Education
Multimedia journalists beware, if you create a video about a candidate’s proposal without any opposing perspectives, that’s not news and your video will look like blatant advertising. That’s exactly what CNBC’s video about Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her student loan plan looked like on June 14. It described Warren’s plan in detail, but only her details beginning with her words and citing others on her side.
For days now, NBC News has been running a series on NBC Nightly News called “My Big Idea” in which they give 2020 Democrats a chance to push their campaign propaganda with the network’s aid and largely unchallenged. Friday’s edition featured former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who was demanding universal pre-K. And Saturday’s was about former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper who wanted yet another federal job training program.
Former Maryland Congressman John Delaney was on The View Thursday, joining the crowd of Democrat presidential candidates who have come on the show. Despite espousing many typical liberal, big government policies, he framed himself as a centrist Democrat, noting areas where his party was being extreme, fiscally. While Sunny Hostin pressed the Democrat from the left at every turn, even Joy Behar admitted she wasn’t for one of the party’s more radical bills.
We are living in a time of increasing domestic tension. Some of it stems from the presidency of Donald Trump. Another part of it is various advocacy groups on both sides of the political spectrum demanding one cause or another. But nearly totally ignored is how growing government control over our lives, along with the betrayal of constitutional principles, contributes the most to domestic tension.
As NewsBusters reported Monday night, NBC News has launched a new report series dedicated to promoting the “big ideas” put forward solely by Democratic 2020 candidates ahead of the debates in a few weeks. Tuesday’s edition followed California Senator Kamala Harris as she campaigned in South Carolina to jack up the death tax to pay for an increase in teacher salaries.
When you send your youngster off to college, you might not mind that they will have to walk on eggshells, respect taboos, snitch on fellow students for politically incorrect jokes and learn to use ad hominem arguments as a means to attack ideas they find “disagreeable.” If that's your preference, you can choose from a wide variety of America's top-ranked colleges. If you want to send your youngster to colleges that are seriously committed to civil and diverse debate, pick up a copy of the June 2019 edition of Reason magazine for some guidance.
I have no love for left-wing, Hillary-promoting Hollywood producer and accused #MeToo villain Harvey Weinstein. Nor am I a fan of those who perpetrated the cop-bashing "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" fiction involving social justice martyr Michael Brown. But I do strongly believe that a grave injustice has been committed by Harvard's witch-hunt mobsters against a law professor who joined Weinstein's legal team and had represented Brown's family in a civil suit against Ferguson, Missouri. Too bad Ivy League elitist bubbles have purged themselves of people with the backbone, integrity, and courage to end the madness.
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University Richard Vedder's new book, Restoring the Promise, published by the Independent Institute based in Oakland, California, is about the crisis in higher education. He summarizes the three major problems faced by America's colleges and universities. First, our universities “are vastly too expensive, often costing twice as much per student compared with institutions in other industrialized democracies.”
Last week's column discussed Dr. Thomas Sowell's newest book Discrimination and Disparities, which is an enlarged and revised edition of an earlier version. In this review, I am going to focus on one of his richest chapters titled “Social Visions and Human Consequences.” Sowell challenges the seemingly invincible fallacy “that group outcomes in human endeavors would tend to be equal, or at least comparable or random, if there were no biased interventions, on the one hand, nor genetic deficiencies, on the other.” But disparate impact statistics carries the day among academicians, lawyers and courts as evidence of discrimination.
My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of “Discrimination and Disparities.” It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sowell shows that socioeconomic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be easily explained by any one factor, whether it's genetics, sex or race discrimination or a history of gross mistreatment that includes expulsion and genocide.
If you think the left hasn't taken over university life in America, you are probably not paying close enough attention or in denial. I'm not just talking about the liberalism of the professors and the core curriculum but about all of college life. There are glaring examples of leftist extremism everywhere you turn, and they're so loony that even sane liberal parents should be concerned.
A $1.25 trillion giveaway program to college grads and future college students deserves scrutiny, not praise as a “bold,” “sweeping” or “ambitious” plan that could “distinguish” Sen. Elizabeth Warren from her Democratic competitors.
Some news stories, including CBS and NBC online, bordered on being a sales pitch for the plan to forgive student loans and make public colleges tuition-free. CBS boosted Warren’s claims that forgiving student loan debts for millions of Americans “could supercharge the economy,” (even though liberal economists have contradicted that claim in the past). It even asked “What’s not to like?” and only cited one Twitter’s complaint it would be unfair to people who didn’t go to college.