The Bill Walton Show

Public K12 education in the United States has become the largest government-controlled monopoly in the world, (other than the CCP controlled monopolies in China), spending nearing $1 trillion per year. And for all the money spent, it's been a failure. In international tests, American eighth graders score 9th in reading, 16th in science, and 34th in math.

With few other options granted other than attending their residentially assigned district public school most Americans cannot conceive that there are other alternatives to educate their children. School reform efforts are ferociously resisted by the education monopoly.

It's not just teachers unions and school boards. It's the curriculum developers, the textbook publishers, consultants, the teachers colleges. The list goes on and on. Schools and school administration are also the largest source of patronage for big city, mayors, and governors in every state. They are not going to give up control of this.

But the dynamics may be changing.

What happened during COVID, and the prolonged school closures, was a great parent awakening. Parents had a front row seat into their child's classroom and they were able to see what was being taught as well as what wasn't being taught. They didn't like what they saw, and now millions are beginning to explore and create other ways to educate their kids.

The person to talk with about this movement is Dr. Keri D. Ingraham Director of the Discovery Institute's American Center for Transforming Education. She is also a Senior Fellow at Independent Women's Forum.

Here is what we agree on.

We need to create new types of schools from the ground up. There are new, more effective ways to teach our kids. Let the old institutions atrophy and die out.

Some Key Takeaways:

• The fastest, most effective way to reform K12 public education is to allow families to exit the system. 03:24

• Public school education's roots are in the progressive era in the 19th Century. 6:29

• On the world stage US students are not competitive. 09:07

• Critical race theory is embedded in the curriculum 10:09

• Progressive bias dominates textbook publishing, college schools of education, and teacher certifications 12:05

• The bar is low to enter teacher college programs. It's typically the easiest field to go into within the university. 15:50

• Teacher college curriculums ignore subject matter expertise. 16:23

• Don Graham, former publisher of the Washington Post and a history major at Harvard, couldn't teach in DC public schools because he didn't have a teaching certificate. 18:12

• Is there any examples of a government monopoly or any big bureaucracy that has successfully reformed itself? 20:46

• Big cities' schools are among their mayor's largest form of patronage. 12;10

• When schools say "We're underfunded. We need more money." It means the want to hire more non-teaching administrative staff. 24:19

• Great books classical education has exploded. 28:26

• Do we really need to have kids go to school and sit there for eight hours a day? 29:46

• What do you do about the inner city kids that don't have parents that are that involved? 35:29

• How do we change the teacher certification rules? 38:42

• From the beginning of the progressive era over a hundred years ago, schools were designed to get kids off the streets and under the control of what they then called the "education trust" 40:44

• In 1919, the "education trust" advocated taking children from the family into the hands of the custody of "community experts." 41:37

• California's Gavin Newsom recently signed a law saying that schools are not required to tell a parent of their child's gender ideology unless that child gives permission. 42:51

• In 1934, the president of the National Education Association, wrote, "we expect to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force." 46:02

• We're not going to be able to reform the existing public government owned K12 schools. What we can do is to create effective alternatives that are better, cheaper, more humane, and teach good values. And if we create these alternatives, this ends the K12 monopoly. 48:22

"He who tries to defend everything defends nothing."

~ Frederick the Great of Prussia

This episode examines the three explosive national security crises the United States and world are embroiled in today, any one of which could escalate into igniting a World War III.

Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Hamas and Taiwan/China.

Disturbingly, there's a lot of sabre rattling with far too many politicians in both Europe and the United States engaged in reckless rhetoric.

To provide cogent analysis and a healthy dose of sobering realism at a time when we face dire risks, Bill is joined by national Security experts and returning guests Stephen Bryen and Brandon Weichert.

Dr. Stephen Bryen, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, has over 50 years national security experience including many stints in the Pentagon where he became one of the world's leading experts on the arms trade.

Brandon J. Weichert, author of The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy is publisher of the Weichert Report and author of the soon to be published A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine.

Some excerpts:

"The neoconservative, neoliberal cabal running Washington believe fully that they have to fight everywhere all the time to preserve America's unipolar standing and our hegemony in the world. But this quest for hegemony has led to the absolute destruction of America's post-Cold War primacy," warns Weichert. "And if we are not careful, in the next six months, we will not only lose that primacy., but we may become like the declining Ottoman Empire or Austro-Hungarian Empire on our way out. We've overcommitted and overextended, and we're paying the price."

"NATO is flirting with war and extinction," worries Bryen. "France is now "officially" sending troops to Ukraine and NATO countries are demanding strikes deep inside Russia. Meanwhile the US has secretly made a "policy shift" that somewhat falls short of what Zelensky wanted, but opens the door to deep strikes by the US on Russian territory."

"It's very hard to see how NATO could defend Poland or the Czech Republic or Estonia. These are not easy countries to defend, and NATO doesn't have today the core countries of NATO, the French, the Germans, the British, it doesn't have the wherewithal to do it. It doesn't have the army or armed forces. It doesn't have the air defenses. It doesn't have the air forces, it doesn't have the tanks. It doesn't have anything sizable enough, and the ability to actually logistically move it to the battlefield."

"So the notion of NATO fighting a war, which is what French President Macron and all these clowns are essentially taunting the Russians with, is a very dangerous thing because it means that Europe could be enveloped in a war can't win."

"Russians have developed a pretty sizable air defense capability," explains Bryen. "They have very good artillery capability. They have increasingly shown their capability with drones and drone warfare, none of which we're prepared for, and our best tank, the Abrams, which our only tank, we've put all our eggs in this one tank. The Abrams is a disaster."

"The think tank community and the Biden Administration have a plan to contain Russia by rolling it back to its medieval borders, so that it's never again a threat to Europe and the West," marvels Wiechert. "This is utterly fantastical thinking, this is childish thinking. Russia is not going to let it happen without a fight."

"Well, their plan not going to happen," agrees Bryen. "The underlying error, and I think it was a huge error, was that we should confront a nuclear power, a significant nuclear power with the dismemberment. We were going to break up the Soviet Union, now Russia. We're going to dismember it, and we're going to sponsor the opposition in Russia, and somehow create this great transformation. But we're messing around with a nuclear power."

"We've essentially forced the Russians into the arms of the Chinese through our policies, which was complete stupidity," says Bryen.

The neocons are very explicit the US must be the unchallenged superpower. In every place in the world, in every region, we must dominate.

This is the thinking that got us into the Middle East. This is the exact thinking that led us down the wrong path in Iraq and then the Arab spring.

"They believed the notion that there was going to be only one superpower and it was going to be the United States,"reminds Bryen. "And since we were to be the only superpower we had to take on these responsibilities. Well, we weren't the only one superpower, and today, we're just one of three, and increasingly the weaker of the three."

For the last 200 years, innovation and technology have produced dramatic increases in living standards and our quality of life.

Yet today there is a widespread and growing belief that technology has become the root of all evils with all sorts of claims being made that it destroys privacy, spreads misinformation, undermines trust, and democracy, eliminates jobs, discriminates by race, and gender, increases inequality, rips off the consumer, harms children, and even threatens the human race.

This is quite a bill of indictment! But is any of this true?

Bill's guests on this show, Rob Atkinson and David Moschella, believe this is mostly agenda driven bunk and have written a persuasive book to prove it.

"Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths About Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today's Innovation Economy"

Robert D. Atkinson is the founder and president of ITIF, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and author of many books including "Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage"

David Moschella is a nonresident senior fellow at ITIF and previously was head of worldwide research for IDC, the largest market analysis firm in the information technology industry.

"America's always flourished more than anybody else in the world," declares Atkinson, "because we have had this underlying faith in innovation, in the future, in taking risks, in going forward into the unknown. And now, that's really at risk. People are saying things like, 'Wait a minute, we shouldn't deploy facial recognition because it's racially biased' or that 'technology innovation has not improved the average worker's living standards.'"

"Well, both those statements are wrong. They are 100% myth."

"As someone who grew up in the Boston area in the 60s and 70s," says Moschella, "Massachusetts was considered a dead economy with no future. And then, this thing called the minicomputer was designed out of MIT, and created companies like Digital Equipment, and Prime, and Wang and all the others. And all of a sudden you had the so-called Massachusetts Miracle. People are forgetting these realities."

Some of the most damaging myths stem from a deep-seated rejection of the Western capitalist system. But to gain traction for this agenda, anti-capitalists must first convince voters that the current system is failing, and a top target is technology driven innovation.

"Also, what's happened is that some of the legitimate criticism of globalization has morphed into criticism of automation," says Moschella.

"People didn't like globalization, but then said, 'Well, automation is really more the cause than globalization, and of course technology drives automation, so we can blame technology automation for the problems globalization has created.''"

"I've actually heard members of Congress say, 'The pace of change is so rapid and we have to slow it down,' worries Rob.

"Now think about that. When has America ever said that? That the average person can't handle change. That it's too fast. We've got to slow things down."

In this episode we also take on the myth that the pace of technological change is accelerating.

Compare current era to the early 20th century, which saw the introduction of transformative technologies like electricity, radio, automobiles, and airplanes. The perception of rapid change today is often skewed by the digital revolution's visibility, but in reality, the physical and infrastructural advancements of the past were probably more transformative.

America has shifted its focus from delivering technological wonders to preventing "harmful" change. Once widely seen as a savior of humanity, technology is increasingly used as a scapegoat for just about every societal ill.

But if we see innovation as a necessary force for good, with government's role as a constructive enabler, there will be thoughtful innovation policies and more innovation

But if the dominant narrative is that technology is an out-of-control force for harm, there will be destructive policies and a stultifying future.

Agree or disagree, this conversation wanders into some interesting waters and challenges a lot of today's conventional wisdom about technology.

Former Navy U.S. Seal and founder of the private military company Blackwater Erik Prince says that "We are fighting wars the wrong way." Stephen Bryen is known as the "Yoda" of the Arms Trade. Time Magazine comments, "He knows every sinkhole in the regulatory swamp. Ignore him at your peril." He is also a former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense and founder of the Defense Technology Security Administration. This week, we are discussing Erik's new paper "Too Big to Win: How the Military and Industrial Complex and the Neocons Keep America Losing." One of the central questions posed by Prince – How has America transitioned from a post-Cold War era of dominance to its current state of disarray?

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In this episode of The Bill Walton Show, Bill wades into the murky waters of the Left's "dark money" manipulation of American politics with Scott Walter and Kristen Eastlick with the Capital Research Center.

We often use the phrase follow the money. Scott and Kristen are among the best at doing just that.

Centerpiece of the discussion is Scott's new book Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America.

In it, he reveals the vast influence that the Arabella Network - by deploying billions of dollars - plays in American politics under the guise of progressive philanthropy.

To name just a few issues, Arabella has played a major role in battles over Supreme Court nominations, abortion, men in women's sports, school discipline, Medicare for All, environmental policies, fake local news outlets, and the "Zuck Bucks" used to manipulate elections. Many believe that most of the attacks on American institutions by the Left are financed and organized in part by Arabella.

This episode's conversation gets into revealing detail about how this network operates as a "dark money" brain trust with a for-profit manager (of course) at its epicenter, commanding several billion dollar nonprofit action groups.

These funds in turn create hundreds of "pop-up" entities that appear suddenly, giving the appearance of huge popular groundswells, when in fact they're the creations of Arabella and other similarly deeply disguised operations on the Left.

Rather than being innocent grassroots outfits, they are the creation of their secretive dark money operations.

The sheer quantity of money that has flowed through Arabella's channels is staggering. In the 2020 election cycle, Arabella's nonprofits took in $2.4 billion, more than the fundraising of the Democratic and Republican National Committees combined. In the 2022 election cycle, Arabella's fundraising rose to $3 billion.

Arabella is a big part of the reason for the Left's stunning advantage in money and sophisticated political machinery that shapes our lives and elections.

Scott and Kristen describe the "three rivers of money" flowing into politics.

"With the first river of hard dollars, traditional political giving, the Left has an advantage, but it's slight," explains Scott. "In the second river, the independent expenditures, dark money and super PACs, the left has a little advantage, but it's also slight. But in the third river," and here Scott grows animated, "where the Left's charitable public policy groups operate, it's not even close. It's over a 10 to one in the Left's favor and totals to over a $35 billion advantage. This is really the death star for the lefties."

It's shocking to learn how Arabella has covertly developed the darkest of "dark money" networks. It's also shocking to learn who has been by far the largest single individual contributor to the abortion industry to the tune of $6+ billion. (Revealed at the 18:36 minute mark)

In fact, the further you go in this episode, the more disturbing the political swamp and the people behind it reveal themselves to be.

If you really want to follow the money, start here.

In this lively episode of the Bill Walton Show, Bill talks with Jim Pinkerton in a thought-provoking discussion about investing in the turbulent waters of today's toxic political climate. With a focus on the stark Red-Blue divide in America, Jim offers a contrarian view that it's fertile ground for what he terms "directional investing."

Drawing from his upcoming book, "The Secret of Directional Investing: Making Money Amidst the Red-Blue Divide," Pinkerton—a veteran of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and a long-time Fox News contributor—unpacks the intriguing idea that political polarization, while daunting, can be a goldmine for the astute investor and entrepreneur.

The conversation digs into a deeper exploration of Federalism and the concept of states as laboratories, not just of democracy, but also micro-economic innovation hubs. Pinkerton paints a picture of a "United States of Arbitrage," where individuals and businesses pick states for their cultural climates and regulatory frameworks, much like how businesses today scout for tax havens.

Bill and Jim weave through topics with ease, touching on the explosive potential of AI and its voracious energy demands, the dynamics of state-driven economic incentives, and the possible futures shaped by these forces. They muse on how states compete to attract burgeoning industries by aligning social policies with corporate needs, imagining a nation where your address might reflect your ideology as much as your lifestyle.

"If a red state were really on its game, thinking for itself," says Jim, "it would announce to the world that any student who got an 800 on his or her math SAT would get a free ride."

The episode doesn't just dissect current trends; it offers a visionary look at how today's divisions could be tomorrow's opportunities, making it a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the intersection of politics, economics, and the future of innovation in America.

Also, you'll learn which state seems to think its idea of economic development is transgender surgery, hoping to become to transgenderism what the Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins are to cancer.

This episode of The Bill Walton Show is a riveting discussion with two astute geopolitical analysts, Dr. Steven Bryen and Brandon Weichert.

Together they dissect the exploding tensions in the Middle East, specifically the dramatic escalation by Iran's air attack on Israel.

And the big questions: How are global players like the US, Russia, and even China moving their chess pieces in this high-stakes game?

The episode is a whirlwind tour through the strategies, fears, and potential flashpoints that will likely redraw the map of global power.

Dr. Bryen, with over 50 years national security experience including many stints in the Pentagon where he became a leading expert on the arms trade, shares his insights into Iran's unprecedented missile and drone attack on Israel. Despite its scale, it was largely thwarted by robust air defenses from Israel, the US, and even regional players like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Still, Iran considers it a success.

He highlights the remarkable and historic aspect of Arab nations rallying in defense of Israel.

Brandon Weichert, author of The Shadow War: Iran's Quest for Supremacy and known for his pulse-racing analyses, shifts the lens to the broader geopolitical chessboard, articulating how the Shia-Sunni divide and the shadows of the Abraham Accords are playing out in real-time.

Weichert critiques the current US administration's handling of deterrence, and its tacit support of Iran which will destabilize the already volatile region.

Dr. Bryen also skeptically views the Biden administration's Middle East strategy while applauding CENTCOM's pivotal coordination role.

Weichert and Bryen also debate potential military strategies that could weaken Iran's capabilities, while worrying about the critical weaknesses in the US and global defense arsenals.

This discussion shines a light on the complex and now dire landscape of international relations that the Biden Administration has wrought.

Buckle up, listeners, because geopolitics just doesn't get more electrifying than this!

In this episode Bill Walton is joined by Dr. Robert Malone in a wide ranging and engaging discussion about modern societal and financial control mechanisms. Their great concern is the relentless and growing overreach of both governments and corporations into personal freedoms through the guise of security, safety and public health.

Robert W. Malone is an internationally recognized scientist/physician and the original inventor of mRNA vaccination as a technology. He holds numerous fundamental domestic and foreign patents in the fields of gene delivery, delivery formulations, and vaccines: including for fundamental DNA and RNA/mRNA vaccine technologies. He has developed some 100 scientific publications with over 14,000 citations of his work.

He now focuses on daily podcasts, interviews, op-eds, advocacy with legislators and building a twitter feed of over a million people.

His life changed from that of a scientist to an advocate because of his personal experiences and concerns regarding the safety and bioethics of how the COVID-19 genetic vaccines were developed and forced upon the world. He discovered the many short-cuts, database issues, obfuscation and frankly, lies told in the development of the Spike protein-based genetic vaccines for SARS-CoV-2.

Some of the topics covered:

The regulatory capture of the federal government has warped and shaped the work of Congress and Federal agencies to such an extent that they no longer represent what is in the best interests of the nation, the world, and humanity.

WHO's Pandemic Treaty is intended to override most of our national sovereignty in health policy decisions, effectively allowing a global body to dictate local health measures.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) which have the potential to be a sinister tool for government financial surveillance and social control.

Financial Privacy Concerns The payment processor Stripe, which recently demanded Malone's financial details, reflecting broader concerns about privacy and autonomy in financial transactions.

Labeling Dissent as extreme, such as "far-right" or "Nazi," to delegitimize and silence criticism, comparing it to historical tactics used during the McCarthy era.

Surveillance and Control under the guise of safety and security, suggesting a slippery slope toward more intrusive governmental and corporate practices.

Robert Malone is a courageous and deep thinker, a man who should be listened to.

On March 18, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Murthy v. Missouri challenging whether the government can induce social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to censor constitutionally protected free speech.

A sinister web of federal agencies, the White House, social media platforms, NGOs and others are orchestrating a vast system of censorship to suppress viewpoints that contradict "preferred government narratives"about COVID-19 policies, climate change, election integrity and other issues that should be open to free & fair debate.

The Supreme Court is being asked to decide on a lower court injunction that ruled that the Biden White House, the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Surgeon General, the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services and many other federal agencies are not permitted to communicate with or coerce social media companies for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech."

Joining Bill in this episode are two people who were inside the Supreme Courtroom on March 18, plaintiff Aaron Kheriaty MD and his lawyer Jenin Younes.'

Aaron, a physician specializing in psychiatry, was fired from the University of California after challenging its Covid vaccine mandate in Federal Court.

Jenin's with the New Civil Liberties Alliance and served as senior special counsel on the Weaponization Subcommittee.

After achieving victory in the Cold War against the Soviet Union, US political leadership, starting with the Clinton Administration, has made a continuing string of strategic blunders that have brought the United States to the point where - after building China up for decades - we face an enemy determined to become the new global hegemon and that now possesses equal economic, military and diplomatic resources.

To learn how this came about, in this episode Bill talks with James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer, Ph.D, authors of

Embracing Communist China: America's Greatest Strategic Failure.

Jim Fanell, a retired U.S. Navy captain and the former Director of Intelligence and Information Operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, is now a Government Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.

Brad Thayer is an expert in Chinese grand strategies and the history of Chinese and Western strategic thought; and a former visiting fellow at Magdalen College, University of Oxford.

"How did China go from an underdeveloped country in 1990 with about 0.6 of 1% of world gross domestic product to over 20% of world GDP today?" asks Brad.

"The answer in large part is that the United States aided and abetted the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and kept it in power. That has never happened before in international politics where one state, the dominant state, has funded the rise of an enemy."

U.S. foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) has been dominated by the so-called "Engagement School" since the end of the Cold War. They believed that U.S. political and economic engagement with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would transform the PRC into a "responsible stakeholder" in the Western economic system and, ideally a democracy. Of course, none of that happened.

Instead, the Engagement School saved the CCP and ensured that the PRC became wealthier and more powerful year-after-year and used that power to re-make the international order to suit the CCP's interests and to threaten U.S. national security, allies, and partners.

"Engaging" with China has led to the offshoring of manufacturing jobs, the loss of intellectual property, and making the U.S. energy future dependent on China, just to name a few of our strategic blunders.

"We thought we could make China and CCP become more like us, that they would see the value of the being part of a US dominated system created in the post-World War II era. We assumed they would just naturally drift into becoming a liberal democracy. So we didn't fundamentally understand communism. We didn't understand the Chinese Communist Party's commitment to that ideology," explains Jim.

The Trump administration began the difficult task of ending Engagement. However, under Biden, it has now returned in a supercharged form.

The Biden "reset" began in earnest in May when CIA Director Nicholas Burns made a secret trip to Beijing to meet with his Chinese counterparts. Then began a cavalcade of visits to the PRC from senior Biden officials: Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Climate Czar John Kerry, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo who was most explicit regarding why nothing could jeopardize the approximately $750 billion per year trade relationship with the PRC.

"But the apotheosis of the engagement paradigm was the summit meeting in November between Xi and Biden. The meeting with Biden was just Xi's doormat to get to what really mattered: the meeting with the 400 business leaders," explain Jim and Brad.

"Never in our history have Americans so openly and brazenly celebrated a communist and murderous dictator. It was an appalling and shameful moment in American history."

"The U.S. has little to show in return for all these meetings, except for the loss of face and its own national power—again, year-after-year. It is stunning that so few Americans have asked what good has America received from the Engagement School. The elite have gotten wealthier, so they and the CCP are the winners. But it's the Chinese and American people that bear the costs."