The Price Democracy Exacts for Ignorance David Catron

https://spectator.org/education-america-democracy/

In an 1816 letter to his friend Charles Yancey, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information.” Jefferson was making the case for taxpayer-funded public schools. He believed an educated electorate with access to a free press would be proof against the government’s inclination to encroach upon our liberties. One wonders if he would take such a sanguine view after witnessing what passes for education and news reporting today.

It’s useful to ponder this question now, considering that our president’s first State of the Union address was a classic expression of the propensity to which Jefferson alluded. Absent the tired bromides and outright balderdash, it was a call for the expansion of an already-bloated federal behemoth. The $2 trillion “infrastructure” plan the president pitched, for example, includes numerous programs to which few taxpayers would apply that term. Indeed, it would spend far more money on entitlement programs than on roads and bridges. As Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) expressed it in his SOTU response:

Republicans support everything you think of when you think of “infrastructure.” Roads, bridges, ports, airports, waterways, high-speed broadband — we’re all in! But again, Democrats want a partisan wish list.… Less than 6% of the President’s plan goes to roads and bridges. It’s a liberal wish-list of Big Government waste … plus the biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation. Experts say, when all is said and done, it would lower American wages and shrink our economy.… “Infrastructure” spending that shrinks our economy is not common sense.

‘Stealth Radical’? Biden’s Program Was No Secret

https://www.nysun.com/national/stealth-radical-bidens-program-was-no-secret/91497/

Six months ago, Joe Biden was supposedly a moderate. Now, he supposedly wants to restructure the fundamentals of the American economy. This narrative is dismaying, because it suggests that Mr. Biden got elected by voters with inaccurate information about Mr. Biden’s plans.

The most nefarious spin on it — call it the “stealth radical” explanation — is that Mr. Biden and his allies in the press were intentionally misleading the voters, falsely portraying the candidate as a moderate by hiding his far-left plans.

The most generous interpretation — call it the “surprise conversion” narrative — is that Mr. Biden somehow changed his mind, entirely sincerely, after the election. Even that is problematic in terms of small-d democratic theory.

Where is the mandate or consent of the governed from the electorate for an agenda that the candidate, before the election, denied having?

A pre-election news article on the front page of the Sunday, October 18, 2020, New York Times mocked what the article called “a curious charge at the center of President Trump’s re-election effort: Mr. Biden, the president insists, is eager to do the far-left bidding of violent agitators and other assorted radicals.” The Times reported that Biden is actually “a 77-year-old moderate.”

The issue came up in the first presidential debate, on September 29, 2020. Mr. Trump said, “Joe, you agreed with Bernie Sanders, who’s far left.” Mr. Biden replied, “The fact of the matter is I beat Bernie Sanders.”

Into practice Timely teaching advice and research findings Demonstrating that everyone’s voice is valued

https://mailchi.mp/harvard/into-practice-monikjimenez-1412968?e=b8a501ae37

Dr. Monik Jimenez, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, uses different pedagogical approaches to elevate diverse voices and styles of learning. In her Mass Incarceration & Health in the U.S. course, she balances speaking time between a traditional scholar and an impacted community member, and emphasizes to the latter (and to students) that they are an expert. Dr. Jimenez also provides a variety of ways for students to participate and ask questions that include different cultural and neurodivergent learning styles. “It’s important to think about decolonizing the classroom in a layered way,” she reflects. “What are the multiple ways in which systems of power and white supremacy have impacted what we consider to be an ‘optimal’ student through the metrics we’ve been taught?”
 

The benefits: “Creating a space that demonstrates everyone’s voice is valued allows students to engage with one another in ways that are far more authentic and that last.” Students open themselves to learning, engaging more deeply with the material, and practice challenging stigmas in a carefully cultivated space. Emphasizing that voices outside the traditional scholar have deep value, permits students to feel comfortable thinking of themselves as experts. Dr. Jimenez notes that her students are often more interested in what impacted community members have to say.
 

“We’re challenging who you can be in this space and that your presence – your whole presence, everything that brought you to this point – is valued, not just where you went to school, but all your lived experience and distance travelled.”

Why School Vouchers Matter and How To Get Them Right Vouchers should promote true competition and benefit poor as well as rich students Charles Lipson

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2021/05/03/why-school-vouchers-matter-and-how-to-get-them-right/

After a year of missed schooling and inadequate online learning, after months of teachers unions delaying the return to classrooms, it is time to reconsider school vouchers. Many “red” states are already doing so. Indiana is the most recent, and Florida, with one of the largest programs in the country, is about to undertake a major expansion. As these programs are implemented, we should learn which policies work best and build on those lessons.

The pro-voucher debate so far has focused on two features shared by all voucher programs. They offer more choices to parents and kids. And the schools supported by them appear to perform a bit better, on average, than existing public schools (after taking into account differences in student populations).

We need to refocus the debate on two other points that are crucial to designing effective programs. One is whether the payments are actually large enough to benefit poor families. Vouchers are useless to the poor unless they cover nearly all the costs of tuition, books and transportation. (The federal government already covers food costs.) The other issue is whether the programs foster genuine market competition, forcing schools to do their best for students or pay a high price for failure.

Well-designed voucher programs should accomplish the following:

Encourage new schools to enter the market,
Drive out schools that don’t meet students’ and parents’ needs, and
Shift public resources swiftly and decisively toward the best schools and away from the worst, as determined by the parents themselves.

These goals can be achieved only if resources follow the students, not the schools, teachers or administrators. They happen only if voucher programs are large enough and if bad public schools aren’t kept on life support. Right now, we don’t have that kind of vigorous competition, and it shows. Our children suffer for it.

China is Trying to Break up the Five Eyes Intelligence Network by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17332/china-new-zealand-five-eyes

The survival of the alliance in its current form, though, is under threat after Ms Ardern’s administration announced that it was making improved trade relations with Beijing its priority, rather than maintaining its support for Five Eyes.

“No matter if they have five eyes or ten eyes, as soon as they dare to harm China’s sovereignty, security or development interests, they should be careful lest their eyes be poked blind.” — Zhao Lijian, the spokesman for China’s foreign minister, BBC, November 19, 2020.

New Zealand’s naive approach to the threat posed by Beijing not only poses a threat to the future of the alliance itself. There is a distinct possibility that Wellington could find itself being expelled from the alliance over its pro-Beijing stance.

As a senior Western intelligence official recently commented about New Zealand’s continued membership of the alliance, the country was now “on the edge of viability as a member” of the alliance because of its “supine” attitude to China and its “compromised political system”.

New Zealand’s socialist government may believe that it is a good idea to throw in their lot with China’s communist rulers. But by doing so, they risk sacrificing their future to domination by China’s despots.

China is making a deliberate attempt to create divisions within the elite “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing alliance by forging closer relations with the left-wing government of New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern.

The Five Eyes alliance, comprising the US, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, dates back to the Second World War, when a number of key allies decided to share intelligence in their bid to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan.

Today, maintaining intelligence-sharing cooperation between the five Anglophone nations is deemed essential to combating the threat posed by autocratic states, such as Russia and Communist China.

The Bleak Biden Way What is the Biden way? To surveille, monitor, root out, raid, jail, confine, and smear all impediments to fundamental transformation. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/02/the-bleak-biden-way/

After a hundred days of President Biden, I think most Americans are now on to what will follow in the next few years. 

Joyless Joe

Biden frowns. He grimaces. He occasionally barks and yells as he delivers a gloomy view of America and its people, past and present. 

Admit it: We are all racists, then and now, captives of Jim Crow still. Biden needs as many fabricated enemies as he can find; otherwise, his speeches, his demeanor, his agenda are little more than absurdities. They cannot stand or fall on their own merits because they have none. So grumpy Biden, in his latest and final incarnation, is always anti-something, usually anti-Trump, anti-racism, and anti-everything traditional America is for.

Lots of bad white people still need to be rooted out—outside of the beltway. These are the ones never woken by Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the media, academia, the corporate boardroom, professional sports, and the foundations. These retrograde deplorables apparently won’t give up their “privilege” without a fight. 

Bidenism demands these environmental desecrators must stop boiling the planet. We are a xenophobic nation that won’t let pioneering migrants enter the United States. We are a Neanderthal America full of people who won’t wear their masks when vaccinated and outdoors. We are a battered America still reeling from the Trump disasters on the border, the Trump failed coup on January 6, the Trump racism that led to peaceful equity marches all last summer. 

So America needs a booster shot, a new way of electing presidents, a rebooted Supreme Court, new Senate rules, more states, and so much more—with so little time. The downer message makes Jimmy’s Carter’s old cardigan sweater sermons look inspiring, as the grey and sullen Joe himself makes Carter in retrospect seem sunny. 

The emerging Bidenism is what some of us warned we’d see last summer when the deceptive Left and naïve NeverTrump mantra preened that old Joe from Scranton would usher in post-Trump “healing.” His therapeutic candidacy was promised to be a “return to normalcy,” as he was a “moderate” eager to “unify” us.  

This illusory reboot from Trump absolutism was to be sort of reminiscent of George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light” and “kinder and gentler nation” promises, as the implied corrective to purported heartless eight years of Reaganism.

Ron DeSantis climbs another rung up the presidential ladder By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/ron_desantis_climbs_another_rung_up_the_presidential_ladder.html

It’s currently unclear whether Donald Trump wants to run for President again in 2024 or whether he’ll content himself with playing kingmaker. In the latter case, lots of people are looking at Florida’s Ron DeSantis, whose refusal to bow down to leftist shibboleths is catching conservatives’ attention. His latest pronouncement that Critical Race Theory is “a bunch of horse manure” will only raise his profile with all sensible Americans.

Most people living outside of Florida weren’t paying attention to Florida governor Ron DeSantis before 2020. However, in 2020, DeSantis showed himself to be a different kind of leader. While governors across America, especially Democrat governors, were turning their states into totalitarian dictatorships with broken economies, DeSantis increased protections for the elderly and other vulnerable people in Florida, and then allowed life to continue pretty much as usual – no masks, no lockdowns. (I should add that many conservative states successfully resisted the extreme COVID mask and lockdown madness that Democrat governors showed. None, however, were as large as Florida or as entirely resistant to masks and lockdowns.)

DeSantis’s constitutional, liberty-oriented approach to dealing with COVID has driven leftists around the bend. What’s been especially irritating for them is that mask- and lockdown-free Florida had significantly better COVID outcomes than states with comparable populations, such as California and New York. That’s why outlets such as 60 Minutes have been reduced to using blatant dishonesty to attack DeSantis’s competence and honesty.

Small Businesses Fight Arbitrary Shutdowns By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/small_businesses_fight_arbitrary_shutdowns.html

Small businesses, critical drivers of innovation and growth, play an important role in our free-market system.  They not only epitomize traditional American values of individuality, creativity, and self-sufficiency, but also present unique opportunities to achieve financial success.  In 2019, the Small Business Administration (SBA) reported that small businesses created two thirds of net jobs, generated 49.2% of private-sector employment, accounted for 44% of U.S. economic activity, and contributed 43.5% to the GDP.

No event in history has devastated small businesses like the coronavirus shutdowns.  In the first three months (February to April 2020) of the pandemic, mandates requiring restricted access, social distancing, and periodic closures caused the number of small business owners to fall 22%.  After seven months of such restrictions, a Federal Reserve survey found that 44% of small businesses had debts of more than $100,000, up from 13% in 2019.  Three out of every ten said they wouldn’t survive 2021 without government assistance.  One report said 27% of small and medium businesses had to reduce their workforce, and 48% had to lay off at least half their employees.  Among the worst hit is the restaurant industry: 110,000 had closed for good by December 2020.

Federal relief, which could have served as a lifeboat, was poorly administered.  Less than two weeks after the SBA received its first application for the emergency Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the money ran out. 

In a move to create “safer prisons,” California plans early release of 76,000 prisoners “Good behavior credits” are being offered to nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole. Leslie Eastman

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/05/in-a-move-to-create-safer-prisons-california-plans-early-release-of-76000-prisoners/

After a steady-year of media-supported civil unrest and toxic political choices, a recent review of crime statistics in Los Angeles County shows that murder rates have spiked nearly 200% so far this year compared to the same time in 2020.

There were 60 people murdered in L.A. County as of Feb. 28 – a 186% jump from the 21 killings reported during the same period in 2020, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department told Fox News in a segment that aired Thursday.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told Fox News criminals are emboldened by District Attorney George Gascón’s progressive policies and stressed that people must understand that such elections will have consequences.

“They need to really pick and choose very carefully.because for them it’s very easy to say, ‘Oh yeah, all cops are bad,’ and, ‘Let’s reform and defund the police,’” Villanueva said. “Yet they’re the very first ones to pick up the 911 when someone’s crawling over their back gate trying to get into their house.”

Against this backdrop, it is stunning to learn California officials are planning the early release of up to 76,000 inmates, including violent and repeat felons, to further reduce the population of what once was the nation’s largest state correctional system.

More than 63,000 inmates convicted of violent crimes will be eligible for good behavior credits that shorten their sentences by one-third instead of the one-fifth that had been in place since 2017. That includes nearly 20,000 inmates who are serving life sentences with the possibility of parole.

The new rules take effect Saturday, but it will be months or years before any inmates go free earlier. Corrections officials say the goal is to reward inmates who better themselves while critics said the move will endanger the public.

Glazov Gang: The Hate of Critical Race Theory. Inside the malice and racist venom of the Counter-American Revolution.

https://jamieglazov.com/2021/05/02/glazov-gang-the-hate-of-critical-race-theory/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Clare Lopez, the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC,

Clare discusses The Hate of Critical Race Theory, taking us Inside the malice and racist venom of the Counter-American Revolution.

Don’t miss it!