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According to liberals, the world’s poor are poor because of white oppression/discrimination/racism/sexism/imperialism/colonialism. I’d rather agree with the cool economist, Walter Williams:

Rank countries along a continuum according to whether they are closer to being free-market economies or whether they’re closer to socialist or planned economies. Then, rank countries by per-capita income. We will find a general, not perfect, pattern whereby those countries having a larger free-market sector produce a higher standard of living for their citizens than those at the socialist end of the continuum….

[C]itizens of countries with market economies are not only richer, but they tend to enjoy a greater measure of human-rights protections.

Have you ever had the displeasure of seeing radical leftists protesting against alleged “human rights violations” committed by the United States as if this were Iraq or Zimbabwe? Speaking of Zimbabwe:

Once a food-exporting country, Zimbabwe stands on the brink of starvation. Just recently, President Robert Mugabe declared that he’s going to nationalize all the farmland. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the consequence will be to exacerbate Zimbabwe’s food problems. Sierra Leone, rich in minerals, especially diamonds, with highly fertile land and home to the best port site in West Africa, has declined into a condition of utter despair. It’s a similar story in nearly all of south-of-Sahara Africa. Its people are generally worse off now than they were during colonialism both in terms of standard of living and human-rights protections.

My advice to Americans: stay in America.

Mona Charen says:

Moore is, of course, free to say that the war on terror is a clever cover story for George W. Bush’s attempt to line his own pockets. Or to suggest that as nasty as bin Laden is, he is nowhere near as bad as our president. But the reception this preposterous pastiche of lies, warmed-over conspiracy theories and free-floating venom has received from the Democratic elite as well as from the public reveals just how badly riven we are….

What should not go unnoticed however is that Michael Moore’s drivel is endorsed by leaders of the Democratic Party — indeed, by the ex officio leader of the Democratic Party, Terry McAuliffe. He attended the opening and emerged to declare the film “very powerful, much more powerful than I thought it would be.” He later told CNN, “Clearly the movie makes it clear that George Bush is not fit to be president of this country.” Other Democrats in attendance were Senators Tom Daschle (D., S.D.), Tom Harkin (D., Iowa), Max Baucus (D., Mont.), Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.), Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Congressmen Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) and Jim McDermott (D., Wash.). As Byron York points out, all of them, and John Kerry as well, should be asked by reporters if they endorse the conclusions of this movie.

A cadre of Useful Idiots. I can’t wait until someone asks me if I’m going to see that movie. It’ll be a horrid sight. I’m going to…to…calmly tell them that I’m not.

John Kerry emerges from his post-Reagan-funeral hiatus with sound bites and promises…to spend more of your money!

He was visiting his buddy (guy in the tan suit) in Chicago yesterday and offered up more of the same fixing-the-educational-system hype and reached out to “minorities” with the rich v. poor routine.

Kerry ranted about doing away with “tax cuts for the rich”, which we’re supposed to assume will pay for all his new educational programs. He proposes a big-government spending trap called the “National Education Trust Fund.” According to his campaign web site:

John Kerry believes it is time to stop sending mandates from Washington to school districts without providing the resources needed to carry them out. Kerry will make a new deal on education — if Washington is going to mandate accountability for our schools, then the funding should be mandatory. Kerry is proposing a “National Education Trust Fund” to make sure that, for the first time ever, the federal government meets its obligation to fully fund our education priorities.

Pouring more money down the drain with promises of “reduced class size” and “higher teacher pay” is passé and trite, so here’s something fresh. The No Excuses project offers real solutions that will require some grunt work:

Across the nation dozens of principals have demonstrated that with effective school leadership children of all income levels can excel. The No Excuses project has identified seven common traits in low-income schools that excel:

1. Principals are free.
2. Principals use measurable goals to foster achievement.
3. Master teachers bring out the best in a faculty.
4. Rigorous and regular testing are used to improve student performance.
5. Achievement is the key to discipline.
6. Principals work with parents to make the home a center of learning.
7. Effort creates ability.

According to the people in the trenches, this is what it will take to properly educate low-income children. It’s not very glamorous and won’t make headlines, but I think it’s the best hope for inner-city schools.

So whenever you hear politicians talking about a “trust fund”, hold on to your wallets. Kerry says he plans to raise our “annual investment” in education from $23.8 billion to about $35 billion.

Good idea. He should start with his wife’s bank account.

Update (10:00pm): I wrote the following in response to a commenter and realized it should have been included in this post:

Me: “[If] you’re implying that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is an ‘unfunded mandate’ (which most critics do), it’s neither unfunded nor is it a mandate. Education spending has actually increased under Bush (unfortunately), and state budget shortfalls can’t be blamed on the NCLB. States are allowed to opt-out of NCLB. John Kerry touts his ‘trust fund’ based on the unfunded mandate argument. People who don’t know the law or how the budget process works usually fall for such tactics.”

Good Night!

Michelle Malkin paints a stark image of traditional cultural values being flushed down the toilet as government schools continue to come up with strange, demeaning and counterproductive educational fads.

A bunch of bureaucrats decided it would be a great idea to expose students to the “poetry” of the late Tupac Shakur, the “[D]rug-dealing, baseball bat-wielding, cop-hating, Black Panthers-worshiping, convicted sexual abuser who made a fortune extolling the ‘thug life’ before he was gunned down in Las Vegas eight years ago.”

A school board member in Palm Beach County, Fla., is also championing Shakur’s so-called literary work. Debra Robinson lobbied to bring Shakur’s book into the classroom last month because “I always think we need to capture the children’s attention where they are and bring them to where they need to be.”

The presumption that children — and particularly inner-city children — can only be stimulated by the contemporary and familiar smacks of lazy elitism and latent racism. These educators, and I use that term as loosely as gangster rappers wear their pants, are clearly more interested in appearing cool than in inculcating a refined literary sense in students. Their aim is not enlightenment but dumbed-down ghetto entertainment. So that teachers and pupils can “relate” and be “down with that.” So they can “keep it real.” You know what I’m sayin’?

So sad that impressionable children have to be subjected to politically correct nonsense like this. Where are the parents?

If I’m ever blessed with children, I’d sacrifice everything — cars, house, clothes, retirement — to send them to private schools if we couldn’t afford it. Either that or I’d strive to be the best homeschooling Mom this side of the Mississippi.

From a woman in the field, Abigail Thernstrom, co-author of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer (registration req.):

In the last five years, in searching for superb inner-city education, I made a discovery: Almost all excellent schools teaching highly disadvantaged kids look very much alike — and quite different from most regular public schools.

These schools combat what Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has called “the greatest problem now facing African Americans.” And that is “their isolation from the tacit norms of the dominant culture.” His statement is really the academic version of Bill Cosby’s recent remarks in which he talked about black parents who are not parenting and about kids who can’t speak standard English and who will be shut out of the world of economic success.

This is how the best inner-city schools I know address that “isolation from the tacit norms of the dominant culture.” In addition to an academically superb program, they demand that their students learn how to speak standard English. They also insist that kids show up on time, properly dressed; that they sit up straight at their desks, chairs pulled in, workbooks organized; that they never waste a minute in which they could be learning and always finish their homework; that they look at people to whom they are talking, listen to teachers with respect, treat classmates with equal civility, and shake hands with visitors to the school.

Resources and Book Reviews:

• No Excuses web site
• More on Abigail Thernstrom
• Walter Williams
• Thomas Sowell
• National Review
• New Republic

In an attempt to be fair and balanced I tried to find bad reviews, but in the allotted time I had to do this post, I couldn’t find any.

My main man Michael King’s on “Hannity Colmes live! The topic is lack of “diversity” in the Kerry campaign and lack of outreach to blacks by Republicans. Whatever. I’m so glad no one tried to “outreach” me. I came to political conservatism on my own. I suggest Republicans not go after blacks as a group, but appeal to them as individuals. That’s more dignified.

Update (6/30/04): Michael talks about his appearance on FOX.

The socialists are at it again. The hard-earned money of Montgomery County taxpayers will be used to study why whites are disproportionately represented in the county’s fire department. Apparently fewer blacks are applying and those who do are failing the employment test at higher rates than whites (though not explicitly stated).

The question they want answered is not how can the performances of blacks be improved. The politicians want to know why whites are performing so well! Good grief.

Why don’t we just do away with performance standards altogether? Get rid of the MCAT, LSAT, GRE, SAT, and all admissions and employment tests so that everybody will be equal. Am I the only “person of color” around here who’s insulted by paternalistic and condescending junk like this?

From the Washington Post (registration req.):

The class of recruits that started training this month is 89 percent white — the highest proportion of whites since the county took over hiring from volunteer fire companies in 1988.

The recruit class’s disparity with the county’s population — 60 percent white — elicited strong criticism from elected officials and community leaders.

County officials have blamed the drop in minority recruits on the fact that the county last year instituted a race-blind hiring process after county attorneys expressed concerns that the race-conscious hiring process was unconstitutional.

Check out this intelligent and innovative idea:

Officials have said they may replace the written firefighter aptitude test with one that affords greater opportunity to minorities.

The current test may skew toward applicants who have previous volunteer firefighting experience, officials said. In Montgomery, that means a largely white pool of applicants.

Perez said some tests also factor in an applicant’s response to stressful situations, ability to interact with diverse communities and facility with foreign languages.

They plan to dumb down the test. Anything they do to make this test easier to pass will entail lowering the standards. Let’s see, what sort of aptitude test will afford “greater opportunity” to blacks? A test given in ebonics? Hip-hop slang? Lots of pictures? If rewriting a test so that blacks can pass it isn’t outrageous to blacks, nothing is.

Blame it on the Supreme Court. Again. In 1971, it held in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. that for purposes of hiring, an employer’s use of a high school diploma requirement and two standardized written tests violated the Civil Rights Act. Black applicants were disproportionately flunking the test, apparently the same as in Montgomery County.

Griggs laid out the “disparate impact” analysis for employment. Absence of discriminatory intent is not the end of the discussion. Even if an employment practice is “facially neutral,” i.e., a scored test, it’s suspect if it has a disparate impact on members of a “protected class.” That is, if a lot of black people flunk it.

Proving that someone intended to discriminate against you is unnecessary. All you need to do is show that a high percentage of others like you (dark skin?) also failed the test. That’s actionable.

This is why race preferences exist. Companies don’t want to deal with lawsuits, so they set aside a certain number of jobs for “protected class” members. In plain language, these are called quotas. In PC language, this is called “diversity” outreach. In my language, it’s called “unconstitutional.”

(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)

Update (5:41 p.m.): Michelle Malkin linked to the post (cool!). [Note (3/26/05): This post is from my old blog, and I think I was excited because it was the first time Michelle linked to my site.] I really want to get the message out that racial preferences are wrong. The solution to disparities in admissions and hiring is finding a way to maintain high standards for all while providing the training/experience/education necessary to equip individuals to compete. Lowered standards beget lowered expectations. We all deserve better.

Technology is confirming what everyone should already know: abortion is the murder of a living, breathing, feeling human being. Smiling babies like this one (24 weeks) have been legally killed in the United States through a hideous procedure called partial birth abortion, a euphemism for infanticide.

President Bush signed a law banning this atrocious act, but courts and pro-child killing groups will continue to challenge it as unconstitutional. It infringes on a woman’s right to “privacy”, which trumps a human being’s right to live.

Doctors are discovering that babies in utero do many things earlier than previously thought. Unborn babies can rub their eyes, open their eyes, yawn and cry.

(Hat tip: Evangelical Outpost)