Don't Give Obama More Power Over Schools

After spending most of June giving President Obama new authority to negotiate trade deals with low-wage countries in Asia, congressional Republicans are now poised to spend July giving Obama new authority over education in America's public schools. This is a big disappointment for those of us who worked hard to elect a Republican Congress last November. We expected the new Congress to take power back from the president, not give him more.

For the past 50 years, the engine of federal control over local schools has been Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. It was the first in a series of socialist laws that President Lyndon Johnson promised would lead to a "Great Society" after we won his declared "war on poverty."

Johnson's Great Society legislation was speedily enacted by a Congress in which Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than two to one (295-140 in the House and 68-32 in the Senate). Despite the trillions of dollars spent since 1965, we're no closer to achieving a Great Society; by many measures, America's education and social welfare are much worse today than when those programs were launched 50 years ago.

Republicans had an opportunity to dismantle the failed regime of federal control when they regained control of both Houses of Congress in 1994 and then elected a president in 2000. Unfortunately, George W. Bush campaigned on the slogan "Leave No Child Behind" as his signature domestic agenda item, and John Boehner, then chairman of the House Education Committee, produced a bill that rebranded the old ESEA under the new title "No Child Left Behind."

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) promised to bring all children (including all demographic minorities measured separately) to 100 percent proficiency by 2014. Of course, that didn't happen, and nearly everyone now recognizes NCLB as a complete failure.

With their current historic majority in both Houses, there's a new opportunity for Republicans to dismantle the 50-year failure of money poured into local public schools with strings attached. Unfortunately, Republicans, once again, are on the verge of just rebranding the same failed programs with new and overly optimistic slogans: the "Student Success Act" (in the House) and the "Every Child Achieves Act," ECAA, (in the Senate).

Via: Townhall

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Charlie Daniels on Socialism: Do You Think This Can't Happen in America? by Charlie Daniels

The government of the United States of America was not formed and instituted for despots to rule over, spy on, dictate to, nor in any other way dominate its citizens. Rather, it was formed to protect and serve. It was created to patrol the borders, control the flow of immigrants and international commerce, insure the civil rights of its citizens and build and maintain infrastructure to keep the wheels of progress turning.

In the days since the inception of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, much of America has come to perceive the federal government as an entity for all seasons, whose purview includes lifelong entitlements, health care and the guarantor of cradle-to-grave security.

In the broader sense, this is known as socialism. It has been tried in many corners of the world, and it has miserably failed in all of them. The reason being is that it discourages individual initiative, encourages sloth, laziness and total dependence on an outside source.

But there are other even more sinister fruits of socialism.

When a society becomes so dependent on government for every need, they begin to incrementally give up their freedom, to turn over more and more responsibility for their lives to their benevolent uncle and by the time they realize what is happening, every facet of their lives are observed, controlled and basically dominated by a government who has granted themselves a license to do anything they dang well please.

They can confiscate your land, claiming that it is needed for the greater good or put you in jail without any representation or outside contact. Has anybody heard anything from the guy the government arrested who supposedly produced the video they said started the boondoggle in Benghazi?

Did you know that there are pieces being put in place, having already begun with The Food Protection Act, that give the government the power to prevent you from planting a garden or keeping food animals because the pollination could "endanger the food chain”?

Via: CNS News

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No Progress Since the War on Poverty Began Half a Century Ago

Eleven days ago, President Obama took the opportunity at Georgetown University to defend the government’s 50-year experiment in anti-poverty welfare programs.  The president claimed:

It is a mistake for us to suggest that somehow every effort we make has failed and we are powerless to address poverty. That’s just not true. First of all, just in absolute terms, the poverty rate, when you take into account tax and transfer programs, has been reduced about 40 percent since 1967.

The president assumes that after spending $22 trillion (in inflation-adjusted dollars) on federal and state anti-poverty programs since the Great Society’s inception in 1964, a 40% reduction in the poverty rate would be some sort of victory.  But is this statistic even meaningful?  Has there really been a substantial reduction in the rate of American poverty since LBJ declared an “unconditional war” on poverty half century ago?  Has this incomprehensibly vast sum really gone to waste?

Yes, it has.  After you take into account the transfer payments themselves, such as means-tested tax credits, food stamps, welfare checks, and other handouts, not including Social Security or Medicare, and after adjusting for inflation, there has been no significant reduction in poverty itself.   

In 2014, the Census Bureau reported that the American poverty rate was 14.5%.  In 1965, the very first year the War on Poverty programs began, it was 17.3%.  In sum, $22 trillion purchased not even a 3% reduction in real poverty.  Even this “reduction” is illusory, because the poverty rate fluctuates year by year with the rate of the economy growing or slowing.

Via: American Thinker

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