Saturday Miscellany

First, from education activist Nicki Neily, an assessment of the state of American elementary school education. Consider this further evidence of the damage caused to American children when schools were shut down during the pandemic:

America faces a lost generation of students who were negatively impacted by decisions made during the pandemic. NAEP scores have shown that proficiency levels in core subjects fell precipitously due to school closures. …

2023 NAEP scores dropped across the country at all grade levels. In Vermont, 8th grade math proficiency dropped 11 points, down to 27 percent; In Pennsylvania, it dropped 12 points to 27 percent; and In Oklahoma, it dropped 10 points – only 16 percent are proficient in math. 

But that’s not all: students in America CANNOT READ. In Virginia, only 32 percent of 4th graders are proficient in reading; In Minnesota, only 30 percent of 8th graders are; In New Mexico, only 18 percent of 8th graders are. Districts are eliminating advanced classes in the name of “equity” – claiming that gifted and talented programs are racist if enrollment doesn’t mirror community demographics. In schools where AP classes have been eliminated, parents have watched their children regress to the level of their least able classmate. Brilliant students are discouraged from getting too far ahead, because “inequity” perpetuates systemic racism. 

And then there are the aberrant values taught to American children:

Hard work, objectivity, and self-reliance are traits that made the American economy the envy of the world – yet now, those characteristics are derided as “white supremacy.” Kids are in school for approximately seven hours each day – but instead of using that time to address learning loss, it’s spent on identity politics. 

In Lawrence, Kansas: elementary school students marched to celebrate Black Lives Matter at School week – at a school where only 32 percent of students are proficient in math. In Appleton, Wisconsin: teachers were given resources recommending that students do “privilege walks” – in a district where only 38 percent of middle schoolers are proficient in reading and math. 

America’s education system is failing the very students that it was designed to serve. Trust between parents and districts has shattered. For decades, public schools operated in loco parentis – and administrators worked with families in the best interest of students.

Pandemic-era closures fractured this bond; it’s hard to say districts prioritized learning when groups like the Chicago Teachers Union asserted that “the push to reopen schools [was] rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny” and the head of the LA teachers’ union said “There is no such thing as learning loss… 

Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. ... They know the words insurrection and coup.” 

Second, in the world of philanthropy, the former Mrs. Jeff Bezos, that would be one MacKenzie Scott is giving some of her fortune to a pro-Palestinian group:

MacKenzie Scott gave $2M to nonprofit tied to group that helped build pro-Palestinian UPenn encampment: report.

Now you know why he divorced her.

Third, the ladies of the View, along with an assortment of crackpots and cranks, have discovered a new principle. They are terrified that a president Trump will do unto them what they have been trying to do unto him-- that is, to silence him and to put him in jail.

As for self-awareness, they have none. Best not to belabor the point.

Fourth, from Ron Paul, on a topic we have been following, our efforts to stop the Yemeni Houthi rebels from shutting down shipping through the Red Sea:

To great fanfare, last December the Pentagon announced the launch of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a joint US/UK military operation to halt the Yemeni Houthi disruption of Israel-linked commercial shipping through the Red Sea.

 

The result:

Over the weekend the Wall Street Journal published a devastating article revealing that after spending more than one billion dollars on munitions alone, the operation had failed to deter the Houthis and failed to re-open commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

The Journal reported that Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, recently told Congress that “the U.S.-led effort has been insufficient to deter the militant group’s targeting of ships and that the threat will ‘remain active for some time.’”

Joe Biden’s military may be dysfunctional, but at least it’s diverse.

Fifth, women voters swing to the right… in France. From Politico, Europe:

Europe’s far-right voters have long been predominantly men, but French women are now bucking that trend ahead of a high-stakes election that could usher in France’s first far-right government in recent history.

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally is tipped to win the most votes in a two-round snap election on June 30 and July 7 that could crush the liberal centrists of President Emmanuel Macron, and women are increasingly driving her party’s surging political fortunes as it seeks to position itself in the mainstream.

On EU election day this month, the National Rally came first with a stunning 31 percent of the French vote, up from 23 percent in the 2019 EU election.

Sixth, as though that is not bad enough, French Jews are saying that they are going to vote for the right wing party of Marine Le Pen, a party that has long trafficked in anti-Semitism.

The problem is, the far left parties, led by Jean Luc Melanchon, have outdone the right in the matter of anti-Semitism. French leftists have signed on to the Palestinian cause and are blaming Israel for everything that is going wrong in the Middle East.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Serge Klarsfeld is a world-renowned Nazi hunter, a historian of the Holocaust and a moral authority in France who has pushed the country to reckon with its dark history of antisemitism.

That is why many in France were shocked this week when Klarsfeld defended the far-right party of Marine Le Pen, which counts among its founders a former Nazi paramilitary soldier. Klarsfeld, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, said the main threat to France’s Jews now comes from the far left and that he wouldn’t hesitate to vote for Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, in the coming parliamentary elections if the alternative were a coalition of leftist parties, the New Popular Front.

“The National Rally supports Jews, supports the state of Israel,” Klarsfeld said on national television. “When there is an anti-Jewish party and a pro-Jewish party, I will vote for the pro-Jewish party.”

Here is the story:

The Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and the ensuing Israeli offensive in Gaza have had a profound impact in France, deepening political divisions in the home to Europe’s largest Jewish community and one of its largest Muslim communities. Leaders of the far-left party France Unbowed didn’t immediately condemn the attack and then stridently criticized Israel. Jewish groups and Macron’s government say the party’s rhetoric has fueled a surge in antisemitism in France since Oct. 7.

Seventh, on the sanctions front, the Biden administration has happily imposed sanctions on Israelis, but has failed to enforce sanctions against Iran, to say nothing of failing to sanction Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

President Biden has been uninterested in sanctioning Iranian oil, but he keeps finding time to impose new sanctions on Israelis. Is it too much to ask him to get serious about cutting off Hamas and Hezbollah’s financial lifelines?

The latest target of U.S. sanctions is Tsav 9, an Israeli protest group that tries to stop aid trucks to Gaza because they often end up in the hands of Hamas. The State Department says Tsav 9 has been “blocking roads, sometimes violently, along their route from Jordan to Gaza, including transiting the West Bank. They also have damaged aid trucks and dumped life-saving humanitarian aid onto the road.”

The West has been wrong to keep quiet about Hamas’s theft of aid, but flooding Gaza with supplies has helped Israel dispel claims of famine and buy time for its war effort. It’s also a problem when citizens take the law into their own hands. Israel has delivered aid despite the Tsav 9 protests and has arrested a few lawbreakers, though it could do more.

But the larger point is that the Biden Administration is expanding its sanctions regime against Israel while it lets Hamas and Hezbollah off the hook. Since Mr. Biden assumed office, Iran’s oil exports have surged to $40 billion or so a year. 

This gusher’s cause is no mystery. The Biden Administration stopped most enforcement of oil sanctions to keep Iran quiet. Even after that logic blew up on Oct. 7, Biden policy didn’t change. Iran still gets the cash it needs to fund its many terrorist proxies.

Qatar and Turkey, Hamas’s other major patrons, also haven’t faced real U.S. pressure. Qatar is supposed to be a key U.S. partner and a mediator in hostage talks that never end. This buys the Qataris immunity, even as they sponsor Hamas, explains Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Eighth, Nellie Bowles at the Free Press keeps us up to date on the news from El Salvador. You might not have heard it, but that country, under the leadership of president Nayib Bukele, has drastically reduced the number of local homicides:

No one can believe it, but El Salvador solved their murder crisis by locking up their murderers. This is a nightmare for American reformers, who swear it’s impossible to stop crime without talk therapy.

Ninth, wasn’t it Lawrence Summers who reported an anecdote from the third world? Didn’t the people in that one world country declare, solemnly, that when China comes to visit, it builds a factory. When America comes to visit, it gives a lecture.

Now, on Twitter, David Goldman tallies it up:

The US spent $6 trillion to export democracy. China spent $2 trillion to build infrastructure. Despite many missteps, China's program broadly succeeded, while the US program has been a catastrophic failure. Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia now want to join the BRICS group. The continental plates of world power are drifting away from the US and it's our own silly fault.

Is it time for another lecture on the eventual triumph of liberal democracy? Calling Francis Fukuyama….

Tenth, Joel Kotkin reviews the damage that wokeness is doing in the media, whether in book publishing, movie making, television production or journalism. This is from Spiked!.

Similar patterns of orthodoxy can be seen in book publishing. Here radicalised editors reject books not because they won’t sell, but because they violate the favoured woke narratives or are written by straight, white males. Even books from beloved authors such as Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss are banned or bowdlerised to meet the tastes of progressives.

Now, the market is having the last word. These woke businesses are losing money. They are losing a lot of money.

One thing these shifts has not done is improve the bottom line. Roughly a quarter of newspapers in the US have gone out of business in the past 15 years. Last year, some 22,000 media jobs were lost, the worst in a generation since 2009. Industry boosters (yes, they still exist) cling to the profitability of the two elite papers, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which for now still appear viable.

And also,

But it seems fairly clear that imposing race and gender orthodoxy on audiences is not exactly a winning strategy. Already gender, race and other identitarian obsessions appear to have weakened once strong franchises like Star Wars, the Marvel cinematic universe and the Disney classics. One top Disney executive blamed a misogynist public for declining viewership figures. A lack of customer interest in these terrible, agenda-driven movies may be more to blame. ‘The audience’, as one film historian told the Los Angeles Times, ‘has moved on’.

Eleventh, as we suspected and as we predicted, those college students who decided to embrace the Palestinian cause and Hamas have been losing job opportunities.

The College Fix has the story:

A recent survey found that 3 in 10 college students or recent graduates had job offers rescinded as a result of their “pro-Palestine” activism.

Intelligent surveyed 672 students or recent college graduates who have engaged in anti-Israel activism and found that 29% of them had a job offer rescinded in the past six months and 55% believe there was bias against them in the hiring process because of their activism.

7 in 10 pro-Palestine activists said they were asked about their protest history during the interview process, according to the survey results.

As it happens, the Columbia university activists will not be prosecuted by Alvin Bragg. They will get their comeuppance in other places.

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