With all the histrionics surrounding the Supreme Court decision banning racial preferences (we refuse to use the left’s euphemistic term “affirmative action”) in college admissions policies, one fact that has been ignored is that the income gap between black and white Americans has not widened, it has shrunk in the last 40 years.
Since 1980 black males have seen income gains that are double the income gains of white males and black females have doubled their real incomes. This isn’t because of racial preferences in college admissions. Most blacks don’t attend four-year colleges, and the gap between blacks and whites has been narrowing for non-college occupations.
Alas, the racial earnings gap is still substantial. But two factors that the left refuses to talk about explain most of the black-white income divide today. First, a high percentage of black children (more than half in major cities) are growing up in fatherless homes (dads matter a lot). And second, a large majority of black children aren’t reading or doing math at anywhere near grade-level proficiency because of horrible inner-city public schools.
School choice is by far the best income escalator for black Americans.
2) High School Graduates Should Be Required to Pass the Citizenship Test
You’ve probably heard the heartbreaking poll result that only 39% of Americans are “very proud” of our country and the numbers are even worse for young Americans – the AOC generation.
Why? Maybe because our incompetent public schools don’t teach kids about our country.
Last year, only 13% of eighth graders met proficiency standards for U.S. history. Only a fifth of students scored at or above the proficient level in civics, or explaining our government and policy structures. Those are the lowest levels EVER recorded.
GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has a smart idea on how to reverse those dismal test scores:
“We should require that every high school senior who graduates from high school should be required to pass the same civics test required of every immigrant who becomes a naturalized citizen in this country. Young people don’t value a country they just inherit. They value a country they have a stake in knowing something about,” he told Fox News last week. “We will have to think outside the standard partisan and identitarian boxes to ask ourselves how our kids' generation will once again be proud of the greatest country known to mankind that's the United States of America."
That's the takeaway in the New York Post editorial on our latest CTUP study with their usual dramatic flair.
The costs of Biden-era new federal regulations — imposed "at a pace surpassing that of the Obama administration" — "amount to almost $10,000 per household," reports economist Casey Mulligan for the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. And if "regulatory costs continue to rise at the same rate as they did during the Obama administration, the total costs of Biden's rulemaking over an eight-year period would almost reach $60,000 per household." By contrast, four years of Trump regulatory moves "reduced regulatory costs by almost $11,000 per household." Oh, and Biden federal agencies underestimated the actual cost of their rulemaking by about 256%. "Government regulation may be the single greatest barrier to prosperity."
US gasoline production trending down since Biden took office. No new refineries. No new LNG terminals. Cancellation of pipelines. Biden talks about “building back better.” Why is he killing our vital energy infrastructure?
5) It’s Official: Biden Is Getting His Climate Change Agenda From…The Simpsons
The predictive value of The Simpsons is well known.
Over the years, the writers have managed to anticipate events years before they happened, even Trump’s famous descent down the escalator to announce his presidential run.
This time they’ve outdone themselves.
You may remember one episode in which Montgomery Burns, owner of the Springfield nuclear power plant invents a mechanism to block out the sun so that people would need power from his plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep their lights on.
Now the Biden Administration is attempting to follow the Burns plan as part of its climate agenda:
What we can’t understand though, is how all the subsidized solar panels will work if the sun is blocked. Sometimes the left hand really doesn’t know what the far-left hand is doing.
