Balancing humor with tragedy.
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Interesting that Obama made comments about the basket ball flare up from Maylasia but he has said nothing about his Secretary of State's outrageous comment about Israel. I guess basketball is more critical than a democratic ally.
And then today's release of the e mail regarding how the Obama Administration manipulated the news about Benghazi just means one more Obama lie and those around him.What difference does it make?
In my last memo I mentioned the article coming out in The New Yorker but I also forgot to mention that the author said al Qaeda, that terrorist organization that no longer existed according to our hapless president, was now in control of large areas of Iraq. Areas that American troops captured after losing over 1000.
He also acknowledged that Bush's 'surge' was effective and brought a strong sense of peace and quiet because it had truly crushed the opposition.
Of course Obama unwound all of this when he pulled out because Bush was his current Pinata and whipping boy for political gain.
Well Obama's polls are now continuing to plummet and his trustworthiness is also sinking. (See 1, 1a ,1b and 1c below.)
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Playing tennis Saturday for first time in nearly two years then leaving for Atlanta and off to Italy on Tuesday.
No more memos until first week in June.
Those who read them have a long respite. Stay informed and well.
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Liberal hypocrisy on education just moves along like a polluted river. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Dick
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1) Hamas Decision Overshadows Kerry’s Slur
By Jonathan S. Tobin
Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology for his use of the word apartheid to describe Israel’s future in the absence of peace has done nothing to lessen the impact of this slur. The secretary’s attempt to walk back his remarks was long on umbrage about anyone questioning his dubious pro-Israel bona fides and short on actual contrition. The aftermath of a taped speech in which he uses a misleading attempt to cast blame for the failure of his peace initiative equally between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is not the most appropriate moment to boast of his commitment to the Jewish state, especially when he has damned it as heading inevitably to racist tyranny if it doesn’t do as he says.
But though the Daily Beast’s scoop about Kerry’s speech to the Trilateral Commission has put the administration on the defensive for the moment, the statement has served the purpose of Israel’s critics since it has given them the opportunity to defend his assertion even as the secretary distanced himself from it. The notion that what he said is an unpalatable truth has become a piece of liberal conventional wisdom even though its premise is demographically dubious and rendered nonsensical when one considers that unless one includes the population of Gaza—which is already an independent Palestinian state in all but name—the day will probably never dawn when Arabs outnumber Jews in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Israel not only, as Kerry conceded in his apology, is not now and has no intention of ever becoming an apartheid state. The entire discussion is specious and tells us more about the effort to delegitimize the Jewish state than it does about Israel’s character. The real damage here is that Kerry has breathed new life into an old canard that neither facts nor logic seems to have the power to extinguish.
But for all the effort expended on this controversy, an even more important one is looming over Obama administration’s Middle East policy in the wake of the collapse of the peace talks. By entering into a unity coalition with the Hamas terrorist movement, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas put President Obama on the spot. The president has repeatedly pledged that the U.S., like Israel, will not deal with Hamas, at least until it repudiates its genocidal charter, recognizes Israel, and commits itself to peace. That ought to mean the end of all U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority (something mandated by law) as well as putting an end to negotiations that are aimed at empowering the PA. But no one in Israel should be taking the fulfillment of that pledge for granted.
It is theoretically possible that Hamas might renounce its charter or pass some sort of measure that will be falsely interpreted by peace advocates as a sign of its new moderation. But since Hamas’s political capital within Palestinian society rests primarily on its ability to pose as a more rabidly anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish force than Abbas’s Fatah, the chances of them being willing to engage in this sort of ruse are fairly slim. But so long as Abbas is the front man for this coalition, the administration may be tempted to stick to its characterization of him as a man of peace despite the fact that he deliberately chose to make peace with Hamas rather than with Israel. Thus, it is entirely possible that President Obama and Kerry may choose to treat the unity deal as irrelevant to the peace process.
If the administration does violate its long-held principles about working with an entity compromised by its terrorist connection, it will mark a clear turning point not only in the U.S.-Israel relationship but also in America’s attempts to combat Islamist terrorism. Though its apologists sometimes speak of Hamas as having evolved into a government in Gaza and being ready for peace, the U.S. has always rightly drawn a bright line between even the most dubious of governments in the Middle East and open practitioners of terror. Erasing or even blurring that line will render Obama’s avowed hard line against terrorism meaningless.
If the administration should choose to walk down this road toward recognition of Hamas, it will do so to the cheers of the foreign-policy establishment and liberal mainstream media that have always chafed against the idea that Hamas was beyond the pale. But if it does, it should also expect that Congress as well as a united pro-Israel community would make them pay a high political price for this betrayal. This is not a battle Obama wants to be fighting in an already difficult midterm elections year. If Abbas is counting on the president to risk some of his scarce political capital on such a cause, then both he and Kerry may have badly miscalculated. But should the Palestinian alliance last into 2015 with a lame duck president already feeling he has little left to lose, then it is entirely possible that Obama could make Kerry’s apartheid flap look like a picnic compared to a decision to recognize Hamas.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger
1a)| John Kerry's Jewish best friends
By Caroline B. Glick
Anti-Semitism is not a simple bigotry. It is a complex neurosis. It involves assigning malign intent to Jews where none exists on the one hand, and rejecting reason as a basis for understanding the world and operating within it on the other hand.
John Kerry's recent use of the term "Apartheid" in reference to Israel's future was an anti-Semitic act.
In remarks before the Trilateral Commission a few days after PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity deal with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, Kerry said that if Israel doesn't cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, it will either cease to be a Jewish state or it will become "an apartheid state."
Leave aside the fact that Kerry's scenarios are based on phony demographic data. As I demonstrate in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East,
Israel will maintain a strong and growing Jewish majority in a "unitary state" that includes the territory within the 1949 armistice lines and Judea and Samaria. But even if Kerry's fictional data were correct, the only "Apartheid state" that has any chance of emerging is the Palestinian state that Kerry claims Israel's survival depends on. The Palestinians demand that the territory that would comprise their state must be ethnically cleansed of all Jewish presence before they will agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it.
In other words, the future leaders of that state - from the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad alike — are so imbued with genocidal Jew hatred that they insist that all 650,000 Jews living in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria must be forcibly ejected from their homes. These Jewish towns, cities and neighborhoods must all be emptied before the Palestinians whose cause Kerry so wildly champions will even agree to set up their Apartheid state.
According to the 1998 Rome Statute, Apartheid is a crime of intent, not of outcome. It is the malign intent of the Palestinians -across their political and ideological spectrum — to found a state predicated on anti-Jewish bigotry and ethnic cleansing. In stark contrast, no potential Israeli leader or faction has any intention of basing national policies on racial subjugation in any form.
By ignoring the fact that every Palestinian leader views Jews as a contaminant that must be blotted out from the territory the Palestinians seek to control, (before they will even agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it), while attributing to Jews malicious intent towards the Palestinians that no Israeli Jewish politician with a chance of leading the country harbors, Kerry is adopting a full-throated and comprehensive anti-Semitic position.
It is both untethered from reason and libelous of Jews.
Speaking to the Daily Beast about Kerry's remarks on Sunday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was quick to use the "some of his best friends are Jewish," defense.
In her words, "Secretary Kerry, like Justice Minister [Tzipi] Livni, and previous Israeli Prime Ministers [Ehud] Olmert and [Ehud] Barak, was reiterating why there's no such thing as a one-state solution if you believe, as he does, in the principle of a Jewish state. He was talking about the kind of future Israel wants."
So in order to justify his own anti-Semitism - and sell it to the American Jewish community - Kerry is engaging in vulgar partisan interference in the internal politics of another country. Indeed, Kerry went so far as to hint that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is forced from power, and Kerry's Jewish best friends replace him, then things will be wonderful. In his words, if "there is a change of government or a change of heart, something will happen." By inserting himself directly into the Israeli political arena, Kerry is working from his mediator Martin Indyk's playbook.
Since his tenure as US ambassador to Israel during the Clinton administration, Indyk has played fast and dirty in Israeli politics, actively recruiting Israelis to influence Israeli public opinion to favor the Left while castigating non-leftist politicians and regular Israeli citizens as evil, stupid and destructive.
Livni, Olmert, Barak and others probably don't share Kerry's anti-Semitic sensitivities. Although their behavior enables foreigners like Kerry to embrace anti-Semitic positions, their actions are most likely informed by their egotistical obsessions with power. Livni, Olmert and Barak demonize their political opponents because the facts do not support their policies. The only card they have to play is the politics of personal destruction. And so they use it over and over again.
This worked in the past. That is why Olmert and Barak were able to form coalition governments. But the cumulative effects of the Palestinian terror war that began after Israel offered the PLO statehood at Camp David in 2000, the failure of the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, and the 2006 war with Lebanon have brought about a situation where the Israeli public is no longer willing to buy what the Left is selling.
Realizing this, Barak, Livni and others have based their claim to political power on their favored status in the US. In Netanyahu's previous government, Barak parlayed the support he received from the Obama administration into his senior position as Defense Minister. Today, Livni's position as Justice Minister and chief negotiator with the PLO owes entirely to the support she receives from the Obama administration.
Neither Barak nor Livni ever lost sight of the cause for their political elevation, despite their electoral defeats.
Like Barak in Netanyahu's previous government, today Livni provides Kerry and Indyk with "Israeli" cover for their anti-Israeli policies. And working with Kerry and Indyk, she is able to force herself and her popularly rejected policies on the elected government.
Like Barak in Netanyahu's previous government, today Livni provides Kerry and Indyk with "Israeli" cover for their anti-Israeli policies. And working with Kerry and Indyk, she is able to force herself and her popularly rejected policies on the elected government.
Livni - again, like Barak in Netanyahu's previous government - has been able to hold her senior government position and exert influence over government policy by claiming that only her presence in the government is keeping the US at bay. According to this line of thinking, without her partnership, the Obama administration will turn on Israel.
Now that Kerry has given a full throated endorsement of anti-Semitic demagoguery, Livni's leverage is vastly diminished. Since Kerry's anti-Semitic statements show that Livni has failed to shield Israel from the Obama administration's hostility, the rationale for her continued inclusion in the government has disappeared.
The same goes for the Obama administration's favorite American Jewish group J Street. Since its formation in the lead up to the 2008 Presidential elections, J Street has served as the Obama administration's chief supporter in the US Jewish community. J Street uses rhetorical devices that were relevant to the political realities of the 1990s to claim that it is both "pro-peace and pro-Israel." Twenty years into the failed peace process, for Israeli ears at least, these slogans ring hollow.
But the real problem with J Street's claim isn't that its rhetoric is irrelevant. The real problem is that its rhetoric is deceptive.
J Street's record has nothing to do with either supporting Israel or peace. Rather it has a record of continuous anti-Israel agitation. J Street has continuously provided American Jewish cover for the administration's anti-Israel actions by calling for it to take even more extreme actions. These have included calling for the administration to support an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council, and opposing sanctions against Iran for its illicit nuclear weapons program. J Street has embraced the PLO's newest unity pact with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And now it is defending Kerry for engaging in rank anti-Semitism with his "Apartheid" remarks.
J Street's political action committee campaigns to defeat pro-Israel members of Congress. And its campus operation brings speakers to US university campuses that slander Israel and the IDF and call for the divestment of university campuses from businesses owned by Israelis.
On Wednesday, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is set to vote on J Street's application to join the umbrella group as a "pro-peace, pro-Israel" organization.
Kerry's "Apartheid" remarks are a watershed event. They represent the first time a sitting US Secretary of State has publically endorsed an anti-Semitic caricature of Jews and the Jewish state.
The best response that both the Israeli government and the Jewish community can give to Kerry's act of unprecedented hostility and bigotry is to reject his Jewish enablers. Livni should be shown the door. And the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations should reject J Street's bid for membership.
During this year’s Passover season, it is especially poignant to remember what danger authoritarian nationalist regimes pose to people who do not fit onto their Procrustean bed – especially the Jews.
In 2003, having spent 10 months living in Moscow, I became convinced that Russia stood on the verge of a nationalist explosion. To be sure, back then, in the early years of President Vladimir Putin’s rule, there was still hope that Russia could be a democratic, modern nation. The country was a lot more open than in the Soviet era, when my family emigrated from Moscow.
Its people were enjoying the freedom to travel and to speak their mind, and cultural life was rich, varied and uncensored. But underneath it all there seethed the anger and resentment of a defeated nation.
When I came back to New York, I went to work for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish charity which since its inception in 1881 had been saving Jews who fled Czarist pogroms in Russia, Nazi genocide across Europe and anti-Semitism elsewhere. In the 1970s, HIAS was instrumental in forcing the Soviet government to let its Jewish people go, and it helped hundreds of thousands of us to resettle in the United States.
I felt that the Russian-speaking community needed to organize and stand ready in case Jews still living in Russia – some 200,000 of them by official count – had to be urgently assisted. For a time, my apprehension seemed groundless. While in the 1990s Russians felt impoverished because Soviet-era industry had disintegrated and ruble savings had been decimated by inflation, in the early years of this century the situation turned completely around. The price of oil, Russia’s principal export, went from $30 per barrel in 2003 to a high of $147 just before the 2008 financial crisis. Now, oil prices are still high, at around $100. Russia was suddenly awash in petrodollars and some of the oil wealth trickled down to ordinary citizens. A new urban middle class began to emerge and even pensioners and low-paid government employees such as doctors and teachers began to see their standards of living rise.
But the newfound material well-being not only failed to placate the rising sense of nationalist resentment but, in a strange way, exacerbated it. Many Russians pined for the Soviet imperial span and for what they saw as national greatness, blaming the West – and especially Americans – for keeping Russia down.
Putin’s government has long been playing the Soviet nostalgia card. As long ago as 2005, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” State-controlled media – and soon there was no other kind – looked at the Soviet past through rose-colored lenses, glossing over vile aspects of the communist regime and exonerating leaders such as Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. In numerous television shows the Soviet past was made to seem glorious – it was when the country was huge, powerful and feared by the entire world.
The success of the Sochi Winter Olympics, in which Russia won most gold medals, and the annexation of Crimea were the catalysts thrusting this Soviet hysteria into the open. Many writers and politicians now openly call for the revival of the Soviet Union and threaten to put Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, on trial for allowing its breakup.
The pining for the Soviet past has not had a significant anti-Semitic component – at least not yet. There are many Jews among Russian business elites, and even some in Putin’s inner circle. Plenty of Jews were on the list of over 500 cultural and artistic figures who signed a letter supporting Putin’s course of action in Crimea.
But Russia is playing a dangerous game. Even though Hitler ranted against “Jewish bankers” whom he blamed for Germany’s problems, Jews were also inimical to the kind of insular, homogenous and retrograde nation-state he was trying to create. Educated, urban Jews were the living embodiment of the complex modern world: international in outlook, skeptical of received opinion, self-deprecating in their humor and forever questioning all authority and simplistic solutions.
Stalin, who defeated Hitler and whose soldiers liberated Auschwitz, began a campaign against “rootless cosmopolites” almost immediately after the end of the war. His Soviet Union was swept by Soviet nationalism and leader worship, and in that environment even loyal Jews among Soviet intelligentsia promptly became the enemy.
Members of the wartime Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee were rounded up, and their leader, actor Samuel Mikhoels, was murdered in a staged traffic accident. On a single night in August 1952, more than a dozen Yiddish writers were executed by Stalin’s secret police.
Prominent Jewish medical professionals were arrested on trumped-up charges in a case known as the Doctors’ Plot. When Stalin died, plans had been laid for collective punishment for all Soviet Jews. They were to be deported to the Far East.
Unabashed Jew-haters already appear on Russia’s state-owned television, such as writer Alexander Prokhanov.
The Jewish origins of some vocal members of the domestic opposition and political leaders in Ukraine have been deliberately pointed out in a series of political exposes. If Putin’s Russia continues on the same nationalistic, xenophobic, insular and imperial course – in other words, moving away from the 21st century and back to the 19th – it will inevitably end up accusing Jews of disloyalty and perfidy.
The author is a New York-based economist and writer. He is a regular columnist for Moscow Times, Russia’s independent English-language daily, and RBK, a business newspaper. In 2004-08 he worked as a consultant, Russian-speaking community development, for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. His detective novel, Murder at the Dacha, set in Moscow in the 1960s, was published by Russian Life Publishers in 2013
1c) A Foreign Policy Flirting With Chaos
The most egregious case of fecklessness has been on Syria. Doubts about American dependability were raised far and wide.
American foreign policy is in troubling disarray. The result is unwelcome news for the world, which largely depends upon the United States to promote order in the absence of any other country able and willing to do so. And it is bad for the U.S., which cannot insulate itself from the world.
The concept that should inform American foreign policy is one that the Obama administration proposed in its first term: the pivot or rebalancing toward Asia, with decreasing emphasis on the Middle East. What has been missing is the commitment and discipline to implement this change in policy. President Obama's four-country Asian tour in recent days was a start, but it hardly made up for years of paying little heed to his own professed foreign-policy goals.
President Obama at a news conference on Monday in Manila, where he defended his administration's foreign-policy record. Charles Dharapak/Associated Press
This judgment may appear odd—at first glance the Obama administration does seem to have been moving away from the Middle East. U.S. combat forces are no longer in Iraq, and the number of U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan (now below 40,000) will soon be 10,000 or fewer. Yet the administration continues to articulate ambitious political goals in the region. The default U.S. policy option in the Middle East seems to be regime change, consisting of repeated calls for authoritarian leaders to leave power. First it was Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, then Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, followed by Bashar Assad in Syria.
Yet history shows that ousting leaders can be difficult, and even when it is not, it can be extremely hard to bring about a stable, alternative authority that is better for American preferences. The result is that the U.S. often finds itself with an uncomfortable choice: Either it must back off its declared goals, which makes America look weak and encourages widespread defiance, or it has to make good on its aims, which requires enormous investments in blood, treasure and time.
The Obama administration has largely opted for the former, i.e., feckless approach. The most egregious case is Syria, where the president and others declared that "Assad must go" only to do little to bring about his departure. Military support of opposition elements judged to be acceptable has been minimal. Worse, President Obama avoided using force in the wake of clear chemical-weapons use by the Syrian government, a decision that raised doubts far and wide about American dependability and damaged what little confidence and potential the non-jihadist opposition possessed. It is only a matter of time before the U.S. will likely have to swallow the bitter pill of tolerating Assad while supporting acceptable opposition elements against the jihadists.
Meanwhile, large areas of Libya are increasingly out of government control and under the authority of militias and terrorists. Egypt is polarized and characterized by mounting violence. Much the same is true in Iraq, now the second-most-turbulent country in the region, where the U.S. finds itself with little influence despite a costly decade of occupation. Terrorists now have more of a foothold in the region than ever before.
None of this should be read as a call for the U.S. to do more to oust regimes, much less occupy countries in the name of nation-building. There is a good deal of evidence, including Chile, Mexico, the Philippines and South Korea, that gradual and peaceful reform of authoritarian systems is less expensive by every measure and more likely to result in an open society, as well as less likely to result in disruption and death.
The Obama administration's extraordinary commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also difficult to justify. Even before the recent breakdown in talks, the dispute didn't appear ripe for resolution. And it must be acknowledged that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute no longer occupies center stage in the Middle East. The emergence of a separate Palestinian state wouldn't affect the troubling events in Syria, Egypt or Iraq.
The one vital undertaking in the Middle East that the Obama administration has pursued energetically is negotiating with Iran to place a ceiling on its nuclear capacity and potential. The administration deserves praise for ratcheting up sanctions against Iran—Tehran's interest in a nuclear deal has increased as a result. The challenge will be to come up with an agreement that is enough for Iran and not too much for us and for Israel.
These diplomatic endeavors take time. A secretary of state can only do so much; time spent in Jerusalem and Geneva is time not spent in Tokyo and Beijing. And there is much that could be done in Asia. Regular consultations are warranted with the principal powers of the region, including China, Japan and South Korea. Crisis prevention and crisis management need to figure prominently in a region characterized by growing nationalism and rivalry and few diplomatic channels or institutions. So, too, does planning for a transition to a unified Korean Peninsula. Long-promised increases in the U.S. air and naval presence in the region need to become a reality.
The U.S. must also increase its involvement with Europe. American inattention, combined with Ukraine's own political dysfunction and the European Union's bungling, set the stage for Russian expansion into Crimea. Shaping Russian behavior will require targeted sanctions, greater allocation of economic resources to Ukraine, a willingness to export meaningful amounts of oil and natural gas, and a renewed commitment to NATO's military readiness.
The administration also needs to focus on the strength and resilience of the U.S. economy and society. This is not an alternative to national security but a central part of it. The energy boom is a major positive, but also needed are comprehensive immigration reform, infrastructure modernization, free trade and a willingness to tackle entitlements. Absent such efforts, economic growth won't be as great as it ought to be. The opportunity will also be lost to do something about U.S. debt before it explodes, driven by surging Medicare and Social Security costs and higher interest rates.
The challenge for the Obama administration is not just to ensure American strength and continued internationalism in the face of growing isolationist sentiment. It is also a case of sending the right message to others. We are witnessing an accelerated movement toward a post-American world where governments make decisions and take actions with reduced regard for U.S. preferences. Such a world promises to be even messier, and less palatable for U.S. interests, than it is today.
Mr. Haass is president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author, most recently, of "Foreign Policy Begins at Home" (Basic Books, 2013). This op-ed was adapted from an article in the May/June issue of the American Interest.
Copyright 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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By Thomas Sowell
Of all the cynical frauds of the Obama administration, few are so despicable as sacrificing the
education of poor and minority children to the interests of the teachers' unions.
Attorney General Eric Holder's attempt to suppress the spread of charter schools in Louisiana was just one of the signs of that cynicism. His nationwide threats of legal action against schools that discipline more black students than he thinks they should are at least as damaging.
Charter schools are hated by teachers' unions and by much of the educational establishment in general. They seem to be especially hated when they succeed in educating minority children whom the educational establishment says cannot be educated.
Apparently it can be done when you don't have to hire unionized teachers with iron-clad tenure, and when you don't have to follow the dogmas in vogue in the educational establishment.
Last year, there was an attempt to shut down the American Indian Model Schools in Oakland, California -- schools that had been ranked among the top schools in the nation, schools with the top test scores in their district and the fourth-highest scores in the entire state of California.
The reason given was that the former -- repeat, FORMER -- head of these schools was accused of financial irregularities. Since there are courts of law to determine the guilt or innocence of individuals, why should school children be punished by having their schools shut down, immediately and permanently, before any court even held a trial?
Fortunately, a court order prevented this planned vindictive closing of this highly successful charter school with minority students. But the attempt shows the animus and the cynical disregard of the education of children who have few other places to get a comparable education.
Attorney General Holder's threats of legal action against schools where minority students are disciplined more often than he wants are a much more sweeping and damaging blow to the education of poor and minority students across the country.
Among the biggest obstacles to educating children in many ghetto schools are disruptive students whose antics, threats and violence can make education virtually impossible. If only 10 percent of the students are this way, that sacrifices the education of the other 90 percent.
The idea that Eric Holder, or anybody else, can sit in Washington and determine how many disciplinary actions against individual students are warranted or unwarranted in schools across the length and breadth of this country would be laughable if it were not so tragic.
Relying on racial statistics tells you nothing, unless you believe that black male students cannot possibly be more disruptive than Asian female students, or that students in crime-ridden neighborhoods cannot possibly require disciplinary actions more often than children in the most staid, middle-class neighborhoods.
Attorney General Holder is not fool enough to believe either of those things. Why then is he pursuing this numbers game?
The most obvious answer is politics. Anything that promotes a sense of grievance from charges of racial discrimination offers hope of energizing the black vote to turn out to vote for Democrats, which is especially needed when support from other voters is weakening in the wake of Obama administration scandals and fiascoes.
Eric Holder's other big racial crusade, against requiring identification for voting, is the same political game. And it is carried out with the same cynical promotion of fears, with orchestrated hysteria from other Democrats -- as if having to show identification to vote is like a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.
Blacks, whites and everybody else can be asked for identification these days, whether cashing a check or using a credit card at a local store or going to an airport -- or even getting into some political meetings called to protest voter ID laws.
But to sacrifice the education of children, especially children for whom education may be their only ticket out of poverty, is truly a new low. As someone once said to Senator Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
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2a) Demonizing the Helpers
By Thomas Sowell
2a) Demonizing the Helpers
By Thomas Sowell
It is not easy to demonize people who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to help educate poor children. But some members of the education establishment are taking a shot at it.
The Walton Family Foundation -- created by the people who created Walmart -- has given more than $300 million to charter schools, voucher programs and other educational enterprises concerned with the education of poor and minority students across the country.
The Walton Family Foundation gave more than $58 million to the KIPP schools, which have had spectacular success in raising the test scores of children in ghettoes where the other children are far behind in academic performance.
D.C. Prep, in Washington, whose students are mostly poor and black, has also received grants from the Walton Family Foundation. Its test scores likewise exceed those of traditional neighborhood schools, as well as the test scores of other local charter schools. Other wealthy people across the country have been doing similar things for years, including high-tech tycoons like Bill Gates and Michael Dell. It is one of the great untold stories of a unique pattern of philanthropy that makes America truly exceptional.
Yet these philanthropists have been attacked by the teachers' unions and by others in the education establishment, including academics.
It was painful to watch a well-known historian of education on a TV talk show recently, denouncing people from "Wall Street" who have promoted alternatives to the failing public schools. Apparently, in some circles, you can just say the words "Wall Street" and that proves that something evil is being done.
You can listen in vain for any concrete evidence that these philanthropic efforts to help educate poor children are creating harm.
Instead, you get statements like that from the head of the American Federation of Teachers, saying, "they're trying to create an alternative system and destabilize what has been the anchor of American democracy."
If government-monopoly schools, with iron-clad tenure for incompetent teachers, have been an anchor, they have been an anchor around the necks of American students, who consistently score lower on international tests than students from countries that spend half as much money per student, and yet have students who outperform our youngsters, year after year.
It is not written in the stars that youngsters in ghetto schools have to score miles behind everybody else. Data from the 1940s show test scores in Harlem schools comparable to test scores in white working class schools on New York's lower east side. (See "Teachers College Record," Fall 1981, pages 40-41.)
Even today, particular minority schools -- sometimes charter schools, sometimes Catholic schools, and sometimes even regular public schools headed by principals who defy the prevailing educational dogmas -- turn out black students who can compete with other students academically.
Teachers' unions and others who defend the public school establishment decry competing schools, on grounds that they are somehow undermining the public schools.
One of the claims is that these alternative schools drain money from the public schools. But expenditures per pupil in the public schools have risen during the era of the spread of alternative schools.
Of course, if there were no alternative schools, the total amount of money going to the public school system might have increased more. But this would not necessarily produce more money per student, since charter schools typically do not get as much money per student as the public schools get.
Then there is the claim that alternative schools "skim the cream" of the students, and that this explains why their test results are better. But many, if not most, charter schools select among their applicants through a lottery.
Lots of things need to be done by lots of people to improve our education system, especially for schools in minority neighborhoods. Demonizing those who are trying to help is not one of them.
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