Racist Roots of Ethnic Studies

Government schools are much worse than parents imagine.

by Lloyd Billingsley for American Greatness

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill 101, authored by Riverside Democrat Jose Medina and cosponsored by the California Teachers Association (CTA), which mandates one “ethnic studies” course for graduation from high school beginning in 2030. Newsom had previously rejected AB 331, a similar bill by Medina, because it was “insufficiently balanced and inclusive.” For Katy Grimes of the California Globe, the revamped AB 101 “is not any of those things,” and ethnic studies is not an academic discipline. 

Those who opposed AB 331 note that “ethnic studies” divides the people into “us and them.” Jewish organizations protested the anti-Semitic content. The authors of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) removed their names and founded the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Institute, and their curriculum “is expected to be even more anti-Semitic than the original ESMC.” As Grimes shows, this is hardly the only problem. 

The curriculum was already implemented at a Salinas high school, and samples include: “Intro to Critical Consciousness: The Biological Fallacy of Race and its Social Construction as a Tool of Ideological Oppression”; “Reclaiming Race As a Space of People of Color Empowerment in the 1960s—Today: Black Power, Red Power, Brown Power, Yellow Power, White Allies in Solidarity”; “Ethnic Studies Saves Lives,” and so on. This is nothing more than caustic political indoctrination based on racist junk-thought with deeper roots than embattled parents might suspect. 

Jose Medina is a former teacher of “Chicano Studies,” a form of indoctrination based on The Cosmic Race (La Raza Cosmica) by influential Mexican educator and presidential candidate José Vasconcelos. According to the cosmic racist Vasconcelos, the Ibero-American race is destined to surpass all the others. The black race, “eager for sensual joy, intoxicated with dances and unbridled lust,” will fade away. So will the “Mongol” with his slanted eyes and lack of boldness for new enterprises. The “Indian” is simply inferior,  while the “white” race ranks at the bottom for Vasconcelos.

Vasconcelos does not include those whites from the Iberian peninsula of Europe. As the razaist contends, “any teacher can corroborate that the children and youths descended from Sandinavians, Dutch and English found in North American universities are much slower, and almost dull, compared with the mestizo children and youths from south.” Such is the erudition of Vasconcelos, but there is more to the man. 

Back in the mid-1940s, when those inferior Yankee “anglos” were tangling with National Socialist Germany, Vasconcelos was editing the pro-Nazi Timon magazine. For Mexican-American Communist Bert Corona, Vasconcelos was a fascist and his racial theories a brand of the racial superiority theory supported by Hitler. Vasconcelos’ razaismo never caught on in Latin America but in 1979 the Chicano Studies department at Cal State Los Angeles republished The Cosmic Race in a bilingual edition. 

The ideas of a racist Nazi collaborator are the core curriculum of Chicano studies, now part of the ethnic studies curriculum soon to be a requirement for high school graduation in California. This racist indoctrination is hardly the extent of parents’ woes. 

Back in 2012, Larry Sand outlined the case of Los Angeles teacher Mark Berndt, who masturbated in class, fed children cookies laced with his semen, and so forth. This went on for years as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) looked the other way. 

An elementary school teacher since 1979, Berndt was arrested in 2012 and in 2013 drew a sentence of 25 years in prison. Dozens of students filed lawsuits and the LAUSD paid a settlement of nearly $140 million. As government likes to say, your tax dollars at work. The case prompted state senator Alex Padilla to author SB 1530, aimed at streamlining the lengthy and complicated process of firing abusive teachers. 

The California Teachers Association opposed the measure as “teacher bashing,” cumbersome and even “un-American,” and Padilla’s bill never got out of committee. As Sand noted, “apparently none of the committee Democrats had the sense to ask how protecting children from pedophiles amounts to ‘teacher-bashing.’”

The CTA, a protector of sexual predators, now co-sponsors Jose Medina’s racist ethnic studies, soon to be required for graduation. Such is the injustice inherent in the government k-12 education system, a collective farm of ignorance, failure, and outright indoctrination. The time is right to boycott the schools, and as Ben Boychuk explains, it is possible to gain some victories within the system. On the other hand, with racist indoctrination prevailing, the time has come to depart.

The pandemic reinforced the value of home schooling and the G.I. Bill models a system in which the dollars follow the scholars, not the bureaucracy. If parents, students, and politicians are serious about reform, they need to promote full educational choice for all students as a matter of basic civil rights. 

Los Angeles Port a ‘Ghost Town’ Despite Biden Order to Remain Open on Weekends

Los Angeles Port a 'Ghost Town' Despite Biden Order to Remain Open on Weekends

Rick Moran - PJ Media

(AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Joe Biden has a problem. Well, yes, he has more than one problem. But this problem will almost certainly cost him and the Democrats dearly at the polls.

Biden promised every good little girl and good little boy that Santa Claus would, indeed, make it to their houses on Christmas Eve after the Grinch tried to sabotage Santa’s mission by causing a huge backlog at American ports, keeping cargo from foreign countries — where all the really great presents like smartphones and games originate — from being unloaded on American docks. He ordered the Port of Los Angeles to remain open on weekends and add extra hours of operation to its schedule.

“What a great idea!” exclaimed the puppy dogs in the press. “Biden Saves Christmas!” screamed the headlines. (Not really, but you know they wanted to.)

What Pappy Joe didn’t mention is that the United States government has zero control over the operations at the port. And that makes Biden’s Big Idea to save the Christmas season for retailers and customers alike nothing more than a PR stunt.

Washington Examiner:

The nationwide port schedule app Pier Trucker showed terminals that looked like ghost towns Sunday with barren traffic lanes as additional cargo ships continue to pile up along the coastlines of Los Angeles and Orange counties. On Friday, 88 ships were waiting to dock at either Long Beach or Los Angeles harbors — 10 additional ships from the last count on Oct. 13, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California.

Port officials say they are working with terminal operators to increase the open gate times. However, waterfront labor negotiator Jim Tessier, who has worked on behalf of both longshoremen and their union, says it comes down to money because shipping companies run the terminals.

And shipping companies don’t want to pay the longshoremen overtime.

“Most shipping companies are foreign and did not attend Biden’s briefing and don’t care about what he or the landlord think,” Tessier said. “The port has nothing to do with all the operations — they are the landlord. How involved is your landlord in your business?”

Tessier said the shippers sign contracts that span decades and typically do not open weekends because the additional pay for longshoremen is pricey. Hourly pay is 1.3 times the regular rate at night and 1.5 on weekends, he said.

“Historically, the industry has not been willing to pay that money,” Tessier added.

Last weekend, five of Los Angeles’ six terminals were open on Saturday while none were open at night. In Long Beach, two terminals were open Saturday during the day, according to the Examiner.

There is quite literally nothing Biden can do to affect the situation at the ports. He can’t get the ships unloaded any faster. He can’t create extra warehouse space that’s in critically short supply on the docks. He can’t conjure up trucks that are in compliance with California’s draconian emissions standards to move the goods from the port to retail outlets across the country.

Biden knew all this, of course. He knew it before he looked into the camera and told the American people he was on top of the situation.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more-Oct 21

 

Evening. Here's tonight's news:

Salmonella outbreak linked to onions: Throw away onions if you don't know where they're from, CDC says

 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has linked fresh whole onions to a growing and mysterious salmonella outbreak.

In a food safety alert Wednesday, the CDC said 652 people have been infected with the outbreak strain of Salmonella Oranienburg from 37 states as of Oct. 18. The number of cases is expected to grow as more illnesses are reported.

The outbreak was first reported in mid-September but the CDC, Food and Drug Administration and local health officials had not identified a food linked to the illnesses.

According to the CDC, the affected red, white and yellow onions were imported from Chihuahua, Mexico and distributed by ProSource Inc., which is based in Hailey, Idaho. The onions were sold to restaurants and at grocery stores throughout the country.

"ProSource Inc. indicated onions were last imported on August 27, but these imported onions can last up to three months in storage and may still be in homes and businesses," the CDC said in its update. "Investigators are working to determine if other onions and suppliers are linked to this outbreak."

The CDC said consumers should not buy or eat the affected onions. The imported onions can last up to three months in storage.

"Throw away any whole red, white, or yellow onions you have at home that do not have a sticker or packaging," the CDC said, noting some may have packaging indicating ProSource as the brand and that they were grown in Mexico. "If you can’t tell where the onions are from, don’t buy or eat them."

According to the FDA, ProSource Inc. has "agreed to voluntarily recall red, yellow, and white onions" with import dates from July 1 through August 27. Onion types include jumbo, colossal, medium, and sweet onions, the FDA said.

A recall notice and a list of stores that sold the onions were not posted as of Wednesday night. "Additional recall information will be made public as soon as it is available from ProSource Inc.," the FDA said.

On Thursday, the FDA posted a recall notice and ProSource listed the brands the onions were sold under.

Symptoms of salmonella include diarrhea, vomiting, fever, stomach cramps and dehydration, which can begin six hours to six days after being exposed to the bacteria, according to the CDC. Most people recover without treatment after four to seven days.

In 2020, onions linked to another massive salmonella outbreak ended up being recalled.

Isabel Brown, consumer watchdog associate with the PIRG Education Fund, said in a statement that the latest outbreak "points to the need for better tracing of imported foods so that when an outbreak occurs, we can identify the source more quickly.

"We’ve known for a long time there’s an urgent need to better track all food through the supply chain so we can identify infections more quickly and recall contaminated food immediately," Brown said.

According to the CDC, Texas has the most cases in the ongoing outbreak with 158, followed by Oklahoma with 98 cases. Virginia has 59 cases, Maryland 58, Illinois 37, Wisconsin 25, Minnesota 23 and Missouri has 21 cases.

Other states with cases have 14 or fewer cases are: Kansas, North Carolina, Arkansas, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, California, Kentucky, Michigan, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, Connecticut, North Dakota, Alabama, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, Georgia, Mississippi, Oregon, Colorado, Indiana and West Virginia.

"The true number of sick people in an outbreak is likely much higher than the number reported, and the outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses," the CDC said. "This is because many people recover without medical care and are not tested for Salmonella."

https://www.aol.com/finance/salmonella-outbreak-linked-onions-throw-001425765.html

Our Purgatory Is Their Nirvana - VDH

One man’s anarchy is another’s road to justice.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

Sheer chaos and anarchy on the border?

Afghanistan—the most humiliating defeat in recent U.S. military history?

A labor-starved supply chain in shambles and holiday shelves emptying out?

The worst inflation in 30 years that seems soon ready to match Carter-era levels?

Gas hitting $5 a gallon with winter heating fuels soaring?

Free-for-all looting in the major cities without consequences?

Joe Biden’s policies and Biden himself diving in the polls?

Never in recent American history has any administration birthed such disasters in its first nine months. 

Yet most Americans are arguing not over the sheer chaos and disasters of the Biden Administration, but rather how could such sheer pre-civilizational calamity occur in modern America?

Were these disasters a result of historic incompetency? Or mean-spirited nihilism? Or a deliberate effort to create the necessary turbulence to birth a new American revolution? Or a bit of all three?

Start instead with the idea that what most Americans see as sheer ruin is not what the left-wing puppeteers, who are pulling the strings of the Biden marionette, see.

Our catastrophes are their minor glitches. For them bad polling is mostly a public relations problem of an occasional uncooperative media. Otherwise, a few broken eggs are always necessary to create the perfect socialist omelet.

The Left now controlling Washington believes that the U.S. border is a mere construct. Every impoverished person has a birthright to cross into America illegally. The 2 million who are scheduled to enter this fiscal year alone is a wonderful, if occasionally sloppy, event. 

Our border calamity is their celebration of humanity and a long-overdue recalibration of ossified American demography, one that will properly warp the Electoral College to provide the necessary election result.

If you believe that a culturally imperialistic America needs to be taken down a notch overseas, then the flight from Afghanistan is “impressive” and a “success”—by how quickly and efficiently we skedaddled. 

Why worry about a lost $1 billion embassy, a $300 million refit of the Bagram airbase, or $80 billion lost in military hardware and training?  

Empty shelves? Boohoo. 

Grasping, upper-middle-class consumers are angry that the working classes are not willing to risk COVID infection to supply them with their accustomed holiday trinkets. 

So, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg intoned that the shortages mean only that the consumer class has to wait a wee bit—until Christmas Eve—to splurge on gifts. 

Who worries about a little inflation? Under new monetary theory, printing dollars brings prosperity. Or as White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain put it in a retweet, inflation is a mere “high class problem” of the Peloton elite.

Only those with money worry their ill-begotten pile shrinks. But the majority without money will eventually rejoice that it is everywhere now—finally and properly “spread,” as former president and now multimillionaire Barack Obama once promised.

As AOC swore, gas and oil are going to be gone anyway in 10 years. So, if Joe Biden slashes over 2 million barrels a day in U.S. oil production, what’s wrong with that?

Didn’t Steven Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, long ago brag that when we hit $8-10 a gallon, we’d approach European levels of proper fuel usage? Why whine about paying over $100 to fill up, when the planet more quickly cools?

Did not Americans learn “critical legal theory” and “critical race theory”? 

Or as the architect of the “1619 Project” reminded us, destroying or taking someone’s property is no big deal. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey shrugged off torched downtown buildings; such torched stuff, he said, is mere “bricks and mortar.”

It is only a crime to “steal” over $500 of needed merchandise from a Walgreens in San Francisco, because the rich who make such absurd laws never have to steal goods from a pharmacy shelf.

If racists wish to point out that African American male youths are disproportionately represented in the latest crime wave, then maybe America should be learning not to create the conditions that force them to break the law. 

In sum, we are on a left-wing roller coaster headed to a socialist nirvana. 

Most Americans believe it is instead an out-of-control “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” nightmare with incompetents at the wheel. 

But the architects of such “hope and change” shrug that the occasional disturbing news that the media sometimes accidentally leaks out is merely the cost of an equitable America. 

One man’s anarchy is another’s road to justice. 

Keep that mentality in mind and the absurdities that are mouthed by Joe Biden, his advisor Ron Klain, press secretary Jen Psaki, Homeland “Security” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, or the ravings of the Squad, make perfect sense. 

They are merely trying to explain to us dummies that what we think is purgatory is actually the new paradise—a promised land that, once we are properly programmed and educated, we too will welcome and thank them for our deliverance.

My night in Béziers with Zemmour FRANCE

 Béziers is the ancient winemaking capital of the Occitanie region in the deep south of France and a stronghold of the French right. Its popular mayor, Robert Ménard, a former journalist, was elected as an independent, but with a strong endorsement from Marine Le Pen. Her political movement, the Rassemblement National, formerly the National Front, with historical roots in anti-Semitism, has been powerful here for decades.

So is it paradoxical, bizarre, or perhaps evidence of a more profound shift of social and political tectonic plates, that last Saturday night thousands of Biterrois turned out at the Zinga Zanga theatre to cheer Éric Zemmour, a Parisian Jewish intellectual, author and television and radio journalist? 

 

 

I got there early and started talking to dozens of Zemmour’s fans as they lined up to enter the hall. Many had come hundreds of miles. There were scores of students. All were disillusioned with Le Pen. Many admitted they’d previously voted for Nicolas Sarkozy. This was not a traditional National Front crowd in their blue smocks, driving those battered Renault vans that look like garden sheds on wheels. The car park was filled with Audis, BMWs, top-line Peugeots and a Jaguar or two. The crowd was well-spoken and smartly dressed.

Zemmour, a Pied-Noir whose Berber parents fled Algeria during the war of independence, is labelled a racist, Islamophobe and right-wing extremist in much of the French media. Critics compare him with Trump and note his convictions for inciting racial hatred. This can sound shocking abroad — but in France, less so. Incitement to racial hatred can be a subjective crime, with prosecutions brought by politicised magistrates. If anything, his convictions seem to add to his insurgent appeal. 

 

 Zemmour is ready to confront taboo subjects. In his speech on Saturday, he insisted that immigrants assimilate or get out. He attacked the obsessive focus on racism and colonialism in the media, government, schools, universities and cultural institutions, saying it has undermined families, the relations between men and women, and religion. He called the state broadcasters ‘organs of propaganda’. He called for Christian, Jewish and Muslim families to unite at the damage being done to schools by imported anti-meritocratic American ideologies such as critical race theory.  

He arrived at the stage an hour late, but still to thunderous applause and chants of ‘Zemmour Président’. The night before he had been in Nîmes, where he’d had an equally supercharged reaction. Versailles was next, to be followed by Rouen, Caen, Rennes and Nantes. He spoke for 25 minutes and took questions for another 25. 

Zemmour has been physically attacked twice in Paris, yet in Béziers he vaulted a crowd control barrier and ran towards hundreds of his admirers to shake hands. When President Macron tried this in June, he was slapped in the face. 

Afterwards Zemmour spent an hour signing copies of his book. I grabbed a moment with him and asked how he viewed the threats of Macron’s government to cut off electricity supplies to Britain in retaliation for the squabble over post-Brexit fishing rights.  

Ever the intellectual, he noted that Anglo-French relations have been worse — a reference to the Napoleonic wars, doubtless — and then put the blame on Europe and particularly the negotiations led by Michel Barnier, who has recently declared that he’s a candidate for the presidency. ‘The French fishermen thought they could continue as always, the English that they would get everything back. This was the result of holes in Barnier’s dossier, the consequence of poor negotiation.’

It’s dangerous to extrapolate too much from one night in Béziers. Zemmour nevertheless seems to be offering something new and attractive to voters who have rapidly been losing faith in politics. French presidential elections have a reputation for producing unpredicted results. Macron is the most recent example. Zemmour may well be the next.

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-night-in-beziers-with-zemmour   

U.S. Marshals Now Looking Into Treatment of Jan. 6 Defendants

Nick Arama reporting for RedState

There was a riot on Jan. 6, I don’t know if you heard about it.

It lasted a few hours. But has gotten far more attention than hundreds of BLM/Antifa riots that continued across the country for months. It’s resulted in hundreds of arrests and even a special FBI page to track down people involved. There is no similar page for the BLM/Antifa riots which involved organized assaults on federal property and attacks on a federal courthouse for over 100 days in a row. Indeed there seemed to be no real effort to go after the organizers or hold people accountable for those radical leftist riots.

While there were certainly people who got violent on Jan. 6, video also shows many people just walking around the building. But even those people who may have just followed others into the building are being prosecuted, unlike the BLM/Antifa riots where even the violent largely seemed to walk away. Questions are being raised not only about proportionality but about the treatment of people still being held in jail for alleged offenses.

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth called out this treatment during a case in which he found that one of the defendants hadn’t been provided with treatment for a broken hand. He found jail officials in civil contempt for failing to provide the records needed for the defendant’s medical treatment.

But Lamberth questioned what was happening with the treatment of the Jan. 6 defendants in general, as well.

“I find that the civil rights of the defendant have been abused,” Lamberth, who was appointed by former President Reagan, said at a hearing Wednesday morning, according to The Washington Post. “I don’t know if it’s because he’s a January 6th defendant or not, but I find this matter should be referred to the attorney general of the United States for a civil rights investigation into whether the D.C. Department of Corrections is violating the civil rights of January 6th defendants … in this and maybe other cases.”

Now there’s word that the U.S. Marshals’ Office has been inspecting the D.C. jail and talking to the people being held to see if they are being treated appropriately.

From NBC:

Multiple officials said a U.S. Marshals Service inspection team arrived at the jail Monday at 9:30 a.m. and was still inside at the end of the business day.

D.C. Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Chris Geldart confirmed Monday the inspectors are speaking with Jan. 6 defendants and said all court orders are being followed.

“We have been working with the marshals office,” he said. “As a matter of fact, they’re in there today doing an inspection of the jail and talking with many of the Jan. 6 folks that are there to make sure that we are continuing to do that.”

Now that’s good news that they’re finally following up on the concerns about the treatment of defendants that have been out there for some time. Let’s hope there’s finally some effective action. We’ll have to see if there’s a further follow-up investigation or looking at the greater question about Jan. 6 facing harsher prosecution than BLM/Antifa or other rioters.

7 Ways Democrats $3.5 Trillion Tax-and-Spend Bill Would Take Over Your Health Care

7 Ways Democrats’ $3.5 Trillion Tax-and-Spend Bill Would Take Over Your Health Care

Nina Owcharenko Schaefer  - 

The Federalist October 19, 2021

A dentist explains what a patient's dental X-ray shows. While traditional Medicare does not include dental, vision, or hearing coverage, Medicare Advantage, a private alternative, already offers those benefits to seniors without government intervention or interference. (Photo: South Agency/E+/Getty Images)

Slimming down the cost of the Democrats’ massive $3.5 trillion social-welfare spending bill is a compromise that misses the point.

Opposition to the tax-and-spending bill is not just about cost, it’s about a policy agenda that shifts more power and control to the federal government and away from patients and families.  

The so-called Build Back Better plan, moving its way through the Democrat-led Congress, is jammed full of policy changes that drive the country closer to a government takeover of health care than ever before.

Trying to slim down the cost or water down the proposals will not resolve those fundamental policy concerns.

The following are seven ways it will be harder for you to keep your health plan, and make it more likely you’d get the subpar benefits that too many do already on government-run plans. 

1) Creates a New, Government-Run Health Plan 

Part of the legislative package would put in place a new federal health care program. The program would be modeled after Medicaid, a joint federal-state program to provide medical services to certain low-income Americans, and would be made available to those individuals in states that did not adopt the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

While seemingly narrow and targeted, the proposal could easily be scaled up and expanded to new groups. Under such an arrangement, the government would set regulatory rules in favor of the government plan, drive out private competition, compel participation, consolidate enrollment, and shift costs on to health care providers and taxpayers.

Ultimately, it puts in place the bureaucratic infrastructure needed to carry out a full-blown government-run health care system.

2) Expands Government Subsidies to Insurance Giants, the Rich

The proposal would make existing Obamacare subsidies more generous and make them available to more people, regardless of income.

Specifically, individuals with income between 100% and 150% of the federal poverty line would no longer have to contribute to the cost of their Obamacare premiums. Obamacare subsidies would be extended to the “rich”—defined here as individuals with incomes above 400% poverty, and no individual receiving a subsidy would be required to pay more than 8.5% toward their premiums.   

Since the subsidies are tethered to Obamacare, these changes are intended to drive more people to the government-run Obamacare exchanges, including some of whom would have otherwise had insurance.

The more people enrolled in Obamacare, the more the government controls the delivery of care and benefits. Moreover, these changes attempt to cover up the fact that Obamacare is driving up—not down—the costs of coverage, and that means that the mega-insurance plans in Obamacare will continue to raise premiums, knowing that ultimately the taxpayers will pick up the cost.  

3) Undercuts Private, Employer-Based Coverage 

The bill changes the requirements for those with access to employer-based coverage to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.

Under current law, individuals with access to employer-based coverage are not eligible for Obamacare subsidies unless their share of the premium costs exceed 9.2%. The bill would lower that threshold to 8.5%.

The private, employer-based market is where the majority of American still get their health care and remains a critical obstacle to a full-blown government-run health care plan. Lowering the threshold is a small, but significant, shift in the opposite direction.

This change alongside expanding the availability of subsidies could disrupt the employer-based market by driving more people out of their existing coverage and toward the government-run plan. A recent Congressional Budget Office estimate notes that the package of policies embedded in the plan would result in 2.8 million fewer people with employer-based coverage.  

4) Undermines Non-Obamacare Options  

The proposal blocks access to information about non-Obamacare coverage options. The bill would prohibit federal funds from being used to “promote non-[Affordable Care Act] compliant health insurance coverage” and explicitly defines short-duration and association health plans as such options.  

This comes on the heels of the Biden administration’s move earlier this year to use taxpayer money to fund a marketing campaign to promote Obamacare.  

With rising costs and fewer options, many Americans have sought out alternative health care arrangements. Promoting Obamacare over non-Obamacare alternatives is yet another attempt to shut down private competition and drive people to the government-run Obamacare exchanges, where the government determines access to the coverage options.

5) Expands Size, Scope of Medicaid 

The legislation assumes a larger role for the federal government in Medicaid. The proposal would create a new grant program within Medicaid that would add $190 billion for home and community-based services.

The proposal would also impose new federal requirements on state Medicaid programs and would weaken oversight and accountability through various policy changes.  

Congress already provided significant federal Medicaid resources to the states, including for home- and community-based services earlier this year. Using Medicaid to solve the country’s health care woes is shortsighted and poorly targeted, and supplanting state flexibility with federal mandates only makes matters worse.

These efforts would drive out private alternatives and stretch an already overburdened safety-net program.   

6) Puts New Obligations on Outdated Medicare Program 

The legislation proposes adding dental, hearing, and vision to the traditional Medicare program. To avoid an even bigger price tag, the benefits would be phased-in over time. Seniors would still be responsible for a portion of costs, but taxpayers would be responsible for the rest.   

While traditional Medicare does not include dental, vision, or hearing coverage, Medicare Advantage—the private Medicare alternatives—already offers these benefits to seniors without government intervention or interference.

Not only does this proposal inject the government where it isn’t necessary, but also piles new obligations onto the already overdrawn Medicare program that will only accelerate the fragile fiscal circumstancesfacing the program.  

7) Sets Government Controls on Prescription Drugs 

Under the bill, the federal government would set prices for certain prescription drugs in the Medicare program, based on prices paid in other countries.

Companies that refused to accept the government price would be subject to an excise tax.

Government control over the price of pharmaceuticals means government control over access to pharmaceuticals. Like residents in those selected other countries, seniors would face less access and fewer choices under this model.

Moreover, government price controls would not end with pharmaceuticals. Similar mechanisms are envisioned with a full-blown government-run program, where the government sets payment rates for all health care services.

Americans only need to look to Canada and the United Kingdom to see the impact such controls have on access to care, where wait lists are common and expected, and where access to treatments are limited or denied.   

In summary, there’s a common health care thread running throughout the “Build Back Better” plan: Drive out private coverage alternatives and consolidate enrollment in the government-run plans.

That’s because, in the end, whoever controls the dollars controls the decisions.

Progressives Versus Independent Contractors

Progressives Versus Independent Contractors

Star Parker - Townhall

Source: AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Despite being a politician all his life, and never having worked in a blue-collar job, President Joe Biden declared, "I'm a union man," when he announced his presidential campaign at a Teamsters union hall in Pittsburgh in April 2019.

What our president really loves is big government and political power, and there is no more reliable money trough for Democrats than unions.

According to OpenSecrets, which tracks political spending, Biden's campaign received $27.5 million in contributions from unions, compared with $360,000 from unions that went to former President Donald Trump's campaign.

So, it is no surprise that the president and his party are now unfurling legislation aimed at protecting unions. It's called the PRO Act -- Protecting the Right to Organize.

The bill passed in the House, but with little prospect of it making it on its own in the evenly split Senate, Senate Democrats have buried it in the budget reconciliation bill that can pass with a simple majority and is not subject to filibuster.

What certain unions want is to take the country in the opposite direction where it needs to go in this new era of global competition and technology-enabled freelancing. But other unions, like those that represent truckers and journalists, are concerned about independent contractors being run out of their jobs.

Among the various major provisions of the PRO Act is effective nationalization of California's AB5 law that passed in 2019. This law makes hiring independent contractors much more difficult and specifies that contractors must be reclassified by businesses that hire them as employees, unless they meet specific and rigorous standards allowing them to stay independent.

The PRO Act takes direct aim at the powerful new technology-enabled trend referred to as the "gig economy." These are freelancers and entrepreneurs of many different stripes who are buying into the flexibility of this new high-tech economy.

But entrepreneurship and flexibility are exactly what big-government politicians and certain special interest unions don't want.

Proposition 22 passage in November 2020 provided protection for app-based transportation and delivery firms, such as Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, from AB5.

But this still leaves many independent contractors subject to the law. This includes many truckers who are independent operators and are impacted by these onerous new requirements.

Truckers are seeking relief through the courts, now principally through the California Trucking Association moving its case to be heard in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, truckers have gotten a court injunction to hold up their need to submit to AB5 requirments.

Another significant provision of the PRO Act would be the effective elimination of right-to-work laws that exist today in 27 states.

Right-to-work laws enable workers in unionized workplaces that do not wish to join the union and pay dues to opt out. The PRO Act eliminates this option and forces all workers to pay union dues.

Considerable academic research points to positive economic results in right-to-work states in the way of higher employment growth, higher productivity, higher population growth and higher personal income growth compared with states without right-to-work laws.

The Census Bureau reports annually on net population outbound and inbound for every state.

In the most recent report, 9 of the 10 states with the highest population inbound were right-to-work states, and 8 of the 10 states with the highest population outbound were forced-unionization states.

It is no accident that today, the number of American workers in unions is about half what it was 40 years ago.

We are entering into new times. Sweeping change was already taking place before COVID-19 hit us. Now our post-COVID-19 economy is reemerging with new realities.

For our marketplace to get where it needs to go, we must embrace change, embrace the new, embrace entrepreneurship and flexibility. These are all things progressives don't want. If the PRO Act becomes law, today's challenges regarding labor and supply shortages will just get worse.

It's time to embrace the new.