The Left’s Plot Against George Washington

Daniel Greenfield  @ Sultan Knish Blog 

 

In Portland, the BLM mob toppled a statue of George Washington. Four years later, local leftist activists and officials have continued sabotaging efforts to restore it again. In New York City and Chicago, officials have discussed removing statues of Washington. And the Father of our Country isn’t even safe at the University of Washington where calls to remove him continue.

But the War on Washington isn’t just a recent phenomenon.

The Left didn’t want until George Washington was a statue to topple him. Newspapers like The National Gazette, The Philadelphia Aurora and The New York Time Piece, which were the vanguard of the emerging Democratic-Republican party, depicted him being led to the guillotine.

Democrats today claim that they oppose George Washington because he was a slave owner, but why did Democrats who were not only slave owners then but defended slavery (unlike Washington who favored liberating slaves and whose Washington Benevolent Societies were the organizing network for black conservative voters in the 1800s ) oppose him then?

Long before their relatively recent interest in organizing black people, American leftists were great enthusiasts of the French Revolution and favored bringing it to this country. My book, ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left’, reveals how the Democrats got their start as the “French Party” built around “Democratic Societies” modeled on French radical Jacobin clubs and set up with the aid of foreign emissaries of the French Revolution.

George Washington’s great crime in the eyes of the leftists of his day was his refusal to turn over America to the forces of the French Revolution which was the USSR of its day. “Ten thousand People in the Streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his House, and effect a Revolution in the Government, or compell it to declare War in favour of the French Revolution,” John Adams would later remember.

French Foreign Minister Charles Delacroix had urged Citizen Pierre-Auguste Adet, the French ambassador, to “use all means in his power to bring about a successful revolution, and Washington’s replacement.”

Washington, always a fighter, would not take the leftist campaign against him lying down.

In his address to Congress, President George Washington had warned of the threat of “certain self-created societies.” By those he meant the Democratic Societies. In a private letter he even more explicitly described how “these societies were instituted by the artful & designing members (many of their body I have no doubt mean well, but know little of the real plan),” by an agent of the French government “under popular and fascinating guises, the most diabolical attempts to destroy the best fabric of human government.” The Democratic Societies, he warned, were created to “sow Sedition; to poison the minds of the people of this country.”

First Lady Abigail Adams later wrote at the height of the crisis that, “France has setled her plan of subjugating America” through “Agents and Emissaries, whom with truth & reason she bosts of having thickly scatterd through our Country, saving her Principles, her depravity of Manners, her Atheism in every part of the united States” so that “she will seduce the mind & sap the foundation of our strongest pillars, Religion & Government.”

“And if there be a Nation on Earth capable of going the necessary lengths, and making the proper Sacrifices to stop its course,—it must be one that is already possesed of substantial Liberty, that knows how to appreciate it, & how to distinguish between it, and that Sort of Liberty which France is trying to propogate throughout the World.”

That “sort of liberty” with its depravity, as opposed to American liberty, was the Left.

And in ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against The Left’, I describe the rise of the American Left and its violent and treasonous plots against Washington and America.

Despite the threats and attacks, George Washington not only refused to give in to the Left, but five years away from death and suffering from arthritis and hearing loss, he became the first and last president to lead troops in the field when he rode out to confront the Whiskey Rebellion.

“We are ready for a state of revolution and the guillotine of France,” the leader of the Mingo Creek Democratic Society had declared. But the guillotine proved no match for George.

Washington rode out with the troops because he feared that America was on the verge of falling to “mob or Club government” under which “there can be no security for life—liberty—or Property”. While Washington won the battle, he earned the undying enmity of the Democrats.

In his Farewell Address on leaving office, George Washington warned about the “mischiefs of the spirit of party” which “opens the door to foreign influence and corruption”.

Both the French and their leftist allies in America were furious at Washington’s message.

“If ever there was a period for rejoicing, this is the moment,” the Philadelphia Aurora responded. “This man who is the source of all the misfortunes of our country is this day reduced to a level with his fellow citizens.”

Adet, the French ambassador, sent a copy of the Farewell Address to his government while raging against “the lies it contains, the tone of insolence”. Adet and the French regime launched a campaign of naval terror “to arouse the attention of the public at the moment of choosing the electors who must choose the President.” The campaign was treasonously coordinated “with our friends in Congress” who, according to Adet, “only saw me last winter in secret.”

But attempting to terrorize Americans backfired badly. Adams responded to French attacks on American ships with the Quasi-War and Jefferson refused to end America’s neutrality.

Nonetheless the Democratic Societies influenced the new Democratic-Republican Party and American leftists continued to dream of bringing the French Revolution to these shores.

A toast at the Democratic Society of Philadelphia envisioned France’s revolutionary movement spreading until it will “have the whole earth for its area, and the arch of heaven for its dome.”

That mission outlived George Washington and the French Revolution. It continued on through European revolutions, the Communist takeover of the Soviet Union and it still continues today.

That is why leftists really want Washington to fall.

'Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers' Fight Against The Left' is now out. 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.

The New York City PreK-12 Education Budget: New York Times Versus Reality

  October 03, 2023/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian

If you wonder why people in New York City seem to have a terribly warped view of reality, look no farther than the New York Times. The Times is where all the seemingly well-educated and sophisticated upper income New Yorkers get their “news.”

Consider, for example, the question of education funding for PreK-12 schools. If you know anything about that subject, even if you don’t know any details, you know that the New York City public schools are far and away the most lavishly funded in the country. How they can spend so much money and fail to achieve even mediocre results for the students is a shame and a disgrace. Of course, the New York Times has an entirely different take.

So let’s compare the New York Times’s view of New York City education funding with some reality.

First, to the Times. The Times has a substantial piece on the subject today, around 1500 words, with the headline (print edition) “Fiscal Cliff Threatens a Raft of Education Plans,” and subheadline “Risk of ‘Massive Setback’ For New York Schools.” The online version has an even scarier subheadline: “The city faces billions in financial pressures in the coming years that threaten to worsen inequality across the nation’s largest school system.” The byline is Troy Closson.

A few sentences into the piece, we are told of the dire financial situation the City’s public schools are facing:

[T]he system is barreling toward a steep new challenge: a huge fiscal cliff that could reduce the education budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.

So a “huge fiscal cliff” is coming, involving “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Well, is that a lot or a little in the overall picture? You won’t find the answer here. Indeed, beyond one vague line that “New York invests more in its students than other large cities,” you won’t find here any of the important information that you would want to know for an informed consideration of the subject matter. For example, in the entire long piece, they never mention the overall size of the City’s education budget, the number of students, the per student spending level, or how the spending compares quantitatively with other cities. Instead what we get is one after another dire warning about the terrible effects of cutting the level of education spending by even a penny.

From a “coalition of more than 150 civil rights groups and youth organizations including Advocates for Children of New York”:

[The City is at] “at a critical juncture,” and could see a “massive setback to public education” . . . . “The stakes are enormous,” said Randi Levine, the organization’s policy director. “We’re always concerned that programs serving students from marginalized communities are the last to be funded — and the first to be cut.”

From unnamed “budget watchdogs”:

The trade-offs illustrate the risk for school officials, budget watchdogs said. It has grown ever more important to convince families who remain in the public school system of the value of district schools.

From schools Chancellor David Banks:

“We don’t want to have to cut anything,” said the schools chancellor, David C. Banks, while adding that “some wonderful programs” were “potentially on the chopping block.”

And then there’s the perennial complaint that parents in affluent districts provide funds for a PTA, which parents in less affluent districts don’t:

In the coming years, school budget debates will probably place a fresh spotlight on disparities between parent-teacher associations, experts said. More than $13 million in annual funds raised separates the city’s wealthiest and highest-poverty districts, data shows, dollars that could go toward restoring art and music teachers, after-school programs or tutoring services.

I guess the taxpayers will need to make up that shortfall too. So by now are you convinced that the New York City public schools need every cent of their current funding and more?

OK then, here’s some reality.

An August 5 piece in the New York Post came up with the most recent enrollment figure that I can find for the New York City public schools: “Total 3K-12th grade enrollment is now at 859,124.” Trends for the years since 2016 (when enrollment peaked) can be found in this April 11, 2023 Report from the Citizen’s Budget Commission:

Between fiscal years 2016 and 2022, DOE spending grew 32.5 percent, or 4.8 percent annually . . . . Between school years 2015-16 and 2021-22, K-12 DOE enrollment declined by more than 141,000 students. . . . Simultaneous spending increases and enrollment declines led to rapid increases in per-student spending. In fiscal year 2022, the DOE spent more than $37,000 per K-12 DOE student—up 15.2 percent from the prior year and 46.9 percent since fiscal year 2016.

Those are rather incredible figures. And we can update them somewhat. The Education Department itself gives its budget for the 2023-24 school year as $37.5 billion. Dividing by the Post’s latest enrollment figure of 859,124 gives per student spending of $43,649.

An organization called EducationData.org gives average U.S. public school K-12 spending as $16,080, with an “last update” date of September 8, 2023.

Granted, there could be some issues as to whether EducationalData’s $16,080 for the full U.S. and the $43,649 of New York City are fully comparable. For example, there could be differences in how charter schools are counted, or whether teacher pension costs count in per student spending. But in the overall picture, those are small issues. Any way you measure it, New York City spends more than two and a half times per student as the U.S. average — and achieves sub-par results in terms of student scores on standardized tests.

How the New York Times can look at this and think that its job is to defend every last nickel of existing spending is beyond me. The New York taxpayers should rightfully be up in arms. But as long as they get their news from the New York Times, complacency will continue to reign.

A separate question is how the New York Times comes to run pieces like this on a regular basis. My inference is that the pieces get spoon-fed to the reporters by various activist groups, most particularly the teachers union, and the reporters just hand them in without ever doing any critical thinking.

Chicago’s Downward Spiral

January 10, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

It’s not easy to identify America’s worst-governed city. You can make a case for jurisdictions such as San Francisco, Detroit, New York City, Minneapolis, or Seattle.

 

For what it’s worth, there is statistical research from last decade showing places like New York and Los Angeles are among the worst of the worst, but I wonder if Chicago actually deserves top billing

There are many reasons to criticize the Windy City. Crime is rampant, taxes are excessive, and schools are terrible.

And, to make matters worse, Chicago is in America’s worst-governed state (at least based on my poll, which is not scientific but is probably accurate).

I already wrote once about bad public policy in Chicago. Today’s column is going to show that things are getting even worse.

I’ve written about how taxpayers are fleeing poorly governed states. Well, they’re also fleeing poorly governed cities. And the AP reports that Chicago is a popular place for companies…to leave.

The Chicago area saw an exodus of corporate headquarters in 2022, including investment firm Citadel, which moved to Miami along with its billionaire founder, Ken Griffin; Caterpillar, which relocated from north suburban Deerfield to Irving, Texas; and aerospace giant Boeing, which moved to Arlington, Virginia, after more than 20 years in the West Loop. The most recent high-profile departure was announced in November, when Lake Forest-based auto parts manufacturer Tenneco said it was shifting its headquarters to Michigan. …vacancy rates in the central business district rose to 19.6%, while the Chicago metro ticked up to 21.8%… Meanwhile, Citadel principals and employees generated billions of dollars in tax revenue for the city and state over the past decade, according to the firm, money that has also headed south.

And why are businesses escaping?

As Adam Schuster explained last October in National Review, the city’s economic management is getting worse.

Can anything be done to save the financial future of one of America’s largest and best cities? …Let’s go through the numbers. The business community is right that a property-tax increase is unnecessary considering the $3.5 billion in pandemic-related federal aid. ..The property-tax hike could be prevented by using just 2.5 percent of Chicago’s $1.9 billion in American Rescue Plan funding. But instead of using the aid to prevent tax hikes that would impede Chicago’s economic recovery, the city has proposed to use those billions to create new programs. The mayor’s proposed budget increases spending by roughly $1.2 billion… Unfortunately, that spending is propped up by one-time federal aid that expires by 2024 — meaning many programs will have to be…financed with significant tax hikes within just two years. And about those pensions: Pension costs will consume more than $2.3 billion of the city’s budget, or 21.4 percent of its own source revenue, excluding state and federal grants. That’s more than a $967 million increase in pension spending since Lightfoot became mayor and $461 million more than last year alone.

In other words, the city is trying to raise taxes today while also making decisions (especially regarding unfunded pensions) that will almost surely mean additional tax increases in the future.

No wonder people and business are fleeing the state and the city.

P.S. To make matters worse, Chicago still has major problems with corruption.

P.P.S. My long-run fear is that politicians in DC will provide bailouts for profligate cities and states.

From Bad to Worse in New York

The city council’s new reform package offers little hope of getting crime under control.

 

Rafael A. Mangual  March 26, 2021 @ City Journal.  Published with permission.  I recommend subscribing, it's free.

 

Serious crime continues to rise in New York City. As of March 21, compared with last year, the NYPD has reported eight more homicides (a 12 percent increase) and 63 more shooting incidents (a 40 percent increase) that wounded 69 more people (a 39 percent increase). These numbers are particularly discouraging because, at this time in 2020—a year that ended with a 45 percent spike in murders and a near-doubling of shootings—homicides were down almost 12 percent, and shootings were up just 17 percent compared with 2019. As I have argued in these pages and elsewhere, there is good reason to believe that reforms enacted by city and state officials—which have essentially lowered the transaction costs of criminal offending, while raising those of enforcing the law—at least partly caused this increase. And now, a new round of reforms that the city council passed threatens to fan the flames.

The spike in crime has reverberated throughout the city, but some neighborhoods and groups are getting hit much harder than others. In 2020, 91.4 percent of murder and non-negligent homicide victims were black or Hispanic; they constituted 96.4 percent of shooting victims. Blacks and Hispanics have constituted at least 95 percent of shooting victims every year since at least 2008, when the NYPD first started publishing its crime and enforcement reports. Over the 13 years covered by those reports, an average of 88.2 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter victims were blacks and Hispanics. And, uncomfortable as it may be for some to contemplate, they have also constituted the overwhelming majority of shooting and homicide suspects—97.1 percent and 91.1 percent, respectively—since 2008.

Time was when city leaders—even self-described progressives—would trip over themselves to reassure residents that they’d get crime under control before a bloody trend set in. They would propose to fix conditions in vulnerable, mostly minority, neighborhoods, and work to reinforce the police and other elements of the justice system. But times have changed.

Enter the city council’s new package of police reforms, which comes atop the measures passed last summer by the council and state lawmakers. It includes bills that will make policework even costlier by, among other things, increasing the risk that officers will be held personally liable in lawsuits; prohibiting officers from living in the city’s lower-cost suburbs—making it likelier that they will cross paths while off the job with those whom they’ve arrested; and taking officer discipline out of the police commissioner’s hands, turning those decisions over to the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

Absent from the city council’s package was anything that could conceivably bring shootings and homicides back down to their recent lows. Rather than draw on the successes of the 1990s and early 2000s, which were achieved largely by the city’s criminal-justice apparatus, leaders have decided that now is the time to embrace even more reform for reform’s sake—to “reimagine” how Gotham approaches safety. What they are proposing is, in essence, an experiment; city residents are the subjects.

The passage of this reform package should put to rest the widely held belief that law-and-order forces can easily capitalize on rises in crime to stunt reform efforts. Wherever the constituency for law and order in New York City currently is, it’s apparently not nearly big or loud enough to give the council and its allies in Albany pause.

What’s happening in New York is just part of a national trend. Chicago saw a 55 percent spike in homicides and shootings last year, yet Democratic lawmakers in Illinois recently passed a similarly misguided package of reforms—one that codified the Windy City’s recent experiment in bail reform in the state’s statute books. Last year, in Minneapolis, lawmakers slashed millions from the police budget amid massive spikes in homicides, shootings, and carjackings. Undeterred by the carnage, some city council members reintroduced a measure to abolish the police department.

Such reforms send a message to those who care about public safety: help is not on the way. The calvary isn’t coming. Deal with it—or, if you have the means, go.

The radical wing of the criminal-justice reform movement has enjoyed enormous legislative and electoral success over the last few years, in New York and elsewhere. Such success owes much to the impression—carefully crafted and nurtured by those leading the movement—that the fight for reform is, à la Public Enemy, a fight against “the power.” David versus Goliath. Meek Mill versus The System. But that’s all just a smokescreen. When the smoke clears, it reveals that those leading the movement to de-police city streets and depopulate jails and prisons are the power. As such, they should be held accountable for their “victories”—and what follows from them.

Rafael A. Mangual is a senior fellow and deputy director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and a contributing editor of City Journal.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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The Blackout Capital of America Sneers at Texas

Daniel Greenfield March 01, 2021 @ International Liberty

 

“Texas thought it could go it alone,” Senator Schumer declared on the Lower East Side. “Now Texas is paying the price. I hope they learned a lesson."

But Democrats never learn their lesson. And they’re never expected to learn.

In 2003, New York City’s power went out because of a mistake by an operator in Ohio as part of the second biggest blackout in history which took down the grid in eight states and in Canada.

Texas’ decision to go it alone was a whole lot smarter than tying the fates of eight states and two countries to a control room in Akron. An interstate power grid means that a problem in a whole other state or country that you have no control over can leave you in the dark.

What was Schumer’s response to the 2003 blackout? He blamed President Bush for a “free market” approach of “allowing the states and utility industry to deal with it by themselves”.

Schumer and the Democrats extracted somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million to further integrate the power grid across a quarter of the country and parts of Canada.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy hit taking out power, leaving hospitals and residents in the dark. The East River power substation’s underground equipment was flooded by a “wall of water”, and the explosion that took out power across a large part of Manhattan could be seen for miles.

The station is located in the Lower East Side: the location of Schumer’s smug taunt to Texas.

You might imagine that after all that, Schumer’s home city and state would have moved the power substation away from the river. And you clearly don’t know New York City.

Instead, $1 billion was invested in a “storm hardening program”. The goal of the program was to make sure that the underground substation located right by the river in an area that regularly experiences hurricanes won’t be flooded because it will now meet current storm surge predictions. The substation was already built to withstand a predicted storm surge of 12.5 feet. Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge hit 14 feet. If another hurricane beats the predictions, then Manhattan will be in the dark again because of an underground power substation by the river.

But, it’s Texas that isn’t “learning its lesson”.

“When I wrote the Sandy bill, $60 billion for New York, we made sure everything was resilient,” Schumer claimed.

How resilient is it?

New York City politicians and media taunting Texas over power failures from the blackout capital of the country (at least the part of it not located in California) is a really poor decision. New York’s power grid goes down if someone sneezes or just looks at it the wrong way.

Last year, New York’s power failure left a quarter of a million in the dark.

Senator Schumer knows because he co-wrote a letter berating Con-Ed, and complaining, "we need to know why so many New Yorkers have been left in the dark, both literally and figuratively—a week after the storm—and get New Yorkers’ power back on ASAP.”

Schumer's letter noted that, "people had been trapped inside of their homes with live downed wires for days."

These letters are an annual tradition in which Schumer and other New York politicians blast Con-Ed, a relic of the corrupt Democrat Tammany Hall era, and then everything goes back to the way that it was before. Only the dumbest Democrat voters are fooled by the display.

Last year, Mayor de Blasio, who can’t even wake up on time, proposed a government takeover of Con-Ed. The Socialist never went through with it, but he would be welcome to try since Con-Ed was originally a network of companies controlled by Democrat officials which robbed the city on such a massive scale that its infrastructure was held back behind the rest of America.

All of these are part of the legacy that New Yorkers owe to Tammany Hall and the Democrats.

The bizarre corrupt shenanigans of the 19th century Democrat gas organizations continue to be a problem because every now and then an explosion happens, like the one that killed 8 people and toppled two buildings in Harlem, because there's a 120-year-old infrastructure of gas pipes under New York City, leaking gas which functions like a ticking time bomb under the streets.

After 120 years, New York still hasn’t learned its lesson about putting Democrats in power.

Con-Ed was formed out of the merger of these companies through a price-fixing agreement. And the occasional blackout, not to mention explosion, is part of the price New Yorkers pay.

New York City’s power grid remains an ongoing national disaster rivaled only by Puerto Rico.

The two years before that witnessed a blackout with an explosion so massive that it turned the sky blue and had Mayor Bill de Blasio's spokesman denying that it was the work of aliens.

Planes were forced to land on emergency power because the airport was blacked out

A year later, New York City celebrated the anniversary of the '77 blackout which kept the city in the dark for days after a lightning storm and led to the worst rioting and looting in the city until the Black Lives Matter riots last year, with yet another blackout.

Blackouts are an annual tradition in the blackout capital of America and no lessons are ever learned. Meanwhile New Yorkers pay on average 35 to 40 percent more than the rest of the country. New York has the 8th most expensive electricity in the country while Texas has the 12th cheapest. And New York residential rates shot up 5 times faster than Texas in just the last year.

That might be defensible if New York City’s power service were at least reliable. It’s not.

Now that Texas suffered major power failures, New York City politicians and media feel entitled to sneer. For the moment, the tiniest moment, the city’s power appears to be in better shape.

Except for the power outages that came with the storm and took down power in Brooklyn.

It’s easy for New York special interests to take cheap shots at Texas because the media may experience blackouts, but it won’t blame New York Democrats for them except for political gain.

Governor Cuomo was praised by the media while the dead filled New York City nursing homes until the left flank of the Democrats decided that it had a shot at replacing him in the next election. And then, suddenly, the media began reporting on the scandal it had covered up.

The Democrats never have to learn any of the lessons from their latest disaster because the only reason the media will ever hold them accountable for any of them is for political gain.

Why bother doing a good job running anything if the only metric that matters is political?

Had Cuomo stayed to the left of AOC, but killed twice as many seniors, he would have been fine. Had President Trump stayed in the White House, Cuomo would have also been safe.

That’s why blackouts in New York and California go politically unpunished, but the media is blaming the Texas power failures on Senator Ted Cruz taking his family to Cancun.

When the snow is cleared away in Texas, New Yorkers will be getting ready for the city’s annual spring and summer blackouts. In ‘21, these will almost certainly be accompanied with riots. But no one in the media will sneer at New Yorkers or Californians huddling in the dark. Unlike sneering at Texans, there’s nothing to be politically gained from such a show of contempt.

New Yorkers won’t learn their lesson. Not even when it’s 120 years in the making

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. 

Thank you for reading.

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

Zone of Reality: Castro Notes

This first appeared on November 25, 2008

New York Honors Che Guevara with a Statue
By Humberto Fontova

On Friday November 21st, while strolling through Central Park's Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Commentary Magazine's online editor Abe Greenwald noticed a statue and did a double take. "Is that...Che Guevara?"

Indeed! There was no mistaking it: a statue of "El Che" by German artist, Christian Jankowski. Upon investigating the matter, Abe Greenwald learned that, "the sculpture is not intended to depict Che Guevara," but rather a street performer from Barcelona's Las Ramblas who idolizes Che Guevara and makes a living mimimg him. "Which I'm sure makes all the difference in the world to the families of Che's victims," Mr Greenwald wisely adds. " There's no mistaking who that statue depicts."

Most New Yorkers seem unaware that but for the grace of God thousands of them would have been Che's victims too.