Commentary From Someone Who Knows

The following was posted at CNS News today by Lt. Col. Allen West:

In the aftermath of the George Floyd incident, everyone seems to want to have a conversation about race in America.

Just recently, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, asserted that if you couldn’t decide whether to vote for him or President Trump, “you ain’t black.”

So, let me clarify something: I was born in February 1961 in a “Blacks only” hospital, Hughes Spalding, in Atlanta, Georgia. I was raised by a proud Black man, Herman West Sr. and woman, Elizabeth Thomas West in the historic Old Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta. My Mom and Dad are buried, together, in Marietta National Cemetery because of their service to our Nation.

The Old Fourth Ward is the same neighborhood that produced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and where the American civil rights movement emanated, “Sweet Auburn Avenue.”

There is a high possibility that I have forgotten more black history than some may ever learn — or certainly know. I just authored a book titled, “We Can Overcome, An American Black Conservative Manifesto.”

I do not need to “qualify” my being Black based upon some pre-determined ideological agenda. I was raised to believe that I was an individual who could think and believe as I determined. I was taught that America is a place where regardless of where you were born, where you came from, there was an equality of opportunity.

That equality of opportunity has enabled me to attain immense success for myself and set the conditions for the success of my two daughters. My wife Angela, an accomplished former marketing professor and financial adviser, and I now teach our daughters about the perils of equality of outcomes, and those who cleverly disguise that intent within the cries of social justice.

With this being stated, I am tired of our Nation cowering, appeasing, acquiescing, and surrendering to this absurd organization calling itself Black Lives Matter (BLM). There is nothing true or sincere about this ideologically aligned progressive socialist, cultural Marxist organization.

BLM is just another leftist organization created by the same ilk of progressive socialists who created the NAACP. When one reviews the goals and objectives of BLM, they have nothing to do with the real issues facing the Black community in America. The focus of BLM is to cleverly advance the leftist ideological agenda under the guise of a witty name that forces people into guilt, shame.

I do not need any white person in America to kneel before me, apologize, wash my feet, or as the insidious comment of Chick-fil-A CEO, Dan Cathay, shine my shoes. I did a doggone good job of shining my own boots during my career in the US Army — that was my individual responsibility, in which I took great pride.

I am tired of these businesses and corporations being shaken down by BLM to the tune of some $464M, $50M right here in my home of Texas. Why?

Black Lives Matter does not support the critical civil rights issue of this day. The major civil rights issue in America today is educational freedom. How many young black kids are relegated to failing public schools in failing neighborhoods? Where does BLM stand on that issue? They stand with the progressive socialist left and the teachers unions. Ask yourself, has BLM ever condemned the action of Barack Obama in April 2009 to cancel the DC school voucher program?

Yesterday was Father’s Day. How many young black kids are growing up without a father in the house, a strong positive role model, like my Dad, US Army Corporal Herman West Sr.? The policies of the progressive socialist left decimated the traditional two parent household in the black community. What does BLM say about the traditional, nuclear, two parent (man and woman) household? They say that is a tool of white supremacy.

If there is to be a conversation about the rule of law in America and the black community, let’s have that honest conversation. However, BLM wants us to believe that there is some focused, dedicated, intentional genocide being enacted against the Black community by law enforcement.

In 2019, there were a total of nine white law enforcement officer shootings of unarmed black men. Yet, how many blacks have taken to the streets to kill other blacks? And where is the outrage from BLM?

But, even worse, since 1973 there have been over 20 million unborn black babies murdered in the wombs of Black mothers. The organization mostly responsible for the industry of murdering unborn babies is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was founded by a known white supremacist, racist, a woman who spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies — Margaret Sanger. Planned Parenthood has over 70 percent of their “clinics” located in black communities across America.

I have never heard Black Lives Matter speak up, speak out, or speak against Planned Parenthood. Why? Simple, the white progressive socialist masters who fund, resource, and enable Black Lives Matter don’t give a darn about the lives of Black children.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. Black Lives Matter is an oxymoronic and disingenuous organization. As a proud American Black Man, I find Black Lives Matter an offensive and condescending organization whose hypocrisy is blatantly evident. Yet, thanks to the lucrative support of the white progressive socialist collective elitists, it survives, and extorts financial support from the useful idiots in our corporate structure.

All lives matter, but this radical organization, Black Lives Matter, is the ultimate Trojan Horse. The consistent purveyors of systemic racism in America is the Democrat Party. They have smartly devised this organization to enable their ends, the proliferation of the 21st century economic plantation. Black Lives Matter serves as overseers on this plantation, stoking the irrational emotionalism and angst to support their agenda, their purpose.

What is the purpose? Simple. The new plantation of the left is not about producing cotton. It is about creating victims who will be dependent, and produce the new crop — votes.

Just in case you are not familiar with Allen West, he is a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army. During his 22-year career, he served in Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, receiving many honors including a Bronze Star. In 2010, West was elected as a member of the 112th Congress representing Florida’s 22nd District. He is a Fox News contributor and author of “Guardian of the Republic: An American Ronin’s Journey to Faith, Family and Freedom” and his latest book from Brown Books Publishing Group, “Hold Texas, Hold the Nation: Victory or Death.”  Mr. West writes daily commentary on his personal website theoldschoolpatriot.com and is a Senior Fellow at the Media Research Center to support its mission to expose and neutralize liberal media bias.)

Just one more note–the two-parent family is the backbone of American society. Before Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” the majority of black and white families were two-parent families. The government programs in the “War on Poverty” undermined first the black family and then the white family. The “War on Poverty” could be described as the gateway to the crime and poverty we find today in our inner cities.

A Program That Is Getting Results

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today about the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the oldest voucher program in the United States. This program began in 1990. The program offers private school vouchers to low-income Milwaukee kids using a lottery system. The article reports that just 341 students participated in the program’s first year. Today, that figure is nearly 30,000 across 126 public schools.

The article reports:

Because it has been running for so long, the MPCP has been widely studied. Past analyses have found that it increases math scores (although not reading), as well as high-school graduation and college enrollment rates. Other voucher experiments have also shown encouraging results: A 2013 study found that Washington, D.C.’s voucher program increased graduation rates by 21 percentage points, while a 2015 analysis of New York’s voucher system saw an increase in college enrollment among students with black mothers.

The authors of the new paper looked at data on students from elementary school through ninth grade who were enrolled in Milwaukee private schools in 2006. They identified 2,727 MPCP students, then used a detailed methodology to “match” them to comparable students in the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system based on where they lived, their demographic information, their parents’ educational backgrounds, and other controls.

Having constructed their “treatment” and “control” groups, the researchers then looked at how each group faired in relation to pivotal achievement milestones: completing high school, ever enrolling in college, completing at least a year of college, and graduating from college.

The article concludes:

“MPCP students are more likely to enroll, persist, and have more total years in a four-year college than their MPS peers,” the authors write. “We also find evidence that MPCP students are significantly more likely to graduate from college, although that college completion finding is only statistically significant in our sample of students who entered the program in third through eighth grade.”

Specifically, MPCP students who were in ninth grade in 2006 were 6 percentage points more likely than their MPS peers to enroll in a four-year college—46 percent versus 40 percent. MPCP students who were in third through eighth grades were 4 percentage points more likely to enroll in a four-year college, and 3 percentage points more likely to graduate (all effects statistically significant).

These results contribute to what the authors call “a growing body of evaluation results indicating that private school voucher programs positively affect student educational attainment.” They point in particular to a Florida program, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, the effects of which on graduation are “nearly identical.”

“The collective evidence in this paper indicates that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program tend to have higher levels of educational attainment than a carefully matched comparison group of Milwaukee Public School students,” the authors conclude. “The MPCP students are more likely to enroll, persist, and experience more total years in a four-year college.”

Obviously the children using the vouchers to attend private schools are getting a better education than the students in public schools. I would guess that children involved in the voucher program also have a higher level of parental involvement–one of the keys to success for students. The children involved in the voucher program probably also know that there may be penalties for not doing the work required. I suspect that discipline in the private schools is probably more prevalent than in public schools. Our public schools have become places where children are not held to an academic or behavior standard. The success of the children in the voucher programs is an indication of problems in our public schools.

How Is The Money We Spend On Education Actually Spent?

Last week Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial explaining how the proposed tax bill might impact educational spending.

The editorial included the following chart:

As you can see from the chart, the number of administrators in education has risen much faster than the number of teachers and students, while test scores have remained essentially the same. It is definitely time that we examined our priorities in education spending,

The editorial also points out how the tax bill under consideration might impact education spending:

The National Education Association blasted the GOP tax reform plan saying that eliminating the state and local tax deduction for those who itemize taxes would be a severe blow to schools, putting 250,000 education jobs at risk.

“It would,” says NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia, “jeopardize the ability of state and local governments to fund public education. That will translate into cuts to public schools, lost jobs to educators, overcrowded classrooms that deprive students of one-on-one attention, and threaten public education.”

There are other provisions in the tax bill that might worry teachers’ unions, such as letting parents use 529 college savings plans to pay for elementary and secondary school costs. That would help make private schools more affordable — a small step toward encouraging school choice.

But it’s the so-called SALT deduction that has the unions up in arms. Why? Because getting rid of it might force high-tax states — which benefit the most from the deduction — to cut taxes and rein in their own spending.

Of course, that’s pure speculation on the NEA’s part. States won’t be obligated to change anything if the SALT deduction goes away.

I think we need to understand that the Trump Administration is generally a goal-oriented group and sometimes their goals are very subtle. The Secretary of Education is a proponent of school choice, and it seems as if the tax proposals might also encourage school choice. The public schools are not doing their job of educating our children, and parents are becoming more willing to find alternative solutions. The amount of children being home-schooled has rapidly increased in recent years. Part of this is due to the fact that test scores have not improved, and part of this is due to the fact that the schools are teaching children values that in many cases contradict the values of their parents.

It would probably be a really good idea to take a look at where our education dollars are being spent. Somehow our students managed to learn more before there was a federal Department of Education.

 

The Key To Racial Equality Is Equal Education For All Children

One of the major keys to racial equality is to make sure that children of all races have access to a good education. Because of the makeup of most of our major cities, the only way to achieve that is through vouchers and school choice. Most Republicans have been encouraging these programs for years. Unfortunately, because of their relationship to the Teachers’ Unions, the Democrats have worked very hard to oppose both vouchers and school choice.

Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line detailing the latest battle on the school choice front. The source for the Power Line article is a Fox News story from yesterday.

One of the unexpected consequences of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans was the birth of a new school system. Many failing schools were replaced by Charter Schools and other schools that were not failing. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has worked very hard to provide children in New Orleans a good alternative to the failing city public schools. However, the Justice Department is blocking his efforts.

Fox News reports:

The Justice Department is trying to stop a school vouchers program in Louisiana that attempts to help families send their children to independent schools instead of under-performing public schools.

The agency wants to stop the program, led by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, in any school district that remains under a desegregation court order.

In papers filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, the agency said Louisiana distributed vouchers in 2012-13 to roughly 570 public school students in districts that are still under such orders and that “many of those vouchers impeded the desegregation process.”

The federal government argues that allowing students to attend independent schools under the voucher system could create a racial imbalance in public school systems protected by desegregation orders.

John Hinderaker at Power Line states:

This Louisiana case is typical: Holder wants to keep the archaic residue of the civil rights movement alive forever, as a club with which to beat the Southern states, and as a means of screwing African-Americans. After all, if blacks can’t escape from terrible schools, their employment prospects will be lousy. They likely will be welfare-dependent, and therefore reliable Democratic voters for decades to come. That is, as best one can infer it from the facts, the calculation that Obama and Holder have made.

Eric Holder’s Justice Department is a disgrace. They have become totally political. I would suggest that Eric Holder be replaced, except that I think President Obama would simply find someone equally bad.

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Why Elections Matter

The Chippewa Herald reported on Sunday that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has signed a $70 billion, two-year state budget.

The article reports:

The budget approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature includes all Walker’s priorities, including a $650 million income tax cut, expansion of private school vouchers and changes to the state’s Medicaid and food stamp programs.

…Walker made 57 changes to the budget using a veto power that allows him to cut words from sentences to change their meaning and remove individual digits to create new numbers. His two most significant vetoes eliminated provisions creating a bounty hunter program and kicking an investigative journalism center off the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

I live in Massachusetts, where our taxes are going up and the gasoline tax is going to be indexed to inflation so it can be automatically raised without the Democrats who control the state having to take responsibility for the tax increase. Massachusetts has some of the best schools in the country and obviously some of the least educated voters. I don’t know anything about schools in Wisconsin, but obviously their voters are pretty smart.

 

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