AFANY Newsleter Fall 2018

New Supreme Court Appointee

Sadly, our two U.S. Senators for NYS,
Chuck Schumer & Kirsten Gillibrand,
have strongly opposed the nomination of
Brett Kavanaugh for the US Supreme
Court. They view Kavanaugh as too likely
to be “pro-life & pro-traditional marriage”.

Is a Boy Sometimes a “Girl”?

Is a person’s gender determined
biologically, as has been the case for
thousands of years, or is one’s gender now
determined by what one “thinks” or
“feels” one is ? And what are the
consequences of the latter choice, i.e., a
person’s gender is “what one feels one is”?
One consequence is that a biological boy
who “feels” he is really a “girl” now
apparently has the right to go into the
“girls” bathroom. Does this make sense?
And recently in June, 2018, Terry Miller, a
transgender “boy” who “feels” he is really
a “girl”, entered a Connecticut girls high
school running race and he won two final
track & field races, setting new records for
“girls”. If he had run in the boys division,
he would not have even qualified to enter.
Is this fair or is this crazy?

Decline in Local Newspapers

The total daily circulation of newspapers in the U.S. was about 62 million in 1998. In the past 20 years this has declined in half to about 31 million. The ad revenue in 2000 was about $48 billion, but has now declined by 2/3 to $16 billion/yr. The NY Daily News recently laid off half of its staff.
Age is clearly a factor, as older readers still rely on newspapers, while many younger readers now rely on the internet.
The Week, 9/7/18

Political Views of NY Times & Washington Post

In 1956 the NY Times endorsed Republican Dwight Eisenhower for President. Since then, they’ve only endorsed Democrats for President. The Washington Post began endorsements in the 1970’s— but only endorsed Democrats. (Imprimis, Hillsdale College, 6/17)

How We View our Public Schools

How do Americans view our public schools compared to those in the rest of the world? Here are the results of a PEW research study. Our schools are: Best in world ———4% Above Average——15% Average—————37% Below Average——41% No View————— 3% (NY Post, 5/20/18)

Black Unemployment

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the unemployment rate of black Americans since 1972. The unemployment rate is now the lowest ever recorded—6.6% (April, 2018) & 6.3% (Aug., 2018). It went below 7% for the first time ever in Dec., 2017. (Watchdog, Media Research Center, June 2018)

Is Morality in Decline?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the unemployment rate of black Americans since 1972. The unemployment rate is now the lowest ever recorded—6.6% (April, 2018) & 6.3% (Aug., 2018). It went below 7% for the first time ever in Dec., 2017. (Watchdog, Media Research Center, June 2018)

Re: Abortion ?

Did we not all spend the first 9 months of our lives in our mother’s womb? Isn’t it perfectly clear that an unborn fetus in its mother’s womb is indisputably a live human being? How on earth can half our political leaders say a woman should have the legal right to “kill” the unborn child alive within her womb? How often has this occurred since Roe v. Wade (1973)? With the “legal” approval of our nation, we have had 60 million abortions! Yes, for centuries we approved slavery—allowing one race to treat another as “property”. Isn’t the current abortion issue as bad? Half or more of Americans vote for lawmakers who take a public position saying, “it is a woman’s right to choose to kill her unborn baby”! Isn’t this comparable to 19th century politicians defending slavery and the “right” of a white person to enslave a black person?

Re: School Choice ?

And, finally, choice in education is a key right of parents—to select the kind of education they prefer for their kids (e.g., prayer, dress codes, getting contraceptives or not, sexual behavior). as long as the academic subjects of math, English, history, science, art & music are taught as required by state education departments. If parents want their children to say prayers and be taught certain moral values, that is up to the parent. As long as the academic requirements set by the state are met, parents should be free to choose the school they want, and, very important, the amount they get in state funding must be below the amount spent per pupil in the public school (PS). So if a parent gets 60% as much as a PS student ($20,000 in NYS), there is a savings of $8,000/year! This savings can then be split between the PS and the taxpayers so that our PS students get more $$/student and NY taxpayers will save many billions of $$/year (per study by Ron Lauder for NY Senate, NY Times, 11/24/91). Everyone wins with school choice—parents, students and taxpayers. This could lower property taxes in NYS. And yet, our liberal politicians oppose school choice because they fear our PS teacher unions which understandably want to keep their current high cost educational monopoly.

Child Sexual Abuse Problem

The issue of child sexual abuse is a very serious problem with long term consequences for those abused. A 2004 study done by the John Jay College of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church found there were 11,000 victims over a 50 year period, or 220 victims/year. A key problem was the failure of Bishops and others to remove abusive priests from their clerical positions and reporting them to the police. The problem has been more properly dealt with in the past 15 years, but is now under examination in many states, including NY. Most of the victims of church abuse were post-pubescent males, not pre-pubescent children (i.e., pedophilia). There were 4000 abusive priests over this 50 year period, and the large majority were homosexual priests abusing post-pubescent males. While the largest number of child abusers overall have been parents, relatives and neighbors, the problem in the Church is especially shocking and disturbing because it involves priests, who were ordained to do Christ’s work here on earth. It should be noted that this number of abusing priests is < 5% of all priests. But clearly, this is still very serious and has long lasting consequences and must be stopped. In addition, another problem is that our liberal news media, partly out of ignorance and partly out of anti-religious bias, has completely failed to report a child abuse problem in another area that occurs more than 100 times as often as in the Church. That problem is the child abuse in our public schools. A major study of this PS child abuse done for our US Dept. of Education in 2004 by Hofstra Professor Dr. Charol Shakeshaft concluded there were about 290,000 child abuse victims in our public schools over a 10 year period, or 29,000 victims/year. This is 130 times as large a problem as in the Catholic Church, and yet we rarely, if ever, hear a word about this PS child abuse problem in our national media. Most abusers in our public schools were teachers (57%), while the others were custodians, coaches, and other school employees. But here also, most of these abusers were not reported to the police and were generally allowed to retire or move to another school district, sometimes in another state, without ever reporting the abuse problem to the new school district. Legislation is needed to extend the age at which abuse victims can report the problem to legal authorities and sue for civil damages. The current age in NY of 23 is too young. Time limits should be extended to perhaps age 30 for criminal reporting, and 40 for civil damages. But there should not be any unlimited period for allowing civil suits going back 50 or more years, when the abuser is often deceased and the public school, church or other party could be unfairly sued, often at taxpayers’ expense.

China: Lacking Babies & Women

In 1979 China set up its “one child” policy, forcing women to “abort” (i.e., kill) any second child in their womb. Today China is facing an older population, lacking young workers. In 2016, they changed their policy to allow 2 children per woman, but the birth rate hardly changed. Now they announced they will abolish the child limit policy in 2020. Another result of their one child policy was mothers more often chose to abort their female fetuses. This has resulted in a shortage of 30 million fewer Chinese women than men. (The Week, 9/7/18)