EDUCATION Comments turned off

Parental Choice is Proliferating Nationwide Should it become law, ECCA would enable millions of students trapped in unsafe, failing public schools to have a chance to enroll in private schools, without worrying about how to cover tuition. By Larry Sand

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/15/parental-choice-is-proliferating-nationwide/

Just 100 days into the year, educational freedom seems to be unstoppable.

Wresting total control of America’s schoolchildren from the government-union educational complex is moving apace. 2021 was declared “The Year of Education Choice,” when 19 states enacted 32 new or expanded educational choice policies, and West Virginia became the first state in the country to establish universal school choice in the form of an education savings account (ESA). This type of choice allows parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds into government-authorized savings accounts with restricted but multiple uses. Those funds can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, and other higher education expenses.

While many choice programs existed prior to the Mountain State’s Hope Scholarship, they all came with restrictions—typically limited to special ed students or children whose families were near the poverty line.

Last year, Arizona became the second state to jump aboard the “school choice for all” train. And in the first 100 or so days into 2023, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, and Florida have followed suit. 

But wait, there is so much more!

Oklahoma, Ohio, Wyoming, Texas, Nebraska, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas, and Pennsylvania are working on school choice bills. In Georgia, Republicans in the state House recently helped defeat a choice bill, but it may come back for consideration next year.

Why is this happening at such breakneck speed now? Clearly the teacher union-led COVID-related shutdown mandates which closed schools all over the country is a major reason. But as Heritage Foundation scholars Jay Greene and Jason Bedrick explain, there is another factor. While they acknowledge that traditionally, school choice has been successful in red states, that is changing. Now, more and more families in suburban and rural areas are concerned about the kinds of values their children are being taught in public schools. “Radical academic content and school practices are not confined to large urban school districts on the coasts. Even in small towns across America’s heartland, public-school staffs have become emboldened to impose values on students that are strongly at odds with those preferred by parents.”

American Enterprise Institute fellow Robert Pondiscio sums it up succinctly, “School Choice Winning Streak? It’s Culture War, Stupid.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In a World Obsessed with Feelings, Whose Feelings Matter? Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/26901/in-a-world-obsessed-with-feelings-whose-feelings

lindagoudsmit.com goudsmit.pundicity.com 

In a society that eliminates meritocracy by shifting its metrics from achievement to feelings, whose feelings actually matter? Let’s find out.

Competence is the mother of self-esteem. We know this is true by simply observing the delight of young children as they learn to dress themselves, feed themselves, or sound out their first words and realize they can read! Each achievement increases the child’s competence and enhances his developing sense of self. Achievement makes little Johnny feel proud of himself and good about himself. Let’s consider what incentivizes competence and achievement, and what doesn’t. Let’s also consider the motivations for incentivizing competence and the motivations for discouraging it.

If you want to know the motive, look at the result. What made America great was its cultural roots in meritocracy. Our society awarded achievement with upward mobility. It was called the American Dream, and America was the land where dreams came true. In every sector of society, little Johnny was encouraged to become an independent, autonomous, rational adult, capable of living a life of ordered liberty in our constitutional republic. In other words, little Johnny was encouraged to grow up and perpetuate the American dream. Not anymore.

In the past, each of little Johnny’s achievements were rewarded with praise when he was a little boy. As he grew older he earned grades in school that marked his achievement. Then he competed in sports with friends, and games with family. His grades were awarded certificates of achievement or advanced placement. His sports achievements were awarded with trophies, and wins in family games were rewarded with more praise.

The competitions all served to incentivize achievement. As Johnny got older he competed for jobs and for advancement. Winning and losing were part of everyone’s private and public life. Meritocracy was society’s infrastructure, rooted in achievement. Those who lost were encourage to try harder, work harder, study more, and try again. In the 1970s, ABC’s Wide World of Sports announcer Jim McKay, immortalized the words, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

We Can’t Have Nice Things Without an allegiance to beauty, art degenerates into a caricature of itself. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on April 16th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/15/we-cant-have-nice-things/

Editor’s Note: This is a version of an essay that will appear in Up from Conservatism: Revitalizing the Right after a Generation of Decay, edited by Arthur Milikh, forthcoming from Encounter Books.

“Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”
— Kingsley Amis

I thought about organizing this column around Kingsley Amis’ seemingly simple remark. How much forgotten wisdom is contained in those seven short words? And what profound application do they have to a moment in which ugliness has not only triumphed in our culture but is everywhere held up as something one must embrace as attractive? How many more fashion ads featuring hideous “fat-positive” females do we need? 

On second thought, though, I realized that I could give an abbreviated answer to the question implicit in my title in just three words: indifference, capitulation, kitsch. 

Let’s start with the indifference. Conservatives in the West long ago ceded culture to the Left. Culture, they felt, was not really serious. You can’t eat Rembrandt or the Ninth Symphony or Paradise Lost. You can’t make a payroll writing poetry or studying Botticelli or Herodotus. True, in 1780, John Adams wrote that “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy . . . in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” That sounds noble, but who still believes it? Not paid-up members of Conservatism, Inc. Quote that passage to them. Then watch them smile. 

It is the same smile they display when you quote Andrew Breitbart’s observation that “politics is downstream from culture.” They might nod. They might say they agree. But how do they act? More or less like Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “Video meliora,” said that unhappy damsel to herself, “proboque, deteriora sequor”: “I see the better path and approve: I follow the worse.” 

Back in 1973, Irving Kristol wrote an essay called “On Capitalism and the Democratic Idea.” In the course of that essay, Kristol touched upon the conservative indifference to the claims of culture. “For two centuries,” he wrote 

the very important people who managed the affairs of this society could not believe in the importance of ideas—until one day they were shocked to discover that their children, having been captured and shaped by certain ideas, were either rebelling against their authority or seceding from their society. The truth is that ideas are all-important. The massive and seemingly solid institutions of any society—the economic institutions, the political institutions, the religious institutions—are always at the mercy of the ideas in the heads of the people who populate these institutions. The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can and will—perhaps slowly but nevertheless inexorably—twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Mike Pompeo Makes His 2024 Decision Sarah Arnold Sarah Arnold

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2023/04/14/mike-pompeo-announces-2024-presidential-run-n2621998

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided whether to enter the race for the 2024 White House. 

On Friday, Pompeo announced that he would not run for president against former President Trump during an interview on “Special Report.”

The Republican said that he and his wife pondered the decision for a few months but ultimately decided it was not the right time for their family. 

“I have made a decision,” Pompeo said. “We have prayerfully concluded we are not going to join the race in 2024. While we care deeply about America and the issues I’ve been talking about for the past year and a half and frankly for decades matter an awful lot, this isn’t our moment.”

Pompeo was asked if his former boss, a top contender for the GOP nomination, had any weight on his decision, which he denied but took a few digs at him.

“I think Americans are thirsting for people making arguments, not just tweets. I think they’re looking for someone who can clearly articulate their vision for what parents ought to be doing to help their kids be successful in schools and how we take back crime from our streets and cities,” Pompeo said while speaking to Fox News. “I don’t know if that will end up being President Trump that the American people choose or if that’s who our party will choose to be its nominee. But I’m hopeful it will be those debates about real arguments, things that really matter.”

However, he insisted that he still plans to support the Republican nominee no matter who it may be. 

In recent months, Pompeo had traveled to a series of early-voting states as his potential run was expected. But, in a statement, he didn’t rule out the idea of never running, saying more opportunities would come about.

“There remain many more opportunities for which the timing might be more fitting as presidential leadership becomes even more necessary,” Pompeo said. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

19 Times Democrats And DOJ Deliberately Politicized Law Enforcement By: Tristan Justice

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/14/19-times-democrats-and-doj-deliberately-politicized-law-enforcement/

Here’s a roundup of the DOJ deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

Amid calls from former President Donald Trump to “defund” the partisan Department of Justice and FBI, which treats its friends above the law and its enemies below it, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer defended the agencies.

But a review of the agencies’ track records shows them to be indefensible. Here are 19 times Democrats and DOJ politicized the rule of law, deploying federal resources to do Democrats’ bidding.

1. Infiltration of Catholic Parishes

House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday after a whistleblower revealed the agency is targeting Catholic parishes.

In February, former Special Agent Kyle Seraphin revealed that “the FBI’s Richmond Division would like to protect Virginians from the threat of ‘white supremacy,’ which it believes has found a home within Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass.”

“The document assesses with ‘high confidence’ the FBI can mitigate the threat of Radical-Traditionalist Catholics by recruiting sources within the Catholic Church,” Seraphin reported.

Jordan’s letter to Wray Tuesday said the FBI sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development.’”

2. FBI Targeted Parents for Domestic Terrorism

Weeks before the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, in which parental rights in education were the centerpiece of Republican campaigns, the FBI deployed counterterrorism resources on parents who raised issues at school board meetings. Parents identified as extremists by FBI activists were labeled with “threat tags” under Attorney General Merrick Garland’s guidance. Whistleblower documents suggest Garland lied about the scandal when testifying before the House Judiciary Committee that October.

In March, the committee published an interim report on the debacle concluding the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” to crack down on parents as terrorists.

Garland has refused lawmakers’ demands to repeal the controversial memorandum, according to the committee.

3. Crossfire Hurricane

The campaign to impeach former President Donald Trump began well before his 2017 inauguration.

Deep-state officials within the FBI concocted plans known as Crossfire Hurricane to frame Trump as a Russian agent after the Republican businessman secured the GOP presidential nomination. Within four months of Trump’s first term, a special counsel was appointed to investigate allegations of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. After the more than two-year special counsel investigation run entirely by Democrats with unlimited resources, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team found not one person, let alone Trump himself, colluded with the Kremlin.

4. Hillary’s Emails

While the DOJ investigated the Trump campaign in 2016, the agency gave cover to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her private email server scandal.

The FBI told journalists there was no evidence that a foreign power reviewed Clinton’s emails improperly stored on a private server. According to a report from the DOJ inspector general in 2018, however, texts show they almost certainly did, “at least one of them classified,” as Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi wrote.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Trashing the Global Environment: ‘There Is No Fish in the Waters’ by Robert Williams

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19554/china-trashing-environment

“Risks to marine habitats are most prominent in Caribbean island nations, such as the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, as well as coastal waters across Africa, most notably along Western and Central African coastlines. In the Bahamas, Angola and Mozambique, more than 2,000 km2 of marine habitats face high impact risks.” — bu.edu, December 6, 2022

“Across Angola, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, more than 50,000 square kilometers of marine habitats are “facing low but non-negligible risks from nearby projects.” — bu.edu, December 6, 2022

Ports built or financed by the Chinese, the study found, pose the greatest risks to marine habitats; the risks remain high even up to 30 kilometers from the port.

China’s overseas infrastructure projects are not the only ones ruining marine habitats. China’s enormous fishing fleet is simultaneously contributing not only to the severe devastation of marine ecosystems but also to the destruction of the livelihoods of local fishermen.

Chinese fishing boats are destroying the livelihoods of West African fishing communities on the West African coast. Due to illegal Chinese fishing, they could be losing more than $2 billion each year.

In Ghana… illegal fishing boats use Ghanaian flags, but, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 90% of those boats belong to Chinese owners.

“There is no fish in the waters. We used to catch up to 90 trays of sardinella fish a day and now we barely get five trays a day.” — Dembo Touray, fisherman Bakau, Gambia’s largest fishing community, aa.com.tr, 2020.

Even though, in 2019, Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that the BRI would become “green and sustainable,” he did not say when.

“China says it will follow environmental guidelines, but history has shown these protections are nonexistent.” — William Laurance, distinguished research professor of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, The Guardian, September 20, 2021

Additionally, China already mines 70% of all rare earth materials, a situation that has made the world virtually dependent on it. The future of the African continent’s environment, in short, looks anything but sustainable.

China’s overseas infrastructure projects present high-impact risks to the environment, a new study has found.

The report — conducted by researchers from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the University of Queensland, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Colorado State University — focused on the risks to coastal and marine ecological systems posed by 114 of China’s overseas development projects between the years 2008-2019. According to the document, those 114 projects represent only 20% of all Chinese development finance projects in that time period, meaning that the results of the study are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Lessons Lost to History: the Tragically Unheeded 2008 Warning of Biolab Threat By Ben Bartee

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/04/14/lessons-lost-to-history-the-tragically-unheeded-2008-warning-of-biolab-threat-n1687401

We ignore prescient warnings in the present at the peril of our future selves.

This one comes from a decade and a half ago, a full twelve years before the course of world history was literally changed forever for the worse by forced lockdowns, masking, and medical mandates unimaginable prior to 2020.

Via Scientific American, 2008:

In an opinion that echoes those of several public health scientists, Keith Rhodes, the Government Accountability Office’s chief technologist, told a congressional hearing in October 2007 that “we are at greater risk today” than before of an infectious disease epidemic because of the great increase in biolaboratories and the absence of oversight they receive.

Nevertheless, Michael Kurilla, NIAID’s director of extramural research, says that “we’re much better off” having spent $41 billion on bioterror research since 2002.

The study’s author, John Dudley Miller, offered his unheeded warning in the context of the anthrax score of the aughts.

Note how often these biomedical security state threads lead back to, and intertwine with, the post-9/11 War on Terror waged by the Bush Administration and continued by its predecessor.

In many ways, this is all one continuous, ever-evolving permanent emergency. The referent objects and threats (real or manufactured) change, but all of the unending crises that we are subjected serve to justify increased national security powers in some form.

The overarching message I wish to convey when discussing AI developers or virologists tinkering with forces beyond their control in a lab is: these people do not know what they are doing.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Michael A. Helfand : A New York State court ruling vindicates the principle of parental authority in education.

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/ny-court-vindicates-parental-authority-in-education

Late last month, the ongoing battle between the New York State Education Department (NYSED) and a small group of Orthodox Jewish schools took a surprising turn. For the better part of a decade, the NYSED has been battling these schools over the quality of the education they provide, arguing that they fail to meet the basic educational standards required by New York law. For that reason, this past fall, the NYSED enacted new regulations setting out a process to assess the instruction provided in nonpublic schools and, when a school fails to meet state standards, ensuring its closure. Not surprisingly, a number of Jewish organizations and schools filed suit against the new regulations. But instead of deciding the case based on big-ticket constitutional questions, a New York court invalidated the regulations on grounds that put the obligation to meet educational standards on parents, not on schools. In so doing, the court severely undermined the NYSED’s ability to regulate nonpublic schools.

New York education law requires that, when minors receive “instruction” outside a public school, the instruction “shall be at least substantially equivalent to the instruction given to minors of like age and attainments at the public schools of the city or district where the minor resides.” This “substantially equivalent” standard has been on the books in New York since the late nineteenth century.

Recent controversies have stemmed from complaints that a small group of Orthodox Jewish schools—primarily Hasidic schools—are failing to meet state standards. After some false starts, the NYSED enacted rules this past fall establishing a process for reviewing whether nonpublic schools were meeting the “substantially equivalent” requirement. If a school receives a final determination that it has failed to meet state standards, the penalties are severe. Under such circumstances, “the nonpublic school shall no longer be deemed a school,” in compliance with the state’s compulsory education law, and parents with children in that school are required “to enroll their children in a different, appropriate educational setting.” In sum, the school must close.

Various Jewish institutions and schools filed suit against the new regulations. According to their complaint, the regulations both exceeded the legal authority of the NYSED and, more dramatically, violated their constitutional rights, including their religious liberty, free speech, due process, and equal protection rights. Indeed, the lawsuit seemed destined to be fought out on the terrain of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ensures parents’ rights to control the upbringing of their children. This right, to be sure, is balanced against the government’s obligation to ensure that children receive an education that enables them to be economically self-sufficient and civically engaged. Figuring out where to draw the line between parental and government authority appeared to be the crux of the legal challenge.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Thirty Years of Global Warming Prophecies By Warren Beatty

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/thirty_years_of_global_warming_prophecies.html

NBC News recently touted a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that says, “The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.”  It further reported, “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” This was echoed by Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council: “This is the stone cold truth laid out in unassailable science by the world’s top climate experts.  We’re hurtling down the road to ruin and running out of time to change course.”

That’s the same U.N. that was wrong 34 years ago when Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, said that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor at the Guardian, says, “Scientists have delivered a ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.”  She cited a report from the IPCC, comprised of the world’s leading climate scientists.

The U.N. again.

CBS News cited a study by Atmospheric scientist Dr. Walker Ashley at Northern Illinois University who predicts storms like the ones that tore through Mississippi, killing several dozen people, could become more common due to climate change.

Now let’s shift attention to hypocritical politicians who make predictions with their mouths and actions, beginning with Barack Obama.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts the sea level to rise by as much as 12″ in the next 30 years.  NOAA predicts the sea level rise, “…will create a profound shift in coastal flooding over the next 30 years by causing tide and storm surge heights to increase and reach further inland.  By 2050, ‘moderate’ (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today.”

But that information didn’t deter Obama from purchasing an oceanside mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.  The 7,000 square foot house is zero feet above sea level and about a quarter mile from the sea.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in 2019, “…there is an urgency needed in addressing man-made climate change, warning that it will ‘destroy the planet’ in a dozen years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost.” 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Tim Scott’s ‘Land of Opportunity’ The Senator’s optimistic conservatism may stand out in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.

Posted By on April 15th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tim-scott-presidential-primary-gop-south-carolina-conservatism-2c4b2cce?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

One regrettable reality of today’s politics is that a left-right condominium is preaching that America is a failed experiment. All the more reason to welcome GOP Sen. Tim Scott as a presidential candidate running on better days ahead and a “new American sunrise.” The question is whether he can refine his aspirational politics into a credible agenda for national renewal.

“I know America is a land of opportunity, not a land of oppression,” the 57-year-old from South Carolina said in a three-minute video released this week. “I know it because I’ve lived it.” Mr. Scott was raised by a single mother in poverty. “I was that hopeless kid in America,” he said in a 2020 speech.

But he graduated from college and started his own business, and he credits his success in large part to the support of his Christian mother and a local Chick-fil-A franchisee who took an interest in him. Many voters will see the better angels of America’s nature in this story.

Mr. Scott has been a Senator for a decade, which isn’t an asset in an era when most of the country dislikes Washington. But he has been largely a constructive force, as Senators go. He helped build the GOP coalition for tax reform in 2017, and he rightly says the Tax Cut and Jobs Act built “the most inclusive economy” in recent U.S. memory, with record low unemployment for black and Hispanic Americans.