%20(1)%20(4)%20(1)%20(1).jpg)
By Salena Zito
EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Late Friday afternoon, as President Joe Biden was departing the White House for Wilmington, Delaware, he was asked by a reporter if he had plans to visit this Columbiana County village.
“Will you go to East Palestine, Ohio? Are you planning to travel to East Palestine, Ohio?” he was asked.
“At this point, I’m not,” Biden said. "I did a whole video — I mean, um, what the hell — on...” Biden said, struggling to find the right words before another reporter jumped in and saved him.
“Zoom?” the reporter asked.
“Zoom! Zoom. All I can hear every time I think of Zoom is that song of my generation,‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’” he joked about the Aretha Franklin dance-pop song about checking someone out in the bar scene in 1985.
When pressed, Biden said, “Guys, wait, wait, wait. Let me answer the question."
“The answer is that I had a long meeting with my team as to what they’re doing. … So, I’m keeping very close tabs on it. We’re doing all we can,” he said.
Nearly one month after 38 freight cars derailed a two-mile-long train operated by Norfolk Southern, Biden has largely avoided discussing the wreck that unleashed a variety of chemicals here, including highly toxic vinyl chloride, into the air, soil, and water.
When asked, local and state officials in both Ohio and Pennsylvania, including Mayor Trent Conaway, said they have not participated in a Zoom call with Biden. Some said they have had calls with the White House but nothing on Zoom. Conaway, who is dealing with the burden of this disaster day in and day out, has never even once heard from the president.
If you missed the webinar, please visit our YouTube channel to view the recording, here. The New, New Middle East: China, Iran, and Turkey with David Goldman Russia's invasion of Ukraine has begun to reshape realities in the Middle East. Both China and Turkey are playing more prominent roles in the region, while Iran has been afforded a dangerous path to achieving its Islamist goals. How will this impact demographics and geopolitics? Is there any pushback by the West? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Second City Shambles The teacher union-controlled school system in Chicago is an abject failure. By Larry Sand The numbers are jaw-dropping. In 30 Chicago public schools, not a single student can read at grade level. In total, just 20 percent of 3rd through 8th graders in the Windy City are proficient in reading and only 15 percent are proficient in math. As such, it’s easy to see why students are bailing en masse. In fact, more than one-third of Chicago’s 473 traditional public schools are currently running at half-full or worse, according to data released in December. Douglass High School, which bills itself as “The Jewel Of The Westside,” has a capacity for 888 students, but just 34 are enrolled, and not one of them is proficient in reading. In the past 10 years, the city’s total public school enrollment has gone from over 400,000 to 322,000 and the bleeding shows no sign of abating. The spending hawks can’t claim it’s due to a lack of funding. When all local, state and federal dollars are added up, Chicago’s per student outlay is now $29,207. Additionally, the underpaid teacher excuse can’t get any traction in Chi-town as a starting teacher makes $64,000 a year and can earn up to $122,000 per annum—not including pension and healthcare perks. Chicago schools took a hit in 2018 when the Chicago Tribune released “Betrayed,” a series of articles that drew attention to numerous shocking incidents of sexual misconduct against students throughout the city. The Trib reported that “between 2008 and 2017, the Chicago Police Department had conducted 523 investigations that involved sexual assault or abuse of children within Chicago schools by fellow students or adults.” Corruption has also been rampant throughout the district. As reported by Wirepoints, former Chicago Public Schools’ CEO Barbra Byrd-Bennett spent time in federal prison for steering contracts to a former employer in 2015. And Forest Claypool, another former CPS CEO, had to resign under a cloud of ethics violations in 2017. And then there’s the Chicago Teachers Union, the most noxious teachers union in the country, especially since 2010, when the Caucus of Rank-and-file Educators (CORE) began to rule the roost. In the past 13 years, the union has held five strikes or “work stoppages.” Mayor Lori Lightfoot, hardly a right-winger, stated during a recent debate with two of her opponents in the Chicago mayoral race that the Chicago Teachers Union brought chaos to the schools. Lightfoot blamed CTU for the district’s enrollment decline and criticized the union’s frequent work stoppages that plagued the city. In January 2022, the union illegally staged a last-minute walkout over the district’s COVID-19 protocols, which gave parents just a few hours to scramble for a back-up plan for their children. The response to the protest was fast and furious. Mincing no words, Mayor Lightfoot called the walkout illegal and said, “If you care about our students, if you care about our families, as we do, we will not relent. Enough is enough. We are standing firm and we are going to fight to get our kids back to in-person learning. Period. Full stop.” For good measure, she added, “I will not allow them to take our children hostage . . . Why are we here again when we know that the safest place for our children is in school? Why are we here again when we know that our schools are safe?” While most teachers unions are political in nature and kids are merely a blip on their radar, CTU is in a league of its own. As reported by Mailee Smith, staff attorney and director of labor policy at the Illinois Policy Institute, since CORE took over the union in 2010, the union has invested heavily in political campaigns, giving more than $17 million to state and local election committees. “In 2021, only 19 percent of CTU spending—$5.9 million of $31 million—was used to represent teachers, according to reports that the CTU filed with the Department of Labor. The rest went to politics, administration, and other union leadership priorities. Last year, the CTU spent more than $1 million on political activities and lobbying, which doesn’t include money spent by its political action committee.” Since 2010, CTU has directed nearly $17.2 million to political committees, according to the Illinois State Board of Elections, including over $2.5 million to Illinois Senate and House candidates, more than $1.3 million to current Chicago mayoral candidates, and over $505,000 to current Chicago aldermanic candidates. CTU also wants to eliminate Illinois’ only private school choice program. The Invest in Kids Act is a tax credit program which provides a choice for families that are seeking a better fit for their kids, but can’t afford private school. If CTU gets its way, over 9,000 low-income students across the state will lose their scholarships to attend their private school, and be forced back into the school system they so desperately tried to escape. Adding to the overall miasma, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker just signed into law House Bill 5107, which enables school principals to unionize. This gambit will serve to exacerbate an already hostile labor environment and further destabilize the school district. On February 28, Chicagoans will elect a new mayor. The union’s choice is Brandon Johnson, a CTU lobbyist, avowed Socialist, and recipient of a $590,000 gift from the union. On Jan. 23, Johnson introduced his “tax-the-rich” revenue plan for the city of Chicago, calling for $800 million in new taxes. He is specifically targeting the “wealthy,” but the details of his plan show that much of the pain will be absorbed by the middle class. A 2004 Fordham Institute study looked at 50 American cities and found that 21.5 percent of urban school teachers send their kids to private schools, while 17.5 percent of non-teachers do. Digging a little deeper, we learn that the disparity is considerably greater for larger urban areas. In Chicago, for example, 39 percent of public school teachers’ kids attend a private school. Given the state of CPS, I would be shocked if that 39 percent isn’t considerably higher now. (Having just scratched the surface here, I advise viewing Local 1: The Rise of America’s Most Powerful Teachers Union, Illinois Policy Institute’s just released documentary about the history of the Chicago Teachers Union and its political influence. It is well worth your time.) Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared at For Kids & Country. About Larry Sand Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network—a nonpartisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ WATCH: Ron DeSantis STUNS Reporter After Perfect Question! Read This Alert >>>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ War in the Middle East Is Closer Than You Think By Walter Russell Mead I was here last week to interview Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Tikvah Israel Security Conclave. The interview, available on the Journal’s website, combined a tour d’horizon of Mr. Netanyahu’s view of world politics with some candid reflections on the history of Zionism. As for the rest of the conference, I came away thinking that the U.S. is much closer to getting involved in another Middle East war than most in Washington understand, and that minimizing this danger requires rapid and sweeping policy change from an administration still struggling to comprehend the most serious international crisis since the late 1930s. The Biden administration came to office with an elegant and cohesive geopolitical strategy. It would address the China challenge by driving wedges between China and its fellow revisionist powers. It would park Russia by accommodating Vladimir Putin and stabilize the Middle East by reviving the nuclear deal with Iran even as it pursued aggressive trade and security policies to limit China’s rise. From the outset, the administration knew that the American-led world system was in trouble, but it underestimated the severity of the threat and misunderstood its causes. To its credit, Team Biden saw the China challenge clearly from day one, but failed to understand how weak the foundations of American power had become or how far the revisionist powers—China, Russia, Iran and hangers-on such as Venezuela and Syria—were willing to cooperate to weaken an American hegemony they both resented and despised. Two years later, the Biden administration is struggling to manage the failure of its original design. Its aggressive rhetoric and policy toward China have intensified China’s hostility, but instead of facing an isolated China in an otherwise calm world, the administration faces simultaneous confrontations in Europe and the Far East. Russia isn’t parked, Iran isn’t pacified, and the three revisionists are coordinating their strategy and messaging to an unprecedented degree. Worse, Iran’s inexorable march toward nuclear weapons, combined with its deepening partnership with Russia, is driving the Middle East steadily closer to a war that is likely to engage the U.S.—one that the Biden administration desperately wants to avoid. For Mr. Putin, a major military confrontation in the Middle East would be an unmitigated blessing. Oil prices would spike, filling Moscow’s coffers and intensifying pressures on Europe. The Pentagon would have to split available weapons between Ukraine and Middle East allies. The balance in the Taiwan Strait would significantly shift in China’s favor. Spiking energy prices would boost inflation in the U.S. just as Mr. Biden tries to persuade antiwar Democrats to support another American military venture in the Middle East. And while in a perfect world Russia might oppose an Iranian nuclear weapon, under current circumstances—in which Mr. Putin desperately needs Iran to help disrupt American strategy—Mr. Putin might well decide to help Iran cross the nuclear threshold. But the Russian dictator doesn’t need to go that far. Simply by increasing Iranian military capabilities that limit Israel’s ability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Mr. Putin could force Israel into a pre-emptive strike that would set off a regional war. The U.S. can’t compel Iran and Russia to avoid actions that trigger a new Middle East war, but strong policy on our part still might deter them. Unfortunately for the Biden administration, that involves precisely the kind of hawkish Middle East posture that many Democrats—including senior Biden officials—viscerally loathe. The American approach to Saudi Arabia will have to move from a fist bump to wholehearted embrace. Drone attacks and other provocations by Iran and its allies against the Saudis, Emiratis and their neighbors will have to be met with the kind of American military response that leaves no doubt of our determination to prevail. The best way to avoid war, and to minimize direct American engagement should war break out, is to ensure that our Middle East allies have the power to defend themselves. We must make it unmistakably clear that we will ensure our allies win should hostilities break out. Nothing else will do. The administration seems to be moving, slowly, in the right direction in the Middle East, but time is not on its side. Wishful thinking and strategic incompetence led the bipartisan foreign-policy establishment first to ignore and then to appease rising challengers to the post-Cold War world order. Now the Biden administration faces the consequences of a generational failure in American foreign policy. We must wish Team Biden success as it struggles to cope with a world that it, along with the American foreign-policy community as a whole, largely failed to foresee. In an interview with 'Global View' columnist Walter Russell Mead on Feb. 21, 2023, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a tour d’horizon of the region, the world situation and Israeli-US relations. Video: The Tikvah Fund Composite: Mark Kelly +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
No comments:
Post a Comment