Tag Archives: politics

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.

Scofflaw Blue States

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And guess who gets to pick up the tab. You get three, and the first two don’t count. Here are the scofflaws:

At least four Democratic-led states with budget surpluses this year have chosen not to fully repay the federal government for money borrowed to fund unemployment benefits, a move that will impose increased charges on businesses to help make up the difference.
California, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York have directed surplus funds to social programs and taxpayer rebates, among other causes, leaving unpaid debts to the federal government ranging from tens of millions of dollars to more than $15 billion.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party at the State level treating loans as grants. Of course, that’s entirely consistent with Party’s attitude toward student loans, so we shouldn’t be surprised.

Ken Pokalsky, Business Council of New York State Vice President:

We’re going to be at elevated levels of taxes for a decade[.]

Yep.

Still Not Ready

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The Progressive-Democratic Party’s Biden administration has had how many months since the leak of the Supreme Court’s then-putative Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling that was going to overturn Roe v Wade (and which subsequently was published and did overturn Roe) in which to prepare a response?

This administration has had how many more months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear Dobbs in the first place in which to prepare a response?

This administration has known for how many years that the Supreme Court had had three textualist Justices appointed, Justices that would adhere to the text of our Constitution rather than rule in the activist manner, and so had a 5-3 majority (with Chief Justice John Roberts voting the way he thought legacy demanded) of textualists? Years in which this administration could have been preparing the outlines of responses to the Supreme Court’s various rulings?

And President Joe Biden (D) is only now coming up with an intrinsically fragile Executive Order with which to address the matter of abortion?

Regardless of what any of us might think about abortion or the Dobbs ruling or the overturning of Roe, this…tardiness…of response should give us all pause. This is an administration, and this is a Progressive-Democratic Party (that has had control of both houses of Congress for how long, now?), that seem incapable of planning ahead, of preparing responses (much less backup responses) to events that are coming down the pike and that are eminently visible in the distance on that pike.

A government that operates only via its rearview mirror is a government dangerous to the national weal and to the national security.

Where in the World….

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…is Joe Biden?

Adding to the long list of European heads of state that have visited Ukraine and met face-to-face with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv and to the long list of American Congressmen who have done the same, Senators Lindsey Graham (R, SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) have met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, just last Thursday.

Which raises anew the questions: where in the world is President Joe Biden (D)? Of what is he so terrified that he won’t go to Ukraine and meet with Zelenskyy face-to-face?

It’s not that Biden is unable to hack the trip itself; he’s been to Brussels in the last few months, after all.