Willingboro, New Jersey
September 3, 1958 - August 15, 2021
It is with great sadness that the family of Brett M. Koch announces his sudden passing on August 15, 2021 at the age of 62. Brett was born on September 3, 1958 in Hightstown, New Jersey and later moved to Willingboro, New Jersey where he attended John F Kennedy High School. He spent his youth surrounded by a loving family. Brett brought two daughters into the world during his marriage and made sure to fill their youth with fun vacations and wild adventures. Brett loved spoiling his children over the years and supplied a lifetime of memories. Both daughters, Joline and Michelle, remained close with Brett until his passing.
He was preceded in death by his parents, Lillian and Henry, and his siblings, Kevin and Carolyn, and brother-in-law Walter Read.
Brett is survived by his daughter Joline, her husband Jim, his daughter Michelle, her husband John, his only grandchild- Emelia, his brother Richard (Barbara), his brother-in-law Fred, his niece Jennifer, his nephews Steve and Paul and their children, cousins, and long-time friends.
Brett was a loving and devoted father, but also a great friend, father-in-law, and relative to so many. He never hesitated to help others in need and would be at your house in a flash when you asked him for his expertise. He was highly skilled in computers and electronics and extremely handy in all areas of home improvement. He loved spending time with his brother, Ricky, talking with friends, and taking his bird, Peaches, for drives.
Brett’s passing signifies a loss of many things: his conversations, his help and guidance, his expertise, and most importantly, his love. Fortunately for all who knew Brett, he lives on within our memories, hearts, and minds.
Memorial Visitation will be held, Saturday, August 28,2021, 9am - 11am at the Goes - Scolieri Funeral Home, 212 Levitt Parkway, Willingboro,NJ. (609)871-1000.
In Lieu of flowers, donations are requested to the American Diabetes Association in his memory.
We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me
Growing up poor in Detroit, if I had believed, as critical race theory (CRT) proponents claim, that my destiny was based on my race, I would not be where I am today. We cannot allow CRT to rob American children of that same hope that was instilled in me.
Recently, author and professor Ibram Kendi, creator of so-called antiracist doctrines that lie at the core of CRT, has claimed that CRT is an "imagined monster" concocted by conservatives as a scare tactic to deny talking about race. This is clearly false.
To start, it’s important to understand that the term "antiracism" as used by Kendi, which sounds non-threatening enough, does not mean what you think. Indeed, far from being antiracist, the ideology promoted by Kendi and fellow travelers is anything but. It redefines reality to assign guilt and blame based solely on race. Classifying persons in such a manner is literally the definition of racism.
This type of vocabulary manipulation is part of the reason this ideology has stealthily overcome our institutions. After all, who doesn’t want to be antiracist?
Contrary to Kendi’s recent claim, CRT and so-called antiracism are very much real, and are the vanguard of a radical, revolutionary movement that seeks to overthrow the established order in every area of society, including capitalism itself.
This divisive ideology seeks to replace the traditional American value of equality of opportunity with a regime that assumes all White people are racist oppressors and labels all racial minorities as victims.
While the classical Marxism from which CRT was born focuses on class conflict, CRT substitutes class for race, wholly ignoring the demonstrated failure of Marxist ideologies – unlike the people of Cuba who are protesting against Marxist failures at this very moment.
CRT and antiracism are founded on racist, conspiratorial drivel.
CRT’s focus has primarily been the classroom, but it’s also gaining momentum in board rooms, corporate trainings, and even the U.S. military – which is now suffering a lack of wartime readiness as a result of an excessive focus on CRT.
Kendi has even gone so far as to propose the creation of a Department of Antiracism that is permanently funded, accountable to no one and responsible for preclearing all local, state and federal public policies based on CRT and antiracist ideology.
Another distinguishing characteristic of antiracism and CRT proponents, besides the fact that they engage in blatant racism, is that they blame all racial disparities on racism. This is an assertion that is not supported by the evidence.
Research has shown that factors such as the presence of a stable two-parent family, educational choices and economic prosperity, among others, account for the large bulk of observed racial differences, rather than the boogeyman of racism. Thus, CRT and antiracism are founded on racist, conspiratorial drivel.
The results of this extremist ideology have been devastating. The massive rioting in Portland and other parts of the country, whose damage has made them the most costly riots in U.S. history, are the fruits of a generation raised on racial grievance indoctrination.
And big city prosecutors, also steeped in CRT ideology, are often letting violent rioters go free. This does nothing more than free criminals to continue menacing their communities and victimize the very disadvantaged populations the radicals claim to be protecting.
But if there’s any silver lining in the Marxist’s aggressive zeal to force CRT on our communities, it’s that their efforts are waking up the nation like few issues in recent memory, mobilizing citizens around the country to engage school boards and local governments to remove racist conspiracy theories like CRT from schools, businesses and government.
This renewed engagement could be a promising first step in eroding the decades-long dominance of Marxism in American education.
Dr. Ben Carson was the 17th U.S. secretary of Housing & Urban Development, a member of President Trump’s Advisory 1776 Commission, and serves as chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute.
We all want a society in which we can get more work done with less.
Unlike our ancestors, who had no choice but to toil in the fields, many of us spend our working days in comfortable climate-controlled buildings. This positive development occurred primarily due to two factors: increases in productivity and the division of labor. We should continue to welcome further developments in this area so that people are able to produce more with less, leaving more time for leisure, family, education, or creating new inventions.
However, unlike the healthy process of productivity and labor improvements, a new, potentially harmful type of labor phenomenon is occurring: The government is paying people not to work. This has happened for decades through many well-meaning but largely ineffective social welfare programs. But it has significantly intensified in the aftermath of COVID-19 lockdowns. The government has passed several rounds of stimulus packages to give additional unemployment benefits to millions of people.
While few are opposed to reasonable unemployment benefits in cases of true hardship, the COVID-19 benefits go far beyond that threshold. They pay millions of people who are perfectly capable of finding a job and working to stay home and stay out of the labor market. Through this, the government has managed stealthily, or perhaps not so stealthily, to introduce a preliminary version of Universal Basic Income. This oft-touted idea proposes to pay citizens a guaranteed monthly stipend without the requirement to work. It is intended as a way to improve quality of life and reduce poverty, at least according to its proponents. The scientific literature is mixed on the efficacy of UBI, but one troubling development following the provision of generous COVID-19 benefits is that employers are having nearly unprecedented difficulty in finding workers.
Pointing to extra government payments as a cause, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell recently remarked, "Enhanced unemployment benefits may be a factor limiting job growth."
While many industries have been badly affected by the pandemic, the restaurant industry has been particularly hard hit. A recent Department of Labor report indicates that there are 930,000 unfilled restaurant jobs as owners struggle to compete with the enhanced unemployment benefits. Although the Federal Reserve expects labor shortages due to COVID-19 enhanced unemployment benefits to be short-term due to the September expiration date of those benefits, many voices are pushing to establish UBI permanently.
Indeed, history shows that once such benefits are initiated, they can be nearly impossible to retract; President Ronald Reagan remarked, "The closest thing on Earth to eternal life is a government program." The long-term impact of taking millions of people out of the workforce is yet unknown. But we can be confident that there will be repercussions for social stability, crime, and economic growth.
So, what’s the right path forward?
As the consolidation of resources in the hands of the few accelerates, as leaders continue to sell out our industries, and as financialization continues to strip our industrial base of productive value in return for short-term profit, there will be more calls for policies like UBI to address the economic malaise. Nevertheless, we must reject the seemingly easy answer of UBI for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that UBI might harm those it purports to help. UBI could permanently undermine the concept of meaningful work.
Instead of trying to turn citizens into permanent wards of the state, policymakers should focus on solving the root cause of our current labor problems. We should reduce the burdens on finding meaningful work and alleviate poverty by increasing productivity, spurring entrepreneurship and innovation to birth new products and new industries. We should adopt technology that helps us get more done with less work and protect American industries and intellectual property.
To do anything less will push America further down the road of dependency on China. It will push people further down the road of despair.
Ben Carson is the founder and chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute and the former 17th secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Does The Definition Of ‘Fascism’ Apply To The Biden Administration? By Ben Carson
Erasing the line between government and private enterprise. Ensuring only government-approved messages are heard. Squashing dissent. Intruding government into every aspect of our lives.
Here is a challenge: Define fascism without reference to a historical event or proper noun.
It’s harder than it seems. Most people associate fascism with European dictatorships of the 1920s and ’30s. That is with good reason: those were the first fascist regimes.
The term itself originated in Italy to describe the political philosophy of Benito Mussolini, who borrowed from the Italian word fascio, literally meaning “bundle” (usually of rods or sticks). Mussolini used the term to mean a group of people who are stronger together than individually, such as how a bundle of sticks bound together is much more difficult to snap than any individual stick.
While most fascist regimes had racial or nationalist elements, it was not racism or nationalism that defined them; there have been plenty of racist or nationalist governing structures that do not merit the label “fascism.” Rather, the necessary ingredient for fascism is the state’s total domination of all aspects of life, including economic life.
Mussolini defined “fascism” as “Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Consistent with this, the American Heritage Dictionary includes in its definition of fascism “a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls.” By hook or by crook, and many times using violence, a fascist government will brook no dissent and will enlist all of the country’s institutions to further its ends.
During the Trump administration, the left took every opportunity to falsely claim that fascism was descending upon the land. But anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear knew those claims were outlandish.
There was plenty “outside the State” and “against the State” during the Trump administration (he is still banned on all major social media platforms, for example) and plenty of dissent. There were plenty of institutions that explicitly declared themselves in opposition to the aims of the government.
Nothing Outside of or Against the Regime
Fully cognizant of George Orwell’s quip that “Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable,’” I am becoming concerned that what many claimed to be happening under the Trump administration is becoming reality under the Biden administration.
I do not make that statement lightly. But events over the past several weeks suggest that the Biden administration, in concert with powerful American institutions, is working to ensure that there is nothing outside of or against the official government line.
Last month White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted the administration works closely with Facebook and other social media companies to identify posts it deems objectionable. While Psaki claimed the White House does not “take anything down” or “block anything,” there would be no reason for the White House to point out these statements if not in the hope of social media platforms taking action against posts contrary to the government’s preferred narrative.
Also, more news continues to come out about how the Biden administration is coordinating with private businesses to further its agenda. According to Politico, the White House is “back channeling” with various media organizations about COVID coverage, particularly arguing that the media’s focus on breakthrough infections of people who have already been vaccinated undermines the administration’s efforts to get more people vaccinated. Relatedly, the New York Times has reported the administration “continues to pressure private companies to introduce coronavirus vaccine mandates to help the U.S. raise its inoculation rates.”
Using Private Businesses to Implement Policy
Regardless of what anyone thinks of the wisdom of the administration’s policies, it should be concerning to all to have the White House directly involved in the operations of private companies. This is especially true when the White House’s focus is on heavily regulated companies, such as broadcast networks. Those are the companies least likely to be able to resist government requests, which always carry the implicit terms of, “Nice business you got there; it would be a shame if anything happened to it.”
It is all the more troubling that the White House is leaning on private companies to do that which the federal government cannot do itself, namely censoring individuals from expressing opinions contrary to the government’s preferred message, and mandating that everyone in America take a certain medicine. This should concern everyone because once you have endorsed the idea that the federal government can and should use private businesses as a tool to implement policy it cannot establish through legal means, there is no limiting principle. Should the government “pressure private companies” to not hire women who have had abortions? Not hire anyone who supported Trump?
It is not enough to claim the administration is doing this only in response to the COVID emergency. Washington is full of programs that were instituted in response to an “emergency” that has well since passed. This fusion of government goals and private action will just find a new problem to solve. Today it is COVID. Tomorrow it will be climate change or systemic racism.
You do not need to take my word for it: in just the past few days the administration announced “goals” for the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States (why it is the federal government’s business to set “goals” for consumer behavior was left unsaid). Standing there right behind the administration were the largest automakers in the country, cheering on the policy so long as there were sufficient government-funded “investments” and “consumer incentives” (read: subsidies). This hand-in-glove cooperation between big government and big business is exactly the kind of “corporatism” that was an essential feature of fascist states of the past.
Erasing the line between government and private enterprise. Ensuring only government-approved messages are heard. Squashing dissent. Intruding government into every aspect of our lives. The Biden administration’s actions are nothing less than creeping fascism.
I pray that the administration, and the American people, recognize this and change course before it is too late.
Dr. Ben Carson served as the 17th Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and is the Founder & Chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute.
