by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Aug 15, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
America’s athletes once again excelled at the 2024 Olympic games. Without the benefit of massive government-controlled sports programs enjoyed by many of their competitors, they proved their superiority while representing their homeland with sportsmanship and respect.
It’s not jingoistic to point out that America, in spite of some worrisome decline, is still number one in many other spheres. In terms of military might, industrial capacity, and technological innovation, we enjoy preeminence.
Yet our educational system, which in the long run may matter most, is below mediocre. We consistently score below average in math and literary achievement tests versus students from other developed countries.
Worse, we are producing graduates with scant knowledge of their own history, ignorant of the political and economic principles that created their privileged world. Many seem emotionally fragile, enthralled with identity politics and unable to tolerate those with opinions different from their own.
The reason for this is no mystery. American education policymaking is dominated by the federal Department of Education (DOE). The department was created by President Jimmy Carter in gratitude to the teachers’ unions for their support in the 1976 election. It has been the gift that keeps on giving as the DOE has faithfully represented the unions’ interests ever since.
Unfortunately, the union/DOE priorities are more directed to sweeping left-wing political agendas than the education of America’s school children. For example, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona enthusiastically supports radical gender ideology.
At this year’s “Trans Day of Visibility,” he advised children that choosing and changing their own gender is expressing the “gift to see things as they could be.” Our chief educator would better serve children by encouraging them to see things as they are and avoid life choices they may bitterly regret later.
Cardona also has strong feelings that teachers, not parents, should direct children’s education, even where values and morals are concerned. “Teachers know what is best for their kids because they work with them every day,” he assured us in a since deleted tweet.
The two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), exposed their near total disregard for the educational progress of their charges during the recent Covid epidemic. They refused to provide in-person teaching long after the scientific evidence was clear that no harm came to children from school attendance.
AFT President Randi Weingarten, in her address at its recent annual conference, didn’t bother to address the enormous educational deficiencies caused by the lockout or exhort her members to focus on the needs of students struggling to catch up academically. Instead, she ranted hysterically about the “violence and fascism” looming if Trump were to win the presidential election. The main obstacle to educational success she perceived was those who question the resource materials that her unionized teachers select for their students of any age.
These unions’ all-purpose remedy for academic shortcomings is more funding. Yet decades of funding increases have produced no positive results.
For example, the Chicago Teachers Union, holding that testing is “junk science rooted in white supremacy,” argued against reopening schools on the grounds that resuming teaching was mere “sexism, racism and misogyny.” Instead, they demanded a $51,000 salary increase, 45 additional days off, and more annual LBGTQ training.
The result: the district now spends $29,028 per student, a 97 percent increase since 2012. Yet during that time, proficiency in math has dropped 78 percent from an already low level and reading proficiency has declined 63 percent. In other words, Chicago public school students are being sent into the world illiterate and mathematically incompetent. But their teachers are well paid.
America has no prospect of improving our educational system until the DOE and the unions are stripped of their influence. It won’t be easy. Realistically this is totally impossible under a Democrat administration, given the strong bonds between the unions and their captive party.
In its 60 plus years of existence, the DOE has failed to provide any academic benefits for our students. The consequences are now becoming apparent. Somehow, we must find the will to eliminate the Department and move forward.
It’s for the children. And the future of America.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Aug 5, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Our federal system is aptly called the laboratory of democracy. Rather than learning everything from the school of hard knocks, states can look to the experience of others with initiatives like charter schools, right-to-work laws, and taxation levels. Unfortunately, there are some slow learners out there.
The IRS recently released its annual report of the net migration of people and money between states. Once again, the high tax-and-spend states lost out. California was the biggest income loser ($23.8 billion) in 2022, followed by New York (14.2), Illinois (9.8), New Jersey (5.3), and Massachusetts (3.9).
Florida gained $36 billion in migrating revenues. Texas realized $10.1 billion, followed by South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Arizona gained $3.7 billion in gross adjusted income (AGI), mostly from the 57,857 people who migrated from California, compared to 25,677 moving from Arizona to California.
Who knew people prefer to live where housing is affordable, power is reliably available, and crime is taken seriously by authorities? California not only fails on these tests, but its gas taxes are the highest in the nation, which means gasoline costs $1 to $2 a gallon more and electricity bills are 2 to 3 times higher than states without California’s climate mandates. Temperatures don’t seem to be coming down much so far.
California’s median priced home is about double that of most states and the state tax on middle income earners is 9.3%, more than most states assess their millionaires. Governor Gavin Newsom can prattle on about the “California Dream” but Californians aren’t feeling it. They’re leaving if they can.
Moreover, it’s getting worse. California lost nearly 3 times as much income to other states in 2022 as it did in pre-COVID 2019. Even though housing costs discouraged many from moving, New York lost 1.8% of the total state AGI, 3.1% in 2021, and 2.5% in 2020.
Florida and Texas were among the beneficiaries, seeing 150 to 200% more income being transferred from high spending states than before the pandemic.
California, New York, Illinois, and other states have created a “doom loop” by their foolhardy fiscal policies. Fewer workers and less total income result in lower tax revenues. The tax-and-spenders must raise tax rates to maintain their social programs and promises to unions and to finance their rising debt. Rinse and repeat.
Most enterprises, faced with falling revenues and climbing expenses, would update their business model. But the high-tax states aren’t interested in changing their ways. California is moving forward with yet more climate mandates and boondoggles like the infamous “train to nowhere.” Illinois rejected fiscal discipline and instead passed a budget with $1.1 billion in tax increases. New Jersey, hemorrhaging jobs, went ahead anyway with reimposing a 2.5% surtax on corporate incomes.
Rather than pursuing modest reforms or spending cuts, the blue states are instead trying to force other states to help them pay for their high taxes. They love the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which requires taxpayers from Florida, Arizona, and other frugal states to pay part of the state tax bill for high earners from high-tax states. They are insistent that Congress remove the $10,000 cap on the deduction, which would further incentivize their excessive spending.
The cap raises about $80 billion a year of relief for federal taxpayers. The Brookings Institution found that if the SALT cap were eliminated, 57% of the benefit would go to the top 1% of earners. Still, the tax-and-spenders claim Congress “screwed” them by instituting the cap, thereby supposedly creating much of their fiscal woes.
States have become more careless in managing their pension fund obligations also. Raising benefit levels is popular, while funding can be deferred. Unsurprisingly, the result is chronic underfunding. New York has assets that would fund only 48% of future legal obligations according to standard accounting procedures and New Jersey is at 29%.
Future shortfalls will eventually result in public bankruptcies and destitute pensioners. Still states resist reforms, apparently assuming the feds would not ultimately deny requests for bailouts in such desperate circumstances.
States must be accountable for their own actions. They should not be allowed to exploit each other to cover for their moral and financial shortcomings.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jul 19, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
Well after 50 years from the end of the Civil War, black Americans in much of the country were not allowed to enter the homes of whites by the front door. Black men could be lynched for looking a white woman in the face. Schools, restaurants, even drinking fountains were all segregated.
Today, no such legal discrepancies exist. Yes, fringe actors still show that vestiges of racism remain and maybe always will. Yet even though Americans of all races mingle peaceably, the income gap between white and black Americans stubbornly persists. Racism itself can no longer provide a satisfactory answer.
Educational disparities account for some of the gap. Too many black children are still trapped in inner-city schools, where unionized teachers often can’t manage to educate even one student per school who acquires basic academic skills.
Unfortunately for the students, individuals who graduate from high school with ninth grade academic skills have the lifetime earning potential of a dropout. You can’t fool the real world with a meaningless diploma. It would be astonishing if there weren’t a sizable income gap when such educational inequities exist.
The overwhelming evidence points to fatherless homes as the main driver of black economic stagnation. In 1960, 24 percent of black children were born to single mothers. By 2018 the figure was 70 percent. Overall, 37 percent of black kids live with married parents, compared with 84 percent of Asians and 77 percent of whites.
Families headed by single mothers are five times as likely to live in poverty than those of married couple-headed families. We all know the depressing statistics for fatherless children—the increased incidence of incarceration and drug dependence, the lower probability of educational achievement, and the high likelihood they will create single parent-headed families themselves.
It’s neither fair nor accurate to blame black fathers exclusively for this social calamity. In fact, black men are often more attentive fathers than their white counterparts. Black fathers were more likely than others to have “bathed, dressed, changed or helped their child every day” according to a National Statistics report.
The problem is not the quality of black fathers but the quantity. Too many black fathers don’t stay to model fatherhood and provide the guidance and structure that children, especially boys, need.
Some critics ascribe this tendency to “black culture” as if something inherent in blacks is the cause. Others claim that poverty causes weak family structures, not the reverse. But history debunks both contentions.
The institution of the black family emerged from centuries of slavery, poverty, and bigotry virtually intact with strong and loyal family structures. By the time of the mid-20th century civil rights movement, family incomes and social standing were also improving. Ironically, it was the Great Society modern welfare state, offering an omnipresent financial incentive for family break-up, that marked the beginning of the decline of the black family, with all its devastating consequences.
Progressives, especially influential academics, and activists like Black Lives Matter argue that the nuclear family should be dismantled because it is…racist!
For example, a 2021 academic webinar promotion stated, “Family privilege is an unacknowledged and unearned benefit” that “serves to advantage certain family forms over others and is typically bestowed upon white, traditional nuclear families.”
So, the fact that more single parent families are black, according to this traditional Marxist interpretation, means that racism is the culprit? Hogwash alert: the number of parents in the family is a far better predictor of economic outcomes than race. You can look it up.
Although intellectual sophisticates preach tolerance of all family relationships, they are more traditional in their personal behaviors. The college educated mostly delay childbearing until after marriage and raise their children in a two-parent household. It’s called “talk left, walk right” or, in other words, hypocrisy.
Rather than stigmatizing families and their fathers, we should support, in meaningful ways, their importance to human well-being. Judging from the results, families without government “help” do a better job overall of rearing and feeding children, of caring for the dependent elderly, and of creating responsible, competent human beings than does government.
We will never close the economic and social gaps until we close the Dad gap.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jul 5, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
The warning signs can no longer be ignored. America’s future as a world power is fading. The emerging alliance of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, spanning the spectrum of autocratic, expansionist ideologies, is poised to seriously threaten Western values and our way of life.
America’s response to a notably more dangerous world has been passive and thoughtless. In three decades, America has gone from the preeminent world power, with the promise of spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world, to a nation of deteriorating moral and strategic standing. We’ve backed ourselves into a dangerous corner.
Our enemies relentlessly undermine our interests and propagandize against us. One even leads public chants of “Death to America.” Russia wages a war of territorial aggression. China menaces our ally in the South China Sea. Hamas’ October 7 massacre was just one of several recent attacks by Iran-associated Islamic terrorist groups.
Weapons programs, especially those involving advanced technology like space weapons and biotech, are being rapidly developed by our enemies. Meanwhile, America’s relative deterrence capability has declined. Defense spending, inflation adjusted, has been reduced while military inductees are versed in the finer points of DEI.
Our Cold War presidents, especially Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan, faced similar dangers to those that challenge us today. The Soviet Union was a powerful force that brutally subjugated Eastern Europe, worked to destabilize regimes around the globe, and seriously intended to establish world hegemony.
Our leaders responded then with certitude and conviction. Ronald Reagan’s approach was not appeasement, but confrontation with superior force. He warned against “blindly hoping for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger by the day.” He recognized that “war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong but when they are weak…then tyrants are tempted.”
Reagan made defeat of the “Evil Empire” the central goal of his presidency. He rebuilt the military and doggedly pursued missile defense systems even when he was ridiculed for supporting “Star Wars.” In the end, it was this missile defense strategy that confounded and broke the Soviets, as Mikhail Gorbachev later confided to Margaret Thatcher.
In contrast, American policy today projects peace through weakness. We foolishly pretend tyrants will be mollified if we don’t provoke them. President Obama not only failed to support ballistic missile defenses, he backed out of commitments to install missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, despite mounting Russian aggression.
Biden fecklessly waived sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, paused military aid to Ukraine, and intentionally slow-walked critical supplies to our Israeli allies. We carefully dole out only enough support to our friends to stave off defeat but not enough to win.
The Cold War presidents were resolute about “stopping partisan politics at the water’s edge,” meaning that domestic political considerations should never impact foreign policy. Today, Biden proves his leftist bona fides by shutting down domestic energy production while treating our enemies more indulgently. Worry over youth protests and Michigan’s electoral support inspired his support of the war aims of Hamas and other Muslim jihadis.
This summer’s presidential debate demonstrated all you need to know about why America is garnering so much disrespect. With pressing problems all about spinning out of control, two candidates with presidential experience vied to be the one to lead us into the future. The result was a farce, a “debate” that was essentially incoherent babbling between two intellectually flabby old men.
One showed the classic hallmarks of senility and should never again be allowed near the nuclear football. The other was unable to construct a coherent argument, instead lapsing into exaggerations and meaningless superlatives. There was nothing resembling serious policy analysis. The two argued over golf scores instead.
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates writes that “at the very moment that events demand a strong coherent response from the United States, the country cannot provide one.” Americans must take our elections more seriously. We need to stop fixating on policy dead ends like climate change and identity politics.
Our short-term problem now is vulnerability to attack as a result of exhibiting weakness. Our long-term goal must be to select leaders better able to keep us strong and free.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
by Dr. Thomas Patterson | Jun 24, 2024 | Opinion
By Dr. Thomas Patterson |
We know exactly the cause of our disastrous immigration crisis. It was us. We voters have only ourselves to blame.
Biden didn’t even try to deceive us on this one. In the 2020 presidential debates, he vowed “on day one” to reverse Trump’s immigration policies. He promised to provide free healthcare to illegal aliens.
Unlike many other campaign promises, he faithfully kept these. He also terminated the Remain in Mexico policy and ended the ban on travel from centers of terrorism. He loosened the rules for seeking asylum so that millions of healthy appearing military-aged males were able to claim, “I am afraid” and be admitted to the land of the free.
Most Americans didn’t think through the consequences of an open immigration policy. Now, the associated problems are beyond obvious. Yet many, particularly religious NGOs, see welcoming all immigrants as an act of decency and compassion which all people of goodwill should applaud.
Is importing tens of millions of persons without qualifications into America, with only the hope they will somehow engage and become productive and independent, really the way to build a better world? There are 8 billion humans on this planet. They obviously can’t all be brought here.
Immigration does not increase the world’s net wealth. It merely redistributes it. The winners are those who are willing and able to make the arduous trek here and defy our laws. The losers are those still in their country of origin and the rest of us.
But the real force driving the illegal immigration surge came from Democrats and the political left. There is no other way to interpret the events over the last three years other than as a brazen attempt to attract millions of future Democrat voters and permanently alter the character of the American polity. Long after the political winds began to blow against the administration’s policies, the Biden gang was willing to take one for the team and keep on going.
The question now is: will the grand scheme work? Signs are appearing that racial minorities might not be Democrat wards forever, like the perhaps apocryphal one who told Democrats, “We’ve been voting for you for 60 years and we’re still poor.” Democrat-led big cities, which is virtually all of them, are getting fed up with the squalor and budget pressures that have come with thousands of demanding “newcomers” appearing in the night, not to mention luxury hotels filling up. The immigration disaster is looming as a major—possibly the decisive—factor in the upcoming election.
Immigration advocates claim that immigrants are actually valuable additions to our society. They are correct that modern America was created by immigrants, without whose efforts we wouldn’t exist.
Yet there’s a world of difference between the Ellis Island immigrants who loved America and were eager to fulfill the requirements of citizenship, and the millions streaming in today. To paraphrase JFK, they seem to care little about what they can do for their new country, but only what it will do for them.
Even if unlimited immigration were a great policy that benefited both immigrants and their hosts, the timing is terrible for two reasons. First is the rapid advance of AI and other labor-saving technologies that will replace many of the low-scale jobs that, in the brightest scenario, the uneducated masses would fill. The question for labor economists has changed from who will pick the lettuce and staff the fast food chains to how we find employment for the laborers—now including the “newcomers”—whose jobs are disappearing.
The other, more serious, problem is that we live in an increasingly dangerous world. With the rise of Islamist jihadists and the growing belligerence of international communism and other mortal enemies, it is lunacy for America to maintain an essentially unmanned border.
The solutions at this point have narrowed. First, we need an administration that will turn off the spigot. But now we have 20 million non-Americans who, as they age, will increasingly demand their share of benefits, which are already imperiled due to lack of future funding.
Repatriation, the ultimate solution, is logistically and politically fraught. We will be a long time regretting this massive foolishness.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
