The Role Of The President

On Wednesday, Jazz Shaw Hot Air posted an article with the following headline?

Is Biden Out of the Loop on Israel-Hamas Negotiations?

The article then goes on to explain why Jazz Shaw is asking this question:

You’ve probably seen the breathless headlines emerging this week featuring Joe Biden suggesting that a ceasefire deal in Gaza was “close” to being finalized and that at least some hostages and prisoners could be exchanged. Most of us would likely be glad to see hostages coming home, so that’s good news, right? And Biden assured us that he’d gotten that information from National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, so the claim must have been pretty solid. There’s only one problem with the story and the assumptions that followed, though. As the Free Beacon quickly pointed out, some reporters had been following up with their sources in Israel and around the Middle East where the major players are involved. None of them seemed to have any idea what Biden was talking about. 

Anyone who has paid attention for the past eighteen plus years understands why a cease fire and a two-state solution are both bad ideas. What assurance has HAMAS given that the hostages are still alive and what has HAMAS done to indicate it is willing to release them? A cease fire would only give Hamas a chance to regroup and rearm, and a two-state solution would create another terror base for Islamist extremists. It has become very obvious since October 7th and Israel’s response that almost all of the ‘humanitarian aid’ sent to Gaza since 2005 has been used to build tunnels and acquire weapons. Why would we give the residents of Gaza a chance to do that again? Many have already stated that they want to repeat the actions of October 7th. Why would we encourage or allow that? Until hate is not taught in Gaza schools and UNRWA camps (see kindergarten graduation picture here), a two-state solution will never result in peace.

The article at Hot Air concludes:

I have seen some conservative commentators previously asking why the United States isn’t assuming its traditional role as a peacemaker and shepherding these negotiations through to the finish line. But does anyone really want Joe Biden at that table at this point? The two sides are at an impasse and have been for a while now. Israel isn’t going to accept a deal that hurts their interests, fails to release all of the hostages, or prevents them from eliminating Hamas. Hamas won’t give up what they see as the last bit of insurance they have against complete obliteration. 

Negotiating this situation would have been a serious challenge for Henry Kissinger on his best day. And Joe Biden couldn’t have matched Kissinger’s skills on his best day, which has long since faded in the rearview mirror. But the fact that he keeps coming out and saying things like this, leaving the media scrambling to either verify it or explain what went wrong is a problem. The world is a powderkeg at the moment and the person potentially in control of the fuse no longer has the cognitive abilities to be trusted with a pack of matches.

Are Colleges Living Up To The Principles They Were Founded On?

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff posted an article at Power Line Blog about the recent virtual graduation at WSU Tech, an affiliate of Wichita State University. Ivanka Trump was scheduled to speak at the school’s virtual commencement.

The article reports:

Some students, faculty members, and alums objected.

WSU’s president responded as college presidents do. She decided that Ivanka would not speak at the virtual ceremony. Instead, her address would be available online.

Ivanka posted it on Twitter. She included a reference to the “cancel culture,” of which WSU’s actions are an example.

The article details the rest of the story:

The Kansas Board of Regents called an emergency meeting and went into “executive session.” After the meeting, the board issued a statement expressing support for free speech, diversity, and inclusion.

It decided not to fire WSU’s president, notwithstanding her obvious lack of commitment to these values. In turn, she issued a statement giving lip service to them.

I suspect that this “resolution” will satisfy Wichita State’s donors. Whether it should is another question.

At this point in the descent of nearly all American colleges and universities, I wonder why any conservative would donate a penny to almost any of these institutions. Such donations subsidize the indoctrination of students by those who dislike conservatives and despise our values. The effects of this leftist indoctrination are there for all to see. In my view, they are undermining America.

We conservatives should do our best to “defund” the nation’s colleges and universities until such time as they demonstrate a true commitment to free speech and viewpoint diversity, and cease the systematic leftist indoctrination of students.

Not only should conservatives ‘defund’ the colleges that are limiting free speech–we should refuse to send our children there.

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.

Sometimes The World Is Just Upside Down

I am a grandmother to nine grandchildren. Some of them are directly related to me, some married into the family. They are all great kids and their parents are working hard to educate them and help them become worthwhile members of society. None of their parents are wealthy, but all of them are hard-working and care about their children’s education. Some have been saving since their children were born, and some have not been so frugal. Hopefully, all of these grandchildren will find a way to get the education they need to get the jobs they want. Meanwhile, not everyone struggles to put an education and a life together. I’m fine with that, but sometimes benefits are taken from those who deserve them and given to people who are simply not legally entitled to them.

Investor’s Business Daily posted an article yesterday about a recent graduate of the University of California San Diego. Indira Esparza, an illegal alien, who waved the Mexican flag at her graduation. So why do I have a problem with this?

The article explains some of Ms. Esparza’s background:

First, she won a coveted place at UCSD’s cushy La Jolla-based Preuss charter school, displacing a legal resident in an elite, taxpayer-funded school. After that, she was showered with resources for illegals.

“She received a scholarship from the Patricia and Christopher Weil Family Foundation to help support her undergraduate studies at U.C. San Diego,” the UCSD public relations website reads. Still better, she got $10,000 cash from the Chancellor’s Associate Scholars program launched in 2013.

“The program essentially provides a full-ride and loan-free UC San Diego financial aid package to eligible students from several underserved high schools,” UCSD said.

Esparza called it “ridiculously awesome” in a 2013 interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune. “I don’t have to worry so much about my finances. I always have money for books. I have money to buy my parking pass. I have gas money.”

Unusual? Not really. Just this month, Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg donated $5 million for college tuition for 400 illegals through the TheDream.US foundation.

She may be totally deserving of every honor in the book, but because of the benefits she received as an illegal alien, a child who is in this country legally was denied those benefits. I wouldn’t have cared if those benefits went to a non-American child as long as the child receiving the benefits was in America legally. Our first priority in giving aid to students in America should be to students who are here legally. Ms. Esparza came here (or may have been brought here as a chld) illegally and has now chosen to throw the Mexican flag in the faces of the people who provided for her education. How rude. Let’s help American children get an education before we spend millions of dollars on benefits for people who are not legally entitled to them.

 

What Are We Telling Our Graduates?

Heritage.org posted an article today about the difference in numbers between conservative and liberal graduation speakers. They also looked at the statistics on Democrat and Republican speakers.

The article reports:

Democratic governors set to speak outnumber Republican ones by a ratio of 11-6, reports Campus Reform’s editor in chief, Caleb Bonham, while Democratic senators overshadow Republican  senators by a 9-4 ratio.

The most heavily weighted group of invited speakers? Liberal political appointees and operatives are 21-5 over conservative counterparts.

…“The bullies’ vision of America is alarming to behold, with the values of peaceful coexistence turned on their head,” Jennifer A. Marshall, director of domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, wrote recently for The Foundry in a piece about the growing intolerance of the Left.”

What is the message that we are sending our young adults?

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Teach Your Children Well…

John HInderaker at Power Line posted a story yesterday about a kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza. The article includes a number of photos from the graduation. Below are two of the photos:

kindergartengraduation

kindergartengraduation2

The photos include children depicting a Palestinian being tortured by an Israeli soldier. Also included in the graduation are coffins. The United Nations should condemn this as child abuse. I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

 

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