The number one song today in 1972 is simply …
Britain’s number one album today in 1972 was Rod Stewart’s “Never a Dull Moment”:
The title track from the number one album today in 1978:
No comments on Presty the DJ for Sept. 16
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Today in 1956, Elvis Presley had his first number one song:
Today in 1965, Ford Motor Co. began offering eight-track tape players in their cars. Since eight-track tape players for home audio weren’t available yet, car owners had to buy eight-track tapes at auto parts stores.
Today in 1970, Vice President Spiro Agnew said in a speech that the youth of America were being “brainwashed into a drug culture” by rock music, movies, books and underground newspapers.
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If you’re on Facebook, look up Kevin Hunt (former WTMJ-TV sportscaster) and watch this video, but make sure you visit the bathroom first:
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Today in 1968, ABC-TV premiered “The Archies,” created by the creator of the Monkees, Don Kirshner:
The number one single today in 1974 is a confession and correction:
Stevie Wonder had the number one album today in 1974, “Fulfillingness First Finale,” which wasn’t a finale at all:
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Citing bias reports filed during last year’s 9/11: Never Forget Project, administrators at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, ruled that YAF’s 9/11: Never Forget Project posters are creating an “environment” where “students from a Muslim background would feel singled out and/or harassed.” As a result, Ripon administrators will not allow the Ripon Young Americans for Freedom to hang the flyers as part of their work to remember the victims of September 11 or other victims of radical Islamist terrorism.
When leaders from Ripon YAF pressed administrators in a meeting to explain what was objectionable about the posters which merely depict history, the school’s “Bias Protocol Board” failed to provide anything more than the usual bizarre leftist excuses that rely on feelings, rather than facts, to back up their censorship.
According to administrators, the objections were “raised to the administration and the bias incident team about the environment that that [the poster] creates… That because of the focus, in this case relentlessly on one religious organization, one religious group, one religious identity—in associating that one religious identity with terrorist attacks which go back far before 9/11 and after 9/11— creates for some students here an environment which they feel like they are not able to learn.”
Administrators reminded the students that Ripon college is a private institution and therefore Ripon can decide what it feels is appropriate for display on campus and what is not. According to the administrators, they are allowed to rule on bias complaints using a “cost-benefit analysis” where they seek to understand “to what extent does something advance” or “hinder… the educational mission of the institution.” YAF would remind Ripon administrators that being a private institution does not render it immune from criticism of its decisions, especially when they attempt to censor key moments in our nation’s history that would be forgotten if not for bold Young Americans for Freedom activists such as those in Ripon YAF.
“There is nothing that this poster, in particular, adds to the conversation about 9/11, or about the politics of terrorism, or about national security or responses to it that couldn’t be done easily and more constructively without it,” claimed the members of the Bias Protocol Board.
“Some things [on the poster] don’t have anything to do with 9/11—ISIS, for example,” asserted one administrator. “I’m not sure I think the Iran hostage issue was Islamic terrorism,” said another.
Students of history will recall that the Iran hostage crisis was “America’s first searing experience with Islamist terrorism,” and that ISIS rose out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and al-Qaeda carried out the deadly attacks of 9/11, as well as other attacks highlighted on the poster.
“I wouldn’t see the Pulse [nightclub] shooting as related to New York. If I were LGBT, oh yeah, that’s what that picture’s for. I do know that the shooter mentioned some comments and pledged some allegiance, but that’s not at all what the media portrayed it as.” Whether the media portrayed the truth or not (the media largely did report the shooter’s commitment to radical Islamist terror), the Pulse nightclub attacker did say “I did it for ISIS. I did it for the Islamic State.” What’s more, to claim that the deadliestterror attack in the United States since 9/11—murdering 49 innocent people—is only meaningful to the LGBT community is inexplicable.
Administrators further—and falsely—claim that one of their objections is because radical Islamist terrorism “represents a small percentage of the terrorist attacks that happened to this country, and they don’t represent the full gamut, and they show a very small picture of a specific religion or nationality instead of the larger viewpoint.” From 1992 to 2017, Islamists were responsible for 92% of deaths caused by terrorism in the United States, and are “far and away, the deadliest group of terrorists by ideology.”
Trying to reiterate their objections, administrators pointed out that, “It seems like the only terrorist activities brought up in this poster are those done by extremist Islamic groups, and so if I’m Muslim on this campus, like, ok, it sends the message that all terrorism happens by Muslims.”
Just as remembrances of horrific events carried out in the name of Nazism or Communism include honoring other victims of those ideological treacheries, so does the remembrance of the attacks carried out by radical Islamists on September 11, 2001.
“The intent is admirable to talk about why are we killing each other,” said an administrator. “That’s very admirable, and I support that, but what about school shootings? We’ve had almost a school shooting a day for the last ten days, and we’re continuing to up the body count.” The administrator then suggested discussing Buddhist terrorism in Myanmar before threatening the students that, “If you put this poster out there… you’re going to get the same negative results. It’s these images.”
There is a problem with what you have just read, and it’s reported by the Ripon Commonwealth Press:Ripon College has been refuting what it states is misinformation being spread by several partisan news organizations.
Several websites have reported that the college allegedly has banned posters about 9/11.
Ripon College representatives insist they have banned no posters.
The incident stems from an article posted on YAF.org, the website for the conservative group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF).
In it, author Spencer Brown claims Ripon College banned the college’s YAF chapter from posting 9/11 memorial posters.
His article then was the basis for a series of additional stories targeting Ripon College.
Ripon College’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications Melissa Anderson was unequivocal in refuting this claim.
“These posters are not banned,” she said.
Ripon College also released an official statement via social media elaborating on that point:
“There has been much misinformation posted related to a recent discussion between Ripon College officials and student members of the Ripon College Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) chapter regarding a 9/11 poster and memorial. Ripon College encourages an environment for free speech and civil dialogue on our campus. The YAF posters are not, and have never been, banned. After receiving complaints from our students about the YAF Islamic extremism posters last year, College officials gave the Ripon College YAF student representatives suggestions as to how to have a discussion about 9/11 this year with our entire campus and community. The annual 9/11 flag memorial is a great example of how YAF students engage the entire community.”
Anderson noted Brown claimed the Bias Protocol Board at Ripon College banned such posters; however, she explained that is not true.
“That Bias Protocol Board is not a decision-making board,” Anderson said. “It has no authority. Its job is to hear complaints, hear from those who have been accused of creating something that’s bias and to have an open discussion about ways to avoid it. In no way shape or form, was the word ‘ban’ ever used.”
She noted students did have an issue with YAF’s posters last year and talked to the Bias Protocol Board about it.
“The poster has several depictions of beheading and other things that some of our students have found offensive [and] concerns have been brought up to a Bias Protocol Board that we have in place to deal with things like this,” Anderson said.
She noted college administrators have taken no action against the local YAF chapter. Instead, she explained, discussions have been held on how to include the entire campus in the chapter’s 9/11 memorial this year.
“It’s a response to complaints from students who find it offensive and biased towards a certain ethnicity,” Anderson said. “But keep in mind, all we’re having are conversations with the local YAF chapter … These posters are not banned; the students were asked to think of different ways to involve the entire campus community in their Sept. 11 tribute.”
Brown told the Commonwealth that his reporting was based on an audio recording he had received of a Bias Protocol Board meeting attended by Ripon College registrar Michele Wittler, Vice President and Dean of Faculty Ed Wingenbach, Director of Residence Life Mark Nicklaus, Director of Multicultural Affairs Kyonna Henry, and Associate Professor of Exercise Science Professor Mark Cole.
He said the names were provided to him by “student activists we work with who alerted us to this situation.”
Since the college has not banned the posters, Anderson said, it was taken by surprise when articles were posted saying otherwise.
“This is kind of very unexpected,” she said. “… Really the source of the misinformation begins with YAF National, Spencer Brown and his article.”
Anderson added once Brown’s article was posted on the YAF website, it “spread like wildfire.”
The article had been picked up by various partisan news media outlets, such as Washington Examiner, The Daily Wire, The Blaze, Independent Journal Review and more.
None of them, Anderson noted, ever contacted Ripon College to see if the claim was true.
“You’ll notice that no Ripon official was quoted in the [YAF] article whatsoever and any of the subsequent articles,” she said. “No, not a single one [contacted the college].”
Because of the misinformation it alleges is being spread due to these articles, the college is working to clear the air about the alleged poster ban along with the flag memorial the local YAF chapter undertakes every year.
“There’s two issues that have been stuck in some of these false articles,” Anderson said. “One, just generally, is the memorial tribute for Sept. 11 victims. Every year our local chapter of YAF leads that effort by putting flags on the Hardwood Memorial lawn … It’s a cherished event that we have every year. We take photos of it. It’s included on our social media. We share it around [and] we put it in our publications to honor those who lost their lives.”
Anderson explained that in posting his article, Brown used an image of the flag tribute that the local YAF chapter organizes every year, which she said led to more confusion and misinformation.
“He had an image of the flag tribute … and then subsequent articles also picked that image up,” she said. “The big issue here is that the only thing that was a point of discussion was the poster and at no point was it banned, which I have evidentiary proof of actually. What happened is the media [and] those stories kind of got it inflated to the point where people were associating the ban, that never happened, with the flag tribute.”
Due to concerns that the college banned posters and the flag tribute, many individuals have flocked to Ripon College’s Facebook page to post comments disparaging the college and to give the college bad reviews.
In less than 48 hours, 54 “does not recommend” and one-star reviews were left on the college’s Facebook page.
Some of the comments state the college is “a disgrace to America,” and an “unpatriotic college. Faculty and staff would rather pander to those who may be offended rather than a national tragedy.”
Other comments suggested “the free exchange of ideas is one of the primary purposes of Colleges and Universities. Ripon would do well to remember that.”
Anderson sees these comments as byproducts of the false information that was spread.
“What we’re responding to is a bunch of misinformation” she said. “People are obviously angry and concerned. ‘Why would a college restrict a celebration that honors Sept. 11 and its victims?’ We’re doing the best job we can to set the record straight.”
Along with its statement on social media, college administrators are “answering every call and every email that we receive and sharing the actual truth,” Anderson said. “It’s an unfortunate situation that this day and age we’re having to fight for the truth.”
I am told the posters were displayed, so in this case the college’s response seems more credible than YAF’s accusations.
YAF then came out with this self-congratulatory revision:
Following last week’s original reporting in the New Guard, Ripon College sent its liberal lap dogs after Young America’s Foundation and the myriad pieces of coverage on the school’s bizarre objections to the memorial posters used as part of YAF’s iconic 9/11: Never Forget Project.
Ripon College claims that because they never used the word “ban” in reference to the posters memorializing innocent victims of radical Islamist terrorism, they don’t deserve the criticism that’s been leveled at them. To be clear, YAF’s reporting never used the word ban, only repeated direct quotes from administrators on the school’s Bias Response Team, a body which refused to approve any version of the 9/11: Never Forget Project poster. It seems self-evident but in our view, as well as the view of the larger press, a refusal to grant approval is the equivalent of a ban.
Let’s go back to the original YAF release:
As a result, Ripon administrators will not allow the Ripon Young Americans for Freedom to hang the flyers as part of their work to remember the victims of September 11 or other victims of radical Islamist terrorism.
The headline on the revision was “Ripon College’s Ban by Any Other Name.” That previous sentence sounds like “ban” to me, which was YAF’s accusation. It is weaseling to claim that because YAF didn’t use the word “ban” that YAF never reported that Ripon College banned the poster. To most people “will not allow” and “ban” are synonyms.
Our original reporting quoted portions of a 38-minute recording of the meeting between Ripon YAF and administrators obtained by Young America’s Foundation. Since apparently those excerpts weren’t enough to show the bias team’s intent, below are some additional, previously-unreported quotes (emphasis added) that further show the opposition to Ripon YAF’s plans to distribute posters in remembrance of the victims of 9/11 and radical Islamist terror. We stand by our reporting, as well as the widespread coverage Ripon College has been mentioned in related to this situation.
In discussing the Bias Protocol Board’s review of bias complaints against the posters, an administrator says of the bias panel’s findings on the posters, “The concerns about the education environment outweigh any potential contribution to the education environment. There is nothing that this poster in particular adds to the conversation about 9/11.” They add, “The fact that there are genuine concerns about [the poster’s] negative consequences leads to a pretty easy cost/benefit analysis that the poster doesn’t need to be up.”
Despite offering more than a dozen times to consider making edits or additions to the posters in order to address some of the administrators’ concerns, the school’s leaders refused to grant approval and refused to express concern for anti-conservative bias that clearly exists at Ripon College. Instead, administrators call the posters “problematic,” say “there’s a problem in the product,” and chastise the students by saying “you kind of miss the mark.” If this is a supportive administration, as Ripon College has claimed in their attempts at damage control, I’d hate to see an oppositional one.
Hannah Krueger, chair of Ripon College Young Americans for Freedom, released a statement further clarifying her chapter’s mission and addressing recent criticism, saying that Ripon YAF “champions free speech from all viewpoints.” Krueger notes that her YAF chapter is “relatively new” but “no stranger to adversity and conflict” on campus. She adds that “It is because I love the college that I cannot stand by and watch organizations be pressured [to censor themselves].”
So now it’s being “pressured,” not a “ban” whatever words you’d like to use. I guarantee you that none of the campus activists of any political bent when I was at UW–Madison, then (and probably now) the most political college campus on Earth, would have knuckled under or used weasel words when faced with authority.
Let’s read Krueger’s statement:
Ripon College Administration has never “banned” the 9/11 memorial or the posters in question. The original YAF article never utilizes the word “ban.” Reporters repeatedly asked me if the College had banned the posters, and I repeatedly replied that “ban” was an inappropriate word for the situation. Many in the media on both sides of the issue made their own assumptions. …
Our 9/11 “Never Forget” posters are presented to the Student Judiciary Board year after year to determine if they violate poster policy, and each year the students on that board decide that they are in accordance with posting policy. It was only this last year that our posters signaled a new investigation by the Bias Incident Response Team.
In our meeting on Tuesday, August 28th, the members of the Bias Incident Response Team stated they had found issues with our posters—which we had displayed last year— as early as September 2017. Ripon College YAF members were informed of this issue in May 2018, during the last weeks of school. This gave us little time to respond, as officers were studying for and taking final exams. In an effort to identify what the specific issues were, I was referred to the Dean of Students. As he was not a member of the Bias Incident Response Team, he was unable to give a clear and concise answer of what was purportedly wrong with our posters.
He then referred me to the Bias Incident Response Team, a board composed of mainly administrators, which ultimately has no power to dictate the actions of student groups, but one who can make recommendations to the administration who then can take action. Why does this board exist? If the school believes in free speech and discussion, it would not have a panel of faculty and administrators that strangles discussion by determining what it feels is “appropriate.” The term “biased” is itself derogatory and used to stifle speech. President Messitte is correct in that the way to deal with speech one disagree with is more posters and speech, but there are groups of students and faculty who prefer to throw about disparaging labels and call certain activities and posters “biased.” Instead of a bias protocol board, the administration might establish a free speech board to ensure all ideas are heard on campus, not just those the school determines are appropriate and will not jostle liberal sensibilities. …
In the meeting, YAF proposed adding other images to the poster to avoid creating the anti-Muslim bias that the board was convinced our posters exhibited. We were willing to include events like Oklahoma City and other suggestions that the team had. The Bias Incident team told us that these images would appear to be an afterthought and would not make the poster any less of an issue. No matter what YAF offered to add or change about the poster, the team found reasons to disagree. The supposed mediator of the meeting, Dean Ed Wingenbach, was the one who offered the greatest argument of why the posters did not need to be up. We were pressured to make completely new posters. The members of the Bias Incident Response Team found no acceptable way to display these posters
It appears that the Bias Incident Response Team is itself biased.
Ripon Media, formerly known as the Ripon College Days student newspaper, adds:
In an email, Brown clarified that the http://www.yaf.org article never explicitly used the word “banned.” Brown said that the administration’s alleged comments during a meeting with Ripon YAF members, specifically that putting their posters up would cause a negative reaction from the student body, “are what I believe led many in the press to close the circle and call the board’s attempted intimidation of the YAF students a ban.”
“Ripon is attempting to save face by claiming the letter of their ruling does not imply the spirit of their ruling would be to keep the posters from being displayed,” Brown said.
According to Melissa Anderson, vice president of marketing and communications, a meeting did occur between Ripon YAF members and Ripon administrators, however the meeting was requested by YAF and did not lead to a “ruling” of any sort.
“The YAF leadership requested that the bias team explain how their poster could be considered biased. That generated a wide-ranging exchange of ideas and perspectives as everyone in the meeting discussed how the poster might be perceived by various audiences, what sort of reactions it is intended to elicit, and whether the poster itself actually meets the goals our YAF students articulated,” Anderson said. “The meeting was not a hearing or a trial, but a conversation, and the quotes in the article were part of that conversation.”
Brown’s article contains multiple quotes that are attributed to unnamed Ripon administrators, who he later identified in an email as Michelle Wittler, Ed Wingenbach, Mark Nicklaus, and Kyonna Henry. Brown said the quotes used in his article were from the meeting between administrators and YAF students and that for questions surrounding attribution “I’ve been suggesting ‘According to a recording of the meeting obtained by Young America’s Foundation…’”
“There may have been a recorder in the room but no college official was aware of it,” Anderson said.
As of yet, no recording of the meeting in question has been released by YAF’s national organization or its local members and the existence of such a recording has not been verified.
As someone with, as readers know, connections to Ripon College, I find the existence of a Bias Incident Resource Team ludicrous. I also find YAF’s claim of a ban and then backpedaling to be disingenuous bordering on duplicitous. I also find YAF’s unwillingness to identify the unnamed college administrators they quote very revealing. Based on this one instance I don’t find the national YAF to be a very good messenger for the conservative cause on college campuses, at least in its willing distortion of what appears to have happened at Ripon College.
Conservatives claim to be more moral than liberals. Being more moral means telling the truth, not just your version of the truth.
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James Wigderson wrote this on the first day of school:
Unfortunately I don’t have any “first day of school” photos from my days in school. We didn’t have phones back then that could take the photo and Matthew Brady was unavailable. I just have cherished memories of walking a mile uphill each way in frigid temperatures that made my daily peregrination resemble the Shackleton expedition.
The destination of these daily walks may surprise some of you. I’m a graduate of Milwaukee Vincent High School. We won’t mention the year, but we’ll point out the school still had that new school smell (as well as urine in the stairwells, etc.). The school is evidence, if anyone needs it, that money and a new building do not add up to academic performance.
Yes, it was possible for me to get a good education there, in part because I sought it out against the odds. I spent my lunch hour my senior year hanging out in the Social Studies study lounge and my other free time in the math department office. I rewrote my school schedule to eliminate gym class starting my sophomore year so I could take extra academic classes and managed to find a guidance counselor to sign the new schedule.
Somebody had to look out for my education.
The school has only gotten worse since my days there. The school “fails to meet expectations” according to the state of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction and it’s not even close. Yet nothing will be done about Vincent and 999 kids will be trapped in a failing school this year. Some students will succeed but the odds are horribly against them. But at least it’s a union school, right?
So imagine my surprise when, thanks to the Facebook page for an upcoming high school reunion, I learned the school is getting a new $5.7 million stadium. The stadium will have artificial grass and a new track for WIAA events. The report I saw didn’t mention metal detectors, but it would be a good idea.
The new stadium is part of an $11 million improvement in athletic facilities for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), presumably so the little convicts can have the best facilities before being sent to the penitentiary.
So the next time someone tells you that MPS needs more money, remind them that more money does not mean a better academic performance. And if they ask for evidence, ask them if $5.7 million could be better spent than on a new stadium for a failing school. And then ask them if the students would be better off with a new track instead of shutting the school down entirely.
At least the artificial turf matches the artificial concern of Wisconsin’s Democrats, including gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers, for the well-being of MPS students. Perhaps the new scoreboard can flash the number of kids being pushed through the system without learning anything – not that any of the students will be able to read it.
That prompted this reaction reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
A conservative blogger who disparaged Milwaukee Public Schools students as “little convicts” has drawn stinging rebukes from MPS and state lawmakers, who have criticized his remarks as hurtful, racist and dishonest.
The backlash comes in response to a recent column by Right Wisconsin Editor James Wigderson, who made the remark in an essay referencing $11 million in planned upgrades for MPS’ athletic fields, including a new $5.7 million stadium at his alma mater, Vincent High School.
The upgrades were being made, he said, “presumably so the little convicts can have the best facilities before being sent to the penitentiary.”
“The next time someone tells you that MPS needs more money, remind them that more money does not mean a better academic performance,” Wigderson wrote. “And if they ask for evidence, ask them if $5.7 million could be better spent than on a new stadium for a failing school.”
MPS issued a statement Tuesday, touting its students’ achievements and saying it is proud to “provide the same access to state-of-the-art facilities for our students as districts in surrounding areas have for theirs” and accusing Wigderson of cyberbullying.
“MPS is outraged — as every parent in the City of Milwaukee should be — that an adult would feel free to make such a derogatory, hurtful, and dishonest statement about more than 75,000 children,” the statement said.
“We have far too many students who work hard every day and who accomplish great things to let an ill-informed and hateful statement stand without comment,” it went on to say.
Current and former state lawmakers also weighed in.
“This is beyond offensive, pure ignorance and complete ‘BS,’” wrote state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, a Milwaukee Democrat. “MPS is home to 77,000 children. These children, and their families, deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.”
State Rep. David Crowley, another Milwaukee Democrat, said he must have been one of the “little convicts” for whom tax dollars should not be spent.
“This kind of racist undertone is how the right communicates,” Crowley tweeted. “This rhetoric is how Trump and the Republican Party continue to rally their white supremacist and base and cannot be met with silence.”
Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor and a former state lawmaker, attempted to connect the Wigderson comments to allies of Gov. Scott Walker.
“They expect their casual racism to be excused,” Barnes tweeted. “The governor’s allies have gone full southern strategy.”
Barnes issued a statement saying, “We have long been ranked the worst state for black Americans, and the governor’s allies continue to drive a wedge and make things even worse with their rhetoric.”
MPS Superintendent Keith Posley declined to comment on the remarks during a visit to Reagan High School where U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Frank Brogan was meeting with students to discuss their anti-bullying efforts.
District spokeswoman Denise Callaway said MPS is not seeking an apology but said the district will use the opportunity to help people understand what it is doing to educate students.
And Callaway made it clear that she deemed Wigderson’s piece “unacceptable.”
Asked if she considered it racist, Callaway said: “That is for other people to judge. It certainly perpetuates stereotypes, which are by definition untrue.”
“How small is it to be a cyberbully against children?” Callaway said.
Wigderson did not return an email from the Journal Sentinel asking to discuss the column but criticized Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice, who first raised the issue on social media.
Wigderson tweeted that he was referring specifically to Deontay Long, a standout Milwaukee basketball player who was recently sentenced to five years of probation for his role in an armed robbery last year.
“So the only smear being done here is by @DanielBice because if he was a serious journalist he would know how to click a link and actually share the context of my statement,” Wigderson tweeted.
Wigderson then wrote:
Now, unlike a lot of other MPS graduates, I have actually paid attention to what has happened to my high school since I left. In fact, it’s largely the result of my experience in MPS and what has happened since I graduated that I have remained concerned about education. I have written about school choice and alternative education since I was a blogger, and then as a columnist for the Waukesha Freeman, then as an education reporter for Watchdog.org, and now as editor of RightWisconsin.
Here’s the bad news about my old school: it’s failing. It’s failing big time. It wasn’t a great school when I graduated (as I described in the editorial) and now it’s worse. There are 999 students trapped in that failing school, according to the Department of Public Instruction. Instead of doing something about it, MPS is building them a new stadium for sports. Instead of getting the kids out of that failing school, or doing something to improve the schools, MPS is putting in artificial turf.
As I wrote in the editorial in a line not being re-posted on Twitter, “At least the artificial turf matches the artificial concern of Wisconsin’s Democrats, including gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers, for the well-being of MPS students.”
But what has them really upset is that I wrote:
“The new stadium is part of an $11 million improvement in athletic facilities for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), presumably so the little convicts can have the best facilities before being sent to the penitentiary.”
The line, with the link to a Fox 6 story that my critics neglect to mention, is clearly referring to the Deontay Long case. Long, for those of you that have forgotten, was a Milwaukee Washington basketball star convicted of armed robbery – a felony – but was still allowed to play by MPS in the state basketball tournament while he awaited sentencing. It’s a clear example of MPS’ screwed up priorities that they still haven’t addressed.
If MPS and my critics are upset with me for referencing that as an example of the screwed-up priorities of the school district, they need to be upset with every other media outlet that bothered to report the story, too.
I obviously did not intend the line to reference all students in MPS. I explained earlier in the editorial how I was an MPS graduate and I included the link to the story about Deontay Long. If I intended to “smear” (as a Journal Sentinel reporter wrote without ever contacting me) all MPS students, I wouldn’t have included the link, nor would I have mentioned my own educational background.
What’s been most disappointing about the reaction to my editorial is how my critics, willing to seize on a fake “gotcha” moment for their purposes, are willing to ignore the fact that nearly 25,000 students are trapped in failing MPS schools. When are they going to show real concern for those students, as I have for the last 18 years of writing about public policy, instead of just drumming up fake outrage to try to silence any voice that calls for real educational reform in Milwaukee?
The tragedy here is that this shouldn’t be about me. It’s the MPS to prison pipeline that won’t be rectified by building new football stadiums. As an MPS graduate I find the embrace of the status quo disgusting. The soft bigotry of low expectations is more vile and more insidious than anything my critics have accused me of being.
Real students, mostly minorities, are being held captive in failing schools, including Milwaukee Vincent. Instead of prettifying the Potemkin buildings, we need to do more to improve the lives of the students in those schools. I stand by what I wrote: the African American, Hispanic and other minority children of MPS would be better off if failing schools were shut down rather than upgrading the athletic facilities.
Wigderson isn’t going to accept being called racist any more than I would. And it’s really revealing that all the reaction to what Wigderson originally wrote fails to address the fact that MPS is the worst school district in the state of Wisconsin, and dragging down Milwaukee and the entire state.
That doesn’t mean Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers doesn’t have an answer, though it is as predictable as the sun rising in the east tomorrow, reported by the Journal Sentinel:
State Superintendent Tony Evers is proposing sending millions of dollars more to the state’s largest school districts to help reduce the massive gaps in academic achievement between the districts’ students of color and their white counterparts.
First: The Journal Sentinel writer committed an error. Evers is the superintendent of public instruction, not the “state superintendent,” despite the DPI propaganda the reporter must have read.
Democrat Evers is challenging Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s bid for a third term in a race that has been focused on the two state officials’ records on educational issues — including whether either have done enough to improve the state’s poor rate at which black students keep pace in the classroom.
One target of Evers’ plan is Milwaukee Public Schools, where about 80 percent of the 76,000 students are black and Hispanic and live in low-income households. Few districts in Wisconsin report worse academic performance than Milwaukee, where more than half the district’s schools are rated as meeting few or no expectations on the state report card.
Walker previously said he would by late summer or fall be making recommendations for Milwaukee schools, but on Tuesday his campaign could not say if Walker still planned to do so.
Under a plan released this week, Evers’ Department of Public Instruction would in the next state budget devote $13 million to programs designed to address struggling students’ performance in the classrooms of Green Bay, Kenosha, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine, including:
- $5 million in grants to expand summer school offerings.
- $1.5 million set aside to provide $15,000 for each National Board Certified teacher who teaches in the five school districts.
- $500,000 to expand principal training in urban settings for each of the five districts.
- $5 million in new funding to provide kindergarten for 3-year-olds in the five-school district.
- $1 million for a two-year project in each school district community to work with health care providers around childhood trauma and with housing agencies to stabilize living situations for children, while improving staff-to-child ratios in child care and educational settings.
DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said the recommendations were developed with input from the five districts and will be submitted as a budget request for the 2019-’21 state budget. He said the department hasn’t proposed the measures before because Walker had previously rejected other similar proposals.
Think the rural school districts that have complained about money going to private schools are going to complain about this money that could be going to other schools but instead will be sucked up by these five giant school districts?
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Today in Great Britain in the first half of the 1960s was a day for oddities.
Today in 1960, a campaign began to ban the Ray Peterson song “Tell Laura I Love Her” (previously mentioned here) on the grounds that it was likely to inspire a “glorious death cult” among teens. (The song was about a love-smitten boy who decides to enter a car race to earn money to buy a wedding ring for her girlfriend. To sum up, that was his first and last race.)
The anti-“Tell Laura” campaign apparently was not based on improving traffic safety. We conclude this from the fact that three years later, Graham Nash of the Hollies leaned against a van door at 40 mph after a performance in Scotland to determine if the door was locked. Nash determined it wasn’t locked on the way to the pavement.
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Rural and smaller-town places seemed to be “winning a little more” in 2017, even though the larger trend in the 2010s has been for the nation’s biggest, bluest metropolitan areas to dominate job growth. During President Trump’s first year in office, in fact, rural places captured a slightly disproportionate share of U.S. job growth, while the nation’s big cities slightly underperformed. It was good to see more places participating in the nation’s economic expansion.
Which raises the question: How are things looking as the politicians leave Labor Day behind and lock in on the 2018 midterm elections, with their volatile themes of division, imbalance, and resentment? To see, we have looked at several go-to resources and observe again that the more balanced growth picture of last year is continuing, with more places participating in the economic good times. As the elections approach, smaller, redder places are doing relatively better than they were in 2016.
The central dynamic of the Trump period persists. As Table 1 shows, goods-producing industries have been surging while services industries have seen their seasonally adjusted employment growth slow since 2016.
To be more specific, while information-sector growth has turned negative in the last two years (with a slight recovery starting in 2018), resource extraction and manufacturing industries have been growing at their fastest rates since the financial crisis. Mining and logging pursuits (which include oil and gas extraction) have seen rapid employment growth based on strong hiring in the various support activities associated with the sector like exploration and prospecting. Meanwhile, machinery manufacturing; electrical equipment, appliance, and component manufacturing; and fabricated metal product manufacturing have all been growing smartly as domestic demand has kept factories humming.
These patterns are notable for what they say about the contours of national economic activity but also because they reflect what’s happening on the ground, in particular urban and rural areas. And in this regard, the dynamics of the current economic surge—strong goods production and relatively weaker services provision—slightly disfavor larger, bluer, tech- and service-oriented metros, and relatively favor smaller, more rural, and redder communities by comparison to their recent problems. This conclusion aligns with the findings of smart analysts like Jed Kolko of Indeed. And it suggests that growth patterns are now playing out fairly positively for many if not all smaller communities and rural areas.
To see this check out the county employment map—first for the first quarter of 2016, and then for the first quarter of 2018 (Map 1). As is very visible growth was more widely dispersed this year than in the earlier period:
Likewise, while the bulk of the nation’s job creation has continued to take place in the nation’s 52 largest metropolitan areas with 1 million residents or more, the employment growth rates of smaller and rural communities actually outpaced those of both the nation and other types of communities earlier this year (Figure 1). This performance was stronger than last year’s. Whether or not seasonal trends portend slower smaller-town and rural growth through the late summer and fall as they often do, the fact remains that smaller communities have been doing relatively better this year.
As to what this means for the fall election, it is no doubt good news for the reeling Republican Party as it slouches towards the midterms. To be sure, very little of the favorable economic shift likely owes to President Trump’s erratic flailing and bluster. As Kolko notes, the rebound of mining employment tracks global oil prices closely. And for that matter manufacturing growth likely reflects normalizing domestic purchasing and stronger global demand. Yet, the current dynamics could be helpful to the Republicans, to the extent that the direction of economic change—measured by employment growth—influences political sentiment and political behavior. After all, counties that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 experienced 4 percent annualized employment growth in the first quarter of 2018, unchanged from the first quarter of 2017, whereas counties that voted for Trump were seeing growth of 5.1 percent a year earlier this year, up from 4.9 percent a year before that and 4.3 percent in early 2016. Many small-town and rural communities may be feeling that things are finally moving in the right direction.
With that said, the political impacts of these incremental growth shifts toward redder counties will likely be modest, and are likely temporary. Cultural rage appears at this point more central to red America politics than economic soothsaying. Beyond that, both near-term and longer-term headwinds lie ahead. In the near term, Trump’s chaotic trade stances may still cost counties manufacturing jobs. Over the longer term, the cyclical nature of many of the industries that have contributed to the current rural and small-town uptick—ranging from agriculture and mining to oil and gas—does not make those commodity industries reliable sources of sustained prosperity. Nor do smaller communities’ education deficits, shortages of digital skills, and specialization in the types of rote jobs that will be most susceptible to automation and globalization.
For now, a little winning in small-town and rural America is welcome news for a nation that has mostly been pulling apart during the last decade.
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Jonah Goldberg chimes in on the anonymous Trump administration New York Times op-ed writer:
There really is no getting around it: This New York Times op-ed by a senior administration official is literally extraordinary — and also astounding and fascinating.
I agree with Ross Douthat that it was no-brainer for the Times to publish it, but whether the author should have written it is a far more debatable proposition.
First, if the Times hadn’t run it, the Washington Post or (maybe) the Wall Street Journal would have — and rightly so. Simply put: It’s eminently newsworthy (I am assuming the author truly is a senior official of sufficient standing to justify publication). It’s also more compelling than your typical op-ed fare, to say the least.
The far more interesting question is: What inspired the author to write it — and to write it now?
If you’re part of a secret cabal to contain the president’s erratic behavior, it seems counterproductive to notify the erratic president about it. What better way to fuel his paranoia and his persecution complex?
One possible factor: the Woodward book. Bob Woodward has let the cat out of the bag that members of the administration are doing precisely what the author claims. I understand that the official word from the White House is that Fear is a tissue of lies, but the op-ed author clearly doesn’t see it that way.
While I am still trying to figure out a high-minded and patriotic reason for why the author wrote this, it’s a little easier to imagine a self-interested reason for it. The author writes:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.
It seems plausible to me that the author is betting that when “it’s over,” there will be many recriminations. He — or she — has gotten out in front of that. The author is now on record with an explanation that may — may — seem less self-serving than if offered when the Trump presidency is over. …
Brit’s gotten a lot of grief for this take, and I will admit I find his finger-pointing at “Never Trumpers” on the right to have some glaring flaws, the chief of which is that it’s a bit of a strawman. Most of the Never Trumpers and Trump-skeptics on the right that I know routinely express their gratitude that General Mattis and others are in the administration trying to minimize the damage and push optimal policies.
But Brit has a point. These people are doing a service to the country. It just seems to me the better interpretation and a more worthy target for Brit’s ire are the people — many of whom appear on Fox (where I am a contributor) — who constantly signal to both the base and our TV-addicted president that Trump should always go with his instincts and that his judgment is always correct.
The lesson of the Woodward book and this op-ed, it seems to me, isn’t that conservatives should drop their objections and criticisms of the president, but that they should make Republican voters demand a higher standard from him. Many of this administration’s greatest accomplishments — most obviously its judicial appointments — do not stem from the president’s principles or his instincts, but from a political calculation that there are some things he must do to maintain conservative support.
What is true of anonymous administration officials should also be true of Republican voters: Do what you can to get the best results possible from Trump rather than encourage him to just go with his gut whenever he feels like it.
So does Steven Crowder, though less than seriously:
The author was kept anonymous mostly because leftist media hates Trump and protects their sources when the source is criticizing Trump. But you and I both know had this OpEd been critical of Hillary, the author would’ve been doxxed. Forced to move into a shack somewhere on the Island of Guam. But that’s neither here nor there. There’s been much speculation about who the real author of this ballyhooed piece is.
We have some theories.
Mike Pence – Since taking the official office of “Waiting for the president to croak,” Mike Pence has been relegated to the side table, where he only dines with his wife. Tired of being number two, despite being far better looking and with the voice over capabilities rivaled only by Darth Vader, Mike Pence finally made his initial move to steal the presidency.
Nikki Haley – She’s so hot right now. Way too hot to simply flip all the birds at the UN. You know Nikki Haley is hoping to make Thug Life happen in La Casa Blanca.
Ben Shapiro – Our favorite little Jewish hobbit has had it out for The Donald since Hillary lost the one ring to rule them all. Sure, Shapiro has launched his own line of products, starting with a tumbler crafted from finest samplings of Gandalf’s poop. But make no mistake. Little Bilbo Shapiro wants to punch kick Trump into the fires of Mordor.
Heidi Cruz – It’s a hard knock life being married to the son of Kennedy’s assassin. Who may also be the Zodiac Killer. Lyin’ Ted’s better half finally snapped, though, when Donald Trump insinuated she was fugly. So Heidi laid in wait, readying herself for the right moment to pounce on the man who stole the presidency from Grayson Allen.
Asia Argento – We’re not sure how Asia snuck her way into the White House, but I think maybe she gave Barron Trump a lollipop. I’ll let you guess what shape the lollipop took. Asia’s grand plans were foiled after Melania caught Asia sending Barron thirst tweets. Thus banishing her from the White House. Angered, Asia Argento contacted The New York Times to dish out the goods. Rumor has it should Asia’s true identity be revealed, she’ll pin the blame on Robin Williams.
Apu fromThe Simpsons– Who knows what this shifty little Indian sketch has been doing of late. All I know is, he’s tired of be a stereotypical Indian cartoon with a stereotypical accent. When Ryan Reynolds denied him a walk-on-role in Deadpool 2 for being too obviously Indian, Apu broke all his sharpened pencils. He snuck into the White House and has been there ever since. His motive is naan of your business.
Thanos – When Donald Trump mocked Kim Jong Un about who had the bigger nuke buttons, Thanos snapped.
MARTHA! – Sick of being a punchline for frustrated, mostly Marvel fanboys, MARTHA! infiltrated the Trump White House, disguising herself with only black glasses. Plot twist this: The only person who needs saving now is DONALD! Blast your way through this house at the very last second as a dirty man with greasy long hair has a gun to your head, because you spent far too long playing kryptonite gas games with Clarky-poo, Batman. We dare you.
Kevin Spacey– The man who played President Frank Underwood was determined to be remembered as more than just a diddler of small boys, so he delivered a real FU. I think he made his way into the White House as an unassuming gimp. And after studying the wall behind Trump, finally got his revenge. According to my inside sources, Spacey sent Trump a cutout of the New York Times article in an unassuming, but bloodied box.
So does Rich Galen:
Last week was the final proof that there is a difference in the way those of us who live and/or work inside The Beltway look at the world and how the other 326 million people living in the United States see it. …
When I say “everyone” was thinking and talking about it, I’m not talking about guests on the cable nets, or the political insiders sitting at the bar at Landini’s in Old Town Alexandria. The – this is true- the guy who runs the 15-items-or-less lane at the Safeway asked me who I thought it was. People who recognized me walking down the street asked me who I thought it was. People sitting in restaurants asked me who I thought it was.
My answer was the same: If it wasn’t Donald Trump, I have no idea.
In fact, I Tweeted:
“I’ve narrowed the potential author of the @nytimes op-ed to three people: John Barron, John Miller, or David Dennison.”
Which generated over 1,900 “Likes.”
For those of you who may have missed the America’s Got Talent episode of “The Many Names of Donald Trump,” those are among the pseudonyms used by Trump when he would call newspapers pretending to be NOT Donald Trump, but a PR guy extolling the virtues of Donald Trump.
The fact that reporters on the other end of phone knew it was Trump didn’t stop them from playing along, nor Trump from thinking he was pulling the wool over their eyes.
Same as today.
To be serious for a moment, the Times said the op-ed was written by “a senior official in the Trump Administration.” Note he or she is not specifically IDd as a “senior official in the Trump White House, so depending on your definition of “senior,” it could extend to just about anywhere in the Executive Branch.
The op-ed claims there is a fully functioning group of “the resistance” whose job it is to help the “Administration to succeed” as it simultaneous works to “preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.”
The author (or authors) suggest that “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment.”
That’s the one that lays out the steps required for a sitting President to be removed from office short of being defeated at the ballot box.
It is not easy. It takes a majority of sitting Cabinet Secretaries and supermajorities – 2/3rds – of the members of the House and the Senate to declare the President unfit and for the Vice President to be sworn in as President. …
If this “resistance” inside the Trump Administration is true and they are actively working to propel policies they agree with and thwart those they do not, it is chilling.
Every White House and its extended Administration has factions. Every political appointee things he or she knows best how to run the world and will happilly share that knowledge in the back bar at the Old Ebbitt any weeknight.
In the end, though, there is one “decider-in-chief” and that person sits in the Oval Office in the White House, not in some small office in the HUD building.
The New York Times’ editors felt the person who wrote this piece was “senior” enough to warrant sharing his or her thoughts with its readers without our being able to judge the veracity of those thoughts against what we know (or would shortly know) about the author.
This will, like all the 18-hour tornadoes that have come before it, will be supplanted by yet another cloudburst.
The next storm building quickly is the new book by Bob Woodward which has leaked so perfectly that we know a great deal of the nuggets, but having Woodward on a book tour will certainly provoke Presidential ire.
I suspect we will, sooner or later, learn who wrote that op-ed and it will generate another day of intense examination.
In the meantime, the game of the week here in Our Nation’s Capital has been “Whodunit?”
I’m betting on the butler in the library with the candlestick.
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Britain’s number one song today in 1963, yeah, yeah, yeah:
Today in 1966, NBC-TV premiered a show about four Beatle-like musicians:
Britain’s number one song today in 1979:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 