Recipe for Disaster

Posted on 08/09/2024 by Grumpa Joe

I am reposting this article by Daniel Greenfield because it is a recipe for disaster we are headed toward. Remember to vote for Harris Walz in November if you want your kid to underperform.

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Daniel Greenfield

Visit DanielGreenfield.org

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow and the Executive Vice President of Programs at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His book, Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left,tells the story of the Left’s 200 Year War Against America.
Gov. Walz’s Legacy is That Majority of Students Can No Longer Read

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Sat, 7 Sep 2024 10:17 PM PST by Daniel Greenfield
Test scores in Minnesota hit a 30 year low under the former high school teacher.

(Note to Subscribers: After the mailing list service I was using shut down, I was forced to switch to a new service. That’s why this is the first email in a week. I’ve been trying my best to get this right, but if there are any issues with the email, please let me know.)

Gov. Tim Walz has made much of being a former high school teacher in his political campaigns. The DNC brought out former students of his on stage and the media has rolled out adulatory stories claiming that Walz’s time as a teacher will help him shape America’s education policy.

The recent release of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCA) test scores for 2024 by Education Commissioner Willie Jett, a Walz appointee, were described by the Minnesota Star Tribune as “stagnant with only about half of students meeting or beating grade-level standards in math and reading.” The paper struggled to describe an empty glass as half-full.

The actual numbers showed that 49.9% of Minnesota students reached grade-level proficiency standards in reading, only 45.5% did so in math and only 39.6% managed it in science: a more accurate description would be that well less than half of Walz’s school students are proficient.

The educational glass in Minnesota isn’t half full, it’s more than half empty.

A majority of Minnesota students aren’t proficient in math or science and a little less than half can read at grade level. These are catastrophic numbers that show a school system that has failed at its most fundamental function despite billions of dollars in runaway spending.

The already terrible 2024 test scores are much worse when viewed in historical context.

In 2017, the year before the election that put Walz in charge of Minnesota, solid majorities of students were proficient in reading and math, and even science scores in the state were passable. Walz however ran as an educator and promised that he could do better.

In 2017, 59% of Minnesota students tested as proficient in math. By 2024, that number had dropped catastrophically by more than 13% down to 45.5%.

In 2017, 60% of students had tested as proficient at grade level in reading. Under Gov. Walz, those numbers have fallen to 49.9%.

In 2017, 54% of students met or exceeded test scores in science. By 2024, only 39.6% did for a decline of 14%.

The respective double digit education declines of 13%, 10% and 14% under Gov. Walz have taken test scores to some of the worst numbers in the state in thirty years.

And these numbers don’t tell the whole story of how bad things are in Minnesota. One analysis found that there were 19 schools in the state where not a single student was proficient in math.

Some of this can be attributed to Gov. Walz’s decision to pander to his teachers’ union allies in EM by shutting down schools and curtailing the education of a generation, but not all of it.

Pre-pandemic test scores were already showing declines and Gov. Walz has had years to turn around pandemic educational failures, but the former teacher who ran twice on fixing education failed to lay out any practical vision for turning around the failed public school system.

Test scores have been consistently falling since Walz took office. Math scores only improved by 1% since the pandemic and reading scores have been in freefall, declining year by year even since the pandemic and last year fell for the first time underwater below the halfway mark.

While Gov. Walz’s decision to close schools was disastrous, but things have gotten worse since. In his 2022 race, he ran on promises to further increase education spending. His campaign featured a commercial claiming that “as a former teacher, Governor Walz does what’s right for our kids.” But doing right meant throwing more money at political allies running a failed system.

The massive $2.2 billion education spending bill passed by Minnesota Democrats last year officially brought up spending to $7,281 per pupil, but not only is there little evidence that the per pupil spending ratio leads to improved education outcomes with some schools in the state that have been spending as much as $31,000 per student producing zero percent proficiency, but much of the money actually went to putting more of Education Minnesota (EM) teachers’ union members along with more administrators, school nurses and social workers on the payroll, and enacting a controversial “ethnic studies” program that critics say brings racism into schools.

A year later, most Minnesota students still can’t handle math, science or reading.

“My messages to families, to students, to teachers, to support staff is, ‘This is the budget for many of us who taught for decades,’ this is the budget we’re waiting for,” Gov. Walz bragged “This is the transformational moment.” It was transformational for everyone except students.

Gov. Walz and his party chose to spend $6 million on ethnic studies while students were struggling with basic skills. $135 million was spent paying ‘unemployment’ for workers off for the summer. Rather than funding schools, much of the new money funded social services, free meals, family social workers and even drug overdose prevention medications on site.

Minnesota Democrats have camouflaged social welfare spending and benefits for union members as educational spending, but there’s no sign that students have benefited from it.

The state’s powerful educational unions have claimed that Democrats are better for education, but test scores in reading hit a high of 74% and math scores hit a high of 64.7% under former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, and have been declining ever since.

Gov. Walz was following the policies of a party that took reading test scores down from 74% to 49.4% and math test scores from 64.7% down to 45.5%.

Behind the numbers is the reality that 3 out of 4 students used to be proficient in reading, now less than 2 in 4 are, and 6 out of 10 students could count, now only 4 out of 10 still can.

What will happen to those two illiterate students and those six students who can’t count?

The Walz campaign claimed that he wanted to make “Minnesota the best state in the country for kids.” But in his second term in office, the kids of Minnesota can’t read, count or do anything.

The governor inherited majority proficiency rates in education in Minnesota and brought them down to less than half. That record may have more bearing on his education policy than his past working as a teacher.

Gov. Walz’s actual educational legacy is that a majority of students can no longer read.

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That result is exactly what we are looking for. We can’t beat China with our best students, so let’s go the other way and try using the underperformers to give it a go!

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Rehire a New Hire?

Posted on 01/09/2024 by Grumpa Joe

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The Party of Karl Marx

Posted on 23/08/2024 by Grumpa Joe

Thank God, Lovely decided to have a conversation with me at the very end of my favorite program. Like always I turn off the TV to give her my full attention. Ten minutes later she left to speak to her grandson in her native tongue. Our conversations are very short because her English is limited. I looked at my watch to decide if there was enough time left before retiring to turn the TV back on. Oh no, I am missing Queens Kamalas address to her subjects. I turned it back on to listen to the last five minutes. Luckily I saw her face turn into something a man hates to see, a woman who is angry and mad. She spoke about foreign leaders and how she would deal with them. My, my how I shivered with fright. I just can’t seem to envision her standing face to face with Putin in a face to face showdown. Every time I picture this scene it winds up with Putin ignoring her and angrily turning and walking away. It is as though she is not even there.

I will give the democrats credit for one thing, they are relentlessly banging away on Trump as hard as they can. The joy they propose to spread in the world disappears when Trump becomes the subject. I see it as another example of hypocrisy in action. The only joy democrats can experience is watching republican millionaires being taxed into poverty. Democrat millionaires are permitted in their perverted society of equal outcomes for all. The envision republicans and conservatives as the new slaves which they control on a chain-leash around the neck.

On the subject of the vice presidential candidate I have a few questions. I’m okay with his quiting the army when it came time to deploy to war, but I am not okay with him telling the people to squeal on their neighbors for not wearing masks during the pandemic. What kind of grammar schoolyard policy is that? I’m also not good with the lack of action he took during demonstrations in his state that wound up burning cars, buildings and hurting people. Supposedly, he was giving the wrong side a chance to be equal. I am also not okay with him giving kids the right to change their genders. What was he thinking when he had tampon dispensers installed in the school mens rooms? Were they supposed to use them to plug up their asses? How could he think that when these kids already have their heads planted up there. I am not ready to accept a man as the next in line when I believe he will fail to press the nuclear button when he sees an a-bomb headed for the white house because it is not the joyous thing to do. I do believe he would insist that world leaders joined to discuss world peace join hands and sing kombayah before deliberating.

I see this country drinking the cool aid and giving the first woman presidential candidate a bye just because it is time to have a woman president. The people of this country are not principled enough to compare Queen Kamala to Golda Meier, Margaret Thatcher, or Catherine the Great, and to see that she is a lightweight at best. She will win for the same reason Obama won, she is half-black, light skinned, raised by a single mom, has an Ivy League degree, uses language with words that are undiscernable to the common people and avoids the ghetto dialect. It will be another example of affirmative action in practice.

The fact that she is a progressive who practices and believes in the Marxist philosophy that all men are the same as their neighbors, and the means is justified by the end will not make a penny’s worth of difference in deciding how to vote.

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Pray Hard

Posted on 20/08/2024 by Grumpa Joe

It is over. I sent the manuscript to a publisher. Now, I can forget about it. If they accept it and send me money, I will accept it graciously. If they don’t, I will bask in the glory of having completed another goal. As I write this, I wonder which goal I will dive into next.

I think, I will start by turning off Grammarly. It seems, my knowledge of English Grammar is quite different than that of Grammarly. I like my version better. It sounds more like me talking. In the writing arena, I’ll try some short stories. The prospect of living long enough to pound out a regular book-sized story doesn’t appeal to me anymore.

Certainly, I will write for this BLOG more regularly. Most times it will sound like Joe Biden drifting off into a mindless stupor while his mouth is still moving and sound continues to flow.

Speaking of Joe Biden. I made the sad mistake of watching his entire speech at the convention. Was it really him who was speaking? He sounded exactly like when he gave us the State of the Union speech earlier in the year. Was it a robot programmed to move his lips like Joe? Or, was it a Disney holograph of him giving the SU speech? Either way, I can proudly brag that I watched Joe Biden give the last political speech of his long career.

One state I never traveled in was Delaware, and after witnessing Joe’s career I will stay away from all people who might have been dumb enough to vote for this guy so many times. How did he manage to last as long as he did? A better question would be how in the hell did he become president?

I do not look forward to seeing Kamala Harris become president because the few policies she is promoting sound like what we went through in the seventies/eighties when Nixon was trying to fix the inflation that Carter brought upon us. I agree that it is time that a woman become president, but please Lord not Kamala. She will become the new model for dumb blond jokes. Since what she proposes isn’t meant to be funny, it will hurt all of us. Just let her go back to the land of the crazies and give her a puppy or kitten to play with, but please Lord, don’t give her the keys to the atomic bombs.

Filed under: Aging, Conservative, Election | 4 Comments »

PSA-240607-A View On Socialism

Posted on 07/06/2024 by Grumpa Joe

The View from Mount Olympus
Daniel Greenfield, 06 Jun 09:35 AM

The view from Mount Olympus is said to be spectacular, but few have ever seen it. Head up past the former homes of long dead movie stars and you can look down from the Hollywood Hills on WeHo’s gay nightlife and Russian restaurants, along with much of the rest of L.A.

With names like Hercules Dr, Zeus Dr, Apollo Dr, Jupiter Dr, and, of course, Mt. Olympus Dr, it’s truly a hangout for any gods with twenty million to spare. Reported celebrity residents and owners of the gated community with 24/7 security include Leonardo DiCaprio, Katy Perry, and Harrison Ford, but even more importantly here is the Ross House, a 13,000 square foot modernist monster, where Hollywood studios hold intimate receptions, screenings and award parties for the small club of those who are famous or can help make them even more famous.

The Ross House of Mt. Olympus is usually a brief entry in industry publications, but it embodies the vast gulf between how people down in L.A. live and how those who decide their fates do.

While Los Angeles has become a crime-ridden hellhole, Mt. Olympus, like many well-off neighborhoods in the area, enjoys private security patrols so that someone is always watching. The celebrities who come and go from private parties at exclusive locations like the Ross House have their own security and studios provide security for their events. In Greek myth, Mt. Olympus may have been difficult for mortals to reach, but the Los Angeles development has a regular commuter class of illegal alien maids, cleaners and gardeners, as well as security.

“The wealthy elite of Mount Olympus are some of the wealthiest and most influential people in all of Los Angeles,” one real estate agent gushes and that may be overstating it, but the 400 or so homes and the 800 or so residents of this Hollywood Hills enclave do live apart from the rest.

As do many of the immortals of the Hollywood Hills where crime is rare and junkies don’t sleep on the streets. And when crime does happen, even the most pro-crime prosecutors are much more responsive to the needs of those on high than to the troubles of those down below.

Every city has its class divides, but the heights of Mt. Olympus and its neighbors in the ‘Hills’ are a divide not only in geographic distance, but topological territory. To pause for a moment at a reception for an Oscar winner at Ross House and cast a brief gaze down below to where street level retail is vanishing and angry hobos roam the streets stabbing people is to be above it all.

Socialism is not an ideology of street-level social reformers, but of aspiring gods who look down and imagine moving people around like so many toys until everything fits perfectly. To be down on the street is to know that there is no perfection and that nothing will ever fit. And that all we have are the imperfect solutions of common sense and whatever character we can wrest from the chaos and technological tricks we can use to stay one step ahead of the entropy horizon.

Hollywood, the people who pretend to tell our stories, play with toys in an industry of them. There are the white roofs of the studios, the large prop rental facilities and a backlot of fake streets on which fake lives will be portrayed and fake lives depicted. And then after playtime is over, the men and women will drive up the narrow winding canyon roads along streets named for old legends, past the Greystone Mansion, where an oil tycoon’s murder-suicide inspired the movie ‘There Will Be Blood’, and where everything from Batman to Star Trek was filmed, to their estates up in the sky. Is it any wonder that they’re socialists? How could they be anything else.

The view from Mt. Olympus is not nearly as glorious as the Alps or the Rockies if what you value in life is natural beauty, but if what you love is power, then the twinkling fairylights of the Los Angeles landscape, the long roads and the endless springtime are ideological ambrosia.

Leftist politics are one part perpetual outrage, two parts magical thinking and four parts pagan godhood. The old days when powerful men could pretend to be gods were dashed by religion and then democracy. Until socialism, wealth bought you only so many privileges. Now it buys you the privilege of looking down and toying with the less well off in the name of social justice.

It doesn’t take much to toy with the really poor, but the genius of leftist politics is that the wildly rich can use it to grind down poorer rivals and aspiring members of the middle class. California’s upward mobility was turned upside down when success was more than just buying a mansion in one of the nicer parts of town, but moving uphill to rain misery on everyone down below.

California’s social justice class is even more effete than in most other places. Gov. Gavin Newsom carries vineyard country wherever he goes. The DSA socialists drive six figure cars when they go to protest for the homeless or Hamas. And their parents benevolently gaze down at them from Mt. Olympus: proud of how much Oliver and Sophia care about the ‘big’ issues.

Radicals are not made out of the molten metal of oppression but poured out of the golden crucible of prosperity. It isn’t the mobs rising up from the streets, but descending down from pricey prep schools like Harvard Westlake where the children of celebrities and their financial planners with few real skills go on to study gender theory at UCLA or USC in between shopping trips to hip boutiques on Rodeo Drive and protests around Grand Park.

The mediocre elites of Mt. Olympus have their McMansion versailles not despite their socialism, but because of it. Stockbrokers call for the redistribution of wealth, doctors demand that medicine be socialized, and celebrities champion the rise of the working man. Up in the sky, idealism seems more real than common sense and reality is for the lesser folks below.

The immortals may have to descend from Mt. Olympus to shop at Trader Joe’s (if they choose not to Instacart their order) where there are bums in the alley and tent encampments under the underpass, but a return to the heights also restores a sense of the rightness of things. In Manhattan, a liberal who had been mugged might become a conservative, but in the nicer parts of Los Angeles County, the liberal drives past the chaos, and escapes that sense of vulnerability by retreating to gated communities and estates policed by heavily armed private security.

It’s vulnerability that makes conservatives out of liberal immortals. Not just a mugging, but mortality in whatever form it comes whether it’s financial reverses, government abuses or just the passage of time. Leftist politics, like casinos and crypto, only work in a cloud of unreality. When reality touches our souls, then the impossible makes way for the realities of life.

What happens to a liberal who never gets mugged? He becomes an idiot immortal, living outside reality, convinced that everyone else could live that way too if only they voted like him.

Southern California is uniquely insulated from those realities. This is where the seasons do not change and time does not pass. Even as the cities decay and the suburbs empty out to Florida and Nevada, the immortals look down from the heights and believe that nothing has changed. Until one day they look down to find that there is nothing left to see underneath the mountain.

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