Asian Students and NYC Exam Schools with Wai Wah Chin Glenn Loury

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/asian-students-and-nyc-exam-schools?token=

New York City’s exam high schools are, in many ways, the crown jewels of the city’s public education system. They’re prestigious, rigorous, and STEM-focused. And, importantly, admission to them is determined by student performance on a single test. They’re meritocratic engines that allow smart, hard-working kids to get a kind of education that would be otherwise inaccessible to many of them.

They also tend to have high concentrations of Asian American students, sometimes over 50%. My guest Wai Wah Chin, Charter President of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, thinks this accounts for recent efforts by the mayor, the schools chancellor, and others to change admissions standards. According to Wai Wah, this attempt to make these schools “look more like the city” by admitting more black and Latino students entails discriminating against Asian American students who have earned their spot by virtue of their test performance.

This is a controversial issue, and it’s not confined to New York. Below, Wai Wah outlines why exam schools are so important, and why she is fighting to preserve a model educational program.

GLENN LOURY: Now we have actually collaborated on something. I should mention this right at the outset. The Pacific Legal Foundation produced and Rob Montz the filmmaker oversaw the production of Dream Factories, I believe is what the documentary is called, which is an investigation of the controversy in New York City about the specialized exam admissions high schools—Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant, and Brooklyn Tech—in which you, that controversy, have been very actively involved. Maybe we could start by you telling us a little bit about the controversy and about your role in it and where things are standing now on that set of issues in New York City.

WAI WAH CHIN: Thank you, Glenn. It was great to be with you in Dream Factories. We, of course, didn’t meet at that time because the shooting of the film happens quite separately in different pieces. But I think it captured a lot of the emotions of a very important topic. And the important topic is about excellence in our schools, meritocracy, and also the anti-Asian discrimination that’s happening in the schools here in New York, as well as in many other areas in education across this country.

Democrats Are Increasingly Freaking Out About 2022 Chris Queen

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2021/10/18/democrats-are-increasingly-freaking-out-about-2022-n1524804

The 2020 election was a tough one for Democrats. Other than the presidency and the Senate, Democrats suffered at the ballot box. The party lost 11 House seats and face the narrowest House majority in two decades. Add to the damage the beating Democrats took in state races, and 2020 looked like a pummeling indeed.

The Biden presidency hasn’t made things any better. The party is dealing with infighting between moderates and far-left members, and the president’s approval ratings are abysmal. On top of these factors, Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) became the latest among 10 key Democrats to announce their retirement ahead of the 2022 election cycle last week.

As a result, the 2022 midterm elections are looking more like an uphill battle for Democrats, and they’re freaking out about it. Back in September, Democrats were already talking about a “bloodbath” and “going for broke” on progressive agenda items, but their mood is growing increasingly fearful.

According to The Hill:

“To be blunt, I’m not feeling good about where we are,” one senior Democratic congressional aide said. “Look, it was never going to be easy or anything. It was always kind of contingent on what got done. I just think we’re starting to see how fragile this is.”

The numbers already favor the GOP. The Republicans only need to turn five seats red to gain a majority in the House, and that’s even without redistricting, which will also work to the GOP’s advantage next year.

The Senate currently sits at 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris as a tying vote, and several Democrats are vulnerable, including Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who won a special election to fill a seat that is up for reelection this cycle.

The 2022 election is also a clear referendum on President Biden and his agenda, which have given Republicans plenty of ammunition to use throughout the campaign season. Approval numbers and recent issue polls don’t bode well for Biden and his party.

On top of all these genuine concerns for the Democrats, a slew of “longshot” candidates have entered key races, drawing attention and donations away from Democrats who stand a better chance of winning their elections. Democrat strategists have their hands full with some unviable candidates.

Christopher Steele: Product of a Corrupt FBI Christopher Steele is a symptom, not a cause, of what ails the FBI. The nation’s top law enforcement agency flagrantly involves itself in U.S. elections on behalf of the Democratic Party. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/18/christopher-steele-product-of-a-corrupt-fbi/

Just as the special counsel’s investigation into the origins of Crossfire Hurricane—the FBI counterintelligence probe launched in the summer of 2016 to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign—is showing signs of life, one of the central figures in the hoax is attempting to burnish his sullied image.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos has produced a documentary featuring Christopher Steele, the man responsible for the so-called dossier bearing his name. “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier,” streamed on Hulu Monday night; promotional clips hinted that, far from a hard-hitting interview exposing Steele for the charlatan he is, Stephanopoulos gave Steele a chance to spin his story ahead of possible new indictments related to John Durham’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax. 

Rather than depict Steele accurately, Stephanopoulos and ABC News social media interns repeatedly describe Steele as an “ex-British spy” or “former intelligence officer” even though Steele left MI6, the UKs version of the CIA, in 2009 to start a consulting business. (That same year, Steele presented a report on Russia to President Obama.) Steele’s now-discredited dossier, which Stephanopoulos tries to portray as “raw intelligence,” was the basis not just for the entire Russian collusion hoax but also served as key evidence to support four illicit FISA applications to obtain warrants to spy on Donald Trump and his associates.

Stephanopoulos’ goal, of course, is to convince uninformed viewers—in other words, most of Stephanopoulos’ audience on any given day—that Steele was working in an official national security capacity instead of as a Democratic political operative paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential race.

But Steele, many folks forget, also had another funder in 2016: the Federal Bureau of Investigation. An often overlooked fact about Steele is that at the same time he was being paid by the Clinton campaign and DNC, he also was being paid by the FBI as a “confidential human source,” otherwise known as an “informant.”

Huawei’s Long Game by Peter Schweizer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17862/huawei-long-game

“It’s simply not reasonable to expect that Huawei would refuse a direction from the Chinese Communist Party.” — Simeon Gilding, former head of the Australian Signals Directorate’s signals intelligence and offensive cyber missions.

It is essential for business leaders to understand this: there is no such thing as a private company in China…. all Chinese companies and individuals must assist with intelligence efforts if asked.

Huawei is hardly slowing down. Despite still being under telecom restrictions…. Huawei was granted hundreds of applications to purchase chips for its automotive supply business by the Biden administration. The company, according to a spokesman, aims to be a component provider for “intelligent connected vehicles.”

In July, Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta signed up as a “consultant” for Huawei. A Huawei company message board posting noted that the hiring was part of an “expanded U.S. influence operation.”

Huawei also employs a white shoe Washington law firm, Sidley Austin, to handle its interests in the capital. This firm was also representing Meng Wanzhou in her successful battle to avoid extradition to the US. Christopher Fonzone, a partner in that law firm, was recently confirmed over Republican objections as the Biden administration’s choice to be the top lawyer for the office of the Director of National Intelligence. An Obama administration veteran…. his LinkedIn profile… goes on to note, “He also has particular experience assisting clients in the management of crisis situations.”

In late September, Meng Wanzhou stepped off the Air China plane in Shenzhen to a hero’s welcome. It was the triumphant return of an innocent Chinese tech executive from wrongful imprisonment by the West. The truth is far different.

Call of the Wild Western imams may be asking at present for peaceful coexistence, but Islam doesn’t preach peaceful coexistence: it preaches conquest. By Bruce Bawer

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/18/call-of-the-wild/

In at least some parts of the United States, the Muslim call to prayer, known as the “adhan” or “azan” (Arabic for “announcement”), is a familiar sound. Perhaps because of the freedom of religion that’s guaranteed by the First Amendment and deeply rooted in American culture, and perhaps also because America has a history of extraordinary religious diversity—with native-born faiths ranging from the Mormons to Jehovah’s Witnesses to Seventh-day Adventism to Scientology—there’s been relatively little opposition to the adhan, even by people who may not be thrilled over the spread of Islam in their towns and cities. 

Since the 1970s, for example, the adhan has been broadcast five times a day from the roof of the American Moslem Society in Dearborn (which has one of the country’s highest populations of Muslims per capita). A mosque in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant began doing the same thing in 1981. 

In 2004, residents of Hamtramck, Michigan (which has been described as America’s only Muslim-majority city), voted to officially allow adhans that were already being broadcast from several mosques. By that point, mosques in Detroit, which surrounds Hamtramck, had also been broadcasting adhans for some time. 

In Minneapolis, which is also heavily Muslim (Democrat Ilhan Omar is its representative in Congress), the Dar Ul Hijra Mosque started broadcasting the adhan in April of last year, after Mayor Jacob Frey issued a permit for it. Two months later, Robert Spencer reported that residents of Culver City in Los Angeles County (the longtime home of MGM) were up in arms about the adhan being broadcast five times a day, beginning at 4:30 a.m., from the King Fahad Mosque. 

But in the United States, anyway, such dust-ups don’t last long and don’t have much of an impact on government actions. Nor have they succeeded in turning the adhan into a major national issue. 

In Western Europe, however, for a number of reasons, the situation is somewhat different—although it varies from country to country. Generally speaking, mosques, even when permitted to do so, have chosen not to broadcast the adhan, or to do so on a very limited basis and at very low volume; when the issue has come up, moreover, there’s been outspoken criticism and national headlines. 

UK Celebrates Diversity: Somali Muslim Stabs MP to Death in a Church The lessons of this incident will, as always, be ignored. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/uk-celebrates-diversity-somali-muslim-stabs-mp-robert-spencer/

A little after noon on Friday, Sir David Amess, a 69-year-old British MP, entered Belfairs Methodist Church in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex for a meeting with constituents, which he held regularly. Shortly after Amess walked into the church, a Muslim whom AFP described as “a British national with Somali heritage” approached the MP. According to a local councillor, John Lamb, “there were people waiting to see him, and one of them literally got a knife out and just began stabbing him.” Amess died of his wounds a few hours later. The Metropolitan Police announced Saturday “the early investigation has revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism.” So Britain once again has a manifestation of the glories of multiculturalism and mass Muslim migration – not that any of the obvious lessons will be drawn.

According to the BBC, “Whitehall officials say the suspect was not on their database of ‘subjects of interest,’” which is simply an indication of the fact that there are so many jihadis in Britain, authorities are finding it impossible to keep track of them all. This is the result of Britain’s longstanding immigration policies, as well as an absolute unwillingness on the part of British officials to confront jihad recruitment and activity head-on, for fear of appearing “Islamophobic.”

Even after the murder of Amess, there is no indication of any change at the top in Britain. Instead, the usual platitudes were issued, and the usual promises made. Britain’s hopeless Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and Marxist-in-waiting, Keir Starmer, visited the site of Amess’ murder to leave flowers. Former Prime Minister Theresa May, who is responsible for so much of the chaos of modern Britain, said it was “a tragic day for our democracy” and called Amess “a decent man and respected parliamentarian, killed in his own community while carrying out his public duties.” She did not, of course, say anything about the person who killed him, or his motives.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said the killing was “absolutely wrong and we cannot let that get in the way of our functioning democracy.”

The DOJ has finally disgorged some exculpatory evidence about January 6 By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/the_doj_has_finally_disgorged_some_exculpatory_evidence_about_january_6.html

For a very long time, based on a few short snippets of random videos that people outside and inside of the Capitol shot on January 6, conservatives have been arguing that significant numbers of the people who entered the Capitol that day did so because the Capitol Police let them in. Their presence there wasn’t an insurrection or even an unauthorized trespass—they had a right to be there once the “guardians” of the Capitol opened the door. Now, the official video from the Capitol confirms that those snippets were accurate.

January 6 defendants and conservative media outlets have been demanding for ten months that the Department of Justice release the 14,000 hours of footage it has showing what happened at the Capitol on that day. An administration dedicated to truth and a prosecution abiding by the principle that the government must make exculpatory material available to the defense would have long ago complied with those requests.

But the Biden DOJ is made of sterner, and possibly more corrupt, stuff. It took a court order to make the DOJ disgorge just some of the footage it has. And let me note that the motion to produce that Ethan Nordean, a defendant, filed asking for material to which he is entitled under the law wasn’t enough. Instead, the “Press Coalition,” which includes CNN, The New York Times, and broadcast news networks, had to add its voice to the motion before the judge. (I happen to think it’s noteworthy that the media’s demands had more weight before the judge than the defendant’s rights.)

Buzzfeed posted two 40-minute long videos, one of exterior footage and one of interior footage, that the DOJ finally produced, claiming that they show “A Breach By Jan. 6 Rioters From Start to Finish.” However, according to Julie Kelly, whose word and analysis I trust a lot more than anything from Buzzfeed, the videos, which run for about 35 minutes, actually show quite a different story:

At the start of the video, one officer held open the interior door that accesses the Capitol Rotunda, a space between the House and Senate wings. Five or six unidentified men exited the door and spoke to the officer before leaving. Those men held open the exterior double-doors, where protesters began filing into the building. Nordean’s lawyer said his client is recorded entering the building, with the consent of police, between 2:37 p.m. and 2:38 p.m.

Elizabeth Warren: Lying, Money-Laundering Socialist Punishing the rich for generating – and enjoying — their wealth. Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/elizabeth-warren-lying-money-laundering-socialist-jason-d-hill/

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Wednesday October 13, 2021, that billionaires who have enough money to shoot themselves into space, as Jeff Bezos did this summer, will pay for the Democrats’ multitrillion-dollar reconciliation bill that is still being negotiated in Congress.

Before analyzing the pure envy and hatred of the productive benefactors of humanity that lie behind her statement, let us identify Warren for what she is: an equivocating, lying, money-laundering, Ponzi-scheming socialist who lives to expropriate the wealth of others to finance socialist programs. She’s contributed nothing in terms of productive value to society—short of being some pit-bull bureaucratic watchdog who lives for enacting legalized theft and money-laundering schemes, which is what socialism boils down to. She denies the fact that production comes before distribution, and that the wealth she so gleefully wants to appropriate was made possible by the ratified choices of individuals who endorsed Bezos’ products and made him wealthy because he added superlative value to their quality of lives. The notion that billionaires don’t pay taxes is such a case of the Big Lie, that it is not even worth refuting.   

What Warren despises is that Bezos regards his personal welfare, enjoyment, and pleasure—all value-choices that comprise his pursuit of his own happiness which is his inalienable right to do with as he pleases. He neither seeks nor needs the permission of others to live optimally.

Elizabeth Warren is jealous, envious, and filled with rage that he has so much surplus income that he can dare to spend it on what she considers to be a frivolous and wasteful activity. Guess what, Warren? The liberal state by design is supposed to remain agnostic on the question of persons’ conceptions of the good life—provided such choices do not violate the rights of others. She is outraged that he’d rather spend millions on a short trip to space than fund the decrepit and corrupt government schools that teach hatred and bigotry via Critical race Theory; that he doesn’t seem to care about funding historically Black colleges which are a total disaster (they are failing abysmally and graduating semi-literate students); that her tuition-free community college education plan won’t be financed. No one should ever be compelled to finance the education of another person’s child. We are not responsible for the procreative choices of other people. The responsibility for a child’s education lies with the parents.

If you cannot afford to educate a child then don’t have one, just as you would not purchase a house or car if you could not afford to finance them. No one has a constitutional right to have children. And no one’s child can be a necessary social good for anyone but the parents of that child. State schools today (and many private schools) are bastions of indoctrination centers teaching hatred of our great republic, encouraging and practicing cancel culture, weaponizing defiance against authority, decolonizing courses by stripping them of canonical texts, and turning schools into Marxist conduits of Social Justice, radical activism, and social eugenics breeding grounds to transform America into a communist charnel house by canceling human agency, and then history, and then our Constitution. No, Sen. Warren. Some of us are going to devote our lives to defunding all public schools and shutting down government schools. She is incensed that she won’t have her drug-pricing policies and undefined “climate crises” funded and foisted on corporations that would just stifle growth and productivity.

U.N. Climate Summit: A Meaningless Meeting Of Useless People

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/19/u-n-climate-summit-a-meaningless-meeting-of-useless-people/

Later this month, private- and public-sector “leaders” will meet in Glasgow, Scotland. Nearly all will fly to the conference, many in private jets. And what will they talk about? Saving the climate from greenhouse gas emissions, of course.

The United Nations Conference of Parties on ​​climate change, the 26th version of this long-running clown show, starts Oct. 31 and will run through Nov. 12. Media coverage will be both intense and obsequious; attendees, especially the ever-smug John Kerry, “special” climate envoy to the president, will speak in somber tones due to the seriousness at hand; warnings of impending doom will be issued; and absolutely nothing will be accomplished.

This is because there’s nothing to accomplish.

Despite the incessant screeching demands that we must save our planet by severely cutting our greenhouse gas emissions, it’s obvious that man’s impact on the climate is not creating an existential crisis. Every harsh weather event is blamed by activists, politicians, reporters, editors, and celebrities as evidence that anthropogenic global warming is going to destroy Earth.

Of course these are often the same people who tell us we cannot take a single weather event, such as a cold snap or an unusually heavy snow, and extrapolate from that there is no man-made warming. They want man’s greenhouse gas emissions to be an existential crisis.

But they can’t have it no matter how much they want it.

“An existential threat is one that threatens the very existence of mankind. Something that is simply a challenge or an inconvenience is not an existential threat,” explains University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor Cliff Mass. “An existential threat must have the potential to undermine the very viability of human civilization.”

Reps. Stefanik & Foxx: Dems want to control your kid’s education. We’re putting parents in the driver’s seat Democrats are on the side of the school bureaucracy instead of students

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/democrats-kids-education-parents-rep-elise-stefanik-rep-virginia-foxx

When Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe stated, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” it wasn’t a mere slip of the tongue during a heated debate.

Just days later, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona refused to accept that parents should be the primary stakeholder in determining educational programing for their children.

And last week, in an unprecedented move, the Department of Justice directed the FBI to investigate and prosecute concerned parents at school board meetings, without citing even one bit of evidence that these alleged “threats” are beyond the capacity of local law enforcement. Nor did the DOJ disclose that Attorney General Garland’s family has a profit interest in marinating the presence of racist theories in schools.

It is a naked ploy to suppress parental dissent.

These actions have made clear that today’s Democrat Party is on the side of the school bureaucracy instead of students and families.

Democrats seem to believe that America’s schools and schoolchildren are better off with parents on the sidelines – a position that is dangerously detached from reality. It also reveals just how far the Left will go in pursuit of government control over every aspect of American life.

The deep frustration we are seeing at school board meetings is the expression of parents’ unsatisfied with the direction of their children’s education, while simultaneously aware that they are left with no other options.