EDUCATION Comments turned off

Featherbed Ed Education hiring continues regardless of the number of students. By Larry Sand

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/10/featherbed-ed/

New data for the 2022-2023 academic year paints a disturbing picture. While students are slowly trickling back into public schools post-COVID-19, the same cannot be said for staff. The National Center for Education Statistics revealed an increase of 173,000 students in public schools, yet during the same period, a staggering 159,000 employees were hired, including 15,000 additional teachers.

Researcher Chad Aldeman provides specific examples of hiring trends in various districts across the country. He explains that about one-third of these districts added teachers while serving fewer students. For instance, Philadelphia lost nearly 16,000 students but employed 200 more teachers, dropping its student-to-teacher ratio from about 17:1 to under 15:1.

About a quarter of all districts followed the path of California’s Capistrano Unified School District, which lowered its teaching force over time but not as fast as it lost students. Capistrano suffered a 22% decline in student enrollment but reduced its teaching staff by just 7%.

Another group of districts saw an increase in student enrollments, but their teacher count has risen even faster. The Katy Independent School District, near Houston, added 4,299 students last year, a gain of 4.9%. At the same time, it hired 366 teachers, a 6% gain. Over the period, its student body increased by 22%, while its teacher count grew by 29%.

But as Aldeman notes, the future is murky: “As districts spend down the last of their federal ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief ) dollars, they may have to lay off staff or close under-enrolled buildings.”

If teachers must be laid off, the typical union contract stipulates that it must be done by seniority, or the “last in, first out” (LIFO) regimen. This industrial style of dealing with teacher overstaffing is typified by Michigan’s Ann Arbor Public Schools system, where the teacher union contract states that after considering years of experience with the district, if two teachers have equal seniority, the last several digits of a teacher’s Social Security number would be the tiebreaker for a layoff.

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Screaming ‘Death to America’ in Dearborn Yes, it has come to this. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/screaming-death-to-america-in-dearborn/

Old Joe Biden has stabbed Israel in the back in order to try to ensure that he carries Michigan in November, but at least some of the Muslims in the Great Lake State don’t exactly seem grateful. Friday was International Al-Quds Day, an orgy of global victimhood posturing and rage over Israel’s refusal to surrender to the Palestinian jihad, and in Dearborn, rallygoers observing the day demonstrated that if Biden actually cared about the wellbeing of the American people, he would have bigger things to think about in Michigan than the presidential election.

Dearborn’s International Al-Quds Day rally was streamed live on the Facebook page of the Arabic-English news site Dearborn.org. It seems to have been taken down from Facebook, but video of the entire rally is still available as of Sunday afternoon at Dearborn.org. Around the 40-minute mark of that video, as the crowd screams “Free, Free Palestine” and the genocidal “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” an activist named Tarek Bazzi came to the podium. What he said should be a matter of grave concern to Old Joe, Merrick Garland, and the FBI — if, that is, anyone can convince them that someone who isn’t a “Jan. 6 insurrectionist” or “white supremacist” should warrant any of their attention.

“We’ve been asked in the past,” Bazzi said, “why are our protests on the International Day of Quds, why are they so anti-America? Why don’t we just focus more on Israel and not talk so much on America? Gaza has shown the entire world why these protests are so anti-America.” Bazzi went on to claim that the U.S. was bankrolling Israel’s war effort and running interference for Israel at the UN; he also referred to Hamas propaganda regarding alleged Israeli atrocities.

Reality had no part in this propaganda display, for if it did, Bazzi would have had to take note of the fact that the Biden regime has betrayed and abandoned Israel both at the UN and in regard to its overall war effort.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Unfriendly Fire Only Israel faces impossible standards for conducting war. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/unfriendly-fire/

Last week Israel mistakenly attacked with missiles a humanitarian convoy in Gaza, killing seven aid workers. As they have done for eight decades, Israel’s international enemies and alleged friends across the world immediately started demonizing Israel and accusing the IDF of intentionally targeting the aid workers. Biden also suggested just that when he said, “Even more tragically, this is not a standalone incident,” adding that the war in Gaza “has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed.”

Of course, Biden claims as well that Israel’s alleged callous indifference to the lives and well-being of civilians and aid workers “is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult—because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers.”

Sadly, such unjust reactions and mendacious slurs against Israel have been unexceptional for decades. And only Israel faces incessant criticism over the mistakes and miscalculations that are the tragic, eternal contingencies of war.

In every battlefield throughout history, fighters have had to face the “fog of war”–– the chaos, uncertainty, unforeseen consequences, mistaken intel, dubious tactics, mediocre leadership, faulty training and discipline, plus terror, panic, and a “thousand shapes of death,” as the Roman poet Vergil described the brutal sack of Troy. These all lead to inadvertently killing one’s own troops or civilians.

Moreover, these grim constants of armed combat are multiplied and intensified in unconventional guerilla wars, especially in the complex landscape of towns and cities, where terrorists like Hamas shelter, spring ambushes, hide explosives, store armaments, use civilians of every age and sex as human shields, and employ humanitarian aid vehicles and ambulances to transport killers.

But over the last century, these historical realities of war have come to be understood as residues from more primitive and savage times, anomalies that modernity fancies can be corrected and mitigated with international laws, multinational covenants, institutions like the Red Cross, self-defeating “rules of engagement,” diplomatic intervention, and the conversion of illiberal autocracies into liberal democracies that acknowledge universal human rights and humanitarian restraints on war-making.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Democrats, EVs And Tyranny

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/10/democrats-evs-and-tyranny/

Why do Democrats insist on forcing consumers to make choices they don’t want? Americans are making it clear they don’t want electric vehicles, yet Democrats won’t give up their mandate zealotry. Are they driven by authoritarian urges?

A poll taken last month shows that 48% of consumers would not consider buying an EV. That’s up seven percentage points from last year. Only 35% of those who responded to the Gallup poll said they might consider buying one, down from 43% just a year ago. A mere 9% said they were seriously considering an EV purchase. That portion was 12% in 2023.

Yes, EV ownership has increased. In 2024, 7% of Americans own a battery-powered car. Last year only 4% owned an EV.

But this combined with a growing resistance is an indicator that the demand is reaching a peak if it hasn’t already. After all, there are only so many consumers willing to buy an expensive, unreliable, grid-draining and destructive automobile merely for the privilege of demonstrating their green street cred and moral superiority. There are quite a few shallow people in this country but not enough apparently to keep the market warm.

Even with the rank of Democrats – whose positions are built on political superficiality – the EV fever has broken, with 27% saying in 2024 they would not buy an EV compared to 17% last year. Among independents, the “would nots” have grown to 47% from 38%. (A thanks to Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell for asking Gallup to break down the responses by party.)

Which is why the Biden administration and nearly half the states have to force EVs on the people.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Dangerous US Rush to Save the Terrorist Group Hamas by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20560/us-saving-hamas

Had the Biden administration maintained the strong support for the destruction of Hamas that it showed in the immediate aftermath of Oct 7, the fighting might already have subsided and all the hostages been returned. But every time the Biden administration weakens its support for Israel, it strengthens the determination of Hamas to raise its demands and threaten Israel, to the point that Israel cannot possibly agree.

Where are the threats and the pressure on Hamas, Qatar or Iran?

Although Hamas praised — indeed celebrated — the resolution, it has no intention of complying with its demand regarding hostages. Yet, it expects Israel to comply unilaterally with what is demanded of it.

Recent data show that it is not Israel that causing hunger in Gaza, it is Hamas: “Hamas, which has been hoarding food and stealing from Gazans, is the root cause of Gazans’ suffering.”

[Hamas] must be required to surrender and the people of Gaza must be de-radicalized. Any other endgame will only postpone a repetition of October 7. Except this time, with calls this week for “Death to America” from within the United States, just as terrorism came to a theater near Putin, this time it may be coming to a theater near you.

The Biden administration’s drift away from full support for Israel will cost more Palestinian and Israeli lives. It will encourage Hamas to keep fighting and to keep rejecting proposals for the return of hostages in exchange for a humanitarian cease-fire. It will persuade Hamas that it can win its war, weaken Israel and create distance between the US and Israel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Genocide Is Not a Vibe By Noah Rothman

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/genocide-is-not-a-vibe/

“If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide, and they have ample evidence to do so,” Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren told an audience at an Islamic Center of Boston event last week.

The “they” in this sentence refers to the International Court of Justice. But because the United States is not party to the charter that created the ICJ, and Israel does not recognize the court’s authority, “they” was not the operative word in Warren’s comments. It wasn’t even “genocide,” which has enough rhetorical force that it dominated the headlines that graced reports about her remarks. Rather, the most important and most revealing word in her statement was “believe.”

In the end, Warren did not have the courage of her own stated convictions. According to her office, the senator was “not sharing her views on whether genocide is occurring in Gaza.” Rather, she was merely commenting dispassionately on the ongoing fact-finding process at The Hague. That’s hard to believe.

For months, Warren has supported the idea of conditioning aid to Israel on terms designed to punish “a right-wing government” in Jerusalem “that’s demonstrated an appalling disregard for Palestinian lives.” Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has engineered a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip by showing no respect for “civilian life,” she said in a highly publicized Senate speech. In that speech, she maintained that “the Israeli government must stop the bombing in Gaza” regardless of the status of Hamas — presumably because, in her view, Hamas’s survival represents the lesser of two evils. If Warren has convinced herself of that, why wouldn’t she also attribute to Israel the crimes of which Hamas is guilty?

We can only assume that Warren’s staff felt it was necessary to walk back her allegations of “genocide” not because those aren’t her true feelings but because the word has a legal definition and Israel’s conduct doesn’t come close to meeting it.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Three Pillars of Education By Peter Wood

Posted By on April 10th, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/three-pillars-of-education/

Editor’s Note: Nowhere has the group quota regime been more successful in its early years than in higher education, where the ideology of outcome equality is mandatory both as doctrine and as practice. A recent exchange in Public Discourse between Robert George and Yoram Hazony considered whether free speech is still a viable or desirable ideal in this era of the woke university. Here, Peter Wood, the president of the National Association of Scholars, argues alongside Hazony that free speech cannot be the highest principle of education — that firmer groundings and loftier aims are necessary in the fight against a revolutionary enemy.

As Wood writes,“Real intellectual diversity, the hierarchy of knowledge, the integrity of the individual, civility, and the pursuit of truth have all been captured by the radical left and turned inside out. We win this war only if we realize that education itself is at stake.”

“If I had been asked a year ago about free speech on campus and the doctrine of “institutional neutrality,” I would have given an answer markedly different from what I give today. Not that I would have lined up with those who elevate “free speech” to be the highest principle—or the deepest foundation—of higher education. The intellectual heirs of John Stuart Mill say such things frequently and with firm assurance. Mill’s great essay, On Liberty, is their Mount Ararat. It towers over the landscape littered with discarded speech codes, debunked theories, and zealous enforcers of rules against bias. Just as certain religious enthusiasts believe Noah’s ark came to rest on the top of the Turkish mountain, certain free speech advocates anchor themselves on Mill’s idea that the truth can be approached by holding the doors of academe wide open to any and all views.

This is essentially the position taken by Robert George in his debate with Yoram Hazony in Public Discourse. Hazony, by contrast, cites Mill with an attitude of weary disdain. He says American universities love Mill’s idea that the “free exchange of divergent ideas will eventually lead society to truth and virtue.”  Hazony adds, “Indeed, the belief that free inquiry is the only road to truth has been promoted as the principal dogma of the postwar liberal university for nearly sixty years—since the ‘free speech’ movement of the 1960s.”  

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Greta’s class war The green ideology is the enemy of working people. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on April 9th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/08/gretas-class-war/

It was like a case study in indifference. There was privileged Gen Zer Greta Thunberg and other Euro eco-brats smiling and flicking peace signs as they called on the Dutch government to stop subsidising fossil-fuel companies. Meanwhile, the Dutch people, very few of whom are the offspring of opera singers with the ear of the world media, are suffering one of the largest spikes in energy prices in all of Europe. Their bills are through the roof. They’re reeling from the ‘pain of high energy costs’, as some in the media describe it. And yet in sweeps giggling Greta and her barmy eco-army to agitate for less government backing for energy production, which would likely hike the price even more.

Rarely has the blinkered vanity, the sheer social apathy, of the green movement been so starkly illustrated. It was on Saturday that Greta and chums made their haughty demands of the Dutch government. In a protest at The Hague, hundreds of supporters of the upper-class death cult Extinction Rebellion marched behind a banner saying ‘STOP FOSSIL SUBSIDIES’. Some of the more spirited of these marchers against modernity, including Greta, broke away from the protest and headed to the A12 highway with the intention of blocking it. Because apparently it’s not enough to hit the pockets of the good people of the Netherlands – no, you have to ruin their weekend travel plans, too. Cops intervened and Greta and others were arrested for the crime of impeding a highway.

The press is full of gushing reports of Greta’s arrest. The BBC features an image of its favourite prophetess of doom yelling something as ticked-off cops drag her away. Our heroine only wanted to ‘block… a main road’ in protest against the ‘Dutch government’s tax concessions for companies connected to the fossil-fuel industry’, the Beeb says. What a turnaround from its reporting on the revolting Dutch farmers who also blocked highways, though in their case in opposition to lunatic Net Zero policies rather than in favour of them. Back then, the BBC said farmers had ‘clogged up’ roads and ‘snarled up motorways’ and created an ‘unsafe situation’. So when workers hold up highways, it’s horrifying, yet when time-rich right-on youths do it, it’s heroic? We see you, BBC.

The truth is there was nothing admirable about Greta’s latest temper tantrum over fossil fuels.

EDUCATION, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Poisoning of Medical School Education How DEI and Critical Race Theory are replacing the Hippocratic Oath. by Joseph Klein

Posted By on April 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-poisoning-of-medical-school-education/

UCLA’s first-year medical students were required late last month to sit through a two-hour lecture on the subject of “Housing (In)Justice” that was part of a mandatory course on “structural racism” at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. UCLA’s guest lecturer was a left-wing homeless advocate, Lisa Gray-Garcia (pictured above), who told her captive audience of aspiring doctors that modern medicine is “white science.” Her pagan prayers to “Mama Earth,” which were part of Ms. Gray-Garcia’s presentation, included a blessing for “black,” “brown,” and “houseless people” who, she claimed, die because of the “crapatalist lie” of “private property.”

Wearing a Palestinian scarf, Ms. Gray-Garcia, a Hamas sympathizer who once posted on X that “Israel is Amerikkklan,” led UCLA’s medical students in chants of “Free, free Palestine.”

UCLA’s medical school has declared on its website that its fundamental mission is to champion “Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.” In pursuit of achieving “equity,” the website states, “We have a collective commitment to combat structural racism.” Its “anti-racism roadmap” includes developing “an advisory committee to include experts in critical race theory, social justice, bias, and health disparities.”

The school’s reading list includes books by leading critical race theorists. They include Robin DiAngelo’s “White fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism” and Ibram X. Kendi’s “How to be an antiracist.”

UCLA is not an outlier. Indoctrination in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) and Critical Race Theory dogmas is being force fed to medical school students and faculty across the country.

The Oregon Health and Science University’s “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism Strategic Action Plan,” for example, requires “ongoing training and learning opportunities related to DEI and anti-racism for learners, staff, faculty and administrative leaders.” There will be “consequences for individuals who are not compliant with the required training,” the strategic action plan warns. This includes incorporating “DEI, anti-racism and social justice core competencies in performance appraisals of faculty and staff.”

Harvard Medical School states as one of its anti-racism initiatives the development of classes to “acknowledge the ways in which racism is embedded in science and scientific culture and work to redress these longstanding issues.” In other words, Harvard Medical School is on board with the outrageous claim that medicine is “white science.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

New Study Pours Cold Water on the Media’s Maternal-Mortality Hyperventilating Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on April 9th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-study-pours-cold-water-on-the-medias-maternal-mortality-hyperventilating/

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we compare the results of a recent study on maternal mortality with the available media reporting on the topic, look at an absurd headline from The Independent, and cover more media misses.

New Study Upends Prevailing Narratives on U.S. Maternal Mortality

Dr. Ingrid Skop, an ob-gyn and vice president and director of medical affairs for the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, regularly has women in her office who have read news reports on the so-called maternal health-care crisis in the U.S., which is said to have the highest rate of maternal mortality of any high-income country.

“What I tell [them] is that we have had troubles with our data, and we’ve put some systems in place that have helped to detect more deaths. When it looks like the rates are rising, it is probably because we are doing a better job of detecting as opposed to actually having more deaths,” she said, adding “the good news is the death that you’re worried about, a catastrophic event at the time of birth, those rates are improving dramatically.”

“You do not need to be afraid of childbirth,” she said.

So she wasn’t surprised by a new study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology last month that found the national U.S. maternal mortality rate is much lower than has been reported by the CDC, which has reported a rate of 32.9 deaths per 100,000 births.

The new study instead finds a rate of 10.4 deaths per 100,000 births and also shows a rate that remained largely stable between 1999 and 2021.