Category Archives: culture

They’re Both Wong

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A Washington Post columnist wrote Thursday, regarding the Wuhan Virus (my term, not hers) lockdowns and the impact they had on our children,

I am basically totally uninterested in who was right and who was wrong in the summer of 2020. Kids don’t need adults’ self-justifications. They need us to get moving and looking forward.

The thrust of her justification centered on

It’s time to start thinking about how to pay them back[.]

That’s mistaken. Blowing off who made the mistake goes too far.

There was a fair amount of demurral regarding her position. A Deseret News contributor offers what I think is the canonical objection.

I am very interested in who was right and who was wrong because we need to make sure that the people who made bad policy will never make policy affecting children again[.]

She’s wrong also, but from the opposite side. Emphasizing fixing blame goes too far in the opposite direction.

Finding out who made the error matters to the extent that it’s important to track trends of good and bad performance so we can emphasize the successful and lessen the impact of the unsuccessful. Mistakes occur, including serious ones, but if those are not part of a pattern, the corrections still need to be made and the lessons learned, but the individuals, in the main, should be continued.

The most important aspect of a mistake, though, especially the large ones like these lockdowns, is the fact of that mistake. Investigations into the mistake need to focus on how the mistake occurred—its mechanics—so efficient, focused corrective action can be taken and the likelihood of that mistake recurring greatly reduced, if not prevented altogether.

If that investigation into the mechanics of the mistake leads the investigators to a who as the what that led to the mistake, that’s when who did it becomes important. That’s when responsibility (not blame) can be attached and personnel-related corrective action, as efficient, focused corrective action, can be taken. And not before.

Is the Iron Curtain Come to California?

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It seems that the University of California Los Angeles has decided to move from college’s PAC-12 Conference to the Big 10 Conference, effective with the 2024 academic/athletic year.

It seems also that California’s Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is unhappy about the alma mater of Lew Alcindor, later becoming the NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, joining the exodus from the State, if only functionally and not physically.

Nobody said, “Mother may I?” to Newsom, and that angrifies him as much as UCLA’s decision to go out from a West Coast conference to a more economically sound area of our nation.

I read about it (is how I found out). No big deal. I’m the governor of the state of California. But maybe a bigger deal is that I’m the chair of the UC Board of Regents. I read about it. Is it a good idea? Did we have a chance to discuss the merits (of the decision)? I’m not aware anyone did. So it was done in isolation. It was done without regental oversight or support. It was done without any consideration to my knowledge.

Now, it may be that there is/was a contractual obligation for UCLA to advise the Board of Regents of the school’s discussions and intentions. However, Newsom didn’t mention any of that in his plaint—only that His Nibs wasn’t consulted.

Regarding those more economically sound areas of our nation—in the new era of Name, Image, and Likeness requirements that allow college athletes to personally profit form the use of their NIL material—here is, UCLA’s Athletic Director Martin Jarmond:

…the move was mostly about increasing “exposure” in the NIL era. By opening the school up to potentially more nationally televised games and East Coast markets, Jarmond says they can now provide an enhanced opportunity for student-athletes to find “their voice and their brand and what’s important to them.”

But not so fast: His Nibs is looking for ways to block the move.

Trust me when I say this: We are not going to be looking into. We are already looking into it within (and have been) minutes after reading about this in the newspaper.

No veiled threat there….

The Opposite of Courage

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In a Just the News article centered on George Washington University Law Professor, and holder of the university’s Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, Jonathan Turley’s view that four Border Patrol agents have defamation and denial of due process cases (the four agents face administrative punishments even though the Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility investigation found they’d done nothing wrong), JtN quoted National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd as saying,

…the president of the United States said that these individuals would pay, and the moment he said that, those investigators had no choice but to find some sort of fault—whether it was criminal or administrative.

On that I must disagree. There’s no doubt the “investigators” might have felt pressure to find a fault, but they also without doubt were not forced to do so. The most pressure that could have been applied would have been to cancel their jobs.

It would have taken a measure of courage to resist the pressure. Choosing their jobs, assuming such a threat was made or implied, over doing the right thing, however, took no courage.

In choosing between doing a right thing and doing a wrong thing, the opposite of courage is cowardice.

A Thought on Money-Follow-the-Child Programs

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday Letters had one.

Quoting Toni Jennings, retired teacher and former Florida Lieutenant Governor, Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute CEO, wrote

The more competition we had in education, the better off we became. So, I for one believe that competition is good. But you will hear those who say, “Oh no, you’re making the public schools compete with others.” Well, those children are going to have to go out and compete with others in the workaday world.

Absolutely, and those public schools are not only failing those children, they’re defrauding those children’s parents, whose tax money is paying for those schools.

Here’s another thought, this one from me, flowing from this bit in Trabert’s letter:

The 2021 ACT results show that 31% of white students are college-ready in English, reading, math, and science, while only 14% of Hispanic students and 6% of black students met that standard. Achievement gaps are getting worse….

Even if that achievement gap didn’t exist, and those minority children also were at that 31% rate, the rate is unacceptably bad and illustrates the magnitude of the failure of our public schools.

We need vastly more competition in our K-12 system, not less, in order to both eliminate that achievement gap and to bring the college-ready rate up to acceptable levels. That means the Federal government must butt out of the business [sic] or be butted out by the States rejecting Federal funds; it means that State and local education funding must follow the child not the institution; and it means that State and local jurisdictions must stop, or be stopped from, using their regulatory powers to obstruct the opening of charter and voucher schools or of the nascent homeschooling pod alternative.

What Apology?

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First Lady and Edith Bolling President of the United States, Jill Biden, likened Hispanics to (breakfast) tacos. When I was growing up, that was an extremely serious and ugly ethnic slur, and I don’t think it’s gotten any gentler since.

In response to the hue and cry about the slur—and not before, mind you—Biden is being reported by the New York Post as apologizing for her insult.

But Biden isn’t apologizing, actually. Instead, her Press Secretary, Michael LaRosa, tweeted some words in her name:

The First Lady apologizes that her words conveyed anything but pure admiration and love for the Latino community[.]

The First Bigot doesn’t even have the courage, much less the morality, to “apologize” herself, choosing instead to cower behind another.

Regarding “apology” in those euphemism quotes: it’s not even an apology. The surrogate mumbled apologies for the outcome of Biden’s bigotry—words conveyed anything but—but there’s not a syllable of apology for Biden’s bigotry. Not even from the man she was ducking down behind.

This is disgusting.