Op-Ed: My Ramblings on some Hot Topics
by Steve Levy
NY Times admits school lockdowns hurt kids
So, the NY Times finally admits (with a sense of being surprised, no less) that COVID school closures created massive dislocations for America's youth - from dramatically lower test scores to an enormous loss in future earning potential.
But this is the same NY Times that ridiculed and hammered those who fought teachers’ unions and authoritative governors in blue states mandating the shutdowns.
Adams cuts cops while lavishing illegals.
Mayor Adams welcomed tens of thousands of illegal aliens to his city. It cost NYC taxpayers $4 billion. Now that the city is broke, he’s slashing city services, including safety officers in schools, and has the gall to ask parents to volunteer to fill in the gaps. Hard to feel sorry for a NYC electorate that supported the sanctuary city platform from their candidates.
You got what you voted for.
America’s downfall. School cancels event honoring the US.
If, 100 years from now, historians look back at the beginning of the crumbling of the American empire, they might point to a recent decision by a school in Massachusetts that canceled a celebration of America because it was deemed too political.
This comes just a week after protesters in New York supporting Hamas terrorists climbed flag poles to remove the American flag, only to have it replaced with the Palestinian banner.
Schools are canceling Halloween events because they are deemed offensive to some of our snowflake students (or perhaps their parents or leftist teachers).
Meanwhile, they’re promoting books on the students’ reading lists that are downright pornographic, including materials with drawings of children performing oral sex on each other and glorifying incest and pedophilia.
Hamas is holding Americans hostage
Every day there’s another article and photo from the Associated Press about the dislocation of Palestinians as Israeli forces move into Gaza to free hostages.
But we rarely, if ever, see an AP article with the photos of either the Israeli or American hostages still held in Gaza by Hamas.
Even after some hostages were released, the NY Times featured the photo not of the innocent Israeli or American hostages, but of a Palestinian woman released by the Israelis who had been charged with facilitating a terror bombing.
Contrast this with how the media reacted in 1979, when Iranian terrorists held dozens of Americans as hostages. We knew their names.
(In fact, the show Nightline was created as a result of the desire to talk about the hostages on a daily basis so that we’d never forget they were still in captivity.)
Today, many Americans don’t even know that their fellow citizens are being held captive. All they see is the rubble that has resulted from Israel trying to free them.
Only suckers pay for train ride
How dumb can the Long Island Railroad be? Surprise, surprise. They’re wondering why only a fraction of the people who were given $1.4 million in IOUs by the LIRR to pay their fares have actually done so (only $60,000 repaid).
Well, Duh! Perhaps it's because there’s no enforcement. All it takes is one publicized instance of a person being removed from the train and fined, and it will not happen again.
China’s Leader arrives in San Francisco; Politicians finally clean up the poop
How totally disrespectful to the people of California that their leaders for years allowed homeless squatters to take over sidewalks and parks and defecate all over their streets, and only acted to clean things up when the leader of China’s Communist Party visited dog poop heaven, otherwise known as the city of San Francisco.
Does anyone doubt for a second that the homeless camps and the defecating will start within a few weeks after Xi returns back to China?
Now, California’s leaders can go back to ignoring its citizens. The most disgusting part is that all of these gutless leaders will probably get reelected again.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of "The Steve Levy Radio Show." He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com