Displaying the most recent of 90901 posts written by

Ruth King

School Choice Winning Competition makes us all better. Teachers unions don’t want that. by John Stossel

https://www.frontpagemag.com/school-choice-winning/

Finally! Now more states will let parents use their tax money to educate their kids at a school they choose.

In Arizona, families can get $6,500 to spend on private school, tutoring or even home schooling.

The education establishment is horrified — especially teachers unions. They don’t want competition.

But competition makes us all better. The Ford Model T was a breakthrough. But it’s lousy compared to what we have today. That’s because carmakers compete to make better cars.

But American education has barely changed since the days of Henry Ford. Kids still sit in a room, watching a teacher at a blackboard.

For my video this week, I debate a union leader.

He’s David Walrod, president of the Fairfax, Virginia, chapter of the American Federation of Teachers. The AFT has been controlled by union boss Randi Weingarten for 14 years. I once provoking her by saying, “Unionized monopolies like yours fail!”

“We are not a unionized monopoly!” she replied. “Folks who want to say this … don’t really care about kids.”

Weingarten won’t talk to me anymore, so I’m glad Walrod would.

“What’s wrong with giving parents a choice?” I ask. After all, competition makes us try harder.

“If I compete directly against you, I have a vested interest in doing better than you,” he said.

Isn’t that good?

The World Wants No Part of Woke, But It’s Glad We Do America once taught the world what works — only now to mock its own lessons. Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-world-wants-no-part-of-woke-but-its-glad-we-do/

The United States obsesses over whether biological men can compete in women’s sports as transgender females.

Crime is spiking at levels not seen in 40 years. But some consider it racist to suggest that arrests, indictments, convictions, and incarcerations deter crime.

Major U.S. downtowns almost overnight went from mostly safe and clean to terrifying and toxic — and we brag that we are at least “tolerant” of the medieval conditions.

The Pentagon and CIA put out recruitment videos that sound like kindergarten diversity, equity, and inclusion programming.

Yet the military is less eager to explain why the United States met utter humiliation in Afghanistan or why the army only has met about 50 percent of its scheduled recruitment targets.

Few dare to attribute declining morale, inept strategic thinking, and anemic recruitment to the stereotyping and targeting of middle-class white males, Soviet-style workshops, and diversity, equity, and inclusion mind conditioning.

The Biden administration in its first 18 months warred on the U.S. oil and gas industry. Radical cutbacks in fossil fuels supposedly would “transition” the world to a greener future.

Biden expressed little worry about the resulting economic damage to the middle class or the lack of commensurate efforts in India and China to curb emissions.

September Border Crossings To Set New Record, Internal DHS Data Show Joseph Simonson

https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/september-border-crossings-to-set-new-record-internal-dhs-data-show/

Migrant border crossings are on pace for a record-breaking September, preliminary Department of Homeland Security data obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show.

Customs and Border Protection recorded an average of 7,300-7,500 daily migrant encounters at the southwest border by the end of September.

Those averages come out to between 219,000 to 225,000 for the month. Any sum within that range constitutes the worst September for migrant border crossings in U.S. history, a review of public CBP data finds. September 2021 saw 192,000 border crossings, which held the previous record for the worst September in history.

The data come as red-state governors grow increasingly frustrated with President Joe Biden’s response to the border crisis. Govs. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) and Greg Abbott (R., Texas) began sending migrants to predominantly Democratic-voting cities and towns, such as Martha’s Vineyard and Chicago, in recent months in an attempt to bring attention to the White House’s lack of progress in controlling illegal immigration.

“These record-breaking numbers we’re seeing at the border have become the new normal,” a senior DHS official told the Free Beacon. “The question is how much worse will it get?”

CBP did not respond to a request for comment.

Biased, Two-Tier Justice System Is A Growing Problem: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/10/03/biased-two-tier-justice-system-is-a-growing-problem-ii-tipp-poll/

One standard of justice for one group, but another for a different group? Even though that sounds distinctly un-American, many voters believe that’s happening today in America’s courts and legal venues. And it seems to be getting worse, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests.

In June, a Golden/TIPP Poll (TIPP is Issues & Insights’ polling partner) asked Americans if “There is a two-tiered system of justice in America depending on your political affiliation and ideology?” At the time, a sizable majority of 63% agreed, either “strongly” (28%) or “somewhat” (35%), with that statement. Only 17% disagreed, while 21% said they were “not sure.”

But something intervened between that June 8-10 poll, the first time the question was asked, and the one taken from Sept. 7-9. Namely, the Aug. 8 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate by the FBI, which took documents from Trump’s presidency along with personal effects.

The latest online survey of 1,277 voters found a significant increase from 63% to 71% of those saying they agreed that we now have a “two-tiered system of justice,” with 32% agreeing “strongly” and 39% agreeing “somewhat.”

Just 15% disagreed, with 5% saying they disagreed strongly and 10% saying they disagreed somewhat. The “not sure” responses fell to 14% from the earlier 21% reading.

Marxism at the Museum What does donor Stephen Schwarzman think of these anti-capitalist exhibits? Andy Kessler

https://www.wsj.com/articles/marxism-at-the-museum-new-york-washington-capitalism-socialism-marx-smith-wealth-productivity-schwarzman-donors-11664712471?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

“This is a rather loud message to capitalists Bezos, Musk, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg: Give your money away if you want to be remembered kindly. Just don’t give your money to libraries or museums. Please.”

Polls show more than half of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. have a negative view of capitalism. More than half have a positive view of socialism. I wonder where they got that.

I recently strolled through the New York Public Library’s “Treasures” exhibit, which would delight readers and writers alike: Charles Dickens’s writing desk, a manuscript delivered in a box from former newspaper columnist Mark Twain, draft cover art for Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road,” and an illustrated page from Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” manuscript. Pretty cool stuff.

Ah look, a first edition of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” from 1776—the free-market bible. I was in awe until I read the description: “Adam Smith believed, as did Karl Marx the following century, that national prosperity was best measured by a country’s labor power rather than by how much gold lay in its treasury.” I guess the description is technically correct, but Karl Marx? In the same breath as Adam Smith, who called free markets “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty”? Unlike Smith, Marx naively saw a static world without productivity, only labor exploitation. He completely missed that labor is more brain than brawn. Add exhibit curators to the list of socialist tub thumpers.

I wonder what Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the rather capitalistic private-equity firm Blackstone and giver of $100 million to the New York Public Library, whose name is etched in stone outside, thinks about the Marxist agenda of the library’s curators.

Judge Laurence H. Silberman, 1935-2022 He was more consequential than most Supreme Court Justices.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/laurence-silberman-dead-judge-circuit-court-obamacare-arms-public-service-robb-11664726000?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The most famous judges in American history are those who make it to the Supreme Court, but that doesn’t mean they are the most consequential. One of the latter is Judge Laurence Silberman, who died Sunday, a few days short of his 87th birthday.

Judge Silberman had one of the great careers in the law and public service. Appointed by Ronald Reagan, he spent some 36 years on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, hearing cases even after taking senior status and up to the time of his sudden illness.

His most consequential opinions include Parker v. D.C. (2007), which found that the Second Amendment was an individual right to bear arms and not merely for a militia. Silberman’s opinion examined the history of gun practices in common law and the American founding, which served as the basis for Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion in the landmark ruling in D.C. v. Heller (2008).

He was also ahead of his time in 1988 (In re Sealed Case), when he held that the independent counsel statute violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The Supreme Court ruled the other way in the dreadful Morrison v. Olson decision. But Judge Silberman’s view was echoed in Scalia’s famous Morrison dissent that would surely prevail with today’s Justices if the counsel statute hadn’t lapsed after Ken Starr’s investigation of Bill Clinton.

‘Against the Ice’: All but Frozen Joe Dolce

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/09/against-the-ice-all-but-frozen/

t the turn of the previous century, Arctic explorers—Alpha males born with an incredible self-belief in their abilities to achieve the impossible—travelled to places where nature held no respect for human life. —Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, introduction, Against the Ice

Greenland is an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark and the largest island in the world. Its population is made up mostly of Inuits, who originally migrated there in the thirteenth century from Alaska. It is physio­graphically part of North America, and the United States has been interested in acquiring it from Denmark since 1867.

US Navy Rear Admiral Robert Edwin Peary’s expedition to unexplored northern Greenland in 1891-92 suggested another landmass, separate and north of the main island. Maps of the early 1900s referred to this area as Peary Land and the water between as Peary Channel. The US wanted to claim Peary Land. Danish expeditions were mounted to prove that “Peary Land” was actually connected to Greenland.

The film Against the Ice tells the true story of the 1910 Alabama Expedition, the second Danish expedition launched to achieve this goal. An earlier attempt, the Danmark Expedition, had failed, resulting in the deaths of three of its senior members.

Against the Ice is a co-production between RVK Studios and Ill Kippers and was released on Netflix earlier this year. It was directed by Danish director Peter Flinth, on location in Iceland and Greenland, and is based on the 1955 Danish memoir Two Against the Ice, written by the captain of the Alabama Expedition, Ejnar Mikkelsen. The screenplay is co-written by Joe Derrick and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Mikkelsen.

Liz Peek: Is the Liberal Press Prepping To Oust Joe Biden?

https://www.nysun.com/article/is-the-liberal-press-prepping-to-oust-joe-biden

Something strange is happening at the New York Times. In a rare break with the Gray Lady’s see-no-evil reporting about the failing Joe Biden, the paper published the other day a lengthy article concerning an astonishing lapse by the president.

It happened at a White House event, where Mr. Biden called out “Representative Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” He apparently forgot that Jackie Walorski, Republican of Indiana, had died in August.

Not only did the Times describe the embarrassing senior moment, the paper also reported on the questions asked later at the daily press briefing, when White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre refused to acknowledge the president had flaked out.

The back-and-forth with reporters was ridiculous. Ms. Jean-Pierre argued that Mr. Biden was not confused, but simply had the deceased congressperson “top of mind” and called out to her, even though he had acknowledged her death weeks earlier.

The back-and-forth confirmed the lengths to which the White House will go to pretend that the president is hunky-dory. Few were shocked by such fakery; the surprise was that the Times, staunch ally of Democrats and Mr. Biden, covered the story at all.

After all, when Mr. Biden appeared to get confused this past summer and shake hands with “thin air,” a stumble that attracted 2 million views on Youtube and widespread coverage elsewhere, the Times ignored the story, as it has many others.

UC Berkeley Law School’s ‘Jew Free Zones’: the Latest Progressive Trend Laura Rosen Cohen

https://www.newsweek.com/uc-berkeley-law-schools-jew-free-zones-latest-progressive-trend-opinion-1748218

For several decades, Jewish college students have been sounding the alarm about rising antisemitism on college campuses. From “mild” episodes of graffiti to BDS activism, Torah desecrations and egging Jewish frat houses, university campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist activism both in North America and throughout the world.

Rightly recognizing campus antisemitism as a blight on higher education and on America, former President Trump signed an Executive Order in 2019 on combatting antisemitism. Unfortunately, since then, not only has the campus situation for Jewish students not improved, it has taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

This can be seen most acutely in a move made recently by law school students at one of America’s most progressive university networks, in one of America’s most progressive states. At the beginning of the current academic year, nine law school student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law amended their bylaws to ensure that nobody who supports Israel or Zionism is invited to speak. Given that the vast majority of Jews worldwide support the state of Israel, these student groups have in essence created a Jew-free zone in the hallowed halls of Berkeley Law.

The ruling would bar the law school’s own dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, who identifies as a progressive Zionist—increasingly an oxymoron, if the progressives have their way.

Trans treatments are the new lobotomy David Strom

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2022/10/01/trans-treatments-are-the-new-lobotomy-n500226

It’s no secret that transitioning to something you are not is a fad.

By this I do not mean that nobody experiences genuine dysphorias that require treatment, and I freely admit that my experience and education are insufficient to the task of developing treatment plans for people who are genuinely suffering from what appears to me to be a serious mental health problem. Dancing around a bit more to cover myself, I will also emphasize that calling dysphoria a mental illness is not a slam or slander: mental health problems run in my family and they are serious conditions that need treatment.

Unfortunately, the science of treating mental illness is not especially good, and the treatments themselves have at times been cruel, destructive, and sometimes downright evil. Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz invented the Frontal Lobotomy and won the Nobel Prize for doing so. Countless people, including children who were deemed too disruptive, suffered from permanent damage to their brains because of a fad.

Tens of thousands of lobotomies were performed, at first only on those suffering from schizophrenia and severe depression, but later on patients with chronic headaches as well as criminals and even children as young as four years old. Beulah Jones was an adult when she underwent the lobotomy in 1953. Her granddaughter, Christine Johnson, describes what she was like after the procedure.

Ms. CHRISTINE JOHNSON (Beulah Jones’ Granddaughter): She was strange because she would do things like rock in place. She didn’t make a lot of sense when she talked. And she didn’t talk about the same things that other adults talked about. She was–childlike is probably the best description.