Monthly Archives: March 2010

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R.I.P. Jaime Escalante

A great teacher has passed away.

Jaime Escalante, whose story was told in book and on the big screen in Stand And Deliver, has succumbed to cancer at the age of 79.

LOS ANGELES — The math teacher at a tough East Los Angeles high school who inspired the movie “Stand and Deliver,” has died. He was 79.

Family friend Keith Miller says Jaime Escalante died Tuesday in Reno, Nev., where he was undergoing treatment for bladder cancer.

An immigrant from Bolivia, he transformed Garfield High School by motivating struggling students to tackle and excel at advanced math and science. The school had more Advanced Placement calculus students than all but three other public high schools in the country.

Michelle Malkin, who encountered Escalante while covering education in Los Angeles, writes a fitting tribute to a man who bucked every educational fad in order to propel his students to excellence:

Jaime Escalante cared about kids. Not about teachers’ unions or partisan politics or educrat ass-covering or racial grievance-mongering. The Bolivian-born physics and math teacher demanded excellence and hard work, raised standards and expectations, and defied critics and naysayers by teaching algebra and calculus to East L.A. high school students whom the government school system had abandoned and written off …

Escalante’s death comes at a time when California education faddists are once again threatening a new front in the old Math Wars and clamoring to lower already degraded academic standards (see my work on the crapy known as Everyday Math). We need more of the real deal Jaime Escalantes now more than ever. Instead, far too many teachers have abandoned their roles as imparters of knowledge for the lazy hackery of social justice activists.
In an age of dumbed-down schools and victimhood indoctrination, the fierce, demanding, no-excuses doctrine of Jaime Escalante will be sorely missed and never forgotten.

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A Helping Hand

One of the strongest conservative voices out there is Caleb Howe, who contributes at Red State.

Caleb’s going through some tough times financially as a result of the Obama Recession, and Red State founder Erick Erickson posted this request for people to come forward and contribute what they can to help Caleb out.

Caleb Howe is one of the valuable members of our community who does tremendously good work. And right now he could use some help. The Obama economy has done him no favors and he has been without a job for some time. With bills to pay, including a mortgage, kids to feed, and an internet connection that has to be paid for, its tough.

Here’s the link to Caleb’s PayPal account. Go donate something. It’ll make you feel good.

Pay it forward.

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Why Dumbass Hollywood Twits Should Shut Up

This guy is dumber than dumb.

Actor Matthew Modine thinks we need to sit down face to face with Osama bin Laden and ask him why he hates the U.S. so much that he’d fund and orchestrate acts of terrorism against its citizens.

From HotAir via NewsBusters:

Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Laden, and say, “Listen man,what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves or get inside get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.” That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.

I’d compare this to third grade conflict resolution tactics but this may even be below that in naivete.

To find a parallel, think of the elementary school student who gets beaten up by a bully on a regular basis and has his lunch money taken every day and the victim seeking out the aggressor and asking him why he hates him so much.

Seriously. Is there anything wussier than that? Not only will it likely result in another whupping, but it will also add widespread public scorn and ridicule with it.

Of course, when you have the Genuflector in Chief apologizing for America everywhere He goes as well as bowing before every thug and tyrant He can find, it’s not surprising that others follow this tack of weakness and appeasement.

It’s also another reason why Hollywood celebritards ought to just STFU and sing and act or whatever it is they do.

Public policy sure ain’t their strong suit.

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John Cornyn: Tool Of The Week

Even while Republicans such as Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin are getting the GOP message of “Repeal and Reform” out for the fall elections, leave it to the doofus Sen. John Cornyn of Texas to open his mouth without his brain being engaged and, well, shoot himself in the foot.

Cornyn, the head of the National Republican Senatorian Committee already in deep doo-doo with conservatives for backing a limp-wristed, linguini-spined pantywaist in Charlie Crist in Florida over a conservative (Marco Rubio) and supporting a GOP candidate in California’s Senate race in Carly Fiorina who is virtually indistinguishable from incumbent Democrat Statist Barbara Boxer while ignoring conservative state Sen. Chuck Devore, told the PuffHo that the Republicans weren’t interested in repealing ObamaCare NaziCare but rather tinkering around the edges, a GOP party activist’s worst nightmare.

In the wake of the passage of health care reform, nearly the entire slate of Republican senatorial candidates seems ready to run on a repeal of the bill. But now, the lawmaker overseeing their election strategy is softening the message. Rather than promising to scrap the bill in its entirety, the GOP will pledge to just get rid of the more controversial parts.

In a brief chat with the Huffington Post on Tuesday, National Republican Senatorial Committee chair John Cornyn (R-Tex.) implicitly acknowledged that Republicans are content with allowing some elements of Obama’s reform into law. And they’d generally ignore those elements when taking the fight to their Democrat opponents as November approaches.

“There is non-controversial stuff here like the preexisting conditions exclusion and those sorts of things,” the Texas Republican said. “Now we are not interested in repealing that. And that is frankly a distraction.”

What the GOP will work to repeal, Cornyn explained, are provisions that result in “tax increases on middle class families,” language that forced “an increase in the premium costs for people who have insurance now” and the “cuts to Medicare” included in the legislation.

Foot, meet mouth.

HotAir’s Allahpundit says it best:

There’s probably something he could have said that would depress his base more than this, but offhand, I can’t think what that might be. He’s trying to reassure centrists here that repeal wouldn’t mean a return to the status quo but merely replacing O-Care with a more moderate GOP-crafted plan — after all, even a stalwart like Pence offered to work with centrist Dems on bipartisan reform — but given the anxiety among the grassroots that Republicans won’t have the political will to roll this thing back even after they return to power, this is pure poison.

For already signaling to the enemy that the Republicans are afraid of their own shadow and too much of girlie men to repeal this attack on basic human freedom, John Cornyn is The Underground Conservative’s Tool of the Week:

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The Neumann E-Mails

This story went from strange to bizarre to Whiskey Tango Foxtrot in about 24 hours.

An e-mail went out from the Mark Neumann for Governor campaign insinuating that Scott Walker would be dropped out of the race to run for Lieutenant Governor.

Mark Belling talked about the e-mails on Thursday, having received a copy of it. Here’s the Belling podcast via Badger Blogger.

The following day, Charlie Sykes also picked up the topic and published the actual e-mail on his blog:

From: Derek Ellerman
Date: Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 8:32 PM
Subject: Re: Dear Mr Neumann

We are increasingly hearing a rumor that because of Mark’s recent and continued insurgence in the polls, and the mass defection of his donors to the Neumann campaign, Scott Walker is going to switch to the Lt. Governor ticket and support Mark Neumann for Governor. Since Mark has limited himself to two-terms, Walker will naturally run for the governorship in 2018.

The Blogfather went on to note that Neumann himself pushed a rumor to the Wisconsin State Journal that Walker would be withdrawing from the race to run for U.S. Senate against Russ Feingold.

I am really disappointed in Mark Neumann. He was my congresscritter for four years and did a good job representing me in Washington. But he’s been out of the political game since losing a close Senate race to Russ Feingold in 1998, and quite frankly if there were a race Neumann should have taken on, it was a rematch with the Senator from Al Qaeda, not a race for governor.

Right now, Feingold is vulnerable, polling single digit points ahead of a pair of abysmal candidates, one trying to raise money by selling blaze orange T-shirts on the Internet and the other as dull as five pound bag of fertilizer that’s run two political races in his life — both for village board — and finished dead last twice.

Instead of having Mark Neumann to go out and work for enthusiastically, we are forced to sit around and watch former Gov. Tommy Thompson, a big spending progressive Republican, do his Hamlet routine on entering the race. Will he or won’t he? Odds are, he will and Tommy is the only Republican capable of raising the money it will take to unseat Feingold.

Now we have to endure a bitter Republican primary for governor, forcing Walker to spend money to win an election, while the likely Democrat, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, has to spend little if any money and will be flush with teachers’ union, trial lawyer and other lefty cash for the general election.

All because Don Quixote has to tilt at windmills.

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The End Of Reaganism?

Remember Barack Hussein Obama’s encounter with Joe the Plumber? Spreading the wealth around, aka wealth redistribution, a staple of socialism, Marxism and communism.

What’s the real end goal of ObamaCare? Attacking perceived inequality of wealth distribution.

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

A true class warrior, Obama demonizes anyone who makes a profit and achieves anything. To Him, profit is an evil word. No one should make money at the expense of others.

The goal of the Redistributor in Chief is simple: reverse all the gains made under Ronald Reagan and in the post-Reagan era. Reverse Reaganism.

Obama is the anti-Reagan.

Charles Krauthammer puts it this way:

Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama’s triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan’s strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes — then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.

Obama’s strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first — which then forces taxation.

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Here Comes The VAT

Charles Krauthammer sees a European-style value-added tax, or VAT, as inevitable here with the vast expansion of government and dramatic increase in government spending.

We mentioned the VAT as one of the next items on the agenda of the power-hungry Marxists in Washington here. We first mentioned that Bela Pelosi and the Chocolate Jesus were eyeing a VAT here.

With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.

We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks — the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) — is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.

It will vastly increase the debt.

The combination of government-run health care and VATs have destroyed the economies of every European nation that has them. Read here to find an analysis of what the deadly combination has done to Great Britain.

Says Krauthammer:

For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude — if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).

It’s the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.

American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.

Combine ObamaCare, which will lead soon to single-payer, with a VAT and a stifling carbon tax being pushed by Chuck-U Schumer and Lindsey Grahamnesty, and you can pound the final nails in the coffin of the private sector economy in the U.S.

How’s the VAT going to emerge? Simple: Obama’s deficit reduction committee, chaired by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson, will recommend it. After the November elections, of course.

Krauthammer is wrong on one thing when he says:

As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work.

The VAT is not a good idea. It does not tax consumption alone; rather, it taxes every level of production in addition to the final product. Those taxes get passed along and drive up the price of the final product.

That is opposed to the Fair Tax, which simply taxes the final product and would replace the income tax. The Fair Tax has a great deal of potential, provided the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is repealed. Otherwise, we’ll wind up with a national sales tax and an income tax.

But be prepared to say hello to a European-style VAT if Democrats Statists retain control of Congress after the November elections. The Democrats Statists need the money to fund all their grand schemes.

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Palm Sunday

1 Now when they drew near Jerusalem, and came to Bethphage,[a] at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go into the village opposite you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Loose them and bring them to Me. 3 And if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord has need of them,’ and immediately he will send them.”
4 All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:

5 “ Tell the daughter of Zion,
‘ Behold, your King is coming to you,
Lowly, and sitting on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.’”[c]

6 So the disciples went and did as Jesus commanded them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt, laid their clothes on them, and set Him[d] on them. 8 And a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 Then the multitudes who went before and those who followed cried out, saying:

“ Hosanna to the Son of David!
‘ Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!’[e]
Hosanna in the highest!”

10 And when He had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “Who is this?”
11 So the multitudes said, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.”