By John Paluska, Founder of The Daily Fodder
Education giant Scholastic has never been known to enter the political arena, but with 2020 and Biden being quite possibly the worst candidate the Democrats have ever run in history, it seems they feel they need to do their part to brainwash children into voting Democrat.
The platform seems unbiased at the start, but when you go over to the issues tab, that's when you realize you're no better off reading this so-called "educational" content than if you listened to CNN as your only news source.
To boot, their section on racial issues states the following about the Black Lives Matter protesters:
The long history of unjust treatment of Black people in America has become a major focus of this election. Two current crises—police killings of Black Americans and the coronavirus pandemic—have highlighted just how widespread the problem is.
Recent incidents of police using deadly force against Black people have sparked historic civil rights demonstrations nationwide. Since last spring, many millions of Americans have marched in the streets in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The public gatherings began after a Black man named George Floyd was killed while in police custody. He died after a white officer pinned him to the ground by his neck for more than eight minutes. Individuals and civil rights groups have since joined together in demanding an end to the long history of bias and brutality against Black people by law enforcement.
That is exactly as it appears on the site, with the bolding in the same way. Of course Scholastic will leave out the riots where women have been choked, police have been pelted with rocks, black-owned businesses have been destroyed, and the fact the Black Lives Matter organization is communist. None of that seems to matter. Let's just completely ignore that.
But what's even worse is their claim that police killings of Black Americans is a crisis. Despite what MSNBC or CNN may tell you, police killings in general has been trending downward. In fact, Statista reports that almost 2x as many white people have been shot and killed by police than black Americans in 2020 alone. In fact, we are on track to have fewer police killings this year than last year. but for the last 3 years, white people were overwhelmingly more likely to be shot and killed by police.
So the real crisis, Scholastic, is police killings of ALL races. It's not accurate nor very "educational" to suggest police are out there just mowing down black people in mass numbers.
The police brutality protests are just (but not the riots, the lootings, the chokings, the fires, and all the other terrible things people are supposedly doing to end police brutality), it is Constitutional and very much necessary to be able to peaceably protest civil rights abuses, but the problem with cherrypicking data is that it leads people to terrible conclusions. Scholastic completely ignores the following statistics when they talk about police brutality:
90-95% of people shot and killed by police were attacking police officers or other people
Agencies with more people of color engaged in more police killings
The real places where police butality and systemic racism come into play is where traffic stops, stop and frisk, and drug plants are concerned. In fact, many times, black people are arrested and convicted for crimes they did not commit. The exoneration data we have shows roughly 50% of black people have been exonerated for murder and other charges. But this isn't police killings.
So, no, Scholastic, there isn't a black person killing spree going on by police officers nationwide. In fact, there isn't even very much innocent killing by cops going on in general. If a person is attacking other people or an officer, then why don't we expect a police officer to shoot? Who, honestly, is going to just sit there and take a beating when they have a gun? And what kind of cop doesn't try to kill someone who is putting other people at risk of death?
But it gets even worse than this. This is their section on healthcare:
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted just how essential access to affordable health care is. Millions of people across the U.S. have been infected by the virus. Nearly 29 million Americans didn’t have health insurance before the pandemic began. Now that a record number of people have lost their jobs, the number of Americans without health insurance is increasing.
The last major change to the U.S. health-care system took place a decade ago, when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. It has helped millions of Americans get health insurance. The law requires large businesses to offer health-care coverage to their employees. It also provides options that are more affordable for people who have to pay for health insurance on their own. But the law has been criticized for being too costly. Many people still have a hard time affording health insurance.
Even before the pandemic, health care was a major concern among voters. Now people in this country see it as even more important. This fall, voters will be looking carefully at how candidates say they will help Americans afford the care they need to stay healthy.
Firstly, the Affordable Care Act WAS NOT the last major change to healthcare. The last major change to healthcare was President Trumps' much-needed Right To Try Act, which allows people to try treatments sitting in the dustbin of the FDA approval process. Additionally, President Trump made some MAJOR changes to ACA through Executive Order anyways. Of course Scholastic won't mention the Right To Try Act because it isn't communist.
Secondly, ever since the Affordable Care Act, the net number of properly insured individuals has GONE DOWN. This means that more people now have worse healthcare than before. Additionally, according to the same study linked above, the employer-based plans have gotten worse since the Affordable Care Act. So, in reality, Americans' health insurance is now worse off than before the Affordable Care Act was even a law. They have insurance, but it's worse insurance. Who wants that?
What's worse for Scholastic, that study claims President Trump tried to "weaken" the law. The result? More people are insured after President Trump changed the law than before he touched it, showing the Affordable Care Act doesn't seem to relieve any major hurdle to people receiving insurance. It simply destroyed a perfectly good healthcare system.
Another key fact missing from the above information is that President Trump held a roundtable with all major health insurers and they all collectively decided to completely cover Coronavirus-related expenses. Additionally, President Trump ensured that Medicare and Medicaid completely covered everything related to Coronavirus care. Wouldn't this also be considered a major change to healthcare policy? But this is nowhere to be found at all in Scholastic's takes on the healthcare situation, nor even in their Coronavirus section.
Scholastic's so-called "education" on the 2020 election sounds like reading an issue of Jacobin Magazine. It is so devoid of reality that we should demand Scholastic be more fair and accurate before our children come home with their heads filled with such communist crap.
HELP STOP THE SPREAD OF FAKE NEWS!
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