Monthly Archives: October 2012

Another Thought on Racism in Education

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Florida’s Department of Education has set race-based goals for its K-12 students (the Florida’s DoE Strategic Plan can be found here and here.  For reading, these goals are

  • Asian students: 90% reading at or above grade level
  • White students: 88% reading at or above grade level of white students,
  • Hispanic students: 81% reading at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% reading at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 82% at or above grade level

The math goals are

  • Asian students: 92% at or above grade level
  • White students: 86% at or above grade level
  • Hispanic students: 80% at or above grade level
  • Black students: 74% at or above grade level
  • American Indian students: 81% at or above grade level

These are not trivial differences.  Education Sector’s Director of Strategic Communications, Kristen Amundson, notes

I understand that this is recognition that students are beginning at different places—and that’s honest—but I think it is, at best, ill-advised to set different learning standards for students based on the color of their skin.

She’s being generous.  This is a blatantly racist program, and it harkens back to Woodrow Wilson’s paternalistic racism.  Some races, the Florida DoE seems to be suggesting, are just inherently inferior to others, and so they should not be held to the same standards.

Adding failure to injury, while this…policy…correctly recognizes that some groups of children start from different—lower—bases than others, it does absolutely nothing to correct those differences—which are educational, not innate capability.  Recognizing that these kids start out at different levels of preparation for school, and that much of these differences correlate with race (they also correlate with a host of socioeconomic factors—family income, family stability, and so on; these factors subsume race into them, so there’s a bit of double-counting here), makes for a useful start point.  But the Florida DoE is telling these kids that nothing will be done to help them finish school on a more-or-less equal footing with their peers.  “There’s no point in teaching you to do better.  You just can’t catch up.”

Yet the Florida School Board Association Executive Director, Dr Wayne Blanton, said this—and he was serious:

The message could have been portrayed a little clearer, but as far as racism, I see nothing in wanting to raise test scores that would be racist.  You’re trying to raise all test scores, not just in one particular group.

No, doctor, the message was portrayed quite clearly.  As clearly as your own disingenuousness.  No one is suggesting Florida is trying to raise test scores only in “one particular group.”  That’s just a cynical red herring.  What Florida is doing is providing drinking fountains, or bathrooms, to all groups—but some will be better maintained than others.

Lies of the Democrats, Part 5

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This is Part 5 of my series on the lies told by Democrats during the present administration’s term in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with the dishonesty while in office.

There’s this from State in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on our Consulate in Benghazi that included the murders of our Ambassador to Libya and three of his staff.  Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice on 16 Sep, five days after the attack:

Putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video….

Yet we know from sworn testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee the day prior to the Vice Presidential debate last Thursday that the intel community had concluded that it was a terrorist attack within 24 hours—four days before Rice’s claim.

Next, in that Vice Presidential debate, Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden said in all seriousness that the reason security for the Ambassador, or for the consulate in Benghazi, had not been beefed up was because no such requests for added support had been made.

Yet we know from sworn testimony at that same hearing that repeated requests for additional personnel and equipage had been repeatedly denied.  LtCol Andrew Wood, former head of our Tripoli embassy’s military security, expressed his frustration at not only not getting the additions he’d been requesting but getting the assets he already had materially reduced:

We were fighting a losing battle. We couldn’t even keep what we had[.]

Eric Nordstrom, erstwhile head of regional security for State, testified that he asked for a team of 12 diplomatic security agents to replace departing commandos, but he was told “you’re asking for the sun, the moon, and the stars,” and his request was denied.

Now, assume Biden is telling the truth on this, that he wasn’t lying.  What does that say about how isolated from what’s actually happening in—forget the world—Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s own administration that his Vice President can be so uninformed?

Yeah, But

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted responsibility for our fiasco in Libya, saying “The buck stops with me.”  Then she excused the confusion with “the fog of war,” and

…the confusion you get in any type of combat situation.

Remember, this was an attack that went on for hours.  There had to be a lot of sorting out. … Everyone said, here’s what we know, subject to change….

However, it’s been widely reported that the fact that this was a concerted terrorist attack and not anything else was well known in near-real time.

Who’s fog?  Who’s confusion?

Lies of the Democrats, Part 4

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This is Part 4 of my series on the lies told by Democrats during the present administration’s term in office.  As I said earlier, I’m not concerned with his broken campaign promises so much as I am with the dishonesty while in office.

In the aftermath of the first Romney-Obama debate, Democrats are asserting that the only way Romney could possibly have won is that of course he lied.

On the subject of Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s remarks about “the 47%,” CNN’s Soledad O’Brien had this exchange:

So, to me, that is you say one thing for a certain audience to get them to support you and then you say something different, maybe completely contradictory, to another audience which some could define as lying[.]

Romney said that his remark was “inelegant,” then later called it “just plain wrong.”  Yeah—couldn’t possibly be an admission of a mistake.  Of course it’s a lie.  Good to know, though, that the Democrats think Romney is perfect and never makes mistakes.  Except by lying.

Then there’s Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s senior campaign advisor, David Axelrod.  In a CBS Face the Nation interview, Axelrod had this on the debate’s outcome:

I think [Obama] was a little taken aback at the brazenness with which Gov Romney walked away from so many of the positions on which he’s run, walked away from his record[.]

And

When he said he never proposed $5 trillion in tax cuts, that was dishonest.  I’m saying that he was dishonest in his answers.

Never mind that Axelrod just makes his bald claim, with no specifics.  Or that Romney has been constant as the northern star concerning all of his positions save abortion, where he has evolved his position—which is OK for the Democratic candidate….

Never mind that there is no $5 trillion, and the only study that said so has been publicly debunked—including by its own authors who said their underlying assumptions were mistaken.

And Congressman James Clyburn (D, SC) had this:

Romney’s performance featured a rather dramatic departure from his public record and campaign proposals, and he displayed a reckless disregard for bedrock American values of truth and honesty.

This is the pot calling the kettle black.  Recall that Clyburn also lied about spitting and racial epithets in April 2010 in the aftermath of Obamacare’s passage.  In the present case, as then, Clyburn has chosen to offer no specifics, no evidence, beyond his bald declaration that Romney was dishonest.

How dishonest is that?

Benghazi: Fail

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Stephen Hayes, of The Weekly Standard, writes

At the [Vice President] debate, moderator Martha Raddatz noted “there were no protesters” that day in Libya, and asked Biden why the administration’s talk of protests “went on for weeks.”

Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden had the answer:

Because that’s exactly what we were told by the intelligence community.  The intelligence community told us that.  As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment.

Fully five days after the terrorist attack on our Benghazi consulate, on 16 Sep, State’s UN Ambassador Susan Rice (stop me if you’ve heard this part before) said on five different national television shows that a YouTube movie short was responsible.

Yet, as Hayes notes,

Intelligence products published on September 12, sources tell us, included detailed evidence that al Qaeda-linked jihadists were involved in the Benghazi attacks

and

Senior State Department officials were in contact with security agents on the ground in Benghazi, in real time, as the attacks unfolded.

and

On September 12, the New York Times[!] reported: “American and European officials said that while many details about the attack remained unclear, the assailants seemed organized, well trained and heavily armed, and they appeared to have at least some level of advance planning.”

and

Congressman Adam Smith (D, WA) of the House Armed Services Committee, said: “This was not just a mob that got out of hand.  Mobs don’t come in and attack, guns blazing.  I think that there is a growing consensus it was preplanned.

and then on 18 Sep, on the Late Show with David Letterman

[Democratic Presidential Candidate President Barack] Obama: You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, a sort of shadowy character who is extremely offensive video directed at Muhammad and Islam.

David Letterman: Making fun of the Prophet Muhammad.

Obama: Making fun of the Prophet Muhammad.  And, so, this caused great offense.  In much of the Muslim world.  But, what also happened was extremists and terrorists used this as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya.

Wait, what?

And Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama insists through his Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, that the Republicans are politicizing the murder of our Ambassador to Libya.

Hmm….