Tag Archives: responsibilities

Progressive-Democrat Obstructionism

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The Trump administration, this time in the form of CIA Director John Ratcliffe, has extended an 8-month buyout offer to the CIA. Typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s insistence on Federal government power, Senator Tim Kaine (D, VA) had this objection:

There’s no statutory authority that I can see for the president making this offer[.]

That’s the Party position on government: nothing is permitted unless Government explicitly permits it. Of course, that’s not how our government works in the structure laid out by our Constitution. Quite the opposite, in fact: the lack of explicit statutory authority is no bar at all against the President—or the CIA Director in the present case—making such an offer.

For Kaine’s benefit, though like his Party cronies, it’s doubtful he’ll read it, here are the 9th and 10th Amendments to our Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Of course, Trump, and Ratcliffe, would need statutory authority to require those folks to take the buyout offers, but no such requirement exists—only the offer. Which is a better severance package than most any private sector organization has ever offered. The CIA personnel, and those other Federal civilian personnel, under the offer even get to keep their current insurance benefits; they won’t even be forced onto the horribly expensive COBRA plans for the eight months.

Students’ Decline

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American students—pupils, really—continue to decline in reading skills, and their math skills remain far too low.

The 67% of eighth-graders who scored at a basic or better reading level in 2024 was the lowest share since testing began in 1992, results from a closely watched federal exam show. Only 60% of fourth-graders hit that benchmark, nearing record lows.

And

In math, fourth-grade scores ticked up, while those for the eighth grade were flat. Math scores in both grades remained substantially below prepandemic benchmarks….

There is considerable angst regarding methods for teaching reading.

The results come in the midst of a wave of attention on how to teach students to read. Many school districts and states have emphasized phonics-based instruction, known as the science of reading, and shed other reading methods that focused more on using context to deduce the meaning of words.
Federal officials and researchers say there are no definitive explanations for the latest scores.

The angst is misguided. There’s no reason, for instance, why phonics and context can’t be taught together. They were, in fact, taught if not together then closely sequentially—phonics in first grade, context in second and third grade when I was in grade school. Nor is the Wuhan Virus Situation, often offered as an excuse for these failures, actually involved. The decline in reading and math skills has been going on since long before the virus appeared.

There’s also this bit of gaslighting, from the Denver school system honcho:

Denver Public Schools overhauled its reading curriculum in 2022. Simone Wright, the district’s chief of academics, said the move is making a difference. Denver’s reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress increased in both grades, though the gains weren’t considered statistically significant.

“Not statistically significant” has a very clear meaning to anyone who can do his sums. That meaning is that it’s not possible to tell whether there were any gains at all, or even whether there was actual decline. Or, maybe not gaslighting so much as she’s as arithmetically illiterate as the pupils in her district.

I offer one definitive solution to the failure—which is a teaching failure, not a student failure (they’re pupils at that age because they’re so young; they remain pupils as they go up the grade ladder because teachers don’t teach them how to be students): stop passing the pupils up the grade ladder until they can read and do math.

This business of social promotion, which itself isn’t entirely on the teachers—parents play a role in “not letting Johnny and Susan fall behind”—is destructive, abusive of the children, and actually accelerates and deepens Johnny’s and Susan’s lag.

Here’s a sample of a high school graduation test from the end of the 19th century. Not only are today’s high schoolers wholly unprepared for such a thing, they have no hope of getting prepared without the basic teachings of reading and math from pre-school on up, and the discipline that comes from teachers (and parents) insisting on actual performance rather than social promotions.

Update: [Sigh]. Added the missing link to the test.

Don’t Accept His Credentials

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The British government has nominated Lord Peter Mandelson to be their ambassador to the United States. I write “nominated” because he’s not it until we accept his credentials as British ambassador.

This is what Mandelson has said about Trump in the recent past.

What Donald Trump represents and believes is an anathema to mainstream British opinion.

More:

Even those who have a sneaking admiration for Donald Trump because of his personality, nonetheless regard him as reckless, and a danger to the world.

Especially this:

little short of a white nationalist and a racist.

Now he says,

Frankly, I think President Trump could become one of the most consequential American presidents I have known in my adult life.

Mandelson already has shown what he means by this circumlocution.

And this:

I made those remarks six years ago in 2019, led rather along this by an Italian journalist….
I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong.

Of course those prior remarks weren’t his fault. Never mind that he’s an experienced politician (even though he pretends otherwise) in which profession words are the stock in trade, and he has years of experience dealing with the press. Aside from that, of course he’s claiming to have changed his mind: he wants the prestige and wealthy perks of an ambassadorship.

This is a “diplomat” who’s already demonstrated a level of integrity and bias that shows he can’t be trusted to report to his government objectively about our government’s doings or to treat with our government honestly in his government’s name.

He’s not worth the trouble of dealing with. Don’t accept his credentials.

Gaslighting

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In a Wall Street Journal article—and this news outlet is not at all alone in this—centered on ICE arrests of those in our nation illegally who have criminal histories, the newswriter, Michelle Hackman, insists on calling them “immigrants,” even as she acknowledges in her lede that they’re here illegally.

…targeting immigrants in the country illegally with criminal backgrounds, including minor offenses.

And

…the agency [ICE] is still conducting arrests by pursuing immigrants on so-called “target lists” of criminals developed by the agency….

No. These folks are not “immigrants,” nor are they, as they are often referred to, “migrants,” illegal or otherwise. They are illegal aliens. On the matter of criminal history, that includes their crime of entering our nation illegally.

They cannot be immigrants under any circumstance unless and until they enter our nation legally. They ceased to be migrants when they entered Mexico (or Canada) illegally by those nations’ laws. Even those who entered Mexico or Canada legally, and so might be migrants there, ceased to be migrants and became illegal aliens when they entered our nation illegally.

Nor does the gaslighting stop there. Abeer Ayyoub, Jared Malsin, and Anat Peled have a piece centered on the return of Gazans to northern Gaza and the destruction wreaked there by Hamas in its war of extermination against Israel. These newswriters—and they’re not alone on this, either—determinedly refer to Hamas as Palestinian militant group Hamas. Again, no. These thugs are not militants; they are terrorists.

As long as newswriters insist on gaslighting us about these, neither they nor their journalism guild in general, will have any credibility at all on these subjects, and by extension, on any other—they might be gaslighting on those subjects, too.

Aside: by entering our nation illegally, illegal aliens have placed themselves outside the boundaries set by our law. By doing that, they have denied our nation’s jurisdiction over them. That has serious implications regarding birthright citizenship and our 14th Amendment, with its requirement of subject to the jurisdiction thereof [the United States] in order to become citizens.

Imaginary Risk

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Mark Zuckerberg, Meta‘s boss, has said he’s opening his Facebook and Instagram to free speech and no longer managing what advertisers’ spots appear alongside postings. Advertisers are concerned.

Advertisers have expressed concerns over the past few weeks—in meetings with Meta as well as with their own agency partners—that Meta‘s tools might not be enough to stop ads from showing up near offensive content as the new content-moderation approach comes into effect, and that user feeds could become inundated with misinformation.

Advertisers’ concerns are wholly unfounded. Any serious risk is entirely in their own timid imaginations. There always will be folks who manufacture objections and smears based on the appearance of an ad alongside a posting that someone decides to find objectionable. As long as those timid ones accede to those someones’ manufactured ire, their reputation—the safety of their brand—will be in the wind. Were they to find, instead, the backbone to ignore the someones and their artificial beefs, those someones would remain the vast minority of viewers, potential customers, and customers who might see the pairing, and the advertisers’ brand safety would remain soundly tied to the quality of their product and to nothing else.

The someones are just bullies, and they’re best dealt with by ignoring them and second best dealt with by directly confronting them and pushing back, hard. Their mis- and disinformation is best handled, not by running away from it, but by answering it with actual facts and logic.