EDUCATION Comments turned off

Colleges Dupe Parents and Taxpayers The high cost of “diversity” being the highest goal of higher education. Walter Williams

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/colleges-dupe-parents-and-taxpayers-walter-williams/

Colleges have been around for centuries. College students have also been around for centuries. Yet, college administrators assume that today’s students have needs that were unknown to their predecessors. Those needs include diversity and equity personnel, with massive budgets to accommodate.

According to Minding the Campus, Penn State University’s Office of Vice Provost for Educational Equity employs 66 staff members. The University of Michigan currently employs a diversity staff of 93 full-time diversity administrators, officers, directors, vice provosts, deans, consultants, specialists, investigators, managers, executive assistants, administrative assistants, analysts and coordinators. Amherst College, with a student body of 1,800 students employs 19 diversity people. Top college diversity bureaucrats earn salaries six figures, in some cases approaching $500,000 per year. In the case of the University of Michigan, a quarter (26) of their diversity officers earn annual salaries of more than $100,000. If you add generous fringe benefits and other expenses, you could easily be talking about $13 million a year in diversity costs. The Economist reports that University of California, Berkeley, has 175 diversity bureaucrats.

Diversity officials are a growing part of a college bureaucracy structure that outnumbers faculty by 2 to 2.5 depending on the college. According to “The Campus Diversity Swarm,” an article from Mark Pulliam, a contributing editor at Law and Liberty, which appeared in the City Journal (10/10/2018), diversity people assist in the cultivation of imaginary grievances of an ever-growing number of “oppressed” groups. Pulliam writes: “The mission of campus diversity officers is self-perpetuating. Affirmative action (i.e., racial and ethnic preferences in admissions) leads to grievance studies. Increased recognition of LGBTQ rights requires ever-greater accommodation by the rest of the student body. Protecting ‘vulnerable’ groups from ‘hate speech’ and ‘microaggressions’ requires speech codes and bias-response teams (staffed by diversocrats). Complaints must be investigated and adjudicated (by diversocrats). Fighting ‘toxic masculinity’ and combating an imaginary epidemic of campus sexual assault necessitate consent protocols, training, and hearing procedures — more work for an always-growing diversocrat cadre. Each newly recognized problem leads to a call for more programs and staffing.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Here’s What’s Going to Happen in 2020 Kurt Schlichter Kurt Schlichter

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2019/12/30/heres-what-is-whats-going-to-happen-in-2020-n2558641

If you thought you can’t top the stupidity we experienced in 2019, brace yourself for 2020 because it’s going to be a pronoun-fueled weather cult pinko freakshow. But it won’t be all amusing antics – the left hates us and its ugly mask is coming off, revealing the even uglier fascist visage lurking beneath. If you listen to them, and if you aren’t an insufferable goo goo wimp who refuses to hear them, you will know that they intend to silence you, even imprison you, and deprive you of the ability to participate in your own governance. So, if you want to live as a free man or woman – if they have their way, they’ll destroy you for recognizing that unalterable binary – best be ready. 

Be motivated to engage in the cultural melee. 

Vote. 

And buy guns and ammo. As my favorite literary creation famously says, no one has ever regretted being too well armed.

With that in mind, here are my predictions for 2020:

10. Trump Will Be Impeached…Yawn: Poor, flailing Nancy Pelosi will eventually transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate, thereby actually impeaching the President. Now, whether Pelosi’s current antics constitute “impeachment” or not is irrelevant, except denying it due to her gamesmanship is fun because it owns the libs. No one cares, and to the limited extent we normal people do, this alleged impeachment is a badge of honor for the President. Her fringe-driven delay tactics make the Dems look dumber, and eventually she will send it to the Senate where Cocaine Mitch will kill it. Sure, some of the useless GOP caucus will make noises about how this clusterfark must be taken seriously because principles and honor and stuff. Saps. They just better take seriously that we in the base will electorally eviscerate them if they vote to convict. Maybe Mitt the Gimp will vote for it because he’s weak and stupid. Maybe Senator Iglookowski (RINO-AK) will too. But in the end, Trump will triumph and yet again humiliate his opponents.

9. The Economy Will Stay Strong, Disappointing Democrats: The party of the workin’ man is already in mourning because the Trump economy has finally brought some prosperity back to the workin’ man instead of concentrating wealth among the globalist liberal gentry that Obama served. The media will cheerlead for a recession; the Democrats will try to ignore the new Roaring 20s, but America’s success will remain a nightmare for liberals during 2020.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Islamic Extremism and Interfaith Dialogue in Texas By Anne Christine Hoff

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/01/islamic_extremism_and_interfaith_dialogue_in_texas.html

Interfaith initiatives have become ubiquitous in American life. In large cities and small towns, there is an expectation that community religious leaders must come together to discuss their similarities and minimize their differences. But these efforts become a hindrance when they are used to ignore and disguise extremism and hatred, rather than expose and combat it.

Over the past several months, our organization, the Counter-Islamist Grid (CIG), which focuses on Islamist extremist networks in cities across the country, undertook a project to write to members of the Richardson Interfaith Alliance, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, in order to appraise them of radical statements being made by some of their interfaith partners, most notably the Islamic Association of North Texas (also located in Richardson, Texas).

We later published an article about some of these radical interfaith participants and their public utterances and provided documentation and screenshots of the radical anti-Christian and anti-Jewish statements made by those who were supposedly true “interfaith” partners.

The responses we received to these letters have been instructive. Almost to a person, the leaders of the organizations we wrote defended and explained away the extremism, despite clear published hatred for members of other faiths.

These responses ranged from mere ad hominem attacks on our motivations to appeals to authority and citing the personal experiences of the participants as superior to actual evidence.

One lead pastor we wrote to let us know that he was friends with the imam and a layperson at East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) which made him, apparently, a superior judge of the character of Texas Islamic leaders.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

DHS to investigate driver’s licenses for illegal aliens By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/dhs_to_investigate_drivers_licenses_for_illegal_aliens.html

In the last few years, numerous states have already begun to, or soon will, issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Spurred by concerns about national security risks, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is finally investigating whether these licenses are pathways to dangerous identity fraud.

The plethora of licenses in the hands of illegal aliens has worried those concerned about voting integrity. In California, for example, the current iteration of the “motor voter” law means that anyone who obtains or renews a driver’s license is automatically registered to vote.

Technically, “Individuals with AB 60 driver’s licenses are not eligible to participate in the California Motor Voter program and are not eligible to vote.” In practice, last year the DMV admitted that it erroneously registered 1,500 drivers to vote including, it said, non-citizens (i.e., green card holder and illegal aliens). (If you’re wondering whether 1,500 is a real number, you’ll find interesting Jeff Carlson’s article about California’s overwhelming support for Hillary in 2016.)

California’s not alone. A July 2019 article from the National Conference of State Legislatures has noted the trend:

Thirteen states and the District of Columbia enacted laws to allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain a driver’s licenses. These states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Utah, Vermont and Washington—issue a license if an applicant provides certain documentation, such as a foreign birth certificate, a foreign passport, or a consular card and evidence of current residency in the state.

POLITICS Comments turned off

AOC to Lose Her Congressional District After 2020 Census? By Matt Margolis

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/aoc-to-lose-her-congressional-district-after-2020-census/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be a rising star in the Democratic Party, but the district she represents could potentially not exist following the 2020 Census since New York is expected to lose as many as two House seats.

According to The City, nearly 47 percent of her district is foreign-born, and more than a quarter are not citizens—both are segments of the population that are often underrepresented in the census due to concerns of taking part in an official government count, and her district has a higher percentage than any other district. This could mean that her district could be divided up in reapportionment, meaning that she might have to face another incumbent to stay in Congress. Frank Luntz says that the state’s Democrats are actually looking to “draw out” her district.

President Trump considered an executive order to restore a question regarding citizenship to the census but ultimately backed down. Still, some say that there will be an impact on the new census, and AOC, who might be fighting for her political future, is trying hard to inform her constituents that they must participate in the census.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Yazidi Survivors Are Key to Bringing Islamic State Members to Justice By Bojan Pancevski

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/yazidi-survivors-are-key-to-bringing-islamic-state-members-to-justice-11577882496

Efforts to compile testimonies from Yazidi victims offer first-hand evidence of genocide committed by the self-styled caliphate

BERLIN—Ivana says she was eight years old when she was sold as a sex slave to an American member of Islamic State after the group murdered her parents.

Five years after the terror militia sought to exterminate her fellow Yazidi, a religious minority in Iraq and Syria, Ivana’s testimony and those of hundreds of other victims offer evidence that might help bring Islamic State members to justice in the West.

European and U.S. authorities have struggled to successfully prosecute returning Islamic State members, largely because of the difficulties in collecting evidence of crimes that happened in Iraq and Syria.

But the Yazidi who survived carry detailed accounts of one of the militia’s worst crimes: The attempt to wipe out the religious minority and the mass enslavement of its women and female children. Islamic State interprets Islamic scriptures literally, using them to justify the murder and enslavement of Yazidis, who are adherents of an ancient religion that is neither Muslim, Christian nor Jewish and therefore perceived as subhuman by ideologues of the terror group. Now lawyers, activists and the United Nations are compiling these accounts to build cases against captured militants from the self-styled caliphate.

“He was horribly brutal. He and his wife owned me and another two Yazidi girls,” Ivana, now aged 13, says in a documentary about Yazidi survivors. The film, by a German-Yazidi lawyer, will premiere at the United Nations’ New York headquarters in January and is part of the documentation effort. CONTINUE AT SITE

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President, and the Spy- Netflix

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/01/netflix-releases-documentary-series-on-murder-of-argentine-amia-bombing-prosecutor-alberto-nisman/

Netflix 6 part series to be released 202: https://www.netflix.com/title/80197991  

Five years after the murder Alberto Nisman — the Argentine federal prosecutor who was investigating the worst terror outrage in the history of Latin America — streaming giant Netflix unveiled its new documentary series “The Prosecutor, the President and the Spy” in its latest offerings for 2020.

Nisman spent more than a decade probing the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in the Argentine capital, and then later exposed the role of former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and her colleagues in a cover-up of Iran’s responsibility for the atrocity.

Hours before he was due to unveil a complaint against the Kirchner government over its alleged collusion with Iran on Jan. 19, 2015, Nisman’s lifeless body was discovered in his Buenos Aires apartment.

The Kirchner government falsely maintained that Nisman’s assassination was a suicide until an independent police investigation in May 2017 established beyond doubt that he had been murdered.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

2019 Was Another One Of Those Tough Years For The “Experts” Francis Menton

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-12-31-2019-was-another-one-of-those-years-for-the-experts

“Anyway, I plan to continue in 2020 paying no attention whatsoever to the predictions of the so-called “experts,” most particularly on issues relating to the climate and the economy. Other, of course, than making fun of them from time to time. Happy New Year!”

Woodrow Wilson was the President who began the transformation of the U.S. federal government into a collection of huge bureaucracies staffed by supposedly neutral and apolitical “experts” who could run things so much better than we ordinary humans could. A hundred plus years into this, we now have dozens of massive bureaucracies staffed by these so-called “experts.”

President Trump appears to have a somewhat different view. The New York Times of December 28 has a piece by Brad Plumer and Coral Davenport that addresses how one particular group of these so-called “experts” — scientific ones — is faring under Trump. The headline is “Science Under Attack: How Trump Is Sidelining Researchers and Their Work.” Excerpt:

In just three years, the Trump administration has diminished the role of science in federal policymaking while halting or disrupting research projects nationwide, marking a transformation of the federal government whose effects, experts say, could reverberate for years. Political appointees have shut down government studies, reduced the influence of scientists over regulatory decisions and in some cases pressured researchers not to speak publicly. The administration has particularly challenged scientific findings related to the environment and public health opposed by industries such as oil drilling and coal mining. It has also impeded research around human-caused climate change, which President Trump has dismissed despite a global scientific consensus.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Demise of the Private Colleges by Tabitha Korol Private colleges are in financial straits, induced by their own progressive policies.

Posted By on January 2nd, 2020

https://tinyurl.com/y7e6z63d

Private colleges are in serious financial trouble.  According to Bloomberg, they may have to merge with others or close their doors.  The seeds planted by the “homeless, tempest-tossed” academics from Frankfurt, Germany, 84 years ago, are now bearing fruit.                                         

The private colleges are yet another casualty of the plot against American values and exceptionalism initiated by those outcasts from the Frankfurt School of Social Theory who arrived in New York, in 1935.  The theorists began their trek through the Institutions, including higher education, changing the system that was among the best in the world, and poisoning the wells as they advanced.  Whether fools or rogues, they soon realized that the Judeo-Christian West’s superiority could only be destroyed from within, by having their operatives join the machinery of the old institutions, and by collaborating with Third World liberation movements and other dissident minority.  It would take some generations, but the prize of the most envied capitalist country in the world – America and the Free West — was worth their patience.             

                            

The learned academics within the private colleges readily complied with the new Common Core curricula, textbooks, teaching films and scripts, recognizing the Frankfurt stamp of approval.  They introduced identity politics, which now requires a six-figure professional to help the children cope with the resultant tribalism and victimhood – sorely needed funds down the drain.     

BOOKS Comments turned off

Gertrude Himmelfarb A scholar who challenged conventions about the Victorians.

Posted By on January 1st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gertrude-himmelfarb-11577837798?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

She was an accomplished historian known for rigorous scholarship, brilliant essays, and her forceful defense of morality in democratic politics. We’re referring to Gertrude Himmelfarb, who died Monday at age 97.

A native of Brooklyn who earned degrees from the University of Chicago, Himmelfarb achieved intellectual fame as a writer with her third book, “Victorian Minds” (1968). The collection of essays on major figures in the British 19th century challenged the prevailing view of the Victorians as incurious moral prudes.

In that book and several subsequent collections, particularly “Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians” (1986), Himmelfarb contended that the old virtues—temperance, chastity, industry—didn’t repress individual creativity. Instead they enabled a century of cultural flourishing and political stability.

She also wrote with insight on the follies of the French Revolution and the assorted non-philosophies known as postmodernism, and she was unafraid to criticize eminent peers when she thought their writings wrongheaded or precious. She memorably found fault with Roy Jenkins’s biography of Winston Churchill for failing to acknowledge what every ordinary person knew: Churchill was a great man.