… New York public education is falling behind because the state has ignored chances to discover what educational practices really work, use that evidence to improve student outcomes, and make its leadership accountable for results.

While the state gathers troves of data, many of its most important programs are poorly measured or poorly evaluated.

For example, New York knows very little about its two fastest-growing programs: special education and school-based mental-health services. In New York, 21 percent of public school students are classified as having a disability, compared with the national average of 15 percent. The state has also opened more than 1,000 school-based mental-health clinics and hired counselors at a rate few other states can match. But it does not track if students are getting the services they need, if the programs are effective, or even if parents agreed to them.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Similar problems dog New York’s tracking of individual students, teacher training programs, and the elimination of the infamous compulsory Regents exams of my youth. New York knows that charter schools are a good idea, but for political reasons they are very limited. And on and on and on.

It’s a choice to be mediocre, and to use money to fund Democrat constituencies in education rather than caring about education itself.

The post Throwing money at schools doesn’t work … appeared first on The New Neo.

The House of Representatives voted to send the smallest piece of US currency the way of the dodo on Monday, passing the bipartisan Common Cents Act in a unanimous vote.

In addition to blocking the Treasury from minting any more pennies save for collector coins, the bill would also set up a framework for cash transactions to be rounded to the nearest 5 cents, in order to eliminate the need for pennies altogether.

When was the last time you used a penny? Now they cost too much to manufacture. So begone!

When I was a kid, penny candy was actually a thing. We went to a little news store that had many bins of it and made our choices carefully. But that’s when a candy bar usually cost a nickel.

The post Say goodbye to the penny appeared first on The New Neo.

Stage four is more serious for Canada. The jobs report came out. They’ve lost 41,000 jobs just in one week of the tariff war. We created 160,000 in August. It’s gonna get worse for Canada.

We have, as I said, nine times the population, 13 times the nominal GDP, and Canada is entirely reliant. Seventy-five percent of it is reliant. I don’t say that out of triumphalism or boasting, but in sadness for Canada. I don’t know what they’re doing.

Mr. Carney, who had three passports before he was prime minister, a Canadian, a British, and an Irish. He was the epitome of a globalist, and he wasn’t a nationalist. So his immigration, his energy, his defense policy, and his trade policy were all globalist. They were all European-style, and they didn’t realize or properly exploit the natural gifts of Canada. …

[Carney has whipped up anti-American feeling] because he did not want, as I said in stage three, he didn’t want an autonomous Alberta and an autonomous Quebec, and those referenda are coming up.

More importantly, he’s now interfering in U.S. internal midterm politics. …

He does not know what he’s doing. He’s living in a fantasy house. …

He and the Chinese are the only two countries that issued counter tariffs. People in Europe love what he’s doing, but not one of them would follow his example. He’s got his neck out, and the fate of 41 million Canadians depends on him being successful, and he’s gonna fail because the United States is saying, “This is a new world. We’re not gonna subsidize everybody’s defense and run up $200 billion deficits with one neighbor, Mexico, and $50 billion to $60 billion with our northern neighbor and call it a free trade zone.”

Then again, maybe he’s counting on the left taking control of the US and doing a switcheroo.

The post Victor Davis Hanson on Carney and Canada appeared first on The New Neo.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced charges against a former government employee and his alleged accomplice, who are accused of selling immigration benefits and expedited application processing.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) praised the DOJ on September 6 for bringing charges against former USCIS Senior Immigration Services Officer Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu and Adeniyi Akeem Somoye. These two allegedly spent years taking gratuities in return for manipulating the immigration application process.

Some background:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has provided details of how Lukman Owolabi Ganiyu, a Nigerian-American and former senior officer at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, allegedly made over a million dollars from desperate immigration applicants by bypassing rigorous background checks, required interviews, and supervisory reviews to obtain permanent residency and citizenship.

Despite the Donald Trump administration’s clampdown on immigration, Mr Ganiyu allegedly used his position as a USCIS senior officer to access applications from Nigerians and foreigners in the Electronic Immigration System and grant unlawful approvals between December 2019 and March 2026.

Mr Ganiyu, working in the Dallas Field Office, came under scrutiny after colleagues found he went to great lengths to approve green card applications, including those of individuals outside his jurisdiction and purview.

For instance, Mr Ganiyu assigned himself as the ISO2 (immigration service officer) on the I-130 immigration application (petition for alien relative) of M.N. (the applicant’s full name was redacted to initials in filings), even though the case was in the Minneapolis-St. Paul field office, according to court documents. Although he was in the Dallas Office, he made himself the case officer on November 3, 2022. On the same day, he approved the application after bypassing supervisory review.

In other words, he over-extended himself in a way that became suspicious. Otherwise, he probably would have gotten away with it.

As for his accomplice:

Somoye allegedly acted as a financial intermediary. Prosecutors say he handled about $1.7 million in transfers involving applicants through bank accounts, Zelle and Cash App, while allegedly keeping part of the money. He also allegedly deposited $449,010 in cash. The complaint says Ganiyu and Somoye frequently exchanged money “back and forth” with applicants.

Nice little gig.

The post Another day, another fraud appeared first on The New Neo.

The Trump administration has been saying for a while that as many as nine million barrels of oil a day are traversing the Strait of Hormuz. That claim has been “fact checked” and derided by just about everyone. …

Only–oops–it turns out that President Trump and Secretary Wright, one of his cabinet’s most impressive members, were right all along, as Kpler now confirms:

“An average of 8.6 million barrels of oil a day have been flowing through the Strait of Hormuz — more than previously reported, maritime analyst firm Kpler confirmed in a new update that matches estimates from the Trump administration.
***
“Kpler and other trackers had initially put the number closer to 5 million, but new data includes “dark transits,” where ships turn off their transponders and secret ship-to-ship transfers, which the group wasn’t previously tracking.

“The nature of the transits left Kpler and other analysts to report only a handful of crossings every day, figures that were picked up by media outlets and used to point out the discrepancy between what was being reported and what the Trump administration was claiming.

“The White House has long-maintained that the data firms were missing a chunk of the exports due to the dark transits, with Kpler now confirming the fact as the dark ships start reappearing and painting a clearer picture of the oil flow.”

I seem to recall a considerable amount of discussion on this blog in the past about this topic.

The post The Strait of Hormuz appeared first on The New Neo.

“At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority US control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” the president wrote.

“This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future, while helping to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity,” he added.

This was not on my bingo card when I voted for Trump in 2024. But if it’s actually true, it’s quite a development.

From Rubio:

“For the Venezuelan people, this deal will bring nearly $100 billion in private investment, support thousands of high-paying jobs, and drive the reconstruction of Venezuela’s economy,” the secretary of state said.

Win/win? Too good to be true?

I had a college roommate who was an American born in Venezuela, whose father worked in the oil industry there. That’s how I learned, long ago, that the US had been instrumental in developing that country’s oil production, although the Venezuelans always owned the oil fields. You might say it was a mutually beneficial relationship, but Chavez ended it and also instituted other changes that deeply harmed the industry. The blows came from many decisions of Chavez’s; you can find much of the history here.

As for “Highly Respected” Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, she seems to be willing to deal.

The post Is it really the biggest oil deal in recorded history? appeared first on The New Neo.

You be the judge. See this:

The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to transport millions of barrels of oil each day — a notable success even as the broader war remains at a stalemate, two U.S. officials told Axios.

Under the operation, which has been underway for the last several weeks, 15–20 tankers have entered and exited the strait each night through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.

About 10 million barrels of oil a day — roughly half the pre-war volume — are being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, the officials said.

And there’s this:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has already enacted numerous sanctions and economic punishments against the Islamic Republic of Iran as the conflict with the U.S. grinds on, but President Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday evening to announce he’s taking things to a whole new level.

Using his trademark all-caps style, he promised to unleash an “ECONOMIC D-DAY” that will be the “MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY!” He also warned other nations that if they throw any lifelines to the mullahs, they will pay a steep cost courtesy of the U.S.

Seems to me we’ve heard this before.

The post Hormuz again appeared first on The New Neo.

Here’s a DSA leader:

Gustavo Gordillo, the 38-year-old co-chair of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, is peddling his anti-capitalist lefty agenda while enjoying the life in the two-story, nearly 2,000-square-foot row home on a gentrifying tree-lined block in Bed-Stuy. …

The Ivy League [Yale] radical’s converted single-family home was bought in 2019 by his mommy and daddy through a dummy corporation, Chucuito LLC, for just under $1 million, property records show.

Since then, it has undergone a major facelift, with renovations done to its entire front facade, the planting of lush landscaping, the revamping of the interior and the addition a pair of decks on the roof as well as near the front door, according to plans filed with the borough in 2023. …

“My son and my other son both live there,” Gordillo’s father said …

Here are some of Gordillo’s plans for landlords. Somehow I think that he might give his own parents a pass on this, considering that he’s the beneficiary of their property-holding. Then again, he’s probably not paying them anything to live in the building, and perhaps his goal is to confiscate the property from his selfish (Boomer?) parents and take it for himself:

Gordillo and his DSA comrades have meanwhile railed against property ownership, calling for a redistribution of land “from landowners to the landless.” …

“We don’t think that anybody should have the constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investment,” he said.

For years he claimed to be an electrician, but his history in that arena was unclear until the NY Post uncovered the following:

Former Yale University liberal arts student Gustavo Gordillo, 38, was fired from his apprenticeship program in March after ghosting his employer for months, meaning he never made it as a fully-credentialed electrician, the IBEW Local 3 union confirmed Wednesday.

“After learning of Mr. Gordillo’s prolonged absence from and failure to participate in required work and classes, the trustees of the Joint Apprentice Training Committee terminated Mr. Gordillo from the program,” the IBEW said in a statement.

A source close to the union said “he didn’t have a strong work record to begin with” and took the job “just for show,” while hogging “a slot from someone who probably really needed the opportunity.”

Absolutely perfect.

And to top it all off, the DSA now pays him $95K a year with benefits.

Has he ever paid his own rent? Plus, it turns out he didn’t graduate from Yale after all, although he “attended”:

The Yale registrars’ office confirmed to The Post on Wednesday that he studied literature there between 2006-10, but did not earn a degree. He also studied sculpture at Yale’s graduate School of Art a couple of years later, records show.

Gordillo’s dad admitted Tuesday that he paid his son’s $2,600 a month rent on the Lower East Side, through a dummy corporation, Chucuito LLC, until 2019.

I think there’s a certain logic to someone from this sort of background becoming a socialist. For them, the connection between earning money and buying things isn’t necessarily part of their “lived experience.” That does not mean that all or most people from such backgrounds become socialists; plenty do not. But a significant number of socialists do seem to have that sort of background. Perhaps becoming socialists is the only way they can feel virtuous without actually refusing their parents’ money.

NOTE: It’s not a new phenomenon, either; one can see this sort of thing among some prominent socialists and Communists of the past. Take Che Guevara, for example. He was raised by very financially comfortable leftist parents, and he earned a medical degree before becoming a revolutionary. He had Mangione’s stylish looks and a similar willingness to kill, and like Mangione he attracted quite a following among US leftists (in Guevara’s case, mostly after his death).

The post Rich socialists as champions of the working class appeared first on The New Neo.

Here’s an article at RealClearInvestigations that purports to explain the history. An excerpt:

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Democrats’ U.S. Senate primary in Michigan last Tuesday was the latest sign of an emerging kingmaker in U.S. politics – a little-known super PAC that has tapped the wealth of a new cadre of Muslim-American mega-donors to support far-left candidates.

Since it was launched just six months ago, American Priorities has channeled millions of dollars, primarily from donors with Arab, Muslim, and/or Middle Eastern backgrounds, to a string of winning candidates in high-profile races.

Most of the entity-supported candidates are running on various democratic-socialist policies, such as single-payer health care, abolishing ICE, and slashing the military. But one area in which all candidates are aligned, consistent with the PAC’s mission, is in their antagonism towards Israel.

Because so much of the Democrat voter base is anti-Israel, this is now a requirement for most races. It’s not new, either. It began to be visible in politics with Barack Obama, although it was more subtle. The four members of Congress known as “The Squad” – two of whom, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, were openly Muslim and Israel-hating – were elected in 2018. Seems like longer ago, doesn’t it?

The Muslim population of the US has been growing in recent years, and it may have reached a critical mass to take more political power – especially if the group votes as a bloc, and especially in areas where the Muslim population is highest (that would be NY, NJ, Illinois, Maryland, and Michigan, by percentage of population; note that only Michigan is not a deep blue state already).

This isn’t much different from other immigrant groups who have come to this country. It’s a natural progression to get more involved in politics and to run for political office. But a larger proportion of this group isn’t interested in the values and principles on which this country was founded, and in this it’s a natural fit for the far left which has the same desire to “transform” the US into something quite different:

A recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing convened by Sen. Ted Cruz raised a more chilling issue. The Texas Republican alleged, and witnesses concurred that – in a parallel to what has transpired in countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – the Muslim Brotherhood, a subversive transnational Islamist organization, has cultivated an “entrenched institutional network” in America of NGOs, advocacy groups, and political organizations to advance its leaders’ recorded mission to “destroy … Western civilization from within.” That network, terrorism expert Kyle Shideler found, has actively partnered with the Democratic Socialists of America, as part of what Cruz called a “Red-Green Alliance,” that Shideler said is “united around a revolutionary objective advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. Constitution.” Democrats on the panel boycotted the hearing in protest, claiming in a statement the Texas senator was “[s]capegoating Muslims.”

Of course; “Islamaphobia,” that all-purpose term to attempt to quell any criticism of this group.

More about the funding that is enabling this:

American Priorities was founded in February as a self-styled “countervailing force” to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Though the largest such group, it is just one of several relatively new PACs with overlapping donors centered on opposition to Israel (see sidebar). The super PAC is led by Hannah Fertig, a strategist self-identifying as Jewish who figured prominently in the 2020 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who is also Jewish and a backer of staunch anti-Zionist candidates. The group’s treasurer is Mark Hanna, an assembly district leader in New York who began his political career as an organizer focusing on Muslim-related issues, including through forming Yalla Brooklyn, an NGO dedicated to mobilizing Arab and Muslim voters. American Priorities has pledged to put up $10 million this cycle to elect Democratic candidates who believe the party establishment is too pro-Israel. AIPAC and its affiliates have also poured tens of millions of dollars into recent election cycles as support for the Jewish state generally has declined – a long-term trend among Democrats correlating with the rise of the anti-Israel progressive left. To support its political claims, American Priorities cites polls showing a majority of Democratic voters oppose U.S. military aid to Israel, are more sympathetic to Palestinian Arabs than Israelis, and shun candidates who accept AIPAC support.

Many of the super PAC’s top donors are first-generation Muslim immigrants who have made their fortunes in the U.S. They include …

The article then goes on to list some of them, with descriptions.

I will also point out that their anti-Israel message appeals to the Tucker wing of the ex-right (I don’t call them “right” anymore, because they have come to resemble the left so much that the differences have become more and more minor). But the attitudes are rife among Democrat politicians and Democrat voters. In 2024, Kamala Harris was well aware of this and did not choose Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania because she knew many Democrat voters would turn away from her if she chose a Jew who wasn’t of the Bernie Sanders variety: secular, virtue-signaling, Israel-hating. There are just a few Democrats who have spoken out against these attitudes (for example Fetterman, Goldman who lost his primary, and NJ’s Josh Gottheimer). In contrast, despite Tucker and company, the vast majority of Republican office-holders are on the pro-Israel side.

Here’s one interesting Democrat who has offered an opinion:

Joel Rubin, the Jewish outreach leader on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, has likewise said that “I think what Sanders and the Sanders operation have done is shove into our system the most categorically anti-Israel, antisemitic candidates that we’ve seen in a generation – if ever, certainly within the Democratic Party” – a reference to the Vermont socialist’s leadership on the left.

In 2020, Sanders had a softer line on Israel that mostly centered on criticizing Netanyahu. That’s probably why Joel Rubin felt it was fine to work for him, but no longer holds that view as Sanders has moved into the “Israel is committing genocide” camp. These days Sanders not only sees which way the Democrats’ wind blows, he wants to be part of the push.

On Mamdani, whose election has been a high point of the movement:

These candidates are following in the footsteps of, and in some cases with the blessing of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani – whose rise captured the attention and support of several of American Priorities’ donors prior to its launch, including its two biggest backers, Mohamed Waqas Javed and Omer Hasan. Both have contributed over $1 million to the super PAC to date. While little is publicly known about them, they and a third donor, Tariq Afaq Ahmed, who has contributed $500,000, were pre- and post-IPO employees at AppLovin, today one of the world’s most valuable ad tech companies, from which they likely made a fortune. AppLovin has come under scrutiny for, among other things, its funding from Chinese Communist Party-linked individuals and entities. …

American Priorities’ treasurer, Hanna, previously served alongside Mamdani in the 2017 campaign of Palestinian-American Rev. Khader El-Yateem. Mamdani said that El-Yateem “transformed” his life, in part by connecting him with “a political movement that understood Palestine as being a central part of the struggle, which is something that I had often struggled with…all of these politicians I had admired…found every way to not address Palestinians when it came to their seemingly universal struggles.”

The Mamdani campaign, which emerged from the city’s Muslim Democrat establishment and made Israel and the Palestinian Arabs a major focus, appears to have catalyzed Muslim donors nationally, while demonstrating a proof of concept for how targeted contributions could dramatically increase their political clout going forward.

Mamdani has been both an inspiration and a catalyst for more donations.

The article cites polls of American Muslims that indicate support among them for the Muslim Brotherhood is especially high, and support for Hamas is quite high too. Also:

The Pew poll also showed that Muslims have a more favorable view of Palestinian Arabs than any other religious cohort at 78%, and a less favorable view of Israelis than any other religious cohort at 26% support. Following the October 7 attack, nearly 58% of American Muslims surveyed found that Hamas was at least somewhat justified in carrying out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust “as part of their struggle for a Palestinian state.”

The following may be the most important part of the article:

Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam, the son of Muslim immigrants, has identified what he sees as two problematic “ideological tendencies” among American Muslims that are of increasing relevance as Islam is set to surpass Judaism as America’s second largest religion within the next generation, and as Muslims’ political power grows. The first is “Islamism” and its violent manifestation in jihad. The second that he hypothesizes persists among upwardly mobile, educated, and often relatively secular Muslims is their rejection of “the quiet gratitude that one associates with immigrants and their children of earlier eras.” This, he says, is not so much due to the dictates of their faith as they understand it, but due to “‘anti-West westernization’ or ‘adversarial assimilation’: a process by which incorporation into American institutions produces not attachment to patriotic narratives of American freedom, individualism, and benevolence but hostility toward them.” He says that this cohort is in thrall to “Third Worldism,” which Salam defines as “a fusion of anti-Zionism, anti-Westernism, and anti-capitalism that places the sacralized victimhood of Palestinian Arabs at the center of a larger struggle against American imperialism.”

Of the two tendencies, “in important respects,” he argued recently in Sapir Journal, Third Worldism “presents the more consequential long-term ideological challenge.”

“Where jihadism targets American civilians as part of a larger struggle to overthrow ‘apostate’ regimes in the Muslim world, Third Worldism endeavors to transform the nation’s ideological-intellectual milieu, shaping how Americans – well beyond the Muslim minority – understand their country and its place in the world.”

I have heard the term “third worldism” more and more lately. I plan to write a post on the subject soon. It’s one of the main ideas that binds Islamists and the left, an alliance that some find strange but that makes perfect sense in many ways. They share the goal of destroying the west as we know it, and although each wants to be the one ultimately in charge of the Brave New World that follows, only one will succeed. But that’s for later. Right now destruction is the proximate goal.

The post What’s behind the sudden emergence of a host of Muslim DSA-backed candidates? appeared first on The New Neo.

But we didn’t know these details about Heidi Beirich, who was the CFO of the SPLC and was recently arrested for fraud [my emphasis]:

A former employee of the Southern Poverty Law Center has been arrested in California on charges that she oversaw secret payments to informants inside of White supremacist groups, one of whom she was allegedly living with and had a romantic relationship with at the time. …

Beirich allegedly “oversaw payments of donors’ money” to people inside of these hate groups, according to an indictment unsealed Wednesday. She also allegedly shared a bank account with one of those sources, which included funds from the SPLC’s payments. …

Despite her role in overseeing the payments — some of which were directed to an Imperial Wizard in the KKK — Beirich allegedly had a romantic relationship with one source who infiltrated a White Supremacy group and stole documents for the SPLC, according to the indictment.

That person, prosecutors say, was paid over $1 million by the SPLC since 2007 – $140,000 of which was put into a bank account that Beirich and the person shared. Beirich allegedly used that money to pay for their personal living expenses.

The documents that person allegedly stole were used as part of an article that the SPLC later published. Beirich then allegedly paid a second informant $6,000 to take the fall for the stolen documents.

“Dr. Beirich is innocent, and this case is without merit,” her attorney, Michael J. Proctor said in a statement. “We believe the charges against her and the SPLC are politically motivated …

The SPLC itself is above politics, of course, dedicated only to truth, justice, and the American way.

The post So the SPLC was in bed with neo-Nazi informants – literally appeared first on The New Neo.