Trump vs. the Judiciary

The current battle between President Donald Trump and the courts is far from unprecedented; in fact, it’s just what this country needs.
Over the past week, Trump has taken a great deal of flak from all sides for reprimanding (in his own, coarse way) federal judges who have blocked his immigration order, despite the fact that presidents have taken similar actions in the past, with no constitutional injunctions whatsoever.
- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/02/why-we-should-welcome-trumps-continued-scuffle-with-the-judiciary#sthash.HfyxnbJu.dpuf

The current battle between President Donald Trump and the courts is far from unprecedented; in fact, it’s just what this country needs.
Over the past week, Trump has taken a great deal of flak from all sides for reprimanding (in his own, coarse way) federal judges who have blocked his immigration order, despite the fact that presidents have taken similar actions in the past, with no constitutional injunctions whatsoever.
- See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/02/why-we-should-welcome-trumps-continued-scuffle-with-the-judiciary#sthash.HfyxnbJu.dpuf

The current battle between President Donald Trump and the courts is far from unprecedented; in fact, it’s just what this country needs.  Over the past week, Trump has taken a great deal of flak from all sides for reprimanding (in his own, coarse way) federal judges who have blocked his immigration order, despite the fact that presidents have taken similar actions in the past, with no constitutional injunctions whatsoever.  Here’s a secret: Trump’s far from the first president to go toe-to-toe with the federal courts. In fact, President Obama’s rebuke of the Supreme Court in the 2010 State of the Union address regarding the Citizens United case was significantly more bold and telling.



This is incontrovertible proof that these judges, and far too many other judges, simply do not believe that the American people have the right to govern themselves. Of course, these power-hungry judges have long been aided and abetted by Democratic politicians who grew weary after years of losing policy fights in the political arena.  So they took their fights to the judicial branch and invented the notion that the Constitution is a “living document,” meaning it doesn’t actually mean what it says. Rather, it means whatever you can get some flunky judge from Haight-Ashbury to say what it means. This is how the courts discovered a constitutional right to abortion in a constitution that says never mentions a single medical procedure.  Liberalism has been dead for 30 years, since the far left loonies destroyed the values of free speech and unrestricted inquiry when they took over the universities and then destroyed the Democratic Party with their warped devotion to abortion and illegal immigration, just to name two.

Here’s a secret: Trump’s far from the first president to go toe-to-toe with the federal courts. In fact, President Obama’s rebuke of the Supreme Court in the 2010 State of the Union address regarding the Citizens United case was significantly more bold and telling. - See more at: https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/02/why-we-should-welcome-trumps-continued-scuffle-with-the-judiciary#sthash.HfyxnbJu.dpuf

For the fascist left, open borders and unchecked immigration are the most essential part of their Cultural Revolution:
Open Borders provides the following ingredients for the Left
1. Large numbers of non-white ethnicities that can be indoctrinated by the Left into voting blocks by promoting Naziesque pseudo-science like White Privilege to teach white-hate and by designating these new immigrants victim class status deserving preferential treatment.
2. An abundant supply of cheap heroin that together, with hopeless economic conditions and the Left’s continued cultural vilification of whites as deplorable purpetuates the epidemic suicide and overdose rates of working class white America
3. Low wages, while this hurts all working class American citizens white, black and brown alike it is used by the Left to increase racial and ethnic resentment as all groups struggle for survival. As the Globalists luxuriate in their Soho Lofts and Beverly Hills Mansions they are far removed from the realities of anger, pain and fear seething around them. They are also removed from the danger.
These policies are also necessary for the continued ascendancy of the globalists who take advantage of cheap labor and trade agreements to strip mine middle America and bejewel their kingdoms on the coast. The SJW gestapo threaten any dissident with Racist, sexist, xenophobe. And universities indoctrinate White-hate, hate of Western Culture to a new generation of young people. Stronger together meant everyone together against the common white enemy, the deplorables.



As for Trump’s disparagement of the judges, only someone ignorant of history can view that as frightening.
Thomas Jefferson not only refused to enforce the Alien & Sedition Acts of President John Adams, his party impeached Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase who had presided over one of the trials.
Jackson defied Chief Justice John Marshall’s prohibition against moving the Cherokees out of Georgia to west of the Mississippi, where, according to the Harvard resume of Sen. Warren, one of them bundled fruitfully with one of her ancestors, making her part Cherokee. When Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that President Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus violated the Constitution, Lincoln considered sending U.S. troops to arrest the chief justice.  FDR proposed adding six justices to emasculate a Supreme Court of the “nine old men” he reviled for having declared some New Deal schemes unconstitutional.  President Eisenhower called his Supreme Court choices Earl Warren and William Brennan two of the “worst mistakes” he made as president. History bears Ike out. And here we come to the heart of the matter.

   Here is what Thomas Jefferson wrote on this topic:

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy."
-- Thomas Jefferson letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820.
"...the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
-- Thomas Jefferson





 Time to break the unaccountable supremacy of the judiciary. The Founders might have meant to create three, co-equal, balanced branches of government; but the courts have appointed so much power to themselves, and face so few checks on their power, that it has effectively become a tyranny where one branch feels free to overrule the other two.  There is, I believe, a solution. The left enamored with FDR and his legacy. That is good. FDR in a 1938 Supreme Court case faced intransigence that threatened his agenda. His approach was that he would appoint additional justices to help the existing nine make their decisions. The case was referred to as the "Switch in Time that Saved The Nine". The court reconsidered in the light of having an expanded group of justices to help them. I suggest that our president carry through on the FDR plan. We need five or six additional Supreme Court justices to help get things done.


 

Abolishing the Department of Education?

       The Department of Education (DOE) is one of the most destructive federal agencies because it attempts to control the flow of ideas and information by controlling public schools, including higher education. If a school does not comply, then it gets no federal money. Educators who rebel outright, such as home-schooling parents, are reined in by an ever-tightening net of regulations.  The Department of Education has, since its inception in 1979, served as the source of national education policies governing our nation’s schools.  I think abolishing  this office would make for a better nation, given that for the most part it has done teachers and students far more harm than good.






    In an 1816 letter to his friend Joseph Cabell, Thomas Jefferson declared that schools were best run by parents in local communities who were close to the situation:

    “[I]f it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.”



     Over time, the Department of Education has become increasingly bureaucratic and invasive, and has formulated its policies on questionable information that appears to emanate from hunches, anecdotes, whims, and fads, buttressed by corroborating evidence from ideologically friendly think tanks and media blowhards. Along the way, in what seems to be an increasing national trend of anti-intellectualism and cognophobic reactions to the specter of educated and knowledgeable people having opinions, it has eschewed the opportunity to consult with people who teach in or study schools.  The DOE has instead relied on think tanks, film-makers whose “documentary” productions tell whatever story is convenient to the producer’s vision, commissioned studies designed to find what its authors and sponsors are looking for, billionaires whose money entitles them to policy roles, and other dubious sources. Less known to the public, and in my view the most malignant of these influences, textbook companies have used political connections and contributions to position themselves to dictate curricula and assessment that they conveniently provide, for a substantial fee, at every stage of a child’s educational journey.

    In the 1979-1980 school year, according to the department itself, public primary and secondary schools spent an average of $6,876 per pupil (in constant 2013-2014 dollars) on their "current expenses." By the 2011-2012, they were spending an average of $11,732 per pupil (in constant 2013-2014 dollars).   Real per pupil spending increased by $4,856, or almost 71 percent.  Did public-school students get a better education as a result? No.

     In 1980, according to the National Center for Education Statistics' "Trends in Academic Progress 2012" report, 17-year-old public school students scored an average of 284 out of a possible 500 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test. That rose to a peak of 289 in 1988 and 1990, then dropped back to 285 by 2012.




   I think that the students who entered school in 2000 and are graduating in 2012 will be the worst-educated cohort in the history of the United States, through no fault of their own, because they will have experienced all of their schooling under these ruinous programs that have reduced all learning to what can be measured on multiple choice tests. Imagine these young people now entering situations where they don’t get three or four reductive choices for each problem they encounter.  Their education has studiously avoided complexity, thoughtfulness, reflection, engagement, stimulation, personal commitment, and everything else that makes an education worth having. The source of the poverty of their education will not be their teachers, who must teach this regime or face punishment; and it will not be themselves, because I am pretty confident that kids actually want to learn things and grow into competent and appreciated people, even if what happens in school often does not provide that opportunity, and especially does not do so when everything is dictated by test preparation and test taking. Rather, the problem emerges from the policies created by those who mistaken test scores for learning and have turned tests into a vengeful machine for punishing teachers whose instruction lacks a commitment to multiple-choice tests as the epitome of a learning experience.

     Instead of having a highly centralized administration powered by money contributed by textbook publishers and other entrepreneurs cashing in on the lucrative enterprise of educational materials production, I would have a highly distributed approach in which most decision-making is local and includes — and indeed, relies on — the perspective of teachers.  81 percent — 81 percent — of the department's spending goes back to the states. So, let me just get this right, only the federal government would do this: I take my local money and send it to Washington and then they send it back.






     The Department of Education deserves to be on the chopping block. Our children’s education is too important to be left up to a federal centralized bureaucracy. Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education as a political payoff to the teachers’ unions for their 1976 endorsement. We should judge all governmental agencies by their results rather than their intentions. Like virtually every federal department, the Department of Education has only made things worse. Student educational outcomes have worsened since the creation of the Department of Education. The Department of Education is blatantly unconstitutional, like so much that the federal government does. The truth is that the federal government only has about thirty enumerated powers delegated to it in the Constitution. Education is not specifically listed in the document, which means that the authority over education should be left up to the states and the people. We cannot afford to waste anymore taxpayer dollars on failed national schemes.

     Federal agencies always cost more than initially predicted. The Department of Education’s 2011 budget is nearly six times greater than its original budget. It has increased from $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) in 1980 to $77.8 billion in 2011. The federal government throwing more money at education has done virtually nothing to improve educational outcomes. Student test scores in math, reading and science have remained flat or declined over the past four decades. The chart below from the Cato Institute shows how increased federal spending has not had a positive effect on educational achievement:

     Washington has a role to play in education. The federal government alone is positioned to prevent “local control” from becoming a pretext for discrimination. It also must maintain funding to schools and colleges. But a separate executive branch department isn’t necessary to those functions. The essential tasks can be shifted to Health and Human Services and the Justice Department.
The federal government meddling in education has been a failure to say the least. A group of federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. cannot possibly design a curriculum that meets the unique needs of millions of school children across the nation. We need to restore control over education to the local level where teachers and parents are put back in charge. Make no mistake; eliminating the Department of Education is a pro-education position.

Liberals and science

     Any half-baked theory having the word “science” attached to it can gather an enthusiastic, if somewhat-gullible left-wing following.  The left twists any and every discreet issue and politicizing them into usual culture war agenda items.  If science is properly understood, it would not be political at all, neither right nor left. The law of gravity or the point of combustion care not a whit about right, left, conservative, liberal , Republican or Democrat. 

     For example, biology, a genuine science, recognizes two sexes – two human genders – male and female. If there is such a thing as “settled science,” there it is. The biological sexes are determined by scientific reality -- DNA. Biological females have XX chromosomes; biological males have XY chromosomes. More easily-recognized gender differences include that biological women have concave genitalia and produce eggs; biological men are convex and produce sperm to fertilize female ova. Preservation of our species depends upon simple biology and physiology.  According to the “scientific” left, though, biology is outdated. Gender is now a social construct, an idea. Anyone can be a man, a woman or a trans-either. Pick one of those, one of  54 other ''gender options''' recognized by Facebook or imagine your own. But they don’t change biology.

     Amusingly, many liberals who tell us that denying biological science is a moral imperative, simultaneously insist that questioning global warming as “settled science” should be a criminal offense , even though, a few decades ago, many of them worried about a new Ice Age.

In and around Earth Day 1970 some so called "scientists" said the things below. Notice they all lean politically left. But we should really really listen to them this time, cause they swearsy's...

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” — Harvard biologist George Wald

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.” — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.” — New York Times editorial



“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.” — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

“Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.” — Paul Ehrlich



“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.” — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

“In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half.” — Life magazine
“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” — Paul Ehrlich

 



“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’” — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

“[One] theory assumes that the earth’s cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun’s heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born.” — Newsweek magazine

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” — Kenneth Watt



Is America a better place or a worse place since the Government began listening to these people and later inserting them into the bureaucracy?  Liberals insist that left-wing social and political orthodoxies are moral imperatives, but, ironically, their entrenched beliefs never seem important enough to invest any time or effort into understanding points of disagreement or persuading the other side. The left’s natural tendency is to insult everyone who doesn’t agree and, then, implicitly, congratulate themselves for their own imagined superiority.
But practical people aren’t self-absorbed or arrogant enough to assume they can alter biological science or “fix” climate. They’d rather dispense with the left’s moral preening and deal with facts, including the inconvenient facts progressives ignore.