People with a brain know Trump's threat to close the Department of Education is idle

 Can Trump actually close the DOE?

Technically, yes.

However, “It would take an act of Congress to take it out,” Don Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, told Vox. “It would take an act of Congress to radically restructure it. And so the question is whether or not there’d be appetite on the Hill for abolishing the department.”

More.

That's because an act of Congress created it in the first place.

Trump is not a dictator, and never will be, although he plays one on TV, which is the real problem.

It's all just words.

 

Rate of public educator sexual misconduct is 10 times higher in a year than in five decades of abuse by clergy, two thirds of the predators are male, most of the victims are high school females

 

Given the roughly 50 million students in U.S. K-12 schools each year, the number of students who have been victims of sexual misconduct by school employees is probably in the millions each decade, according to multiple studies. Such numbers would far exceed the high-profile abuse scandals that rocked the Roman Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America. ...

“In any given year they have failed to report thousands of these situations, and instead they’ve papered them over, acted like it’s not an issue,” former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told RealClearInvestigations. Stunned by a 2018 Chicago Tribune investigation that found 523 incident reports of sexual misconduct by employees of the city’s schools during the past decade, DeVos during the Trump administration launched the process of including specific questions about such cases in the Department’s Civil Rights Data Collection, a process it undertakes every two years. Previously, the Office for Civil Rights asked only general questions about sexual misconduct incidents, without a breakdown of alleged perpetrators.

The Biden administration initially sought to remove those questions, saying it wanted to avoid data duplication, but it backtracked after fierce criticism it was doing so as a sop to teachers unions. Consequently, the question will be included on future questionnaires, but, as of today, the Department of Education “has no data,” a spokesperson told RCI. These days, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, even a cursory review of local news reporting brings disquieting revelations of teachers accused of or arrested for alleged sexual relations with a student. ...

Pointing to research from Hofstra University that found roughly 1 in 10 students in K-12 schools have suffered “some form of sexual misconduct by an educator,” Terri Miller, head of the advocacy group SESAME (Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation), said the number of victims is staggering.

More.

Biden is breaking the law by canceling student loans, and everybody knows it

A COVID-19 emergency excuse is even less persuasive today than it was when Pelosi last year said Biden doesn't have the authority to cancel the loans.

This will be stopped by the courts, same as Biden's illegal vaccine mandate for the private sector was stopped.

Still waiting, however, for the courts to reverse the illegal deprivation of the former president of access to his own papers. 

So don't hold your breath.

This out of control and senile old man Joe Biden should be impeached and removed from office.

US Department of Education, Office of the General Counsel, January 12, 2021, here:

All federal student loan programs administered by the Department are funded through annual Congressional appropriations drawn from the Treasury. These appropriations are conditioned on the Department’s faithful execution of the laws authorizing that loans be made available to eligible borrowers and then repaid or collected. See 20 U.S.C. §§ 1077a, 1078, 1078-3, 1078-6, 1078-7, 1080, 1080a, 1082, 1083, 1085, 1087e, 1087-1, 1087gg, 1091b, 1092b, 1092c, 1095a, 1098e. Although Congress could enact legislation authorizing the Department to provide blanket or mass cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness of student loan principal balances, and/or to materially modify repayment amounts or terms, it has not done so. See 20 U.S.C. §§ 1077-10 – 1077-12, 1087e(f), 1087e(h), 1087ee, 1091b, 1098d. Rather, Congress has explicitly authorized cancellation, compromise, discharge, or forgiveness, and/or material modifications to repayment amounts or terms only in very limited circumstances. See, e.g., 20 U.S.C. §§ 1087e(f), 1087e(h), 1094(b)(3), 1098aa, et seq. ...

Title IV’s plain text and statutory scheme, and controlling interpretative canons, compel us to conclude Congress appropriated funds for student loans with the expectation that such loans would be repaid except in very specific circumstances.

LOL, NYC has fewer than 100 teachers you'd actually want teaching your kids

 The ones using fake vaccination cards, of course.

From the story:

NEW YORK - The New York City Department of Education is placing dozens of educators on unpaid leave to investigate whether they tried to use fake COVID-19 vaccine cards to meet city requirements to continue working in the school system.

School spokesperson Nathaniel Styer said, "Fraudulent vaccination cards are not only illegal, they also undermine the best line of protection our schools have against COVID-19 – universal adult vaccination. We immediately moved to put these employees - fewer than 100 - on leave without pay." ...

The United Federation of Teachers, which represents district employees, says approximately 70 of its members were contacted by the Department of Education. ...

The FDNY and the Sanitation Department have also had issues with fake vaccination cards by department employees.

 

Deep state swamp: Federal workers gave Hillary 95% of their political contributions

The Department of Education is the worst, but the whole damn thing has to go.

Story here.

Trump told supporters over and over he was against Common Core, NYT says he doesn't understand it

Here:

COMMON CORE In an interview with Fox News in October last year, Mr. Trump said: “I may cut Department of Education. I believe Common Core is a very bad thing.” The statement, though, may have reflected a bit of a misunderstanding. Common Core standards, an initiative to standardize educational requirements throughout the nation, were adopted by states. Under a recently enacted law, the federal government is prohibited from telling states what educational standards to adopt. So the Department of Education has no authority over Common Core anyway.

Limited government: One Supreme Court justice down, two to go

The wrong one is down, mind you, but the Founders' Court had only six members, not nine (eight) as now, according to The Weekly Standard in "Eight is Enough (for Now)".

A Donald Trump administration, in addition to closing the Department of Education, could easily save some dough and restore some probity to the court by not appointing a ninth justice, nor an eighth nor a seventh should the opportunity arise, er .... fall:

"An even-numbered Court seems to be more conducive to judicial restraint."

He'd just have to make sure to appoint if another justice with common sense dies.

Conrad Black defends Donald Trump against the hysterics, and tells you what he's for

Here:

"What Donald actually advocates is the deportation of 351,000 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes and now imprisoned; the end of illegal immigration by building an Israeli-like wall along the Mexican border; an (as yet unspecified) screening process to justify the deportation of some of the illegals and the normalization of the others; and although he advocates the suspension already mentioned of Muslim immigration (not the Christians who are almost half of the refugees), he at least acknowledges that the United States is partly responsible for the political chaos that generated this humanitarian tragedy in the first place. He wants only a small increase in defence spending, reallocated to more effective anti-terrorism; and universal health care through health savings accounts and by smashing the insurance cartel. He is for the gradual legalization of most drugs; is a militant anti-polluter, but correctly (on present evidence) regards climate change and cap-and-trade as hoaxes. He wants to leave education (and same-sex marriage) to the states and to give them the money now wasted in the federal Department of Education. He would ban only late-term abortions, and not when there were overriding circumstances. He would reform the corrupt shambles of campaign financing by abolishing super-PACs and soft money, and lift limits on individual contributions to political candidates. He is a moderate protectionist opposite cheap labour countries, and advocates marginal income tax reductions and the reconstitution of the bloated national debt as a sinking fund to be gradually reduced by spending restraint, implicitly involving an imprecise level of entitlement-reform. Trump opposes foreign intervention in areas where the U.S. has no natural interest, including Ukraine and Syria, but wants a redefinition of the national security interest of the country, and wants to protect that interest, unlike Obama, but not over-extend it, unlike George W. Bush. This is not a radical program."

CBS News claims Trump keeps the EITC

Here.

For the current 5-year period 2012-2016 the Joint Committee on Taxation has previously estimated the annual cost of the Earned Income Tax Credit to be about $64 billion.

That's actually less costly than the food stamp program was in 2014: $74.2 billion.

Keeping the EITC means keeping what amounts to a welfare program, but one which rewards only those who work. The transfer payments to such individuals basically rebate the Social Security taxes they pay even though they generally make too little to pay much in the way of federal income taxes, if they pay any at all.

Trump's claim that his plan will be revenue neutral is already taking incoming because of things like this.

Of course we don't know what spending Trump plans to cut. He might go really big and call for shuttering some cabinet level departments entirely. The Department of Education, for example, costs $77.4 billion.

Jewish Children In Oslo Schools Report The Most Harassment

Gee, I wonder why. Just maybe because anti-Semitism, the preferred pose of Norway's Labour Party and its youth arm, the AUF, is pandemic in Norway, thanks to Gro Harlem Brundtland. Imagine that. A doctor spreading a disease.

Excerpted from a news report in June:

Students with ethnic Norwegian background were the least harassed, but the rate of harassment rose in line with the number of non-Norwegian students at their schools.

Most worrisome for school and city officials was the high level of Jewish students, 33 percent, who reported harassment at least two to three times a month. That compares to 5.3 percent of Muslim students who said they’d been harassed. Fully 9 percent of the students responding said they’d been harassed at school because of their religion or faith, while Christians experienced the least harassment. ...

More than half of the students, 52 percent, said they’d experienced that the word jøde (Jew) was used to describe something negative. Fully 41 percent confirmed having heard jokes about Jews at school and 35 percent had noticed generally negative commentaries on Jews. As many as 5 percent had heard other students deny that the Holocaust occurred during World War II.

“Respect, tolerance, equality and inclusion must be made crystal clear in the schools’ educational program,” said director Astrid Søgnen of the city’s department of education.

What a joke. Whether it's under fascists like Quisling or communists like Labour, anti-Semitism finds fertile ground to flourish and grow in Norway, no matter what.

Main Street, Obamaville: All Bumps, No Road

From the inimitable Mark Steyn, here:

The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarized bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour.

In a sane world, Americans would be outraged at the government waste that confronts them everywhere you turn: The abolition of the federal Education Department and the TSA is the very least they should be demanding.

Now You Know Why The Dept. of Education Wanted to Procure Shotguns

The "federal business opportunity" placed here on March 8, 2010 was for 27 shotguns for the Dept. of Education.

They probably used them in the recent raid reported here, smashing down a family's door at six in the morning, looking for payment on delinquent student loans.

There's an old saying that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them.

Shotguns with barrels less than 18 inches long are outlawed. That's why Obama's fascist police state thugs from the Department of Education procured shotguns with 14" barrels.

Think of it as close quarters tutoring.

As we reported here, the IRS got some too, for close quarters audits, and ObamaCare insurance compliance.

Teachers Averaged $272,000 in Salary Under Obama's Stimulus Bill

Stimulus funds preserved 367,524 teacher jobs in 2009-2010, and the amount spent on saving these education-related jobs in the nation's public schools was nearly $100 billion, according to a story in The Baltimore Sun which relies on data from the US Department of Education.

That's about $272,000 for each teacher. Wow. Those must be some kind of wonderful teachers.

That also means taxpayers all across America ended up on the hook for the salaries of about 7,350 teachers per state.

Formerly these teachers were paid directly from local property tax revenues, not borrowed funds, but these revenues have been in dramatic decline due to the crash in the housing market and due to skyrocketing unemployment and home foreclosures.

It is highly unlikely that more stimulus funds are on the way, and it is highly unlikely that property tax revenues will be raised easily in this economy, so isn't it time for the teachers in Wisconsin to pack it in already and quit the illegal strike?

They should be thankful just to have a job.

Wisconsin Teachers Haven't Earned Their Very Generous Pay and Benefits

As the regime itself admits:

In 1998, according to the U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin public school eighth graders scored an average of 266 out of 500 on the NAEP reading test. In 2009, Wisconsin public school eighth graders once again scored an average of 266 out of 500 on the NAEP reading test. Meanwhile, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil expenditures from $4,956 per pupil in 1998 to 10,791 per pupil in 2008. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator the $4,956 Wisconsin spent per pupil in 1998 dollars equaled $6,546 in 2008 dollars. That means that from 1998 to 2008, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil spending by $4,245 in real terms yet did not add a single point to the reading scores of their eighth graders and still could lift only one-third of their eighth graders to at least a “proficient” level in reading. ...


Nationwide, only 30 percent of public school eighth graders earned a rating of “proficient” or better in reading, and the average reading score on the NAEP test was 262 out of 500.

More here.