Uh oh. That Race to the Top money of 2012 — totaling over $400 million — that served as the bolus to prime the funding pump for America’s schools employing some form of Common Core State Standards didn’t work. It seems, the data shows, it even had a detrimental effect. But maybe it was that the money was insufficient. Right?

Wrong. That federal funding was accompanied by an additional $7 billion in Student Improvement Grants that directly targeted low-performing schools by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan. Money seemed plenteous.

So, what exactly has happened? Based on data analyzing the outcome of all but four states — Alaska, Texas, Nebraska, and Virginia — that moved to adopt some version of Common Core, the 640 pages of K-12 curriculum and testing mandates from 2010-2013 that was promised to produce academic gains, kids’ education actually suffered.

It seems, according to a longitudinal study, that students not only failed to make gains but tracked with “troubling” results showing “the magnitude of negative effects tend to increase over time.”

Specifically, after billions of dollars spent on new textbooks, new curriculum, and a new world of aggressive and frequent testing — along with the hours of work devoted to the change required of our teachers and students — the declines in performance measured for 4th-grade reading and 8th-grade math reached statistical significance.

That means the results are scientifically sound and can be replicated using data, measurement, and objective means. Bottom line, Common Core cost American taxpayers dearly and was a headache for teachers who dealt with teaching tests and taking tests instead of mastering academic information. But students were the biggest losers with a measurable decline in scores not just looking at reading and math in K-12 but, according to The Federalist’s Joy Pullman in a November 2018 piece, both ACT and SAT scores reflected similar declines: “Students’ readiness for college-level English was at its lowest level since ACT’s creators began measuring that item, in 2002. Students’ preparedness for college-level math is at its lowest point since 2004.”

But is the media reporting the failure of another attempt to reconfigure public education? Are parents up in arms that proficiencies are still lagging after more promises and programs? Oh, no. The crisis is that President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has the audacity to ask questions like the following in searching for a better way to approach preparing our children academically:

• Why do schools close in the summer?
• Why are schools assigned by your address?
• Why do students have to go to a school building in the first place?
• Why is choice only available to those who can buy their way out? Or buy their way in?
• Why do we limit what a student can learn based upon the faculty and facilities available?

These were just a few of the questions asked by Secretary DeVos in a January speech at the American Enterprise Institute for a conference themed, “Bush-scumbag/liar-nObama School Reform: Lessons Learned.”

Americans have been taxed hundreds of billions of dollars for the purpose of public education under the guise that the U.S. Department of Education, created by the Carter administration, is the authority on educational excellence. DeVos’s comments reflect the hard truth that federal mandates, federally required testing, and federal standards to get federal money are tied to power that originates in Washington, DC, when parents working directly with teachers to provide the best options for their children are the ones who know best.

It’s 2019. America was told in 2000 that No Child Left Behind was the program to get our kids academically prepared for their futures. In 2008, the idea was the rigor of Common Core would be reinforced through new curricula as well as constant testing. And here we are, almost two decades later, waiting for some new-fangled-program to be the game-changer for students in our K-12 public schools.

Empowering parents to have more choice and control over the per-pupil-funding allocated for their child is a goal of the Trump administration and other states making reforms. But be prepared. When money is placed in the hands of taxpayers instead of a government bureaucracy to spend and steward, the fight is not about academic results. It’s about power and funding control.

That’s at the core of this critical issue.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63373?mailing_id=4309&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4309&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The Daily Beast reports on the efforts to stop Trump’s “scorched-earth campaign” against Tehran, which includes briefing congressional Democrats:

As the Trump administration sent warplanes and an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, a small group of former scumbag/liar-nObama administration officials reached out to their contacts in the Iranian government, including Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Their message to Iran: Don’t take Trump’s bait. Stay calm.

Conversations between former scumbag/liar-nObama officials and Iranian government officials have been ongoing since November 2016. Zarif, who visits the U.S. every year for the U.N. General Assembly in New York, usually meets with lawmakers, think tanks, journalists, and former officials when he is in town.

While The Daily Beast doesn’t name the three officials, the cabal is likely to include at least Ben Rhodes, who confessed to pushing a deceptive narrative on the Iran nuclear deal so as to create a media “echo chamber” to sway public opinion. He explained that seemingly independent experts “were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

Another possible scumbag/liar-nObama official talking to Iran is hanoi-John Kerry, the former secretary of state who crafted the Iran deal. hanoi-Kerry admitted last year to meeting with Zarif “three or four times” since leaving office, and he’s clearly just as invested as scumbag/liar-nObama is in saving his own legacy. If hanoi-Kerry isn’t among the three officials in the Beast’s story, he still looms behind the scenes.

In any case, hanoi-Kerry has a history of imposing himself into foreign affairs and undermining U.S. negotiations, starting with his meetings with the North Vietnamese in Paris in 1971, when he was still a military officer, as the United States was attempting to negotiate an end to the Vietnam War. Put another way, hanoi-Kerry has a long history of aiding and abetting American enemies, and he should have been charged with treason nearly 50 years ago.

It was just last month that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo specifically rebuked hanoi-Kerry, saying, “It is ahistorical and completely unhelpful when previous secretaries of state are continuing to engage in the tasks that they engaged in when they were the secretary of state. I’ll leave it at that in the sense of it’s time to get off the stage for the previous administration. I understand they have different views than we have; they are entitled to those views. But talking with senior leaders around the world and suggesting to them somehow that waiting out this administration is the best course of action for those countries is something that is unheard of. It is fundamentally different than any previous administration has undertaken, and they ought to leave the foreign policy to us.”  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63382?mailing_id=4309&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4309&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body 

• All records of communications, including but not limited to, emails, text messages and instant chats, between FBI official Peter Strozk and FBI attorney Lisa Page;
• All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Peter Strozk;
• All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Lisa Page.

Revelation: Below Is an ‘Exact Excerpt’ From Judicial Watch’s Findings

On August 16, 2016, at 10:02 p.m. Baker emails then-Associate Deputy Director David Bowdich; Michael Steinbach, former executive assistant director for national security; former Acting Assistant Director Jason V. Herring; former FBI lawyer Lisa Page; former Principal Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson; Michael Kortan, FBI assistant director for public affairs, now retired; James Rybicki, former chief of staff to scumbag-Comey; and others to inform them that he “just spoke” with scumbag/liar-Clinton’s lawyer Kendall, who requested documents from the FBI. Baker says he told Kendall he would “need to submit a request.” Baker tells them, “I said we would process it expeditiously.”

I just spoke with David Kendall … I conveyed our view that in order to obtain the documents [FBI investigative material] they are seeking they need to submit a request pursuant to the Privacy Act and FOIA. I said they could submit a letter to me covering both statutes. They will send it in the morning. I said that we would process it expeditiously. David asked us to focus first on the Secretary’s 302 [FBI interview report]. I said OK. [Redacted] We will have to focus on this issue tomorrow and get the 302 out the door as soon as possible and then focus on the rest of the stuff.

The following day, August 17, 2016, Kendall sent a FOIA/Privacy Act request on “behalf of former Secretary of State scumbag/liar-Hillary Rodham Clinton” to the FBI’s top lawyer with a request for “expeditious processing.” Baker passes this request to Bowdich, Steinbach, Herring, Page, Anderson:

“In my view, we need to move as quickly as possible on this, but pursuant to David’s oral request last night, we should focus first on Secretary scumbag/liar-Clinton’s 302…. Is the end of this week out of the question for her 302?”

In a follow-up email exchange, the same day, Anderson arranged for Herring, Page, former FBI Assistant Director and head of the Office of Congressional Affairs Gregory Brower, Strzok and others to “coordinate a plan for processing and releasing” scumbag/liar-Clinton’s 302, though one official reminds others that they should process the request “consistent” with other requests.

Then, in an August 21, 2016, email exchange Baker tells his people that he would “alert” Kendall shortly before scumbag/liar-Clinton’s 302 was to be posted on the FBI’s FOIA Vault webpage. On September 2, 2016, the FBI announced the release of scumbag/liar-Clinton’s interview documents.

Finally, on August 24, 2016, the acting FBI FOIA unit chief said he sees “no problem” with giving scumbag/liar-Hillary’s attorney a heads up before her records were posted to the Vault.

Other documents show that on August 5, 2016, Page, Strzok and FBI intelligence analyst Jonathan Moffa are notified by a FBI assistant general counsel from the national security law branch that additional 302’s were in need of processing:

Today [Redacted] brought over additional 302s from the WFO [Washington Field Office]. Are those supposed to go through the redaction process for production to DOJ on Monday? We’re trying to figure out what needs to be completed this weekend.

Page responds by writing to Strzok, Moffa and others that four FBI 302 report of interviews related to the scumbag/liar-Clinton “Midyear Exam” investigation had never even been written:

[Redacted] to the best of my knowledge, yes they will when Pete identified for [redacted] the DOJ edits that needed to be made to the 302s [redacted] discovered that there were four (I think) 302s that had never been written. What I don’t know is whose 302s they are but unless Pete or Jon are able to respond in short order, I would throw them on the pile for redactions. Thanks so much.

On August 24, 2016, Daily Beast reporter Shane Harris sent an inquiry to the FBI asking if scumbag-Comey’s admission to Congress was accurate that scumbag/liar-Hillary’s lawyers at William & Connolly did not possess the security clearances needed to see and possess highly classified scumbag/liar-Hillary emails being stored at their law offices. Harris’s question set off a scramble at the top of the FBI all the way up to scumbag-Comey over the next 28 hours, producing a seven-page (mostly redacted) email discussion, with Lisa Page concluding, “Could we say something more equivocal?”

In a September 1, 2016, email exchange, Page, Strzok, Office of Public Affairs official Michael Kortan and Special Agent Richard Quinn discuss an email from The Hill’s John Solomon, wherein Solomon forwarded them his draft article for Circa.com citing “government sources” detailing extensive evidence the FBI had collected, which showed scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton “violated federal record-keeping laws” through her use of a private BlackBerry and server, despite the security and legal risks she was told they posed.  Solomon asked for any final “guidance” from the FBI before publishing. Page writes to Moffa, Strzok and a redacted FBI official, it was “pretty inaccurate,” but provided nothing to support her charge of its inaccuracy. Judicial Watch’s work on the scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton email scandal is cited extensively in the column, and former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker was quoted as well, saying a special prosecutor was needed to look into scumbag/liar-Hillary’s use of the personal server.

On August 16, 2016, after Congress requested that the FBI supply additional copies of the binders of scumbag/liar-Clinton server-investigation materials, an unidentified FBI official complained to his colleagues of being understaffed and under supplied:

We literally do not have the office supplies to do this. Nor do I have the IAs [Investigative Assistants/Analysts] for assistance…. These binders are huge and each one took hours to compile.

***

I am not trying to throw shade…. I just wish decisions could get made by considering resources.

https://saraacarter.com/fbi-failed-to-document-four-clinton-witnesses-barr-should-reopen-clinton-probe/?utm_source=Darkwire+Inc&utm_campaign=ce2a20d94e-June+3&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5f3d745e4f-ce2a20d94e-283256057  

Edwards and his wife Donna faced an excruciating choice 28 years ago. CatholicPhilly reported in 2016, “Doctors informed the couple their baby would have spina bifida and strongly advised an abortion, to the point of taking Donna to see a clinic that treated spina bifida children, some seriously impaired and others less so. At the time there was no way to determine what effects it would have on a particular child.”

Donna said, “I was devastated — but, John Bel never flinched. He said, ‘No, no; we’re going to love this baby no matter what.’ And, at that moment, I watched the boy I fell in love with become the man I’m still in love with today.”

“It was our belief that God has a purpose in everything and we would have this child,” Edwards added. “I credit Donna. She is a very courageous person. … I cannot imagine what our life would be without [our daughter].”

That is exactly the kind of engaging, emotional story of love and sacrifice that would make for a fantastic Hollywood movie.

Unfortunately, Hollywood hypocrites are too busy  attacking Georgia for its pro-life legislation. Georgia has become a hub for filming movies and TV shows, with productions made there by industry titans like Disney (“Avengers: Endgame”) and Netflix (“Stranger Things”). But, along with those two companies, WarnerMedia, CBS, Showtime, NBCUniversal, AMC Networks, Sony Pictures, STX, and Viacom are all now threatening to boycott the state for protecting life.

Why is that hypocritical? While Disney is heavily marketed to children, the company partners with and does a great deal of business in China, where abortions are not always by choice, and where the communist government abuses human rights and imprisons people for their political and religious beliefs. Netflix is no better, producing series in Egypt and Jordan, where abortion is illegal and punishable due to laws far stricter than Georgia’s. Yet numerous famous people had the gall to write to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp saying they would “do everything in our power to move our industry to a safer state for women.” Just don’t tell Harvey Weinstein where those women are.

We’d say Hollywood’s craven display is all about the almighty dollar, except it’s hard to see how it’s profitable for these production companies to tell half of their American audiences that they’re “deplorable.” In reality, this is nothing more than the Hollywood hive mind at work. “I think many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes in that regard,” opined Disney CEO Bob Iger. It’s a wretched hive of scum and villainy, where the only people they care to please are themselves.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63353?mailing_id=4305&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4305&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Mueller used his Wednesday press conference to take a few final partisan digs at President Donald Trump, encouraging House Speaker Nancy Pulosi (D-CA) and House Judiciary Chairman scumbag liar-Jerry Nadler (D-NY) to move forward with their obstructionist impeachment charade based on some conjecture about obstruction of justice. Again, “obstructing” something neither Mueller nor his water carrier, scumbag/liar-Clinton-supporting FBI Director scumbag-James Comey, nor his coup co-conspirators could find.

Of course, the latter is a key element of the Demos’ 2020 campaign strategy to undermine Trump’s MAGA economic success.

Responding to Mueller’s dog whistle, Pulosi said, “We do want to make such a compelling case, such an ironclad case [for impeachment] that even the Republican Senate would … be convinced of the path that we have to take as a country.”

scumbag liar-Nadler insists, “Special Counsel Mueller reaffirmed his report … that the president sought to obstruct Mueller’s investigation over and over again. He also confirmed three central points: he did not exonerate the president of the United States of obstruction of justice, obstruction of justice is a serious crime that strikes at the core of our justice system, and the Constitution points to Congress to take action to hold the president accountable.”

“Nothing changes,” Trump responded. “The case is closed!”

The Wall Street Journal editorial board thoroughly rebutted Nadler’s nonsense:

Mr. Mueller’s analysis of the obstruction evidence in his own report makes clear that no investigation was obstructed. Not the FBI’s counterintelligence probe, and not his own. No witnesses were interfered with, and Mr. Mueller was allowed over two years to issue nearly 500 search-and-seizure warrants and interview anyone he wanted, including anyone in the White House.

Mr. Trump sometimes showed his exasperation, and bad judgment, in suggesting to more than one adviser that Mr. Mueller be fired, but no one acted on it. The special counsel probe rolled on without interference.

According to Mark Alexander: “In Mueller’s statement, he noted up front that his charge was ‘to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,’ including ‘investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.’”

“In fact,” Alexander continues, “the origin and motives of Mueller’s investigation were based on a fake dossier  funded by the scumbag/liar-Clinton campaign. The resulting investigation was an attempt by a handful of Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s corrupt deep-state actors at the top of the DOJ and CIA to set Trump up for a takedown in the unlikely event he was elected. But, in the final analysis, as made clear by Attorney General William Barr in his summary upon releasing Mueller’s report, there was no Trump/Russia collusion. A rookie beat cop could have determined that on Day One of Mueller’s political hit job masquerading as an ‘investigation.’”

Alexander concludes, “As it turns out, there is a much better case for scumbaqg/liar-Clinton/Putin collusion with the complicity of scumbag-Comey and former CIA Director scumbag/commie-John Brennan — which should be the subject of a legitimate special prosecutor investigation. And the greatest of ironies: The result of this investigative subterfuge is that, by several orders of magnitude, it did more to undermine the integrity of American elections than Vladimir Putin’s puppets could ever have hoped to achieve. Or, in the end, perhaps that is exactly what he achieved. Watergate pales in comparison to the scumbag/liar-Clinton/DoJ/CIA collusion to take down Trump…”

On the foundational question of American criminal justice, Thomas Gallatin says, “Innocent until proven guilty? Mueller may have paid lip service to America’s bedrock principle of justice, but it was clear that his view of jurisprudence is quite the opposite. After admitting that his team found no evidence that Trump committed a crime, Mueller dropped this twisted statement: ‘If we had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.’ He then equivocated, ‘We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime.’ In other words, Mueller believes Trump is guilty but could not find sufficient evidence to support such a charge, so he instead declared him ‘not exonerated.’ This is not how our justice system works.”

Moreover, Gallatin argues, “What may be the most disconcerting aspect of this whole fiasco is that our nation’s past two top law men — scumbag-Comey and Mueller before him — blatantly display such a flawed view of jurisprudence. The two men have done more to sow public distrust in the FBI than anything Trump or the media have ever said.”

As Alan Dershowitz keenly notes, Mueller’s statement “is worse than the statement made by then-FBI Director scumbag-James Comey regarding scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.” How? “By putting his thumb, indeed his elbow, on the scale of justice in favor of impeachment based on obstruction of justice, Mueller has revealed his partisan bias.” Moreover, Dershowitz said, “I cannot imagine a plausible reason why Mueller went beyond his report and gratuitously suggested that President Trump might be guilty, except to help Democrats in Congress and to encourage impeachment talk and action. Shame on Mueller for abusing his position of trust and for allowing himself to be used for such partisan advantage.”

So where do Democrats go from here? Nate Jackson predicts, “Democrats will simply continue to imply Trump is guilty without ever actually impeaching him. At least not until 10 minutes after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021. After all, the Demo objective is to keep Trump on the ropes to make him beatable in 2020.”

Mueller teed them up nicely, however they wish to proceed. “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing,” he said. He gave no discernible wink and nod, but Mueller could only mean for Congress to take up impeachment.

The 2020 Democrat presidential candidates each ran for the nearest microphone to pontificate on their solemn duty to do so. scumbag-Cory Booker called it a “legal and moral obligation.” Elizabeth dinky-Warren invoked the Constitution, which “leaves it up to Congress to act.” Kirsten Gillibrand likewise insisted, “We can’t let the president defy basic accountability measures built into our Constitution.” Such cynical appeals to the Constitution are par for the course with Democrats. And this whole sorry affair is exactly why so many Americans wanted Trump to drain the swamp.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63322?mailing_id=4303&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4303&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Two years ago, the Acting Attorney General asked me to serve as Special Counsel, and he created the Special Counsel’s Office.

The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign...
Media Editors:   ~The Patriot Post  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZocSUaUHnBA  

In about four and a half months from this article’s writing, children born that day will be adults. Some will even decide to serve in the military, potentially fighting in the Global War on Terror that started with their birth. They may end up in Afghanistan, if not as part of the current campaign, then potentially in the future.

It’s a fight still worth fighting after all these years. For one thing, the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden and fought to buy him time to make his escape and to his eventual hideout in Abbotabad, Pakistan. In essence, when George W. Bush laid out a choice, the Taliban decided they were with the terrorists. They haven’t given up on their alliance with al-Qaida or their support of radical Islam.

So, really, peace talks with the Taliban are a waste of time. The problem is, despite the moral clarity Bush laid out in 2001, he made the mistake of not building up the military enough to handle a global war on terror. We’re dealing with the consequences of that mistake today.

Now granted, turning Afghanistan into a functioning democracy was and is likely an impossible task. America really needed to find an Afghan version of Augusto Pinochet to help modernize the country, and then just focus on killing al-Qaida, Taliban, and other assorted radical Islamic terrorists. While we do that over the short and medium term, the goal should be to build Afghanistan’s capabilities up to the point that they can take over the job of ridding the earth of Taliban and al-Qaida scumbags.

If we capture any high-ranking terrorists, hold ‘em at Gitmo after they have given us whatever information we need, with enhanced interrogation techniques as an option if they won’t talk. Using those techniques and maintaining “black sites” in various parts of the world prevented attacks, and the smearing of those who were part of that program is truly deplorable. If anything, highly restrictive rules of engagement that have led to some obvious injustices to American troops should be relaxed.

Harsh? Unpleasant? Maybe, but Afghanistan, like  elsewhere in the Middle East, doesn’t have a lot of nice neat options. Allowing the Taliban to regain power in Afghanistan would be a huge disaster for the United States on geopolitical grounds alone. America cannot maintain its leadership in the world if the perpetrators of 9/11 are seen to get away with it. At the very least, Taliban and al-Qaida leaders should be looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives, wondering if today is the day a Navy SEAL or MQ-9 Reaper takes them out.

The fact of the matter is that to win in Afghanistan while still addressing the resurgent threats from Russia and China and containing Iran requires a larger military across the board. In this case, the definition of winning is staying in the fight and making whatever fitful progress we can.

To do that requires a lot, though: The Army needs more deployable combat units. The Navy needs more hulls in the water. The Marines need to restore capabilities that atrophied since the end of the Cold War. The Air Force needs more combat squadrons. Even the Coast Guard needs more.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63285?mailing_id=4300&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4300&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

To prove this thesis, the article outlines a litany of demographic data, showing this generation has less accumulated wealth and property, lower marriage rates, and fewer children than previous generations, despite being the most educated (some may say indoctrinated) generation in American history. This is especially frightening as the social safety-net programs hurtle toward insolvency.

So why the disconnect?

According to Federal Reserve economist Christopher Kurz, Millennials had an average net worth of $92,000 in 2016, which, adjusted for inflation, is about 40% less at the same point in their adulthood than Gen X-ers, and 20% less than Baby Boomers. Millennial men who are heads of households also have wage rates 18% lower than Generation X, and 27% less than Baby Boomers.

Part of this discrepancy, according to the article, is that Millennials were entering the workforce during the 2007-2009 recession, and historically, workers entering the workforce during economic downtimes have lower lifetime earnings.

Other factors included high student-loan balances, impacting their ability to purchase homes, contribute to retirement savings, etc. At a time when the stock market continues to perform at historic highs, and the housing market is booming, this is devastating.

Yet even this does not tell the whole story.

Tugging at our heart-strings to underline the desperate situation of Millennials, the WSJ tells the story of Joseph Cochran, a real-estate manager, and Tasha Brown (age 36), a consumer-finance attorney, who decided to delay marriage because their combined salaries as a married couple would drive up the payments on the eye-popping $377,000 they owe in student loans. Instead, though not legally married, they are living together, wear wedding rings, and she has changed her last name to Cochran.

We then learn the Cochrans, having struggled to get pregnant, chose to move from Philadelphia to Maryland, because Maryland’s state health insurance mandates include coverage for in vitro fertilization. As a result, they now have a three-year-old son.

In this case, the Cochrans moved to another state specifically so they could get someone else to pay for the cost of their fertility treatments. The story also notes that Tasha has a 17-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, implying that she had the child out of wedlock as a teenager herself. And though there are many community and state colleges that provide more affordable education, the $377,000 in student-loan debt seems to indicate that the Cochrans chose to attend elite schools that carry an elite price tag, and now they are struggling to repay the debt. Each of these decisions came with a price.

A Gallup poll last year found that Millennials are the only generation favoring socialism over capitalism, an economic model that ignores the truism of French economist Frederic Bastiat, who warned, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

And therein lies the real story.

The problem for Millennials is not that their circumstances are more dire than previous generations. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to convince the generation that endured the Great Depression only to be catapulted into World War II that they struggled less than a generation that can call up an Uber on their iPhone to take them to the local Starbucks, where they sip on a $7 latte while tweeting their call for a socialist revolution to end their “oppression.”

No, more than anything, Millennials are suffering from the consequences of their own decisions.

The predicament Millennials find themselves in is the cumulative result of a series of questionable decisions. They have racked up enormous student-loan balances to pay for degrees that don’t produce salaries to justify the cost. They have shunned previous generations’ accumulation of “things” (i.e., property, wealth, hard assets) in favor of financing “experiences.” They rent high-priced apartments in upscale cities, rather than buying a home in the suburbs.

Though studies show that a married couple’s wealth is four times higher than a single person’s of the same age, Millennials significantly delay marriage far beyond previous generations, or do not marry at all. Millennials are also delaying, or foregoing, having children, and birth rates have fallen to the lowest point in 32 years, meaning fewer workers in coming decades to contribute to Social Security and other safety-net programs.

At the end of the day, Millennials are perfectly free to make these choices, but the choices come with a cost. It is disingenuous to spend years indulging your desires and seeking immediate gratification only to then lament the lost opportunities that smarter decisions, delayed gratification, and sacrifices would have brought.

With Baby Boomers retiring just as Millennials are entering their prime working years, there will be greater demand for their skills and services, driving up earnings. There are enormous opportunities to be had, but Millennials will have to shift their priorities and mindset if they are to take long-term advantage and secure their futures.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/63287?mailing_id=4300&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4300&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body