[OPINION] On immigration, Kasich just as extreme as Trump

A resident of Summit County, Isabel Framer is a Latina community activist whose expertise springs from her work in language access in the justice system.

It’s a sad state of affairs in the Republican Party today when the candidates are falling all over themselves to out-Trump one another on the issue of immigration. The GOP’s anti-immigrant xenophobia has gone so far, the candidates are now attacking families and innocent children. The Republican outrage du jour concerns “birthright citizenship,” which is a right guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson, Lindsey Graham ... nearly half of the GOP field have come out recently in favor of amending the U.S. Constitution or passing legislation to take away citizenship rights from children who are born in America. Early last week Scott Walker voiced his support for ending birthright citizenship, then seemed to reverse course and now is claiming he won’t take a position on the issue. Meanwhile, Jeb Bush says folks should “chill out a little bit” with criticism of his use of the derogatory term “anchor babies.”

One of those who has seemed slightly less offensive with his comments has been John Kasich. However, a quick look at Kasich’s record reveals he has been just as extreme as Trump and the rest of the GOP. In the early 1990s, Kasich was on the leading edge of anti-immigrant fever as a co-sponsor of legislation to end birthright citizenship. The former Fox News host continued his support for this policy during his 2010 run for governor.

CINCINNATI.COM

Kasich defends immigrants as ‘contributing significantly’

Now that Kasich is running for president – against a field that offers him no room to maneuver on the right – he’s trying to sing a different tune on immigration. While Kasich says he wouldn’t take a path to citizenship off the table, he has also said he opposes it. Kasich added, “I don’t favor citizenship because, as I teach my kids, you don’t jump the line to get into a Taylor Swift concert.”

Many immigrant families have been working for decades, waiting to come out of the shadows as Republicans have failed to act, but Kasich thinks that’s somehow equivalent to teenagers cutting the line for a concert.

Now let’s take a look at Kasich’s actual record as governor on the issue of immigration. Ohio is one of the states challenging President Obama’s executive actions that have deferred action for young people who arrived in America as children and parents of U.S. citizens. To date, Kasich has stood on the sidelines while Attorney General Mike DeWine joined a lawsuit against Obama’s executive orders.

CINCINNATI.COM

Kasich clear on immigration, less on Common Core

Kasich loves to talk about balancing budgets, but he’s ignoring a real benefit for Ohio taxpayers from deferred action. This process, which requires undocumented immigrants that qualify for the program to register, undergo background checks and pay taxes, would bring in an additional $41 million in revenue for the state of Ohio. Add to that the fact that earlier this year a study by UCLA found Ohio was the worst state in the country for promoting the health and well-being of undocumented immigrants.

So ultimately, actions speak louder than words, and Kasich’s actions shouldn’t fool anyone that he’s suddenly a moderate on immigration. If Kasich wanted to do something about immigration, he could pick up the phone and tell DeWine to drop his ridiculous lawsuit. He could make it easier for immigrants in Ohio to access health care and higher education and obtain legal documents. Until then, I’ll view Kasich as a flip-flopping opportunist who can’t be trusted.

Via: CIncinnati.com

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STONEWALLED: FEDS HIDE FISCAL DETAILS ABOUT VAST OPERATION TO RESETTLE ILLEGAL ALIEN MINORS

Illegal aliens who show up at the border have been resettled all across United States of America instead of being detained and deported, as Donald Trump recently called for in his new immigration plan.

According to data from the Justice Department obtained by Breitbart News, 96 percent of Central Americans caught illegally crossing into the country last summer are still in the United States. Now Breitbart News has learned exclusively that a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from a pro-security group about the cost of this operation is being stonewalled.

In January of 2015, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), filed a FOIA request to discover the cost of accommodating the tens of thousands of illegal unaccompanied minors who came across the border encouraged by President Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty for illegal youths.

The FOIA letter made five requests of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency: that the federal agency detail (1) the costs of building of family detention centers; (2) the costs of apprehending, processing and detaining unaccompanied minors; (3) the costs transporting, transferring, removing and repatriating unaccompanied minors; (4) the costs related to ICE’s representation of government in removal procedures involving unaccompanied minors; and (5) the number of instances where objections to the return of unaccompanied minors were raised by the governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

The federal agency, however, refused to answer many of these questions– instead only partially answering two of the five requests. The agency provided only the costs of transporting, transferring and removing illegal minors, as well as the costs of the man-hours such tasks required. Those costs totaled $58.2 million—quadrupling ICE’s costs of $15.6 million in the year previous.

FAIR told Breitbart News that the agency did not provide clear documentation nor explanation as to how it arrived at this estimation.

FAIR asserts that, “The failure to provide most of the cost information related to the surge of [unaccompanied minors] indicates that the government has either failed to properly document those costs, or is refusing to reveal them.”

Because this FOIA request only inquired into the fiscal impact on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency– it does not at all take into account the cost incurred by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) nor the public education system. Because most of the unaccompanied minors were turned over to HHS following their apprehension, FAIR notes that HHS’ costs “for providing shelter, food, education, health care and other services, likely vastly exceed additional costs incurred by ICE.”

The flood of minors has also placed fiscal strains on our public education system. FAIR notes that, “68,541 [unaccompanied minors] were apprehended entering the U.S. Virtually all of them have been allowed to remain in the U.S., at least temporarily.”

Because federal law dictates that all children are entitled to an education regardless of their immigration status, the fiscal burden of educating these students has fallen onto our public education system.

As FAIR notes, educating 68,541 illegal immigrant children at “an average annual cost of $12,401 per child enrolled in K-12 education, the annual cost to local schools is at least $850 million. However, since virtually all of the [unaccompanied minors] are non-English proficient, the actual costs are likely substantially greater.”

The increased costs and difficulties associated with educating illegal minors from poor and developing countries has been well-documented. As Fox News Latino reported in June of this year, the border surge has left many “schools struggling with influx of unaccompanied minors.” While the federal government’s policy of releasing illegal minors into American communities imposes burdens all across our nation’s education system, it will perhaps hurt minority American students most profoundly, by straining the educational resources needed in their communities.

For instance, New York’s Hempstead School District, which is a 96 percent black and Hispanic district, had about 6,700 students dispersed amongst its 10 schools and usually receives an average of a couple hundred new students every year. “However, last summer’s enrollment skyrocketed to about 1,500 new kids – most of them undocumented immigrants.” Fox News Latino writes, “The crush of new enrollees left the district scrambling, forcing it to dip into its emergency reserves to shell out more than $6 million to hire more English as a Second Language teachers and additional staff to alleviate overcrowded classrooms. Still, it has not been enough. The average classroom in the district now has about 40 to 50 children and [as one teacher explained is] posing a safety issue… ‘You have to understand,’ [one teacher said], ‘many of the children are not even proficient in their native language, Spanish, and now we have to teach them how to speak English. That can be very difficult.’”

Deporting instead of resettling illegal immigrants would save taxpayer dollars in two ways.

First, by deterring future border crossings, it would reduce the amount of illegal immigration in the future. As FAIR explains, refusing to implement immigration law has only encouraged more illegal immigrants to unlawfully enter the United States: “In July 2015, the Government Accountability Office confirmed that President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] program played a substantial role in triggering the surge of [unaccompanied minors] in 2014.”

Second, deporting rather than resettling illegal immigrants would save the costs of feeding, clothing, housing, educating, hospitalizing, and caring for illegal immigrants and their relatives. A previous study conducted by FAIR documented that illegal immigrants cost U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion every year. After FAIR explains that by comparison, “The estimated cost of deporting an illegal alien is $8,318. Using just the partial enumerated $58.2 million costs to ICE and the conservative $850 million estimate for education of [unaccompanied minors] resettled in the U.S., the amount of taxpayer money spent on dealing with unaccompanied minors would have paid for the removal of an additional 109,000 illegal aliens.”

Via: Breitbart

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Mandatory Common Core tests in New York just happen to be full of corporate brand names

Across the state of New York, this year’s Common Core English tests have reportedly featured a slew of brand-name products including iPod, Barbie, Mug Root Beer and Life Savers. For Nike, the tests even conveniently included the shoe company’s ubiquitous slogan: “Just Do It.”

The brands – and apparently even some of their familiar trademark symbols – appeared in tests questions for students ranging from third to eighth grades, reports The Post-Standard of Syracuse.

Over one million students were required to take the tests.

Parents, teachers and school administrators have speculated that the kid-friendly brand names are a new form of product placement.

Education materials behemoth Pearson, which has a $32 million five-year contract to develop New York’s Common Core-related tests, has barred teachers and school officials from disclosing the contents of the tests.

Students and parents are not so barred, though, and many have complained.

“‘Why are they trying to sell me something during the test?'” Long Island mother Deborah Poppe quoted her son as saying, according to Fox News. “He’s bright enough to realize that it was almost like a commercial.”

Poppe said her eighth-grade son was talking about a question about a busboy who didn’t clean up a root beer spill. It wasn’t just any root beer, though. No sir! It was Mug Root Beer, a registered trademark of PepsiCo (current market cap: $129.7 billion).

Another question about the value of taking risks featured the now-hackneyed Nike slogan “Just Do It.”

Via: Daily Caller

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[OPINION] Lawmakers did too little for higher education

Many of our current Oregon legislators went to college at a time when our public universities were very affordable and students could cover their costs with summer jobs and part-time work during the school year. As we all are painfully aware, that is no longer the case. Tuition at Oregon's public universities and community colleges keeps heading up and up while our state contribution has fallen so precipitously that we are 47th out of the 50 states in the level of public support for higher education. We leave it to the students to figure out how to pay the difference, and much of that ends up being unsustainable debt, averaging $27,000 for the current graduating class.  

Many students are asking themselves whether college is worth the cost and the debt. Student debt impacts our state's economy as well, as young college graduates can't buy a car, much less a house, can't start a business and have to grab the first job that comes along, often one that doesn't require a college degree, just to meet interest payments on their student loans.  

The Legislature set a very ambitious goal of achieving "40-40-20" by the year 2025 (40 percent with a high school diploma; 40 percent with a community college degree; and 20 percent with a university degree or better). To get there, they eliminated the higher ed board, created the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, eliminated the Oregon University System and spun off the universities to governance by independent boards.  

What have those changes done for the cost of college? In the last few months, those independent college boards raised tuition in amounts ranging from 7.6 percent (Oregon State University), 4.2 percent (Portland State University) to 3.8 percent (University of Oregon), well above the annual rate of inflation rate of minus 0.2 percent. At the same time the University of Oregon's board recently offered a salary of $800,000 to their new president. No wonder they need to raise tuition!  

At the very end of the legislative session, the Ways and Means Committee was able to increase funding for higher education by a substantial 22 percent over the last budget. Although still not back to pre-recession levels, this was a major increase of $700 million for the universities and $550 million for community colleges. The problem is, the Legislature did not mandate that this increase in state support result in any commensurate tuition cuts for students. Rather, the PSU president has said the additional funding might help to lower the planned 4.2 percent increase in tuition and fees. But increase it they will!

Meanwhile the Washington state Legislature took a dramatically different approach. They cut tuition for their public colleges and universities by an immediate 5 percent and by an additional 10 percent to 15 percent in 2016. Any increases thereafter will be tied to increases in Washington's median hourly wage. Oregon needs to do the same.  

Oregon needs to start with a student-centered reinvestment budget, as opposed to an institution-focused reinvestment budget. This would include reining in the universities' sky-rocketing non-academic costs, increasing need-based student aid grants, lowering — or at least freezing — tuition levels and helping students meet tuition payments without incurring unsustainable debt.  

The Legislature did budget $10 million for a much scaled down "free community college" bill. This effort, while helpful to some high school graduates, will not provide any assistance to the older worker coming to community college to get advanced training nor to any students at our four-year universities.  

That's where the "pay it forward" program would have come in. "Pay it forward" offered students the opportunity to go to a public university without paying tuition upfront but, rather, making small, income-based payments after completion. Their payments would not go to out-of-state banks — currently some $200 million in student loan payments leaves the state every biennium —  but would stay right here in Oregon in a fund that would help pay for future generations of students, eventually becoming self-sustaining. Yes, the state would have to come up with the initial funding, but this is a shared responsibility model, and the students would pay back into the fund after they completed their education so that future generations of students could have the same educational opportunity.  

We have to revisit the question of student debt in the next legislative session. It is a problem that haunts the future for all of us.  

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Barbara Dudley is senior policy adviser for the Oregon Working Families Party.

Via: Oregon Live

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How We Can Stop The Expansion of the Federal Government Into Our Classrooms

Innovation starts locally – not in Washington.

Yet, over the past few years, we have witnessed the unprecedented expansion of the federal government into our classrooms.

Decades of regulations, mandates and rules have been piling up on our educators, but failing to improve our students’ education.

Congress is set to reconsider, and potentially reauthorize, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

This law outlines federal programs for K-12 education and was last reauthorized in 2002 as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which further expanded Washington’s intrusion in our schools by creating new federal mandates.

No Child Left Behind also expired in 2007.

This means the Obama administration has been able to operate without certain limitations and has strong-armed states into complying with its liberal education agenda.

Thankfully, we have the opportunity to get Uncle Sam out of the business of micromanaging our schools from the top-down and return control to our local families, educators and officials.

This week in the House, my colleagues and I are revisiting the way Washington approaches our K-12 federal education policy with consideration of H.R. 5, the Student Success Act.

This bill repeals and reforms many failed education policies like the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) mandate, but I challenge that we can do even better for our children and future generations.

Conservatives have the largest majority in Congress that we have had in years, and we have a real opportunity to stand against Washington’s culture of bureaucracy and make a difference in our federal approach to education — let’s ensure we truly return education decisions back to the local-level.

Via: Daily SIgnal

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Education System now Graduating Al Gores from public schools

Meanwhile, that little Noah and Amanda you sent off to school will be coming back home as another Al Gore

The next generation of global warming-spouting Al Gore type activists are already in training in America’s classrooms.

The big lie called man-made global warming, birthed by the United Nations and lib-left world leaders out to make a fast buck in the impossible-to-fail money maker advanced on society by global warming/climate change, is here to stay.

As permanent a fixture in modern society as career politicians and rising taxes, the future of global warming will be played forward by school children, who although they can’t read or write, will fill the ranks of the environmental protest movement calling attention to the supposed inherent dangers of man-made global warming.

Teaching school age children how to be politically correct far exceeds educating them. In education, indoctrination has become a lucrative cottage industry, because it can count of the support of generous government grants. 

Rather than school kids wanting to talk about the family’s next planned trip to Disneyland, they will be probing the size of their parents’ carbon footprint, per the instructions of their classroom teacher—and coming up with creative ways to shrink it.

With a colossal number of parental eyes fixed on Common Core, added to the never-ending worry of why so many school children still struggle with reading and writing, this is what the Department of Education slipped in:

“Under the guise of the first new K-12 science curriculum to be introduced in 15 years, the real goal seems to be to expose students to politically correct climate-change orthodoxy during their formative learning years. (Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2015).

Via: Canada Free Press

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[VIDEO] Obama's Education Secretary Seeks Economic Advice From Chicago GANG LEADERS

Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced this week that he has sought employment policy guidance from street gang leaders in Chicago.

Duncan made the remarks on Tuesday at the National Summit on Youth Violence Prevention in Crystal City, Va.

Via: Fox News

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ANALYSIS: Obama proposes same-old discredited education ideas

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, President Obama once again called for renewed and vigorous funding of universal preschool programs at the state and national level–a favorite policy of the president that nevertheless is opposed by most education experts.

“Research shows that one of the best investments we can make in a child’s life is high-quality early education,” said Obama. “I’m going to pull together a coalition of elected officials, business leaders, and philanthropists willing to help more kids access the high-quality pre-K they need.”

Contrary to the president’s statements, research does not indicate that greater funding of early education efforts would be a worthwhile investment for the nation’s children. Experts from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution and the Reason Foundation have all told The Daily Caller that there is very little evidence for the claims made by universal pre-K supporters.

While children enrolled in preschool tend to develop more quickly than their peers, the gains don’t last. By fourth grade, children who enrolled in preschool are no more intellectually or socially advanced than their peers, according to studies.

There is also scant evidence that expanding early education programs would have a noticeable reduction on crime or poverty, as liberals often claim.

Still, the evidence has not stopped Obama from frequently demanding increased funding for federal preschool programs like Head Start, as well as state efforts. Funding for pre-K was a major policy proposal in previous SOTU addresses as well as in other speeches the president gave throughout the year. (RELATED: Obama skirts Congress, funds pre-K through Obamacare)

Via: Daily Caller

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TAX HIKES REMAIN TOXIC

On Tuesday, November 5 the good citizens of Colorado voted 65% to 35% to defeat a ballot measure that would have replaced the present 4.63% flat rate income tax with a higher rate of 5% for those earning up to $75,0000 and a 5.9% rate for those earning more than $75,000.  This measure, if enacted, would have increased taxes by $1 billion a year with promises that it would be spent “on education.”

When issues are placed on the ballot by initiative petition or legislative referral we can learn a great deal from election results.  Candidates can win for a many different reasons.  Was the winner popular? Or was the loser unpopular?  Did voters agree with the candidate they cast a vote for on his entire agenda?  Or just one key issue?  Or was the vote based on personal issues of character or experience rather than any particular policy question?

But a vote on an income  tax increase to spend more money “on education” losing two to one in Colorado sends some stark, clear, undiluted messages. Initiatives do not flub debates or misspeak or drive under the influence or have bad hair days.  We can be fairly certain what message voters intended to send in Colorado when they said “no” to an income tax hike for more education spending.

And this loud and clear message of opposition to higher income taxes even with the promises that the revenue would flow to a “popular” cause of education spending undermines the Left’s narrative on taxes, Obama, and Colorado.

Via: Human Events

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Carney dodges on Duncan comments

The White House on Monday sidestepped a brewing controversy over whether Education Secretary Arne Duncan had erred when he said last week that "white suburban moms" were opposing new education standards.

Press secretary Jay Carney said he had not seen Duncan's "full comments" and had not spoken to President Obama about the remark.

But he also defended the apparent spirit of Duncan's comments, in which the secretary said it was "fascinating" that opposition to the Common Core standards was coming from “white suburban moms who — all of a sudden — their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”

"If his point was that we need to be honest with kids and parents about whether we're providing the skills they need to succeed, I think we can all agree on that," Carney said. "So, again, I haven't had a discussion with the president about that, but I think the broader point that we need to be honest about whether we're providing the skills these — our children need to succeed, I think we can agree on that."

Asked if it was "appropriate" for Duncan to single out white mothers for their opposition to the standards, Carney again declined to respond.

"I can just tell you that the secretary of Education and everybody on the president's team dedicated to this effort is focused on making sure that we do everything we can, working with states and others, to ensure that our kids are getting the education they need for the 21st century," he said.

Duncan's remarks about the Common Core standards were reported by The Washington Post.

The controversial federal initiative is designed to standardize a single set of education criteria for English and Math studies from kindergarten through 12th grade. All but five states have adopted the standards, which are supported by a $4.35 billion stimulus grant.

Via: The Hill

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