By Mike Huckabee
December 30, 2021
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THE EVENING EDITION By Mike Huckabee
Good evening! Here are some stories I think you will find interesting.
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1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE
This verse was recommended by Mary R.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33 KJV
To recommend a verse for the Evening Edition, email [email protected].
THE LATEST NEWS
2. The Value of an Education:
As a rock music fan, I enjoy Pink Floyd. But “We don’t need no education” is bad advice for life.
When our kids graduate school, they no longer just have to compete with each other. They now compete in a global marketplace. Not only have low-skilled jobs moved abroad where labor is cheap, but to attract new high-paying, tech-based jobs to America (or even to work online), our kids need an education as good or better than students get in China, India, Israel and other nations. Sadly, our schools are not giving them the tools they need to compete in the 21st century.
I have a friend who owns a printing business. He gives job applicants a pencil and ruler, and asks them to mark an eighth of an inch, a sixteenth of an inch and other simple measurements on a piece of paper. He tells me that no more than one out of ten even has a clue what he’s talking about. If America’s students can get a high school diploma without knowing basic fractions, then all we’re equipping them to achieve is a fraction of the American Dream.
Of course, the cry always goes up, “We need to spend more on education!” But we already spend over $550 billion a year, more than 4 percent of the gross domestic product. If money equaled results, then Washington, DC, should be crawling with junior Einsteins. DC public schools spend over $30,000 per student per year, or $10,000 more than the tuition for an in-state graduate degree from the University of Virginia. Yet DC’s reading, writing and math scores are well below the national average. Money alone doesn’t fix the problem.
Those who are obsessed with “income inequality” want to tear down those who earn more, but have no ideas for helping those who earn less. Well, here’s one: finish high school! Nearly a third of US students drop out. Over their lives, they’ll earn, on average, a quarter million dollars less than high school graduates. They’re also more likely to suffer ill health, get involved in drugs and crime, and die nine years younger. Staying in school benefits both them and society.
But if we want students to learn, then schools have to make them want to learn. To ignite their curiosity and turn them into lifelong seekers of knowledge. That takes both involved parents and competent teachers who are rewarded for good results. Kids need to be taught how to think, not just memorize standardized tests. They also need to be taught real facts and real history, not trendy racist, socialist and anti-American propaganda.
Dropping arts and music classes is the most short-sighted budget cut a school can make. Studies show that music class helps kids do better in other subjects, develop social skills, and stay in school longer. It might also improve the current dismal state of pop music. We must remember that schools exist for the students, not for the teachers’ unions or the education bureaucracy (so open the schools and stop letting the unions keep them closed.) And we need to keep most decisions about education at the state and local levels, with close parental involvement, so they’re made by people who know the students best.
If you think that doesn’t matter, look at all the home-schooled students winning academic contests. Home is as local as you can get, yet those students are more than ready to compete on the world stage. Don’t you want your kids to be?
3. Must-Read Articles:
As we finish year two of the pandemic with COVID cases once again rising, Stu Cvrk of the Epoch Times examines how China influenced our COVID policies for the worse and got the Western media to cover for them.
There are several articles out there on the theme of how "China Got Away With It," but one of the best is Frank Schell’s at The American Spectator. By "getting away with it,” he means inflicting a pandemic on the world that destroyed their rivals’ economies and societies, normalized authoritarian policies, crushed individual rights, and boosted their own economy and military power, while the Western media censored anyone who dared to criticize them.
https://spectator.org/why-china-got-away-with-it/
And just as a reminder of what we’re really dealing with, here’s how China is acting in Hong Kong, which is exactly what many of us predicted from the moment they took it over.
4. Interesting take:
Jim Thompson on the cult of COVID fear:
https://redstate.com/jimthompson/2021/12/29/its-a-cult-n498917
5. Maxwell is found guilty:
Wednesday, a jury in New York found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty on five out of six felony counts related to procuring and grooming underage girls for the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. She faces up to 40 years in prison on each charge. I don’t want to go into the distasteful details of the charges, but you can read more here:
Her lawyers did raise one point worth considering when they argued that the prosecution was using Maxwell as a scapegoat for Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 before he could be put on trial. That point is that Epstein had many rich and powerful friends who allegedly had similar illegal appetites and victimized many girls. Yet as this account at Redstate.com notes, all the details of Epstein’s network have been ordered sealed.
Epstein is dead and Maxwell is being punished, but what about other potential victims and their powerful exploiters? Seems to me that her conviction should be just the beginning of this investigation, not the end of it.
As Jennifer Van Laar points out, if Southern District of New York prosecutors can manage to leak sealed documents and illegally-seized attorney-client communications from Project Veritas to the New York Times, surely they can do the same to expose people who actually did something that needs to be exposed.
6. A new single-day record:
Tuesday, the US set a new single-day record for COVID-19 cases with 441,278. That’s nearly 150,000 more than the single-day record of 294,015 under Trump. If I wanted to be a political hatchet man, I could accuse Joe Biden of being personally responsible for all those cases (which is what he said about Trump.) But I know that no President can stop a virus, and that the leap in case numbers is due to the more transmissible Omicron variant. Fortunately, it’s milder, so we’re not seeing a similar jump in hospitalizations and deaths.
All that said, it’s interesting to compare the biased spin from the media in their reporting of these two record-setting days under different Presidents:
Related: Wait, so you mean that firing thousands of essential workers during a surge in COVID cases wasn’t smart policy? Whoever could have predicted this?!
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/vaccine-mandates-us-vulnerable-omicron-surge
7. I Just Wanted To Say:
Thank you for reading.
8. Prayer Tree:
We are stronger together.
Our hope is that our newsletter readers and social media followers will consider these prayer requests each day. To submit your own prayer request, go to my website here.
HEALTH AND HEALING
"Please pray for my daughter-in-law, Phyllis, my grandson, Matthew, and my son-in-law, Michael, who all have Covid 19. Pray for their swift and complete healing, and for the protection for all other members of both sides of the family. Thanks."
"Trevor Bush, a fairly young super-dynamic worship leader at our church is experiencing stage one liver failure. A liver either spontaneously heals or slowly fails, requiring a liver transplant. Pray for a miracle of healing, God willing, or for a liver transplant if needed."
"Please pray for my cousin Jerry who is 68 and just tested positive for Covid. Thanks in advance for your prayers. Appreciate it so much."
"My brother Bob, who is suffering from liver disease. He’s very dear to me and has always helped me when I needed it. Thank you, Susan"
"My Son-in-law Missionary/pastor Kevin Amburgey had a couple of heart attacks and in in the hospital. Pray for healing. Also my husband who has Alzheimer’s. He is a retired Missionary to Belize."
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