Using the high cost of a college education as cover, Donald Trump and senior advisor/daughter Ivanka released the Proposals to Reform the Higher Education Act. As is always the case whenever Washington uses the word “reform,” the result will be bigger government, more spending, and less liberty.

“We need to modernize our higher education system to make it affordable, flexible, and more outcome oriented so that all Americans, young and old, can learn the skills they need to secure and retain good-paying jobs,” Ivanka stated in a call with reporters.

Sounds noble, doesn’t it? Did you notice the absence of words like “personal accountability” and “free markets” and the use the pronoun “we” to describe the federal government? Nancy Pelosi would be so proud.

In reality, Daddy’s little girl is promoting the equivalent of Common Core for colleges where government money will only be doled out to those who “make the grade” — pardon the pun — as established by the government.

It makes sense when you think about it. Common Core fails to prepare students for college, and college fails to prepare students for the real world. Merging the two was inevitable.

In his overview of the proposal, Trump bragged about how he has “reversed regulatory initiatives that increased the cost of college, fueled skyrocketing student debt levels, and hampered innovation.” Ironic because he concluded by renewing his commitment to reform higher education “through legislation and regulatory reform.”

While including a mixed bag of good/bad principles, every “problem” came with a several big-government solutions.

“Congress should expand… Congress should reform… Congress should require…”

A few of the most troubling suggestions are: focusing on “student outcomes,” increasing “institutional accountability,” supporting “returning citizens,” and simplifying “student aid.”

While harmless-sounding on the surface, “student outcomes” and “institutional accountability” are buzzwords right out of the Common Core playbook.

Supporting “returning citizens,” aka criminals released from prison, sounds great. How else will the drug traffickers and gun felons released early from prison, thanks to Ivanka’s and Van Jones’ prisoner reform legislation, go to college?

Simplifying “student aid” sounds like a good idea until you get to the part where Trump proposes the expansion of student loan forgiveness. I guess borrowing money you never have repay is pretty simple. And as a man with numerous bankruptcies to his credit, it’s no surprise that he supports defacto bankruptcy on school loans.

Never having to repay taxpayer-funded student loans has always been a key part of Ivanka’s agenda. In Sept. 2018, she supported a bill proposed by Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) that would allow companies to cover student-loan payments as a tax-free benefit, the same way they are allowed to pay for college tuition reimbursement or for health insurance.

You may be thinking, “Doesn’t that mean the loan gets paid?” Yes and no. The loan is repaid, but as a tax-free benefit the employee pays no taxes on the money and the employer is able to reduce compensation costs. In the end, the cost of the student loan is shifted to the taxpayer.

Neal McCluskey, director of the CATO Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom blames the high cost of college on government handouts and tax breaks. And he believes that creating more giveaway programs will only make the situation worse.

In response to Davis’ bill, McCluskey stated that the government should get out of the education-financing business. “The root problem in American higher education is government subsidies, especially to students in the forms of federal grants, loans, and tax credits,” McCluskey said. “They enable colleges to raise their prices, often at rates well in excess of inflation, and students to demand lots of things that have little, if anything, to do with learning.”

McCluskey is right, but I have a feeling that Ivanka is about to chalk up another victory for her socialist feminist agenda by working “across the aisle” to make Common Core for college a reality … with Daddy’s blessing.

Free college at government taxpayer expense is in Bernie Sanders’ platform, but it looks like Trump will beat him to it.

Originally posted on StridentConservative.com.

David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative. His daily radio commentary is distributed by the Salem Radio Network and is heard on stations across America.

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The United Nations is a joke. They are an anti-Israel organization that gives an effective pass to any nation that commits human rights violations other than Israel. Even the simple act of listing the names of nations that participated in condemning Israel while having their own blatant human rights deficiencies is too much for the United Nations Human Rights Council. They shut down the listing of names almost immediately.

Nobody believes the nation of Israel is innocent, but the weight given to denouncing their actions versus the combined weight given to every other nation is the world is lopsided. Of the 27 resolutions passed by the United Nations against an individual nation in 2018, 21 of them were against Israel.

This video is a clear example of the deafening silence forced upon anyone who speaks against the actions of nations other than Israel. It is unquestionable. Only a true antisemite can not witness this without noticing the bias.

Will you help revive the American Conservative Movement?

It is, for all practical purposes, nearly impossible for the vast majority of people who have received a modern education to even consider the possibility that dinosaurs are not as old as we have been told. It’s a topic that I’ve avoided because the presuppositions are so powerful among the general population.

Today, I decided to tackle the topic with one purpose: to start a discussion with those who have an open mind. I’m well aware that most minds will be closed and there will be much more sarcasm than discourse, but ridicule from the indoctrinated masses is a small price to pay if just one person can hear this and decide to dig deeper into science and the Bible to have the truth revealed.

It’s been instilled in our minds as common knowledge that the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event with the most prevalent alleged culprit being the impact of a comet or asteroid at Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. For the most part, anything that’s considered common knowledge can be sustained without anyone questioning the assumptions. For example, it was common knowledge based upon what was easily observable that the sun, moon, and stars revolved around the earth. That was finally debunked, of course, but scientific debate on the model of our solar system continued until the early 20th century.

A more recent example of common knowledge being wrong is the idea that acid caused by bad diet or stress is what causes ulcers. In 2005, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren won the Nobel Prize for Medicine by demonstrating that the vast majority of ulcers were caused by an infection of the bacterium H. pylori.

Now is not the time to debate young earth versus ancient earth, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that dinosaurs were around in the time of man. Even a brave segment of the secular scientist world has started questioning whether the extinction event killed off all of them based upon mounting evidence. There was even a formerly prominent professor who learned the hard way that bringing forth compelling scientific evidence of dinosaurs walking with men can earn people a quick entry onto the black list.

Over the centuries, intellectuals have had a difficult time having their worldviews shattered. The funny thing is that the existence of modern era dinosaurs doesn’t change much. It could mean that small pockets of the world were protected from the extinction event. One would not have to make huge adjustments to their worldview if this were the case which is why it’s so perplexing that they won’t even explore the possibility. It’s reminiscent of the persecution that Galileo received, only this time it’s not at the hand of the Christian church but rather at the hands of the church of science.

I want to go much deeper on the issue of why there seems to be reluctance at best and a systematic coverup at worst, but we’ll have to explore that on a future video. For now, I’d like to turn to a video we watched that gives a pretty interesting perspective. While I don’t agree with all of the conclusions or evidence, there’s enough good to make it appropriate for sharing.

Will you help revive the American Conservative Movement?