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  • Iconic Incoherence on ‘Immigration’

    George Rebane

    That is the best that can be said about ‘Trump’s approach on illegal immigration won’t solve the problem’ by columnist and one of our readers, George Boardman, in the 15apr19 Union.  He blithely blames the whole border security problem on President Trump “who created the current crisis” for political reasons.  Mr Boardman is known for his solidly established views from the left shoulder from which he occasionally forays to visit the center stripe.  But in this latest offering he ventures further into the weeds with claims such as –

    • Trump has labeled “all illegal immigrants as criminals that threaten the security of the most powerful nation on earth.” (emphasis mine) Everyone knows that the most powerful nations cannot be so threatened.
    • Trump is “siding with racist-driven hardliners who want to shut off all immigration, especially from Third World countries.” (emphasis mine, but who are these racist-driven hardliners?)
    • After WW2 “the end of colonial rule didn’t deliver the promised benefits to Third World nations when the US became the economic powerhouse of the world.” (Where has this man studied?  All data show exactly the opposite – life in 3rd world countries that embraced models of western governance made and continue to make enormous strides in all dimensions in quality of life for their citizens.  The culturally deficient suffered.)

    Mr Boardman seems to be innocent of the more salient causes of illegal entry across our southern border.  Ted Kennedy’s role in launching chain migration and Third World preference quotas through his Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is a major omission.  And nowhere does he even hint that the Democrats are the major beneficiaries of the increase of America’s Hispanic population – both illegal, and most certainly the ongoing illegal migrations.

    In the middle of his piece Mr Boardman shows a welcome awareness that illegal migrant hordes do cost taxpayers somewhere in the $100-300B range annually.  And he correctly offers “that’s a high price to pay to fill agricultural and other low-paying jobs”, especially if we want to “retain the core values of America, and control our own destiny.”

    However, knowledge of America’s governance should inform Mr Boardman that there is nothing Mr Trump or any president can do to solve our border crisis, save fulfill his constitutional duties to secure the nation and execute current immigration laws.  Congress, dominated by globalist anti-American Democrats, will not do anything to slow the migration of illegal aliens.  Today the Left is active in Mexico and central America through their NGOs, mega-sponsors, and activists forming up cohorts, numbering in the thousands of women and children, for the perilous journey north.  These migrants are motivated, not by Trump’s efforts to secure the border, but only by Democrat promises that our president will be thwarted from doing exactly that; and, that once across, only American taxpayer-sponsored succor and sanctuary awaits them.

    Progressive propagandists like Mr Boardman (presumably) see none of this, else they are part of our Left’s openly pursued policies to create a post-American continent in whose history the United States will be seen as a sordid chapter of humanitarian insult, that will then have been corrected by the socially just march to inevitable socialism.

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  • Sandbox – 14apr19

    [Well, it looks like we may be able to settle the embarrassment of riches that the county should suffer from if we really do have 700K annual visitors to the South Yuba.  gjr]

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  • Ruminations – 13apr2019 (updated 16apr19)

    George Rebane

    AG Barr will finally seek to hold the FBI accountable for their Obama era corruptions.  This has the Democrats screeching bloody murder for what they know will be revealed on the road to the 2020 elections.  WSJ’s Kim Strassel lays it all out – ‘Barr Brings Accountability’.

    California’s critical 4th grade academic rankings are in the toilet – 47th in math, 46th in reading, 46th in science.  Assemblyman Kevin Kiley was punished in the California Assembly for making public the latest progressive follies in screwing the state’s school kids.  The bottom line is that progressives are lunatics when it comes to governance as they demonstrate total ignorance of how humans work – their needs and behaviors.  The only policies they propose, promote, and pass are those designed to enlarge government and give the Left ever more power over our lives.  (more here)

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  • Our K-12 education is a national travesty

    George Rebane

    [This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 10 April 2019.]

    The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology tells us that in the next ten years the country will need, at a minimum, about 1M more STEM professionals than we will produce at our current rate.  Today there are already more than 2.4M unfilled STEM jobs.  It has been the innovators and workers in science, technology, engineering, and math who have made possible today’s quality of life, and it is they who will provide us the intellectual assets and infrastructure means to continue generating the wealth that, more than anything, will insure our future.

    However, our public education industry is not doing much to support young people going into such careers.  In fact, there is ample evidence that most of our education professionals are fostering a future that will soon relegate the US into second world status on the global stage.  Today only one out of six high school graduates are proficient in STEM subjects and interested in a STEM career.  However, out of this small cohort who then enroll in STEM programs, only 2 out of 5 actually graduate with STEM degrees.  Most of our STEM students drop out because high school did not prepare them properly in science and math.

    The cause of such deficits is now visible to all but the politically invested in Common Core, the latest whizbang curriculum to have come out of the mavens of progressive education.  Federally mandated Common Core has turned much of K-12 education on its head, abandoning the teaching methods and means that accelerated post-war America into the world’s technology powerhouse.  Today teachers are taught that they cannot teach science along with reading and arithmetic in the lower grades.  New Common Core compliant approaches like ‘Everyday Math’ forbid memorizing multiplication tables and reject the use of common algorithms for solving problems in favor of new and counter-intuitive ones that are hard to understand.

    In short, effective science and math education has become extinct in our union-dominated public schools in which unqualified teachers literally foil millions of kids in their efforts to understand and enjoy science and math.  It is in such schools that kids are made to wade through dysfunctional instruction schemes in the early grades, after which they are not likely to stay interested in the more difficult subjects.  Even as this predictable and visible tragedy unfolds, all the experts continue to noisily pretend they are solving the problem.

    Common Core also induces schools to defocus what is left of their STEM curricula by piggybacking various arts subjects, thereby adding the ‘A’ and making STEM into STEAM.  STEAM opens doors to further pedagogical perfidy and silliness by inviting courses like the recently announced “writing program for STEM students” developed by the University of Michigan.  It is clear that, with these professional pinheads from the education schools, anything goes except straight-ahead, proven STEM teaching methods.

    Things have gotten so bad that Bill and Melinda Gates have already pulled their support of Common Core, offering a veiled apology for being the early and major supporter of this disastrous approach to K-12 education.  The Federalist reported that “Since 2009, the Gates Foundation’s primary U.S. activity has focused on establishing and implementing Common Core, a set of centrally mandated curriculum rules and tests for what children are to learn in each K-12 grade, with the results linked to school and teacher ratings and punitive measures for low performers. The Gates Foundation has spent more than $400 million itself and influenced $4T in US taxpayer funds (under the Obama administration) towards this goal. Eight years later, however, Bill Gates is admitting failure on that project, and a ‘pivot’ to another that is not likely to go any better.”

    When we step back an take a broader look at what has happened to our ideologically-dominated public education from kindergarten through academe, it appears that things could not have gone more counter to America’s interests to continue as the global leader in technology, commerce, and maintaining the world order.  In sum, to millions of Americans, our education system appears and performs as if it were designed for us either in Beijing or in the Kremlin.

    My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

    [Addendum]  It’s also interesting and relevant to know some stats on how well our government schools are received by Americans.

    1. 62% of Americans think education has gotten off on the “wrong track”.
    2. 68% of middle-income earners vs 59% of low-income earners hold the ‘wrong track’ sentiment.
    3. A plurality (42%) of Americans would choose private schools over public schools in selecting among types of schools. 28% would select a public school, while 11% would select a public charter school, and 10% would rather homeschool their children.
    4. A solid majority (59%) favor charter school, and 23% oppose charter schools.
    5. A majority of Americans (56%) support school vouchers vs 28% who oppose such vouchers.

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  • Scatteshots – 8apr19 (updated 10apr19)

    George Rebane

    Union columnist and RR reader George Boardman writes ‘High school cutbacks another consequence of our stagnant economy’ in today’s paper.  There he gets kudos for echoing the commentaries and comments on Nevada County schools and economic development that have long populated these pages over the years.  My preference is that he should have stated his case more strongly – Nevada County’s leftward tack has now baked in its previous on/off promotion of the county’s development in literally all dimensions, save being a welcoming home for progressive causes, non-profits, and ‘San Francisco values’.  The county has been and continues to be enthusiastically anti-development; and it subscribes in spades to Einstein’s dictum of insanity.  Our political leaderships’ latest foray in this direction is opposing the development of housing for our successfully retireds – major cash importers to our community – who want to move from their acreage homes to appropriately high-end, higher density local options that offer more readily accessible conveniences.  It seems that Mr Boardman’s own list to port prevents such a frontal assault on his brethren.  Then again, perhaps next time.

    ‘The Cultural Revolution comes to North America’ writes Anastasia Lin in the 8apr19 WSJ.  The Left in both the US and Canada has now been launching ‘call-out mobs’ whose “aim (is) not to persuade or debate, but to humiliate the target and intimidate other.”  Their main weapon is to paint their opponents with the broad brush of ad hoc labels whose meanings they either do not know or take to mean whatever they want it to mean as convenient.  Popular terms du jour are ‘racist’ and ‘white supremacist’.  One of the established intellectual leaders of the local blue mob is Steven Frisch, who has frequented these pages for years, distributing his opprobrium in RR comment streams when he finds anything that is too persuasive of a counter to his progressive mores, values, or narrative in general.  I am his favorite target and recipient of his latest offering a few days ago.  I use it as a concrete example of the cultural revolution Ms Lin describes – as they say, you can’t make this stuff up.

    I know you think we are in a new crusade and Islam is going to take over the world; that brown people are a scourge on our country; that anything that addresses environmental or climate benefit is a UN and IPCC conspiracy to control the world; that there is growing threat of communism in the US; that young people are stupid and lazy; that we should be able to have communities where people of like culture live together without having to bothered by outsiders; that you were once wrote a column for a newsletter that featured a cover of the Völkischer Beobachter on their front cover, and I could go on…

     

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  • Sandbox – 7apr19

    [Back from travel.  I hope that some of our readers have been following the trail and travail of foreign correspondent and journalist Lara Logan, recently of '60 Minutes' fame.  She is causing quite a consternation in the lamestream media who have targeted her for destruction since she has blown the whistle on the whole progressives' propaganda machine.  Her interview on tonight's Mark Levin show was superb.  gjr]

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  • Reconquista Revisited

    George Rebane

    Last night on FN, Tucker Carlson interviewed Juan Hernandez, a Mexican government official currently serving as the Guanajuato Secretary of Migration, on Mexico’s policy of permitting central American trans-migration through their country to the US border.  The official pointedly avoided addressing the harm that Mexico’s official behavior does to the United States.  (more here) The part of the interview that was most revealing concerned Reconquista – the return of lands that Mexico lost to the United States in 1848.  In the 20th century Mexico and pro-Mexican politicians in this country have openly declared that the lands will be returned bloodlessly by immigration and out-breeding our European descended whites.  In recent decades they have added cross-border migration of illegal aliens to their plan to enlarge and spread insular and non-assimilating latino communities in the US.  (Google also Mexifornia and other writings by Victor Davis Hanson.)

    Tucker Carlson reminded Mr Hernandez of some of his past statements on the matter.

    “We are betting Mexican-Americans will think ‘Mexico first,’ even unto the seventh generation.”

    “Mexican immigrants to the United States are going to keep one foot in Mexico. They are not going to assimilate in the sense of not being Mexican.”

    “We recognize the Mexican population is 100 million in Mexico and 23 million who live in the United States. We are a united nation.”

    RR has covered Reconquista in these pages for over a decade, presenting concordant views by other commentators, academics, and politicians expressed through print and the media.  The Left, especially its local light-readers, have vehemently denied that any of this is happening.  Their main argument has been that there is nothing to worry about because all Mexicans – no matter how arrived – will quickly assimilate into ordinary Americans holding the same loyal sentiments with the rest of us.  The visible evidence does not support that argument.  The overwhelming share of American latinos vote with and for the anti-American leftwing, promoting policies and initiatives to diminish the sovereignty of the US.  Today’s initiatives focus on keeping borders porous, amnesty to all illegals, and voting rights for all US residents.

    Given the ongoing flow of supporting evidence and the vigorous denials by our Left, it is not unreasonable to conclude that for all intents and purposes, Reconquista has been the national policy of Mexican governments since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed on 2 February 1848.  However, never until the globalist tilt of the anti-American Left in recent decades have the Mexicans had a strong ally working in their behalf in the United States.

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  • Sandbox – 3apr19

    [Anybody know what the Dems are celebrating in Chicago?  In that latrine excavated city, the liberals have been in charge forever, and all their numbers are already in the mud.  As arguably the nation's most corrupt and criminalized city, they have a history of electing bad guys and double dummies into public office; what do they expect this new batch to accomplish besides more of the same?  gjr]

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  • Democrats’ 2020 Platform Previewed

    George Rebane

    Ever since Trump was elected president and the national Left mobilized their efforts to destroy his administration and unseat him, I’ve been bitching and moaning that the Democrats offered no alternative programs to implement that would “fundamentally transform” America as promised.  Well, the time has come to stop complaining because in recent months after the 2018 election the Democrats have more than filled a cornucopia of initiatives, proposals, programs, and promises to construct several election platforms for any political party dedicated to steering America into a socialist state.

    This was made clear to me when I received the notes that a friend used in his talk to an organization the other day.  Its perusal reveals an extensive list of things we may expect were the country to hand over control of the executive and legislative branches to our anti-American Left (anti-American in the sense that they don’t like the America of the past nor the direction it was going before they came along, hence their need for a fundamental transformation).

    Without further ado, here is the laundry list of items the Democrats want to afflict on the country starting in 2021.  It is presented as received with minimal editing.

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  • Two Americas – A National Emergency on Steroids (Addended)

    George Rebane

    A couple of mornings ago NPR’s Morning Edition reported that the illegal entrant rate across our southern border has exceeded over a million per year, and that the border security and illegal alien handling facilities are overwhelmed.  Overwhelmed, the Border Patrol has now abrogated the role of the US Customs and Border Protection agency in turning the illegals loose into our society with minimal or no ability to track their identity, origin, or intentions.  All we know is that they will quickly disperse and emerge in ‘sanctuary’ communities where all manner of public doles to succor them await.

    The national border crisis is daily attested by the reports from the border and testimony from homeland security and border control officials past and present.  Recently they were joined by several Obama era higher-ups including former Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson who testified that there is indeed a border crisis in progress.

    In the face of this, the country’s anti-American political faction continues to celebrate, promote, and sustain this deluge of indigents, the human trafficked, criminals, diseased, and economic opportunists that are now pouring across our southern border.  They also communicate their welcoming message in the “shithole countries” of Central America, well-funded messages that induce desperate people and dubious opportunists to undertake the long and dangerous journey north through Mexico.  Our progressives don’t care for the migrants’ welfare or risk involved during the journey.  Their only objective is to maximize the number of illegals who successfully penetrate our border, who then become political fodder within a byzantine and broken immigration system.  Ultimately their presence and large numbers will serve anti-American ends one way or another.

    Astoundingly, there are even many pro-American light thinkers who cannot understand the necessity for and cost-effectiveness of an improved and extended physical barrier to span critical sections of the border.  They swallow the argument of the anti-Americans that what we really need is to greatly expand and improve the welcoming facilities to house, feed, care for, and relocate the arriving hordes.  All such responses will do everything to increase the flow and nothing to stem it.  It is the analog of calling for more bailing buckets instead of patching the hole in a sinking boat.  There is no public awareness or discussion of the longer-term impact that these indigents and their now accelerating arrival rates will have on our institutions, economy, and citizens.  The existential goal of the anti-Americans is to simply keep the ingress rate high and increasing.  No one has asked, ‘How and when will this massive migration of illegal aliens stop?’

    TwoAmericas

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43 comments on Iconic Incoherence on ‘Immigration’