What does this have to do with Bill Cosby?

Some context: Prior to the interview with the Cosby (below), Viera had just gotten her head handed to her by Trump in an earlier interview that had the partisan “Today Show” host so flustered you can actually see her face turn red. Obviously, still bruised by the experience, she was looking to Mr. Cosby to make her feel better and call Trump a racist or something, but the classy comedian didn’t quite oblige. His main criticism was reserved for Trump’s will-he-or-won’t-he dance around his intention to run. The Trump stuff starts at the 6:40 mark, but make note of the awkward pause at 5:30 when Viera asks Cosby if Obama’s been a good education president….

For giggles I’ve embedded Trump’s interview with Viera below. Like I said I’m no Birther, but do you think for a second if anyone questioned where a Republican seeking the presidency was born, the media would not only ignore the issue but at the same time set out to destroy anyone who didn’t? 

That’s not a hypothetical. We already have an answer to that.  

Watch Viera’s face turn beet red. Priceless. Trump also relentlessly stays focused on attacking Obama, which is the only recipe for a GOP victory in 2012. The MSM knows that if 2012  is a referendum on Obama he loses in a landslide, so the Palace Guards will be looking to make the election about our nominee — which means our nominee must relentlessly stay on message and handle the Meredith Vieras of the corrupt MSM world exactly like this:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What, then, is the public to assume when, in spite of the best efforts of our most brilliant thinkers and politicians, freedoms erode, prosperity decreases, and for a great many, justice seems elusive? Surely, sinister forces must be at work.

Let us take for an example the nation’s system of public education. For years, American taxpayers have been sold on a triad of public policy fixes for public education. In order to improve student performance, state and federal governments must dedicate a greater portion of their budgetary dollars to education; class sizes must be reduced, and there must be greater oversight by the federal government. So fervent is the belief in this holy trinity of education, that to even ponder the efficacy of the federal Department of Education is seen as heresy. Any politician who attempts to curb the unrestricted flow of tax dollars to public schools is accused of not wanting to “invest in education.”

And yet, increases in spending have not resulted in a corresponding increase in student achievement. Studies have shown that over the last 50 years, student proficiency in math and English has shown little improvement even as spending and federal government oversight has increased and class size has decreased. Given the brilliance and dedication of our public servants, the failure of significant academic gains to materialize, in spite of billions spent on education, can only be the devil’s work.

And if you are a black man, the devil must, indeed, be working overtime.

Information recently culled from the National Assessment for Educational Progress, based on national math and reading tests given to students in the fourth and eighth grades, revealed some rather disheartening results. According to the New York Times, the report paints a picture for black males that is, “even bleaker than generally known.”

In 2009, math scores for black boys lagged behind those of both Hispanic boys and girls, and black males fell behind white boys by an average of 30 points, which is interpreted as three academic grades. Black males drop out of high school at a rate twice as high as white males and their SAT scores are on average 104 points lower. In short, the report shows that black males fall behind academically early on and never regain ground.

These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.

The social cost of this failure is not to be underestimated.

Half of these students will drop out of high school; lacking a high school diploma and being functionally illiterate will qualify them for manual labor, which is steadily in the decline. They will join the ranks of the chronically unemployed; many of these men will make a life hustling on the streets and eventually become involved in the criminal justice system. Criminal records will make these men more unemployable, which will make it even more unlikely that they will have the financial means to support the children they father. It is a hellish cycle that will repeat generation after generation.

Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard, says, “There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten.” Ferguson gives voice to something that many of us have long suspected: how well children perform in school depends, to a great extent, on the kind of training they receive in the home.

Battling the dark forces aligned against our children may necessitate the asking of some uncomfortable questions. For instance, is the continued academic under-performance of black boys the result of a failure of the educational system? Or, is the issue rooted in black culture?

Of course, we can always avoid the discomfort of those questions and continue to rely on the original thinking of our best and brightest. In response to the chilling figures presented in the report, the authors have come up with the original idea of urging Congress to “appropriate more money for schools.”

Patrick Courrielche’s kickoff article exposing major university faculty and graduate students’ Cry Wolf Project is alarming. Each installment in the series has only made it more so.

CWP’s solicitation for policy briefs designed to construct politically driven narratives is a confession of academic malpractice. As Kurt Schlichter has pointed out, its participants’ intentions are unethical, insubordinate, and potentially illegal.

The CWP email shows its players to be intolerant of varying viewpoints in the pursuit of their ideological ends. The fact that they are offering colleagues and grad students money to predetermine outcomes proves their intent: to tell partisan political stories:

Drier-Email –

What are they afraid of?

We pay the bills. We want our children to receive comprehensive, legitimate educations as advertised by the schools we choose; educations in which multiple viewpoints of issues are honestly presented, empirically considered, and respected by professors. We do not want our schools to act as political parties and centers for ideological indoctrination.

But, the Cry Wolf Project is in violation of joint policies adopted by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU). From the Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure:

As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

From the Statement on Professional Ethics:

Professors, guided by a deep conviction of the worth and dignity of the advancement of knowledge, recognize the special responsibilities placed upon them. Their primary responsibility to their subject is to seek and to state the truth as they see it. To this end professors devote their energies to developing and improving their scholarly competence. They accept the obligation to exercise critical self-discipline and judgment in using, extending, and transmitting knowledge. They practice intellectual honesty.

In soliciting the creation of political propaganda through their schools and the facilitating organizations that receive public funding, CWP scholars abandon their ethical principles.

Nationwide university regulations, education codes and tax law strictly prohibit the unauthorized use of school resources for partisan political purposes. There are formal complaint procedures that can and should be initiated immediately against the Cry Wolf Project.

The project’s Request for Proposals was sent from Professor Dreier’s Occidental email address, and presumably communicated to and from the other schools’ servers. This creates the impression that Occidental, UCSB, Harvard, Yale, et al. endorse the plan by which Dreier & Co. intend to carry out the project. How prevalent is it that our tuition and tax dollars fund similar activities?

The Zinn Education Project is a notorious example. Its ‘guerilla-warrior’-in-chief, the late professor Howard Zinn, publicly instructed participants to violate education codes as he channeled Saul Alinsky:

Don’t obey the rules. You have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired. You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians.

With the high cost of tuition, people must practice due diligence in choosing schools. Universities not only promise an excellent education, but also the practice of good, legitimate intellectual values and principles we want to instill in our students’ young minds so that they can be successful, productive citizens in our American civil society.

The actions of the Cry Wolf committee and the schools associated with its participants should cause parents and taxpayers to reassess their very dear investments in these institutions.

President Obama, touted as one who “embodies diversity,” attended three CWP schools: Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard, where he was recalled as being an “even-handed leader.”

I got into politics at Occidental. I made a conscious decision to become involved in public policy.

That decision would lead him to Columbia University and his first exposure to community organizing, “I really wanted to see New York and become more involved in politics.”

Obama of course later enjoyed his own teaching stint as a University of Chicago law lecturer; the same university’s alumni association once awarded CWP coordinator Peter Dreier a distinguished Public Service Award.

In his Hampton College commencement address last month, President Obama stated:

[So that] all those checks you or your parents wrote to Hampton will pay off… now that your minds have been opened, it’s up to you to keep them that way. It will be up to you to open minds that remain closed that you meet along the way. That, after all, is the elemental test of any democracy: whether people with differing points of view can learn from each other, and work with each other, and find a way forward together.

Mr. President, as an even-handed leader who embodies diversity, do you believe the Cry Wolf Project meets your elemental test of democracy? Or is it “just words? Just speeches?”

“Intellect loses its virtue when it ceases to seek truth and turns to the pursuit of political ends.” – Robert H. Bork

It would not be the last time the founders appealed to the Almighty God.

James Madison acknowledged God’s favor in our founding in Federalist 37 referring to “a finger of that almighty hand, which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.”  I dare say that men like Madison and Cushing would not recognize the America of today, filled with politicians afraid to confess their faith or educators fearful of offending the sensibilities of their students with any mention of God.

Math teacher Brad Johnson of Westview High School of the Poway School District in San Diego, California, is a case in point.

In 2007, Westview Principal Dawn Kastner ordered Johnson to remove banners hanging in his classroom because they contained the words “God” and “Creator.”  According to media reports the banners, which had hung in his classroom for 25 years, measured approximately 7 feet long by 2 feet wide and carried the phrases: “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” “God Bless America,” “God Shed His Grace on Thee” and “All Men Are Created Equal, They are Endowed by Their Creator.”

Kastner objected to the banners, claiming that they promoted a Judeo-Christian viewpoint and might make some students feel uncomfortable. The school district agreed.  Oddly enough neither Kastner nor school district officials were concerned with posters hanging in other classrooms containing Buddhist, Islamic, and Tibetan prayers or those containing anti-religious messages that might make Christians uncomfortable.  What remains unclear is why those that preach diversity and tolerance seem incapable of practicing those same virtues when it comes to Christians and the role of Christian faith in our American history.

Kastner and Poway district officials might argue that they are simply enforcing the Constitution’s wall of separation between church and state.  The U.S. Constitution, of course, recognizes no such wall.  There are roughly 4,500 words in the original unamended document and not one of them was written to imply that God – specifically the God of Abraham – should be hidden from school children.

The Bible – Old and New Testament – was the most common piece of household literature of the time; it was the primary textbook from which children and adults learned reading, writing, and morality.  The first American dictionary contains biblical references on just about every page.

Moreover, the founders believed religion and religious teaching to be essential to the maintenance of a free society.  The great patriot Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania wrote, “All its [Christian revelation] doctrines and precepts are calculated to promote the happiness of society, and the safety and well being of civil government.”  Therefore, reasoned Rush, “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion.  Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”  In short the founders recognized not only the nexus between virtue and happiness, but also virtue and liberty.

We should not be surprised when those that endeavor to erase God from our history also seek to shackle us to the administrative state.  Man will “either be governed by a power from within or controlled by a power from without.”

In his farewell address, George Washington said, “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.  Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

The founders would find the mushy multi-cultural political correctness of the 21^st century to be outrageous.

The first round of the legal battle was won by Johnson.  U.S. District Court Judge Roger T. Benitez delivered a scathing rebuke to the Poway School District, correctly reasoning that “recognizing that God places prominently in our nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.”

Not content to leave well-enough alone, the Poway School District has appealed the decision, which will be heard by the liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Heaven help us!

After the video presentation, host professor Ellen DuBois facilitated an audience question-and-answer session with her guests, actor Josh Brolin and producer Chris Moore, while Howard Zinn’s partner Anthony Arnove (whom Brolin credits for his own participation) paced the back of the theater.

Asked about his project’s intended use in K-12 public school settings, Mr. Moore answered:

We have a whole educational program. There’s a curriculum, there’s a whole educational thing. There’ll be a website that has tools, that’s searchable… There is definitely a plan.

That plan includes “The Zinn Education Project” which:

…promotes and supports the use of Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States and other materials for teaching a people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change.

In “A People’s History,” Prof. Zinn declares:

Objectivity is impossible, and it is also undesirable… because if you have any kind of a social aim… then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity.

Moreover:

Professor Zinn announces the overtly political agenda of A People’s History in an explanatory coda to the 1995 edition. Zinn explains to the reader that he has no interest in striving for objectivity, and that his history is ‘a biased account.’ Professor Zinn explains: ‘I am not troubled by that. I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be  a part of the social struggle. I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself is a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.’

That subjective social aim and biased accounting, when used as the basis for student instruction, is inconsistent with state education codes, local school board policies and administrative regulations.

Public schools are required to provide varying points of view and deal with issues in a factual, rational, objective manner and in a spirit that clearly indicates an attempt to promote greater understanding. They are prohibited from engaging in viewpoint discrimination.

Teachers are both legally and ethically restricted from using their positions to forward their own political, economic or social biases. Teachers may express their personal opinions, but must first identify them as such and not express them for the purpose of persuading students to their personal points of view.

The Zinn Project’s other materials for teaching a people’s history are provided by its collaborators:

• Teaching for Change: a social justice organization that, “Encourages teachers and students to question and re-think the world inside and outside their classrooms, build a more equitable, multicultural society, and become active global citizens.”
• Rethinking Schools: an activist publication that claims, “Schools are integral not only to preparing all children to be full participants in society, but also to be full participants in this country’s ever-tenuous experiment in democracy. That this vision has yet to be fully realized does not mean it should be abandoned.”

A lesson plan, formulated by social justice teacher Bill Bigelow: “One Country! One Language! One Flag!” crystallizes the Zinn Project:

It asks students:

What does it mean to “pledge allegiance” to the flag? What would it mean to not pledge allegiance to the flag? [The Pledge bonds child and flag in a way that may inhibit young people from thinking critically about actions taken in the name of the flag…].

The lesson is designed to persuade students that the American Flag stands for an unjust nation whose history is one of repression, intolerance and shame, equating the Pledge itself to immoral ideologies and totalitarian regimes:

Why not lead kids in the original Pledge to the Flag, including the “One Language!” chant and the Nazi-like salute, and then lead a discussion about the politics of the Pledge?

State laws require public school days to begin with patriotic exercises intended to promote the understanding of the concepts of “pledge,” “allegiance,” “republic,” and “indivisible,” and understanding the importance of the pledge as an expression of patriotism, love of country, and pride in the United States of America.

On what legal, professional or ethical grounds can or should public school boards and administrators allow their teachers to provide instruction to students that is, in this case, specifically designed to subvert their state patriotic exercises statutes?

These teachers are already participants:

• “I love all the materials I received in the packet and have so far seen an amazing effect with my students … Thank you for letting me and my classes participate in this program!”
— Angela Hubbs, Junior High School Teacher, San Diego, CA

• “Thank you so very much for sharing Zinn’s materials with us. We badly need to get a message of advocacy and action into our communities and into our hearts. Your support makes this easier, in a fight that feels overwhelming …” — Nancy Jean Smith, California State University Stanislaus, Stockton, CA

This would explain the Arkansas fifth-grader that made news recently by claiming there is no “liberty and justice for all” in America as his reason for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance during his school’s daily patriotic exercises.

Hopefully schools will become more cautious before agreeing to institute such curriculum and lesson plans in their classrooms.

Howard Zinn is a famous educator.

Does what he and his Zinn Education Project collaborators and celebrities think will advance causes of humanity comply with the law, and is it ethical instructional material?

If not, then it is inappropriate for use in America’s public schools.

Enter Howard Zinn – an author, professor and American historian – who, with the help of Hollywood and the History Channel, intends to change the way our pre-K through high school children learn American history. His current curriculum suggestions, like introducing three-year-olds to the lynching of African-Americans, or quizzing seven-year-olds on which Presidents owned slaves, should be a red flag to parents.

Zinn has spent a lifetime teaching college students about the evils of capitalism, the promise of Marxism, and his version of American history – a history that has, in his view, been kept from students. His controversial 1980-book The People’s History of the United States paints traditional American history as a façade – one that has grotesquely immortalized flawed leaders and is based on principles that victimize the common man. In 2004, Zinn wrote a companion book entitled Voices Of A People’s History Of The United States, which includes speeches and writings from many of the people featured in The People’s History.

These two books have now become the basis for a new documentary, entitled The People Speak, to be aired December 13th at 8pm on the History Channel. The trailer portrays the documentary as a collage of compelling one-person readings, told through the words of “ordinary” people who have struggled throughout American history against oppression. Produced by Zinn, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, and Chris Moore, the documentary appears to be cloaked, ironically (given Zinn’s admitted socialist agenda), in many of the traditional ideas that were behind our founding. The verdict is still out on the doc, but it is not for the books that inspired the film as well as the educational initiative associated with it.

Perhaps due to their one-sided perspective of America’s past, Zinn’s history books have largely been limited to colleges and universities, until now. In the press release announcing the broadcast, HISTORY introduced a partnership with VOICES Of A People’s History Of The United States, a nonprofit led by Zinn that bares the same name as his companion book, to help get his special brand of history into classrooms.

Delving into Zinn’s nonprofit is where this story gets interesting, and the organization’s grade school educational ambitions concerning.

VOICES’ function is to provide live performances of readings from the book Voices of a People’s History as well as educational materials to schoolteachers. The nonprofit’s site provides teachers with resources, including a teaching guide that explains how to get students excited about Zinn’s history books. Their educational materials also includes the Zinn Education Project, a resource for teaching Zinn’s perspective of American history to – drum roll please – pre-Kindergarten through high school students! Included in the curriculum for pre-K students (that’s three and four year-olds) is “Rethinking Columbus,” which counters “the myth of Columbus.” In Zinn’s view, our pre-K children “need to hear from those whose lands and rights were taken away by those who ‘discovered’ them.”

Another teaching lesson for our three-year-old students is “One Country! One Language! One Flag!” that includes teaching ideas for “examining the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the political milieu in which it was written.” The teaching plan suggests introducing our pre-K-ers to the lynching of African-Americans in the 1880s, and introducing the history of violence and discrimination against minority groups. It also proposes a discussion on an old “One Language!” chant allegedly used in classrooms up until 1942, and poses teachers with the question, “Why not lead kids in the original Pledge to the Flag, including the ‘One Language!’ chant and the Nazi-like salute, and then lead a discussion about the politics of the Pledge?”

This discussion is proposed for kids age three to seven?

Zinn also includes a youngster version of his influential book entitled A Young People’s History of the United States as an introduction to his untold American History. The publisher of the book highlights a review by the magazine Socialist Review, who proclaimed “Howard Zinn has adapted his People’s History of the United States for younger readers, but in no way do these books pull their punches. Zinn feels the younger reader is entitled to look at US history honestly.”

The background of the board of directors and advisers of VOICES’ can only be described as jaw dropping and begins to show a clear motive behind teaching this predominantly anti-American history at such a young age.

Made up of several notables including Zinn, Kerry Washington, and Marisa Tomei, all of whom make appearances in the documentary, the VOICES board also includes radicals who play a role in our public schools. Brian Jones, a New York teacher and actor, is a board member of VOICES and has also played the lead in Zinn’s play Marx in SoHo. You can see Jones speaking about Zinn and the play below, recorded for a performance in Greece, where he extols the benefits of this one man play as a tool to introduce people to Marx’s ideas:

Jones is also a regular contributor to Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and speaks regularly on the beneficial principles of Marxism, including this year at the 2009 Socialism Conference. He recently gave a speech on the failure of capitalism, proclaiming that “Marx is back.”

Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles high school teacher, is also on Zinn’s Teacher Advisory Board. Like Jones, Knopp is also a regular contributor to International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, is an active member in The International Socialist Organization, and was also a speaker at the 2009 Socialist Conference. Here is Knopp speaking about the benefits of socialism, how capitalism destroys lives, and how she advocates workers taking over their factories:

Is it becoming clearer why this group might want to teach children to think poorly of the American system?

Then there is Jesse Sharkey, a schoolteacher in Chicago. Sharkey is another of Zinn’s Teacher Advisory Board Members and, completely uncharacteristic of this group, is a contributor to… Socialist Worker.

This is the group that the History Channel is working with “to develop enhanced, co-branded curriculums for a countrywide educational initiative.” If readers choose to watch The People Speak, which we at BigHollywood encourage, keep in mind the context of the documentary’s creator and the pre-K to high school curriculum that the History Channel and VOICES could possibly create given the makeup of the board members.

I am not advocating that we spare our kids the harsh truths of American history, but I am suggesting, given Zinn’s far-left political affiliation, this project is designed to breakdown our vulnerable children’s views of American principles so that they can be built back up in a socialist vision.

Zinn’s one-man play Marx in SoHo provides an example of his attempt to reestablish the socialist ideology. The play, created in 1999, places Marx in New York after bargaining with the authorities of the after-life for a chance to come back to earth to clear his name. At the end of the cold war, Zinn felt that Marxism was unfairly discredited through being anchored to the fall of the Soviet Union. Through the play, Zinn wanted “the audience to see Marx defending his ideas against attack.” Those associated with the play have described it as an attempt to reestablish Marx’s philosophic and economic outlook – a philosophy that views capitalism as corrosive to the human condition. It doesn’t take a great leap to surmise that instilling in children a pessimistic view of the American experience could make his ideas more palatable.

Zinn’s socialist philosophy has definitely made its way into the documentary, including a speech by prominent socialist Eugene Debs. In his speech, which is a prose to the ills of the capitalist system, he speaks to a court that convicted him of sedition:

“I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man, who does absolutely nothing…to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.”

The promotional videos can be viewed here:

It is not surprising to me that there are groups sympathetic to Marx’s ideas throughout our country. What is surprising is that the most powerful persuasion machine in the world (Hollywood) and the History Channel would provide Zinn such a prominent soapbox to stealthily build a case for a destructive ideology to our children, and as a result mainstream his ideas with the magic of cool music, graphics, and celebrity. Groups that push Marx’s philosophy are like a virtual organism that will not die off even when stung by the undeniable historical evidence showing human behavior makes such a system unsustainable. If we let this virtual organism into our grade schools, it will take decades for our kids to unlearn the ideology.

And if there are any doubts of the intentions of Howard Zinn’s movement, I provide a quote of his in closing. When a reporter asked Zinn, “In writing A People’s History, what were you calling for? A quiet revolution?” Zinn responded:  “A quiet revolution is a good way of putting it. From the bottom up. Not a revolution in the classical sense of a seizure of power, but rather from people beginning to take power from within the institutions. In the workplace, the workers would take power to control the conditions of their lives. It would be a democratic socialism.”

It appears that Zinn’s ilk have started the institutional phase of their agenda.

Or is it?

In 1994 the political right offered voters something more than simply criticism of the President. Republican members of the House of Representatives presented voters with the “Contract with America.” This document, signed by all but two Republican congressmen and all of the Republican congressional candidates, detailed the specific legislative action Republicans would take if the American people handed them the reigns of government. The contract was a “detailed agenda for national renewal, a written commitment with no fine print.”

At the time of this writing I am not aware of Republicans having any such detailed agenda nor, unfortunately, am I confident that there is one in the works. I have a recurring nightmare that we will all awake on January 1st with a President and Democrat congress weakened by continued economic malaise, a healthcare boondoggle and threats of huge energy taxes designed to save the planet only to be greeted with the Republican mantra of tax cuts – a tune that has become monotonous and rings rather hollow, due primarily to Republican complicity in building the ship that delivered us to these rocky economic shores.

And yet like 1994 over-reaching by the new left has provided Republicans with a huge political opportunity to perhaps retake the House of Representatives or at the very least deny Democrats their filibuster proof majority. But in order to convince voters that the right is prepared to drive domestic policy the GOP needs more than complaints and criticism; they must present a committed and detailed agenda.

Rather than call it a “Contract with America,” which seems a bit old hat, we can perhaps refer to this as a Political Warranty – a warranty that if the GOP is returned to power they will be bound to a short-list legislative agenda aimed at delivering true healthcare reform, true education reform and truly trying to realize a post racial America.

I am not talking about rhetoric or an articulation of principles. Alas, Republicans are all too adept at articulating principles; they have as of late been rather lackluster in conveying specific policy.

What is the specific legislative action the GOP is going to take to increase competition in health care? How willing is the GOP to buck the system and remove barriers to insurance purchases across state lines? To removing obstacles to new insurance companies entering the industry? How committed is the GOP to instituting real tort reform? True price and quality transparency? Are they willing to butt heads with the AMA and make it easier to build new medical schools in order to train more doctors?

Republicans talk about education reform, but what is the specific legislative action they promise to take in order to remove decisions about k-12 education out of the pockets of the bureaucrats and back into the hands of parents? How will they encourage innovation? How will they rebuild our vocational schools to meet the needs of the 21st century?

Finally, criticism of the President for not moving the nation beyond race means very little without a GOP re-commitment to being the post racial party. Republicans must warranty that they will be most committed to legislation that furthers the battle against discrimination of all kinds. Further the warranty must make it clear that the party will not tolerate bigotry of any sort within its ranks.

I will leave it to others more politically astute than I to fill in the blanks, but the questions must be answered. The GOP has a real opportunity to become the true party of reform, but history will not simply repeat itself without a little nudge.

Enzi Leads GOP HELP Committee Inquiry
Into Alleged NEA Political Activity

 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today led his fellow Republican HELP Committee members in requesting an explanation regarding possible violations of federal law at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).  Enzi and his colleagues sent the request to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. 

In the letter delivered today the Senators questioned the possibility of “taxpayer dollars to engage in lobbying activities to promote the President’s health care legislative agenda and other legislative priorities” during several August conference calls with NEA grant recipients and community stakeholders.

The letter also raises serious questions regarding how the NEA’s participation in these calls may have violated federal criminal restrictions on lobbying Congress, the Hatch Act, appropriations restrictions on spending funds for such purposes and possible contradictions with the entity’s mission under its authorizing statute.

“…The promotion to NEA grant recipients of topics that are at the top of the President’s legislative agenda and urging a call to action creates a serious conflict of interest,” wrote the Senators.

The full text of the letter to Landesman is below:

Let’s start with some statistics.   My computer counted 36 uses of the word “I” and 15 uses of the contraction “I’m” in 2,367 words.  The subject is supposed to be “school,” but that word only appears 25 times.  So, the subject is the President.

The first two paragraphs seem innocuous, but they set the tone.  There are a lot of contractions – 110 by my Dell’s count.  You use those to seem comfortable and informal, sort of like Matlock would.  It assures the jury – I mean the kids – that you are not so different from them, that you’re one of them.  It’s a good move – I do it.  I’m just not sure the President should.

After some attempts at light bonding through feigned commiseration – “[S]ome of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.” — he moves right into the meat of the speech – anecdotes from the life of Barack Obama. 

Fair enough – it’s not a bad story, but it gets distracting.  When he discussed about how his mother gave him “American” lessons every morning at 4:30 a.m. in Indonesia, I wondered why he would bring that up when every “birther/Obama is a Muslim” nut out there would hop right on it.  Of course, maybe he wants to spin up a controversy where he’s in the right to drag the spotlight off his communist cop-killer-hugging “truther” ex-green jobs czar.  If so, give him an “A” for spin strategy.  And don’t take the bait.

He also mentions that his mother would call him “buster” when he got out of line.  I’m not sure kids today can relate.  Most of the special little snowflakes listening to his speech are totally unfamiliar with the concept of parents asserting authority over them. 

He then outlines the non-reflexive theme of his talk:  “I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.”   Objection!  I’m unfamiliar with any provision of our Constitution enumerating setting expectations for our school kids among the responsibilities of the President.

He next moves right into another of his Top 5 rhetorical tricks – the “As I’ve said before …” gambit:  “Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education.  And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.”  With this, the President firmly establishes himself as 100% behind education and responsibility and in unwavering opposition to those who are against education and responsibility.  I guess you know who you are.

He is also on record about “your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.”  Again, I have a problem with the premise that the President has anything at all to say about how I raise my kid.

He also mentions how he has talked about the responsibilities of teachers and government.  The speech does not contain the words “union,” “charter” or “choice.”  I didn’t bother looking for the word “voucher.”

Then he gets to the kids’ own responsibility.  Fair enough – I’m all for putting the consequences of bad decisions (like not studying, skipping school and listening to hip hop) on the person making them.  This is because it is the most economically efficient way to incentivize good behavior and because, as Judge Smails observed in Caddyshack, “The world needs ditch diggers too.”

The President observes that everyone has at least one talent that makes them special, and gives an example.  “Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book . . . .”  Yeah, folks who have written books are awesome.  Or maybe you could “come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine.”   That’s less likely – the next iPhone will come from India after California’s anti-business environment drove the inventor out of Silicon Valley.  But we do need folks to invent new medicines and vaccines – otherwise there’ll be no one left for the Democrat-supporting plaintiffs’ bar to sue.

He then mentions that the kids might want to become “a member of our military” but accurately warns that “You’re going to need a good education” to do so.  That’s true and great to hear from our commander-in-chief.  Nice to see he isn’t buying that “only dummies end up in Iraq” nonsense – our military is fanatical about education.

The President then suggests that education will give you “the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.”  Whoa, Nellie!  As a law school professor, the President knows that “critical thinking” actually embodies the exact opposite of the meanings of both words.  It is, instead, code for a left-wing, rote indoctrination that is essentially a crash course in why America sucks.  No thanks.  But the next line does off-handedly mention that private enterprise might have some small contribution to make to our prosperity.

Then there’s more on his own life experience, including:  “There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.”  I know that feeling.  I’m a conservative trial lawyer in Los Angeles.

Next comes the appeal to personal responsibility:

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. 

Wow, I could have written that.  Of course, my politics are also congruent with that philosophy instead of completely at odds with it.

Next, he tells the inspiring stories – and they are inspiring – of three kids, Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell, who overcame the odds against their completing their education.  This raises a question – does anyone name their kids things like Bill or Susie anymore?  Just wondering.

Then he switches into cheerleader mode, talking about the importance of hard work and effort.  This is good stuff – again, I just wish he governed like he believed it.  He mentions Michael Jordan’s quote “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”   Hear that, Chrysler and GM?

So, in short, the message, beyond how interesting his own experiences were, is somewhat innocuous – work hard and do well in school.  The sub-text, though, is a bit different.  The President has no real business making this speech and injecting himself into my kids’ lives.  If he’s going to talk about educational responsibilities, he might at least mention the teachers unions that have done so much to stifle reform and protect the incompetent (Yeah, I know the K-5 kids won’t get it but the high school kids know the score).  The part about “critical thinking” is just nonsense – the last thing the educrats want is thinking, much less thinking that critically assesses their weary leftist dogma.

Rhetorically, the speech is clearly designed to introduce the friendly face of the President’s ideology to a future generation of voters.  It strives for a false familiarity through vivid verbal images and casual manners of speech.  But even without the positively creepy discussion guide’s recommendation that kids write letters to the President pledging their help to fulfill his vision, the whole thing is just inappropriate.  Thanks for the help with my kids, Mr. President, but no thanks – I think I’ve got it covered.

But at least we can all agree on the speech’s last phrase – “God bless America.”