The Week’s Most Disturbing, Perturbing, and Unnerving Headlines

BLACKS V. BOARD OF EDUCATION
Last Saturday marked the 60-year anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that desegregated America’s public schools. Predictably, the hyper-sentimental and aggressively deluded mouthpieces of big government are lamenting that America’s institutions of lesser learning are still unacceptably segregated and that huge discrepancies in test scores persist due to unprovable phantoms such as “bigotry.” We are lectured that we still have a long way to go and that possibly the only solution is to forcibly desegregate our neighborhoods as well as our schools.

But is it mere coincidence that American education has declined since the landmark decision?

Washington, DC’s public-school system allegedly forks out nearly $30,000 per student a year“€”for 2010-2011, that was reportedly the highest spending of any major American urban area”€”and yet over 80% of its students do not even rank as “proficient” in reading and math, which is the lowest national average.

Might all those horrible “disparities” in student discipline possibly be linked to behavior rather than prejudice? Might it have anything to do with thuggish teenage imbeciles assaulting elderly teachers?

It seems inarguable that by most known indices, black people do better when they’re around white people. The question most pundits seem afraid to ask: Do whites do better when they’re around black people?

Again and again, we still hear the unscientific mantra that the only difference is “skin color.” When we are told that “African Americans were underrepresented by 48 percent in gifted education,” the implication is that this is solely due to white racism rather than a natural dearth of gifted black students.

After 60 years, is it still accurate to call it “prejudice”? Forget about “separate but equal””€”maybe what many Americans have learned over the past few generations is that even if you force everyone into the same classroom, they’re still going to be unequal.

THE V.A. LIED, VETERANS DIED
In April, retiring Veterans Administration physician Sam Foote told CNN that the Phoenix VA had a secretive practice of fudging numbers regarding the average wait time for ailing vets to receive medical attention. Rather than the 14-30 days the “official” list cited, over 1,000 sick veterans were forced to wait up to 21 months, leading to an estimated 40 presumably preventable deaths.

It turned into a full-blown government scandal last week as the Department of Veterans Affairs’ undersecretary for health resigned a day after appearing before a Senate hearing. Reports of falsified VA medical documents began leaking in Illinois, New Mexico, Georgia, Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Texas.

This should give all Americans great hope for the bright, deadly future of government-sponsored healthcare.