Education thoughts

Education has been on my radar screen, certainly at least since mid-November, when the Red for Ed movement was able to mount a "day of action" in numbers sufficient to get a lot of Indiana school districts closed for the day:

More than 100 school districts will be closed Tuesday as teachers and public education supporters are expected to flood the Indiana Statehouse on the day lawmakers return to ceremonially begin the 2020 legislative session. 

More than 13,000 people – the majority of them teachers – have registered to attend the Indiana State Teachers Association’s Red for Ed Action Day. The state’s largest teachers union called on its members to take a personal day to lobby state lawmakers for better pay, among other things. 

So many teachers requested the day off that districts across the state decided to close or call for an “e-learning day,” when students stay home and get school assignments online. So far, 117 districts have opted to close. Others are to make a decision in the coming days.

More than half a million kids will be out of school, about 45% of the state's public school students.  

It's not like education funding hasn't been going up for years. But teachers feel their pay is still still increasing at an unsatisfactory rate:

ISTA has three goals for the upcoming legislative session. It wants to see the state make significant progress toward raising teacher pay. Indiana lags neighboring states in average pay and has some of the slowest wage growth of all teachers nationwide.

Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, said last year’s budget showed lawmakers’ commitment to public schools and the educators who work in them. The budget included an annual increase in education spending of 2.5%, but many teachers were disappointed that lawmakers didn’t do anything to specifically address pay.

That frustration bubbled up over the summer at public hearings hosted by Gov. Eric Holcomb’s commission on teacher pay. That group is supposed to deliver policy recommendations to the governor and lawmakers next year before the 2021 budget session.

Smith-Margraf said the state can’t wait that long.

“Teachers are leaving the profession,” she said. “Every year we wait, this problem is going to get worse.”

A general flow of money to education is not the problem. This article, dated January 1, 2017, makes clear that education is overwhelmingly - and perennially - the biggest item in Indiana's budget:

Indiana annually spends more money on elementary and high school education than any other budget component, a trend likely to continue when the General Assembly convenes in January to determine how to spend anticipated revenue for the next two years.

Almost half of every tax dollar collected by the state, totaling nearly $7 billion, will be distributed during the 2016-17 academic year to a public school corporation, public charter school or through a private-school voucher to pay for the education of some 1.06 million Hoosier students.

Despite leading the nation in school choice options, the bulk of Indiana's kindergarten-through-12th grade education funding still ends up at traditional public schools, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency.

 That's continued over the years:

The legislative session could come to a close on Wednesday night with the passage of a final budget.

About 30 minutes after the two-year budget was published, Republican leadership spoke about its key points, most noticeably the education spending.

The budget would direct $700 million in new funding to public schools. It would increase current spending 2.5 percent next year and 2.5 percent in 2022.

Some Democrats are unhappy with the budget because it did not specifically guarantee that teacher’s pay will increase.

Democratic Party chairman John Zody released a statement saying:

“Governor Holcomb and Statehouse Republicans continue to disrespect hardworking Indiana teachers by delaying significant pay hikes for teachers with the slowest-growing salaries in the country. Hoosier teachers have accepted an ‘I owe u’ from Statehouse Republicans for the better part of a decade and that didn’t change this session. Empty promises don’t pay the bills. Today’s event reinforced the simple fact that Indiana Republicans don’t value teachers’ dedication enough to even give them a seat at the table.”

The governor says teachers will see an increase in their checks because of increases made to the “Teacher Appreciation Grant.” The House and Senate voted to increase the total from $30 million to $37.5 Million.

Holcomb also says they are working on a long term plan that would systematically increase pay.

After publishing the budget he released a statement saying:

“From the very beginning, my administration, the House and the Senate shared our top two priorities – passing a balanced budget and protecting our reserves that in turn protects our AAA credit rating and increasing K-12 funding as much as we possibly could. This budget proposal does both. I appreciate the hard work of all of our colleagues as we near the end of this legislative session.”

The budget now goes to the floor of the House where it is expected to be approved.

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Governor Holcomb wants to undertake a deep dive to see why more of these ever-increasing education dollars aren't going directly to teacher pay. It's a process that will take a while, but that time frame is unsatisfactory to the Red for Ed folks:

Gov. Eric Holcomb is defending his timeline to hold off on taking significant statewide action on teacher pay raises until 2021, despite calls from teachers to send more funding support to schools in 2020 when lawmakers aren’t likely to open the state budget.

Holcomb has said he wants Indiana among the top three states in the region for teacher salaries, and points to school funding measures passed by lawmakers in 2019 as a reason the state can wait to press forward with budget items until 2021. That includes a $150 million boost to help schools pay off teacher pension debt, and a slight bump in tuition support. 

“This is a massive step forward, but we have more steps to take,” he says.

Teachers unions and Democratic lawmakers have called for more statewide action on teacher pay during the next legislative session since Holcomb unveiled his 2020 agenda in early December. Sen. Tim Lanane (D-Anderson) called Holcomb’s plans “disappointing” in a statement shortly after the governor’s 2020 agenda announcement.

But Holcomb says he wants to know more about the ways school money gets to teachers’ salaries before adding even more dollars to the mix.

“And then now going into this next year we’re going to see where all those - where the gap remains,” he says.

Holcomb and other Republican leaders have called school funding levels through the latest state budget “historic,” though some schools under the state’s formula will receive less funding than the previous budget, or receive increases that fail to keep up with inflation rates. Lawmakers have also started looking at revising the complexity index that provides more funding to schools serving populations of at-risk students. 

Some schools have already been able to offer significant pay raises with the help of local tax referendum measures, including Indianapolis Public Schools.

The governor’s Teacher Compensation Commission has hosted three meetings to receive public input about how the state can raise teachers pay, and will make recommendations to lawmakers and the governor ahead of the 2021 session.

Strikes me as the responsible way to proceed. There's lots of gravy flowing to the districts. Directing it properly is the next order of business, isn't it? Do these unionized teachers want the legislature to just pass a teacher pay increase isolated from all other factors? As Holcomb says, the state has to protect its credit rating to ensure that it can continue to be so generous regarding education.

Some districts are looking into property tax referendums to address the situation:

Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation (BCSC) Superintendent Dr. Jim Roberts gave a presentation to the board on Monday evening regarding the $9.3 million per year referendum he wants the board to approve at the January 13 meeting. The property tax referendum would go on the May 5 election ballot. About two-thirds of the money garnered from the proposed tax increase each year would go to raises for teachers.

Roberts said that state funding to BCSC has been reduced by $46 million since 2009. Property tax cap losses the corporation has experienced hampers the ability to purchase buses each year in line with the goal of having a fleet no more than 12 years old. He noted the rise in health insurance and the fact BCSC is hiring 76 new teachers per year, a sign of a retention challenge, as reasons more funds are needed.

The referendum calls for a property tax rate increase of $0.1950 per $100 of assessed value. This would amount to an increased property-tax increase of $9.74 per month for the average homeowner.

I understand that graduation rates are not the final word on the quality of the education product, but in 2019, only one state - New Jersey - cracked the 90 percent threshold, with the national average being 84.6% for the 2016-17 school year. 

Maybe there are some useful metrics of a cultural-and-civic-literacy nature worth examining.

This number is not encouraging:

A new survey reveals just 37 percent of Americans can name their congressional representative, and just over half know their congressman’s party affiliation.

On April 24, Haven Insights surveyed 575 American adults about their civic literacy.

Haven Insights discovered only 37 percent of those polled could name their congressional district's representative, while 63 could not. Out of all Americans polled, a little more than half (56 percent) could name their representative's party affiliation.

Broken down by political ideology, conservatives fared better than liberals: 46 percent knew their representative’s name, and 62 percent knew their representative’s party affiliation.

By contrast, only 33 percent of liberals knew their representative’s name, and 57 percent knew their representative’s political party affiliation.

It seems that post-America has been shooting quite a few of its citizens through the education pipeline without substantive results in at least a few key areas:

Many people who live in the United States are “alarmingly ignorant of America’s history and heritage,” according to a new poll.

The poll found, for example, that 10 percent of American college graduates incorrectly think celebrity television judge Judith Sheindlin, known as “Judge Judy,” is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The poll, which was conducted in August of 2015, surveyed both college graduates and the general public and found many were lacking some basic knowledge about the U.S.

For example, only 20.6 percent of Americans were able to identify James Madison as the father of the Constitution, with more than 60 percent naming Thomas Jefferson, who was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence.

College graduates only scored marginally better.

The survey also found that roughly 60 percent of college graduates couldn’t correctly name a requirement for the ratification of a constitutional amendment, and 40 percent didn’t know Congress has the constitutional authority to declare war.

Not even half know that the Senate oversees presidential impeachments.

“These were not isolated findings,” said the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, which conducted the survey.

“A 2012 ACTA survey found that less than 20 [percent] of American college graduates could accurately identify the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation, less than half could identify George Washington as the American general at Yorktown ((Virginia)), and only 42 [percent] knew that the Battle of the Bulge occurred during World War II.”

ACTA found in another recent survey that of over 1,100 liberal arts colleges and universities, only 18 percent require a course in American history or government.

“When surveys repeatedly show that college graduates do not understand the fundamental processes of our government and the historical forces that shaped it, the problem is much greater than a simple lack of factual knowledge,” said ACTA. “It is a dangerous sign of civic disempowerment.”

ACTA describes itself as an “independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America's colleges and universities.”

In light of all this, I found the way this recent piece by Jennifer C. Berkshire at The Nation framed  the nature of the factions interested in particular approaches to education telling:

 For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.

I'm amused by the way "GOP free-marketeers" is slipped in there as if it were some kind of niche group, like it was some little bunch of people preoccupied with some kinky and elusive vision, much like those overthinking third-way Democrats.

The thrust of the piece is that, gosh darn it, those who want to strengthen the stranglehold the teachers' unions and advocates of what are conventionally thought of as "public schools"  have on the whole apparatus are up against some obstacles that strike them as very strange - such as inner-city blacks who like the idea of school choice:

“Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools,” was the headline of a recent New York Times story, prominently displayed on the front page. The reporters cite long charter waitlists in cities and recent polling showing a widening racial divide over charter schools—white voters’ approval of charters has plummeted in the age of DeVos, while Black and Latino approval of the schools has held steady. 

Berkshire goes on to point up where this is heading: arguments over using tax dollars to fund religion-based education, or other deviations from the standard that purely public education advocates have established in their own minds and would love to impost on the entire populace.

Of course, Trump's selection of Betsy DeVos as education secretary - a great move, the greatness of which the Very Stable Genius surely has no comprehension of, as is characteristic of the laudable policy and personnel moves in his administration - has inflamed the public-and-unionized education lobby in this country. The outrage centers on her focus on school choice and charter schools.

And that side of the debate cannot provide a compelling argument for why we should find Mrs. DeVos's focus objectionable.

What's wrong with the idea of charter schools and competition? Charter schools, at least in states in which they are subject to quick closure if they are underperforming, are compelled to offer a top-quality product. 

If the goal is really to send yearly swaths of citizens out into the world equipped with truly essential knowledge as well as some tools for exercising discernment, reflection and inspired civic and economic engagement, then why not unflinchingly look at what's working best around the country?

You know where this is going. Why not throw education completely open to free-market conditions?

Seriously, why not?

An answer one is starting to get these days is that education is a "public good," like roads.

Oh, no, it's not. The education of an individual human being is foremost among the ways in which that human being's parents can ensure the transmission of their values and their worldview. A parent has one shot - about an eighteen-year-window - in which to instill an understanding of the world that the parent feels responsible for ensuring the flourishing thereof. The alternative is a government-imposed lens for viewing human existence that, in the case of public-school education, has come to embody all manner of silly and destructive features. Here in my own Indiana city, the local Human Rights Commission is working aggressively to get the New York Times's 1619 Project, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance program, into local classrooms. This is not universally embraced in our community.

The argument is made that taxpayers should not have to finance education that, for example, includes immersion in a particular religion.

Fair enough. How about we dismantle the whole public-education apparatus, and save those taxpayers a whole lot of money which they can then use to educate their kids in a competitive market?

I know, it sounds outlandish by 2020 standards. So we will continue with these vague measures like sort-of-public-but-not-really schools and rancorous debates over proper use of state funds and nothing will really get resolved.

And meanwhile the post-American public's understanding of the civilizational underpinnings that have made its life so unprecedentedly great will recede ever further into the mists of a time when people understood how to determine if something was worthwhile.

A Democrat governor vetoes four pro-life bills his state's legislature had passed

Seriously? America's Dairyland opted for this guy over Scott Walker? Did they know they'd be getting an enthusiast for the extermination of fetal Americans?

Democrat Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers vetoed four pro-life bills that were passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature.

Gov. Evers announced the vetoes last Friday, rejecting Assembly Bills 179, 180, 182, and 183 in their entirety. The legislature is not expected to be able to override any of the vetoes.  

“Everyone should have access to quality, affordable healthcare, and that includes reproductive healthcare,” stated Evers on his official Twitter account following his vetoes.

“Politicians shouldn’t be in the business of interfering with decisions made between patients and their healthcare providers.”

Earlier this month, the Wisconsin Legislature sent four bills to the governor. One of which, AB 179, or the “Wisconsin Born Alive Requirements Bill,” would have required a healthcare provider to help any baby born after a failed abortion.

Memo to Wisconsin voters: Don't vote for a Republican legislature and then hamstring it. People who aren't born yet - and even some who are - get killed that way.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

As if Illinois didn't already have enough self-erected barriers to economic recovery:

After a heated debate, calls of racism, and shouting, the Illinois state House of Representatives voted to require all publicly held companies in the state to have at least one woman and one African-American on the company's corporate board.

State Rep. Chris Welch’s bill, which passed Friday, would require any publicly-traded company headquartered in the state to have at least one woman and at least one African-American on its corporate boards starting in 2021.

“No later than the close of the 2020 calendar year, a publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation's SEC 10-K form, are located in Illinois shall have a minimum of one female director and one African American director on its board of directors,” according to the text of the bill. It would allow boards to expand to meet the requirements.

It would require the Secretary of State to keep an online list of corporations that would show if a company is in compliance with the law.

The bill would also impose fines up to $300,000 for failure to comply.

Obviously, the primary layer of wrongness here is that of government telling private organizations how to conduct their affairs (something made possible by government having already gotten its foot in the door with measures like the minimum wage and the gathering momentum for paid family leave).

Then there's the plain fact that Leftists have no interest in a color-blind society or treating people as qualified or not for particular functions without regard to gender.

Most sewers of Leftism in post-America are found on the coasts. How did the Midwest wind up with such a fetid repository of all that is rotten?

 

Can Indiana reverse its recent flirtation with narcissistic, infantile delusion?

LITD recently - I'll check into exactly where; I think it was part of a roundup - noted that the Indiana BMV has started granting license applicants the option of identifying as something other than what they actually are (male or female).

Some other states have done this, too, as have some private businesses, such as United Airlines, so Indiana's moves don't occur in a vacuum.

But this one may not be a done deal:

Some lawmakers, however, are already having second thoughts. (CBS Chicago)

Republican Rep. Matt Hostettler filed an amendment to a senate bill Tuesday that would have eliminated the option. The amendment was ultimately not called up for a vote.

A different bill that passed out of committee Wednesday would make it harder to prove a new gender identity, requiring applicants to change their birth certificates first.

“I don’t think I need to prove that I go by an X gender,” Dutour said. “Nobody has asked me to prove that I go by an ‘F’ gender before.”

It would be shocking if Indiana actually mustered the votes to roll this back. Once states start drinking this particular Koolaid it’s hard to kick the habit. But unless we’re just going to throw out the science books entirely, it’s at least worth the effort to try. 

Our local state legislatures make themselves available to the public on the last Monday morning of every month in a forum called Third House. I'm going to go tomorrow and see that this gets discussed. I know our districts's representative personally and know he and his wife to be solid Christians and people with their heads on straight generally. I'm pretty certain he's on board with what Hostettler is initiating, but I'd like to be sure.

One of the most recurring themes in punditry these days is the attempt to prove that our nation is either experiencing a renaissance  or plunging into an ever-more dire situation.

The first camp likes to point to the unemployment rate, the shift in the ideological tilt of the federal courts and the ubiquitousness of technological advancements that would have astounded any citizen even twenty years ago.

These two camps overlap somewhat with political leanings, but not completely. Particularly among those holding the second view, what might, for want of convenient shorthand, be called "social conservatives" point to developments such as the subject of this post, along with the recently passed legalization of infanticide in New York and Vermont, as well as rampant drug addiction, declining church attendance and the disappearance of the study of history in American education as substantiation for their position. Lefties also can be found sounding the alarm, however, albeit for markedly different reasons. Their inability to accept the reality of a Trump presidency drives their sense that the landscape is darkening.

LITD is, of course, of the first camp. And among the social ills cited in the paragraph above, this business about perpetuating the utter delusion that gender is fluid or that there are more than two genders may be the most destructive. There is nothing more basic than one's maleness or femaleness. It colors everything about a human being's approach to existence, whether he or she thinks so or not.

Our time is nothing short of horrifying when state legislatures and major corporations are codifying this infantile fantasy and indulging not just feelings generally, but feelings utterly divorced from reality. There is no counting on an assertion of objective reality about anything else once that has become a norm.

So, yes, I'll be in the audience tomorrow morning. It's in seemingly low-key settings such as that that the struggle to rescue the nation's soul is either won or lost.

Ohio has the back of people who aren't born yet

Praise be to God:

Earlier this month, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling and upheld a 2016 Ohio law that rerouted approximately $1.3 million in state funding from abortion facilities (like Planned Parenthood) to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). As Live Action News previously reported, “… Planned Parenthood… successfully managed to get an injunction blocking the law, with U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett ruling that stripping the abortion giant of its taxpayer funding would cause ‘irreparable injury.'” The Sixth Circuit disagreed, with Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing, “Private organizations do not have a constitutional right to obtain governmental funding to support their activities. The state… has no obligation to pay for a woman’s abortion. Case after case establishes that a government may refuse to subsidize abortion services.”

Now, Ohio has followed through with its original plan and has defunded Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations in the state. The Associated Press reports that the Ohio Department of Health “notified recipients and contractors Thursday that it will end that funding within a month to comply with the law, unless the court delays the effect of its ruling as Planned Parenthood requested.”

Once in a while, something goes right in this broken world.

Two disparate Hoosier takes on the subject of hate crimes

In the wake of the Indiana legislature doing the right thing and putting the kibosh on the bill that would have spelled out a bunch of demographic classifications that would have made for additional punishment when one citizen harmed or killed another, there has, as was going to be inevitable, backlash from the Left.

Tom Linebarger, CEO of Cummins, a Fortune 200 maker of engines, gen sets, turbochargers and other power-generation products, has weighed in, along with the CEOs of Salesforce, Lily,  Old National Bank, Simon, IU Health, and the NCAA:

Cummins Chairman and CEO Tom Linebarger is among 22 leaders in Indiana asking Statehouse legislators to add protected classes back to Senate Bill 12, which is a hate crimes bill being considered this session.

The Indiana Senate passed the bill last week, but removed specific protections for race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, disability national origin, ancestry, sexual orientation and age.

In the letter, which was also signed by David A Ricks, chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly, Bob Stutz, CEO for Salesforce and Bob Jones, chairman and CEO of Old National Bancorp, the leaders said “the bill in its current form is unacceptable, unenforceable and harmful to the state’s economy.”

The letter asks that the bill be strengthened by adding the classes back in the legislation to establish a strong bias crimes law in Indiana. Indiana is one of only five states without a hate crimes law.

Also signing the letter were David Simon, chairman of Simon Property Group, Gail K. Boudreaux, president and CEO of Anthem, Dennis Murphy, president and CEO of Indiana University Health, Jeff Smulyan, chairman of Emmis Communications Corp. and Mark Emmert, president of the NCAA.

Now, for the sensible viewpoint, put forth in a Resurgent piece from last September by Peter Heck, who teaches high school social studies in Kokomo, Indiana and used to host a radio talk show, and who contributes regularly to The Resurgent.

I'm going to paste the entire piece, since his argument is so cogent and important:

There’s a situation going down in my home state of Indiana that provides a good learning opportunity for people of sound mind around the country. For years, left-leaning social activists have been attempting to push “hate crimes”legislation through Indiana’s part-time legislature and onto the Governor’s desk. To this point it hasn’t happened, largely because for well over a decade we haven’t had a Governor who would have been silly enough to sign it.

In late July, however, vandals scrawled Nazi graffiti on the walls of a Jewish synagogue in an Indianapolis suburb and everything changed. The state’s Republican Governor, Eric Holcomb, almost immediately issued a call for lawmakers to rectify this grievous act by enacting a new statewide “hate crimes” or “bias crimes” law. Left-leaning media, including the state’s largest newspaper The Indianapolis Star that has been editorializing in favor of this action for years, has amplified Holcomb’s request. Despite supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, it is likely that the upcoming session will see Republicans pass a law that they once understood was unnecessary at best, dangerous at worst.

Here’s why I say that:

1. Hate crimes laws are, despite having been enacted in a vast majority of states, objectively unconstitutional. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution demands equal protection under the law for all citizens. That means the punishment inflicted on a criminal who kills me is not to be gentler nor harsher than if that criminal killed you. To enhance the penalty for killing one class of people is to provide them more protection under the law, not equal protection.
2. Hate crimes laws are, despite their fanfare and appeals to emotion, completely unnecessary and in many ways harmful to justice. Take Indiana as but one example. Indiana law already permits a judge to take into consideration the personal characteristics of a victim that motivated a crime, and then enhance a penalty accordingly. Hate Crimes laws actually limit the ability of a judge to do this. For instance, if an old man wearing a veteran’s cap was assaulted because of his service in the military, an Indiana judge today could enhance the penalty for the attacker due to the heinous circumstances of his motivation to commit the crime. But “military service” is not a protected characteristic under Holcomb’s proposed hate crimes law; thus, if enacted, certain groups of victims of these bias crimes would be rendered vulnerable because they failed to make the government’s list of favorites.

Given these realities, plus the inconvenient truth that no hate crime statute would have prevented the Nazi graffiti at that synagogue, we can fairly surmise that this entire push is – like most progressive causes – about symbolism, not substance. It’s pandering, political grandstanding at its finest. Which is one reason why it is so depressing that Christians, who have been commanded by Christ to exercise discernment in ways the world does not, fall for this –particularly when there is often a nefarious element to these legal campaigns that threatens people of faith.

It is no secret that the loudest promoters of hate crimes laws are often the same social activists who champion so-called “non-discrimination” laws that include their favorite five words: “sexual orientation and gender identity.” Once codified, those laws don’t do anything to prevent discrimination, but they do provide a legal method through which progressives can harass, bully, financially intimidate, and exact debilitating punitive fines and punishments on people whose conscience offends their agenda.

When states or municipalities balk at adding those words to discrimination statutes in order to prevent that kind of harassment (like what Jack Phillips at Masterpiece Cakeshop is unconscionably having to endure in Colorado), activists slip them into the law code through channels like hate crimes bills. Codified as a legal “class” in one section of the law, it is judicially predictable to see it extrapolated outward to others – like non-discrimination.

It’s the camel nose under the tent, all for no moral or legal good whatsoever. Yet in Indiana, the presidents of six of the state’s leading Christian universities and colleges – The University of Notre Dame, Indiana Wesleyan University, Anderson University, Grace College and Seminary, St. Mary’s College, University of Saint Francis – all signed a letter supporting Governor Holcomb’s foolish appeal. 

Christian schools whose leadership calls to limit and deny justice, while providing a springboard to government harassment and censure of Christian citizens. Righteous discernment indeed.

This is what we are up against. All those corporations, colleges and universities have fallen in on the absolutely wrong side of an issue with grave implications for basic human freedom.

Interestingly, there appeared a piece today at National Review by Jim Geraghty that says that survey data bear out that people are far more interested in whether these companies' products have value to them than how woke the companies are:

A few oddities arose in a newly released survey of consumers and their views of companies and politics. The survey asked, “How appropriate is it for a corporation to take a position on each of the following issues?” As one might expect, more than 90 percent of respondents approved of companies taking a position on less controversial topics like “hiring and training U.S. military veterans” and “fair labor standards for workers.”

Coming in dead last? “Against President Trump,” at 47 percent — behind “legalization of marijuana” at 49 percent, “transgender issues” at 58 percent.

The survey asked, “If (company) were a person, do you think it would be a Democrat, a Republican, or an independent?” Unsurprisingly, Nike was the company scored most likely to be a Democrat. But the perception of other companies is surprising, considering what those companies have actually done.

Dick’s Sporting Goods scored just barely on the Republican side, which is surprising considering the company’s post-Parkland stance on gun gales (and resulting drop in earnings). Similarly, Delta Airlines scored as a Republican company, which is a little bit surprising considering the short-lived brouhaha over their quickly forgotten dropped discount for NRA members (that apparently only 13 people used anyway).

General Motors scored on the Republican side, which suggests the entirety of the bailout and “Government Motors” debate has been forgotten by the public. And the company that ranked the second most “Republican” in responses was the department store Nordstrom . . .  which stands out as a company specifically denounced by President Trump for dropping his daughter’s line of luxury apparel. (Ivanka Trump closed up her fashion brand last year.)

The company perceived to be most “Republican” is the bank- and financial- services company J.P. Morgan Chase. Most years, the company’s employees donate slightly more to Democrats than Republicans. In 2012, Obama called them “one of the best-managed banks there is.” Asked about his political views earlier this year, CEO Jamie Dimon said, “My heart is Democratic, but my brain is kind of Republican.”

Facebook is perceived as the second-most Democratic company, despite a considerable number of online activist Democrats believing that the company let Russia manipulate the election through various ads. Starbucks is fourth-most Democratic, which isn’t enormously surprising, but the company has certainly attracted the ire of progressive activists over the years.

Target is considered a Democratic company, Walmart is considered a Republican company; this probably has to do with the short-lived “transgender bathroom” policy announcement of 2016. Beyond that, Target’s policies aren’t all that distinguishable from Walmart’s. There is one dollar’s worth of difference in the two companies’ minimum wages. Both companies stand accused of using contractors who hire undocumented immigrants and pay them a pittance, and Target settled a class-action discrimination lawsuit last year.

The authors of the analysis of the survey declare, “There is reward for companies that take action on political and social issues, and a penalty for inaction.” But I think the evidence points to the opposite conclusion. I think the clearer lesson is that most consumers quickly forget about most of these controversies that kick up like a summer thunderstorm – they appear quickly, suddenly get very intense, and then disappear quickly, and almost everyone forgets about them. Despite all the loud talk of boycotts against Starbucks, Nike, and Facebook, most people just want to drink coffee, wear sneakers, and see which high-school classmates got fat.

The perception of a company’s politics often has only a nominal connection to what the company actually does. State Street, the financial-services company that paid for and positioned “Fearless Girl,” the statue of a young woman challenging Wall Street’s “Charging Bull,” agreed to pay $5 million in a settlement over allegations that it paid female employees less than their male counterparts.

A lot of people, led by a far-too-credulous media that is eager for clicks and controversy, are gullible when it comes to corporate image-shaping and public relations. Nike figured out how to get Americans to stop worrying about sweatshops. Patagonia realized its supply chain had been profiting off human trafficking, forced labor, and exploitation.

Outspoken progressive activism is the quickest and easiest way to buy your way back into the good graces of certain corners of society. Witness Michael Cohen this week, as well as James Comey’s reinventing himself from the favorite election scapegoat of many Democrats to a leader of #TheResistance.

Which is not to say we can ignore all this woke activism. For one thing, the social-justice jackboots are very loud and persistent.

It would be folly to sit idly by and cede the floor to them.

 

 

In 2019, the confluence of ideology and geography come into even sharper relief

Economist Stephen Moore broadened his realm of consideration beyond his customary focus in a recent Townhall column to deliver a truly upside-the-head speculation that, in this year of buzz-saw cacophony, bitterness and polarization, can no longer be dismissed as the stuff of fantasy.

To wit, he wonders how much more post-America can take before it splits apart:

In America, the deepening and perhaps irreversible red state-blue state schism deserves immediate attention. We as a nation are more divided on ideological, cultural, economic and geographical lines than at any time since the Civil War. Look at the electoral map from recent elections.

In most of the South and the Mountain States -- red America -- liberal Democrats are virtually nonexistent in state government. In blue America -- California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island -- Republicans have been wiped off the map. Today, there are only two states that have a divided legislature.

I hope that we can bridge our differences and come together as one nation. This 50-state union is what has made America the unrivaled superpower economically and militarily. We benefit mightily from being the largest free trade zone in the world and from our common bond of freedom.

But it's not unimaginable that the polar opposite visions of where America should be headed economically, culturally and morally can't be repaired. I hope I'm wrong, but prudence dictates we start thinking of what might happen if liberal and conservative America grow so polarized that they can't peaceably coexist in the future.

For some concrete evidence that the time has come to ponder this possibility, I ask any LITD readers living in flyover country rather than coastal / urban areas what they make of recent speeches by New York City mayor Bill DeBlasio and newly sworn in California governor Gavin Newsom. Are the visions each of them outlining something you'd tolerate where you live?

DeBlasio says this:

New York City will begin guaranteeing comprehensive health care to every single resident regardless of someone's ability to pay or immigration status, an unprecedented plan that will protect the more than half-a-million New Yorkers currently using the ER as a primary provider, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. 

It's not health insurance, his spokesman clarified after the surprise announcement on MSNBC Tuesday morning. 

"This is the city paying for direct comprehensive care (not just ERs) for people who can't afford it, or can't get comprehensive Medicaid — including 300,000 undocumented New Yorkers," spokesman Eric Phillips tweeted. 

Newsom came out of the gate with a confrontational tone:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was sworn in Monday and immediately drew sharp battle lines with President Donald Trump, pledging to enact “progressive, principled” policies as the antidote to the White House’s “corruption and incompetence.”

“People’s lives, freedom, security, the water we drink, the air we breathe — they all hang in the balance,” Newsom, 51, declared to a crowd of hundreds packed into a tent outside the Capitol.

Newsom took the helm as California’s 40th governor with a speech laced with bold pronouncements about California’s values and the direction he envisions for the nation’s most populous state.

But there were few specifics on how he’ll get there. He never mentioned Trump by name, but said the president’s administration is “hostile to California’s values and interests” and blasted plans to construct a wall along the nation’s border with Mexico.

“The country is watching us, the world is watching us. The future depends on us, and we will seize this moment,” he said. 

Maybe he didn't offer a lot of specifics, but he's on record as advocating an aggressively more pervasive role for government in people's lives:

While touting the California Dream and strong economy, Newsom also acknowledged the state has problems, from a homelessness crisis to a gulf between the state’s wealthiest and poorest residents to failing schools, all of which he called “moral imperatives.” Beyond Trump, he pledged to take on drug companies, the gun lobby, polluters and payday lenders.

Newsom praised Brown, a longtime family friend, but indicated he would strike out a separate path from the fiscal restraint Brown made a hallmark of his last eight years in office. Brown sometimes angered legislative Democrats by rejecting big-ticket social spending items.

Newsom, meanwhile, already has pledged to expand access to early childhood education, reduce the cost of community college and extend family leave. He suggested Brown’s method of resisting more spending in favor of saving needed rethinking.

The lines have been drawn. This vision is utterly foreign to most people in the hinterland.

How do you bridge a divide this deep?

Wednesday roundup

This one turned out well, but that Equality Commission still needs to be dismantled:

Asher's Bakery is a Christian-owned establishment in Northern Ireland, UK. In 2014, Gareth Lee, a gay rights activist, ordered a cake from the bakery with the slogan "Support Gay Marriage." The bakery declined the order. Mr. Lee immediately sued the bakery claiming discrimination against him based on his sexual orientation and political beliefs. 

For the last four years, the case has made its way through the British courts system. Twice, lower courts ruled in favor of the gay activist, and ordered Asher's Bakery to bake the cake. 

Twice, the bakers appealed, arguing that they were not discriminating against anyone, that they would never bake a cake which violated their religious beliefs for anyone, regardless of sexual orientation or political belief.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled unanimously in favor of the bakers, noting that no one can be forced to express political opinions that they do not wish to express. 

While this ruling is a victory for liberty and freedom of religion, it serves as a a particularly ugly omen for Christian business owners. You see, while Christians and conservatives have become accustomed to well-organized and executed legal assaults brought by radical gay activists, the scariest element of this case is that of the funding behind Gareth Lee's lawsuit.

While the owners of Asher's Bakery was forced to pay £ 200,000 in legal fees over the past four years, Mr. Lee had his legal fees completely covered by the British Taxpayer. Throughout the entire suit, Mr. Lee's case was funded by the Equality Commission of Northern Ireland, a publicly operated organization. Therefore, in this case, the government itself was paying for an assault on the basic right of Freedom of Conscience. 

Great Kevin Williamson piece at NRO entitled "Why the Left Won't take Up Originalism." 

Confirming your detection of the odor of hard leftism wafting off Google, one exec said this:

"Abolish the Senate," tweeted Ken Norton, a former project manager at Google and currently a partner at GV — formerly Google Ventures — the company that directs the venture capital investments for Alphabet, Google's parent company. Norton has been at Google for 12 years.

Worse, Norton tweeted a call to action, announcing that he had donated money to a bribery scheme attempting to force Collins to vote "no" on Kavanaugh. "Match my pledge to Either Sen. Collins VOTES NO on Kavanaugh OR we fund her future opponent on [Crowdpac]!" he tweeted.

Another said this:

. . . design lead Dave Hogue infamously tweeted, "You are finished, [GOP]. You polished the final nail for your own coffins. F**K. YOU. ALL. TO. HELL."

The tweet, now deleted, concluded with yet more vitriol. "I hope the last images burned into your slimy, evil, treasonous retinas are millions of women laughing and clapping and celebrating as your souls descend into the flames," he wrote. 

He later said he should have expressed himself in a "less condemning" way. Ain't that civil of him?

The new IPCC report on the climate hangs its hat on erroneous data.

And humankind still overwhelmingly prefers normal-people energy sources to all that wind-and-solar hooey.

A most edifying IBD editorial:

For several years, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has ranked statesbased on five measures of their financial condition: cash solvency, budget solvency, the ability to meet long-term spending commitments, state spending and taxes as a share of personal income, and unfunded pension liabilities and debt.

And lest anything think that Mercatus — a free-market-oriented group — is fudging the numbers, note that the data used to compile these rankings all come from official state annual financial reports and from state actuarial reports.

For 2016, the latest year for which data are available, the top five most fiscally sound states were, in order: Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Florida and Oklahoma.

The five worst states, starting at the bottom: Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Kentucky.

Notice anything similar in these groupings? We did. All but one of the top five are solidly Republican states. All but one of the bottom five are solidly Democratic.

And this tidbit is noteworthy:

There's another commonality between the best-run and worst-run states. Taxes.

As it turns out, states in the worst fiscal shape also tend to impose the highest tax rates in the nation. In fact, six of the 10 states that consistently show up as the least fiscally solvent rank in the Top 10 for highest taxes as a share of income, according to the Tax Foundation.

Of the 10 most fiscally sound states, all but one impose below-average tax burdens on their residents. 

Great Ben Shapiro piece at Daily Wire entitled "What Do We Have In Common?"