Tag Archives: Progressive

by Barry Kelly | February 19, 2014 · 7:45 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 100

EDUCATION: BETTER OR WORSE?

Teaching is a wonderful vocation. My mother taught in a small, rural school in Western Pennsylvania. My brother, his wife and two children taught in

the public school system. One is still teaching. All of them are wonderful people. With them the kids always came first. I believe the great majority of American teachers are good people, interested in educating the nation’s children. If that’s true, what then is the problem with the public schools? Something has to be. Probably more than one thing. A recent study I read made a convincing case that our kids compete well with children around the world up to the fourth grade. After four years in the public schools, American children rank lower every year after. The longer they attend public schools, the lower they rank on the international scale. No improvements are in sight.

The breakdown of the family, the violence we tolerate in our inner-city schools, the emasculation of intra-school discipline, and the sweep of political correctness across America all contribute to the state of education as it exists today. A lack of money is not the problem. Washington, D.C., has one of the highest spending rates per student in the nation and its public school system does not serve its children well. I blame two major elements. The first is the growth and power of the teacher’s union. It is now near the top ranking of unions in the wielding of political power. Look at the recent conflict between Governor Scott Walker and the teachers’ union in Wisconsin.

The teacher’s union predominately supports Democratic candidates and policies. So what! That shouldn’t result in the failure of the public schools to serve the nation’s children. Education is the primary pathway to improving social and financial status. If the teacher’s union was primarily made up of Republicans would that improve our public schools? Certainly the failure of the public school system is not because of the political orientation of its membership.

More likely, the failure is the centralization of education and the management of the union that has put political bureaucrats in charge of the nation’s education. The union now exists to grow its power and protect its members. Its number one goal is not to educate our children nor to ensure that the best teachers get rewarded for their work. The states and local school boards are supposed to be in charge of the public schools in their respective states. Schools and universities should not be pushing a political viewpoint. The school’s job is to teach students how to think, not what to think. If, like the unions believe, our public schools are successfully educating our youth, why should they be so adamant against ‘school choice’ and charter schools? This country became great because it valued education and allowed the growth of great universities. Why won’t the Democrats and the union allow the best pre-college schools to flourish? Parents and the children will exercise their freedom to chose the best schools. The result will be the education system our children deserve.

Random thought: Wise people know there are more problems than solutions. http://t.co/ILipUL1jHb

— Barry Kelly (@factsfictions80) February 18, 2014

In the meantime, we have a Progressive administration led by a president who does not support school choice. The elite left never does. It goes against their basic ideology. The elite Progressive leadership knows better than you do what education your children should have. It’s a progressive nightmare to try and control a free market system of user’s choice in the field of education. School choice is not in the cards for those focused on transforming America into a socialist totalitarian society.

By the author of the Brandon novels. Like me on Facebook at facebook.com/factsandfictions.

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Filed under Intelligence & Politics

Tagged as America, education, far left, politics, Progressive, schools, teaching

by Barry Kelly | January 6, 2014 · 7:30 am

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS-93 THE ADIVSOR

PREDICTIONS FOR 2014

For the first time in all of his years of sitting in his underground office suite, The Advisor, more out of boredom than anything else, decided to put his predictions for the new year in his Journal. He opened the Journal to a clean new page and began to write.

I am just beginning my sixth year of advising a President who only listens to his own drum. He doesn’t like my straight talk. I believe that is my job to tell him important things that no one else will. As a result he seldom comes to see me. He has had a bad year and knows if he had followed my advice ,both he and the nation would be better off.

It has taken me a while to realize that he does not share my view of the nation or the world. He is like the utopians of our past who believed human behavior could be changed to fit a society based on Karl Marx’s axiom that ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ The early utopians in their agrarian progressive compounds all failed, as have all the nation states that have tried the communist or progressive approach to governing people.

Does the President have no understanding of history? It is clear. In modern times, Russia, China, Cuba, Eastern Europe, Germany, and even the United Kingdom all have tried varying degrees of wealth distribution. All the economies failed and individual freedom disappeared when power ended up in the hands of a Progressive elite that used an increasing amount of raw power to coerce people into doing what the elite decided was best for them. There is no other way that increasing centralization combined with one person or a party elite exercising all the power can end up.

So my first prediction is: (1) President Obama will continue to push for a one-party government; (2) the Democratic party will lose badly the mid-term elections and the Republicans will take over the Senate. (That will be okay for the President for he believes two years of a do-nothing Republican Congress will set the stage for a decisive victory in the 2016 National Elections and he may be right.) (3) Iran will have a nuclear weapon before the next national election. (Anyone who believes Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful uses or that weaklings can deter them by talk are very wrong.) (4) The Affordable Care Act will fail but not before it has done serious harm to the best medical system in the world. Once reconstructed the whole things will look more like Obamacare than a free market system. (5) China and Russia will increase their influence in the world. (6) Before President Obama leaves office, America will begin to feel the impact of unemployment, over-regulation, and inflation. (6) Lastly, radical Islam will show the beginnings of the organization of an Islamic Empire and the isolation of the Israeli Nation.

The Advisor put his pen away and placed the Presidential Journal back in its place. Maybe one of his successors would read it and find it helps them understand the years he was responsible for keeping the real record of every President.

This is a fictional account of an Advisor that doesn’t exist by the author of the Brandon novels. The author (pictured far right) has 27 years of Government service, including two years serving President Ronald Reagan (middle left) in the 1980s as an advisor. Meeting with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Deputy National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci and General Colin Powell in the Oval Office.

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Filed under centralization, Conservative views, Eight Decades of Insights, foreign policy, Intelligence & Politics, Israel, Obama, Obamacare, political solutions

Tagged as government, new year, Obama, one-party system, Progressive

by Barry Kelly | March 4, 2013 · 12:59 pm

EIGHT DECADES OF INSIGHTS 38

OBAMA’S LEGACY

The president has almost four years left to serve. It is presumptive to judge his legacy at this point. But it is not too early to look at the last four years and discuss what he may want his legacy to be. After all, aren’t presidential or anyone’s legacies derived more from results rather than words?

English: President Obama in Tucson: “The Forces that Divide Us are Not as Strong as Those that Unite Us” (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can not score the president’s work on important issues, such as unemployment, energy self-sufficiency, taxation policies, immigration, debt reduction, balance of trade, strategic military, or foreign policies. Or even health care. You see, I believe none of these issues in themselves are important to President Obama. He gives constant partisan speeches on the issue of the moment. Sometimes on both sides of the issue. But the issue is never the issue. In President Obama’s world issues are the tools used to destroy the opposition. He has total flexibility and even moral authority to use any side of any issue at any time to attack the opposition. How else could any rational person, let alone a sitting President, be openly in favor of Sequestration, sign it into law, threaten to veto any legislation that tries to change its implementation and blame the Republicans for the projected spending cuts?

Let’s take the immigration issue. Obama’s only interest in immigration is to secure the vast majority of the Hispanic vote for the Progressive Party, formerly called the Democratic Party. The last thing he wants is for the Republicans and the Democrats to work together to bring about an immigration policy that is good for the Nation, fair for the immigrants and acceptable to both parties. If that happens, how can he use the immigration issue to attack the opposition. Remember when he was first running for President, he clearly told Hispanics that he would bring about immigration reform as his first legislative effort. But, no, socializing the health industry was a more important use of the issues available to him. The Hispanics could wait. They would vote for him anyway. His analysis was brilliant. The opposition still hasn’t figured out what happened. Except one seventh of the US economy is now under federal government control. Not a bad start when your real program is to transform American into a Socialist (elitist) top down managed economy like Europe or Cuba.

When you can take a issue, such as Debt Reduction, that the vast majority of Americans favor and turn it into a partisan attack on the Opposition that is a political genius at work. President Obama even has respectable, or formerly respectable Democrats, chanting “there is no spending problem.” Where have they been. I thought every informed American knew we are borrowing forty cents for every dollar we spend. How can that not be a spending problem? Turning to Clint Eastwood‘s talking chair we learn if the rich were just willing to pay a little higher taxes, the debt could be paid off. The truth is if we taxed the rich at 100% it would make very little difference in the national debt.

The only result President Obama and his insiders want for a legacy is, they transformed America into a one party government run by a progressive elite. At this point they are on schedule.

by the author of the Jack Brandon thriller novels. http://www.factsandfictions.com