April, 2018, Part 3,Political Class Insanity: The Failure Of Government In Education and the Failure Of The New York Times To Be Unbiased

It is another month which means it is again time to review the latest political class insanity from Washington and around the world. Political class insanity takes many forms including the wasting of taxpayer wealth, criminal fraud within government programs, inane and stupid political quotes and actions, the inability to create and implement effective and efficient government programs, stupid and ill performing economic policies and strategies, and other forms of insanity that continue to evolve and surprise and shock us.

Let's get started:

1) We have often talked about one of the biggest recent failings of the Federal government and Washington political class, the failure that is known as Common Core. Common Core was an attempt by Washington to impose a standardized educational system across the entire country with the objective of improving the education of our kids in this country. It is no secret that we severely under educate our kids despite spending untold amounts of money to attain such a failure.

Places that have implemented many of the components of the Common Core curriculum have seen education results get worse, not better. Massachusetts, which once had the best track record in educating kids relative to the other 49 states, has fallen to seventh best after implementing Common Core tenets. The state of Maryland saw its educational attainment levels DROP after implementing Common Core principles: 

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/10/will-center-hold-october-2014-part-2.html

So it is refreshing when a Washington bureaucrat actually agrees, finally, that Common Core has failed miserably:

• The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal website recently ran an article that was an interview with Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education,.
• DeVos recently spoke exclusively to The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey after her Department of Education released what’s known as the “nation’s report card” which again showed the failure of the Federal Government to improve education in this country.
• DeVos talked about how the the National Assessment of Educational Progress report showed that that there had been only minimal gains in education effectiveness.
• She said that if anything, our education processes are worse than than they were 35 years ago when Reagan first focused on our educational deficiencies.
• Despite Common Core and spending probably trillions of dollars on education, the latest results show that only 37% of our fourth graders and only 36% of eighth graders are proficient in reading.
• Only 40% of fourth graders and 34% of eighth graders are proficient in math.
• According to DeVos: “We have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars to try to focus on the lowest-performing schools, and the lowest-income students. And yet the results for those students continue to, in most cases, decline.”

Pretty depressing stuff. Trillions of Federal dollars spent with nothing in return. But DeVos did show a positive sign, pointing to the state of Florida and what could happen when Washington bureaucrats and politicians get out of the education business and let the more local forms of government decide how to educate their local kids:

• Twenty years ago, the state of Florida was one of the worst, if not the worst state, in educating its kids.
• It then set about putting in place local educational reforms that it felt served its kids better.
• Today, Florida kids have the fourth best state ratings when it comes to fourth grade math and reading and fifth best state ratings when it comes to eighth grade reading and eighth best state ratings when it comes to eighth grade math. 

It can be done, it just cannot be done by the overarching and overreaching Federal Government. Or as DeVos says: “The last thing we want to see is another mandate from the federal level.” 

Well said, and probably true in many other areas, not just education.

2) It is not just the American political class that is broken, our freedom of the press is threatened by a news and journalism industry in this country that for the most part has lost any sense of impartiality. News outlets now have well deserved reputations for favoring one side of the political spectrum vs. others. Fox News favors the right side, just about every other national news outlet favors the left side, e.g. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

A quick bias example was pointed out in a recent blog post we did. The New York Times pretended that they had done a comprehensive analysis which showed that Barack Obama had lied less than twenty times during his eight years as President while Donald Trump had lied over 800 times in his first year in office. 

We easily showed this was total garbage, easily doing a quick Internet search which came up with a single YouTube video that showed Obama himself lying three dozen times on a single Obama Care issue. We then found a second video that showed Obama himself lying another three dozen times about another facet of Obama Care. Thus, within two minutes our “research” showed that Obama had lied at least six dozen times on only two different topics while the “extensive” New York Times research turned up only a handful of lies:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2017/12/december-2017-part-5-political-class.html

Now, according to sa recent NewsMax article, we have another blatant bias of the New York Times:

• On a regular basis, the New York Times publishes a top selling book list, something it has been dong for a very long time.
• Author Jerome Corsi current has a new book out that is a runaway bestseller, “Killing The Deep State: The Fight To Save President Trump."
• The book debuted as number 10 in the market in the non-fiction hardcover category as reported by Nielsen BookScan, a premier national book sales tracking process.
• Despite this hot selling book’s national numbers, the New York Times has decided to not even list the book in its book tracking process despite selling more copies than other books that the Times did list.
• For example, according to Nielsen, Corsi’s book should have held the number four spot on the Times bestselling list.
• It has sold more copies than ten other books that the Times did list.
• The number four spot on the Times is held by "I'll Be Gone in the Dark," by Michelle McNamara, even though it sold hundreds of copies less than "Deep State" did according to Nielsen tracking.
• In fact, Corsi’s book has sold more than twice as many copies than many of the top 15 books on the Times list and was in the top ten on Amazon’s best seller list earlier this month.
• Corsi had the following reaction: "They don't want any book that will support President Trump, who they detest, to be on The New York Times bestseller list. Even if the book legitimately outsells most of the other books. It's completely disgraceful and dishonest. But again, The New York Times is disgraceful and dishonest these days."

So given that the New York Times is so blatantly left wing in these few instances, how can anyone trust that the serious news they report is not biases, slanted, ignoring facts and realities, and generally not honest? And this trait makes them just as big a threat to our freedoms and liberties as the dishonest and useless politicians that are in office today.

Failure of the Department of Education and the failure of the New York Times, two very serious problems that face our country today. More insanity to follow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w