We have again reached another so-called budgetary crisis where the Federal debt ceiling must rise or else risk the possibility of the government defaulting on its debt payments. The ceiling currently sits at $31.4 trillion and must rise because the government continuously spends more than it receives in tax revenue. Failing to raise the ceiling means that the government could not pay all of its obligations and would have to delay or renege on some of its debts. Currently, the House in Republican hands is threatening not to raise the ceiling unless Biden agrees to some spending cuts and shifts in spending. Biden of course refuses. We have seen this Kabuki theatre before with its elaborate preening and false displays prior to raising the ceiling. The Republicans want their voters to think that they are actually trying to curtail spending while the Democrats want their voters to think that no cuts will be forthcoming – unless they are to the military. Both obviously are not being forthcoming because neither party is serious about cutting Federal spending. They want to grow spending on their priorities and not on the priorities of their adversaries while ever growing overall Federal spending.

The debt ceiling has been around since World War I and has always been raised when it has been reached. It doesn’t matter who sits in the White House, the ceiling gets raised. The only difference is that when the Republicans are the president, the Democrats object to raising the ceiling and when the Democrats are in office, the Republicans object. Its all a game. Who said “My vote against the debt limit increase cannot change the fact that we have incurred this debt already, and will no doubt incur more”? The answer is Senator Joe Biden who voted against raising the ceiling in 2006. Biden also voted against raising the ceiling two times before. Now of course the same Biden is accusing the Republicans of playing partisan games by holding the debt ceiling hostage – just like he did on three different occasions when he was senator. Of course, he is right. Both parties avail themselves to the opportunity of playing before the cameras while not being in the least bit serious about controlling government spending overall.

The government always threatens a “shutdown” in case the ceiling is not raised. I think the last so-called shutdown was in 2019. Then the government picked those items to shut down affected the public directly, like closing the national parks and furloughing “non essential personnel”.  Entitlements continued to be paid, the military and the congress got paid, air controllers, law enforcement got paid and the mail got delivered. The shutdowns was brief, lest the public realized that they really don’t missed most of the non-essential government. Also, the non-essential workers got paid vacations since they were given back all back pay.

Much of the doom and gloom that comes out of Washington during times of a threatened shutdown is simply theatre. Instead of the Treasury trying to inflict the most pain on the public in order to pressure the Congress to raising the ceiling – which it will do anyway – there are other options. The first concerns the paying of interest on the debt. Government agencies hold about $7 trillion of the debt and the Federal Reserve holds another $6 trillion. The government could just defer paying interest on this debt while paying the interest on the debt to all other holders. Even in a worst case scenario, the US Treasury can always rely on the Federal Reserve to supply the funds necessary to fund its spending.  Therefore, the US government can be thought of as a contingent currency issuer who can issue the funds to spend.  

So in the end, the debt ceiling will be raised and the main driver of the debt, entitlement spending, will continue to grow unconstrained. I can guarantee that any agreement on the budget will not address entitlement spending and until it does, both Democrats and Republicans will continue to play this silly game of chicken as each successive debt ceiling is reached.

Remember the joke about the guy tasting Bud Lite for the first time thought it tasted funny and sent to a lab. The report said “I am afraid your horse has diabetes.” Well now Bud Lite – the fake beer – has a new spokesperson who is a fake woman. So a drink impersonating beer has a man impersonating a woman.

The news reported a man whose job offer was withdrawn because he sent an email to two women with “ladies” as a greeting. One woman said calling her a “lady” was a “microaggression.” 

I think the left has conspired to get Donald Trump the republican nomination because the only way that the democrats can get re-elected is if Trump is the republican nominee. Hence the indictment.

I don’t understand how anyone can advocate gender surgery for kids and

why gender issues should be part of the curricula for K-12.

The national debt is over 100% of GNP. The democrats want it to be higher and the republicans aren’t much better. On the opposite spectrum, Finland just voted out its leader because its national debt had surged to only 40% of its GDP.

It used to be that the Federal Reserve was the only adult in the room. Remember when it was said that the Fed removed the punch bowl after the party had just gotten good? Now the Fed is spiking the bowl.

Sadly, the Fed is saddled with the same incompetence that runs through the Biden Administration. Its regional presidents are ill-equipped to do their basic job of overseeing the banks in their region. Rather some of the regional banks such as Atlanta, Minneapolis and San Francisco seem to be spending more resources on DEI than on bank regulation. Mary Daly at the San Francisco Fed is the embodiment of incompetence.

The Fed Board’s seven members lack the foundation of monetary economics. Only two of them even have a modicum of training in the field. Jay Powell is a lawyer, not an economist. Its like the Supreme Court having a bunch of economists as justices.

The Knoxville NAACP has “demanded” that the application for a boys only charter school be withdrawn. This is in sync with the national organization’s opposition to charter schools. Guess all the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to the NAACP by the teachers’ unions is paying off.

I loved the Babylon Bee’s story of a Chinese army training video showing how to attack the American army by using the wrong pronouns.

Is transgenderism just part of a national mental health crisis?

I bet most kids questioning their gender reside in liberal states.

I just finished reading Siddarth Kara’s Colbalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. It is a sobering and frightening account of the appalling conditions in mining cobalt in the Congo. That such conditions are allowed to continue is almost unimaginable. Everyone should read this book. Kara tells the story of the people of the Congo who have been dealt perhaps the planet’s worse poker hand. From slavery to the genocide by the Belgians to exploitation by the Europeans and now by the Chinese, the Congolese have never profited from the rich minerals in their soil. More personally, one of my 13 DNA strains is Congo, so these are stories about my relatives.

We now have in power a government that seems to conspire with the Chinese. It lets a spy balloon sail across the country unimpeded until after it finishes its mission. It denies domestic mining permits of minerals used in smartphones and EVs that are currently dominated by the Chinese. It is trying to destroy fossil fuels and replace them with more expensive and less reliable sources of energy while the Chinese are building more coal fired plants. Why should we make China better off while we make ourselves worse off and more dependent upon our main adversary? 

The Biden Administration is coming after your gas ovens, your small appliances, your light bulbs, your internal combustion engines, banning natural gas buildings, diesel and gas heavy trucks – everything it seems other than John Kerry’s private jet.

All of the above points to a country in decline. I think it is a product of all the propaganda spewed by the left that has taken over media, “culture”, education and politics. Its no wonder that most Americans think that their children will be less prosperous. It is also no wonder that fewer Americans are patriotic, love the country, are religious and believe in the American dream. Its truly sad because this malaise is of our own making.

I’ve written often on being governed by incompetents. The current example is the failure of bank regulators to enforce banking regulations. Another obvious example is the current president and his cast of supporting characters. As a Washington veteran, I am aware that the president doesn’t usually actually pick those that receive nominations. Rather, the staff at White House personnel is generally entrusted with the task. Too often those that are nominated know little if anything about the office that they are to occupy. Consider Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of Transportation who had zero expertise in the area of transportation. Consider that his experience consisted of being a small town mayor where he was known as “Pothole Pete” overseeing a fleet of 60 buses, a train station and a regional airport. Moving into managing an agency with 60,000 employees and a budget of $90 million was one giant leap. Not only did he not have the management skills but he also lacked the knowledge regarding transportation. Remember the supply chain crisis of 2021 with container ships stuck in port waiting to be unloaded, clogged rail yards and a trucker shortage? Buttigieg did nothing because he knew nothing. Of course, he was not alone as Marty Walsh the labor secretary – another incompetent – was also befuddled. Instead of addressing the issue, Buttigieg ignored it, knowing that it would go away. Instead, he went on parental leave as he and his husband were new parents (presumably adoptive). Then we had the train derailment in Ohio. Here again Buttigieg was befuddled and had no solution to the problem. Instead, he must have taken advice from Kamala Harris and simply not showed up at the derailment site. One Ohio congressman called him “incompetent” and said that he should resign. But of course when did competence become a job requirement in this administration?  Buttigieg got the job because he checked a DEI (diversity equity and inclusion) box by being gay.

Consider the secretary of the interior, Deb Haaland who as a native American and female checks the appropriate DEI boxes. Haaland actually made sense superficially to be interior secretary in that Interior oversees the Indian reservations and manages over 500 million acres of mostly western land. Haaland also makes sense in a Biden administration in that she strongly supports the “Green New Deal” and is an outspoken opponent of fossil fuels even though she is from New Mexico, a state that is the most dependent on revenues from oil and gas produced on federal lands. Recently Haaland was before a congressional committee. Even though she was a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, she was asked if she knew it banned fracking a clean coal. Her response was that she didn’t know because she sponsored a lot of bills while in congress. She was also asked if she knew that the push for electric vehicles would make the US dependent upon China especially after her department had rejected applications for mining vital minerals here in this country. Her response was “Yes. Okay.” She would not even answer the question as to whether she preferred to get her gas and oil from American energy rather than from Venezuela or Russia. Instead she said “I appreciate the question.”

Of course Buttigieg and Haaland are only two examples of incompetents leading agencies. The tragedy for the country is that there is no stopping this rush to the bottom. The nominations go to the senate for confirmation and with 51 democrats, few if any of the nominees will be rejected. The only exceptions will be the few that are forced to withdraw because they lose the rare democrat senator who might insist on a modicum of expertise. Consider the nominee for the Federal Aviation Administration withdrew his name. The nominee was CEO of the Denver Airport but lacked aviation experience and could not answer several questions posed to him at his senate hearing, his response being “I am not a pilot.” His name was withdrawn when at least two so-called “moderate” democrats declined to support him. Of course, the White House said that the attacks were partisan and unfounded. But given that the aviation industry has been plagued by transportation woes (Buttigieg again?), airplane controversies and scheduling issues, an important question is whether the FAA administrator should be an aviator as well as a strong manager.

Even though I have lived amongst white people since I was 17 years old, I don’t pretend to understand them. Why do whites condemn white supremacy if they are white? It seems to me that if whites are opposed to white supremacy then they should do something about it and I don’t mean trying to find some kook uber racist group to label as terrorists. Consider that Joe Biden has condemned those who use white supremacy “for power, political gain and for profit”. If he is serious then he should resign and cede the presidency to Kamala Harris. Attorney General Garland has testified that white supremacy poses the most serious domestic national security threat in the U.S. Again, Garland should resign and give his position to a person of color. The governor of Washington in 2022 in a speech listed objectivity and individualism as examples of white supremacy. This is from a white guy. The Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture listed traits of white supremacy: rugged individualism; the nuclear family; objective, rational linear thinking; hard work; Christianity; respect for authority; planning for the future; delayed gratification; action orientation decision-making; and being polite. Does this mean that I’m a white supremacist?

Consider that white supremacy abounds among the white “elites”. When the nominations for the Oscars were announced, the director of a movie named “Till” condemned the academy as being being “aggressively committed to upholding whiteness” after she failed to earn a best director nomination. Halle Berry’s acceptance speech when she was awarded an Oscar for best actress thanked the black actresses who came before her. No other black woman had won the best actress award. The others have been best supporting actresses. Yes, even in the wokeness that is Hollywood, white supremacy prevails. No  Oscar nominee for acting was black, prompting the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite. So much for progressive equity in Hollywood. Despite the movies seeming to overrepresent blacks and to put a gay couple in every movie, Hollywood behind the cameras is still overwhelmingly dominated by straight white males. Again, if Hollywood were serious about equality and equity, all the whites should resign and give their positions and roles to minorities.

There is even a website stating there were “101 Ways White Liberal and Progressive Women Perpetuate White Supremacy”. Egads! 101 ways? Biden’s deputy director in the Department of Education stated that democracy was based on white supremacy. Who knew? So does she favor Marxism, like the leaders of Black Lives Matter? Wasn’t Marx white and a Londoner? Maybe Marx gets a pass since he looked a lot like Frederick Douglass. 

Everywhere you look you see signs of white supremacy. Schools are teaching Critical Race Theory which classifies all whites – even progressives – as racist. The education establishment is dominated by white liberals who are obviously white supremacists because they refuse to teach black kids how to read, write and do arithmetic choosing instead they lower standards for grade advancement and graduation. Time Magazine published an article claiming that exercise perpetuates the legacy of white supremacy. How? I’m not quite sure because the whole article makes little sense to me.

What about academia? One college had an op ed asking if white people should be kicked out of parties hosted by minority organizations. Many universities have used their departments of diversity, equity and inclusion to host anti-whiteness seminars. Some have called whites parasites and advocated abolishing whiteness. There are a multitude of other examples, most of who are from whites who obviously hate themselves and virtually are all at universities with whites in the principal leadership positions. Again, they also should resign and give their positions to people of color. 

So I ask, why do whites hate white people? You may say that all the white folks talking about the evils of white supremacy are only speaking about extreme racists who would do violence to minorities, but does it? Violence need not be physical. Not educating children does more violence to minorities than the Ku Klux Klan ever did. Hollywood, Joe Biden, the Biden Administration and academia are all dominated by white people who despite making the appropriate clucking sounds are obviously just making empty noises. I guess this what is meant by “white noise.”

 

Socialists hate capitalism because it works so well. Capitalism’s critics living in capitalist economies complain and whine because capitalism produces prosperity. Socialism produces poverty and starvation. Those conditions are endemic to socialism and are the norm whereas in capitalism they are the exception, not the rule. Evidence abounds before our very eyes but is ignored. Remember East Germany versus West Germany or North versus South Korea? No advocate of socialism could ever convince anyone that living under socialism was preferred to living under capitalism – unless of course you are a member of the socialist ruling elite. What it really boils down to is that socialists do not like markets because markets reflect the choices of the people rather than the elites. In the minds of the socialists, markets are wasteful and messy. When one Russian leader visited the United States, he was taken into a Baskin-Robbins. He proclaimed that the US economy would fail because it wasted so many resources producing 31 different flavors of ice cream when only three were necessary – chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. He loved chocolate. Of course, if the other flavors were banned, then a black market in ice cream would appear because the market works even where it is restrained – rum raisin anyone?

Markets strive to satisfy the multitude of consumer tastes in clothing, food, drugs, automobiles (although the elites are working hard to limit your choices), music, consumables and non-consumables. Your typical Walmart Supercenter carries over 142,000 items and Walmart online carries 70 million SKUs (stock keeping units). Amazon lists over 500 million SKUs. I wonder how many choices are available in the socialist paradise of North Korea? In a capitalism economy the production of all this variety is not wasteful. If it were, then the item would not be produced. If capitalism were wasteful and socialism were not then one would expect to see lots of empty shelves in capitalist stores and overflowing shelves in socialist ones. Reality shows the opposite. The only time I can recall of shortages and empty shelves was during Covid and that was temporary and a result of government missteps. 

Ask Bernie Sanders and AOC why are living conditions and economic prosperity worse under socialism. Also ask why don’t they expatriate to the socialist paradise of their choice? It is because, contrary to their whining, they know that they would be worse off living under socialism. Besides, where else but in a capitalist country can you carp and complain and be paid handsomely to live in affluence by the very system that you profess the desire to destroy? America’s socialists are whiners with no socially redeeming virtues. 

There are always China, Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Angola, Laos, Zambia or lovely Cuba for our American socialists to go to live. But then they would have to give up their Teslas, French bulldogs, designer dresses, fancy apartments, estates, and have to work for a living rather than have capitalism generate the wealth that allows them to continue to live off the productivity of others. 

There must be a reason why socialists keep winning elections other than to get them to live in Washington rather than in their home state. Perhaps they get the vote of the welfare dependent, or the millions of government workers who get higher pay, work fewer hours and hardly ever get fired. Maybe they get the vote of the unions or of the teachers who have job security, salaries based on time in the job rather than merit. Yet again to be a socialist you have to be blind to reality and to human nature. This is why socialism is more popular amongst the youth than people who have to work for a living and pay their own bills. American socialists foolishly pretend that America’s wealth will continue on an upward path even if they take away the incentive to be productive – the profit motive. They are wrong and in their hearts they probably know it.

Remember the joke about the guy tasting Bud Lite for the first time thought it tasted funny and sent to a lab. The report said “I am afraid your horse has diabetes.” Well now Bud Lite – the fake beer – has a new spokesperson who is a fake woman. So a drink impersonating beer has a man impersonating a woman.

The news reported a man whose job offer as a principal was withdrawn because he sent an email to two women with “ladies” as a greeting. One woman said calling her a “lady” was a “microaggression.” 

Stanford’s law students went ballistic over a judge who refused to use a convicted pedophile’s preferred pronouns. That Stanford did not expel those students speaks volumes as to where that university stands with regard to free speech (see how the University of Chicago treated similar protests).

I think the left has conspired to get Donald Trump the republican nomination because that’s the only way that the dems can get re-elected given the joke that is the Biden presidency. Hence the indictment.

I don’t understand how anyone can advocate gender surgery for kids.

I don’t understand why gender issues should be part of the curricula for K-12.

The national debt is over 100% of GNP. The dems want it to be higher and the republicans aren’t much better. Just imagine that Finland just voted out its leader because its national debt had surged to only 40% of its GDP.

It used to be that the Fed was the only adult in the room. Remember when it was said that the Fed removed the punch bowl after the party had just gotten started? Now the Fed is spiking the bowl.

Sadly, the Fed is saddled with the same incompetence that runs through the Biden Administration. Its regional presidents are ill-equipped to do their basic job of overseeing the banks in their region. Rather some of the regional banks such as Atlanta, Minneapolis and San Francisco seem to be spending more resources on DEI than on bank regulation. Mary Daly at the San Francisco Fed is the embodiment of incompetence.

The Fed Board’s seven members lack the foundation of monetary economics. Only two of them even have a modicum of training in the field. Jay Powell is a lawyer, not an economist. When someone with a shred of knowledge like Judy Sheldon gets nominated, she gets opposed because she knows too much that is useful to the primary mission of the Fed: control of the money supply.

The Knoxville NAACP has “demanded” that the application for a boys only charter school be withdrawn. This is in sync with the national organization’s opposition to charter schools. Guess all the hundreds of thousands of dollars given to the NAACP by the teachers’ unions is paying off.

I loved the Babylon Bee’s story of a Chinese army training video showing how to attack the American army using the wrong pronouns.

Is transgenderism just part of a national mental health crisis?

I bet most kids questioning their gender reside in liberal states making it a fad of youth – like Tik Tok.

I just finished reading Siddarth Kara’s Colbalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. It is a sobering and frightening account of the appalling conditions in mining cobalt in the Congo. That such conditions are allowed to continue is almost unimaginable. Everyone should read this book. Kara tells the story of the people of the Congo who have been dealt perhaps the planet’s worse poker hand. From slavery to the genocide by the Belgians to exploitation by the Europeans and now by the Chinese, the Congolese have never profited from the rich minerals in their soil. More personally, one of my 13 DNA strains is Congo, so these are stories about my relatives.

We now have in power a government that seems to conspire with the Chinese. It lets a spy balloon sail across the country unimpeded until after it finishes its mission. It denies domestic mining permits of minerals used in smartphones and EVs that are currently dominated by the Chinese. It is trying to destroy fossil fuels and replace them with more expensive and less reliable sources of energy while the Chinese are building more coal fired plants. Why should we make China better off while we make ourselves worse off and more dependent upon our main adversary? Is this the Hunter Biden payoff?

The Biden Administration is coming after your gas ovens, your small appliances, your light bulbs, you internal combustion engines, banning natural gas buildings, diesel and gas heavy trucks. Everything it seems other than John Kerry’s private jet.

And then there is the border which is completely out of control and overseen by a complete incompetent who seemingly does not care about the misery, chaos and suffering going on. Also does not care about the costs imposed on the citizens of the border states. Maybe Mayorkas is being bribed by the cartels.

All of the above points to a country in decline. I think it is a product of all the garbage propaganda spewed by the left that has taken over media, “culture”, education and politics. Its no wonder that most Americans think that their children will be less prosperous than the current generation. It is also no wonder that fewer Americans are patriotic, love the country, are religious and believe in the American dream. Its truly sad because this malaise is of our own making.

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank sparked a mini-panic in financial markets. The word “contagion” was tossed around as if the banking system were replete with other banks in similar straits as SVB. There was even an old fashioned bank run at SVB and some other banks resulting in the failure of Barney Frank’s Signature Bank. Recall that Frank was cosponsor of the Dodd-Frank Act that was supposed to lessen bank failure.

I presume the run was from depositors who held more that the federally insured $250,000 since 94% of SVB’s deposits were over the insured amount. Those depositors would only be able to access $250,000 and would receive a voucher for the rest. Of course the Biden administration through the FDIC did exactly the wrong thing by insuring all deposits regardless of denomination. This will inspire continued recklessness by some bankers to conduct unsafe and unsound banking practices. Moreover, the bailout was of depositors who likely did not need to be rescued. The SVB episode is a prime example of incompetence at all levels. The banking executives, the California state banking regulator and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco were all complicit and all should be fired.

To recount, SVB was heavily involved in the tech industry, startups and venture capital. It expanded its loan portfolio rapidly taking advantage of the Fed’s low interest rate policy that started in 2009. That SVB grew so rapidly should have been a warning sign to its regulators. Too rapid growth is a fundamental warning sign and was apparently ignored by the regulators. Another warning sign that the bank was in trouble was its borrowing of $15 billion from the Federal Home Loan Bank system. SVB’s management was incompetent and obviously did not learn its lesson from the S and L failures of the 1980s. 

The S&Ls failed because they had short term liabilities (deposits) and long term assets (mortgages). When interest rates rose, the cost of their liabilities rose while the return on their assets stayed the same, eventually resulting in insolvency. The same thing happened with SVB. They took their deposits and either loaned them out to tech firms and startups or bought long-term bonds. They then were doubly exposed by the downturn in the tech industry and the Fed’s raising of interest rates. The downturn in tech brought about defaults on SVBs loans and the rise in interest rates mean that SVBs bond portfolio lost value. As a result SVB started borrowing liquidity from the Federal Home Loan Bank system. Surely, the regulators had to have been aware of the borrowing and should have moved to examine the bank. Since SVB was a state chartered bank, the primary responsibility for examining the bank for safety and soundness lies with California’s Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. The state regulator did not act until it took possession of SVB citing inadequate liquidity and insolvency and turned the bank over to the FDIC to dispose of its assets and pay out insured depositors. That California did not pursue corrective actions sooner is an indictment of that department and its heads should be fired. But of course they won’t. It is also an indictment of the Federal regulators, namely the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. 

To my knowledge, no Federal Reserve president has ever been fired. It is time to change that and for the Fed to fire the president of the San Francisco Fed, Mary Daly. The regional Fed banks have the responsibility for supervising and examining the Fed member banks in their districts and the San Francisco Fed failed to heed the warning signs from SVB and shares the responsibility of this debacle. Mary Daly has long been recognized as one of the least able of all Fed bank presidents. She does not have a background in bank regulation and supervision and has not made these an important part of her tenure at the head of the reserve bank. In fact she was once a “labor inequity researcher” – whatever that is – at the San Francisco Fed and said that the Marxist economist Gene Wagner “has mentored me my whole life.” 

It is time for the Fed to reexamine the role of the regional banks and emphasize safety and soundness. It is also time for the Fed to insist that its regional presidents have training and background in these areas. The stability of the banking system is too important to be left in the hands of amateurs and the incompetent. Both the heads of the California regulator and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco bear responsibility and both should be fired.

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The sharp knives are out for Ron DeSantis who infuriated the leftist mob when he said that Florida was the state where woke goes to die. But DeSantis doesn’t care. He obviously feels that attacking “woke” is a key to his political future. He has proclaimed “We will never surrender to the woke mob.”  When Disney was pushing the leftist agenda, DeSantis had them stripped of their self-governing status in their theme park in Orlando. 

DeSantis’ latest salvo against the left created a furor when he would not allow the AP course in black history to be added the school curricula in Florida. He was promptly branded as a racist. The intent of the media onslaught is to get blacks firmly against him and it has worked. Two close friends of mine repeated the narrative that DeSantis was trying to erase black history. This saddened me because it showed that even very smart people are intellectually lazy. I provided them with other evidence and they both have changed their minds. No matter, because where he now appears, there is a protest organized against him calling him anti-black. He was attacked by the usual suspects including the White House, the Vice President, the teachers’ unions, the View and the liberal press. 

However he opposed the teaching of woke black history rather than the teaching of black history. None defended why critical race theory, advocating for the abolition of prisons, queer black studies, black feminism and a laudatory section on the Marxist anti-family Black Lives Matter were essential parts of black history. I bet that even the discredited warped view of the 1619 project was included. Headlines read “What is behind DeSantis push to erase black history?” Another accused him of altering black history. This was especially curious since the AP course was the one altering black history.

The governor’s office released a statement saying the proposed course is a “vehicle for a political agenda” that leaves far too much room for “ideological material” to make its way into the curriculum. Of course this was true. There was no mention of black conservatives and the AP course was revised to include some of them like Ben Carson, Thomas Sowell, Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas. Yet more revision is needed to honesty tell the remarkable story of blacks in American history.

Black American history is American history. It is a rich, diverse, compelling story of courage, resistance, emancipation, resilience and triumph over daunting odds. When the slaves were freed, most had no possessions and little if any education. Many did not even have a last name. Yet through hard work, faith and inner strength they and their proud descendants were able to navigate through the barriers imposed by the Jim Crow south and the more subtle discrimination present in the north. What about the early black legislators, inventors, educators, scholars and entrepreneurs that are missing from woke black history? It is though the left wants to portray blacks as hapless victims rather than telling the true story of dealing with and overcoming adversity.

Governor DeSantis rejected the AP course on Black History on the grounds that the course did not relate this history but instead injected a biased, political interpretation of the American Black experience. The AP course was an exercise in promoting a political agenda rather than an accurate telling of our history. I wonder if the AP course told of the abolitionist movement that existed prior to the founding of the country and of black historical figures who defended the Constitution such as Frederick Douglass. It should also be noted that contrary to the claims that Gov DeSantis is trying to erase black history, that the governor annually awards winners of Black History Month student contests in Florida. These are not the actions of a racist. I applaud Gov. DeSantis and his Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr for having the courage to reject the biased historical perspective of the AP course and to insist on educating our children rather than indoctrinating them.