Displaying posts categorized under

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

The New York Times and Upper West Side Segregation By Robert Weissberg

In the PC world of the New York Times, it is better not to offend certain sensitivities or raise uncomfortable questions than honestly address educational disasters. One can only be reminded of proper Victorians struggling to discuss venereal diseases as if sex never happened.

Of all of the taboo topics in today’s political landscape, absolutely nothing is more fraught with danger than race. Recall the old joke about how people dance at a nudist camp — carefully, very carefully. Everything from vocabulary to tone of voice must be carefully calculated and the slightest mistake can be career-ending.

A complex etiquette per se is not, however, the problem. Civil society would collapse if everybody spoke bluntly. The question is whether taboos blind us from serious problems that demand forthright, honest discussion.

A perfect illustration of how the race taboo undermines honest discussions of serious social problems can be found in recent New York Times articles (and here) about redrawing school district lines in Manhattan’s über-liberal Upper West Side. These articles abound in euphemisms and omissions guaranteed to obscure awkward truths.

Manhattan’s Upper West Side is home to a multitude of affluent white liberals and large numbers of poor blacks and Hispanics residing in public housing. Some schools, all overwhelmingly white, excel academically. Not surprisingly, “white” schools in this neighborhood have long waiting lists for prospective enrollees. But, often only a few blocks away, are schools with large poor black and Hispanic enrollments plagued by fights (often involving weapons), classroom disorder, and appalling academic outcomes. The polite nonracial euphemism for these schools might be “schools with low test scores.”

For those with school-age children who strongly care about their education, school district demarcations are vital. Having one’s offspring attend a stellar grade-school with bright classmates is seen as the first step to admission to an elite college. Equally crucial is safety — not even the most rabid Bernie Sanders fans would risk their children’s well-being, including the danger of acquiring bad habits (drug use, thievery, a penchant for violence, a rotten work ethic and similar underclass inclinations). As one education-minded parent said about these “diverse” schools, “My husband and I support public school education but not at the expense of our children’s educational and physical well-being,”

There are also major financial costs for parents in a lousy school district. For apartment owners, residing in a “bad school” attendance zone can substantially reduce the value of one’s residence, while the private school alternative can cost upward of $30,000 per child each year. If a private school is unaffordable, the remaining option is relocating to the suburbs, hardly appetizing to many Upper West Side liberals.

Now, what happens when a Department of Education bureaucrat announces that junior may be bounced from his nearly all-white (and often-overcrowded) high-test score school, and instead sent to the nearby “diverse” school that, say the bureaucrats, offers junior a chance to benefit from diversity since “studies show” that such a racial/ethnic mixture is essential mastering today’s multicultural world?

Ironically, these well-educated, affluent “good thinking” Manhattan (white) residents now confront the same tribulations faced by down-market white Southerners over court-ordered integration post Brown v. Board of Education (1954). But, unlike these bigoted Rednecks, white liberal New Yorkers, aided by the racially hypersensitive New York Times, need not block the doorway of junior top-flight nearly all white school and shout, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow….” while the federal government orders the New York City’s police to forcibly enroll residents of nearby public housing as junior’s classmates. These white liberals are expert at walking on eggshells (I’m not a racist but….”) and playing politics to keep their kids in white schools; there is even a website on how to game the system.

Healthcare Reform? Let’s Take a Close Look at Some Examples Abroad By Antonio R. Chaves

Republicans won the presidency and majorities in Congress based in part on promises to replace Obamacare. Nonetheless, with so many Republicans facing re-election in states that voted for Clinton, the strategy of “repeal and replace” is easier said than done. Furthermore, in view of the challenges involved in garnering enough votes for the “Obama-Lite” alternative that barely passed the House, Republicans appear to be running out of options.

If the “gradualist” strategy is so problematic, why not move to single payer? In Japan, healthcare spending makes up only 10% of GDP even though it has the world’s highest percentage of people 65 or older. In the U.S. it is an appalling 17% (Fig. 1). Japan also has the world’s lowest infant mortality, while in America this healthcare indicator exceeds that of all other developed nations with a comparable GDP (Fig. 2). If lack of access to healthcare is responsible for this shocking statistic, why not “get with the program” and shift these costs to taxpayers as they do in nearly all other affluent nations?

Before turning over 17% of GDP to the government, we should not overlook one extraordinary exception to this worldwide trend: Singapore is second only to Japan in having the world’s lowest infant mortality (Fig. 2) even though it has the least-subsidized healthcare in the developed world (Fig. 1). Singapore also stands apart from other developed nations in that it spends less than 5% of its GDP on healthcare (Fig. 1). If privatization works so well in Singapore, why have market forces failed so miserably in America?

While it is common knowledge that increasing the supply or decreasing the demand results in lower costs, many overlook the importance of having a critical mass of savvy customers shopping around for the best deals. This selective pressure ensures that the product or service gets better and cheaper for all consumers. In Singapore, patients shop around because co-payments cover a considerable portion of their medical bills and everyone is required to have a health savings account. In the single-payer systems that predominate in Europe, it is the government that does the shopping and bargaining. In America, health maintenance organizations stabilized prices in the 1990s by bargaining with providers and rationing services. However, many patients objected to “managed care” and the ensuing backlash resulted in government mandates that limited what these HMOs could do to cut costs. In the absence of a conscientious buyer, hyperinflation resumed by the end of the decade. Even though European governments provide healthcare at a lower cost, Americans who want to replace Obamacare with single payer should be careful what they wish for. More on this later.

Another reliable strategy for lowering costs is deregulation. We need not look abroad to see this principle applies to medical services: The cost of cosmetic surgery in the U.S. has remained remarkably stable despite a huge increase in demand. This has been attributed largely to a streamlined regulatory process that makes it easier for competitors to enter the market and for cost-cutting innovations to get approved.

Antifa Violence Will End Badly by Edward Cline

An ex-Marine and blogger by the name of David Risselada published on Freedom Outpost an interesting and probing analysis of Antifa, “Antifa: Useful Idiots Too Brainwashed to Know They are Being Used.”

They are so brainwashed, writes Risselada, that they refuse – nay, are unable to see the contradictions pregnant in their violent actions – because contractions are either “white” constructs of the privileged order, or are direct permutations of Communist/Nazi ideology, and therefore can be dismissed with a fist in the face or a kick in the head. They do not believe in debate; their only recognized form of argumentation is physical violence. The brown shirts in training (other than college students) propose to oppose fascism by adopting fascist activism, which employs the physical obstruction of freedom of speech (and other civil liberties) with violent and passive means (but mostly violent). Britannica defines and discusses fascism:

Although fascist parties and movements differed significantly from each other, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, and a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.

Ostensibly, Antifa poses as being an anti-establishment force to contend with, when in practice and in ideology (what there is of one) it is and will remain part of the establishment, as a kind of Mafia enforcer. There are no “victims” of Antifa violence. Only “fascists.” Risselada writes:

Across the nation, the group Antifa is continuing its call for revolution by staging massive riots and acts of violence against innocent people. They are pushing the narrative that they are engaged in a revolutionary struggle against Fascism and that the time to act is now in order to stand against oppression. They have been brainwashed to believe that America represents racism and our constitution was written only to protect the interests of a few privileged white men. They are demanding an end to constitutional government and the enactment of a communist system which they believe will be fairer. In this facebook video posted by Columbus Ohio Antifa, they are asking military veterans to remember their oaths and join their national militia. Obviously, these people have no idea what they are talking about nor do they have any clue what it means to take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

DANIEL GREENFIELD MOMENT: COMMUNISM’S MURDEROUS INSPIRATION FOR THE LEFT ON THE GLAZOV SHOW

This new special edition of The Glazov Gang presents the Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center and editor of The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed Communism’s Murderous Inspiration for the Left — from Portland to Venezuela to the New York Times.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch the special episode of The Glazov Gang that featured Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Peterson shared his views on Non-Traditional Gender Pronouns, unveiling the dire consequences of the control of language now reaching the legislative level in Canada:

Universities competing in race to the bottom By Carol Brown

There’s stiff competition among our bastions of higher education. The race to the bottom is fast and furious. Toward that end, the University of California at Berkeley recently honored student Juan Prieto with an award for outstanding service to “undocumented” students. Juan then sent out the following tweet: “Let’s celebrate 5 de Mayo by going to Dolores Park and beating the shit out of white people, in the spirit of La Batalla de Puebla.”

But don’t worry. Juan didn’t mean it. It’s just Twitter and he often posts “dumb s*** on Twitter all the time.”

Oh, ok. I see.

Meanwhile, Florida Memorial University, a historially black college that produces a large number of teachers, announced it will be awarding a posthumous degree in Aeronautical Science to Trayvon Martin.

Also in the past few days, Emory University will cover tuition for all their students that are in the country illegally, while Mira Costa College in southern California will be offering scholarships to students who say they are “transgender.”

As I said, the race to the bottom is fast and furious. Which institution will move the bar to the lowest point imaginable remains to be seen. But, again, don’t worry. It’s only the future of America that’s at stake. Viva President Preito!

Hat tips: The Geller Report, The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit, The Daily Wire, The College Fix

Refugee admissions up 160% in April under Trump By Ed Straker

Before he left office, President Obama set a goal of accepting 110,000 refugees in the 2017 fiscal year (beginning Oct. 1st 2016), even though he was only president for four months of that fiscal year. Once Donald Trump became president, he set a revised limit of 50,000 for the 2017 fiscal year. However, a federal judge struck down the 50,000 limit.

As a result, Trump is admitting larger numbers of refugees.

The U.S. accepted 2,070 refugees in March, the lowest monthly total since 2013, according to State Department data. April ended with 3,316 refugees admitted….

That’s 160% higher than March.

Now here’s the tricky part:

While a federal judge has struck down Trump’s 50,000 limit, that does not mean that Trump is required to admit more than 50,000 refugees. He just can’t explicitly set a limit of 50,000. He could actually select fewer than 50,000, as long as he did not order a formal limit. No federal judge in the world can order President Trump to specifically select refugees to admit to America.

“As we have said repeatedly, Trump’s refugee admissions are not at the mercy of two rogue judges,” said longtime refugee watchdog Ann Corcoran in her blog post Thursday at Refugee Resettlement Watch. “He can bring in any number under the CEILING set either by Obama (110,000) or his reduced ceiling (50,000).”

So why is Trump admitting a larger number of refugees when he doesn’t have to? When he campaigned for the presidency, Trump promised to deport all Syrian refugees in America; now he is admitting more than ever, even taking in ones bound for Australia.

Trump supporters say we should be happy that Trump is admitting fewer refugees than Hillary would. But why not hold Trump to a higher standard–to his own promises? He can stop admitting any more refugees right now, not admit a single new one, and no federal judge can order him otherwise.

I guess we can file this away with other security promises that will never be fulfilled, like the wall that will be paid for by Mexico (or a wall at all), and the termination of the illegal “DREAMer” program. I just wonder, when a radical Islamic Syrian refugee that Trump admits into the country kills someone, who will Trump supporters blame? A federal judge? Paul Ryan? The Deep State? The Freedom Caucus? Ted Cruz’s father?

No, the FBI Was Not a Trump Partisan The Democrats’ latest canard ignores difference between criminal and intelligence investigations. By Andrew C. McCarthy

There is nothing more inequitable than treating two fundamentally different things as if they were the same. This should be the retort to the media-Democrat complex’s latest “we wuz robbed” 2016 election narrative: The claim that the FBI became a rogue partisan, publicizing the investigation of Hillary Clinton while keeping mum on the investigation of Donald Trump.

This theme was hammered by Democrats in the questioning of FBI director James Comey during Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. It was, moreover, the leitmotiv of the New York Times’ 8,000-word report on the FBI’s handling of the two investigations — the losing side’s best shot at writing the definitive history.

It is also dumb as a doornail.

Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal, based on mountainous evidence of law-breaking, resulted in a criminal investigation. The suspicion that associates of Donald Trump have troubling ties to Kremlin insiders, based on comparatively sparse evidence, has resulted in a foreign-intelligence investigation. The two types of inquiry are fundamentally different — dissimilar in their objectives, their processes, and their presumptions about secrecy and disclosure. The only similarity is that each is called an “FBI investigation.” To contend that this makes them equivalents, suitable for similar treatment, is akin to saying red and blue must be the same thing because each is a color.

A criminal investigation is launched when investigators have a good-faith basis to believe one or more penal laws may have been violated. It is an inquiry that targets a particular person (or persons in the case of concerted criminal activity). Once investigators are convinced that a crime has been committed by the suspect, the objective of the investigation is to build a case fit for prosecution in a court of law — i.e., to amass sufficient evidence to prove the essential elements of the statutory offense beyond a reasonable doubt. The investigators fully anticipate making a formal public charge against the suspect (i.e., an indictment), which will be followed by a public trial — the presentation of witness testimony and tangible evidence in a judicial proceeding open to the media and other spectators.

For commonsense reasons, various aspects of criminal investigations are secret. Search warrants and wiretaps would not be very useful if police had to notify the suspect in advance of their raids and surveillances. It would be very difficult to get the cooperation of witnesses or compel the production of relevant documents if grand jury proceedings were conducted in public. Most significantly, the suspect is presumed innocent. To publicize investigative information before a person has an opportunity to test its credibility under due-process rules would undermine the presumption and brand the person a criminal.

Nevertheless, even amid the secrecy, an expectation of publicity hovers over every criminal investigation. Because resources are finite and crime is plentiful, police agencies rarely waste their time on unprovable cases. It is anticipated that charges will be filed, and that eventually everything will be revealed: Affidavits supporting warrants will be unsealed and provided to defense counsel; there will also be discovery of the evidence to be presented at trial, the grand-jury testimony of the witnesses, investigative reports detailing surveillances and witness interviews, and any potentially exculpatory information in the prosecution’s files.

All of this is disclosed because of what a criminal investigation, in essence, is: an effort by the government to deprive a person of his constitutional right to liberty. We permit this only under the strictures of due process — a trial of the accused before a jury of his peers in which he enjoys the assistance of counsel, the right to confront witnesses, and an opportunity to present any defense he may have. Because the whole point is to assure the society that the government has met its burden of proof before a person’s liberty is removed, the proceedings must be public.

Emory University rewards law-breakers By Carol Brown

Emory University will now fund 100% of financial aid to students who are in the United States illegally. It means that if you are in the country illegally, you are rewarded for breaking the law, while Americans who are working hard to attain a college education receive no such blanket aid.

Like so many things these days, it’s inverted, upside down, and backwards.

Breitbart reports:

“Emory meets 100% of demonstrated financial need for undergraduate Undocumented Students (with or without DACA) who are admitted as first-year, first-degree-seeking students, and who graduated from a U.S. High school through a combination of grants and scholarships, institutional work study (DACA students only), and institutional loans. Undocumented Students without DACA status may receive an institutional loan in place of the typical work study award,” the university’s website states.

Speaking to The College Fix, Megan McRainey, a spokeswoman for Emory, claimed that providing full financial aid relief to undocumented students reflects the university’s commitment to welcoming students from diverse backgrounds. [snip]

International students, who are not afforded the same aid privileges as undocumented students, will be forced to foot a $70,000 per year tuition bill if they wish to attend the prestigious Georgian university.

“Diversity!”

It’s one of the left’s favorite buzzwords which they pull out of the proverbial hat to rationalize all manner of insanity.

(Also, noticed how the university’s statement capitalizes the term “undocumented students,” elevating them to new heights (as if giving them a free college education isn’t enough.)

Taking a short walk down memory lane, readers may recall that last year some students at Emory University were traumatized by the words “TRUMP 2016” written in chalk on the pavement. Their “safe space” was violated, they were “in pain,” and they demanded action! Which they got, when university administrators pledged to get to the bottom of who wrote the “controversial markings.” The drama was of epic proportions, with protestors chanting the words of a cop killer as they ranted about their pain and, ironically, their commitment to fighting for freedom (here and here).

So this is Emory University. Where illegals get a free ride, Americans pay through the nose, and chalk is a dangerous weapon.

Decades in an Asylum Wasn’t the Worst Fate My mentally ill great-uncle spent 72 years in custody. Today he’d be isolated in a prison cell—or maybe homeless and dangerous. By Howard Husock

To say I didn’t know my great-uncle, Wolfe Levine, would understate things. Though my grandfather and I were close, for years I didn’t know he had a brother. In retrospect, it’s clear Wolfe was simply unmentionable. We’d write it off today as the stigma of mental illness.

Wolfe’s story is tragic, dating from an era of large public asylums that America has sought to forget. His journey to the Lima State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Lima, Ohio, began in 1910 with a criminal conviction: one to five years in a reformatory for pickpocketing. Six years before, Wolfe had immigrated to America at age 14. Theft was not a shocking charge for a young man in Cleveland, living on a block of ramshackle frame houses with his widowed mother and her three other children. Once convicted Wolfe would never again be a free man.

After less than two years in the reformatory—later made famous as the setting for “The Shawshank Redemption”—he exhibited “persecutory delusions” and “auditory hallucinations.” That’s how he wound up in Lima, where the conditions were so bad that by 1974 a federal judge chastised Ohio for failing to ensure “dignity, privacy and humane care.”

My great-uncle was still there. He died in custody in 1982, at 92, and was buried near Toledo, the costs covered by a fund for indigents supported by a local Jewish federation. Wolfe had spent 72 years in institutions. In the language of reformers, he had been “warehoused” for his entire adult life. His aspiration to be a playwright, the occupation he listed when admitted to the reformatory, would prove a dark irony for someone formally diagnosed with dementia praecox—schizophrenia, as it later came to be called.

Yet the story is not so straightforwardly bleak as it seems, and it casts light on how far America has come—and not come. Are we treating the severely mentally ill better today than we did a century ago?

Wolfe did not do well at the reformatory. In a year’s time, more than 300 days were added to his sentence for misbehavior. This almost certainly reflected an onset and worsening of his mental illness. The family may have been involved in the decision to transfer him to the hospital. My great-aunt, now nearly 100, recalls my grandparents discussing what to do with Wolfe. “Dave and Ethel were just starting their own family,” she says. “They just couldn’t take care of him.” Nor was his extended family well-off. My grandmother’s immigrant father was still making deliveries on Cleveland’s East Side with a horse-drawn wagon well into the 1920s.

Thus did Wolfe arrive at Lima in 1915. Little information exists on daily life there, but census records portray an institutionalized American melting pot. My great-uncle was listed as a “Russian Jew”; his neighbors—all of whose occupations were listed as “patient”—included natives of Alabama, Indiana, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, England and Italy. The hospital was enormous, with 17 wings for 1,400 patients. It was considered the largest poured-concrete structure in the world until the Pentagon.

The nationwide hospital system was the product of a 19th-century reform movement, led by Dorothea Dix and Horace Mann, outraged by the imprisonment of so many of the mentally ill. By 1940, America had institutionalized 450,000 patients. Though the care given was far from perfect, it aspired to be therapeutic.

A little-known book provides a remarkable window into the era. In 1931, a 52-year-old journalist named Marle Woodson checked himself into Eastern Oklahoma Hospital in an attempt to kick his alcohol problem. As he dried out, he wrote “Behind the Door of Delusion,” which did not describe a quiet warehouse: “About me the daytime activities of the hospital hummed. All the work was done by the patients. There was little detailed supervision by the attendants, although they were here, there, and everywhere all the time.” A “floor gang” polished and shined, and a crew for making up beds did its work “with a neatness which would shame many of the maids in good hotels.” Patients worked in the “art department, bakery, the store, or other departments of the institution.” CONTINUE AT SITE

How to Raise an American Adult Many young Americans today are locked in perpetual adolescence. Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse on how he and his wife are encouraging their own children to become fully formed, independent grown-ups see note please

Nice column by an erudite senator who is a GOP star…..but Diana West wrote a splendid book on this issue back in 2008
The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization by by Diana West Sep 16, 2008

We all know the noun adult. But I was perplexed last year to hear the new verb to adult. In social media, especially on Twitter and Instagram, it birthed a new hashtag: #adulting. As in: “Just paid this month’s bills on time #adulting,” or “Decided I couldn’t watch Netflix 8 hours straight and went to the grocery store instead #adulting.” It even got a nomination from the American Dialect Society for the most creative word of 2015.

“Adulting” is an ironic way to describe engaging in adult behaviors, like paying taxes or doing chores—the sort of mundane tasks that responsibility demands. To a growing number of Americans, acting like a grown-up seems like a kind of role-playing, a mode of behavior requiring humorous detachment.

Let me be clear: This isn’t an old man’s harrumph about “kids these days.” I still remember Doc Anderson standing in the street in 1988, yelling at me to slow down as I drove through his neighborhood in our small Nebraska town. I was 16 and couldn’t stand that guy. Years later, when I had children of my own, I returned to thank him. Maturation.

What’s new today is the drift toward perpetual adolescence. What’s new is seeing so much less difference now between 10-year-olds and young adults in their late teens and early 20s.

As many parents can attest, independent adulthood is no longer the norm for this generation. Data from the Pew Research Center show that we crossed a historic threshold last year: “For the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household.” Fully one-quarter of Americans between 25 and 29 live with a parent—compared with only 18% just over a decade ago.

A great many factors have contributed to this shift toward perpetual adolescence. The economy has something to do with it, of course—but social and cultural developments do too. The list of culprits includes our incredible wealth and the creature comforts to which our children are accustomed; our reluctance to expose young people to the demands of real work; and the hostage-taking hold that computers and mobile devices have on adolescent attention.

Our nation is in the midst of a collective coming-of-age crisis. Too many of our children simply don’t know what an adult is anymore—or how to become one. Perhaps more problematic, older generations have forgotten that we need to teach them. It’s our fault more than it’s theirs.

My wife, Melissa, and I have three children, ages 6 to 15. We don’t have any magic bullets to help them make the transition from dependence to self-sustaining adulthood—because there aren’t any. And we have zero desire to set our own family up as a model. We stumble and fall every day. CONTINUE AT SITE