Phyllis Schlafly: The NEA Lists Its Goals and the Democratic Party Agrees.
Some critics complain that the issue of education has been conspicuously absent from presidential television debates. But Democratic presidential candidates did sound off with their pro-federal government, pro-spending policies at the annual convention of the National Education Association, and the nation’s largest teachers union liked what they heard.
U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., told delegates that she will fight school vouchers “with every breath in my body.” Reiterating the message of her book “It Takes a Village,” she called for universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., likewise inveighed against “passing out vouchers.”
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After cheering the promises made by the candidates, NEA delegates buckled down to the serious business of spelling out their political goals, many of which have nothing whatever to do with giving schoolchildren a better education.
The NEA demands a tax-supported, single-payer, health care plan for all residents, a word artfully chosen to include illegal immigrants…The NEA passed at least a dozen resolutions supporting the “gay rights agenda” in public schools…The NEA enthusiastically supports all the goals of radical feminism, including abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, school-based health clinics, wage control so the government can arbitrarily raise the pay of women but not men…The NEA calls for repeal of right-to-work laws, which allow teachers in some states to decline joining the NEA….
Here are some things the NEA opposes: vouchers, tuition tax credits, parental choice programs, making English the official language of the U.S., the use of voter identification for elections, and the privatization of Social Security. High on the list of NEA policies that actually relate to education is opposition to the testing of teachers as a criterion for job retention, promotion, tenure, or salary…
Two of the NEA’s favorite words in its resolutions and policies are “diversity,” which means teaching that gay behavior is OK, and “multiculturalism,” which means stressing negative things about the United States and positive things about non-Christian cultures.
FrontPage Mag: Two Ohio Public Schools Run by CAIR.
As children all over the country prepare for the annual American rite of the beginning of school, hundreds of school children and their parents from the Columbus, Ohio Somali refugee community may be getting far less than they bargained for, as well as Ohio taxpayers.
These children will be attending two publicly-funded K-8 charter schools, International Academy of Columbus and Westside Academy, schools are sponsored under an Ohio Department of Education contract with the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation and operated by a politically-connected group of Islamic extremists associated with both the national and Ohio chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). At least one of the taxpayer-financed schools has been used during the last school year to play host to an anti-Israel CAIR-OH “teach-in”.
Time: Gifted Kids Let Down by Government-Run Schools.
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Update: If you don’t remember Miss Gulch, this should refresh your memory (loud music warning).
The editors of National Review are usually a smart bunch of people, but they’re having a hard time understanding the FairTax. NRO Editorial: Fair Tax, Foul Politics.
The tax code needs major reform to become fairer, simpler, and more efficient. The Fair Tax is one instantiation of those goals, but its political impracticality makes it fatally flawed. If conservatives force a choice between a Fair Tax and no tax reform at all, the latter is what they are likely to get.
There is widespread confusion about what the Fair Tax would entail. If you bought $100 of clothing and paid a $30 tax on it, you would probably think you had paid a 30 percent tax. The Fair Taxers say that you paid a 23 percent tax: $30 is 23 percent of the $130 you paid in total. When they say they want a 23 percent tax, that’s what they mean.
The FairTax Book author Neal Boortz refuted all this on the radio and on his website, but the FairTax plan is so simple even a cartoonist can point out the problems in NRO’s arguement:
- Under the FairTax, $100 worth of clothing would cost you $100. There is no price increase. The FairTax will already be included in the list price of what you are buying. The price of everything you buy now is already inflated roughly 22% by the current tax code. These taxes will be abolished and replaced with the FairTax.
- Under the FairTax, $100 buys a lot more clothing than it does now. The FairTax abolishes all corporate tax burdens. Lower business expenses mean lower prices.
- Under the FairTax, $100 is a lot easier to come by than it is now. The FairTax abolishes the income tax. You take home your entire paycheck.
- Under the FairTax, that pile of clothing you just bought is much more likely to have been manufactured in the USA rather than in China or Mexico. No other country can compete with a tax code this simple. The FairTax makes America “the greatest tax haven the industrialized world has ever known“.
Neal Boortz:
… let’s work on the assumption that these editors are actually intelligent. You don’t get to be an editor at NRO by filling out an end panel on a box of Grape Nuts. So … if these guys have any brains at all, how can they so badly misrepresent the FairTax? There are crane operators out there who know that if you buy $100 worth of clothes the 23% FairTax comes out of the $100. Nothing is added to the price. The clothes don’t cost you $130 in total … they cost you $100. The 23% FairTax merely replaces the imbedded tax that would be there if you bought those clothes today!
Look … if you’re going to criticize the FairTax, can you at least read the book before you make fools out of yourselves?
Zell Miller on the FairTax:
The current income tax taxes savings, labor, investment and productivity not once but many times. The FairTax takes the tax off wages, savings, and investment. It also increases productivity and produces signifigant economic growth. The current income tax code places unfair tax burden on U.S. imports and fails to neutralize tax advantages for imports. With the FairTax foreign companies are forced to compete on even terms with U.S. companies for the first time in ninty years!
FairTax.org: FairTax Rally in Ames, Iowa.
Events start at 10:00 a.m. with another Neal Boortz-led rally of music, speeches and appearances by presidential candidates and other invited guests.
Afterward, we will once again “march for the FairTax” handing out FairTax literature as well as “gently” reminding the national media and presidential candidates that FairTax supporters cannot be ignored.
In addition, we will have a 2,000 person, air-conditioned tent with food, beverages and entertainment where you can take a break from the day’s activities as well as educate visiting Iowans–and perhaps a presidential candidate or two–about the benefits of the FairTax. You will also have the chance to visit all the presidential candidates’ tents and hear their speeches.
About the FairTax:
The FairTax plan is a comprehensive proposal that replaces all federal income and payroll based taxes with an integrated approach including a progressive national retail sales tax, a prebate to ensure no American pays federal taxes on spending up to the poverty level, dollar-for-dollar federal revenue neutrality, and, through companion legislation, the repeal of the 16th Amendment.
The FairTax Act (HR 25, S 1025) is nonpartisan legislation. It abolishes all federal personal and corporate income taxes, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, and self-employment taxes and replaces them with one simple, visible, federal retail sales tax administered primarily by existing state sales tax authorities.
The FairTax taxes us only on what we choose to spend on new goods or services, not on what we earn. The FairTax is a fair, efficient, transparent, and intelligent solution to the frustration and inequity of our current tax system.
The FairTax:
- Abolishes the IRS
- Closes all loopholes and brings fairness to taxation
- Ensures Social Security and Medicare funding
- Brings transparency and accountability to tax policy
- Allows American products to compete fairly
- Reimburses the tax on purchases of basic necessities
- Enables retirees to keep their entire pension
- Enables workers to keep their entire paycheck
Scorecard: find out which members of Congress support the FairTax.
Stanley Kurtz at National Review:
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required), under threat of a law suit, Cambridge University Press has just agreed to pulp all unsold copies of the 2006 book, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World. According to the Chronicle, this is the fourth such book on terrorism funding to be pursued by a libel action.
Bryan Preston at HotAir:
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this story. The Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. required) on Wednesday published an article about Khalid bin Mafouz, a wealthy Saudi banker, and his successful effort to persuade the Cambridge University Press to halt the publication of four books that detail how Saudi citizens use their wealth to finance global terrorism. One of those books, Alms for Jihad, was once on sale at Amazon and elsewhere, but it has been pulled from sale and copies of it are now being pulped. Cambridge has even sent out letters to libraries that stock it and the other three books, asking for their return so that they too can be pulped, meaning they will soon disappear, burying the details they contain on how terrorism finance works and who is behind it.
Mark Steyn: The Vanishing Jihad Exposés.
So why would the Cambridge University Press, one of the most respected publishers on the planet, absolve Khalid bin Mahfouz, his family, his businesses and his charities to a degree that neither (to pluck at random) the U.S., French, Albanian, Swiss and Pakistani governments would be prepared to do?
Because English libel law overwhelmingly favors the plaintiff. And like many other big-shot Saudis, Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors … Sheikh Mahfouz had indicated he was prepared to spend what it takes to challenge it in court, and Random House decided it wasn’t worth it.
We’ve gotten used to one-way multiculturalism: The world accepts that you can’t open an Episcopal or Congregational church in Jeddah or Riyadh, but every week the Saudis can open radical mosques and madrassahs and pro-Saudi think-tanks in London and Toronto and Dearborn, Mich., and Falls Church, Va. And their global reach extends a little further day by day, inch by inch, in the lengthening shadows, as the lights go out one by one around the world.
Thanks to Instapundit for supplying this cartoon’s caption.
Update: Kevin B. emails that he was able to purchase an ebook version of Alms For Jihad at Books On Board. The ebook is available for $17.38 in Mobipocket format, software download is free.
National Review’s Stanley Kurtz: Saudi in the Classroom.
Unless we counteract the influence of Saudi money on the education of the young, we’re going to find it very difficult to win the war on terror. I only wish I was referring to Saudi-funded madrassas in Pakistan. Unfortunately, I’m talking about K-12 education in the United States. Believe it or not, the Saudis have figured out how to make an end-run around America’s K-12 curriculum safeguards, thereby gaining control over much of what children in the United States learn about the Middle East…
How did they do it? Very carefully…and very cleverly. It turns out that the system of federal subsidies to university programs of Middle East Studies (under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) has been serving as a kind of Trojan horse for Saudi influence over American K-12 education. Federally subsidized Middle East Studies centers are required to pursue public outreach. That entails designing lesson plans and seminars on the Middle East for America’s K-12 teachers. These university-distributed teaching aids slip into the K-12 curriculum without being subject to the normal public vetting processes. Meanwhile, the federal government, which both subsidizes and lends its stamp of approval to these special K-12 course materials on the Middle East, has effectively abandoned oversight of the program that purveys them (Title VI).
Enter the Saudis. By lavishly funding several organizations that design Saudi-friendly English-language K-12 curricula, all that remains is to convince the “outreach coordinators” at prestigious, federally subsidized universities to purvey these materials to America’s teachers. And wouldn’t you know it, outreach coordinators or teacher-trainers at a number of university Middle East Studies centers have themselves been trained by the very same Saudi-funded foundations that design K-12 course materials. These Saudi-friendly folks happily build their outreach efforts around Saudi-financed K-12 curricula.
Walid Phares also writes about “academic jihad” in his book The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy.
From the early 1990’s, considerable Wahabi money was made available for “academic jihad.” Both government and independent emirs offered money to be invested in the West to “teach about Islam, correct the image of it, and better explain the real problems of the Middle East…”
The offers were coated as strictly “academic” -neutral, balanced, and inclusive. On the doner end, however, the objectives were fully ideological: further the cause of Islam as they envisioned it, support the Palestinian cause as the sole issue in the Middle East, and plant the seeds of the concept of an illegitimate West. This real agenda by the doners merged with the anti-American, anti-Western, and in some cases anti-Semitic elements of the extreme left and extreme right in America and other Western societies.
Some examples of how this money is being spent:
The Cabinet: ‘Open tent’ at Amherst Middle School
LittleGreenFootballs: Aramco Sponsoring Teacher Trips to Saudi Arabia
