Fix K-12 Schools And Diversity College Admission Preferences Will Not Be Needed

My comment to The Wall Street Journal article, "SAT to Give Students ‘Adversity Score’ to Capture Social and Economic Background: New score comes as college admissions decisions are under scrutiny" by Douglas Belkin | Graphics by Elbert Wang:

The focus on college admissions hides the true problem of the failure to teach in inner city, union run, government public schools. Without skills in basic reading comprehension, basic mathematics and logical reasoning (what SAT measures), students admitted through diversity will either fail to graduate college or gravitate to the easiest majors. While it is easy to blame environment and parents, standards to become a teacher have declined over the years. NYS teacher test has a score range of 15-75. The passing absolute score for certification for grades 1-6 is 46 (equivalent to 61 percent on a 100 based scaled); English and Math grades 5-9 and grades 7-12 passing absolute scores are 38 (equivalent to 51 percent). When our teachers are barely understanding the subjects they are teaching, how can our inner city, low income, disadvantaged kids be expected to learn to read and do basic math? Fix k-12. De-unionize to allow firing of teachers. Allow school choice. College admission solved.

Source for NYS Teacher certification passing scores.

Job Opening Excess Does Not Mean The US Needs Additional Labor

My published comment to The Wall Street Journal, Opinion, "Help Wanted in the U.S.A.: More guest workers would ease the growing labor shortage." by The Editorial Board:

The existence of [excess] job openings does not equate to a need for additional labor. There will always be marginal businesses that do not have the funds to invest in equipment, that are profitable and exist only if labor is very cheap. Keeping labor costs low by importing more labor leads to a misallocation of resources into unsustainable businesses that are unneeded, inefficient and have artificially low product prices. When the WWII Bracero guest migrant agricultural worker program, which existed from 1942 to 1964, ended in 1964, farming equipment replaced the lost workers without a loss of output. Additionally, as workers gain experience, they move into higher productivity jobs at higher wages at the same or different firms. An unfillable opening at the lower wage previous job is a signal to the employer that its products and processes are inefficient and lack needed added consumer value to allow the payment of a competitive wage. Importing cheap labor distorts capital investment.

Every Banana Republic Has A Bill Of Rights: Every American Generation Has A Vocal Minority That Considers Itself Doomed To Live In An Age Of Constitutional Degeneracy.

From The Wall Street Journal, "The Culture That Sustains America’s Constitution: Without it, checks and balances are barricades of foam and counterweights of butterfly’s breath." By Joseph Tartakovsky, July 2, 2018:

"Every banana republic has a Bill of Rights," Justice Antonin Scalia told a Senate committee in 2011 [See embedded video below]. Written guarantees are meaningless without a culture to sustain them. Russia’s Constitution purports to secure the freedoms of speech and press, but Muscovites shrugged in 2001 when Vladimir Putin seized the last independent television network. Imagine if the White House swallowed up Fox News, CNN and MSNBC, one after another. Americans may bicker over “fake news,” but an attempt at censorship like that would unite us in virtuous rage.

Every American generation has a vocal minority that considers itself doomed to live in an age of constitutional degeneracy. The supposed fall from purity began about 600 days into the Constitution’s life, when the Virginia Legislature, in November 1790, denounced George Washington’s financial policies as constitutionally blasphemous. But Americans chose to cannonade each other with pamphlets, not artillery. And so the orderly transitions of power went on, one after another, like a never-ending football game in which the parties eternally gain and lose yardage.

Constitutionalism is not a mere institutional form but a culture—a set of sentiments, habits and assumptions, a permeating spirit that animates an otherwise lifeless paper scheme. Without this instinctive loyalty, the Constitution’s checks and balances are barricades of foam and counterweights of butterfly’s breath. It is not in having a constitution that our strength lies, but in cherishing it. So long as we keep the faith, our Constitution will be displaced no sooner than an ant tips over the Statue of Liberty.

Video of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, "Opening Statement on American Exceptionalism to a Senate Judiciary Committee" delivered October 5, 2011, Washington, DC:



Full transcript follows of above video from American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee:

I'm happy to be back in front of the Judiciary Committee, where I started this pilgrimage.

I am going to get even more fundamental than my good friend and colleague. Like him, I speak to students, especially law students but also college students and even high school students, quite frequently about the Constitution because I feel that we're not teaching it very well.

I speak to law students from the best law schools -- people, presumably, especially interested in the law and I ask them, "How many of you have read the Federalist Papers?" And a lot of hands will go up. [And I say], "No, not just Number 48 and the big ones. How many of you have read the Federalist Papers cover to cover?" Never more than about 5%.

And that is very sad, especially if you're interested in the Constitution. Here's a document that says what the Framers of it thought they were doing. It's such a profound exposition of political science that it is studied in political science courses in Europe. And yet, we have raised a generation of Americans who are not familiar with it.

So, when I speak to these groups the first point I make -- and I think it's even a little more fundamental then the one that Stephen [Breyer] has just put forward. I ask them, "What do you think is the reason that America is such a free country?" "What is it in our Constitution that makes us what we are?"

And I guarantee you that the response I will get -- and you will get this from almost any American, including the woman that he [Justice Breyer] was talking to at the supermarket. The answer would be: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, no unreasonable searches and seizures, no quartering of troops in homes -- those marvelous provisions of the Bill of Rights.

But then I tell them, if you think that a bill of rights is what sets us apart, you're crazy. Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights. Every President for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former "Evil Empire," the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it, literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press -- big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests; and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!

Of course -- just words on paper, what our Framers would have called a parchment guarantee. And the reason is, that the real Constitution of the Soviet Union -- you think of the word "constitution," it doesn't mean a "bill"; it means "structure"; [when] you say a person has a sound "constitution," [he] has a sound "structure." The real Constitution of the Soviet Union, which is what our Framers debated that whole summer in Philadelphia in 1787 -- they didn't talk about the Bill of Rights; that was an afterthought, wasn't it? -- that Constitution of the Soviet Union did not prevent the centralization of power, in one person or in one party. And when that happens the game is over; the Bill of Rights is just what our Framers would call a parchment guarantee.

So, the real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government.

One part of it, of course, is the independence of the judiciary; but there's a lot more. There are very few countries in the world, for example, that have a bicameral legislature. Oh, England has a House of Lords, for the time being, but the House of Lords has no substantial power; they can just make the [House of] Commons pass a bill a second time. France has a senate -- it's honorific. Italy has a senate -- it's honorific. Very few countries have two separate bodies in the legislature equally powerful. That's a lot of trouble, as you gentlemen doubtless know, to get the same language through two different bodies elected in a different fashion.

Very few countries in the world have a separately elected chief executive. Sometimes I go to Europe to talk about separation of powers, and when I get there I find that all I'm talking about is independence of the judiciary, because the Europeans don't even try to divide the two political powers, the two political branches -- the legislature and the chief executive. In all of the parliamentary countries the chief executive is the creature of the legislature. There's never any disagreement between them and the prime minister, as there is sometimes between you and the President. When there's a disagreement, they just kick them out. They have a no confidence vote, a new election, and they get a prime minister who agrees with the legislature.

And the Europeans look at this system and they say, well, it passes one house [and] it doesn't pass the other house; sometimes the other house is in the control of a different party; it passes both, and then this President, who has a veto power, vetoes it. And they look at this and they say, "Ah, it is gridlock." [in faux foreign accent of indistinct origin]

And I hear Americans saying this nowadays, and there's a lot of it going around. They talk about a "dysfunctional government" because there's disagreement. And the Framers would have said, yes, that's exactly the way we set it up. We wanted this to be power contradicting power -- because the main ill that beset us -- as Hamilton said in The Federalist when he talked about a separate Senate -- He said, yes, it seems inconvenient, but inasmuch as the main ill that besets us is an excess of legislation, it won't be so bad. This is 1787 -- he didn't know what an excess of legislation was.

So, unless Americans can appreciate that and learn to love the separation of powers, which means learning to love the gridlock, which the Framers believed would be the main protection of minorities -- the main protection. If a bill is about to pass that really comes down hard on some minority [and] they think it's terribly unfair, it doesn't take much to throw a monkey wrench into this complex system.

So, Americans should appreciate that and they should learn to love the gridlock. It's there for a reason -- so that the legislation that gets out will be good legislation.

And thus conclude my opening remarks.