeline, while only 22 percent oppose it. In Washington three-to-one margins are usually referred to as mandates.”

In contrast, in March 2013 the then-Interior Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, boasted “In just over four years, we have advanced 17 wind, solar, and geothermal projects on our public lands.” It is not these projects that Americans depend upon for energy. The opposite is a stark explanation why coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy remain the heart blood of the economy.

AA - Keytone in Perspective

Infographic courtesy of UTA Consultants. For a larger view click on the image.

The Daily Caller reported in July that the “U.S. Bureau of Land Management is currently sitting on a backlog of 3,500 applications that need approval to move forward on drilling for oil and natural gas on federal land,” just part of Obama’s war on U.S. energy.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, fossil fuels met 82% of U.S. energy demand in 2013.

Petroleum, primarily used for transportation, supplied 36% of the energy demand in 2013. Natural gas represented 27%. Coal represented 20% and generated almost 40% of all electricity. In the six years since Obama took office that is a loss of 10%!

The much ballyhooed “renewable sources” of energy, justified by the false claim that carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming or climate change, are a very small part of the nation’s power providers. Wind power represented 1.6% and solar power represented three-tenths of 1%! Hydropower supplied 2.6% making it the largest source of so-called renewable energy.

Politically, it has been Democrats advocating renewable sources and siding with the President’s delay of the oil pipeline and the Environmental Protection Agency’s assault on coal-fired plants to produce electricity. By contrast, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been busy putting forth legislation to fix aspects of our energy problems and needs.

Some of the bills that were introduced included H.R. 2728: The Protecting State’s Rights to Promote American Energy Security Act; H.R. 3: The Northern Route Approval Act (regarding the keystone XL Pipeline; H.R. 1900: The Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act; H.R. 2201: The North American Energy Infrastructure Act; and H.R. 6: The Domestic Prosperity and Global Freedom Act, intended to expedite the export of liquefied natural gas to our allies around the world. The global market is growing at a colossal pace.

These bills will likely all die in the U.S. Senate, controlled by the Democratic Party. The Nov 4 midterm elections can change that if enough Republicans are elected to gain control.

It’s not just natural gas that is helping the economy improve. The Financial Times reported in late September that “The U.S. is overtaking Saudi Arabia to become the world’s largest producer of liquid petroleum, in a sign of how its booming oil production has reshaped the energy sector.” Why? “The U.S. industry has been transformed by the shale revolution, with advances in the techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling enabling the exploitation of oilfields, particularly in Texas and North Dakota.”

The only places you won’t find oil drilling are on federally controlled lands. The same holds for coal and natural gas.

This is in keeping with a virtual war on U.S. energy waged from the White House. Consider what we have witnessed:

  • Obama has refused to let the Keystone XL pipeline be built.
  • Billions wasted on loans to renewable energy companies, many of which like Solyndra and Solar Trust of America went bankrupt.
  • Obama made electric cars like the Chevy Volt part of his energy policy, providing subsidies but their high cost and low mileage capacity has resulted in few sales.
  • Obama and the EPA advocated a cap-and-trade tax on greenhouse gas emissions when there has been no global warming for 19 years and carbon dioxide plays no role whatever in the Earth’s climate.
  • The Obama administration terminating the construction of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada despite nearly $15 billion already spent on this necessary repository.

These are just a few examples, but in the meantime, the U.S. still requires that a valuable food commodity, corn, be turned into ethanol, an automotive fuel additive, that (a) reduces the millage in every gallon and (b) increases its cost at the pump. As Seldon B. Graham, Jr., a longtime energy industry consultant and observer, notes that “Ethanol production peaked in 2011 at 6% of total oil demand.” Favoring replacing imported foreign oil with American oil, Graham says “Americans would have saved $64.7 billion on the oil price since 2009.”

Americans are afflicted by a President and his administration that for political and environmental reasons are costing them trillions in needless, senseless energy costs, loans and subsidies, and efforts to impose laws that have no basis whatever in science.

© Alan Caruba, 2014