Subscribing To The Left’s Catechism!

MAY 29, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at PowerLine:

YOU MUST PARTICIPATE, COMRADE!

One of the strange phenomena of our time is the co-opting of sports organizations into the service of leftism. I can’t explain it, but here is another case: the French Football [Soccer] Federation organized a pro-LGBTQ+ demonstration by players who were told to wear “rainbow” jerseys. Most went along, but one–a Senegalese Muslim named Idrissa Gueye–apparently didn’t participate. Natalie Solent at Samizdata has the story; links omitted:

Idrissa Gueye is a Senegalese footballer who plays for his country and for the French side Paris Saint-Germain.

On Sunday 15th May, Paris Saint-Germain played Montpellier. On that day, players in the French Ligue 1 were meant to wear football jerseys with the numbers in LGBT rainbow colours in order to commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia. Unexpectedly, Mr Gueye did not play in that match. So far as I can find out with my limited ability to search news reports in French, he has not said why he sat out the match, but it is widely believed that it was because he felt that it would be incompatible with his religious beliefs to wear a shirt in Pride colours. He is a practising Muslim.

This is the really sinister–one might say Stalinist–part:

Via Paul Embery, I found this quotation from a letter that the FFF (Fédération Française de Football / French Football Federation) sent to Mr Gueye on May 17th:

There are two possibilities, either these allegations are unfounded and we invite you to speak out without delay to silence these rumours. For example, we invite you to accompany your message by a photo of yourself wearing said shirt.

Or the rumours are true. In this case we invite you to realise the impact of your act, and the grave error committed. The fight against discrimination towards different minorities, whoever they might be, is a vital fight for all times. Whether it’s skin colour, religion, sexual orientation, or any other difference, all discrimination is based on the same principle which is rejection of the other because they are different from the majority.

By refusing to take part in this collective operation, you are effectively validating discriminatory behaviour, and rejection of the other, and not just against the LGBTQI+ community. The impact of football on society and the capacity for footballers to be a role model for those who admire them gives us all a particular responsibility.

For the Left, it is not enough that fellow leftists show solidarity in the cause du jour. All must be forced to participate. No one can sit on the sidelines. Why? Because holdouts might stimulate questions from those who wonder whether the Left’s causes are really righteous. That can’t be permitted. Unanimity is required.

Ms. Solent writes:

One does not have to share Mr Gueye’s religious beliefs, or his (probable) opinions on LGBT issues, to see something sinister in this demand that he make a display of loyalty to prove his “innocence” of a charge that he did not participate in what is effectively the visual equivalent of compelled speech.

It certainly is compelled speech, which would be unconstitutional in the U.S. if enforced by government. But the reality is that compelled speech is common in leftist precincts like our universities, government agencies, and, increasingly, big business. It is not enough to sit out leftist campaigns: all must participate, or else. This is a serious threat to freedom of conscience in the U.S. and many Western countries, not only for Muslims but for the majority who, in various ways, don’t subscribe to the Left’s catechism. We can only fight back at the ballot box.

“Our feckless trade policies have led to a potentially disastrous reliance on China!”

MAY 29, 2022 BY JOHN HINDERAKER at PowerLine:

INFANT FORMULA REVISITED

The infant formula shortage is a crisis for many American families, and the end is not in sight. What caused supplies of a staple product to run out? The most thorough explanation I have seen comes from Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. (Numerous links in the original are omitted here.)

Lincicome fingers government as the culprit, with protectionism as villain number one:

U.S. policy has exacerbated the nation’s infant formula problem by depressing potential supply. First, … the United States maintains high tariff barriers to imports of formula from other nations—all part of our government’s longstanding subsidization and protection of the politically powerful U.S. dairy industry. Imports of formula from most places, such as the European Union, are subject to a complex system of “tariff rate quotas,” under which already-high tariffs (usually 17.5 percent, but it depends on the product) increase even further once a certain quantity threshold is hit.

We even restrict imports of formula from most “free trade” (scare quotes intended!) agreement partners, including major dairy producing nations like Canada. In fact, a key provision of the renegotiated NAFTA—the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA)—actually tightened restrictions on Canadian baby formula to ensure that new investments in Ontario production capacity by Chinese company Feihe would never threaten the U.S. market…

Government regulators contributed to the problem:

If tariffs were the only problem here, then high prices in the United States right now might induce alternative supplies from overseas producers looking for new customers and profits. Unfortunately, however, the United States also imposes significant “non-tariff barriers” on all imports of infant formula. Most notable are strict FDA labeling and nutritional standards that any formula producer wishing to sell here must meet. Aspiring manufacturers also must register with the agency at least 90 days in advance and undergo an initial FDA inspection and then annual inspections thereafter. And the FDA maintains a long “Red List” of non-compliant products that are subject to immediate detention upon arriving on our shores. As a result, the FDA routinely issues notices that it has seized “illegal” (e.g., improperly labeled) infant formula from overseas.

The issue is not one of quality or safety. Perfectly good European products are confiscated:

Key here is the European Union, which is the world’s largest producer and exporter of infant formula, especially in the Netherlands, France, Ireland, and Germany. (China, it must be noted, produces a lot of formula but sells almost all of that to its domestic market.) European formula also has been found to meet FDA nutritional requirements, and is in high demand by some American consumers. Yet, when parents here have tried to import European formula, it’s been routinely subject to seizure by the FDA. In fact, formula made by two of the most popular European brands—HiPP and Holle—is on the FDA’s red list and thus only arrives here via unofficial, third party channels.

Unless the FDA gets to it first.

There is much more at the link, including the fact that the federal government buys about half of all U.S. baby formula through the WIC program, which requires sole-source contracts for infant formula. The result has been a highly concentrated industry with little incentive for new entrants:

[A]s the dominant buyer of infant formula in the United States and by demanding below-market contract prices, WIC may discourage additional investments in U.S. capacity or new market entrants. Put simply, nobody had an incentive to break into the U.S. infant formula market—or to boost existing U.S. production—when half of the market is effectively controlled by a single buyer demanding unprofitable prices and compliance with piles of state and federal regulations.

As a conservative, I am pro-free trade. But events of the last few years have convinced me that for security reasons, the U.S. needs to assure a safe–most likely domestic, but probably including, say, Canada, Mexico and a handful of other countries–supply of energy, pharmaceuticals, and critical minerals. Our feckless trade policies have led to a potentially disastrous reliance on China for all three of these product categories. But Lincicome argues that protectionism creates its own security issues:

[T]he infant formula situation is an unfortunate reminder that the trendy economic nationalist policies proposed to make America more “resilient”—tariffs, localization mandates, government contracts, etc.—can actually make us weaker by discouraging global capacity, supplier diversity, and system-wide flexibility. As I’ve said a million times now, reshoring supply chains might insulate us from external supply and demand shocks, but it also can amplify domestic shocks (and reduce overall economic growth and output to boot). We’re seeing that reality play out once again in the highly protected and regulated U.S. dairy market, where domestic production accounts for the vast majority of American consumption. Indeed, infant formula—with its protectionism, regulations, and heavy dose of government direction—is pretty much the poster child for what nationalist “industrial policy” advocates today propose for all sorts of “strategic” industries.

Those points deserve thoughtful consideration. One way of putting it is that if we are going to onshore critical industries, we should make sure that our regulatory agencies don’t screw them up. But how to do that, when the swamp rules?

I am not going to change my view that we are crazy to rely on China and other hostile powers for products and materials that are critical to our survival. But at the same time, globalism and international trade can provide diversity of supply–a good thing, if only to keep our own power-hungry agencies in check.

50 YEARS OF AMERICAN DECAY! (It began at schools and its disappearing MOTHERS!

Progressive policy experiments hurt the people they claim to help

By THE Post Editorial Board

May 28, 2022 4:39pm 

Criminal justice reforms from progressives like Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg only lead to more crime.REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

It’s astonishing how regularly progressive “innovations,” especially in the name of equity, end up doing serious damage to already vulnerable groups. 

Take crime. In New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and elsewhere progressive DA’s and other electeds made sweeping “reforms” these past few years: ditching bail, decriminalizing quality-of-life offenses and hamstringing cops. 

Crime, unsurprisingly, shot up. Here in New York major crimes are up 34.2% over the past year, reversing the trends of a quarter-century. Gun violence is nearly double pre-pandemic levels. In ‘Frisco, murders are up almost 37% from pre-pandemic levels. 

The poor and minorities suffer most. In 2020, 65% of New York murder victims were black, though just 24% of our population is. Blacks and Hispanics were 63% of San Francisco shooting victims, though they combine for only 18% of the population. 

Equity? Bull.

On education, liberal public-school districts across America have been lowering or jettisoning standards entirely because they allegedly shore up white supremacy. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio did his level best to end NYC’s Gifted & Talented program because of black and Hispanic underrepresentation in it. In Virginia, California and elsewhere similar programs were cut entirely or had their entry requirements lowered. Another “reform,” in parts of the city and elsewhere, is to re-engineer admissions to selective middle and high schools to “improve” the racial mix.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to end NYC’s Gifted and Talented programs hurt the Asian American community.

These moves did nothing for the “underrepresented” (unless you count being forced into a school where you’re not prepared to compete). They did, however, severely dent the prospects of another minority group: Asians.

How does that advance diversity and inclusion? 

Add to that disastrous COVID school closures — demanded by the same crowd that wants to kill calculus and Shakespeare. Data shows only 37% of black 1st graders nationwide are on track to hit literacy benchmarks this school year, a massive drop from 51% in 2019. For Hispanics it’s 42%, down from 54%. 

And on literacy, progressives have long sacrificed kids to ideology. Witness their decades-long war on phonics, which ensured that generations of kids failed to learn how to read well (or at all). Guess who was most affected?

Indeed, COVID itself was the perfect larger opportunity for progressives to test-run more new and terrible policies, like lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates.

School closures during the COVID-19 pandemic set students back.

The results broke the exact same way. Poorer, less-white communities in cities around the country bore the brunt. National black unemployment skyrocketed from its historic low in 2019 and has not yet healed; the Hispanic/white employment gap also hit historic levels.  (These aggressive measures did nothing to improve our COVID outcomes, by the way.)

For some of these innovations, time is running out. San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin faces a likely recall; LA’s soft-on-crime George Gascón faces a second recall vote. Manhattan’s own Alvin Bragg has walked back some of his worst policies, and the next governor may well remove him for refusing to do his job. Seattle’s Ann Davison is trying to undo the harm her predecessor caused.24

What do you think? Post a comment.

Woke school-board members got the boot in San Francisco. NYC mayor Eric Adams is refusing to give into COVID alarmism and rebuilding the G&T program. Anti-phonics guru Lucy Calkins of Columbia Teachers College recently recanted her idiotic theories in the face of overwhelming evidence of how much damage they’d done.

And that’s all to the good. 

But why are the people who suffer the most in these experiments always the same groups the left claims it wants to help?

The Decay of America’s Schools Began Its Rot IN THE LATE 1960s! THE DEM NATION OBLIGED!

Texas Becomes 23rd State To Exit National School Boards Association  

BY: CHUCK DEVORE

MAY 27, 2022

by CHUCK DEVORE at the Federalist:

The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) finally left the National School Boards Association (NSBA), the 23rd state to do so. The exit happened hours after news broke that the NSBA had planned to request that the Biden administration invoke the Insurrection Act to federalize Army National Guard troops and deploy them to intimidate parents trying to exercise their First Amendment right to petition redress of grievances at school board meetings.

The NSBA didn’t cite the Insurrection Act in its draft request for National Guard troops to Attorney General Merrick Garland, but that act is the only legal option for a president to take command of a state’s National Guard to restore public order.

That Texas’s NSBA affiliate would be among the last to sever ties with the organization might seem counterintuitive to a non-Texan. But Texas school boards, as in much of the nation, skew left of the general population.

TASB’s tardy exit was likely hastened by election results on May 7, when conservatives won dozens of school board races against pro-mask incumbents who denied that explicit material is in libraries, as well as the existence of lesson plans based on critical race theory. The most high-profile loss for TASB was by Jim Rice, TASB’s immediate past president and a 12-year veteran of the Fort Bend Independent School District.

Left Seeks to Stifle Dissent with Force

The latest revelation from NSBA’s efforts to bring in the federal government for school board meetings betrays a troubling and dangerous trend of the left seeking to stifle peaceful dissent with the power of government or threats of violence.

In NSBA’s case, the letter they did send to the Biden administration on Sept. 29 of last year claimed that heated public comments at school board meetings amounted to “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials.” They also claimed this was sufficiently “heinous” as to be “a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes” subject to enforcement under the Patriot Act or other laws.  

Less than a week later, the NSBA letter sparked an order by Attorney General Merrick Garland detailing the FBI to investigate alleged threats against school boards — diverting agents from more important work, such as stopping mass murderers.

No Parallel to Ike Calling Up Guard After Brown

Some on the left may see the call for military intervention at school board meetings as analogous to Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s invocation of the Insurrection Act in 1957 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that racially segregated schools were “inherently unequal” in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education.

But the circumstances couldn’t be more different. In 1957, as nine black students enrolled at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, the Democratic governor there, Orval Faubus, called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the students from attending school.

Eisenhower countered, issuing Executive Order 10730. In the justification section of the order, Eisenhower noted that “certain persons in the state of Arkansas, individually and in unlawful assemblages, combinations, and conspiracies, have willfully obstructed the enforcement of (court) orders… (and this) obstruction of justice hinders the execution of the laws of that State and of the United States, and makes it impracticable to enforce such laws by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings; and… such obstruction of justice constitutes a denial of the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution of the United States and impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

In this, Eisenhower was harkening back to the early days of Reconstruction after the Insurrection Act, passed in 1807, was amended to contend with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and more formal state and local government efforts aimed at denying the full exercise of rights to recently freed slaves. Not only did Eisenhower send in active-duty troops, he also federalized the Arkansas National Guard, removing them from Faubus’s command, since they were being used to thwart rule of law.

Parents Respond

In an interview, Christopher Zook, president of Texans for Educational Freedom, a PAC backing conservatives in school board races in Texas, commented, “When a national organization like NSBA labeled parents as domestic terrorists, they revealed their true intent. NSBA took the first shot, and parents responded.”

Noting the electoral victories for conservative school board candidates, Zook said, “The biggest mistake any person can make is to get between a momma (and poppa) and her cubs, and that is exactly what NSBA did. These recent school board elections continue to show that parents will not stand for radical indoctrination in our classrooms.”

James Quintero, a policy director with the Texas Public Policy Foundation (where I also work), told me that, “On the ground, school boards are engaged in all sorts of bad behavior, like demanding staff vote for bonds and threatening consequences if they don’t, and spreading disinformation related to new debt and tax rates. At the legislature, special interest groups, like TASB, go all out to defeat conservative attempts to stop these practices with legislation.”

According to IRS filings, TASB brought in $78.3 million in revenue in 2020, virtually all of it from taxpayers in the form of payments from school districts. James Crow, TASB’s executive director, pulled down $1.1 million in 2019 (a legislative session year) and $448,418 in 2020. TASB had 10 employees making $250,000 or more in 2020.

By pulling out of its national affiliate, NSBA, TASB likely believes that its member boards across Texas will be less inclined to leave TASB, thus preserving millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded fee revenue. Even so, TASB’s considerable clout in the Texas legislature will take a hit in the upcoming 2023 legislative session, especially as several teachers’ union-backed Republican candidates lost their runoff elections on May 24 to more conservative challengers.

Analyzing the runoffs, Zook said, “This week’s elections go to show Texans want a more conservative legislature. People do not want radical indoctrination in our schools, and TASB has now come to the realization they lost some allies to more conservative challengers. TASB is finally coming to terms that they cannot get away with their radical policies any longer…their actions have consequences.”

NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE!

O Come, All Ye Faithful!

“Battle Hymn of the Republic”

 

WILL OUR AMERICA EVER BE BEAUTIFUL AGAIN?

HAVE FAITH, OH YOU FAITHFUL!