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The deadly strike into Israel by the terror group Hamas on Oct. 7 represents a monumental failure of Israeli intelligence. But it is neither the first such mistake by governments in the modern world, nor will it be the last.
Governments are by their very nature fallible institutions. Whether dictatorship, monarchy, or democracy, all are composed of human beings and ultimately subject to the range of prejudices, egos, and preconceived notions that sooner or later push individuals to misjudge situations and make bad choices.
Warning signs had been clearly visible for many months before Hamas terrorists burst into Israel on Oct. 7. Israeli intelligence services, however, failed to see the evidence for what it was – concrete preparation for a multi-faceted terrorist strike into Israel.
Perhaps Mossad and IDF leaders were blinded to the evidence before them because they believed themselves invulnerable based on past successes. Perhaps it simply illustrates the more typical shortcomings of government intelligence services, with competing bureaucracies stovepiping their resources and intelligence so that key data is not shared on a timely basis.
Regardless of why this major failure of intelligence occurred, Israel joins a lengthy list of sometimes catastrophic intelligence blunders that have befallen nations from East to West since the advent of modern intelligence gathering capabilities in the 1940s.
One of the first and deadliest such blunders was by Soviet Union leader Josef Stalin in June 1941, when he adamantly refused to believe numerous reports, including from American intelligence services, that Hitler was readying a massive attack against Russia from the west. While Stalin’s Red Army eventually beat back the Nazi invasion, his refusal to believe accurate, pre-attack intelligence warnings cost millions of civilian and military casualties.
Later in 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor caught the Americans by surprise, despite numerous and reliable intelligence reports that the Imperial Japanese military was planning a sneak attack. Bureaucratic and inter-service rivalries, however, prevented coordinated and timely analyses.
Despite America’s eventual victory in the Pacific, that early intelligence failure cost thousands of American lives and severely limited the availability of heavy surface ships for our Navy in the early stages of the ensuing conflict.
The creation of the CIA in the immediate aftermath of WWII failed to prevent recurrent problems of intelligence agency hubris and egocentric leadership. These issues led to the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961, and several years later manifested themselves in the failure to heed intelligence warnings of an imminent and multi-front attack by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong during the Tet holiday in early 1968.
Five years later, in Oct. 1973, reliable intelligence was provided by our CIA to Israeli services that Egyptian and Syrian forces were poised to attack Israel on two fronts during the Jewish Yom Kippur holiday. Israel, however, believing its adversaries knew its defensive forces to be sufficiently strong to repeal any attacks, refused to take steps based on that intelligence and were caught unprepared.
The list of failures by intelligence services to render coordinated and timely analysis of evidence, or the refusal of policymakers to believe or act on it, is long — the failure to foresee the fall of the pro-U.S. Shah of Iran to extremist Muslim forces in 1979, the failure to predict the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that same year, the final collapse of the seemingly mighty Soviet Union in 1991, and most notably, our failure to piece together intelligence that very well could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks.
Even domestic law enforcement can fall victim to misevaluation of evidence or locking onto false predictive models. Police investigating the 2002 “D.C. Sniper” shootings fixated on a lead that a “white panel truck” was the vehicle being used by the deadly snipers. Ignoring evidence not fitting that narrative needlessly prolonged the string of murders.
Any solution to such recurrent missteps must, at a minimum, include three basic ingredients — 1) consistently good, apolitical intelligence that is gathered, analyzed, and presented to policy makers, who then 2) make national security decisions based on that product, and 3) are not punished politically for doing so.
Sadly, only rarely have we enjoyed administrations exhibiting that combination.
“Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” may have worked for Meatloaf in his 1977 hit song, but in the real world defending against terrorists and other deadly adversaries, there is nothing good about such an equation.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
In the 1972 made-for-TV movie Between Time and Timbuktu, the protagonist is transported to a world in which no one person is permitted to be superior in any way to any other person – physically or mentally. Individuals who happen to be physically stronger or more agile than others are forced to carry weights on their shoulders – “handicappers” – so they are not able to out-perform their weaker fellow citizens.
Now, a half century after author Kurt Vonnegut’s make-believe but prescient production, the federal government is punishing companies for hiring employees who are stronger and more athletic than others.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has become Uncle Sam’s handicapper enforcement arm.
One case at hand pits the EEOC, currently chaired by Democrat Charlotte Burrows, against a California moving company. The unforgivable legal sin committed by Meathead Movers that has led EEOC to file a lawsuit against it, is to hire movers who are strong and agile – precisely the qualities that would have forced such employees to don the handicappers envisioned by Vonnegut in Between Time and Timbuktu.
The primary difference between the handicappers in the 1972 movie and those now the object of the EEOC’s lawsuit against Meathead Movers, is that in the fictional account, the handicappers are physical weights, while the 2023 handicappers are statutory. The punishment sought by the EEOC against the moving company is, of course, monetary.
The EEOC initially demanded that Meathead Movers pay $15 million to settle the case – an offer the company refused. Notwithstanding the agency’s oh-so-generous subsequent offer of $5 million to withdraw its threatened action against the company, Meathead Movers declined, which precipitated the EEOC’s September lawsuit.
While most discrimination actions by EEOC are initiated via complaint filed by an employee or applicant for employment, in this case the Commission deemed the “discouragement bias” (yes, that is a real term now employed by the EEOC) inherent in the moving company’s ads seeking to hire strong, agile, and energetic individuals, to be so egregiously discriminatory that the company was targeted without any individual alleging discrimination or bias.
At a time long ago and in a land far away (say, the United States a half century ago), it would seem not only lawful but entirely reasonable for a moving company to hire individuals who exhibit the physical and mental traits necessary for the demanding work of lifting heavy loads and transporting them quickly from home or office to truck and back. No longer.
In the eyes of President Biden’s EEOC nannies, Meathead Movers’ ads impermissibly “discourage” older individuals from applying for such jobs. The fact that nothing in the company’s ads or hiring practices indicated a preference for age – only that individuals were strong, agile, and motivated – could not save it from lengthy and costly litigation.
The AARP, which formerly was known as the American Association of Retired Persons but now goes simply by the acronym “AARP,” has applauded the EEOC’s action against Meathead Movers, blasting the company for using inappropriate “stereotypes.”
Sadly, this most recent idiotic move by Uncle Sam’s nanny watchdogs at the EEOC is by no means the only example of the federal government and various state regulatory agencies working to hobble hiring practices in ways that lower or altogether remove reasonable standards for employment.
The U.S. Air Force three years ago lowered the standards for pilots because the previous requirements were deemed to limit the number of female pilots. Not to be outdone, the Army in 2022 reduced its physical fitness standards in order to bring more women and older persons into its ranks.
New York City and other state and local governments have decided that employers cannot turn away applicants because they are obese.
Even firefighting, among the most physically demanding jobs of all, is falling victim to the drive for lowered standards in order to hire a preferred class of persons, in the case of Connecticut, more women firefighters.
Restricting the ability of companies and government agencies to establish meaningful, performance-based hiring and employment standards may delight DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) zealots like the EEOC’s Charlotte Burrows. However, for those who rely on such standards as are now seen as unlawful for companies serving the public, or for government agencies protecting our country from enemies abroad or from disasters here at home, such extreme nanny-ism can be debilitating, even deadly.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
As someone who has been involved in the ups and downs of politics for many years, I am very familiar with the games politicians play, trying to show that their opponents are on the skids and headed to defeat.
And as a long-time member of the Board of Directors for the National Rifle Association, I am quite familiar with the games played by gun control advocates and their cohorts in the media, trying to convince the American public that the NRA is on the skids and headed to defeat.
Despite the wishful thinking evident in recent opinion pieces in Newsweek (“The NRA is Slowly Dying“) and Rolling Stone (“The NRA Is Cannibalizing Itself“), the 152-year-old civil liberties organization is alive and well and fulfilling its long-standing mission to protect the constitutionally guaranteed right to possess firearms in America.
The Newsweek article cites as evidence for its thesis that the NRA is “dying” the fact that its number of dues-paying members (currently more than four million) is marginally lower than in some prior years. The article also notes that because its revenues also are less robust than in some recent years, the association is “fading.”
Conveniently ignored by Newsweek’s authors, is the fact that many membership-driven organizations have seen declines in both membership and revenue since the disruptions caused in 2020 and 2021 by the COVID pandemic.
The Newsweek opinion piece correctly notes that New York Attorney General Letitia James has engaged in a more than three-year-long legal battle to destroy the NRA, which was incorporated under the Empire State’s nonprofit laws in 1871. The since-reelected AG first campaigned in 2018 on a platform that declared the NRA a “terrorist” organization that needed to be be dissolved.
Omitted from the magazine’s analysis are the significant legal costs of defending against James’ abusive litigation, essential expenditures that necessarily have forced the NRA to make adjustments in its spending priorities. Many organizations targeted by vindictive regulators have had to contend with similar situations. The NRA is hardly “cannibalizing” programs, as the Rolling Stone article claims.
Perhaps the most telling deficiency in the Newsweek opinion piece is the metric it uses to describe the NRA’s decline — the number of “legislative victories” scored in the decade the article considers the benchmark for the current predicament it claims the NRA faces. According to Newsweek, the NRA “scored 230 legislative victories” in the decade from 2003 to 2013 – including many that protected and expanded the individual right to purchase and carry handguns in numerous more restrictive states across the country.
It is, however, when the author of the “NRA-is-slowly-dying” article asserts that “such successes have become rarer in recent years” that her thesis falls apart under scrutiny. In the same number of years (10) since the author claims the NRA enjoyed legislative “successes” — that is, from 2013 to 2023 — the Association has an additional 206 legislative wins to its credit, only slightly under the 230 cited by Newsweek in the decade prior.
Noteworthy also, is the fact that the NRA’s many legislative victories — both defeating anti-firearms legislation as well as passing bills to protect and expand those important rights — have taken place in every state across the country except Massachusetts. All-in-all, hardly evidence of an advocacy organization in its death throes.
The list of these recent civil liberties victories run the gamut from defeating legislative bans that would criminalize possession of certain firearms because of their appearance, to blocking the Biden administration’s effort to defund shooting, hunting, and archery safety and education classes in schools.
Then there is the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, achieved thanks largely to the NRA’s supportive advocacy, that has dramatically strengthened the ability of firearms-rights groups to successfully challenge abusive and unconstitutional gun control laws at the state level.
The NRA message of responsible firearm ownership continues to be reflected in the facts of gun ownership in the country: the number of U.S. households with at least one firearm remains relatively constant at 45 percent, with more that 72 million firearms owners in the country, some two-thirds of whom cite personal protection and fear of crime as their primary reason for such ownership. Gun safety and ownership programs aimed at women — an education priority of the NRA — are surging.
None of this reflects evidence of a failed or weakened mission by the NRA, no matter how much its opponents wish it were otherwise.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
If the 65 million (and counting) Americans who rely on Medicare want to see this 58-year-old federally-backed insurance program continue to meet their needs, they had better contact their Member of Congress and Senators and urge them to quickly fix the outdated and unfair physician reimbursement system.
Not only does the current system, administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), greatly underpay participating physicians, but it is exacerbating workforce shortages throughout the nation’s entire healthcare system. This in turn makes it difficult for independent physicians to maintain their practices.
If national policymakers fail to address this fundamental problem, the shrinking number of doctors will serve only to fuel radical arguments for a single-payer, Medicare-for-all system favored by far-Left Democrats. This will mean the end of the Medicare system as we have known it and as it has worked well for nearly six decades.
The Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) is on a dangerously unsustainable path. For years, Medicare has failed to include annual inflationary updates for physicians. Other provider types, including inpatient and outpatient hospitals, skilled nursing centers, and hospices, all receive annual upgrades based on inflation. Physicians, however, have been forced to endure a congressionally ordered statutory freeze on payment increases until at least 2026. Even then, updates are set to resume at a minuscule 0.25 percent per year, well below the rate of runaway inflation we’ve seen under Bidenomics.
According to Medicare Trustees data, Medicare physician payments have only increased 9 percent over the past 22 years, roughly 0.4 percent per year. In that same time, the actual costs of running a medical practice increased by 47 percent, or 1.8 percent per year. Making things far worse, economy-wide inflation has risen by 73 percent, recently reaching historic levels not seen since the 1980s.
To put it mildly, Medicare payments to physicians do not go nearly as far as they once did. In fact, when taking inflation into account, Medicare physician payments actually declined by 26 percent from 2001 to 2023.
Considered together with the economic impact that the pandemic has had on our healthcare system, these reductions in payments are making it increasingly difficult for physicians to address ongoing workforce challenges. The impact this deeply flawed payment system has had on physicians nationwide – particularly in our many rural and other medically underserved communities – cannot be overstated.
As more private physician practices struggle with these burdens, more and more physicians are choosing to leave the profession entirely. Between 2021 and 2022 alone, over 71,000 physicians left Medicare – exacerbating the ongoing national healthcare workforce shortage.
Additionally, Medicare’s failure to keep up with inflation is fueling higher rates of healthcare consolidation, which threatens to increase overall costs and decrease access options for patients. That is especially true in rural communities that already struggle to access comprehensive health services. If something is not done to fix the MPFS, we likely will see more rural physician practices close at a time when we should be working to protect and expand access to healthcare in America’s rural communities.
To keep Medicare sustainable and responsive to beneficiaries’ needs, doctors must be reimbursed for the true costs of providing care in this economic climate, and not have their payments restricted by some complicated academic formula determined by Washington bureaucrats or siphoned off to pay for the consequences of consolidation and less competition in the marketplace.
Fortunately, a coalition of physician representatives in the U. S. House has introduced bipartisan legislation – the Strengthening Medicare for Patients and Providers Act (HR 2474) – that would take an important step forward to fix this broken system. The legislation would provide physicians with similar inflation-based payment updates just like the ones other Medicare providers already receive. This reasonable and much-needed solution would help put the MPFS on a more sustainable, realistic path in order to protect patient access and keep America’s physician practices strong and responsive to their communities’ needs.
Fixing the Medicare payment system now, before it further threatens the viability of physician practices and patient access to care, definitely is the smarter option to prevent more radical upheavals or the broad failure of our entire healthcare system. That is why Congress must pass HR 2474 to stabilize one of the primary pillars of our nation’s healthcare system.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
In the 14 years since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was granted what it had for decades sought — power to regulate tobacco and tobacco products — it has sought to expand its reach. One way the agency has done this is by waging a misguided, years-long crusade against e-cigarettes.
FDA’s broad tobacco mandate, overseen by its Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), is to “regulate the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect public health.” In this endeavor, the FDA claims that it “evaluates new tobacco products based on a public health standard that considers the risks and benefits of the tobacco product to the population as a whole.”
Inherent in this mission statement is the underlying goal to reduce or eliminate cigarette smoking in the United States — arguably a reasonable though certainly not universally supported point of view. What is unreasonable, however, is the FDA’s regulatory record over the past several years as measured by its stated objective.
For example, CTP has in recent years approved, without any scientific review, nearly 900 new brands of cigarettes produced by dozens of companies; new brands on top of the billions of packs of cigarettes already approved for consumers. This fact alone appears completely at odds with the parent agency’s mission.
The confusion becomes bewildering when considering that, during this same period, CTP has approved less than two dozen e-cigarette products, despite acknowledging that e-cigarettes are an effective alternative to the far more health-damaging cigarette smoking.
Simply put, e-cigarettes have not gotten a fair shake in the agency’s taxpayer-funded activities, the result (to some extent) of bad behavior by a select few companies that improperly directed their marketing to young audiences.
However, the abundant volume of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of e-cigarettes in helping adults quit or reduce their smoking is nothing short of overwhelming — evidence that has been largely ignored by CTP.
One of the most credible studies, authored by Georgetown economist Robert J. Shapiro, evaluated the strength of the evidence on e-cigarettes as an effective harm-reduction and smoking-cessation tool, puts it clearly: “The single most effective way to help people stop smoking, which kills 480,000 people per year, is to encourage them to switch to vaping, which kills no people per year.”
Shapiro who, ironically has advised Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden, goes on to say that “this is no longer a matter of serious controversy among scientists” — unless, of course, you work at the FDA.
Under CTP Director Brian King — a career bureaucrat who was the Chief Science Officer for CDC’s highly controversial COVID-19 response – the FDA has completely squashed individual choice around e-cigarette use, and instead pointedly instructs Americans to use only the pharmaceutical products that won FDA’s self-defined stamp of approval.
The CTP’s bias against e-cigarettes is evident in the fact that of the 26 million premarket tobacco product applications presented to the Center, a miniscule 23 have been granted — a clear violation of its regulatory mandate and its commitment to public health.
The FDA pays lip service to the benefits of e-cigarettes but has simply ignored the latest science on e-cigarettes, which have been found to be more effective for smoking-cessation than FDA’s approved medicines. To justify its pinched approach, the FDA repeatedly relies on the trope that “No tobacco product is safe.”
This is disappointing, but unsurprising. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, government agencies and institutions, including the NIH and the CDC (with King as its Chief Science Officer), have sought to justify their own existence and exercise control over the American public. Mask mandates, and the lie that receiving the COVID jab will provide immunity and prevent you from passing the infirmity to others, are just two critically important examples of how this approach has failed us.
To regain the public’s trust, largely lost amidst the COVID fiasco, the FDA should stop acting as a political and prohibitionist nanny, and simply regulate within its mandate. A good first step would be to start being honest and transparent with the American people about e-cigarettes being far less harmful than cigarettes.
Such transparency, based actually on scientific evidence, would be a welcome change of pace for an agency that is supposed to protect the public from the harmful effects of tobacco. It would also make for an interesting congressional oversight hearing, perhaps even garnering kudos from some Republicans.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
Before Siri and Alexa arrived on the scene catering to every whim of their voice overlords, tracking an automobile took at least a degree of knowledge – of the tracking device itself and also how to monitor it.
Now, for $25 or less, anyone can purchase a tracking device that is small enough to fit just about anywhere, in someone’s purse, pocket, or automobile.
These tiny trackers have caught the attention of mayors in some of the country’s largest and most crime-ridden cities, as a way to divert attention from their own policies that have spawned serious spikes in vehicle thefts within their jurisdictions.
Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. are among the municipalities jumping aboard the tracking device gimmick as a way to convince residents that the skyrocketing numbers of vehicle thefts can easily be solved by simply by giving vehicle owners handy dandy tracking devices to place in their cars.
Unfortunately, the history of vehicle theft, especially in Democrat-run cities, is a tale that is not so simple to solve.
After years of declining incidents of vehicle thefts in the 1990s and early 2000s, the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic saw a stark reversal of that trend, especially in major metropolitan areas governed by Democrats – including among others, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, and Norfolk; actually tripling in some cities between 2019 and 2022.
The significant decline in vehicle thefts prior to the pandemic was not so much the result of better or more vigorous law enforcement, but rather technology built into cars and pickup trucks that made it more difficult to steal vehicles by “hot wiring” them.
Since 2020, however, carjackings and thefts of catalytic converters have risen significantly; with the latter being a predicament that can cost the vehicle owner thousands of dollars to replace the government-mandated emission-control devices that contain valuable rare-earth metals.
While the increases in auto thefts, at least for Kia and Hyundai vehicles manufactured through the 2021 model year, can be blamed in part on a Tik Tok video “challenge” that went viral in 2021-22 showing how easy it was to steal these makes of cars (which had no built-in “immobilizers”), there is no escaping the fact that policies instituted by a number of cities and states share much of the blame for the dramatic rise in vehicle thefts.
When Washington state enacts a law prohibiting police from pursuing stolen cars, it should come as no surprise that car owners in the Evergreen State have had to deal with a significant rise in theft of their vehicles. Similarly, when cities like Aurora, Colorado face shortage in their police ranks officers are pulled away from auto theft cases, with a resulting spike in vehicle theft.
Then there are George Soros-backed prosecutors like Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, who views auto theft as a crime unworthy of his prosecutorial attention.
And, it does not take a rocket scientist to predict that when, for years as in Portland, Oregon, car thieves are not prosecuted or punished (even as repeat offenders), car thefts rise and remain high.
So we now have city leaders in cities where hard-working citizens are having their vehicles stolen in record numbers, being offered a “free” tracking device as a panacea for bad policing, bad judging, and indifferent prosecutors.
Adding insult to injury, Washington, D.C. officials are easing citizens’ privacy concerns about the tracking devices by claiming inaccurately that only the vehicle owner will have access to or be able to share the tracking information.
In fact, accessing such devices can easily be tracked by persons other than the owner of the device. However, in a city like Washington, D.C. or Baltimore, Maryland, where crime of all sorts is rampant, it should surprise no one that public officials will say or do anything to shift the blame for their bad policy decisions onto inanimate devices such as cars without “immobilizers” or tracking devices.
No matter how many tracking devices these mayors give away, until they get serious about prosecuting vehicle thefts and other crimes infecting their cities, vehicles will continue to be stolen with impunity.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
For centuries, and certainly to Thomas Jefferson and other Founders, the value of an educated citizenry has been understood to be an imperative for good governance, if not for the very survival of a free people. Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli stated the principle clearly in an 1874 speech to the House of Commons, declaring that “Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.”
Based on recent decisions by top education officials in states like Oregon, however, the fate of our country in this 21st century is indeed bleak.
Dragging the already sinking ability by Oregon students to read, write and calculate into the education abyss is the unanimous decision just last month by the Public Ed Department. Thanks to these bureaucrats, a 2021 policy to not require Oregon students exiting high school to prove they can read, write or perform mathematically to any particular level will continue for four more school years.
In the Bizarro World that has transformed many Democrat-run American cities and states into cultural and economic wastelands, those who support Oregon’s profoundly disturbing education policy decision may laud the fact that it has led to an historically high graduation rate of 81.3 percent. The fallacy of this artificial calculus is that in virtually every other state or city that has sacrificed educational standards on the altar of “equity,” proficiency in basic subjects like math, reading and writing have dropped.
For example, Ohio in 2020 traveled the same policy path as Oregon. According to a report by Ohio State University, the Buckeye State’s reward for such foolishness has been a “substantial” decline in math and English proficiencies.
If Oregon’s Governor, its Education Department or the Oregon Education Association – the union representing tens of thousands of teachers in the state – had wished to find further evidence on which to base the state’s boneheaded new policy, it could easily have discovered that Baltimore schools, which for years have repeatedly lowered the math standards for public school students, has more than a dozen high schools in which not a single student tests proficient in math.
The most deeply disturbing aspect of what Oregon has decided to do by making it easier for students to graduate but far more difficult for them to succeed in the real world is the cavalier manner by which the state’s Department of Education justified its policy. Their rationale can be found in a statement claiming that the subject-matter proficiency standards were being discarded because they had become “burdensome.”
Obviously for Oregon’s education leaders, making the jobs of teachers and administrators less “burdensome” is more important than ensuring that students can read, write and calculate.
The initial move by Oregon to loosen “Essential Learning Skills” (as permitted by the federal Department of Education) occurred in the wake of the education debacle that Oregon and other states brought on themselves by forcing students into stay-at-home schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Oregon’s “temporary” policy was supposed to end after the 2023-2024 school year, but obviously was deemed such a success that it now has been extended through the 2027-2028 school year. It would come as no surprise if, as 2028 approaches, there will be moves to extend the policy again, or simply make it permanent, so as to provide true “equity” for future high school seniors.
Speaking of “equity,” the fact that 18.7 percent of Oregon’s public high school seniors still fail to graduate even without having to prove basic subject-matter proficiency might fuel a move to simply hand out diplomas to every senior just for showing up, in much the same way that youth sports teams have taken to giving every player a participation trophy rather than recognizing only the truly superior players.
Such “equity” might be viewed as acceptable and perhaps considered benign in the world of volunteer youth soccer. But for young men and women about to leave high school to enter the real world, such an education policy places them at a distinct disadvantage — a travesty that must be laid clearly at the feet of the adults in the room.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He served as the United States Attorney in Atlanta from 1986 to 1990 and was an official with the CIA in the 1970s. He now practices law in Atlanta, Georgia and serves as head of Liberty Guard.
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