This story, if you haven’t heard it yet, should bring tears to your eyes:
It’s safe to say that the Baltimore schools get an F grade. The schools aren’t teaching the kids; they are intellectually abusing them.
Now here’s what makes this story all the more heartbreaking: Baltimore spends $21,000 per student. How could the teacher's unions possibly spend that much money and accomplish almost nothing?
Most of you have heard our riff on public education in America: in most inner cities across the country, kids could be getting a much better education at half the cost in Catholic schools. Nowhere is that more true than in Baltimore.
The United States is. This is a point we’ve made at CTUP for years, so we were thrilled to see a new study by our friends at Institute for Energy Research providing slam-dunk evidence.
Despite Joe Biden’s war on American fossil fuels, the U.S. is still one of the world’s largest producers of oil, gas, and coal (at least for the next 10 years, according to Biden). Yet, we rank Number One of all energy-producing nations on IER's measure of environmental quality.
Here is the ranking:
And here is our record in improving air quality:
The takeaway: Biden’s climate strategy to strangle domestic fossil fuel production isn’t just hurting our economy, it will transfer production to countries like China and Venezuela with horrible environmental records.
The Chicago Tribune reports that “hundreds of communities and organizations across the country are considering providing reparations” to African-Americans.
They should take a look at the preposterous impact of one of the nation’s first reparations programs, in the liberal Chicago suburb of Evanston.
As we reported two years ago, Evanston’s city council voted to distribute $10 million over the next 10 years to eligible Black households. The funds were to compensate black families for past housing discrimination in Evanston dating back to 1919.
But this meant that white, black, and Hispanic households who have only recently moved into Evanston and had nothing to do with the discrimination, have to pay a reparations tax to the grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of black homeowners who may have suffered injustices as far back as 100 years ago.
The city came up with a crazy scheme that only a progressive could possibly think up. Under the plan, 16 residents, selected randomly by a ping-pong ball machine have received $25,000 payments.
Two of the 16 people who’ve gotten reparations so far are upset that the $25,000 city payment may disqualify them from other free money that the state of Illinois liberally passes out each year.
The whole thing in Evanston is a laughable sham. So naturally, in California, the “reparations commission” that Governor Gavin Newsom created in 2020 is suggesting that 2.5 million “descendants of slaves” in the state be compensated with $223,200. The cost would be more than California's entire state budget in 2021.
4) State Department Blacklisting Conservative News Sites
If there were ever any lingering doubts about the Deep State in Washington is real, get a load of this: the State Department has given over $300,000 in grants to a group that works to demonetize websites it claims are spreading “disinformation” - almost all of which are conservative.
The group is called Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit that claims to be a “non-political” watchdog working to root out “disinformation.” Its list of funders is chock full of left-wing groups like George Soros' Open Society Foundation.
Among the outlets that are on the GDI blacklist are the Washington Examiner, Daily Wire, Reason magazine, Real Clear Politics, and Breitbart. (We are jealous that we didn’t make the list!)
Then get this. GDI also has a list of the “ten sites with the lowest level of disinformation risk.” On that list: National Public Radio, ProPublica, Buzzfeed News, and HuffPost.
What a laugh! For starters, Buzzfeed was the first outlet to publish in full the infamous Steele Report, one of the most blatant “disinformation” documents of recent years.
5) Quote Of The Day: FTC Commissioner Resigns Charging Agency Is Violating Rule Of Law
Christine Wilson, an FTC Commissioner since 2018, announced her resignation in Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
Much ink has been spilled about Lina Khan’s attempts to remake federal antitrust law as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Less has been said about her disregard for the rule of law and due process and the way senior FTC officials enable her….. I refuse to give their endeavor any further hint of legitimacy by remaining. Accordingly, I will soon resign as an FTC commissioner.
I am not alone in harboring concerns about the honesty and integrity of Ms. Khan and her senior FTC leadership. Hundreds of FTC employees respond annually to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. In 2020, the last year under Trump appointees, 87% of surveyed FTC employees agreed that senior agency officials maintain high standards of honesty and integrity. Today that share stands at 49%……
My fundamental concern with her leadership of the commission pertains to her willful disregard of congressionally imposed limits on agency jurisdiction, her defiance of legal precedent, and her abuse of power to achieve desired outcomes.
