Woman's March Falling Down

     

     A Women’s March group is canceling its January rally in Humboldt County, Calif., over concerns that its participants would be “overwhelmingly white.”

The decision comes amid division and tension in the broader Women’s March movement.  In a Monday news release, the organizers of the Eureka Women’s March acknowledged that their leadership team is currently majority-white, and said the decision was made to “ensure that the people most impacted by systems of oppression have an opportunity to participate in planning.”  In recent months, the Women’s March has tried to quell controversy surrounding its leadership. Some regional chapters have distanced themselves from the national group and its leaders, who have been called to step down over ties with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and accusations of anti-Semitism. 

     In a November Facebook post, Women’s March founder Teresa Shook called for the resignations of national co-chairs Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour, adding that they have “steered the Movement away from its true course.”  Mallory, in particular, was criticized after she attended the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours' Day event in Chicago this year, at which Farrakhan made statements about “powerful Jews” who he considered his enemies.

     
     The risible rantings of Ashley Judd, Madonna and other female celebrities against Mr. Trump made much more sense once the Harvey Weinstein debacle was exposed. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop Mr. Weinstein so Mr. Trump became their stand-in.  Starting a movement with a subconscious fraud doesn’t bode well for its future and leaves it ripe for the picking of bad actors.

     
     Like clockwork, leftist activists appropriated the effort, twisting it into a battle-ax for social justice. Gone was any semblance of a genuine commitment to advocating for women, as leftists consumed the movement with race-baiting, homophobia, Jew-hatred and misandry. Women who happened to be Jewish, or pro-life, or in some other fashion deemed unacceptable, were rejected or banned.  The Women’s March, like the liberal establishment itself, has completed its transition to a medieval religion; those who are unacceptable due to race, religion or wrong-thought, are heretics.  In other words, the organizing tactics used by the left in every community and country they’ve destroyed from within. Some might think that’s an unintended consequence of stupid, divisive ideas. Or it could be exactly the point.

     

     The so-called "Women's Movement" is grossly misnamed. It should be called "The Women of Color and Varied Gender Labeling Movement" as they reject white women, conservative women, Christian women, women who own businesses, Jewish women, ProLife women and in general any woman who doesn't fall in lockstep with their slate of political goals. To label this as a movement representing all women is rather like saying California represents the views of all border states.  This has always been my problem with traditional feminism. Its lack of intersectionality is exclusionary. When feminists proclaim “women’s rights are human rights” it feels more like they mean “white women’s rights are human rights.”  Indeed, either most of the issues raised in Women’s March “Unity Principles” have already been codified into law; the issues themselves don’t actually exist; or they demand something which is illegal for a pretty good reason. It’s also a shame that the Democrats who founded the movement so often engage in hypocrisy that it renders their call for equality hollow.  Therein lie the fundamental flaws of the Women’s March, and the problem with Democrats in general.It’s all about emotional outrage and projection.   America is not perfect, but if you read the Principles and watched the Marches, you’d think American women are practically slaves.

 

      In fact, it sends a really awful message to women and teenage girls.  The March tells women they are second-class citizens when they are not, something eerily reminiscent of what race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson engage in.  Where are signs showing history’s greatest women?  Where are the speakers talking about all the great things women have accomplished?  Why so relentlessly focused not only on the negative, but on things that aren’t even real?  As a result, there were great opportunities missed, including something that should define the Women’s March: the treatment of women outside the United States, particularly in Arab countries.  Imagine what real changes would look like in many Arab countries where women weren’t forced to wear hijabs; were allowed to use makeup; were allowed to drive, travel, marry, or work without consent of a “guardian”; go for a swim; compete freely in sports; didn’t have to mutilate their genitals; couldn’t be legally beaten or raped by their husbands; weren’t lawfully permitted to be forced into marriage as a pre-pubescent; weren’t legally permitted to be murdered under the pretense of “honor killing”; weren’t stoned for adultery; or weren’t subjected to countless other truly inhumane and legal discrimination.  

     Another missed opportunity: how about presenting a comprehensive plan on how to reduce sexual harassment, both in the workplace and everyday life?  Women also face an unintentional blowback by men who may now fear hiring or interacting with women in the workplace.  How can this issue be addressed in a manner where everyone can live and work together and push America forward?
Alas, it is exactly because Democrats are unhappy people that great opportunities like this will be repeatedly squandered. Instead of women looking around and feeling empowered by what they have accomplished, and how many men actually support them, they will be repeatedly browbeaten with how they mean nothing. 

 

 

     Americans naturally come together on the issues to help make a difference. For women, the issues that impact and make us all sisters transcend race, ethnicity, age, social status and sexual identity. It is about economic freedom, personal freedom, education, health care, child care, ending sexual violence, etc. There are a multitude of issues that all women face and on which action must be taken.
Instead, the Women’s March, serving as a hallmark of today’s liberal establishment, works to divide women against each other, and even against the men in their lives.


     In the end, this is a huge lesson about the nature of the left and the deliberately destructive nature of identity politics. The left thrives on chaos, and that’s what they’ve got.

Spurned advances spark Texas shooting

     If only Shana Fisher had said yes. This is the implication of countless headlines following Dimitrios Pagourtzis’ decision to slaughter her along with nine of her teachers and classmates.  According to a Facebook post by Fisher’s mother, Fisher “had four months of problems from this boy” where “he kept making advances on her and she repeatedly told him no. He continued to get more aggressive”. So a girl endures several months of harassment, until her harasser kills her. How are we supposed to see this?

     The headlines say it all: “Spurned advances spark Texas shooting.” “Texas school shooter ‘killed girl who turned down his advances’.” “Spurned advances provoked incident at Santa Fe high school.”  The message, in case you’ve missed it, is that Fisher’s rejection – her “spurning” – of Pagourtzis is what caused his murderous rampage.  There’s something truly depressing about finding the world view of a killer reflected in the reporting of his crimes. Then again, belief that women and girls exist to tend to the sexual and emotional needs of men and boys is everywhere.

It’s there in every romantic comedy and pop song that recasts male stalking and harassment as the plucky determination of the underdog. It’s there in every parenting manual which tells mothers that boys require more attention than girls. It’s there every time we lecture girls on how much harder boys find it to express their feelings without using their fists.  It’s there in our very concepts of manhood, masculinity and male pride. Men and boys, we are told, have something precious to lose whenever a woman says no. There’s no comparable concept of female pride. Girls who feel ugly, who are mocked for their appearance, who don’t get the boy they desire – the vast majority of us, that is – are simply expected to suck it up.   There has to be a fundamental change in how our sons conceptualise their place in the world.   The implication is that if only the parents of the eventual shooter had taught that all important life lesson that you will be rejected by a girl one day and that's the way the cookie crumbles.  There isn't a guy alive that hasn't been rejected by a girl, or a guy who was once alive. 

     A week before the shooting, Fisher embarrassed him in front of others in a class by standing up and telling Pagourtzis that she wouldn't go out with him.  This seems to be the final straw that caused him to snap.  Even if Pagourtzis decided to carry out this tragic act of violence because Shana Fisher turned him down and embarrassed him, the shooting didn't happen because of Shana Fisher. The shooting happened because of the shooter. Sure she may have had a 'right' to embarrass him in class. Still, had she not, she would still be alive.  And this is a very key point, that gets over looked and swept away.  What does it say about our society that kids think the response to frustration over being rebuffed by a female student or embarrassed in front of others is sufficient cause to shoot a bunch of kids to death?  I think one of the main problems here is the kids who are not taught how to deal with rejection or failure; therefore, when it happens, the only possible reaction, in their minds, is revenge... "getting even" with whoever rejected you or caused you to fail... In extreme cases, this could even extend to "eliminating" anyone who witnessed an event that resulted in the kid feeling shamed, humiliated or rejected.  Everyone will jump on to ''she had the right to do anything'' and ''he should just suck it up''; but how toxic is that line of thought?  It's normal and desirable, I think, for parents to want their kids to grow up happy and successful, but the kids ALSO need to learn and understand that not everything in life will be "fair"; that they won't always succeed at everything they try...and that they will not necessarily be loved, or even liked, by every other person in the world.




     If it is true that for months the alleged shooter was harassing a fellow student, and that his harassment was escalating in severity, we need to ask WHY the school did not take action under Title IX's requirement to maintain schools free of gender discrimination and keeping schools safe from gender violence.  I can only hope that schools look closely at this case and start understanding why sexual harassment can create climates that are unsafe for our children -- and why they need to take these incidents seriously. We need to do more to devote resources and training on sexual harassment and assault at Pk-12. It is part of addressing this multifaceted tragedy of violence in our schools.  The sad truth is that schools, the community and people just don't want to do anything that will take time, effort and most of all money.


    Some 4,400 adolescents commit suicide each year from being bullied. The underlying issue for then is mental health and guidance about norms during the adolescent maturation process. While some of these massacres are clearly by psychopaths (e.g. Las Vegas), most of them are by men left to their own devices to understand the landscape of the norms of interpersonal boundaries. A great deal of the adolescent period of life is about learning boundaries, understanding them with respect to awakening human sexuality, androgens and estrogen, and limits on interpersonal dominance (that bullying), how to deal with rejection, pride, menace, esteem and self-respect, when to stand your ground and when to ask for help, dealing with failure and success: basic socialization and mental health. We are social animals and children are not born with some innate understanding of this as they encounter it, or better said this monster reacted to it in a way a child would by acting out but with lethal weapons. Behold the apparent narcissism of a neglected generation. It is as much a part of the adolescent learning process as anything else taught in school, we just address our lame management of it later with revenge fantasy movies like Mean Girls and Revenge of the Nerds, something that actually encourages this.

    The idea of parochial schools is an attempt to address these two learning experiences, academics and normative values, or religion or scouting, many families simply do not supply them (or even have them). I would say that we need a non-secular course like this in public schools but this both crosses the line into parental rights (to inculcate their own values into their children, separation of church and state), and I am also quite confident the teaching of them would be poached by politicos to also teach their own subjective values with the official stamp of academic objectivity.

    We have to supply this education to children somehow though or this carnage will continue. Surely we can all agree on some basic set of norms about mental health and interpersonal boundaries, perhaps a selection of courses selected the parents, even provided by non-school organizations such as churches or more non-religious philosophical groups of their preference, the only requirement being that one of them be selected and completed. Hey people: we are primates, a sexual species with dominance hierarchies and like it or not no amount of political ideals will change that, get it? As we grow it takes guidance as children become adults or it is Lord of the Flies. Adolescents need this education to become socialized and self-actualizing as surely as they need to learn to read and write.

The Soda Tax

    

     When Seattle's soda tax passed in July of last year, its proponents promised that it would accomplish all good things.  Tacking on just 1.75 cents per ounce to sweetened beverages, said then mayor Ed Murray would not only encourage healthier consumption habits, but also generate enough revenue to subsidize trips to the farmers market, to pay for free community college, and even to roll back "white-privileged, institutional racism."  On January 1, the tax went into full-effect, and while all those vaunted progressive goals no doubt are just over the horizon, Seattle shoppers are starting to see a more immediate effect of the tax: massive price increases.  The cost of a typical can of coke is now 20 cents higher. That adds up fast: A typical 36-can case of soft drink is now $7.56 more expensive, nearly doubling the price at many retail outlets. Stores are only too willing to let customers know who is responsible for the cost increases.  Local Seattle press and social media have been filled with images of Costco price tags that now bear a "City of Seattle Sweetened Beverage Recovery Fee" to make up for the new tax, along with an inscription that reads "this item is also available at our Tukwila and Shoreline locations without the City of Seattle Beverage Tax.

   So far Seattle is sticking by its soda tax, which it is counting on to bring in $15 million in its first year. That revenue is intended to pay for a grab bag of progressive goodies, including more educational services, $2 million for subsidies to farmers market shoppers, $1.4 million in community college tuition assistance, and $500,000 to retrain beverage industry workers who lose their jobs.  But a soda tax is a micro solution to a macro problem. The purveyance of teaspoon remedies is a hallmark of Clinton/Obama public policy (with some notable exceptions), and soda taxes are essentially neoliberalism at the municipal level: small-scale solutions to large problems relying on undependable market mechanisms. Is whatever revenue they provide really going to solve the enormous disinvestment in black and brown communities?

     But the real knock on the soda tax is that the conversation it generates—the policy oxygen it consumes—far exceeds its relevance to the oppression of people of color in local communities.  Soda taxation is a very meager substitute for a serious discussion of urban policy, or of economic policy responses to institutional racism. If our concern is revenue for local governments, we need to talk about federal and state aid, financed by broad-based taxes. If our concern is public health, imagine how low-income communities would benefit from an expanded network of community health clinics, as has been proposed by Bernie Sanders and James Clyburn. Or consider the changes in behavior—including consumption of sugar drinks—that follow from reductions in inequality and increases in living standards. When people have more money to spend, healthier food becomes more accessible.

  All income brackets and races/ethnicities in the U.S. self-report consuming approximately the same amounts and types of calories, with middle-income people frequenting fast food establishments the most. Even if, on average, lower income people consume more soda, I question this narrow framing of sugar intake. Surely artisanal, small-batch cider or ice cream (or craft soda!) also contain excess sugar, but no public campaign surveils and shames foodies for their bespoke drinks and desserts.
The idea that somebody’s diet should be policed simply because she has less money in her wallet, or more weight on her body, is highly problematic. Soda tax campaigns almost always conflate weight and health, invoking the so-called obesity epidemic as if heavy necessarily means unhealthy. They also tend to conflate race and class, claiming to be especially concerned for (read: rescuing) people of color, as if being Black or Brown necessarily means “needing help from above.”

     Stigmatizing and taxing people for drinking soda both distracts from the (far worse) industrial production of toxic exposures and alienates potential allies in the paramount battle against the real threat: corporate power. (After all, if everyone simply switches from Coke to Dasani, Coca-Cola Co. still wins, and people and the planet still lose.) We cannot spare our precious time and resources on soda taxes—of all things!—when living wages, affordable healthcare, and safe and clean workplaces, homes and neighborhoods are far more urgent concerns. Public health advocates should refocus their energies on stronger corporate regulations, relieving the downward pressure on wages, prohibiting offshore tax havens and preventing chemical intoxication of our environments, among other issues.
Promoting public health means supporting all people’s right to prepare pleasurable meals on their own terms, which requires reining in the corporations that are corrupting our government, poisoning our planet and quite seriously threatening our lives.

Bad Hollywood

       

     It's only been a few weeks since the sexual assault allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein exploded into public view. Since then there have been new allegations made against other powerful men in various industries seemingly almost every day.


     So it has been asked:  Why do the axes seem to fall swiftest on the heads of the liberals who are only accused, and not even convicted.  On the other hand conservatives seem more resilient and able to withstand allegations...no matter how severe with little to no backlash/repercussion/loss of status. Why is this?

     
      I think I have a possible answer: those accused are guilty.  Some might be feeling some remorse and are silly coming clean after being caught, but there is much more to the story then just that bit.  Remember that in most cases the actions happened years or decades ago, that is seems like a lot of people know, and that there is a ton of evidence.  And not just evidence to try someone in the court of the public, but also a court of law.  And in most cases the higher ups in a company knew all about the actions, and have for years, and have through actions or inactions covered it up.   So when a guy is finally outed as a bad guy, the company that knew all about it all along, is quick to get rid of the guy.  So it's not punishing the innocent that have not been proven guilty in a court of law; it is companies distancing themselves from someone they know is guilty.    Not only does the company not want bad press, but on a more darker note, they might have more dark secrets they don't want a light shinned on because of this one guys actions.

      People in power, or the public spotlight always have and always will face attacks from others that want to tear them down, hurt them or simply want power or money.  A lot of such accusations are false: people just make them up.  And if something is false the target, as well as their company, will fight to prove that the accusation is false.  And sometimes, yes, the accusations are true and the person and their company will fight to the last breath to keep the truth from coming out.

     But there is another twist.  The person is guilty, beyond guilty with tons of witnesses and other evidence, and the company they work for knows all about it.  It is covered up, of course, as such things are done.  Some of it is just part of the social networks of power, but there is another obvious reason to do it: money.  If someone is working for a company and is making that company tons and tons of money, they can both look the other way and cover it up.

     And a lot of people cover such things up for many other reasons.  It's worth remembering here that the model Cara Delevigne, who described alleged harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein in an Instagram post, said she had kept silent about her experience with him because "she didn't want to hurt his family."

      Charlie Rose and Louis C.K. admitting to doing what they were accused of doing.  And their companies wasted no time in getting rid of them.

  Semantics can't govern our lives, only the law. Otherwise, every cause can just devolve into a witch hunt and gender relations neither benefit nor improve. The only ones who benefit are the  media who play us like emotional puppets.

Your Right to Keep and Bear Arms

      

    
                                       Armed Men are Citizens , unarmed Men are subjects. 

           

     What many citizens and legislators do not understand is that the federal government has no right to prevent any law-abiding citizen from owning or possessing any firearm. The entire argument for gun control is built upon a false premise. The Second Amendment is not about self-defense from criminals.

     As unpleasant as it may be for this modern society to say out loud, historically and constitutionally speaking, the right of the people to keep and bear arms has always been a right to protect yourself from those in power who want to enslave you. If America wants to engage in a real factual debate on the right to keep and bear arms, then it must be approached from the proper perspective.
The Constitution and its history is unequivocally clear on this. Here is a little Second Amendment history lesson so we can defend our Rights from becoming government bestowed privileges.

  Why are our politicians and media talking heads bent on disseminating miseducation and lies? Perhaps they repeat the lies because they intend on disarming the people, because they know, as our founders did, that an armed citizenry is the last line of defense against absolute tyranny.
 
     A proper debate on one’s right to keep and bear arms is not one that is framed in the terms of whether you can feel safe from wicked and depraved people, full of hate and malice, who want to hurt you. You will never feel safe from those people and those people will not cease to exist just because you are not allowed to legally own a gun. Why? Because those people do not care about laws and they will always find a way to hurt and destroy, with or without gun laws.

      "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government" -- Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334


     The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”  For most of the republic’s lifespan, from 1791 to 2008, those commas and clauses were debated by attorneys, senators, judges, governors and lobbyists. For the most part, the supreme court stayed out it.

      In 2008, the supreme court decided the District of Columbia v Heller, 5-4 , overturning a handgun ban in the city. The conservative justice Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in narrow but unprecedented terms: for the first time in the country’s history, the supreme court explicitly affirmed an individual’s right to keep a weapon at home for self-defense.  The court would rule on the issue again two years later as part of McDonald v. City of Chicago, which challenged the city's ban on private handgun ownership. In a similar 5-to-4 ruling, the court affirmed its decision in the Heller case, saying the Second Amendment "applies equally to the federal government and the states."  In 2016, the Supreme Court again ruled on a right-to-bear-arms case, Caetano v. Massachusetts. The case involved a woman who was in possession of a stun gun for self-defense against an abusive ex-boyfriend. Because stun guns were illegal under Massachusetts law, the woman was arrested and convicted for possessing the weapon. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that stun guns and, indeed "all instruments that constitute bearable arms," are protected under the Second Amendment.

      Every person on the planet has the right to defend themselves from those who would oppress them, exploit them, harm them, or kill them.
     Far fewer women would be raped, far fewer children would be killed, far fewer towns would be destroyed, and far fewer dictators would survive if people everywhere on the planet had this God-given right to bear arms recognized. Mass killings and rapes like those that took place in Darfur might have been prevented if the people had the right and the means to defend themselves. When citizens have the power to defend themselves against a violent and tyrannical regime, governments think twice about trampling the lives and liberty of the people.
     The United Nations has an extensive Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to join a labor union and the right to social services and security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood or old age.  Nowhere does it provide for the right to keep and bear arms that in many places around the world is so critical to self-defense.


     It is critical not just for those living under oppressive regimes, but for the many people who live in conditions in which the government cannot secure their safety. From dangerous neighborhoods even here in the United States to lawless regions of the world run by gangs and warlords, firearms are often the only means of personal security.  When criminals have weapons, taking away the right to bear arms is nothing less than eliminating the right to self-defense. Only the elites, who’ve never had to live in a dangerous place or fear for their own lives, could be so confident that denying ordinary citizens the right to bear arms would make everyone safer.

     If society is honest and historically accurate, the only question that has any relevance to the gun control debate is:
     “Do you trust those in government, now and forever in the future, to not take your life, liberty, or property through the force of government?”
     If the answer to that question is “no,” the gun control debate is over.

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.