Armageddon (28 page)

In the 2011–2012 school year, Garcia's wife and daughter spent nine months during a marital separation living in his wife's father's house in Lower Moreland, a township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. That year, Fiorella attended Lower Moreland's much-sought-after elementary school, where, Spencer writes, “She read picture books, learned the alphabet and made friends.”
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The Moreland County prosecutor charges that the separation was a sham designed to get Fiorella into a better school in Lower Moreland. Arrested in August 2012, they had to pay more than $10,000 in restitution to the school district.
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Unfortunately, there are many other examples of prosecutors persecuting parents whose only goal is to give their child a quality education—a right rich people have no problem securing by writing a check to a private school.

• • Kelley Williams-Bolar, a special education aide in Akron, Ohio, actually had to spend nine days in jail for sending her two daughters to a better school where her father lived.
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• • Tanya McDowell, a homeless mother in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested for sending her five-year-old son to a Norwalk, Connecticut, school.
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• • In 2009, Yolanda Hill, a Rochester, New York, mom, was charged with two felonies for enrolling her children in a better suburban school district where she didn't really live.
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• • The school district in Orinda, California, a rich suburb of San Francisco, actually hired a private investigator to spy on a seven-year-old suspected of living in another town.
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• • A New Jersey detective firm,
  VerifyResidence.com
  , says it works with more than 200 districts on enrollment issues and residency fraud.
  

Do they deserve these fines? Remember that most of these parents are already paying property taxes to support their local schools. Now, in addition, they are being asked to pay restitution to the school outside their district to which they sent their children—a form of double taxation.

It is just outrageous that parents have to lie and falsify their addresses in order to send their children to good schools just because they can't afford private school tuition. The reason for such laws—and the prosecution that enforces them—is simply that teachers' unions know that if they let parents choose where to educate their children, the bad public schools would lose their children.

Once Dick was speaking at a pro–education choice rally in Orlando, Florida, when a teachers' union heckler yelled out, “Which of our public schools do you want to close?” He shouted back, “The empty ones!”

Ryan Smith, executive director of The Education Trust, made the point that “the real issue is how do we provide quality schools for all children so parents don't have to make decisions that ultimately break the law.”
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If Trump can frame this issue properly, he
can make it clear that Hillary spurns parents and children as she embraces the unions.

In addition to holding down Hillary's margin among women, we must do the same in the Latino community.

If Trump has a problem with female voters, pundits believe that is nothing compared to the difficulty they expect him to have among Latinos. Because Donald has threatened to deport all illegal immigrants in the United States—indeed, because he dares to call them “illegal” not “undocumented”—he is thought to be on the verge of being wiped out by Hillary among Hispanics.

The insiders feel that Trump's advocacy of building a wall along the Mexican border is sure to turn off Latinos and lead them to vote for Hillary in numbers that will dwarf even Obama's 2012 triumph among Latinos by 73-27.

Just as the mainstream media and political pundits have convinced America that abortion is the most important issue among American women, so they have sold us that immigration reform is the key to Latino attitudes in 2016.

Immigration is key for some Latinos. But polling suggests that there is a big divide between the one-quarter of Latino voters who were born abroad and the three-quarters who were born here. While immigration remains the key issue for those Latino voters who are foreign born, it has receded in importance for those who were born in the 50 states.

Since media coverage of Latino attitudes is largely shaped by the statements of ethnic group leaders who tend to represent the immigrant population more heavily, the importance of other issues among Hispanics is often obscured.

In a 2011 survey by the McLaughlin Group, the sharp divisions between Latinos based on their place of birth became evident. Asked
if they supported President Obama's decision to grant amnesty to many of the immigrants who arrived here illegally, 83% among foreign-born Latinos supported the president's decision. But among those born in the United States, support fell to 50%, with 40% opposing the president's position. Asked which issues were the most important to them, American-born Latinos put immigration reform last while foreign-born Hispanic voters put immigration first.

What Is the Most Important Issue? Among US-born Latinos

. . . and among non-US-Born?

Source: 2013 Survey by McLaughlin and Associates,
http://www.mclaughlinonline.com/lib/sitefiles/National_Hispanic_Presentation_06-21-13_-_FOR_RELEASE.pdf

Indeed, with many Latinos thrown into competition with recent arrivals for jobs and wages, a certain reserve about opening our borders further would be easy to understand.

But just as the quality of life here in the United States is important to American-born Latinos, McLaughlin's survey found that they are very concerned that Obama is leading America to make the same mistakes as the leaders in their former countries did.

When their ancestors came to America, they felt they left behind a culture of government dependence, large debts, and irresponsible giveaways by politicians seeking votes. But now they report seeing these things right here in America. These American-born Latinos worry that
the experiences their forebears had in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and other countries from which they fled in search of a better life is being replicated here in the USA.

Indeed, a survey by Rafael Giménez, former Public Opinion coordinator for the office of the Presidency in Mexico, tends to confirm the idea that Latinos in the United States are deeply concerned about the welfare-state orientation of the Democratic Party. Giménez interviewed a national sample of 1,100 US citizens of Latino origin using telephone, cell phone, and many in-person interviews between January 15 and February 15, 2013. Giménez elicited broad support when he asked participants if they agreed or disagreed with the following statement:

The results were as follows: agree: 59%; disagree: 34%. These fears—that America is going the way of the mismanaged countries they left—will make Latinos increasingly look to Donald Trump and away from Hillary Clinton.

By 78%–16%, US Latinos agreed that “Latino immigrants must not go the way some have gone into high unemployment, crime, drugs, and welfare. They must be more like the hard working immigrants who came here and worked their way up without depending on the government.”

When Giménez asked his Latino sample which party most shares this sentiment, they chose the Republicans, by a margin of 45%–29%. The survey also found that US Latino voters feel Republicans are more likely than Democrats

• • to “work hard to reduce the incidence of teen pregnancy” (45%–31%)
  
• • to agree that “the family fabric in America is being ripped apart. Parents are too permissive. There is too much divorce, too many unwed mothers, and too many children who don't listen to their parents” (49%–32%)
  
• • to avoid “ruining the United States” with too much debt (39%–37%)
  
• • to “strengthen churches so they can help the poor and teach values of faith and family” (52%–31%)
  

Latino voters agree that “too many people depend on the government and its handouts. That way of thinking is very bad and leads to lifetimes of unemployment, poverty, and crime” (89%–7%). And by 45–37, they believe the Republican Party is more likely to share their view than Democrats are.
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McLaughlin's survey found that Latino voters in the United States described themselves as pro-life by 67%–25%, about 30 points to the right of Americans generally.

Donald Trump must seek to rekindle in the United States the same debate that polarizes people in Mexico: Whether to create a welfare state or one that is governed by traditional values. After all, the ancestors of America's Latinos voted with their feet to leave nations organized around giveaways and handouts. They are sure to be vigilant in avoiding the same pitfalls here that ruined their native countries.

Polling shows that social problems, particularly those that concern their families and child-rearing have especial salience among Latino voters. Latina mothers are especially worried about the collapse of authority and discipline among their children and the declining importance of religion in their lives. Trump must address these issues and refuse to confine the debate among Latinos to the immigration issue.

Young voters are Hillary's single biggest problem.

The vote of people under 35 was a key element in Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012. In 2012, Obama lost among voters over the
age of 40 by five points. 52% voted for Romney and only 47% backed Obama. His victory was entirely due to his gigantic margin among younger voters, whom he carried by 20 points, 58%–38%.

But it is young voters who animated Bernie Sanders' challenge to Hillary's nomination. A FoxNews poll in April of 2016 found that voters under 45 backed Sanders by 65%–30%.
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The younger they were, the more these Democrats voted for Sanders and against Hillary in the primary. The
Washington Post
reported that “in Iowa and Nevada, voters under 30 went 6 to 1 for Sanders. In New Hampshire, 5 to 1.”
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Hillary is not unique in her problems with young voters. Between 2014 and 2015, Obama's job approval has dropped from 52% to 41% according to a survey by the Harvard Institute of Politics. Of the young voters Harvard surveyed, 55% said they voted for Obama in 2012, but only 46% said they would vote for him again.
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Among young white and Hispanic voters, Obama and the Democrats are in even worse shape. The Harvard Poll found that “though Obama maintains a 78% approval rating among young African Americans, his favorability among young Hispanics has plummeted. Obama commanded an 81% approval rating in the young Hispanic demographic in 2009. Today, that number is 49%. His approval is also down among young white Americans. In 2006 and 2008, a majority of young white millennials supported Democrats. Now the percentage of young white Americans who support President Obama is only 31%.”
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Obama isn't on the 2016 ballot, but his Party is, and younger voters are taking out their disapproval of him on Hillary.

Part of what is driving younger voters in their growing disapproval of Democrats is a rapid drop in the popularity of Obamacare. The Harvard Poll found that 57% of young voters disapproved of Obamacare, with 40% saying it will worsen the quality of their care, and a majority believing it will drive up costs.
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Since Obamacare is a program designed to tax young people to subsidize the medical care of their elders, its unpopularity is likely to remain and even grow.

Obamacare negatives are Hillary negatives because of her record of having proposed a similar program in 1993. The Republicans need to run a targeted campaign against Hillary among younger voters.

In a curious sense, this task is easier among people who have only limited experience with Mrs. Clinton. Voters over 35 are a bit jaded when it comes to Hillary. They have watched scandal after scandal reaching back all the way to Whitewater, each sapping whatever residual credibility she had with them. But to those under 35, all the Hillary scandals are new. These voters, after all, were under 15 years of age when the Lewinsky scandal unfolded and were way too young to have followed Hillary's misadventures over the years.

Trump must slam Hillary on the credibility issue. Her lies and distortions are so well documented and extensively filmed that they will make excellent fodder for negative campaign ads. Whether it is Hillary erroneously saying that she was under fire in Bosnia (she was greeted by a child bearing flowers on a red carpet) or that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary (who climbed Mt. Everest four years after her birth) or that she was instrumental in the Irish peace process (a memory nobody else confirms) or that she left the White House “dead broke” (despite an $11 million book deal) or that she used a private e-mail server for convenience, all these stories make great ammunition.

Time has always been Hillary's biggest ally. People forget scandals and they fade from the front pages as the news cycle moves on. But now time is her enemy since these scandals are all new, exciting, and interesting to young voters who have never heard them before.

Woody Allen famously said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
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