Can We Do Anything About America’s Decline?

 

At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson asks what we’re all thinking:

Can We Do Anything About America’s Decline?

In the next five years, either cities will seek new governance to reduce taxes, break up municipal unions, mandate charter schools, restore police funding and manpower, recalibrate pensions, and prosecute criminals and corrupt officials—or Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and a score of others will become Detroit.

One of the strangest phenomena amid our current debility are the millions of affluent leftists and liberals who have fled their unworkable, now unlivable blue-run, but naturally beautiful cities like San Francisco or Portland. They seem to lack an abstract recognition why they are leaving, or why and how their new chosen destinations are so different and therefore so inviting to them. Is their motto, “I am fleeing what I created, but I still hate those who created what I want”?

To have a “border problem,” one must have a border. The United States has no southern border. . . .

VDH concludes his essay on a sad note:

Election night is a mere construct. It is mostly meaningless. Local, state, and federal election results are stalled and descend into days, weeks, and sometimes even months of bickering, counter charges of ballot tampering and fraud, ballot harvesting and curing, and a loss of confidence in the integrity of the final result. Debates mean little anymore, once a large portion of the electorate has already voted. No wonder deceased candidates can win. Gaffes are now determined by whether they occur before or after the majority of voters has cast their ballots. 

There should be a national uniform standard that allows states to set their ballot procedures—as long as they result in 70 percent of the electorate voting in person on election day. 

America is in a similar position to where it was in 1861, 1929, 1941, and 1968—only perhaps worse, given in all those cases, there was at least a president and Congress that identified and reacted to the crisis, whereas today our elected government is what caused the crisis.

Read the full column here.

# # #

Proof: 2020 election fraud

 

Gary Varvel cartoon

Wayne Allyn Root’s columns are always good value.  He has his own website and various blogs routinely link to his articles.  His column today is not going to put a smile on your face, but it’s his take on how we KNOW the 2020 election was stolen.  Here are his closing paragraphs:

 The consequences of a stolen election are all around us. . .

Our country is a freaking mess. A shell of its former self, in free fall. The people in charge could star in One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest.

This is the purposeful destruction of America and the great American middle class  
- in only two short years since an illegitimate, corrupt, brain-dead President was placed into power.

The humiliating state of our nation is all the proof you need of a stolen election. The evil all around us is the proof. In only two short years, a stolen election has unleashed the gates of hell. This was all a plan…

And it’s being carried out to perfection.

Click here to read the whole thing.

# # #

 

Nigel Farage at CPAC: video and extracts

 

File photo of Mr. Farage at Trump Tower

Shane Trejo at Big League Politics posted the video of Nigel Farage’s speech at CPAC-Texas.  Here’s most of Shane’s report with excerpts:

Brexit hero Nigel Farage gave a rousing defense of Western Civilization during his speech at CPAC Texas on Saturday.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are under attack, under attack as never before, and that threat is not external, no, not even Nancy Pelosi’s one-woman attempt to start the third World War is the biggest threat we face, and it’s not Putin. The biggest threat we face is from within. The biggest threat we face is the fifth column inside all of our countries,” Farage said.

Farage explained how “educational institutions” have been captured by this fifth column to wage war against families, Judeo-Christian values, and our very civilization.

“Kids are not being taught critical thinking, kids are not being taught there are two valid approaches to a problem. Our children are being indoctrinated. Our universities have become madrassas of Marxism, and it needs to change,” he said.

“White privilege did not exist as a term. You didn’t hear about white privilege 10, 20 years ago, and yet, mainstream media ram it down our throats every single day. And that’s just one little example,” Farage added.

He derided the divisive racial agenda from the far left that is meant to pit groups against each other and make young people hate their families and their country.

. . .

“This is a Marxist attempt to break Western Civilization, a Marxist attempt to destroy everything we are, and we are going to fight back hard against it, aren’t we?” he asked, to an overwhelming applause from the audience.

Farage refused to let modern conservative leaders off the hook for their weakness in pushing back against far-left extremism. He said conservative leaders have shown “cowardice” and “fear” in recent years, empowering the Marxists.

“. . . To save Western Civilization, this is the battleground. Because if America falls, we all fall!” he added.

Source link is here.  This Tea Party person loves Mr. Farage. 

# # #

Never Talk About Marxism - but it's in the schools

At andmagazine.substack, Sam Faddis describes the decline and fall of the American education system.  If you have kids or grandkids in school, this will be of interest (read: reason for alarm):

. . . Apparently, Marxists, at least in modern-day America, have the same rule. The first rule about Marxism is you don’t talk about Marxism.

Americans hate Marxism. They understand it is a failed ideology that has killed hundreds of millions of people and laid waste to entire nations. They do not want it here. So, even as the revolutionaries spread their doctrine and feed it to your children they color it as something else.

. . .

Our schools are under the control of an educational establishment completely infiltrated by Marxists who detest this nation and everything it stands for. They are not attempting to teach your children to read, write or do arithmetic. They are training them as revolutionaries for the express purpose of destroying this nation from within.

That is the obvious truth. And, yet, somehow, it cannot be said. The first rule of Marxism is as we know – you can’t talk about Marxism.

Read the full article here. Do you know what is being taught in your neighborhood schools?

# # #

Weak Men Make Hard Times

 

At American Thinker, Christian Chensvold brings some clarity to the topsy-turvy world we’re living in ("Weak Men Make Hard TImes"):

There's a popular meme you've probably seen that was floating around even before the endemic pandemic.  The images vary, but the text delineates four stages running thusly:

1. Hard times make strong men
2. Strong men make good times
3. Good times make weak men
4. Weak men make hard times

This takes us back to step one, after which the cycle repeats itself.

. . .

Key to understanding this so-called "doctrine of the yugas" is that in each of the four stages, one group or form of social organization is the dominant one and the holder of all the culture's moral legitimacy.  Currently, things are so upside-down that in the view of most of the establishment — government, media, education, the entertainment industry, and the business world — an illegal alien who crossed the border this morning, with neither money nor education and thus entirely dependent upon American largesse, has higher "moral value" than a legacy American whose family has been living and paying taxes here for 150 years.  And suppose this simple citizen of the merchant caste criticizes his rulers' importation of the fourth caste from others' lands and demands that they be deported.  In that case, he is branded with the scarlet letter R because — just to chill you to the core and leave no doubt that you're in a cosmic soap opera — per ancient teachings, caste and race overlap.

The ancient doctrine of the four ages is key to understanding where we are now, how we got here, and the correct course of action.  It should be clear that winter has fallen upon us, that we are no longer the land of the free and home of the brave but are on an inescapable path to becoming its very opposite.  In winter, the trees are barren, the antithesis of what they were in that verdant springtime.  You cannot plant seeds because the soil won't sustain them.  You can only bunker down, ride it out, and fight off the wolf at the door.  And you can reflect upon what you learned over the year, where things went wrong, and how to do things differently when spring finally comes.

Full article is here.

# # #

Victor Davis Hanson: The Pillars of Our Civilization

 

Victor Davis Hanson is not optimistic.  He concludes his American Greatness essay “Losing Confidence in the Pillars of Our Civilization”:

In the current crime wave, brazen lawbreakers enjoy de facto immunity. Mass looting goes unpunished. Indictments are often aimed as much against those who defend themselves as against criminals who attack the innocent.

Conservatives now have lost their former traditional confidence in the administration of justice, in the intelligence and investigatory agencies, in the nation’s military leadership, in the media, and the criminal justice system. 

No one yet knows what the effect will be of half the country losing faith in the very pillars of American civilization.

His full article is here.  

# # #

Breaking the Progressive Narrative on Campus

 

Collin Pruett at The American Conservative sums it up (h/t Instapundit):

At college football games across the country the past two weekends, student sections erupted in “F— Joe Biden” chants. Thousands of unruly fans expressing their discontent with the president packed Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, and dozens of other football stadiums. Many conservatives I know found it impossibly crude. Others found it amusing. They all missed the point: The chanting did more to break the progressive narrative on campus than God and Man at Yale ever did.

Well-funded think tanks and decades of conservative activism failed to yield results. But two weekends of college football anarchy and a social media trend popularized by Barstool subsidiary “Old Row” has normalized conservatism on campus again. College administrators accustomed to threatening, brainwashing, and harassing their students finally met their match: ticked-off football fans. 

If these chants can start to break the stranglehold of progressive propaganda and indoctrination on campuses, it’s a good thing.  More on this and "Barstool Sports" here.

# # #

 

Take children out of America’s schools

 

Dennis Prager at Jewish World Review has one answer:

The most frequent question people pose to me is: What can I/we do to fight back against the nihilistic anti-American destruction of virtually all the country's major institutions?

There is an answer.

The single best thing Americans can do to counter the left-wing attack on America — against its freedoms, its schools, its families, its children, its governmental institutions, its sports, its news and entertainment media, its medical establishment, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the military — is to take their children out of America's schools.

. . .

He goes on to explain. Spoiler: yes, it's home-schooling. Read the rest here.

# # #

 

VDH: Radical new rules for post-America

 

At American Greatness, Victor Davis Hanson identifies ten ways in which America is changing, “maybe permanently.” Below are his “rules” summarized as bullet points.  Click on the link to read his full article;  he elaborates on each rule, and it’s not a pretty picture.

1) Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air. Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much. 

2) Laws are not necessarily binding anymore.  

3) Racialism is now acceptable. 

4) The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. 

5) Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. 

6) Hypocrisy is passé. Virtue-signaling is alive. 

7) Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it.  

8) McCarthyism is good. 

9) Ignorance is preferable to knowledge. 

10) Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity itself. 

VDH concludes:

Americans privately fear these rules, while publicly appearing to accept them.

They still could be transitory and invite a reaction. Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.

The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it

VDH is an historian and scholar -- hardly a rabble-rouser.  For his full take on these scary rules, click here.

# # #

 

Still an uphill battle

Most of the metrics are up: the economy, employment, Main Street, jobs, etc.  And even though the impeachment charade should never have been validated by the Senate, many conservatives can be comforted by the fact that things are, indeed, getting better. Or are they?  Mark Bauerlein at American Greatness sobers us up again:

The election of November 2016, the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the Mueller report debacle, the Iran turnaround, and other wins for conservatives may be satisfying, but they have not shaken the leftist lock on our institutions one bit. The simmering stew of LGBT rights, toxic masculinity, white privilege, disparate impact calculations, and Millennial social justice campaigns has become dogma in corporate America, media, higher education, K-12 public schools (and many private schools, too), Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Broadway, the art world, museums, libraries . . .

. . .

For the Left, outcomes trump procedure just as politics eclipses intelligence, conscientiousness, and competence. One thing I saw in more than 30 years in academia was that while leftists on the faculty were not always the brightest bulbs in the room, they often managed to populate university and department committees where policies were created and passed. While we were teaching and researching; they were reshaping the institution. We were getting on with our work, pushing our individual careers, getting our names in print, and believing we were advancing the field and the school. They were taking over. Put it this way: We were clueless, they were canny.

Donald Trump understands this. That’s one reason the Left despises him. He typically doesn’t bother to debate ideas and ideals, but this is not anti-intellectualism, as the liberal says. It is, instead, his awareness that politics is now, first and foremost, a battle of persons, not ideologies or tax rates or trade. The Kavanaugh episode proves the point, for this battle was all about the individual (which is one reason why Supreme Court appointments are so heated).

In recent times, conservatives have tended to focus on ideas. If, after President Trump leaves office, they don’t start thinking more about personnel, if they don’t consider the population of institutions as much as they do the structure of institutions, if they choose a leader who thinks technocratically instead of ad hominem-ly, we will indeed end up with the permanent Democratic majority liberal intellectuals have predicted for the last 20 years.

Read the rest here.

And a follow-up: One American News’s special report on FISA abuse (blogged here) is not at present scheduled for a re-broadcast.

# # #

When cultures collapse

 

image credit: saturdayeveningpost.com

Walter E. Williams sums it up:

A society's first line of defense is not the law or the criminal justice system but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly imparted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. Police and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Today's true tragedy is that most people think what we see today has always been so. As such, today's Americans accept behavior that our parents and grandparents never would have accepted.

Williams considers gun violence, popular music, unwed mothers, manners, and more. His article “Things Haven’t Always Been This Way” is at Townhall here. RELATED: Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker is unhappy about the degradation of public school dress codes in Texas. Not encouraging.

# # #

What is their endgame?

image credit: theburningplatform.com

I go hot and cold on Mark Levin. But his column yesterday was the lead link at Doug Ross’s Director’s Blue blog, and it’s a good one. Here’s his conclusion:

Challenge socialists on this single point: What is their endgame?

When is enough government control enough? Why won’t socialists -- or Democrat Socialist -- share their blueprint for society? What industry is a “bridge too far” for socialism? Why can’t they tell us what their limits are on taxation, control of industry, and how much of society should be dependent upon their handouts?

Conservatives know their endgame: it is called the United State Constitution. These four pages of wisdom, condensed instructions gleaned from thousands of years of human experience, ended up germinating the most magnificent nation-state yet to arise from humanity’s tumult.

And a great percentage of our fellow citizens neither recognize nor appreciate the magnificent society with which they have been bequeathed. They take for granted this unique and precious anomaly in the context of human history.

Only education can help them. Not all of them, to be sure, but many: those who possess both open minds and a willingness to learn.

He asks a good question, one which my ultra-liberal friends and relatives might have difficulty responding to. The full article is here. 

# # #

Teaching history in England and America

art credit: indianexpress.com

  

James Delingpole’s “History Teaching Has a Dangerous Left-Wing Bias” is mostly about teaching the history of England, but he references NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s put-down of the USA from a day or two ago: “We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great.” 

The teaching of history in America more and more shares Gov. Cuomo’s guilt-ridden perspective. And I am thinking of all the Confederate and Founding Father statues and plaques that are being torn down, which will ultimately result in history text books filled with blank pages and lies. Delingpole concludes his article:

Apart from being objectively untrue – the historical achievements of the Anglophone empires and their various scientists, inventors, writers, painters, explorers and warriors far, far outweigh their defects – this approach is also insidiously dangerous.

There’s a reason why young Victorians were raised on GA Henty novels with titles like Under Drake’s Flag and Winning His Spurs. The narrative of national pride filled young men and women with the confidence to go out and achieve extraordinary things on behalf of their great nation.

There’s a reason, too, why young Americans used to pledge allegiance to the flag.

We’re encouraged by the modern left to pour scorn on such outmoded jingoism. But it was nothing of the kind: just people uniting in love of their country and recognising that it was a cause worth fighting and dying for. The less you value your nation’s history and traditions, the less you feel they are worth defending. Such negativity is a recipe for decay and defeat. It’s so obvious, so well-documented that only a left wing historian could be deluded enough to imagine otherwise.

The full article is on Breitbart here.

# # #

Socialism on the rise

image credit:thedebtweowe.com

The disconcerting headline (disconcerting to Tea Party people!) in Rick Moran’s piece in American Thinker:

"Socialism is going mainstream, and Millennials are the cause"

From the article:

A headline in The Hill captures a significant moment in American history: "Four socialist-backed candidates win Pennsylvania legislative primaries."

The Democratic Socialists of America supported all four candidates, who will almost certainly win in November, given their lack of GOP opponents.

The DSA itself thinks socialism's time has come:

The DSA hailed the legislative victories as a huge moment for the socialist movement. 

Arielle Cohen, co-chair of the Pittsburgh DSA chapter, told HuffPost that she feels a "monumental shift" after the victories, noting DSA's growing membership since President Trump's election.

"We won on popular demands that were deemed impossible.  We won on health care for all, we won on free education," she said.

"We're turning the state the right shade of red tonight," she added.

The "right shade of red" is due to a growing acceptance for socialism, especially among Millennials, and outright hostility and opposition to capitalism. 

. . .

How did this happen? The short answer is that the American people are ignorant of the dangers to human liberty posed by socialism and have been propagandized by our educational system, our culture, and our media to hate capitalism.  If you are told capitalism is evil for your entire life by teachers, movies, TV, and news media, you are going to believe that capitalism is evil. 

The rest of the article is here. If you go to the link, you will see more than the usual number of reader comments - over 400 when I posted. 

# # #

HB 512 sets off alarm bells at PJ Media

image credit: youtube.com

The other day, Paula Bolyard at PJ Media ran a report “Kasich Power Grab Could Give Unelected Bureaucrats Almost Unlimited Power Over Education.” Here’s the opening:

Ohio Governor John Kasich and the Ohio legislature are fast-tracking a bill that that would consolidate nearly all educational departments into one unelected executive agency controlled by the governor. It's a giant power grab by Kasich and Ohio Republicans, who have become frustrated by their inability to control the Ohio Department of Education and the elected members of the State Board of Education.

HB 512, currently under consideration by the Ohio House, seeks to combine the Ohio Department of Education (ODE), Ohio Department of Higher Education, and Ohio Department of Workforce Transformation into a single new department organized under the governor. In addition, the elected State Board of Education (SBE) would be stripped of most its powers to promulgate rules related to K-12 education. The current board, which has 11 regionally-elected members and eight at-large members appointed by the governor, has purview over a wide variety of education issues, including standards, assessment selection, proficiency determination, state report cards, teacher/student ratios, private and homeschool regulations, and public school operating standards.

"What I really want... I want to be able to run the Department of Education," Kasich said at an Associated Press forum in early February, signaling his support for the move. "I don't think we should have this elected school board." Instead, he said the governor should be in charge of education in the state.

"We have no clue who these people are and they're running education policy," Kasich said. "And I'm governor and I can't tell them what to do. It's nuts."

That's the way democracy works, John.

. . .

The most egregious change, she warned, "is the transfer of authority from our State Board of Education to one person appointed by whomever the governor may be." As a result, "every four to eight years the focus and direction of [the agency's] broad scope of power can change, which is not conducive to stability," Elsey said.

Read the rest here -- including written testimony already submitted. Don’t just weep. Cleveland Tea Party blogged alerts on HB 512 earlier today here and on March 4 here. Please refer back to those blog links for Actions you can take to stop this monstrosity.

# # #

American education standards and today's electorate

art credit: giphy.com

Anyone who can stand to watch Fox’s Watter’s World on-the-street interviews with low-information voters, or those who remember similar candid camera interviews on Jay Leno’s Tonight show, are probably aghast at the dumbing down of the American culture, media, and education. We're talking about young adults who do not recognize an image of George Washington and cannot name the sitting Vice President. Who are the young voters who are part of the electorate?

This past week, I came across two opinion pieces that examined the educational decline in our country. The first was by Bruce Deitrick Price (K-12: Parent X Takes On Principal Zero) at the American Thinker blog, about a parent who had attempted on numerous occasions to register concerns with the principal of her daughter’s school:

My complaints were elevated to the new principal.  I met with him at least seven times; several times I was accompanied by a member of the school board.

Finally the principal, aggravated and arrogant, told me schools no longer believe in academic excellence because demanding subjects no longer appeal to the mainstream student or to his parents.

He proclaimed that his program, his syllabus, his teachers were all fully in compliance with local, state, and federal standards, and he wasn't going to change a single thing to accommodate me or my daughter.

He said proudly he is a "Progressive," he has a Ph.D., and he had "helped" develop and design many of those standards, and he believed in them.  He said any kid who wants a higher-level education for a professional career will have to get it somewhere else. 

He was emphatic that neither I nor the school board member could change anything.

This parent decided to home-school her daughter. But the principal’s attitude and his unashamed statement that academic excellence is a thing of the past is more than a little alarming. The rest of that short report is here.

A longer analysis of the collapse of America’s educational standards is by a Canadian contributor to PJ Media, David Solway:

What we see today, then, universities as centers of leftist indoctrination, the shutting down of intellectual debate (cf. Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind), a generation of “snowflake” students who are preoccupied with frivolities like trigger warnings, microaggresssons, transgender bathrooms, and “safe spaces” where they will never be exposed to an unfamiliar or conflicting idea, and the sniveling infantilization of the entire academic cohort—flows directly from [John] Dewey and his followers. 

These pedagogical dissidents prepared the ground for the subversive agenda of the Frankfurters by engaging in an act of cerebral softening, that is, promoting the student over the teacher, the child over the man (or woman), and feeling over thought—hence the continuing prominence of the “self-esteem” movement that slashed-and-burned its way through the educational landscape.

Scary stuff. This is a much longer read and very thought-provoking, but it may be of interest to conservative voters who have an opportunity to discuss the upcoming election with family and friends. Be forewarned: the essay is rather depressing, but it does a good job of tracing the history of how we got to where we are and why it's an uphill battle. If you are interested, it’s here.

The key for me when attempting discussions on politics with liberals is that the facts and logic don’t seem to matter – at least most of the time. It’s all about feel-good emotions. If you find Mr. Solway’s observations perceptive, you might also want to take a look at Diana West’s book-length treatment, The Death of the Grown-Up. It’s available on Kindle and discounted hardcovers (as low as 1¢). It’s a good read and goes fast.

# # #

HR 5 Student Success Act (NCLB): ONLY DELAYED - NOT DEFEATED!

Through the hard work of many phone calls, emails and the use of social media, the reauthorizing of No Child Left Behind or the Student Success Act (HR 5) was not passed this past week. 

While this is cause to celebrate, it is important to understand our success was only in DELAYING the Student Success Act (HR 5) from passing - it was not defeated (voted down).

We must remain vigilant & continue to contact members of Congress to tell them to NO continuation of NCLB and No on the Student Success Act (HR 5).

To contact your member of congress, click here.

From Politico --

House Republicans decided not to vote Friday on their proposed rewrite of the No Child Left Behind law, the Student Success Act, after House leadership struggled to lock down support for the bill and debate over Department of Homeland Security funding eclipsed education plans.

The House passed a nearly identical bill in 2013, but discontent with the Common Core academic standards and concerns about federal government intrusion have grown, and conservatives have said they want to get more out of an education bill in the newly Republican-controlled Congress. That left House leadership facing new criticism from the right because the GOP bill omits school vouchers, radical reductions to federal mandates and other right-wing proposals.

“My district doesn’t like it. They just feel that we’re moderating No Child Left Behind. They hate No Child Left Behind,” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said.

It’s not clear when a vote on No Child Left Behind will take place.

The wrangling over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, set to run out Friday, complicated matters. The debate over how to handle DHS funding has angered conservative lawmakers — who House leaders will need to vote on the Student Success Act. Handling both votes in one day would have been difficult for lawmakers, several House aides said Friday.

And that’s not to say the Student Success Act didn’t have issues of its own: On Thursday night, House leadership was still trying to shore up support for the bill, several GOP aides and lawmakers said. At a Friday morning press conference held by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and others at a charter school in the Anacostia neighborhood of D.C., lawmakers didn’t talk about the Student Success Act and didn’t hold scheduled press availability. House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline didn’t even attend, though he was originally listed to be there: He was on Capitol Hill whipping votes for his bill.

Despite anger that has built up over the law’s far-reaching scope, the politics constrained how far to the right Republicans pushing the Student Success Act could go.

Kline needed a bill that would pass the House with support from moderates. He has made clear that a bill with private school vouchers would not have the votes to pass the chamber and would not fly with President Barack Obama, who has threatened to veto the House version of the bill.

NCLB expired in 2007. The current push to update the law is the first serious attempt at reauthorization since then, but there’s only a short window to rewrite it before the 2016 elections are fully underway and legislative work slows.

Senate lawmakers are working on their own version of No Child Left Behind in a bipartisan fashion, with hopes of heading to conference later this year.

Kline has been coordinating his approach with Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, but the Senate leader is on a very different track than Kline. He’s negotiating with committee Ranking Member Sen. Patty Murray on a bipartisan bill that they hope can clear the chamber. Alexander has insisted he’s optimistic about his chances of striking a deal with Murray and wants to get a bill in front of the committee by mid-March.

“We’re making good progress,” Alexander said earlier this week. “I’m very pleased with the way we’re working with Sen. Murray right now.” With Alexander taking the moderate route, it was up to the House to push a bill that’s as conservative as possible to set the party up in a strong position for the potential conference — but without ostracizing the White House altogether.

So House Republicans supporting the bill have had little choice but to play to the center of the party. The House took up over 40 amendments but didn’t consider any proposals that would have added heavy doses of conservatism. An amendment pushed by Heritage Action that would allow states to opt out of the law’s requirements altogether but still receive federal funds was left on the cutting room floor when the bill went through the House Rules Committee. Heritage and The Club for Growth both strongly opposed the bill.

“It’s a good thing that at least the train has been stopped at the station for now and maybe there’s some time to go back and rethink this,” Club for Growth Communications Director Doug Sachtleben said.

There were signs as the week progressed that House leaders were trying harder to turn some of the “no” votes. Language slipped into the bill Thursday that included new provisions barring school-based health centers from distributing information on abortions, for example. The abortion language did not reflect a major change to education policy — and it could easily get stripped out of the bill down the line — but it catered to the right.

As of Thursday night, House leadership was still not sure whether it had the votes needed to pass the bill, several lawmakers and GOP aides said.

In the end, it appears, they didn’t. At least not this week.

Democrats, meanwhile, balked at Republicans’ bill, and at Alexander and Kline’s optimism about a potential compromise on education. The White House veto threat called out a provision that would allow education funds for low-income students to follow students as a particularly harmful measure. Democrats say the net effect of the provision would be to drain billions of dollars from poor school districts, where the funds are needed most.

“The goal here isn’t to pass a bill — it’s to pass a good bill,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said this week.

Education doesn’t always divide along party lines, but current differences between leadership of the two parties are vast. Republicans want to cede more control to states and localities to make decisions on education and dump many defined programs.

To Democrats and the civil rights community, stripping the federal role out of education would signal a return to times before No Child Left Behind, when many states didn’t even collect data about the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their peers. Democrats want the bill to retain strong accountability measures and would like to see a new title in the bill devoted to early education.

House Democrats have also criticized Kline’s approach to passing the Student Success Act: There wasn’t a single hearing on the bill in the new Congress. (The House education committee has held many hearings on the bill in previous years.)

The Student Success Act “turns the clock back on educational progress and jeopardizes the civil rights of young people,” House Education and the Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott said this week.

If HR 5 passes, the federal government will own education

Art credit: thearrowsoftruth.com

While we continue to fight for local control of education, the federal government looks to eliminate it.  

The No Child Left Behind law created a culture of extreme testing and oppressive federal intervention on students, teachers and school administrators. 

Next week the House will vote to reauthorize No Child Left Behind (H.R. 5 Student Success Act), thereby extending this outdated education policy through 2021 and it MUST BE STOPPED!  

From NCLB came Race to the Top, and from RTTT came the Common Core State Standards Initiative.  If HR 5 passes, the federal government will own education!

HR 5 will transform all schools into government run schools, just like Europe.  This will be accomplished through the use of NATIONALIZED TESTS and CURRICULUMS and Title I money.

Page 552-553 in this 597 page bill clearly states that if a State participates in federal funding grants and programs (Title I) the state waives its rights and gives full authority to the federal government.  Click Here to read the bill

TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION!

Call your Representative and tell him/her to vote "NO" on HR 5!

Tell them we want to SUNSET NCLB and defund the Dept of Education.  We do not want this failed program to continue.

Click here to read the legislative brief 

The vote is expected nextTuesday, so ACT NOW!

Click here to contact your representative

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Opting Out of Common Core

We’re posting this meeting announcement from Mansfield Tea Party, since some Cleveland Tea Party Patriots have easy access to Mansfield via I-71 or Route 42. Venue will be announced.

Many of you want to OPT your children OUT of the PARCC assessments this February, but are unsure of what to do, or are receiving push back from school administrators.

Heidi Huber (Founder of Ohioans Against Common Core) and Marianne Gasieki are putting together an informational meeting to get ALL your questions answered.

Opting Out and the 

2015 Plan to Remove Common Core

As many of you are aware, the were several roadblocks in Ohio legislative leadership last year, that prevented any success in removing Common Core from our educational system.  Many of those roadblocks are gone, but unfortunately, so are some of our allies.

A new plan of action is being formulated, which Heidi will be discussing at this meeting, as well as information needed to successfully opt your child out of the PARCC testing this February.

It's important that you RSVP for this meeting as soon as possible.  It will be held in the Mansfield area, but the size of the venue will be determined by the number attending.

WHEN:     Saturday, February 7th

                10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

WHERE:   Mansfield (venue TBA)

Guest Speakers to Date

Heidi Huber, Founder - Ohioans Against Common Core:  The real story on Opting Out of PARCC and why it's critical to reclaim your child's classroom.

Rob Coburn, President - Garaway School District Board of Education:  Role and responsibility of district Boards of Education to the community and its students.

Marianne Gasiecki - State Co-coordinator Tea Party Patriots, Mansfield Tea Party Founder: Promoting parental and district activism to get results.

Invited legislators will be added upon confirmation.

Please Click Here to RSVP.  

If others are joining you, please ask them to complete the RSVP so we have an accurate count and can accommodate accordingly.

We have the power, and the right, to control our children's education.

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