CHANGE: Manhattan just lost its stranglehold on white-collar workers. “The white-collar workforce has proved it can skip the office not just one day, not just a week, not just two weeks, but for nearly five months now. Five months isn’t forever, no. But it is a long time. Just as emerging city and state officials want to extract more, in higher taxes, from business and its workers, the balance of power has indefinitely changed.”
PROFESSOR MIKE ADAMS WAS MY FRIEND: He was also a fighter for free speech and due process on campus, who was persecuted in his lifetime and, after being driven to take his own life, was mocked and cursed after his death. He deserved better — we all do. But that won’t happen until we treat people as people instead of as instruments for our own agendas. This will take a general awakening, and I can only pray it happens soon.
ATOMIC BETTY: The Angel in the Marble. Remembering a friend.
ONCE AGAIN, “TWEET THAT OUTRAGES THE POLITICAL CLASS” IS NOT SYNONYMOUS WITH “IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE.” My friend Steve Matthews, a high-powered lawyer with top-level DOJ experience, observes:
Without weighing in on whether changing Election Day is a good or bad idea (I think it’s not a good one, for irrelevant reasons), I offer the following observations regarding some of the rhetoric over the President’s tweet that raised the possibility.
The Constitution places in Congress the power to set the date for choosing electors. (Art. II, Sec. 1, 4th para.). Congress has, by statute, set that date as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. 3 U.S. Code § 1. Congress can amend that statute at any time (subject to filibuster, veto, override, and all the usual legislative hurdles). [NOTE: Each state can begin the process earlier than that First Tuesday, and many do – allowing early absentee or mail voting to begin quite a bit earlier. More recently, other state-governed election schedules have already been changed and/or litigated due to Covid-19 concerns. I don’t know of anyone who has suggested that those actual or proposed modifications to election schedules are either fascistic or impeachable.]
The Constitution not only allows, but requires, that the President “shall from time to time . . . recommend to [the Congress’s] Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” (Art. II, Sec. 3.)
Moreover, the President does not, upon taking office, lose his rights under the First Amendment either to “the freedom of speech” or “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Neither performing his Constitutional duty (Art. II, Sec. 3) nor exercising his Constitutional rights (1st Amend.) constitutes “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” (the sole basis for impeachment). (Art. II, 4.) Nor is either one of those “fascistic,” by any rational definition of that over-used term.
It’s disappointing to see not just the usual gang of idiots, but also some people who should know better joining the hysteria here. As I said before, we had elections during the Civil War and there’s no need to delay them now. But once again, just because a tweet — or other presidential action — riles up the political class doesn’t make it an impeachable offense. And if our political class had been as dedicated to actually defending decency, decorum and tradition as it is determined to weaponize them against Trump, we wouldn’t have gotten Trump.
Amusingly on Facebook where this was originally posted, one person explicitly agrees with Steve Matthews’ legal argument — except for Trump. Because #OrangeManBad.
2020 IS REALLY GOING ALL OUT: Mind-controlling fungus makes zombie cicadas lure other cicadas to a zombie fate. “Male cicadas infected by a particularly gruesome parasitic fungus become zombies with an undercover mission: They broadcast a female’s sexy come-hither message to other male cicadas, luring their unsuspecting victims to join the zombie cicada horde.“
And then when caught, they promise to atone by attacking the NRA and Donald Trump.
THE WINNERS OF JULY: Emerson poll: “As coronavirus cases continue to grow across the country, the November presidential election appears to be unchanged, as former V.P. Joe Biden holds a four-point lead over President Trump –– 50% to 46%. (n=964, +/-3.1%, likely voters). This is the same magnitude as June’s national poll, where Biden led Trump 47% to 43%. Since June, the number of undecided voters has declined from 10% to 4%.”
(Classical reference in headline.)
AT AMAZON, Mr. Coffee 12-Cup Coffee Maker, Black.
SENTENCE FIRST, TRIAL AFTER: College expels student for ‘racist’ social media post, then discovers what actually happened. “Days later, the school backtracked after realizing that the posts were made by another person.”
Will an administrator lose his/her job over this? Because someone should.
AOC EMBODIES “PRETTY PRIVILEGE” — IF SHE WERE UNATTRACTIVE SHE WOULDN’T GET AWAY WITH SAYING SUCH DUMB STUFF: Father Damien ministered to native Hawaiians in a leper colony, now AOC calls him a ‘colonizer.’ “So according to AOC, you are a colonizer if you lay down your life for people you never met before, halfway across the globe. If you earn the plaudits of the local queen for your selfless heroism, you are a colonizer. But there’s even more to the story.”
WOE UNLIMITED: A look at politics, death and what passes for life in ayatollah Iran.
THE KEY WORD BEING “REPORTEDLY:” Ellen DeGeneres reportedly wants to end her talk show.
Ellen DeGeneres may be tired of talking.
Anonymous insiders at Telepictures said the longtime host of her eponymous talk show is ready to hang up her microphone in the wake of recent allegations about “toxic” workplace conditions.
A source at Telepictures told DailyMail.com that the host is telling executives at Telepictures and Warner Bros that she has had enough and wants to walk away from the show.
“She feels she can’t go on and the only way to recover her personal brand from this is to shut down the show,” an insider told the outlet on Friday. “The truth is she knew what was going on — it’s her show. The buck stops with her. She can blame every executive under the sun — but Ellen is ultimately the one to blame.”
It sounds like pressure is being applied via “anonymous insiders” to force DeGeneres out for her producers’ excesses.
OBAMA’S PRESIDENCY WAS A TRAGICALLY SQUANDERED MOMENT, WASTED ON A SECOND-RATER WITH A MEAN, DIVISIVE APPROACH: Obama’s latest outrageous political games a reminder of how he opened door to Trump.
NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: China floods affect 54.8 million people, inflict US$20 billion in losses: China’s reports of deaths, damaged homes suspiciously low given scale of disaster.
Suspiciously, yet predictably.
THINK OF THE PRESS AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OPERATION AGAINST NORMAL AMERICANS AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Tells Media Their Distorted Portland Riots Coverage Is Part of the Problem.
WHY ARE DEMOCRAT-MONOPOLY INSTITUTIONS SUCH CESSPITS OF ABUSE? NBC Insiders Say Entertainment Boss Fostered Toxic Culture, Under Investigation. “Current and former employees allege that NBC Entertainment chairman Paul Telegdy engaged in racist, sexist and homophobic behavior: ‘It was par for the course.’”
“PUNCH TO THE STOMACH:” “An appeals court has thrown out the death penalty sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, meaning the convicted terrorist will return to court to be resentenced.”
SHOW ME THE MAN, AND I’LL SHOW YOU THE CRIME: St. Louis Prosecutor Reopens Michael Brown Case in Secret, Still Can’t Prove Darren Wilson Committed a Crime.
AFTER THE ELECTION, WE’LL BE TOLD THAT TRUMP’S OPPOSITION TO MAIL VOTING WAS A NEFARIOUS SCHEME TO GET DEMOCRATS TO DOUBLE DOWN AND SUPPRESS THEIR OWN VOTERS: Poll: More Than Half Of Young People Lack Resources To Vote By Mail. Among other things, millennials don’t know where to get stamps, apparently.
Related: Despite virus threat, Black voters wary of voting by mail.
SAVAGERY FROM THE BABYLON BEE: Teachers Refusing To Go Back In The Fall Launch ‘Every Child Left Behind’ Movement.
July 31, 2020
150M HOP SOON, SAYS ELON: SpaceX fires up Starship SN5 rocket prototype ahead of first test flight. “The final version of Starship will feature six Raptor engines, stand about 165 feet (50 m) tall and be capable of carrying up to 100 people, Musk has said. The spaceship will launch atop a gigantic rocket called Super Heavy, which will be powered by 31 Raptors of its own. Starship and Super Heavy will be fully and rapidly reusable, Musk has said.”
THINK OF THE PRESS AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE OPERATION AIMED AT AMERICANS AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: ‘Staggering’ Increase in COVID-Linked Depression, Anxiety.
WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Lockdown’s Destruction: Incredibly, some in the media want to repeat the second quarter’s 32.9% plunge in GDP.
Consumer spending fell 34.6% and accounted for some 25 percentage points of the GDP decline. The fall in transportation, recreation, food services and hotels was brutal. But the biggest surprise was the plunge in health-care spending during a health-care crisis. Health care represents about 12% of the U.S. economy and its collapse subtracted 9.5 percentage points from GDP.
How does that happen in a pandemic? The answer, as our friend Don Luskin points out, is that politicians panicked in March and waited for a surge of Covid-19 patients that the pandemic modelers told them would arrive. Blessedly, the modelers were wrong, and far fewer hospital and intensive-care beds were needed. But the economic harm from stopping all elective surgeries and barring visits to doctors was severe and unnecessary.
It was also a terrible public-health blunder. That harm will play out for years as Americans discover cancer, heart-disease and other diagnoses that were missed or delayed. . . .
Hard to believe, but some on the left are stumping for a second nationwide lockdown to control the virus. Shut the U.S. down again until October when the scourge will be gone for good. Do they want another 33% decline in GDP and 40 million more unemployed?
Without a vaccine, the virus was always likely to spread through most of the country, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted in March. The lockdown-as-miracle-cure is a fantasy, as the World Health Organization has now acknowledged. The economic and public-health harm is too great and the virus is too easily transmissible.
The public is smarter than the media and can adjust its behavior when flare-ups occur. Hospitalizations and cases in hot spots in the South and West are trending down. They’ve fallen by a third in Arizona from a peak two weeks ago and are down 8% in Texas. Deaths have increased, but the rate is far below those on the East Coast in the spring.
At least the worst economic news is over, or it should be without a second lockdown. Orders for motor vehicles and capital goods are rising, and housing is strong. The service economy will take longer to come back, but it will do so when the public feels confident enough to venture out. What no one needs is another catastrophe like the second-quarter lockdown.
The WSJ is on-target, though the GDP drop is not an absolute 32.9% but an annualized rate. The actual drop for the quarter was much smaller, of course, though still huge. And it was pretty much all government-induced. Weirdly, when you force large parts of the economy to close down, the GDP drops.
I HAVE A FRIEND WHO HAD HER KNEES REPLACED OVER A YEAR AGO AND SHE STILL HAS TO ICE THEM TWICE A DAY, SO YEAH: Opioid prescriptions after knee, hip replacement on rise, study finds.
I’D LIKE TO KNOW IF THERE’S ANY ACTUAL SCIENCE — SAY, IN THE FORM OF CONTACT TRACING DATA — INDICATING THAT BARS ARE THE PROBLEM: Knox County bars prepare to close following Board of Health order.
NEARLY HALF THE CORONAVIRUS DEATHS IN AMERICA HAPPENED IN NURSING HOMES, WHICH DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS LIKE WHITMER, CUOMO, AND WOLF DELIBERATELY SEEDED WITH INFECTED PATIENTS: Whitmer vetoes bill that would have prevented COVID-19 patients housed in nursing homes.
PUTTING THE TOTAL IN TOTALITARIANISM: Nothing escapes the Sauronic eye of the cancellation squad, which is now after U. of North Texas professor Timothy Jackson for writing an article in the music theory Journal of Schenkerian Studies that was skeptical of a fellow prof’s allegation that there is a “‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” And like clockwork, Dean John W. Richmond of UNT’s College of Music has announced an investigation into Jackson.
DISPATCHES FROM THE INTERSECTION OF “THIS IS CNN” AND THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: CNN Redefines Women As ‘Individuals With A Cervix.’
A TALE OF TWO TWITTERS:
Shot: Twitter finally bans ex-KKK grand wizard David Duke.
—The New York Post, today.
—Fox Business, yesterday.
WHY NOT TAKE A BREAK FROM THE SERIOUS NEWS FOR A FEW MINUTES? Florida Man Friday: $300,000 Lamborghini Bought with Stolen Stimulus Money.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Mastering Small Self-Defense Guns.
EVERYTHING IS RACIST: Taxpayers Not Funding Abortion Overseas Is ‘Racism,’ Now?
AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMING:
● Boss From Hell! Ellen DeGeneres Treats Her Talk Show Staff Like ‘Peasants!’
Fortunately though: Ellen DeGeneres Addresses Toxic Workplace Allegations in Letter to Staff: “I Promise to Do My Part.”
In her letter, DeGeneres notes that her show has changed since she first launched it 17 years ago, and she vows to fix the issues that have been building up over time. “On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness – no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect,” she wrote. “Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry. Anyone who knows me knows it’s the opposite of what I believe and what I hoped for our show.”
When does DeGeneres do a Weinstein-style pivot to take on the NRA and Donald Trump?
GLOBAL COOLING IS MUCH WORSE THAN GLOBAL WARMING: Rapid Loss of Sunlight Could Have Unleashed Snowball Earth Events in The Past.
‘A WIN FOR SANITY:’ Trader Joe’s Now Denies Being Racist. “Trader Joe’s panicked because somebody put up a silly petition calling them racists because they label their burritos ‘Trader Jose’s.’ Actual Trader Joe’s customers, the people who keep the store in business, let them know how crazy it was to give in to such ludicrous demands. Now the company has decided to just keep doing what they’re doing. Good for them.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Less stress, better grades: With schools closed, some kids thrive.
“I was worried about the distractions of being home with my mom and my sister and doing extra chores,” Natalie said. “But then things changed.”
Things changed, too, for Marcos Adame, whose grades improved because he could spend more time on problematic subjects. They changed for Sebastian Hernandez, 15, who has more energy, and for 10-year-old Jacob Lalin, who discovered he could mix schoolwork with Lego.
At a time when many of their peers struggle with isolation, uneven online teaching or lack of access to computers, a fraction of students have discovered that distance learning can offer a unique kind of relief — and they have thrived. . . .
“There are intrinsic characteristics that may allow a child to thrive more under the current circumstances,” she said. Children who are introverted or those “who process information internally and gain energy from time and space for introspection” would likely fare well.
Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Austin Beutner agreed that some students, especially adolescents navigating middle school, have excelled at home, away from the pressures of school and a strict routine. He praised Natalie’s school, the Harry Bridges Span School in Wilmington, as an example of one doing “extraordinary work” with online learning.
“Actually, we’ve heard from middle-schoolers; some students who felt they’d been bullied or were having trouble socially in the melting pot that’s middle school are actually liking a little bit of space and enjoying study more,” Beutner said. “And so there are some for whom being in this environment has actually benefited. We’ve heard all kinds of anecdotes.”
Natalie said she felt more relaxed despite what she considered an increased workload. She ate healthier, slept longer, rushed less. She spent more time on projects and stayed connected with friends through texts.
Note the beneficial effect of extra sleep, mentioned by many in this story. Sleep deprivation is a major and destructive side effect of schools.
If only someone had thought about this stuff before.
MORE ABOUT THE WASHINGTON POST’S NEWSROOM APPARATCHIKS: Hans Bader sees a major step in the “debasement of journalism.”
INDEED: Vandalism Is Violence: Destructive Riots Are Not ‘Just Property Damage.’ “Property rights are human rights, and we discard them at our own peril.”
MR. JONES AND THE DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF SHODDY JOURNALISM:
Stalin was undoubtedly the general leading this crime against humanity, but he had lieutenants. And not all were Russian. Foremost among them was Walter Duranty (Peter Sarsgaard), the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Man in Moscow.” Duranty was fond of saying the Soviet experiment required sacrifice — omelets and broken eggs and all that — and spent his decades-long career lying to the people of the United States about the extent of Soviet atrocities in Ukraine and elsewhere.
“Mr. Jones” is, in many ways, a film about Duranty; indeed, Holland and writer Andrea Chalupa seem uncertain that we can understand his story without reference to other, more famous writers from the era. Holland and Chalupa suggest in “Mr. Jones” that George Orwell’s (Joseph Mawle) “Animal Farm” was inspired by Jones’s work, and the movie is, for some strange reason, framed around Orwell’s writing of that modern fable. This is the movie’s one misstep, a suggestion that the audience cannot comprehend the horrors they’re about to witness without a reference point from middle school.
Duranty comes in for a beating — justifiably portrayed as a hack and an apparatchik for a loathsome regime; shown living in a literal den of iniquity, hosting drug-addled orgies to gather blackmail material for his friend Stalin — and for good reason: It’s high time this tool of genocide got his comeuppance onscreen.
Read the whole thing.
Earlier: Me and Mr. Jones: A New Film Exposes one of the Oldest Deceits of the New York Times.
HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG? NASA Detects 5 Asteroids Flying Past Earth This Week.
THINK OF THE PRESS AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH BYLINES AND YOU WON’T GO FAR WRONG: Germany’s economy fared worse than the US economy, but Trump-hating journalists are mangling numbers to convince you otherwise.
I BLAME THE SCAREMONGERING MEDIA: Man fires ‘warning shots’ in Miami hotel lobby after telling guests ‘you all aren’t social distancing.’
THAT’S WHO OBAMA IS, THAT’S WHAT OBAMA DOES: Tucker Carlson: Obama Pouring Gasoline While Country Falling Apart From Racial Strife. “The country falling apart riven by racial strife and tribalism and one of the most respected people in the whole country decides to pour gasoline on that and compare the police to Bull Connor? As if America or Minneapolis is like Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? It’s insane. It’s reckless.”
Mean, sanctimonious, and divisive is no way to go through life, but it’s the way Obama has chosen. If he’d been the Obama of the 2004 DNC speech the country would be much better off. But he never was that Obama; the speech was simply a lie.
And for the record, Bull Connor was a member of the Democratic National Committee.
HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: UCSB teaching assistant says he would ‘assassinate Jesus’ if he had a time machine.
“Indeed,” as the wise blogger once said.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Which Law Schools Will Thrive (46), Survive (65), Struggle (23), Or Perish (18) In The Age Of COVID-19?
MOVING THE GOALPOSTS AGAIN: Dr. Fauci Now Wants Us to Wear Goggles as Extra Protection from COVID-19.
IN THE MAIL: From John R. Lott, Jr., Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control.
VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR DAILY INSANITY WRAP: ‘F**k It. If One Of Them Cops Got Killed, Good.’
Insanity Wrap needs to know: Exactly when did planet Earth slip from a sane timeline into the most insane of possible timelines — and how?
We’ll have the answer for you below.
But first, a quick preview of today’s Wrap.
You’ll see:
• Bill Clinton on Epstein’s Orgy Island (ew, ew, ew).
• BLM co-opt the regulatory state (seriously).
• A perfect and perfectly simple Bloody Mary recipe (you’ll need it).
Shall we begin?
So much more at the link you’d have to be crazy to miss it.
GODSPEED: SpaceX: Crew Dragon is returning to Earth – here’s when to hold your breath. “The Crew Dragon spacecraft, produced by private company SpaceX, is scheduled to return from the International Space Station (ISS) and splash down in the Atlantic ocean on August 2. Contingent on a favourable weather forecast and a successful final week at the ISS, NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will begin the undocking procedure on August 1, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere the next day – a total of 64 days since lift off.”
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Conservative students attacked at Binghamton last fall sue university over melee. Make them pay.
Also: Complain to grantmaking agencies under Executive Order 13864.
RULES ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Will Obama Obey 14-Day Quarantine Rule Once Back in DC?
CANCELED: Loyola University has removed the name of Flannery O’Connor, the disabled Catholic woman writer of Southern Gothic stories, from a hall named after her because of a petition complaining about “recent letters and postcards” written by her that employed racist language.
Flannery O’Connor died in 1964.
UM… ISN’T THAT THE ENTIRE POINT? Please Don’t Objectify Sex Robots.
My wife, who is apparently a glutton for punishment, listened to an entire Arlington County school board meeting last night. School is online only indefinitely. She reports there was great concern expressed about, and discussion of how to help: (1) the teachers, especially those who will have kids at home (the proposal was to give teachers with kids ten and younger child care, and no one else); (2) the staff, who should not be subject to any layoffs or hours reductions, even if, like extended-day staff, they have nothing to do; (3) poor kids who rely on school lunches; and (4) poor kids who have trouble accessing the internet.
Other than (4), there was essentially no discussion of educating students, which was a disaster online in the Spring, nor concern expressed for parents who can’t afford childcare, can’t afford tutors to help their kids, and who are otherwise experiencing a looming disaster with indefinite school closure.
The way at least my county school system has reacted to this crisis would have been considered outrageous ideological propaganda if a libertarian-oriented public choice scholar had predicted it. I’ve heard the same about other districts.
FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Some students are daring to stand up to cancel culture.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Dirtbag Liberals Waste No Time Disparaging the Memory of Herman Cain. “When I awoke yesterday to the news of Cain’s passing I did the dumbest thing I could have done under the circumstances: I hit social media. I merely wanted to express my condolences. The coffee hadn’t kicked in enough yet to remember that leftists are classless animals whenever a conservative dies. Maybe I just block it out in between the deaths of prominent conservatives.”
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: Susan Rice’s Testimony on Being Out of Russiagate Loop Doesn’t Add Up.
To be fair, that’s because she lies a lot.
GIVEN THEIR PERFORMANCE LATELY, IT’S HARD TO BE SAD ABOUT THAT: Newspapers are dead, just 3% get political news from them.
WE ARE LIVING IN BIZARRO WORLD, WHERE EVERYTHING IS OPPOSITE: CEO of Boston’s Tatte bakery chain steps down amid discrimination accusations.
A petition signed by nearly 300 current and former employees details comments and actions that they found offensive or discriminatory, including “crude, sexual remarks made about customers, performative alignment with LGBTQ+ organizations, promoting ‘inclusive’ optics on social media, queerphobic and ableist comments by management, and firing employees who do not fit the ‘Tatte aesthetic.'”
So one of the accusations is that she supported LGBT etc. organizations, and another is that she made sure that the company’s ads were “inclusive,” i.e., included a ethnically and otherwise diverse group of models. This is seen as evidence as racism and homophobia (as it would be if she had done the opposite.)
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: UCSB Teaching Assistant Said He Would ‘Assassinate Jesus of Nazareth’ if He Had a Time Machine.
WELL, TWITTER: Twitter defends not blocking Iran leader’s tweets after blocking Trump’s “Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s tweets call for ‘elimination’ of Israel.”
A little genocide talk among friends isn’t threatening or hateful, unlike discussing the potential benefits of HCQ, which is practically Hitler.
NOTHING SUSPICIOUS HERE, MOVE ALONG: Obama Tells Packed Crowds At Lewis’ Funeral That Mail-In Ballots Needed ‘So People Don’t Get Sick.’
CUTTING THE CORD: Comcast lost 477,000 cable-TV customers in Q2 amid 12% drop in revenue.
I figured I’d miss pro sports when we cut the cord unless I paid extra for streaming season passes, but then I never missed them enough to pay up.
THEY WERE CALLED ‘POLITICAL OFFICERS’ IN THE SOVIET UNION: At the Washington Post, the title is “Managing Editor for Diversity and Inclusion.” I wonder if she will have rewrite authority to ensure strict compliance with the party line in every story? Remember Ivan Putin in “Hunt for Red October”?
FOUR MAIN TAKEAWAYS FROM THE HOUSE’S BIG TECH ANTITRUST SIDESHOW:
As Twitter’s Jack Dorsey buckles to finger-wagging commentators, Mark Zuckerberg has provided a platform largely dominated by conservative news and viewpoints. The thanks Zuckerberg receives? Being quizzed about taking down Donald Trump Jr’s Twitter account. Zuckerberg is by no means perfect, or let’s face it, even human, but right now he’s the only thing standing between free expression and a media and Congress eager to regulate his platform out of existence.
Read the whole thing.
IS THIS THE SANEST MAN IN OREGON? Billy J. Williams is the U.S. Attorney for Oregon. How he responds to narrative-pushing journalists in a recent interview about the continuing violence in Portland is a model of straight talking, fact-based toughness.
BAN ALL THE HISTORY! Name Change Underway At Sir Francis Drake High School.
WHAT DOES GOD SAY ABOUT RACE? There is a long-standing liberal stereotype about Southern Baptist preachers that became stale quite a while ago. So this Maryland pastor’s recent two-part sermon on God and race may shock some folks, but at least they’ll gain a more accurate understanding. I suspect that most Americans, regardless of their faith or lack thereof, hold similar views, that skin color is irrelevant. Just ignore the lame jokes.
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Chinese Immigrant Sues University for Sanctioning Tiananmen Post. “Fordham threatened student for posing with legal rifle.”
DAVID HENDERSON: The Virus May Strike Teachers Unions: What happens when they refuse to do their jobs and it turns out home-schoolers are better at it anyway?
If you have school-age children, you may be wondering if they’ll ever get an education. On Tuesday the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest education union, threatened “safety strikes” if reopening plans aren’t to its liking. Some state and local governments are insisting that public K-12 schooling this fall be conducted online three to five days a week and imposing stringent conditions on those students who actually make it to the classroom.
Yet there are three reasons to be optimistic about the future of education. First, many parents will be more prepared to home-school their kids than they were in the spring. They or their hired teachers will do a better job of educating children, in many cases, than the public schools.
Second, once the pandemic ends, many parents, perhaps millions, will have a new appreciation of how mediocre a job the public schools were doing. They will continue home-schooling, switch to a private school, or push hard to end restrictions on the growth of charter schools. Third, as schools sit empty and homebound teachers draw their regular salaries for less effective work, there will be more opposition to more funding for public schools, which, in turn, will make local school boards amenable to lower-cost options such as charter schools. . . .
Public schools are dominant because they don’t need to compete for funds. Taxpayers are forced to finance them. If a family decides to take a child out of the local public school, thereby saving the school board the cost of educating that child, the family gets no tax break, no rebate. If a family finds a cheap private school that charges $8,000 in annual tuition, sending the child there makes economic sense only if the family values the private education by at least $8,000 more than they value the public education. That’s a high hurdle for most parents.
But with public schools’ shift to online instruction, the equation changes dramatically for two reasons. First, the public schools have done a poor job of adjusting to the new reality. Second, and possibly more important, online instruction eliminates arguably the most valuable service provided by public schools: child care. On net, therefore, the value of the online public school is much lower, especially for young children, than the value of in-person public school.
Many will opt instead to home-school. This summer, parents have had time to plan for the fall. Many of them are forming “learning pods,” which are small groups of families getting together to hire a teacher or a tutor to teach their kids.
What if, as I predict, home-schooling works, on average, better than the public schools before the pandemic? Once the pandemic ends, many parents will want to continue with home-schooling. A poll taken in May of 626 parents found 40.8% of them saying they were more likely than before the pandemic to enroll their child in “a home school, a neighborhood home-school co-op, or a virtual school” once the lockdowns ended. There are now about 56 million children in K-12 schools. Before the pandemic, an estimated two million children were home-schooled. If even a third of the 40.8% of parents who said they might take it up followed through, the number of home-schooled children would almost quadruple.
Even many who don’t home-school will push for an expansion of charter schools, which tend to be responsive to parents and can more easily fire poor teachers.
That’s the dream.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.
