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« on: March 13, 2019, 11:46:06 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Digest 3-13-2019
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Patriot Post® · Mid-Day Digest
Mar. 13, 2019
https://patriotpost.us/digests/61739-mid-day-digest
THE FOUNDATION
“The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.” —Thomas Jefferson (1820)
https://patriotpost.us/fqd/61738-founders-quote-daily
IN TODAY’S EDITION
Wealth, privilege, and cheating to get into college.1
The Green New Deal is losing even some Democrat constituencies.2
Daily Features: More Analysis3, Columnists4, Headlines5, Opinion in Brief6, Short Cuts7, Memes8, and Cartoons9.
IN BRIEF
Wealthy Leftists Caught Cheating College Admissions10
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors announced charges against more than 50 people involved in cheating and bribery for admission to colleges and universities. Individuals charged included two well-known actresses, several business CEOs, college coaches, college administrators, and William Rick Singer, founder of The Key, which was the organization responsible for running the whole scheme. The schools implicated include Georgetown, Yale, Stanford, University of Texas, University of Southern California, UCLA, and others. Interestingly, several of the charged individuals have also donated to Democrats11.
Andrew Lelling, U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, explained12, “Based on the charges unsealed today, all of them knowingly conspired with Singer and others to help their children either cheat on the SAT or ACT and/or buy their children’s admissions to elite schools through fraud. This case is about the widening corruption in elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud. … There can be no separate college admissions system for the wealthy.” He further noted, “For every student admitted through fraud, an honest, genuinely talented student was rejected.”
“The cherry on top?” National Review’s Jim Geraghty asks13: “The whole enterprise was granted tax-exempt nonprofit status by the Internal Revenue Status since 2013. Those Tea Party groups couldn’t get nonprofit status, but these crooks could.”
Cheating always raises people’s ire, especially when it comes at the hands of those with wealth and influence. Indeed, as Geraghty put it, “The full description is an epic portrait of graft, corruption, elitism, and sleaze that will leave you wanting to burn down the Ivory Tower.” That said, in many ways the system has been legally rigged for years, primarily through affirmative action. Claiming to seek the goal of equality of access, affirmative action instead promulgates the idea that some groups are inherently more worthy or deserving than others, based upon historical circumstances viewed through the lens of race rather than individual merit.
The point here is that neither cheating the system via bribery nor legally rigging the system to favor (or in the case of Harvard University, discriminate against14) racial minorities are just. A truly just system would apply the same standard to all applicants, irrespective of their economic status or race.
How will this criminal fiasco be spun by those on the Left? We predict it will become a call for greater government intrusion; remember, never let a crisis go to waste. Don’t be surprised to see more calls for “free college” as a solution. Leftists will claim that free college will serve to limit the “evil” impact of “white privilege” and the “wealth privilege” of capitalism. This is the same logic Democrats use to defend their free-speech-squelching campaign-finance reform.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/61737-wealthy-leftists-caught-cheating-college-admissions
Big Labor Slams Green New Deal15
Democrats thrive on dividing Americans into constituency groups, which is a very effective way to win votes by making those groups feel beholden to the party. But every once in a while, there’s a head-on collision at the corner of such “intersectionality16.” This time, that clash involves Green New Deal proponents and union representatives.
In a joint letter to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), the chief GND sponsors in Congress, 10 national labor unions on the AFL-CIO’s energy committee wrote, “We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor, but the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sections of our economy. We will not accept proposals that could cause immediate harm to millions of our members and their families. We will not stand by and allow threats to our members’ jobs and their families’ standard of living go unanswered” [emphasis added].
What immediate harm? The GND calls for, among many other things, eliminating fossil fuels en route to completely restructuring the U.S. economy. Mark Alexander warns17 the GND’s authoritarian goals “would result in catastrophic worldwide economic collapse.” But if you don’t take his word for it, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore declared that “it would be basically the end of civilization.”
No wonder unions are a bit worried.
But Ocasio-Cortez tells us there’s nothing to fear from “being automated out of work.” In fact, she says, our “core problem” is that “we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die.” That’s not true, of course, but it’s why her since-removed GND FAQ section called for paying even those people “unwilling to work.” Maybe unemployed union workers can ask her for a paycheck.
The irony is that the GND would hurt hard-working, blue-collar people that make up most unions — the same people who have long been Democrat voters. And because renewable energy is simply not sufficient18 to meet our needs, it would also hurt the poor, who are far less able to shoulder the burden of skyrocketing energy costs and other new expenses imposed by the $93 trillion boondoggle.
So while the Green New Deal is fashionable among chardonnay-sipping coastal elitists and college socialists earning gender-studies degrees, out here in the real world, even other Democrat constituency groups are afraid of its disastrous consequences.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/61735-big-labor-slams-green-new-deal
ON OUR WEBSITE TODAY
Featured Analysis: ‘Second Amendment Sanctuaries’19 — Rural counties in blue states defy leftist gun-control laws that undermine constitutional rights.
John Roberts and the Siren Song of Institutionalism20 — The chief justice may be more worried about preserving precedent and institution than the Constitution.
Dems Plan to Pack the Supreme Court21 — Former AG Eric Holder advocates a Court-packing agenda for future Democrats.
Debunking Decades of Climate Alarmism22 — Alarmists made wrong predictions in 2009, 1989, 1970, and even as far back as 1798.
Video: Tax Myths23 — Ocasio-Cortez thinks taxing the rich at 70% will bring in lots of tax money. It won’t.
TOP HEADLINE SUMMARY
According to Reuters25, “British lawmakers crushed Prime Minister Theresa May’s European Union divorce deal on Tuesday, thrusting Britain deeper into crisis and forcing parliament to decide within days whether to back a no-deal Brexit or seek a last-minute delay.” The vote was 391-242 and represented the second such rebuke, though the margin this time around was more respectable. Reuters adds, “The vote puts the world’s fifth largest economy in uncharted territory with no obvious way forward; exiting the EU without a deal, delaying the March 29 divorce date, a snap election or even another referendum are all now possible. May might even try a third time to get parliamentary support.”
“Gov. Gavin Newsom is putting a moratorium on the death penalty in California, sparing the lives of more than 700 death-row inmates,” The Sacramento Bee reports26. An effort to repeal the death penalty was thwarted by voters three years ago, but Newsom is issuing an executive order to circumvent and defy that reproach. |
