November, 2014, Part 1, Will The Center Hold: Common Core, School Lunches, and Border Sedurity Unrest

We are going to spend a few days visiting an occasional recurring topic in this blog, namely whether or not the country can hang together, given the growing resistance around the nation to an overreaching and increasingly repressive Federal government. Previous discussions on this topic can be accessed by typing in the phrase, “will the center hold” in the search box above.

The growing grass roots resistance against the Federal government covers a wide range of topics including gun control, Obama Care, Common Core, warrantless spying on citizens, and other topics important to the American people. The resistance ranges from individual citizens to state legislations and really raises a basic question: what happens to the country if Washington issues a decree or law and the rest of the country simply ignores it or aggressively resists it? Will the center hold?

The latest resistance efforts start below and will likely go on for a few days after:

1) It is not just adults who are resisting the overreach of Washington. A Wisconsin high school senior is tired of being force fed tasteless and inadequate school lunches as a result of Washignton’s and Michelle Obama’s ill conceived and ill thought out school lunch guidelines. She doing something about it. Meghan Hellrood of D.C. Everest High School in Schofield, Wisconsin, is tired of the sub-par quality food and the one-size-fits-all mentality that the new school lunch regulations have produced.

She has organized a boycott to draw attention to the new regulations and show politicians in Washington that students don’t agree with the act and its one size fits all mentality and that students want something better: “I love my school. My school is fantastic. And I know that they’re not the ones that have started this entire regulation. So what I really want is for this to go to Washington, basically. We can’t just depend on our local schools, because there’s thousands of other schools that also comply with this act. So if we go to Washington, maybe they’ll see that so many kids are upset with this and that there needs to be a change.”

Hellrood points out that the logic of how the one size fits all mentality of the law is not realistic for all students. She points out the following facts in a very logical manner:

- Even at 90 pounds and 4 feet 11 inches, she says the food provided is not enough to fill even her up: “I’m served the same amount of food that the 220-pound senior football star is,” commenting that she can’t even imagine how hungry the athletes must be.

- She also points out that her peers at school complain that they are not performing as well in the classroom or on the field because they are hungry and “out of energy." 

- Athough some students who can afford it often bring food with them to supplement what they are getting in the cafeteria, or run to a convenience store after school to grab something to eat before practice or a game, many other students are going hungry.

- According to her experience, at her school, rather than providing higher quality, healthy foods, her school is providing smaller portions of the same processed foods they were serving before in order to keep them within the new Washington nutritional guidelines: “The whole point of it was to get healthier foods, but instead of healthier foods, we’re getting smaller portions of more processed foods.”

Good for her, speaking up and taking action against another Washington disaster that is causing more pain and heartache than it is curing.

2) States across the country have decided that having Washington dictate the educational standards in their state, another Washington one size fits all disaster, via the so-called Common Core program is not for them. Many of them have opted out of all or parts of the program and have told Washington they will educate their kids the way they see fit, not the way the Washington political class sees fit.

The Medina (Ohio) Gazette recently ran an article that showed that not only are state governments fed up with Common Core but an individual local mother is also. Rene Antonio of Harrisville Township said she’ll withdraw her second grade daughter by December 15 from the local public school and either place her in a private school, if she can find one that hasn’t also adopted the Common Core educational standards, or home-school her.

She has started a Facebook page called “Ohio Students Strike Common Core,” that has already accumulated more than 400 likes: “I’m trying to be unbiased on my page because everyone has different reasons for not liking it. Children’s minds don’t adapt to the Common Core like they’re expected to. It takes away from the child’s ability to explore.”

Not only does it take away the child’s ability to explore, it also is not a good way to educate, as we have discussed previously. Consider what happened to test scores in Maryland after Common Core had been in place for a few years:

Thus, you can see why a mother like Ms.Antonio would be concerned about the welfare and education attainment of her daughter.

Fortunately, there may be help on the way for her and other concerned Ohio parents. Ohio House Bill 597 is pending in the Ohio state government legislature. If passed, it would repeal Common Core in the state, a reality that would make Ms. Antonio and many other parents in Ohio quite happy: “Everyone I’ve talked to about it are against the Common Core. We are the parents, we have a say, and if enough people pull their children out of school, they’re going to have to do something about it. These aren’t the government’s children, and they aren’t the state’s children.”

Good for her, standing up like millions of others across the country, fighting an overreaching and incompetent set of Washington politicians who saddle us with outrageously bad programs such as Common Core and Obama Care. Programs that are ineffective, expensive, and affront to liberty and personal freedom.

3) It is no secret that our southern border security is a joke. There is very little security, it is porous which allows illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and it is a gateway for terrorists to enter the country without much threat of being apprehended.

However, rather than sitting back and allowing the Federal government to continue is mishandling of border security, a group of sheriffs from across the country are taking action to prod the Washington political class to actually do their job. A letter being circulated by Bristol County, Massachusetts Sheriff Thomas Hodgson, is attempting to organize American sheriffs to march on the capital on December 10, in order to “encourage immediate action by Congress and the Administration [sic] that will secure border security once and for all.”

According to the letter, the effort will be joined by U.S. Senators Jeff Sessions and David Vitter as well as “other members of Congress” as they publicly seek redress at the Capitol Building. According to the letter, the effort seeks to achieve border security “as the first step in achieving legitimate immigration reform in the future.”

The letter goes on to state: “As you know, the policies of recent years that encourage immigrants to illegally enter our country have created serious threats to our domestic… security. The citizens of our nation are counting on [sheriffs] to fulfill our oath to preserve law and order and live up to our responsibilities as guardians of the United States Constitution.”

According to the contents of the letter, Sheriff Hodgson hopes to get at least 200 sheriffs to come to Washington for the protest and to make the point that Washington has failed to 1) secure the border and 2) develop and deploy an effective and fair immigration policy, something it should have done decades ago.

That will do it for today but more backlash and fight back against the Federal government activities will be discussed in the next few days. But today we learned that concerned citizens across the country, from a high school kid in Wisconsin to a concerned mother in Ohio to a sensible and concerned sheriff in Massachusetts, are telling Washington to either back off or how they should be doing their job.

As always, if enough of America does the same, will the center hold? If enough Americans ignore the failed school lunch policies of Washington, if enough Americans ignore the Common Core mandates of Washington, if enough sheriffs ignore the failed immigration policies of Washington, what happens? Interesting times we live in.

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:

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

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

Part 1, Will The Center Hold?, December, 2014: Nullifying Common Core, Gun Control, Tasteless Lunches and More Federal Government Dictates

On a semi-regular basis, we check in with a continuing theme in this blog that we call: “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen a political class so out of control and consequently, we are witnessing a backlash against this overreaching and intrusive political class. 

Which raises a question: are we getting to a point that one day soon we may see Washington enact a law or create a regulation and the rest of the country simply ignores it? What happens when the country tells Washington to go pound sand on something and refuses to support it? Will the center hold or does the country splinter into who know what?

Most of this backlash and pushback is against the un-Constitutional overreach of the Washington political class. Those in Washington have been pushing a variety of issues and actions that do not sit well with large parts of the country. These issues include, but are not limited to, gun control, Common Core education standards, Michelle Obama’s healthy eating/school lunch legislation, Federal government land grabs, NSA spying on innocent citizens, IRS harassment, etc.

For the next few days we will update where state and local governments and individual citizens are rebelling against this overreaching and increasingly repressive set of politicians. When reviewing these updates keep in mind the overall question: will the center hold once the rest of the country actually starts to ignore Washington dictates?

1) The Education Action Group website reported on December 23, 2014 that Arkansas is the latest state, on the growing list of states, that is considering a repeal of Common Core national standards.

The Arkansas News recently reported that state senator Gary Stubblefield is considering filing legislation to repeal Common Core. His reason for wanting to get out of the Common Core disaster is similar to what we have reported on in other states: “This one size fits all, I just don’t buy that, because there’s just too much difference in different school districts in different states. I just think there’s a better way to do it.”

He recently recounted what he is hearing from a lot of teachers: “They [teachers] think it’s a waste of time. They spend more time trying to learn how to give a test than they actually do teaching.”

Last month we reported on how the governor of Maine wanted to also get out of the Common Core strait jacket since he noticed how far kids in Massachusetts had fallen below their education attainment trend line after living through Common Core processes. Also, the state of Maryland has also seen a degradation in their kids’ learning progress under Common Core:

Seems like the senator from Arkansas has also seen the light for kids in his state.

2) The Conservative Tribune website did a nice summary job in their website article from December 12, 2014 which highlighted the progress and action states were involved with to push back on an overreaching Federal government and Washington political class:

• The article focused on two broad fronts that states are using to pushback, namely state nullification of Federal law and the pending Article V Convention of States effort. 
• The article claims that around twelve states are directly defying the Federal government in the area of gun control and Second Amendment rights, usually be declaring that Federal gun control laws are null and void within their state borders.
• These states that are trying to nullify Federal gun control efforts range from north to south and from east to west across the country: Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas, among others.
• In some of these states it is now against the law for any state or Federal agent that attempts to enforce Federal gun control laws.
• At least four states are also working on nullifying Obama Care including Arizona, Georgia, Missouri, and South Carolina.
• This effort is above and beyond the decision by more than two thirds of the state to not build and operate Obama care website health care exchanges in their states.
• Nine states have already rejected Common Core standards and at least thirty states have different legislative efforts underway to address changes to their Common Core changes.
• Regarding the Convention of the States front, approximately half of all states have already submitted, or are in the process of submitting, an official application calling for the convention.
• Organizers from around the country have already held meetings to establish ground rules for a convention.
• Most supporters of a Convention of States are focusing on forcing Congress to balance an out of control Federal budget and instituting term limits for Washington politicians. 

As I said above never in my life have I seen such a rebellion on so many fronts against the Washington government bureaucracy and political class.

3) I recently came across a Townhall website article written by Kurt Schlichter entitled, “Nothing Succeeds Like Liberal Secession: Blue America Without Red America Would Be A Basket Case.” He writes a fictional story of how the country became so polarized that it eventually split into two separate countries.

Obviously fiction, since it runs out to the year 2019, but its theme is consistent with what we are talking about here. In his view, the center does not hold and the country divides along political lines because of many of the concepts we have talked about here. It is very well written and is a very interesting take on what could happen if the center does not hold.

I wanted to reprint the entire article in this blog, it is quite long and entailed, but never received reprint permission from Townhall. Thus, I am providing the link directly to the article on their website for your review and contemplation:

http://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2014/12/15/nothing-succeeds-like-liberal-secession-blue-america-without-red-america-would-be-a-basket-case-n1931175?utm_source=iacfbp&utm_medium=fbpage&utm_campaign=IAC#!

4) State and local government are pushing back on the Federal government not only on Common Core but on the new Federal government school lunch guidelines that were championed by Michelle Obama. As we have discussed many times in this blog, the new guidelines have resulted in many disasters in school districts across the country.

These disasters include kids not getting enough to eat, untasty food be thrown out by the ton, school budgets being hit with drastic cuts in revenue as kids and families refuse to pay for tasteless food as a result of the new guidelines, and learning and school athletic performance suffering because kids are no longer getting enough calories at lunch.

According to a recent article on the Education Action Group website, school districts across Wyoming are just the latest school districts turning their back on the Federal school lunch guidelines.

According to Jeremy Smith, business manager for Wyoming’s Sheridan County District One, his school has dropped out of the so-called National School Lunch Program: “because there were just too many complaints. Universally, it was, ‘We are starving. We are hungry. This isn’t enough food for us.’ But we couldn’t blame them, because I looked at that school lunch and said, ‘I wouldn’t eat it either.’” 

His school district saw a 20% upward spike in cafeteria sales this school year after it dropped the Federal rules championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. The district raised prices to provide larger portions of food to their growing kids and focused on offering “locally sourced produce and beef.”

Dennis Decker, the school district‘s food service director, told NPR in an interview that, “A one-size-fits-all program doesn’t work everywhere. And I also think that food is a little too personal to make a law. You can tell someone they can’t speed, but I don’t [think] you can tell everybody what they have to eat every day.” Wow, another American who realizes that top down, bureaucratic dictates from Washington make little sense when they hit the real world.

The article goes on to report that seven Wyoming school district

have dropped out of the Federal school lunch program. And you know the program must be bad since they are forgoing Federal grant money to provide the low calorie, tasteless food. 

That will do it for today. Pushing back on lunch standards and education standards, gun control, Obama Care and more. Will the center hold or do we end up two separate countries as Mr. Schlichter foresees? In the meantime, consider joining our effort to impose term limits on Washington politicians, the very people that are causing the center to shake and rattle, and maybe make it roll:

www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com

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:

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

More rebelling tomorrow.

Part 2, Why There Is Hope To Better Educate Our Kids, Something That The Political Class Never Provided, Hope and Good Educations

It is no secret to anyone in the know that we are doing a terrible job of educating our kids in this country. On international achievement tests, there are usually kids from dozens of countries who score better on all different types of tests than American kids. It is truly a national disgrace.

A national disgrace especially when you consider that we have spend more and more on public education in this country over the years and have seen no improvement of positive return on that spending. This embarrassment was captured by the following graph from the Cato Institute, using California as an exmaple:



It is not as if the American political class has not tried to fix the problem, they have just proven they do not know how to fix the problem, as witnessed by the graph above. Their solution always involves spending more money which in turn has gotten us nothing. Their latest attempt, via the so-called Common Core effort, has also proven to be a disaster. Where Common Core has been instituted, in states like Massachusetts and Maryland, the results have been a disaster. 

At one time, Massachusetts turned out the smartest kids in the country. Under common Core, they have slipped to seventh place. Several years after Common Core was established in Maryland, test scores have plummeted:


Step 27 proposed a solution to this problem that did not include any input from the American political class. Over the past several decades they have proven themselves incapable of not injecting politics, greed, and their lack of knowledge of education principles and strategies. As a result we have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars funding the Federal Department of Education and lord knows how many billions of dollars developing Common Core, of which both investments have failed horribly and disgracefully.

But that does not mean that we cannot heal our education processes and start turning out smart kids again. In fact, there are success stories in this field all across the country, a few of which we will shall over the next two days. One of the common themes underlying these success stories is that the political class has been cut out of the education process, resulting in tremendous successes without tremendous costs.

1) Yesterday we showed two examples where it is possible to give our kids a high level of quality education without excessive or with no input from politicians. We discussed the high school in Watts in Los Angeles where the entire senior class from this all boys schools were accepted into college, a record that very few schools anywhere in the country can match.We also discussed an article from the website, www.sfbayview.com, from a few years ago that showed how ten African-American kids were thriving academically in so many artistic and academic fields. 

Let’s start today’s continuing examination of kids in America getting a good education with an article from the Heritage Foundation that was written by Lindsey Burke. The article, “How Charter Schools Spend Less Than Public Schools But Achieve Better Results,” examined recent research on how charter schools, the bane of teacher unions and the politicians that depend on those unions for their perpetual electioneering, are outperforming public education processes at a lower price.

Details and research from the article include the following:

• In America, there are about 2.5 million kids enrolled in 6,500 charter schools in the U.S.
• Enrollment rose almost 100% from 2001 through 2011.
• Burke assumes that this incredible growth rate is because “may be due to the schools’ productivity and ability to improve learning outcomes on a more limited budget than traditional public schools enjoy."
• Burke backs up this assertion by quoting recent research on charter schools: “…the public charter school sector delivers a weighted average of an additional 17 [National Assessment of Educational Progress] NAEP points per $1,000 invested in math, representing a productivity advantage of 40 percent for charters. In reading, the public charter sector delivers an additional 16 NAEP points per $1,000 invested, representing a productivity advantage of 41 percent for charters.”
• The research also dispelled the myth that charter schools perform better because they get smarter and more motivated kids to begin with: “Any claim that the higher productivity of charters relative to [traditional public schools] TPS is because charters serve a more advantaged population would be undermined by these findings, as all charter sectors outperform their [traditional public schools] TPS on productivity measures even though half of the charter sectors enroll a more low-income population of students than their TPS.”
• Although counter intuitive, the researchers conclude that charter schools are more efficient because they have LESS financial support and budgets: “It appears to be likely that much of the basis for the higher productivity of public charter schools rests on the fact that they receive less funding and therefore are highly disciplined in their use of those education dollars.” 
• A Stanford University researcher, Caroline Hosby, found that going to a charter school from kindergarten through eighth grade brings lower socio-economic kids’ academic performance up to the level of affluent suburban schools in math and would close 66% of the gap in English achievement levels.
• A 2010 Department Of Education survey found higher levels of satisfaction among parents with both the quality of schools and their child’s development.
• The average charter school has a waiting list of 300 kids trying to get in, indicating a high level of acceptance and desire in the communities they serve.

So charter schools deliver high academic performance at a lower cost that attracts high levels of enrollees and provide high levels of satisfaction to parents relative to their kids’ education. This all proves that all kids from all segments of society can get a great education. But somehow along the way American politicians find a way to not accomplish what is doable despite spending hundreds of billions in a vain attempt to do so.

2) New Orleans is a city which has had good education results with charter schools. Nine out of ten kids in that city attend charter schools, a reality driven by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina. This makes New Orleans the city with the highest level of charter school penetration in the country.

How has that effort worked out for their kids? Stacy Telcher Khadaroo writing for ChristianScience Monitor on March, 2014 went looking for those answers:

• In New Orleans, there is no longer a traditional central district office that dictates what schools students will attend, a central office that usually hires and promotes teachers in negotiation with a union, and controls everything from budgets to textbooks. 
• In New Orleans, families get to select among charter schools citywide that have to meet certain benchmarks in order to have their charters renewed.
• Although 82% of the students in New Orleans schools are considered low income, charter schools’ test scores and graduation rates have climbed steadily over the past decade or so.
• Andy Smarick, a partner at the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners in Washington believes that New Orleans has shown that "we can move government out of running schools" and have it focus on oversight instead.
• A charter superintendent, Patrick Dobard, gave some insight on why New Orleans charters have been successful: "Our model is about empowering educators that are closest to the children, to give them the autonomy to have great schools, but to have a strong accountability system in place...ensuring there is equity and access throughout the whole system."
• Academic results in New Orleans schools have moved ahead of the state average for high school graduation by several points, with 77.8 percent for the class of 2012 graduating within four years – up from just over 54 percent in 2004.
• Based on a state based academic performance school, in 2004-05 only 12 percent of students in New Orleans attended 'A' or 'B' schools while nearly 75 percent attended 'F' schools. By 2012-13, just 17 percent of students were in 'F' schools, while 34 percent were in 'A' or 'B' schools.
• Even better, the percentage of New Orleans students qualifying for college scholarships prior to Katrina was less than 6 percent of students in 14 high schools that were later taken converted into charter schools. By 2013, that 6% had increased over four fold to 27%. by the RSD qualified for these scholarships, NSNO reports. In 2013, 27 percent did.

The entire article can be viewed at:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0301/New-Orleans-goes-all-in-on-charter-schools.-Is-it-showing-the-way

The writer goes into much detail on the mechanics of education in charter schools that helped attain the tremendous improvements listed above. Regardless of how they do it, the results are what any parent would want for their kids: high and improving academic performance, better chance for college scholarships, etc. 

More proof today that we as a nation can do a much better job educating our kids. But somehow the political class gets in the way of allowing that improvement to happen. That is why Step 27 from our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” along with the track records of the education endeavors we have reviewed over the past two days, are needed to finally give our kids the education they deserve in an efficient and cost-effective manner. 

Allowing national politicians and Federal bureaucrats have given us the exact opposite: inefficient and lower education levels in a high cost manner.

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:

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

November, 2014 Part 2, Will The Center Hold: More Common Core Rebellions, School Lunch Debacles Continue, And Arizona Asserts Its Independence

We are going to spend a few days visiting an occasional and recurring topic in this blog, namely whether or not the country can hang together, given the growing resistance around the nation to an overreaching and increasingly repressive Federal government. Previous discussions on this topic can be Accessed by typing in the phrase, “will the center hold” in the search box above.

The growing grass roots resistance against the Federal government covers a wide range of topics including gun control, Obama Care, Common Core, warrantless spying on citizens, and other topics important to the American people. The resistance ranges from individual citizens to state legislatures and really raises a basic question: what happens to the country if Washington issues a decree or law and the rest of the country simply ignores it or aggressively resists it? Will the center hold?

The latest resistance efforts start below and will likely go on for a few days after:

1) In the recent elections, the state of Arizona and its voters took a giant step towards formally reasserting the rights of the state and its citizens. Arizona voters approved Proposition 122, an amendment to the state constitution that enshrines nullification, or anti-commandeering. Specifically, the amendment permits the state to “exercise its sovereign authority to restrict the actions of its personnel and the use of its financial resources to purposes that are consistent with the Constitution.”

In other words, Arizona citizens can now more easily tell the Federal government to pound sand when the state and its citizens in Arizona feel the Federal government is overstepping its Constitutional limits. It will allow Arizonans to refuse to enforce Federal laws by allowing voters to hold and vote on referendums on such issues as withholding state resources from enforcing Obamacare, Federal impingement on American’s Second Amendment rights, NSA spying programs, and other measures, according to the Tenth Amendment Center.

While Arizona citizens could have held such referendums at any time in the past, adding this new language to the state’s constitution means that such referendums will now be statutory, rather than constitutional, making it easier and far less expensive to get on the ballot for the people to decide.

Apparently there is legal precedent for this type of action. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld previous efforts by states to refuse to implement federal programs. These efforts include: Prigg v. Pennsylvania (1842), New York v. US (1992), Printz v. US (1997) and National Federation of Businesses v. Sebelius (2012).

Thus, it appears that the Arizona not only is a slap against Washington’s infringement on state rights and citizens’ personal freedoms but it also has a strong legal underpinning. Which again raises the central question we have been asking: what happens when Washington tells the state government and state citizens in Arizona to implement a Federal program and Arizona says, “thanks but no thanks?”

2) Yesterday, we discussed the bravery and initiative of a Wisconsin high school senior that was battling against the idiocy of the latest Washington school lunch guidelines. But it seems that not only are kids resisting Michelle Obama’s food dictates, but teachers across the country are also getting in on the food rebellion.

According to an article written by Kyle Olson for the Education Action Group that appeared on November 7, 2014, many teachers aren’t happy with how the new Federal school snack rules, e.g. banning birthday cakes in classrooms, have impacted their classrooms. They are so unhappy that “Nearly every teacher” at Tyler’s Bonner Elementary School are turning their noses up at the new rules, according to TV station KLTV: “Ridiculous,” Debbie Oliver, a 5th grade teacher, says. “To me, it might be saying, let’s not have any kind of fun in school anymore. It would be one thing if teachers were constantly bombarding the kids with treats and candy and cokes and stuff like that, but that’s not realistic. That’s not even happening.”

While the Washington nutrition rules are supposedly to curb childhood obesity, the teachers think they’re missing their mark.
“A lot of us are obese. That’s true,” teacher Camille Moore said. “But I don’t think we’re getting obese in the classroom.”

Meanwhile, the lunch rules aren’t going over much better in Michigan’s Pinckney school district, which has seen a dramatic drop in school lunch purchases as a result of the nutrition guidelines: “It’s frustrating because we want to serve these kids, but there are less students in the lunch line,” Linda Moskalik, the district’s assistant superintendent of finances and operations.

As with other school districts around the country, because of the new rules, kids in Pinckney are going hungry rather than eat the new food, a very bad unintended consequence of the Michelle Obama push. Before the “healthy” rules were implemented, food sales at Pinckney schools during the 2011-2012 school year were roughly $400,443.

The next school year, the district’s lunch sales dropped to $377,200, or 5.8%. During the 2013-2014 school year, they dropped an another 4%. In order to get the Federal government financial support, schools are required to give students the prescribed servings of fruits and vegetables.

But what is the reality of the new lunch guidelines? Not good: “As soon as they leave the lunch line, they will throw the food right in the garbage, which is a waste of food,” according to a teacher quoted in the article.

“I have a particular thing with frozen foods, and I kind of feel like some of the lunch foods taste like they’re frozen,” Lewis Tate, an eighth-grader at Charlottesville, Virginia’s Buford Middle School, tells Charlottesville Tomorrow. “One of the reasons I pack my lunch so often is because if I don’t know where my food came from I don’t like eating it.”

“Most of the food is just defrosted,” adds Maggie Vidal, a sophomore at Western Albemarle High School.

What good is having a so-called healthy lunch menu if kids do not eat it, especially if the food is unappetizing, recently defrosted, and insufficient for kids to learn and be active with? Unintended consequences of another bad Federal program.

No sane person could deny that we have an obesity problem in this country. But you do not solve this problem by denying a birthday cake in the classroom every once in a awhile, serving recently defrosted tasteless food in school cafeterias, or penalizing schools financially. You launch a nationwide, long term public health strategy and program to educate and change underlying behaviors, starting in the home, not in the school cafeteria line.

3) Common Core is getting rebutted across the country, with the state of Maine being the latest to join the surge of taking back control of heir kids’ education.

Maine Governor Paul LePage recently stated he was convinced that his state needed to get out from under Common Core and find another education solution for Maine’s kids. The impetus for his decision and awakening occurred after he observed that Massachusetts fell from being first in the country for education to seventh place after adopting Common Core standards.

LePage recent told WABI in Maine: “First of all, there is always a better way. And I no longer support Common Core, and I say that because we have been in Common Core for several years here in Maine. But after seeing what has happened to Massachusetts—they were the number one education system in America prior to adopting Common Core. That tells me that we need to take a hard look, maybe it would be better going back to what they had before.”

If that is not a slap across the face of the Federal government. After all of the effort, all of the expense, and all of the promotion, this governor has reached the conclusion that doing nothing is better than enacting Common Core principles. Another failed Federal government program that the rest of America is starting to reject.

4) Resistance to the Federal government takes many forms but probably not many are as forceful as the recent line in the sand that newly elected Texas governor Greg Abbott drew. In a recent television interview, Abbott said Texas will sue the Obama administration if the President tries to overstep the bounds of his executive power and interfere in immigration and naturalization issues and existing immigration laws: “If the president crosses the line he’s going to see an overwhelming rejection of what he’s trying to do, so he better not overstep. If he does, for one of course we’ll be involved with another lawsuit against him but [for] another you can expect quite a strong pushback [from the people].”

It does not look like Washington will get much help from the state of Texas if it decides to ignore existing immigration laws and may well find itself in front of a judge as Texas dares the Feds to disobey standing laws.

I can think of no time in our past where states were willing to pass amendments to the state constitution to inhibit Federal government overreach or sue Federal government for disobeying its own laws or tell Washington bureaucrats that we will ignore your nutrition and education guidelines and do what is best for our kids. Never before have I observed Americans actively taking back their liberties and freedoms that the Federal government has eroded over time.

At what point to Federal actions and initiatives become mere suggestions to the rest of the country? And at that time, when we ignore what is usually expensive and ineffective Federal laws and acts, does the center hold? More rebellions against the center tomorrow.

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:

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

April, 2015, Part 1, Will The Center Hold?

On a regular basis we discuss a continuing theme in this post. “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen such a push back against an overreaching Federal government and Washington political class at all levels of government and at the individual citizen level. From Obama Care to gun control to education to Common Core to spying on innocent civilians, across the country people are finally saying enough and have started to rebel against Washington dictates and laws.

Which brings to two very interesting questions:

1. What if Washington passed a law and everyone the country simply ignored it?
2. Would the center hold or would the Republic splinter apart?

Don’t believe that the center is possibly in danger? Insert the phrase “will the center hold” into the search box above or read on today and for the next few days to see where the rebellion has spread to.

1) A major source of irritation and push back against Washington has been with Common Core, the Washington based overhaul of education in the country which attempts to dictate a top down approach to education. We have often discussed how badly this program educates are kids based on actually testing results and how states, schools and parents are rebelling against education dictates from a far away and out of touch Washington.

How deep is the push back? Well, on Long Island in New York, twice as many parents have taken their kids out of the the Common Core testing exams this year vs. the previous year. In one school district, over 80% of the parents decided their kids should not be subjected to the Common Core tests. Other school districts on the island have had opt rates over 50%. Thus, we are not talking about a small minority of rebellious parents, we are talking about the majority of parents in certain school districts.

Which gets us to the question: what happens if everyone takes their kids out of Common Core testing, does the Common Core program die a well deserved death? We shall see. For a look at the opt out rate for Common Core in every Long Island school district go to:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12MKPf7x8-Xym-sLwEH2XJNqR6cN6KMGzjFx25k4-_ug/edit#gid=246053646

2) One movement that we have not talked a lot about in this theme but which is certainly related is the Convention Of States movement. This effort aims to put together a coalition of states that will press for Constitutional changes that include the annual balancing of the Federal budget and term limits for Federal politicians. Two thirds of the state need to pass legislation calling for a Convention of States and that movement is progressing nicely towards that number across the country.

A week ago, the Tennessee Senate formally passed legislation calling for a Convention of States by a vote of 23 to 5. The vote was this strong despite out of state efforts and money to derail it.

3) The Personal Liberty website posted some state by state efforts to rebel against the Feds in a March 24, 2015 article by Michael Boldin:

• In Arizona, legislation was recently passed in the state senate, by a vote of 17 to 12, that would ignore any restrictions that would inhibit the right to keep and bear arms in the state.
• A similar bill to protect Second Amendment rights in Montana was recently passed by both houses of the state legislature and is headed for the governor’s office for approval and enactment.
• Similar efforts are are underway in the Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state legislatures.
• Idaho was the first state in the country in 2014 to pass state level legislation designed to prevent any new Federal gun control efforts.
• In 2014, Arizona voters approved Proposition 303 which allow Arizonans to try experimental medical treatments that have not yet been approved by the Federal government.
• In 2015, Wyoming and Arkansas enacted so-called “right-to-try” laws and similar legislation is pending in Virginia, Montana, Indiana, Utah, and Mississippi, all intended to go around the FDA’s glacier drug approval process: “These laws are a no-brainer,” said Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. “When someone is on their deathbed, the fact that FDA regulations would let them die rather than try, has got to be one of the most inhumane policies of the federal government. Every state should nullify the FDA like this.”
• The Federal government allow hemp to be grown for medical research purposes only but it is currently being actively farmed in Colorado and Vermont in defiance of that Federal law.
• In addition, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Washington, Connecticut, Missouri, Texas, Florida and North Dakota are in various legislative stages of allowing widespread hemp farming in their states.
• Last year Utah and New Hampshire passed laws that ban each state from participating in any warrantless eavesdropping activity on its citizens by the Federal government.
• Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina and other states have introduced legislation to ban all “material support or resources” to all Federal bulk warrantless spying programs.
• Legislation is under way , Montana, New York, Missouri,Vermont, Massachusetts, and Oregon to block a nationwide car license plate tracking program.
• Legislation in Arizona and Texas is moving ahead to ban enforcement of an Obama Care tenet.

Many states and many issues, much rebellion and push back, will the center hold? 

4) Arizona has been one of the most active states in telling the Feds to pound sand. It is working on two new pieces of legislation in that vein:

• The first piece of legislation, Arizona House Bill 2368, prevents the state of Arizona from funding any executive orders issued by President Obama, or policy directives issued by the Department of Justice. The bill would prohibit “this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.” It also “prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with a policy directive issued by the U.S. DOJ to law enforcement agencies in this state that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.”
• The second bill, House Bill 2643, stops state and local governments from using state funds to enforce and implement the Obama Care. 

Both bills passed the Arizona House and will now move to the Senate. 

Wow, a state insisting that the Federal government and current Presidential administration follow the Constitution. Amazing and unfortunately, very rare. 

But maybe the tide is turning. Dozens of instances where states across the country are making a stand for the rule of law, common sense, and the protection of its citizens and their rights. The center is getting shaken on the edges, will it hold? More shaking tomorrow.

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:

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

Part 1, Why There Is Hope To Better Educate Our Kids, Something That The Political Class Never Provided, Hope and Good Educations

It is no secret to anyone in the know that we are doing a terrible job of educating our kids in this country. On international achievement tests, there are usually kids from dozens of countries who score better on all different types of tests than American kids. It is truly a national disgrace.

A national disgrace especially when you consider that we have spent more and more on public education in this country over the years and have seen no improvement of positive return on that spending. This embarrassment was captured by the following graph from the Cato Institute, using California as an example:



It is not as if the American political class has not tried to fix the problem, they have just proven they do not know how to fix the problem, as witnessed by the graph above. Their solution always involves spending more money which in turn has gotten us nothing. Their latest attempt, via the so-called Common Core effort, has also proven to be a disaster. Where Common Core has been instituted, in states like Massachusetts and Maryland, the results have been a disaster. 

At one time, Massachusetts turned out the smartest kids in the country. Under Common Core, they have slipped to seventh place. Several years after Common Core was established in Maryland, test scores have plummeted:


Step 27 proposed a solution to this problem that did not include any input from the American political class. Over the past several decades they have proven themselves incapable of not injecting politics, greed, and their lack of knowledge of education principles and strategies into the education process. As a result, we have wasted hundreds of billions of dollars funding the Federal Department of Education and lord knows how many billions of dollars developing Common Core, of which both investments have failed horribly and disgracefully.

But that does not mean that we cannot heal our education processes and start turning out smart kids again. In fact, there are success stories in this field all across the country, a few of which we will discuss over the next two days. One of the common themes underlying these success stories is that the political class has been cut out of the education process, resulting in tremendous successes without tremendous costs.

1) An ABC TV News out of Los Angeles reported back in June, 2015 that an all boys high school in Watts has a 100% college acceptance rate. Yes, a school in Watts, one of the roughest and poorest sections of any American city actually has a high school where all of the graduating students got into college. I doubt there are many schools anywhere in any socio-economic class that can make that same boast.

Details of the story include the following:

• The school is called Verbum Del School and has been successfully run by the Jesuits for the past 50 years.
• This past year, every senior at the all boys school has been accepted to college.
• And I am assuming these are not only community college acceptances, given the goals of some of the students quoted in the article: "I want to be an orthopedic surgeon or an oral surgeon," said Zachary Byrge, the salutatorian for Verbum Dei's class of 2015. And, "Most immediately, I want to major in mathematics and do a program with Georgetown and Columbia, where I can become an engineer," valedictorian Nicholas Spates said.
• All of the school’s students come from low income families and are in fact academically lagging one to two years when they start at the school, making the college acceptance story even more amazing.
• Juan Perez, Jr. is the first in his family to go to college, having been accepted to St. John's University in Minnesota: "They always tell me every single day -- since I'm going to be the first person in my family to be going -- they're extremely proud of me." 

Outstanding, and nowhere in the story, which can be viewed at

http://abc7.com/education/all-boys-watts-high-school-has-100-percent-college-acceptance/777375/, 

is there a mention of Common Core, teachers unions, politicians, etc. Just dedicated teachers, families, and students proving that you can still get a good education in this country WITHOUT any “help” from Washington politicians.

2) This is a somewhat older story but it still applies to what we are talking about today. An article on the www.sfbayview.com website from June 28, 2013 talked about “10 Black Child Geniuses You Should Know.” Writer Amir Shaw started off his article with the following, pretty accurate stereotype descriptions: “If you only watched the evening news or depended on pop culture to paint a picture of young Blacks, you would probably think that the majority of Black youngsters were only ambitious about sports and music – or caught up in crime and debauchery.”

But he goes onto to describe the amazing educational accomplishments in a variety of fields of ten young black people who are achieving success “at a high level in science, math, classical music, chess and other knowledge-based areas and preparing to change society.” Mr. Shaw's profiles follow:



Stephen R. Stafford II - Stephen entered Morehouse College at the age of 11 and picked up three majors. Now 16, he is currently studying computer science and mathematics. He will likely graduate at 17.



Mabou Loiseau- By the age of 7, Mabou spoke French, Creole, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic and Russian. Additionally, she plays the harp, clarinet, violin, drums, guitar and piano.




Andrew Koonce - Andrew is a master violinist based in Atlanta. He was named concertmaster, the most skilled musician, of the Georgia Music Association’s All-State Middle School Orchestra.




Autum Ashante - Raised by a single father, Autum was ridiculed by conservatives at the age of 7 for writing a poem that highlighted the travesty of slavery. Autum never wavered and mastered languages such as Arabic, Swahili and Spanish. She scored 149 on the standard IQ test. At age 13, she was accepted into the University of Connecticut.




Imafidon family - The Imafidon family is known as the smartest family in the U.K. The youngest siblings, Peter and Paula, made history by becoming the youngest students to enroll in secondary school. Their older sister, Anne-Marie, was the youngest student to pass A-level computing at the age of 13.




Rochelle Ballantyne - At 17, Rochelle is one of the top chess players in the world. She is currently on the verge of becoming the first Black American female to earn the title of chess master.




Ginger Howard - Ginger is the youngest Black American woman to become a pro golfer. Howard is competing to become the fifth Black American woman to join the LPGA Tour.




Tony Hansberry II - After Tony didn’t place in the eighth grade science fair, Tony interned at Shands Hospital and developed a method of reducing the amount of time it takes to perform hysterectomies and potentially reducing the risk of complications after the procedure. He was honored for his contributions.




Chelsea Dock - Chelsea has been an accomplished pianist since the age of 5. Now 13, Chelsea has performed at Madison Square Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Steinway Hall. She’s also an artist and straight A student.




Daquan Chisholm - Daquan created a walkie-talkie, bulletproof helmet at the age of 12. He’s currently working with Johns Hopkins University to gather funding to patent the idea. 

Unbelievable, great accomplishments in a variety of fields at such young ages. It is possible to to educate our kids to high levels of attainment, these ten kids in this article prove that reality as do the kids in Watts.  

But despite having spent trillions of dollars via the Federal government to educate our kids, the vast majority of them get their butts and brains kicked when the are tested against kids from around the world. That is why we need the politics and the politicians out of the process, they have already proven they are incapable of attaining high education results despite high levels of funding.

Let’s find out what the educators of these fine young people were doing right, and as proposed in Step 27 in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government,” let’s apply those successful education approaches to the rest of the kids in this country. They deserve better than what the Department of Education, Common Core, and today’s politicians have been giving them.

More successful education stories tomorrow.


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.comIt 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.robertringer.com/

http://realpolichick.blogspot.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w