Approaching the Financial Cliff

As we approach the “financial cliff,” ostensibly debating which entitlements to cut, as a quid pro quo for increases in taxes, few of us expect the liberals to be swayed to give up a single entitlement or even reductions in their costs. Nobody thinks Obama is serious about allowing any entitlements to be cut; he is going to continue, in the words of the late, great Darrell Royal, to  “dance with what brung him;” that is, continue to pander to the entitlement class that elected, and re-elected, him. Some conservatives believe that Obama is willing to “go over the cliff,” and that he will brazenly let the country fall into bankruptcy rather than concede any meaningful cuts in entitlements.  There are no Reagan-like negotiators among the  Republican politicians in Congress today, not like the one that walked out of the meeting with Gorbachev and refused to give up his “Star Wars” defense, in preparation for escalation of the Cold War ahead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk_Summit 

That Reagan coup inspired Russian dissenters, like Boris Yeltsin, to stand up to Gorbachev, and it most certainly precipitated events that eventually led to the fall of the Iron Curtain.  Obama is trying to portray the image that Nikita Khrushchev did: that of a dictatorial, maniacal leader, willing to “go over the brink” to get his way.  Khrushchev’s tactic worked against Reagan’s predecessors:  JFK gave up three overseas missile bases to get Khrushchev to take his missiles out of Cuba in that “crisis.”  JFK also made a treaty to allow Communist Cuba to exist in perpetuity, and to never invade it again.

Liberals downplay it, but Reagan’s “walk-out” was the greatest diplomatic coup of modern history.  Unfortunately, there are no Republicans with the spine that Reagan had, willing to play brinkmanship with Obama—the way Ragan did with Gorbachev.  Most conservatives believe that Boehner has the spine of a jellyfish.

CUTTING THE FAT:

 One of the biggest and most counterproductive Government wastes is OBEMLA, a Washington bureaucracy dedicated to promulgation of bilingual education.  Bilingual education has been debated ad nauseam, and many Americans still do not even know what it is.  Many, if not most, think it is the practice of teaching foreign languages in public schools.  Almost everyone agrees that learning at least one foreign language is a good thing.  However, bilingual education DOES NOT teach a foreign language to native English speakers.  Not at all.  What it does is teach core public school subjects in the language of a child’s ethnic origin.  It is therefore an obstacle, not an aid, to learning English.  Many bilingual education teachers are themselves not native speakers of English and teach students “English” in a foreign language, inevitably with a foreign accent.  English is simply one of the core courses, including social studies, math, etc., that bilingual educators teach the students in their foreign tongue.

Activists who advocate bilingualism could care less about handicapping students in public schools.  Those of us who, over the years, have observed firsthand what they have wrought, have no doubt that bilingual education retards and impedes the learning of English, the tool they need most in securing meaningful employment (outside the bureaucracy of bilingual education). The advocates’ primary interest is their own job security, growing the bureaucracy, OBEMLA, and creating thousands of more teaching jobs, especially for minorities who cannot compete on an even keel with native English teachers in subjects other than foreign languages. Illegal immigration, therefore, is the “sine qua non” of the perpetuation of bilingual education.  These activists are among the stronger forces behind demands for “immigration reform,” and essentially, open borders. They will pay lip service to immigration control, but they know that the borders will never be controlled without the magnets that bring illegal aliens here: no, not jobs, but mainly, “entitlements.” The bilingual education activists, and their corrupt allies in Congress, also know that immigration cannot be controlled without a national identity card and vigorous enforcement of sanctions against employers and those who harbor illegal aliens for self-serving reasons.  They include subversive pseudo religious and political organizations who want to increase their membership with groups beholden to them for their “assistance” in aiding and abetting them to evade immigration laws.