While the MSM hyenas, Hollywood jugheads, and Democrats are on their knees everywhere (the natural position for Liberals any place except Church); President Trump moved forward on a new policy to open new educational opportunities other than sports for mostly minority and rural communities. The Presidential Directive allocates $200 million to boost STEM in public schools.
Because of Academic incompetence, the US is falling far behind European and Asian countries in scientific fields. The President noted in his remarks just how bad the situation is. Note especially the portions of his speech that we've highlighted:
"Today, too many of our nation's K-12 students lack access to quality STEM programs; and thus are excluded from some of the most attractive job options in the growing US economy. Courses in Computer Science are especially scarce in too many communities despite the employment opportunities that these skills create. Nearly 40% of high schools do not offer Physics and 60% do not offer computer programming... Minorities and students in rural communities have even less access to Computer Science education. Nationwide, only 34% of African-Americans and 30% of rural students have access to Computer Science classes."
That does bring up the side issue of what the Academic Establishment has been doing all these years with their already-bloated budgets. It's a national disgrace that 2 out of every 5 high schools do not even offer Physics---a subject that we used to get as early as Middle School just a generation or so ago. Postmodern high schools do, however, teach a lot of political correctness and scapegoating. This despite the fact that that 2/3 of young Blacks and 3/4 of young women can't even get access to skills that would enable them to compete.
The President also noted that there is an extreme shortage of STEM teachers, especially in the Computer Science field. Part of this new fund will help rectify this problem as well. As part of this initiative, the President signed an Executive Order in June that would reduce student debt in STEM fields for graduates entering STEM-related apprenticeship programs. The MSM of course ignored that story too; just like they've ignored Obama's obvious failures in his Hope and Change agenda. While educational opportunities for Blacks declined under Obama, his Administration saw some of the worst race-riots in America since the 1960s.
But the billionaire Whacko Left-Wing sport-franchise owners would prefer that minorities are kept on the NCAA plantation and leave the high-tech profits for themselves.
The long-overdue backlash against the corrupt and degenerate National Football League is accelerating and showing no signs of abating. The decline of this organization appears now to be irreversible. Unless they institute some radical reforms they're heading down the tubes along with their confederates in the Corporate Media.
Here's a few resources that have come to light over the last few days, for those readers whose activism is inclined to go further than boycotting games or publically burning NFL regalia---which is also going on across the country.
1. The Wall Street Journal and Zero Hedge have been reporting today that subscribers to Direct TV's NFL Sunday Ticket service have been cancelling their contracts. There are reports that subscription refunds in various forms are now available. At any rate, fans who subscribe to Direct TV or similar services should cancel and try to get refunds. It may not always succeed, but where it does it means money that won't go to the NFL.
2. An online movement has started to boycott Wall Street/Corporate NFL sponsors.
Consumer boycotts usually have mixed results; but putting consumer pressure on these companies is certainly possible. What has a huge impact is when stockholders---including people with IRA-type funds---start divesting shares in these firms and encouraging stockbrokers not to trade them. Significant shareholders can pressure the company more directly. In any case, the monopoly-minded NFL likes giving exclusive 'sponsorship' rights to certain companies; so it is relatively easy for consumers to switch from one of these companies to another.
Just as a side note, USAA---one of the companies listed---is a financial services company for military veterans. Veterans can contact their local VFW or other veterans' groups to apply the appropriate pressure.
3. Several other bloggers have been exposing the fat tax subsidies and illegal tax breaks and monopoly privileges that the NFL gets from politicians at all levels. The NFL is also a tax-exempt non-profit organization (how that is legal we've no idea). Political activists can move GOP (and even sympathetic working-class Democrats) officials to take political action. Some suggestions:
a.) Revoke the NFL's non-profit standing since they violate it by taking political positions.
b.) Lobby to end any taxpayer subsidies to NFL.
c.) Pressure legislators and state Attorneys-General to bring anti-trust suits against the NFL.
And we're certain that legal minds can think up other creative ways to bring the NFL to some kind of accountability.
There's a growing movement to start a new professional football league on the ruins of the old. The last major competitor to the NFL was the USFL during the 1980s. As an interesting side-note, President Trump used to own a USFL team. So we can presume the White House would be sympathetic to the idea.
This denizen of the Deep State was a really bad one, too. Department of Homeland Security official and special agent Christopher Ciccione was jailed today after an internal investigation exposed him as an operative of the very narcotics cartel that he was hired to suppress.
Ciccione was in charge of Operation Cornerstone, an Obama-Era attempt to bring Cali Cartel mob-boss Jose Piedrahita to justice. In 2016, Piedrahita was indicted after an extensive investigation, but the case against him was dismissed by a Federal Grand Jury. Agents involved in the case were baffled at how Piedrahita's case collapsed; but their suspicions were ignored until the Trump Administration came in. Jeff Sessions authorized an internal investigation which discovered that Ciccione was in contact with Juan Carlos Velasco---a notorious Cali henchman.
The indictment issued today revealed that Velasco, a ruthless thug, acted as an intermediary between Ciccione and Piedrahita. In exchange for at least $20,000 in cash; free access to Cali-affiliated clubs; and a hearty supply of prostitutes, Ciccione sabotaged the case against Piedrahita. This sabotage included falsifying agent testimony and suppressing evidence. Legal opinions within the Justice Department concurred that Ciccione's actions damaged the Government's case against Piedrahita.
As a consequence of today's revelations, Piedrahita has been re-indicted and a warrant also issued for Velasco. Both however are apparently back in Colombia, where they still run their criminal activities---thanks to DHS Special Agent Christopher Ciccione.
It's instructive to reflect that the MSM jackals, the NFL protestors, the Antifa, and the rest of the anti-Trump 'Resistance' want the kind of government that Ciccione represented to come back. Whatever the motivations of the recent past administrations were; they are increasingly being uncovered as either unable---or unwilling---to make the government function cleanly, fairly, and efficiently.
We don't want them back. Seven months of Trump has done more for America than the last seven years of Obama combined.
The controversy between President Trump and the National Football League has really intensified. The President yesterday expressed what many---if not most---Americans actually think about the NFL. Most Americans love football, but thoroughly despise the NFL as an institution. A lot of us see it as another cultural swamp in need of draining.
The Corporate Media hyenas---who imagine all Trump supporters as beer-swilling, low-IQ couch-potatoes---pounced on the story and egged on their confederates in the NFL Players' Union to inflame matters worse by staging fake 'solidarity protests' throughout the NFL today. Both the Corporate Media and the NFL leadership hold their followers in complete contempt; and hope that publicity stunts like these will alienate voters---whom they presume will follow celebrity-athletes like sheep.
As for the millionaire perverts and drug addicts who pass for 'athletes' these days, we shouldn't be surprised at their behavior. Most of them are simply punks and thugs who find themselves at home in the gangland-like moral atmosphere of postmodern professional sports. They'll sell out their own teams for a higher contract, so selling out their country and disrespecting its institutions and traditions comes naturally to them.
It wasn't always this way, of course. We're only a few decades removed when public prayers were actually said at football games in addition to the National Anthem. And they were said by people like:
Who, as a young man in WW2 saw his family interned by the US government for being non-naturalized citizens of Italy. Instead of burning flags and running around in a black hood smashing windows, young Gino enlisted and came back from the Pacific Theatre a decorated war hero. Taking advantage of the GI Bill, he finished college, and was drafted by the Baltimore Colts in 1952. Now a Hall-of-Fame member, Marchetti founded a successful restaurant chain and retired a rich man.
One of the most valuable things that team sports used to teach young men like Gino Marchetti was how hard work can turn defeat into victory. Even when the inequalities and unfairness that often comes in life seem insurmountable. The longest field-goal in NFL history was made by a kicker who was born without a hand and partially missing a foot.
In our postmodern culture where victimhood is honored above all else, stories like these seem unbelievable. The whole American ideal, however, is based on overcoming incredibly difficult challenges. Football was, at least in the past, a game of strategy as much as skill. But intelligence, innovation, and excellence left the NFL a long time ago.
The fake-news is also naturally trying to spin the controversy as somehow 'racist' as if there is some natural inconsistency between being patriotic and being Black. The ignoramuses on the Whacko Left fail to understand that Blacks have been a part of the NFL from the beginning.
And back then Black athletes had a lot more discrimination and prejudices to overcome than the sad-sacks of today who won't stand for a patriotic ceremony but don't mind cashing their paychecks. Paychecks, incidentally, which are about 100,000 times higher than what their counterparts in the 1920s were paid.
The actions of the NFL players today are bound to backfire on them. They may imagine themselves too big to fail; but they are really a bunch of pygmies in the bigger scheme of sports history.
The Monocle-and-Martini Set who run the National Football League are outraged with President Trump's remarks in Alabama today. Trump called out NFL management for tolerating the gutter-trash behavior of some of its so-called stars. Recently, some of these punks have doing things like flashing gang signs and giving Black Power salutes on the field, as well as protesting the ceremonial National Anthem.
One might think that a country where semi-literate ghetto-trash can become overnight millionaires and celebrities in the NFL might be worthy of some more respect among this class of people, but not so. The NFL has really become a lot like Hollywood. Both rose to cultural icon status about the same time and both have degenerated long beyond their cultural shelf-lives through a combination of stupid greed, politically-correct pandering, and incompetent management.
But if Hollywood has become a shadow of its former self, the NFL has become a ghost of what it once was. The NFL and its chief corporate media mouthpiece, ESPN, are getting clobbered with declining ratings, revenues, and viewers. This is because the NFL has not only lost touch with its audience; it's lost touch with its very reason for existence.
The NFL was originally about excellence: strategy, teamwork, skill, and sportsmanship. A team represented a community; and thus players reflected the values of the community. This is how football grew to be so symbolic of American values. During the Golden Age of the NFL, teams, players, and coaches usually stayed in one locality and were identified with it.
Today, this attitude has changed completely: championships have become meaningless---because these 'community leaders' have no scruple about running to any other community that offers a higher price. The community gives these teams every dime they have---even building stadiums with tax dollars---and the league establishment thanks them by selling out to the highest bidders and disrespecting values that society believes in.
What has happened to the NFL is the very defect that usually spells the downfall of all monopolistic organizations. In the passing of a century, control of the organization passes from virile and energetic men to effete inbreds who are cynical and resentful. Here again, the comparison to Hollywood is apt.
And generally along with the declining quality of performance, monopolies tend to try and maximize profit by pandering to the lowest common denominator among audiences or consumers. Thus the NFL players today engage in the crudest, most unsportsmanlike behaviors: more like pro wrestling and roller-derbies in the past. The NFL management never tolerated such behaviors before; today they are common. There are numerous players who showed promise once who simply and suddenly dropped out of the league. Usually this was for drug use or some other behavior detrimental to the team or the community's image.
Regarding our postmodern protesting players, there was a famous example of a similar case during the 1970s. Joe Gilliam became the first Black starting quarterback in the NFL with the Pittsburgh Steelers. But Gilliam had political sympathies with militant Blacks, which he publically displayed and often criticized alleged racism within the Steelers and the NFL generally. His behavior led to coach Chuck Noll throwing him off the team and replacing him with Terry Bradshaw. No other team wanted Gilliam despite his skills.
Bradshaw went on to four Super Bowls, eight AFC Championships, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Gilliam died of a cocaine overdose at the age of 49.
The NFL's political correctness is another huge problem. It's recent tendencies towards gender-bending alienates most of its fan base. It's also preventing quality players from looking at professional football as a desirable career option. It's much the same problem we've seen with military recruitment. A football team, like an Army platoon, needs tough men who respect one another.
The NFL isn't likely to change any more than Hollywood will; and ultimately is going to fall under the weight of its own hubris. What we really need now is a new league that upholds the old values.
When we last heard from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, he was forming a bipartisan political team in his native Montana to stop a Neo-Nazi march headed by the notorious Andrew Anglin. Zinke is back in the news again; speaking on occasion of the long-neglected National Hunting and Fishing Day (September 23rd). President Nixon established the day as a semi-official start of hunting/fishing/trapping season in 1972.
Among its other duties, the Interior Department oversees national lands, fish and wildlife management, and conservation. The decades of Deep State leftist policies discouraged outdoor sports. Zinke noted that the numbers of outdoorsmen has declined since 2011, by 2.2 million.
Zinke rightly observed that this is an unfortunate social trend. To help encourage a return to outdoor traditions, the Interior Department dedicated October to promote hunting, fishing and trapping again. But more importantly, Zinke issued a Federal Order aimed at restoring access to public lands and expanding educational programs.
Secretarial Order 3356 designates that:
1.) Within 120 days, submit a plan to expand hunting and fishing on BLM, USFWS, and National Park Service Land;
2.) Lift restrictions against firearms on National Monument Lands;
3.) Expand educational outreach programs to include minorities and youth in urban areas;
4.) Creation of a national database enabling sportsmen to research laws and codes on public lands;
5.) Establish wildlife management panels with conservation and sportsmen's groups;
6.) Establish a review process to access federal lands through private property in a way fair to property owners.
Point #6 is especially important because it reverses previous Administrations' abuses of Eminent Domain and water/mineral rights laws.
Sportsmen's groups, conservation organizations, American Indian tribes, and property-rights advocates are applauding the new policy; as are hiking, camping, boating, cycling, and snowmobiling enthusiasts. With the exception of Breitbart News, the Corporate Media has passed over the new policy with discreet silence---no doubt after discovering how unpopular previous policies really were. The policy of restricting access to public lands and waterways began during the 1990s under President Clinton and his VP, Albert Gore. Gore was an environmentalist fanatic whose extremism discredited Conservationism among many Conservatives. Yet, as we mentioned in the last article, it has historically been Conservatives who have led the way in protecting the environment.
Zinke is not adopting a new approach, therefore. He is restoring rights and promoting culture that corrupt Deep State policies sought to undermine. So in honor of the day, enjoy a buffalo steak, venison hamburger, roast pheasant, or some fresh-caught fish for dinner.
The Trump Administration is not only cleaning up Obama-Era scandals, it's cleaning up the environment too. Last month, crooked software engineers were jailed and Volkswagen ordered to pay millions in fines for cheating on the Clean Air Act. That scandal had dragged on for two years under Obama was wrapped up by Trump in six months.
The Justice Department and the EPA announced recently that Starkist---one of the world's largest fisheries---had agreed to pay over $6 million in fines and invest in corrective anti-pollution measures stemming from 2014. EPA authorities found that Starkist's fish processing facility in American Samoa. Starkist is the world's largest supplier of canned tuna and once a great American company. Today, it is a subsidiary of a South Korean transnational agribusiness cartel, Dongwon Industries.
In 2014, a wastewater pipeline break led to an investigation which revealed that Starkist was dumping pollutants into Pago Pago Harbor at high levels; and that they had actually also dumped unreported contaminants into the sea. There were large quantities of hazardous chemicals also illegally stored at the plant. The company thumbed its nose at Obama, and went on with business as usual.
But now, in addition to fines, Starkist agreed to purchase $88,000 in equipment for Samoan hazardous-waste removal teams and upgrade wastewater treatment systems. The proposed new system will reduce pollution by 85%.
Interesting that the Corporate Media tells us that Trump is anti-environment. The Volkswagen and Starkist cases are the largest environmental settlements, but not the only ones by far. In addition, the Trump Administration has also cracked down on illegal importation of endangered-species products; just yesterday an international ivory-smuggler was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
But a better question is how these big companies got away with these activities during the green rule of the Deep State. The mystery is cleared up when we note that Starkist is listed as a top donor to the Democrat Samoan Congressional representative. Last year, Starkist spent $400,000 on lobbyists and $190,000 this year alone. The lobbying firm Manatt, Phelps, and Phillips is retained by Starkist and two of Starkist's lobbyists are Revolving-Door former federal bureaucrats. Both are Democrats.
Volkswagen, for its part, donated to the Tennessee DNC in 2012, where its corporate headquarters in America are located. Democrat Congressman Joseph Kennedy III, of Massachusetts, is one of Congress' leading shareholders of Volkswagen stock. Not coincidentally, Volkswagen is Kennedy's largest corporate contributor.
Volkswagen spent over $1.5 million on lobbyists last year, with lobbying firm Akin Gump. Five of their six lobbyists are also former Federal bureaucrats.
It's always been Conservatives who take meaningful measures to protect the environment. Liberals do things like banning woodstoves and toilets with large water-tanks. But they look the other way when their chums on Wall Street pollute harbors and create smog.
