Tag Archives: AOC

Feb 15 2020

The School Funding Inequity Farce


By James D. Agresti
November 25, 2019

Leading presidential candidates and major media outlets are claiming that school districts with high concentrations of minorities and poor children generally receive less funding per student than other districts. That hasn’t been true for at least half a century, but people are spreading this myth through deceptive studies that exclude federal funds.

In reality, a broad range of credible studies that include all funding sources show that such school districts are as well-financed as others.

The Claims

According to Democrat presidential hopeful and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, “our current approach to school funding at the federal, state, and local level underfunds our schools and results in many students from low-income backgrounds receiving less funding than other students on a per-student basis.”

Along the same lines:

  • Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times reported in early 2019 that “on average, nonwhite districts received about $2,200 less per student than districts that were predominantly white….”
  • Maria Danilova of the Associated Press (AP) reported in 2018 that “the highest-poverty” school districts “receive an average of $1,200 less per child than the least-poor districts, while districts serving the largest numbers of minority students get about $2,000 less than those serving the fewest students of color….”
  • Democrat presidential contender and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders claims that “less is invested in the education of children from low-income families compared with their more affluent peers” because “school districts are funded out of local property taxes.”
  • Clare Lombardo of National Public Radio (NPR) reported in 2019 that “high-poverty districts serving mostly students of color receive about $1,600 less per student than the national average.”

With the exception of Sanders—who provides no evidence to support his claim—all of the others misrepresent their sources by failing to reveal that they ignore federal funds. Moreover, their sources obscure this fact in the following ways:

  • Warren cites a study by the Education Law Center, which refers to federal funding on page 2 but then never accounts for any of it. Instead, the study mentions on page 5 that it uses “actual state and local revenues” for its analysis.
  • The New York Times and NPR cite a report from EdBuild, which doesn’t say a word about the exclusion of federal revenues. Instead, it tacitly slips this into a separate webpage of “research methods“ that references “revenues from state and local sources” while ignoring federal revenues except when subtracting out charter school funding.
  • The AP cites a report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that repeatedly mentions federal funding, but when it presents the $1,200 and $2,000 underfunding figures quoted by the AP, it cites a study from the Education Trust that explicitly excludes “federal sources.” The Commission on Civil Rights doesn’t even allude to this fact—and to discover it, readers must go to the footnote and then locate the study from a citation with an unclickable link.

In short, these politicians and journalists never hint that their statistics exclude federal funds, and the sources they appeal to bury this crucial caveat. This ensures that only diligent readers with time to investigate will learn the truth.

Moreover, those who propagate this falsehood often call for more federal funds to fix this contrived disparity. But since they ignore federal funding, their proposals to increase it will not change the statistics they present.

Warren’s K–12 education plan, for instance, makes the false claim quoted above and then calls for “quadrupling Title I funding—an additional $450 billion over the next 10 years—to help ensure that all children get a high-quality public education.” Title I is the largest source of federal K–12 education funding, but because Warren doesn’t count this money in her statistics, her plan won’t affect her own measure of school funding.

The Reality

Wide-ranging studies that include all education funding—like those conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (1996), Ph.D. economist Derek Neal (2006), the left-leaning Urban Institute (2008), and the conservative Heritage Foundation (2011)—have all found that school districts with higher portions of minority students spend about the same amount per student as districts with smaller portions of minorities.

The Urban Institute study, which looks the furthest back in time, found that “differences in spending per pupil in districts serving nonwhite and white students are very small” since at least 1972.

Likewise, a study published by the journal Education Next in 2017 found that “per-student K–12 education funding from all sources (local, state, and federal) is similar, on average, at the districts attended by poor students ($12,961) and non-poor students ($12,640), a difference of 2.5 percent in favor of poor students.” The study also found that “this difference has not changed much since 1994–95,” the earliest data in the study.

Within school districts, research published by the Brookings Institution in 2017 found that “on average, poor and minority students receive between 1-2 percent more resources than non-poor or white students in their districts, equivalent to about $65 per pupil.”

The Property Tax Charade

Warren alleges that “school systems rely heavily on local property taxes, shortchanging students in low-income areas.” This was previously the case, but it hasn’t been so for decades. As explained by the Urban Institute:

In the past, because public schools were funded largely by local property taxes, property-rich and -poor school districts differed greatly in expenditures per pupil. Since the early 1970s, however, state legislatures have, on their own initiative or at the behest of state courts, implemented school finance equalization programs to reduce the disparity in within-state education spending.

Consequently, data from the U.S. Department of Education show that local revenues have declined from 83% of all school funding in 1920 to 45% in 2016:

Furthermore, the chart above only shows national averages. These don’t reveal the fact that school districts in low-income areas typically receive greater portions of their budgets from state and federal funds. For example, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2011 that some school districts receive no federal Title I education funding, while others receive as much as 36% of their budget from it.

Along with increasing shares of school funding paid by state and federal taxpayers, the inflation-adjusted average spending per student grew by 22 times in the same era:

False Justifications

Some people openly argue that federal funding should be ignored when comparing schools, because this money is meant to help disadvantaged students. However, federal law is at odds with such logic.

The Education Trust, for example, writes that it excludes such funds from its analysis because “federal dollars are intended—and targeted—to provide supplemental services to such specific groups of students as those in poverty, English learners, and students with disabilities.”

In accord with that view, the Obama administration published an issue paper stating that federal education funding “is intended to provide the extra help low-income students need to succeed, but it cannot do that if state and local funds are not evenly distributed to start with.” The administration also drafted regulations to impose this requirement on school districts.

In contrast, the applicable federal law explicitly states that “nothing in this subchapter shall be construed to mandate equalized spending per pupil for a state, local educational agency, or school.” Thus, the Congressional Research Service determined that the Obama administration’s proposed regulations “appear to directly conflict” with the law.

Federal law does require that states and localities not reduce their funding to schools when they receive federal funds. This provision says that states and localities can only use federal funds “to supplement the funds that would, in the absence of such federal funds, be made available from state and local sources,” “not to supplant such funds.” This does not require that funding be equal before or even after federal funding. It simply requires that states and localities don’t cut other funding just because they receive federal funds.

The law also requires that local school districts provide services that “are at least comparable” to all schools within their district before they receive federal funds. New York City, for example, cannot provide unequal services to schools and then use federal funds to equalize them. To meet this requirement, districts must provide similar staff-to-student ratios, “curriculum materials,” and “instructional supplies” to schools in their district in order to receive federal funds.

Nevertheless, politicians and unions sometimes create funding disparities within local school districts by agreeing to contracts that give senior teachers more pay and discretion to choose the schools where they work. These higher-paid teachers tend to avoid inner-city schools with high rates of crime and student discipline problems, resulting in lower spending-per student in poor neighborhoods. Federal law permits this practice by excluding “staff salary differentials for years of employment” from its compliance provisions.

Conclusion

Regardless of any rationale for excluding federal funds from school funding comparisons, it is deceitful to omit such money without even a hint. Yet, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the Associated Press are doing just that.

Such disinformation is enabled by advocacy groups like EdBuild and the Education Law Center, which publish reports that exclude federal funds while burying this vital fact.

Warren takes the deception even further by leading people to believe that she actually accounts for federal funds. She does this by claiming that “the current investment in Title I—$15.8 billion—is not nearly enough to make up for state-level funding inequities,” but her supposed evidence for this is a study that excludes all of this money. This provides false grounds to continually demand more from taxpayers and to portray the U.S. education system as systemically racist.

Feb 12 2020

Antifascism, a worthy cause


by Tabitha Korol and Kevin O’Neil

We can all fight for a cause, but “The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

They began as idealists, working to save the French-Jewish army Captain Alfred Dreyfus who’d been falsely accused of conspiring with the Prussian army.  The Dreyfus Affair of the mid-1890s and early 1900s was the impulsion for people to unite in support of the rights of the individual before a military authority that was rightly seen to be draconian and dismissive.  A worthy cause, yet the case divided France into the anti-Dreyfusards, fascist, Jew-hating ultranationalists, and the “Dreyfusards,” the anti-fascists who formed associations and humanitarian consensus to gain his exoneration.                

Today’s anti-fascists, “Antifa,” miss the point if they see themselves as successors to the Dreyfusards.  The latter were inspired by love of the individual, a positive inspiration, whereas Antifa is motivated by negative hatred for the establishment and the abuse of the individual who happens to disagree with them

Defining the term fascism has proven notoriously difficult.  There were German antifascists in the early 1900s who joined the Jewish working class to fight for dignity and better wages, and Italian antifascists who fought against Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party and Hitler’s growing influence.  There were also Spanish antifascists both before and during Spain’s civil war, with writers Orwell and Hemingway among their ranks.

But there are sufficient differences between the various fascist regimes that make it virtually impossible to identify a commonality.  However, most leading scholars agree that all fascists support the violent revolutionary overthrow of the state’s entire government to be replaced with a totalitarian system that diminishes the value of the individual to a mere component of the whole.  Any difference of opinion is seen as fair game to be silenced.

Antifa are a burgeoning collection of discontented militant-leftist groups who, convinced that white supremacism was responsible for chattel slavery and the Holocaust, are allied in their attempt to overthrow “white” western government by any means available, including violence.

British political theorist Roger Griffin, author of “The Nature of Fascism,” wrote, “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is … palingenetic,”  which means that a “rebirth” would follow the demolition of the existing political order.  By this scholarly definition, Antifa’s own methods and goals fulfill the criteria – not of anti-fascism – but of Fascism!

After interviewing 61 current members in 17 countries, Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” asserts that militant antifascism is a “reasonable, historically informed response to the fascist threat that persisted” after World War II and into recent years. They argue that every fascist or white-supremacist group has the potential of being the start of Mussolini’s original hundred or Hitler’s first fifty-four members of the German Workers’ Party.  Hence, they believe they have a righteous obligation to stop what they regard as fascist “violence, incivility, discrimination, and speeches that stimulate further white supremacy, oppression and genocide.”

      And fascism, real fascism, must be opposed.  Edmund Burke’s statement was never more apposite, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

In “The View from My Window:  The Ethics of Using Violence to Fight Fascism,” Elie Wiesel recalled familiar riots while he was watching one play out below his fifth-floor window in Berkeley.  It brought to mind the millions of people who fought fascism throughout Europe and he suitably wondered at what point resistance to fascism may be justifiable.

A very sobering question!  And whatever the “point” is at which action is justified, one thing is certain: we must be able to define fascism and be convinced that the group we oppose is truly fascistic.

Not only had Wiesel witnessed real fascism at work, but had suffered from it, and lost both parents and a sister to the Nazis.  He recalled the brave month-long resistance of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto when the Nazis came to liquidate it, April 19, 1943.   Move than fifty-six thousand Jews were killed, very few escaping.  This is the face of real fascism.

America is not Warsaw; neither is it remotely similar.  We are not ruled by an authoritarian power, and our laws are not for the subjugation of the individual but for his/her protection.  Antifa must ask themselves if they are even capable of actually recognizing true Fascism.

Columnist Mark Thiessen wrote in The Washington Times (6.30.17) that Antifa was the “moral equivalent of neo-Nazis.”  The statement may or may not be prescient, but it will not be the first time in history that a movement that began as an ideological liberator abandoned reason and descended into violence and incoherent rage.  In the famous words of Goya, “The sleep of reason produces monsters.”

If Antifa truly aspire to being worthy successors to the antifascist groups of history, they must urgently learn the meaning and methods of fascism and be prepared to come to some very disturbing conclusions.

abitha Korol

https://tinyurl.com/y7e6z63d

 

Feb 11 2020

Immoral Choice? Study Shows Fetus Feels Abortion Pain Earlier Than 24 Weeks


152K subscribers

The Patriot Post is America’s News Digest. Find out why: http://bit.ly/2RztXJh —— A Journal of Medical Ethics study, written by a consultant to Planned Parenthood, now says that a fetus in the womb can experience pain much earlier than 24 weeks of gestation — as early as 13 weeks. Does this change the moral calculation of the pro-choice message, and third-trimester abortion? Here’s a link to the article Scott Ott mentions, by Amy Hall at Stand to Reason: http://bit.ly/FetalPain Bill Whittle Now with Scott Ott is a production of our Members. Join them today https://BillWhittle.com/register/
Feb 10 2020

Berning Academia and the Warren College Education: Loans Forgiven via Transgender Kids


152K subscribers

If we elect as president either Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, they promise to forgive almost all student loan debt, a move guaranteed to make college unaffordable, . Warren takes her brilliant education policy a step further by promising to allow a 9-year-old transgender student to vet her nominees for Secretary of Education. Right Angle — with Scott Ott, Bill Whittle and Stephen Green — is a production of our Members, who enjoy backstage content, the power to post to our Member blog, a vibrant comments system, Member directory and private messaging. Join us today, and find your people at https://BillWhittle.com/register If you’d like to get to know the hosts of Right Angle up close and personal, come with us on a Caribbean cruise May 15-18, sailing from the port of Miami to the Bahamas. We’ll stage live versions of our shows, engage in lots of Q&A and casual conversation over meals and drinks, among the Members and fans. Learn more and book your cruise today [TIME IS ALMOST UP TO REGISTER] at http://bit.ly/StratoCruise2020 Listen to audio versions of our shows on your favorite podcast app: http://bit.ly/BWN-Podcasts Tell Alexa: “Play Bill Whittle Network on TuneIn Radio” Watch us on Amazon’s Fire TV: https://amzn.to/2Pa1mI3
Jan 29 2020

The Danger of an Idea – Just Change the Label to Environmentalism


Armstrong Economics Blog/Economics

Re-Posted Jan 29, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: The totalitarian need for and use of the new idea.
First, after the French Revolution, the idea was Marxism . which led to Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Neocons and so many totalitarians.
Today, Marxism is sort of worn down a bit, and suspected, so the new necessary idea is environmentalism, in celebration of which; the hoi polloi will vote themselves into chains.
The idea conquers all logic. So, conclusion—– climate change never happened before.

DC

REPLY: I find it curious how this idea of taking other people’s assets is one of the prohibitions in the Ten Commandments, meaning that it is a very old idea that keeps resurfacing. You are correct, it is always the same solution. When it is discredited like Marxism, then change the label and call it “socialism” to oppress others. When that becomes old, they call it “progressivism.”

Even Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican, began his Progressive Party based on Marxism without ever using the label. We now have Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders calling themselves “Progressives” trying to avoid the word “Socialist” with the same platform.

Once again, they change the label but the solution remains the same — seize private property because the government should run everything, and use regulation to oppress the behavior of people to destroy the Industrial Revolution and send everyone back to a commune style life.

 

Jan 27 2020

Religious & Climate Change DRAFT


Armstrong Economics Blog
Re-Posted Jan 27, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Good morning Mr. Armstrong!

Thanks for always opening our eyes! Could you please explain to me what natural phenomenon of cataclysmic proportions could alter the world and even change religion and who and how would they benefit today? What role should universities play in this scenario? What and how should we teach in classrooms to prepare our students so they can face this future?
Regards!
CB
Professor … University

ANSWER: That is a very interesting question. Historically, religion seems to go through changes that are driven by economics. However, in many instances, economics has been driven itself by often climate change that has resulted in mass migrations.

There were two major climate change periods which drove the populations from the north to invade the south. The first was the Sea People who invaded moving from Europe south into northern Africa. That was the collapse of the Bronze Age. Virtually every civilization collapsed with the exception of Egypt. The next major mass migration was the invasion of the northern tribes into the Roman Empire.

Even the migration from Europe to the United States in mass took place during the Little Ice Age. Remember, there were no income taxes. The tax burdens were indirect and property taxes. The weather, however, was very cold. Most likely the combination sent many to flee to the United States.

The Great Irish Potato famine began in 1845 and had a severe social impact for some six years which sent waves of Irish migrating to America. Ironically, those who keep claiming that the population will run out of food using the theory of Thomas Malthus, miss the entire point of what motivated him behind coming up with that theory – it was climate change and the Little Ice Age – not global warming. The environmental dangers behind Malthus and his six essays on population were published between 1798 and 1826. This was the Little Ice Age.

If we look at the fall of Rome, historians have reached a consensus that the line is drawn with the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180AD. He is followed by his son, Commodus, who is so ruthless that he was assassinated on December 31, 192AD which unleashed civil war in Rome. The Praetorian Guards were so corrupt, they put the office of Emperor up for the highest bidder after assassinating Commodus.

While the victor was Septimus Severus who began the Severan Dynasty, a member of that line was Elagabalus (218-222AD) who important his god from Syria and compelled the people to worship a black meteorite he claimed was the stone from god. He issued coins displaying the meteorite in a chariot he would parade around the city. He was assassinated in 222AD and his body was dragged through the streets.

So religion has often played a key role in events caused by economics driven often by climate change.

Jan 26 2020

The Climate Change – Al Gore & Jennifer Morgan’s Fraud


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Jan 25, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

All of the data that these climate activists have been using is an absolute fraud. It is untrue that 97% of scientists agree to any of this nonsense. They create that myth to then bully scientists who dare disagree with their agenda.

This is actually criminal behavior and the agenda is Marxism behind the entire plot. They use children like Greta and then Jennifer Morgan proclaimed at Davos that Greta is a climate expert, which is really just absurd at the age of 16.

Nobody will dare even question the climate change activists. They are NEVER asked to prove anything they have to say. They are NEVER asked to even produce a list of scientists who can be verified who have agreed with this catastrophic doom. Exploiting a 16-year-old girl so no one will publicly challenge her because of her age is all part of the scheme.

To argue global warming is dangerous is absurd. Just ask yourself: When is the flu season? Summer or Winter? Claiming this is all human-induced is a major fraud in and of itself when measuring the warming coming out of the Little Ice Age. It certainly appears that this is part of the economic decline of Europe that is underway. Then we have economists like Rogoff arguing to tax the West to hand the money to China. That is just an example as to why the West is declining and our computer will be correct — China is emerging as the next Financial Capital of the World. American politics has entered its Dark Age and its inevitable collapse.

 

Jan 25 2020

97% Scientists Do Not Agree with Climate Change or the Solution


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Jan 23, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

In 2009, the University of Illinois sent a survey online to about 10,000 scientists with the following two questions:

QUESTION #1

Do you agree that global temperatures have generally risen since the pre-1800s?

QUESTION #2
Do you think that human activity is a significant contributing factor?

Only 3146 responses were received of 10,000, and of that 31%, 90% said yes to the first question but 82% said yes to the second question.

This is how the fraud was carried out by people who have used this survey. They narrowed down the responses and found that among Meteorologists who responded, only 64% said yes to the second question, so about 1/3 said NO!

Then disregarding all the others of the 3146 responses, they focused on only 77 who described themselves as “climate experts” without any proof of their credentials and found that only 75 said yes to the second question.

Therefore, when we divide 75/77 we get to their claim of  97% of all scientists in the world say there is a climate emergency that warrants raising taxes and seizing property.

This was only 2.3% of those who bothered to respond and I doubt that they would agree with the solution which is COMMUNISM!

0.0075%

If we take the 75 responses of 10,000 scientists surveyed, that means that 0.0075% agreed that there is climate change with some human causality. Why are they lying to the entire world? Because behind this movement is the destruction of capitalism and the resurrection of communism. And people wonder why our computer has been forecasting that the financial capital of the world is moving to Asia? Climate Change Activists are trying to recreate the Marxist experiment all over again.

 

Jan 25 2020

Rogoff’s Global Carbon Tax – Give the Money to China


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Jan 23, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; What do you think about Harvard Professor Kenneth Rogoff who advocates a global carbon tax and then takes that money and hand it to China to subsidize them ending coal to generate electricity?

I think he has lost his mind.

HC

ANSWER: This is why major institutions have ZERO respect for academics. They have no concept of the real economy because they have never had to actually roll up their sleeves and deal with a crisis. They have never seen firsthand how capital actually moves. They also see people as an endless source of taxes. Just unbelievable.

Categories: Climate
Jan 25 2020

When You Thought You Hit A Dog


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate

Re-Posted Jan 23, 2020 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: You are wrong as usual. We just had the hottest decade. This is all about fossil fuels. There was never a CO2 problem until fossil fuels.

KJ

ANSWER: This entire climate change is nonsense! The first clean air act was passed by the Emperor Justinian in 535AD. Humans have burned wood long before coal. Perhaps you slept through science class, but burning wood produces CO2. This nonsense that the climate has changed ONLY because of humans and fossil fuels is ridiculous. They used fake data only since 1850, refuse to discuss the climate cycles pre-1850, and they fail to address the fact that we were coming out of the Little Ice Age for 200 years before the invention of automobiles and a 100 years before they invented trains.

Believe what you want to believe, but you are a victim of organized propaganda. You go right ahead and destroy Western society, lose your job, and live without heat or air conditioning. I will move to Asia where this nonsense is being rejected. And by the way, 1934 remains the hottest year on record with 1998 being number two.

There just so happens to be a 43-year cycle. The year 1934 was a major cycle inversion and remains the record high. Then 43 years later, 1977, that was the Deep Freeze where it snowed in Miami and they were talking about climate change back then too turning back to an Ice Age. Again, 43 years later and it is back to the 40s in Miami and there are warnings about falling iguanas because it gets so cold they are still alive but pass out.

You people are taking credit for everything. The Australian fires and California droughts are all because of CO2? I hate to tell you that just because the press only wants to sell newspapers they are willing to print your garbage to get people talking about this nonsense. There have been droughts in California that have lasted more than 200 years! Nobody will address the cyclical evidence pre-1850.

The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Roger Hallam, in his Common Sense for the 21st Century, claims mass disruption, mass arrests, and mass sacrifice are necessary to prevent extinction. He calls for acts of civil disobedience, bypass political theory, and urges people to rise up to a non-violent revolution against society. He calls for the confiscation of private property. Your spokesperson is an outright communist. Nothing he has put forth proves anything. (see Spiegel, November 22, 2019)

So what you are saying is the Little Ice Age should be the norm and all this global warming is entirely because of fossil fuels? Enjoy yourself. Give up your car. Do not heat or air condition your home. If you cannot walk or ride a bike to work, quit! And how dare you use electricity to send me an email. If you want to be a climate activist, then adapt what you are yelling about instead of blaming everyone, of course, except yourself.

Categories: Climate