RUSH: It is from Forbes. Here’s the headline. “Obama Administration Takes Groupthink To Absurd Lengths: School Discipline Rates Must Be ‘Proportionate.'” I’m gonna get some pull quotes, but I’m gonna read to you how this thing starts. “Barack Obama has wrapped himself in egalitarianism all his political career and now that dissatisfaction with his goal of ‘transforming’ America is growing, heÂ’s pushing equality more relentlessly than ever.”
Well, let’s examine that. Obama is trying to transform America. That is his major goal. And Mr. Leef here contends that there is growing dissatisfaction with this. Well, there may be growing dissatisfaction, but is Obama not succeeding? I wouldn’t say he’s not succeeding. I think he’s had profound success so far. But what this story says is that Obama is unhappy with the dissatisfaction. Obama is not happy that people oppose him, so he is going to push for this transformation even more relentlessly than he ever has.
“Last fall, he declared income equality to be the ‘defining challenge of our time.’ ThatÂ’s laughable, but in January, his administration — specifically the Departments of Justice and Education — went even further with a ‘guidance’ letter that demands a group equality approach to student discipline in AmericaÂ’s public schools.”
Now, let me tell you what this is, folks. Mr. Leef has identified what is happening. This push for equality — and the reason that they push for equality is because it’s almost a magic word to young people. They think everybody should be equal. There should be no inequality. There shouldn’t be any unfairness, and everybody should be happy, and everybody should be treated the same, all of this. So Obama uses code words. It’s sort of like you could pass anything in the world you wanted in Congress as long as you called it the Civil Rights Act. You might be able to legalize rape if you called it the Civil Rights Act of 2014. I mean, you couldn’t, but I use that as an example. You could do a lot just by the basis of what you call it.
So the terms “equality” and “inequality” appeal to unthinking, inexperienced, low-information youths. And that’s where this story takes place, school and the equality of school discipline. School discipline, the rates and the parceling it out must be proportionate. And I think this is all part of the — I mentioned stuff on the destruction that this Regime can enact in the next three years. The reason they want to win the House, the Democrats do, there’s no opposition.
That’s what Obama wants, no opposition. He doesn’t want to debate the opposition. He doesn’t want to consider the ideas of the opposition. He doesn’t want to have to enter the arena of ideas with the opposition and outdebate them and outmaneuver them. He just doesn’t want there to be any opposition. That is the modus operandi and that’s why the Democrats want the House. It will become a literal rubber stamp.
I mean, if you’ve got such brainiacs as Sheila Jackson Lee already saying that the purpose of the Congress is to write executive orders for the president to sign, and she said it, and she means it. When Obama goes before them on the State of the Coup speech and basically says, “If you guys don’t do what I want, I’m gonna do it anyway,” and they give him a standing O, if the Democrats win the House, the House is officially a rubber stamp.
They won’t even wait for legislation. But they’ll be able to debate, pass legislation inside of a day, and Obama can sign it. That’s what they’re angling for here. A lot of things are taking place under the radar before that happens, all of these rules and regulations, all kinds of little things. From the EPA, to the Department of Justice, to the defendant energy and education, there’s all kinds of things that they’re doing, like this FCC thing that’s been caught with monitors in newsrooms.
Soon school officials under threat of the federal government will either start disciplining students who shouldn’t be or, more likely, will not discipline some students who should be, and that is what is on the agenda. It’s gonna be totally illegal, but this is going to be done under the auspices of equality and fairness. Here’s a pull quote from the story: “[I]n January, [the Obama] administration — specifically the Departments of Justice and Education — went even further with a ‘guidance’ letter that demands a group equality approach to student discipline in America’s public schools.
If federal bureaucrats suspect that there’s any racial disproportionality in the punishments meted out for misbehavior in school, they will descend on the school’s administrators. Unless those officials can then prove to the government’s satisfaction (good luck!) that any differential in rates of punishment by race or ethnic group is ‘necessary,’ the school will face the loss of federal funds and costly mandates for diversity training.”
Want me to translate that for you?
The federal government is going to assert control over the way discipline is handled in local public schools, and the administrators of these schools are going to have to report every act of discipline that they have engaged in. They’re gonna have to explain who was disciplined, and why, in every case. If there are disparities seen, if more blacks are disciplined than whites or if the disciplinary action is at all judged to be unfair or disproportionate by the federal monitors?
Then the federal government will go to the logical school government and say, “You’re gonna fix this! You’re going to discipline the way we tell you to or we are going to withhold funds — and, furthermore, we’re going to mandate that every teacher and every administrator attend diversity and sensitivity training,” and here you go. “Come on, Rush! It’ll never happen. They don’t have the manpower. They can’t do that. They can’t even run health care!” That’s not the point.
The point is, they want to.
The point is they’re going to try to. The point is, they believe it is totally within their purview to do this — and the point is that their starting point is that it’s already inequitable, it’s already unfair, and it’s already racist. Their guidepost for that is the incarceration rates. They already believe that discipline is disproportionately racist because there are many more blacks in jail than there are whites. That’s their starting point.
So they figure that, on average, just a natural occurrence, school administrators are gonna be much harsher, much more punitive on minority students than on white students. That’s the starting point. The starting point is the school districts are guilty, and then the Regime is now instituting a program that’s designed to prove what they think is already going on, and they’ll be able to prove whatever they want. They’ll have the administrators by the shorts.
“You give us what we want in this or else we’re gonna pull your money away.” The administrators will then begin to alter the discipline, change it, cancel it for some and increase it for others. Now, let’s take a look at how the discipline’s gonna change. How does the left deal with matters of inequality? How do they do it when they detect income inequality? How does the left do it? Obama, the Democrats, how would they attack that situation?
What they normally do is they look at the people in the low end of the economic scale and people at the high end, and they assume the people at high end are cheating and they take from them. They never, ever attempt to elevate the poor or the underachievers. They always take the successful, the economically successful — in this case the academically successful. They punish them, and they equalize people by bring people at the top down.
So if you transfer that to the way they would deal with discipline, what do you think is going to happen? The real problem cases are not gonna be dealt with. That’s gonna become the baseline for norm. Another pull quote. “What prompted this aggressive move by the feds — apart from its political value with most of Obama’s base — is the notion that some students, especially African-American and Hispanic males, are apt to be given harsher discipline for an infraction than would white or Asian students.”
So you see, the starting point is that there’s already bias and racism. That’s the starting point for this regulation. The starting point is: The schools are already harsher on African-Americans and Hispanics. That’s why we’re doing this. There’s a problem. We are not disciplining whites nearly as severely, and that’s gonna change.
So what’s going to happen is, rather than study why harsh discipline is being handed out, they will study why there isn’t harsh discipline on the whites, and they will try to equalize it by making sure that the discipline is increased on those who are not being disciplined as severely as minorities and so forth, or look the other way on the bottom students. But have any of you heard about any of this? This is news, right? This is stuff happening under the radar. It has made into Forbes.
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