marsh
On TB every waking moment
8:34 min
Is America Becoming Like China?
Oct 25, 2021
The Daily Wire
Chinese Dissident Habi Zhang shares her thoughts on how wokeness is destroying America.
GOV/MIL Leftists Call For New "Secret Police" Force To Spy On Trump Supporters (AN ABSOLUTELY MUST-READ THREAD)
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8:34 min
Is America Becoming Like China?
Oct 25, 2021
The Daily Wire
Chinese Dissident Habi Zhang shares her thoughts on how wokeness is destroying America.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
5:58 min
Biden Is Building a New Surveillance State with the IRS | LevinTV
Oct 25, 2021
BlazeTV
The IRS already has a deep footprint in the lives of Americans. Now, the Biden Administration's prying eyes are looking for more ways to extract money. Under the guise of making billionaires pay their fair share, Biden wants to give the IRS new, unprecedented powers to snoop on savings, checking, mortgage, and bank loans. However, Mark is here to expose their real target: You. The average middle class American. This isn't about billionaires - it's about creating a new surveillance state.
marsh
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Architect of CCP fascist ‘social credit system’… Every country in the world should use this program…
Posted by Kane on October 25, 2021 12:00 pm
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1451621865349267457
.43 min
Beijing Fascist Scientist Lin Junyue — “If you had the social credit system, there would never have been the Yellow Vests, we would have detected that before they acted.”
Junyue has worked on a Chinese social credit system on since 1999 when he was appointed chief engineer for a new team set up at the request of Prime Minister Zhu Rongji.
The Nation did a big write up on Lin in 2018.
9:07 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
New Evidence Reveals Facebook Censoring Conservative Content; Breitbart Traffic Hobbled
MONDAY, OCT 25, 2021 - 10:25 AM
Authored by Yves Smith via naked capitalism (emphasis ours),
The Wall Street Journal just published a detailed story substantiating what many have suspected of Facebook, that it’s been censoring right-wing content.
Admittedly, this finding is in “dog bites man: terrain. Gizmodo had ascertained that through an analysis of “Trending Topics” in May 2016, meaning well before the Trump win led Democratic/establishment screeching about Russian influence and clamping down on opinion suddenly deemed responsible and necessary.
However, Facebook operates on the premise that it can tell howlers to Congress and the public and large, and no one heretofore has been able to disprove its self-serving and dubious claims. So lifting the veil on Facebook’s process, such as it is, for booting content and providers from its platform serves to restrict its ability to prevaricate. It could even lead to a sensible policy or two.
The Journal story relies on internal chats and focuses on Breitbart as an object of Facebook restrictions. The picture is not pretty. Facebook appears to lack any clear-cut policies, which means employees views and arguments held way too much sway. Fox also gets hated-on by Facebook staffers, but there’s no indication in this story that there’s any smoking gun as far as Fox is concerned.
It’s no surprise that Facebook’s efforts at moderation are a train wreck. This tiny site has highly experienced moderators make considerable effort to keep the discussion civil and informative. Moderation does not scale.
And that’s before the wee problem of Facebook having what sure sounds like unduly fuzzy objectives. I find it hard to understand, save its presumably huge legal budget, why Facebook has put itself in the position of intervening in content as much as it does. This degree of control over content makes it hard for Facebook to deny that it’s a publisher, as opposed to a platform.
It’s puzzling that Facebook hasn’t attempted to stare down the thought police and banned content and sites only that peddled hate speech (as in the kind that could be successfully prosecuted) and exhortations to commit violence. Cracking down on misinformation? Seriously? After two plus years of Russiagate fabrications? As Lambert points out, the discussion among scientists on Covid aerosol transmission would have been expunged under the “misinformation” standard because both the CDC and WHO rejected it.
In fact, the Journal story both points out how Breitbart and other conservative sites were down-metered, yet also suggests they were treated too timidly because revenues:
The Journal account focuses on its new trove, and hence does not step back to give context. We’ve avoided saying much about Google and Facebook censorship of supposedly right wing and left wing sites because it’s at least as much an effort to winnow the Web down to fewer, orthodox voices But the interests of the officialdom don’t fully align with those of the tech platforms. For instance:
One thing that is sorely missing is what exactly Breitbart was publishing that was deemed to rise to the level of “misinformation” and hate speech.
There’s not a single example of a debate over a particular Breibart story and how it wound up. Instead, Facebook performed a study….we aren’t told how…and Breibart got the worst marks in terms of trust:
Interestingly, around the time of the George Floyd protests, the Journal found one employee calling for using them to purge Breitbart. The response was that Facebook needed to stick to its algos:
[ZH: As Breitbart reports, Facebook's censorship suppressed their news traffic by 20%...
* * *
What this article never states clearly is the elephant in the room, that Facebook’s users skew conservative, putting the more liberal moderators at odds with them. For instance, Breitbart retorts to the Journal that it is rated better among Facebook’s own readers than many mainstream media publications, which could be true. The flip side is that Facebook went so far as to insert conservative pundits into “Feed Recommendations” allegedly out of fear (I have difficultly believing the fear part, I am sure the operative reasons were mercenary).
The article discusses how many advertisers tried to avoid placement on Breitbart, yet wound up there. Facebook staffers try blaming that on Breitbart machinations. Huh? This sounds like dog ate my homework. And in any event, the advertisers should have stared Facebook about paying for ads they explicitly did not want placed.
There are only two news items mentioned: one a video of Trump reposting a Breitbart clip saying masks were unnecessary and touting hydroxychloroquinine, which was widely viewed across the Internet before being taken down and this one at the close of the story:
This sort of thing is worth litigating? Seriously? First, it’s a pervasive conservative trope to accuse government officials of spending too much on themselves. Calling it hate speech is simpy hysterical.
And it is true that the March 2020 Covid stimulus bill contained $25 million for “salaries and expenses” for the House. But an actual pay increase would require approval of the House Appropriations Committee, and that didn’t happen. The money instead was going for stuff like pay to furloughed food workers and funding to kit out remote connectivity. One could argue that House members should worry about their own computers just like other employees told to work at home, but that wasn’t the point made.
USA Today quotes much greater exaggerations about House spending in the CARES Act from Facebook that appear to have been untouched by the moderators.
Oh, and as part of the CARES Act, which Trump had to sign before it became law, how was this a clean conservative shot even if accurate? Seems like this claim would set up for an easy rejoinder from someone on the other side of the ideological divide. But apparently goodthinking liberals have already written off the deplorables as beyond redemption.
In the hothouse world of the Beltway, the video bloggers Diamond and Silk matter because they are among the few black supporters of Trump, and have earned a perverse badge of honor of being booted from Fox for questioning Covid data (they are now on NewsMax). The Journal also fails to provide some key backstory, that Diamond and Silk claimed that they had been censored by Facebook and had received a message stating their content and message were “unsafe to the community.” That got them a Congressional audience. I am in no position to get to the bottom of this, but Wikipedia strongly insinuates that the Diamond and Silk claims of Facebook downranking are exaggerated if not fabricated.
In other words, Diamond and Silk’s off the mark shot at the House may seem important to the likes of Media Matters, but this is a nothingburger to most Americans. And a lot of people would find it disturbing that Facebook is engaging what looks like sentence-level policing.
I wish the Wall Street Journal would publish all the documents to allow for broader reading and calibration. But not surprisingly, what they’ve served up so far is true to Facebook’s unsavory brand image.
marsh
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EXCLUSIVE-Kevin McCarthy: Facebook Employees' Leftist Narratives 'Threatened' by Breitbart Reporting
House Minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) slammed Facebook for its suppression of Breitbart News and other conservative media, following reports that the social network introduced tools which suppressed traffic to Breitbart News and other conservative publishers by double-digit margins.
www.breitbart.com
EXCLUSIVE-Kevin McCarthy: Facebook Employees’ Leftist Narratives ‘Threatened’ by Breitbart Reporting
2
ALLUM BOKHARI and MATTHEW BOYLE25 Oct 2021243
House Minority leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) slammed Facebook for its suppression of Breitbart News and other conservative media, following reports that the social network introduced tools which suppressed traffic to Breitbart News and other conservative publishers by double-digit margins.
In an exclusive, wide-ranging comment to Breitbart News, Rep. McCarthy said Facebook’s most partisan employees push for censorship of the platform because they are “threatened” by the accurate reporting of Breitbart News, which challenges their far-left worldview.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg ( Kevin Dietsch/Getty)
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 28: U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks during a weekly news conference May 28, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. McCarthy held news conference to fill questions from members of the press. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Censorship of conservative news coverage by Facebook and other Big Tech companies, said McCarthy, leaves Americans with only “half the story.”
“When Big Tech censors speech that isn’t popular with legacy media, it not only disproportionately silences conservative voices, but it leaves Americans with half the story,” McCarthy told Breitbart News.
“Legacy media outlets are not infallible voices of authority and information. From suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story to downplaying the riots that gripped American cities in 2020 and shutting out discussion of the origins of Covid-19 — decisions to hide facts from the American people should not be the gold standard of truth all content should be measured against. Try as they might, legacy media cannot hide what Americans across the country are seeing and experiencing in their own lives every day.”
“But Big Tech adds to the one-sidedness of the narrative by suppressing content from other outlets telling the rest of the story. Big Tech routinely cites algorithms as their defense against accusations of bias. But House Republicans continue to point out that humans write the algorithms, as well as enforce the implementation of disproportionate and harmful tools like Facebook’s “Sparing Sharing” and “Informed Engagement.”
“And as these Facebook Papers reports illustrate, employees at these companies are not just hysterically anti-conservative — they are against any idea that doesn’t fit their narrative. That’s why accurate headlines, like ‘Massive Looting, Buildings in Flames, Bonfires!’ from outlets like Breitbart News, feel threatening to them and are then subject to suppression.”
“The strength of our free society lies in the firm principle that Americans are free to use their own minds to form opinions on any given issue. What Facebook — and other platforms — are doing to narrow the ability of Americans to access information, is itself a particularly dangerous practice of misinformation.”
McCarthy issued his statement in response to news that Facebook introduced tools after the 2016 election that slashed traffic to conservative publishers – in Breitbart’s case, by an estimated 20 percent.
Via Breitbart News:
The news emerged in a story from the Wall Street Journal, which shed new light on both Facebook’s censorship of conservatives, and the ceaseless agitation on the part of its left-wing employees for more punishment of Breitbart News and other conservative pages.
Last edited:
marsh
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Biden Admin Gave NSBA President Ed Appointment Two Days After Letter
The Biden administration gave the National School Boards Association's president a cushy education appointment two days after she sent the infamous letter.
thefederalist.com
Biden Admin Gave School Board Organization President Plum Education Appointment Two Days After She Issued Bogus ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Letter
OCTOBER 25, 2021 By Kylee Zempel
The Biden administration and the National School Boards Association have been in hot water since news broke that the two had colluded to use “domestic terrorism” laws to wage a war on parents concerned about school coronavirus policies and left-wing curricula. The plot thickened on Monday with the revelation that the administration rewarded the NSBA’s president with a cushy education appointment just two days after she sent the infamous letter.
Purportedly to “deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation,” the NSBA sent a letter to the Biden White House on Sept. 29 begging the president to deploy law enforcement and invoke domestic terrorism laws against concerned parents, including the father of a girl who had allegedly been raped in a school bathroom by a boy in a skirt.
Just two days later on Oct. 1, NSBA President Viola Garcia began her tenure on the National Assessment Governing Board, a pivotal position within the education bureaucracy as the board decides which questions are asked on Nation’s Report Card assessment tests, which help determine federal education policies.
Garcia was one of five board members appointed by Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, as The Washington Free Beacon first reported. Biden’s Department of Education kept these appointments hush-hush for nearly two weeks until it finally sent out a press release announcing the appointees on Oct. 13.
The Biden administration appointing Garcia to the plum education post comes immediately after she and her colleagues at the NSBA colluded with the Democrat administration, which raises suspicions about whether the appointment fulfilled a presidential quid pro quo. Emails obtained and released last week by Parents Defending Education through the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the head honchos at the NSBA had actually been working with the Biden White House before the national school board group sent its official letter requesting a federal crackdown on parents, which would have mutually benefited both parties.
In a Sept. 29 email to the board, National School Boards Association CEO Chip Slaven said there had been “talks over the last several weeks with White House staff” who “requested additional information on some of the specific threats, so the letter also details many of the incidents that have been occurring.”
Garcia penned an email to the board on Oct. 2 saying the NSBA had communicated with the White House “for several weeks” to collect examples of parents protesting against local school boards.
“We felt compelled to say something when we started hearing about the threats, harassment, and acts of intimidation at school board meetings,” Garcia wrote one day after beginning her tenure at the National Assessment Governing Board.
Despite most of the incidents the NSBA cited in its letter to justify federal intervention not having escalated to arrests or charges by even local law enforcement, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and state attorneys to address “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools,” a spike that Garland later admitted in congressional testimony was based on the bogus NSBA letter, not on real evidence.
In an Oct. 2 email, Garcia attempted to justify her actions, saying the “pattern of threats and violence occurring across state lines and via online platforms” rapidly required “the federal government’s assistance.”
After receiving sharp blowback from parents, conservative media, GOP lawmakers, and state school board associations that condemned the “domestic terrorism” letter and said they had not been consulted or notified about it, the NSBA expressed “regret” for sending it and noted “there was no justification.”
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Catholic university helps create critical race theory lessons for K-12 schools | The College Fix
The new guide helps teachers push back against CRT bans.
www.thecollegefix.com
Catholic university helps create critical race theory lessons for K-12 schools
MATT LAMB - ASSOCIATE EDITOROCTOBER 25, 2021
The new guide helps teachers push back against CRT bans
Loyola University Maryland’s racial justice center has teamed up with Ms. Magazine and the National Women’s Studies Association to release a lesson plan and critical race theory guide for K-12 schools.
Journey to Justice: A Critical Race Theory Primer “includes articles, essays, lesson plans, an annotated bibliography and a COMloquium conversation that addresses and examines the perils of teaching critical race theory from kindergarten to college settings,” according to Ms. Magazine. The Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice at the Jesuit Catholic university in Baltimore helped develop the lesson plan.
The institute is led by a Professor Karsonya Whitehead (right), an advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. She previously taught a class at Loyola about the success of BLM in using social media for its political goals.
The guide is part political activism guide and part curriculum.
The magazine’s description says:
A sample lesson for kindergartners discusses “gender identity” and “gender roles.”
Gender identity refers to “[o]ne’s own internal sense of self and their gender, whether that is man, woman, neither or both,” the lesson plan explains. “Unlike gender expression, gender identity is not outwardly visible to others.”
“When we are born, the doctor identifies/assigns us as a boy or a girl,” sample lesson plan for the teacher says. “Based on that identification, others, sometimes including our teachers and parents, expect us to behave like a girl or a boy.”
The guide includes other suggested readings, including one essay titled “Anti-Racism Should Be Taught to Students and Their Parents,” published on October 15 in Ms.
CRT proponents have previously said it’s not taught in K-12 schools
The curriculum is a change in argument for CRT proponents and politicians, who, as Ms. Magazine said, have argued that it is not taught in grade schools.
Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe said that critical race theory is not taught in schools. However, as governor between 2014 and 2018, the state education department did prioritize the teaching of CRT as a learning goal.
“Teachers nationwide said K-12 schools are not requiring or pushing them to teach critical race theory, and most said they were opposed to adding the academic approach to their course instruction,” NBC News reported in July, based on a survey it reviewed but did not link to in its article.
University of Maryland Professor Rashawn Ray said “teachers in K-12 schools are not actually teaching CRT,” in a July article for the Brookings Institution.
“Let’s be clear: critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said in July. “It’s a method of examination taught in law school and college that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists — and, in particular, whether it has an effect on law and public policy.”
marsh
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Ted Cruz grills Tiktok exec… Are you spying for China…
Posted by Kane on October 26, 2021 1:50 pm
10:11 min
From Senate testimony today on Big Tech
Walrus Whisperer
Hope in chains...
WHY does Brennan always look like he's in need of a high colonic? 
marsh
On TB every waking moment
BREAKING: Era of Big Tech Over? Big Threat to Tech Monopoly Emerges 43:05 min
BREAKING: Era of Big Tech Over? Big Threat to Tech Monopoly Emerges
The Rubin Report Published October 26, 2021
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report has a major announcement for anyone looking for Big Tech alternatives. Innovative Big Tech competition has arrived with Rumble’s announcement that it is acquiring Locals Technology, Inc. Buying Locals will help Rumble’s mission of giving creators even more autonomy over their work and connections with their audience. The era of the Big Tech monopoly may be ending as true alternatives like Locals and Rumble empower their creators to generate revenue without being limited by corporate advertisers and special interests. Most importantly, Locals users own their community data and content. The era of creators being dependent on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter is ending! Watch to hear what’s coming next!
BREAKING: Era of Big Tech Over? Big Threat to Tech Monopoly Emerges
The Rubin Report Published October 26, 2021
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report has a major announcement for anyone looking for Big Tech alternatives. Innovative Big Tech competition has arrived with Rumble’s announcement that it is acquiring Locals Technology, Inc. Buying Locals will help Rumble’s mission of giving creators even more autonomy over their work and connections with their audience. The era of the Big Tech monopoly may be ending as true alternatives like Locals and Rumble empower their creators to generate revenue without being limited by corporate advertisers and special interests. Most importantly, Locals users own their community data and content. The era of creators being dependent on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter is ending! Watch to hear what’s coming next!
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Professor from Soviet Union warns anti-racism agenda in U.S. is ‘rehashing of Marxism’ | The College Fix
“Like the Soviet communists, who used class-based hate and rhetoric to control the ‘masses’ and build the society of ideological slaves, the ‘Diversity’ departments use race.”…
www.thecollegefix.com
Professor from Soviet Union warns anti-racism agenda in U.S. is ‘rehashing of Marxism’
ERIN MCLAUGHLIN - GROVE CITY COLLEGE •OCTOBER 4, 2021
A professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Pittsburgh who came to America 30 years ago as a refugee from the Soviet Union is sounding the alarm on the growing anti-racism movement in the U.S., saying it’s basically a rehashing of Marxism and socialism.
Professor Michael Vanyukov, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences, psychiatry and human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh, warns that essentially race has taken the place of class warfare in the narrative.
“Like the Soviet communists, who used class-based hate and rhetoric to control the ‘masses’ and build the society of ideological slaves, the ‘Diversity’ departments use race. In a way, that is worse, because one can change one’s class, but race is forever,” Vanyukov told The College Fix in an email.
Vanyukov recently took a stand against the University of Pittsburgh’s Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’s push for anti-racism on campus and its reliance on Ibram X. Kendi’s work.
“[Kendi’s] demagoguery is no different than what the Soviet propaganda taught about the West and capitalism,” Vanyukov wrote in a letter to the editor in UPitt’s University Times.
He called out the diversity office’s effort “for an open-ended ‘ongoing, corrective action […] to foster fair and desirable societal outcomes,’ rather than for fostering equal opportunities and meritocracy,” as a “rehashing of Marxism and socialism.”
Vanyukov was responding to Office for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion’s recent email to promote sessions that focus on erasing cultural “anti-Blackness” and “systemic racism” and promote “cultural humility” and “cultural competence.”
The diversity office stated it “is committed to fostering an antiracist culture at the University of Pittsburgh and beyond to address systemic racism and advance racial equity.” It also called for the “dismantling racism in higher education, and across all institutions and communities.”
Vanyukov denounced these statements in his letter.
“The University, an institution of science and reason, is supposed to eschew baseless statements even if they take over public discourse. I have not seen, however, nor does the announcement provide, any evidence that racism, ‘focally anti-Blackness,’ is ‘systemic’ in this country or at Pitt,” he wrote.
Vanyukov told The College Fix in an email that universities that push critical race theory share many similarities to the Marxism of the Soviet Union: “The main is the lack of freedom—to the degree that people who read my letter consider it ‘courageous.’”
“Historically, similar ideas have led to suffering — first and foremost of those who were allegedly supposed to benefit from them. The only true beneficiaries were the ideologues,” he said.
He added that he believes higher education cannot be reformed.
“[T]his country has arrived to its moment of truth, and the truth is sad. That does not mean that we should not fight. What it means is that the chances are slim. You should be ready for defeat while trying to win.”
A representative from the University of Pittsburgh told The College Fix in an email that the school does not have a comment on Vanyukov’s letter to the editor. The university “respects all faculty members’ right to speak freely on any issue.”
Vanyukov left the Soviet Union in December 1990 and immigrated to the United States. He started work at the University of Pittsburgh the next year.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Loudoun County Is Forcing Parents to Sign Form Promising Not to Show Anyone Their CRT-Based Curriculum | The Gateway Pundit | by Cassandra MacDonald
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) is forcing parents to sign a form similar to a non-disclosure agreement in order to view their Critical Race Theory based curriculum.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Loudoun County Is Forcing Parents to Sign Form Promising Not to Show Anyone Their CRT-Based Curriculum
By Cassandra Fairbanks
Published October 27, 2021 at 7:17am
Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) is forcing parents to sign a form similar to a non-disclosure agreement in order to view their Critical Race Theory based curriculum.
Parents are only permitted to view the curriculum in person — and cannot broadcast, download, photograph, or record any portion of it.
The Daily Caller reports, “as part of LCPS’ broader equity agenda, the district spent approximately $7,700 to become a ‘licensed user’ of Second Step Programs, a branch of the left-leaning non-profit organization Committee for Children. According to a copy of the NDA-style form reviewed by the Daily Caller, ‘eligible parents’ at LCPS must sign the document to view the Second Step curriculum.”
The form states that “I understand that the Authorized Presentation of Second Step Materials I am about to view is not a public event, and that copying, broadcast or recording of any kind is not permitted,” the form reads. “I agree to comply with the terms of the above Special License.”
According to the Caller’s report, Second Step is dedicated to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and becoming an “anti-racist organization.” Part of Second Step’s curriculum addresses “anti-racism,” a term coined by activist Ibram X. Kendi. It also creates a “common language” to “create lasting systematic change.”
The school district has already made headlines multiple times this year, first for their heated school board meetings on Critical Race Theory and the suspension of a gym teacher who refused to use students “preferred pronouns.”
Students in Loudoun County walked out of class in protest on Tuesday over the district covering up multiple sexual assaults by a “gender non-conforming” boy in girl’s restrooms at two of their high schools.
The father of one of the teenage girls who was victimized, Scott Smith, was smeared as a “domestic terrorist” after he was arrested at a school board meeting for speaking out. The school board falsely claimed that there was “no record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”
marsh
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FIREWORKS! Senator Cotton Unleashes on Merrick Garland: "Thank God You Are Not on the Supreme Court. You Should Resign in Disgrace, Judge" (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila
US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
FIREWORKS! Senator Cotton Unleashes on Merrick Garland: “Thank God You Are Not on the Supreme Court. You Should Resign in Disgrace, Judge” (VIDEO)
By Cristina Laila
Published October 27, 2021 at 11:36am
US Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
A defiant Garland stood by his letter labeling parents who protest CRT “domestic terrorists” even though the National School Board Association on Friday apologized for the letter.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) wasn’t having it and erupted on Merrick Garland for writing the threatening letter ‘citing news reports’ claiming parents were a danger to school board members.
The news reports were referring to Scott Smith, the father a teenage girl who was raped by a boy wearing a skirt in a girl’s bathroom on campus at a Loudoun County public school.
“Do you apologize to Scott Smith and his 15-year-old daughter, Judge?” Cotton asked Garland.
Merrick Garland refused to apologize so Cotton ripped into him.
“Judge! This is shameful! This testimony. Your directive. Your performance is shameful! Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court. You should resign in disgrace, Judge!” Cotton said.
VIDEO:
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1453394515822317574
1:22 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
AG Merrick Garland Sent HELICOPTER and the Feds to Intimidate Parents at Fairfax County School Board Meeting | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Merrick Garland sent federal agents and a helicopter circling overhead to threaten parents attending the Fairfax County School Board meeting last week.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
AG Merrick Garland Sent HELICOPTER and the Feds to Intimidate Parents at Fairfax County School Board Meeting
By Jim Hoft
Published October 27, 2021 at 2:05pm
Merrick Garland sent federal agents and a helicopter circling overhead to threaten parents attending the Fairfax County School Board meeting last week.
This was after Garland testified and said he was not sending the feds to threaten American parents who speak out at their local school board meetings.
Larry O’Connor and Company interviewed Faifax mother Stacy Langton who attended the school board meeting last night. Stacy spoke out at her school board meeting about the filth, porn and pedo content in her local school’s library.
Stacy attended the school board meeting last Thursday night after AG Merrick Garland’s testimony. She says in her interview that the feds sent out several vehicles to threaten parents attending the school board meeting. Stacy also received numerous threats at her home after she spoke out about the pornography in her children’s library.
And she describes how a helicopter was even circling above the meeting to threaten the parents.
Enterprise podcasting made simple with Omny Studio 7:14 min audio on website
O'Connor & Company Interview - Fairfax mom STACY LANGTON -10.22.21 - O'Connor & Company - Omny.fm 6:50 min
Stacey Langton also spoke about the threats on FOX News.
Video on website 3:37 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Meanwhile in Loudoun County…
Posted by Kane on October 27, 2021 1:00 pm
1:01 min
Resign tonight, all of you, and end the mockery you’ve brought to this great county.
8th grader goes off on Loudoun school board
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Ted Cruz absolutely unleashes on Merrick Garland…
Posted by Kane on October 27, 2021 4:49 pm
5:37 min
From the last hour in Senate hearings — Watch these first two clips
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1453432810971168768
1:29 min
9:36 min
7:14 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Senator Kennedy stumps Merrick Garland…
Posted by Kane on October 27, 2021 5:01 pm
.56 min
Excellent highlight from this afternoon
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:14:35 min
LIVE: 'Moms for America' Protest NSBA and DOJ's Threats Against Parents
Streamed live 9 hours ago
The Epoch Times
marsh
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Democrat Terry McAuliffe AGAIN Smears Virginia Parents by Calling Their Concerns About Critical Race Theory "Racist" (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Cristina Laila
Democrat Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe AGAIN smeared Virginia parents by calling their concerns about Critical Race Theory (CRT) “racist.” McAuliffe claimed CRT is not taught in Virginia schools and called any opposition to the Marxist curriculum a “racist dog whistle.” VIDEO...
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Democrat Terry McAuliffe AGAIN Smears Virginia Parents by Calling Their Concerns About Critical Race Theory “Racist” (VIDEO)
By Cristina Laila
Published October 27, 2021 at 8:37pm
Democrat Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe AGAIN smeared Virginia parents by calling their concerns about Critical Race Theory (CRT) “racist.”'
McAuliffe claimed CRT is not taught in Virginia schools and called any opposition to the Marxist curriculum a “racist dog whistle.”
VIDEO:
.17 min
McAuliffe is a liar.
CRT is taught in Virginia and through AG Garland’s son-in-law’s company Panorama.
CRT is taught in Loudoun County and Fairfax County.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Nation's Largest Teacher's Union Approves Critical Race Theory Plan for All 50 States
"The NEA represents 3 million public school employees in all 50 states. They have a $350 million annual budget and an army of operatives"...
beckernews.com
Nation’s Largest Teacher’s Union Approves Critical Race Theory Plan for All 50 States
July 5, 2021
by Kyle Becker
Written by Kyle BeckerThe National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the United States, has approved a plan for Critical Race Theory to be implemented in all classrooms nationwide.
The radical agenda was adopted after the 100th NEA Assembly, which was held at the Washington Convention Center and was livestreamed as a virtual meeting.
Both President Joe Biden and Jill Biden spoke to the educators in a reportedly “mostly empty” hall in Washington. It was symbolic of the lack of public support for the hard left’s racially divisive agenda.
Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and activist against Critical Race Theory, reported that the agenda item was adopted.
“The nation’s largest teachers union has approved a plan to promote critical race theory in all 50 states and 14,000 local school districts,” Rufo reported. “The argument that ‘critical race theory isn’t in K-12 schools’ is officially dead.”
It is important to read the nature of the NEA agenda, which is blatantly political.
Among the agenda items is to promote a marketing campaign (a critic might call it a ‘disinformation’ campaign); defend the academically discredited 1619 Project; coordinate with the marxist group Black Lives Matter and the Zinn Education Project, named after known communist Howard Zinn; as well as ‘fight back’ against anti-CRT rhetoric.
Note that examining the scholarly merits and debating CRT in an intellectually honest fashion is opposed by the NEA. This is a radical agenda that is about politics, not academic inquiry.
The NEA’s plan to indoctrinate schoolchildren with CRT is sweeping in its scope. Rufo reported further on the developments.
“The union has also approved funding for ‘increasing the implementation’ of CRT in K-12 curricula and for attacking conservative groups who oppose CRT indoctrination,” Rufo continued. “The teachers union has made critical race theory its #1 priority—and want to implement it nationwide.”
“The NEA represents 3 million public school employees in all 50 states,” he continued. “They have a $350 million annual budget and an army of operatives in 14,000 local communities. They have now declared war on parents who oppose critical race theory—and parents must fight back!”
The NEA’s website reinforces the openly political nature of the educators’ agenda.
“Through interactive workshops, sessions, panels and plenaries, attendees have the opportunity to access information, resources, plan, strategize and engage on issues that impact educational opportunities for communities of color, LGBTQ and women,” the NEA website states. “In the process, we: Build local power; Look to the future; Center intersectionality; Build community.”
“In our daily work and through the conference, we fight to bring racial and social justice to all communities,” the teachers union states. “Racial Justice: The systematic fair treatment of people of all races that results in equitable opportunities and outcomes for everyone. Social Justice: A society in which the distribution of resources is equitable, all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure, and individuals are self-determining and interdependent.”
The teacher’s union is going so far as to organize counter-attacks against those who question the educators.
“NEA will research the organizations attacking educators doing anti-racist work and/or use the research already done and put together a list of resources and recommendations for state affiliates, locals, and individual educators to utilize when they are attacked,” the measure reads on NEA’s website.
The NEA President Becky Pringle called pushback against the CRT agenda “senseless fearmongering” and argued that teachers must “present to students the good, bad, and ugly of our past so that they can build a better, brighter future.”
Pringle brazenly pushes the nonsensical talking point that parents who oppose CRT are advocating to “ignore racism.” She also accuses states that are passing laws to keep radical activists from politicizing the public school agendas as seeking to ‘rewrite history’ and ‘censor teachers.’
“Today, more than 25 states have introduced or passed laws to censor teachers from speaking about race and racism and deny students the right to a truthful and honest education,” Pringle argues.
“These dangerous attempts to stoke fears and rewrite history not only diminish the injustices experienced by generations of Americans, they prevent educators from challenging our students to achieve a more equitable future.”
This is gaslighting at its finest: Teachers are accountable to school boards, parents, taxpayers and state governments. There are academic and ethical standards that must be abided by, which are not tantamount to ‘censorship.’ She was not alone in her advocacy for the political agenda of Critical Race Theory being taught in public schools.
“The NEA has to take that explicit stance, because then that protects those of us who are doing the real work in the field,” added Kumar Rashad, an NEA delegate from Louisville, KY. “I want to know that my union has my back when I’m doing nothing but spreading the truth, which is empowering a group of people to be independent—which is our ultimate goal of education.”
It should be noted that slavery, Jim Crow laws, and the civil rights movement have been taught in intellectually honest fashion for over 50 years in the United States. CRT has nothing to do with teaching such topics in balanced and honest fashion. Critical Race Theory is an offshoot of neomarxist Critical Theory, which is a radical project to weaponize the culture to promote the marxist agenda of destroying capitalism, the nuclear family, and religion.
Indeed, teachers around the country have begun teaching CRT with Maoist-like ‘struggle sessions,’ which shame white children for their skin color and accuse them of being the ‘oppressors’ of the ‘oppressed’ black people. There is no real recognition or explanation of the progress made in the United States, which resulted in a two-term black president, a black female vice president, and multiple black Supreme Court Justices.
Instead, the teachers weaponize past racial injustice by wielding a potent technique called the ‘pedagogy of discomfort.‘ It is a teaching tactic consistent with Megan Boler’s method of provoking emotional distress and fostering disorientation among children in order to make them more receptive to radical ideas.
“In most humanities courses, students are challenged to subject their own self-image, beliefs, and values to investigation,” one blogger summarized. “This self-reflection lends itself to emotional resistance in the form of ‘defensive anger,’ ‘fear of change,’ and ‘fears of losing our personal and cultural identities’ (Boler 176). As Stenberg and Winans both observe, emotion has the potential to derail critical inquiry when not treated correctly, particularly in courses that focus on racism, sexism, and other forms of inequality.”
As a critic put it: “I believe it [the pedagogy of discomfort] is not only theorerically wrong, but immoral, because it subtly inverts the moral universe of the classroom. And I believe, takes advantage of the student’s lack of knowledge and experience. Therefore, any educator who uses this pedagogical approach is not involved in education, but in deception and manipulation and indoctrination.”
CRT follows in the vein of such programs as Paul Freire’s controversial “pedagogy of the oppressed,” which sets out to create a Manichaeistic narrative of “oppressors” and “oppressed.” It is a reimagining of the Marxist “proletariat” versus the “bourgeoisie” narrative that has been used to usher in social revolutions, and invariably, authoritarian governments that dictate all economic means of production and social relations.
In this scheme, children are simply means to these miseducators’ ends; merely fodder to be deployed to achieve victory in their self-imagined Marxist class struggle. The schoolchildren are rendered abstractions in their radical teaching program, and not recognized as individual human beings who own their own lives, and thus, should be instructed to determine their own life-paths towards self-actualization.
If you want educators that treat schoolchildren as if they are devoid of individual agency, personality, and responsibility, and imply they are somehow morally culpable for the immorality of those who died generations ago, then by all means, support the Critical Race Theory agenda.
But if you want our children to grow up as individual human beings capable of thinking for themselves, who take personal responsibility for treating others justly and fairly, and who respect the progress made in America while seeking to extend the benefits of freedom and equality to others, then the Critical Race Theory indoctrination program should be kept far away from our children’s schools.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Supercut: Democrats Saying Conservatives Are the Greatest National Security Threat to the Country - The Liberty Daily
If you love the news, check out The Liberty Daily's homepage. Indoctrination, propaganda, and gaslighting are three tools used by those who know their narrative is false but need it believed in anyway. Wielded properly, each can be very effective at convincing people that what their own eyes...
thelibertydaily.com
Supercut: Democrats Saying Conservatives Are the Greatest National Security Threat to the Country
By J.D. Rucker • Oct. 27, 2021
Indoctrination, propaganda, and gaslighting are three tools used by those who know their narrative is false but need it believed in anyway. Wielded properly, each can be very effective at convincing people that what their own eyes, ears, and minds tell them are not aligned with reality.
Modern day Democrats are using all three tools simultaneously to convince America that “domestic terrorism” from “white supremacists” is the greatest threat the nation faces. Of course, they use phrases like “white supremacists” or “January 6 insurrectionists,” but what they’re really portraying in their message is that America First conservatives and populists are the real threat.
Listen to them for yourself…
View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1453433279261126658
2:19
The funniest line, at least for me, is when Senator Dick Durbin says, “Let’s stop pretending that the threat of Antifa is equivalent to the white supremacist threat.”
He’s right! There is no comparison. Antifa is an exponentially bigger threat to this nation, as we’ve seen them through their daily activities of intimidation, violence, and fascism. But I don’t think that’s what Durbin meant.
The Democrats’ narrative about domestic terrorism is indoctrination, propaganda, and gaslighting at the same time. But the worst part isn’t that they’re saying these things ignorantly. It’s that they know they’re lying in unison and they don’t care.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
WATCH: HOT MIC: Parents Call For Resignation After Unhinged California School Board President Caught Saying "F*ck You" to A Concerned Parent After They Questioned Mask and Vaccine Mandates for Children | The Gateway Pundit | by Julian Conradson
Calls for the resignation of a California Board of Education president are growing louder after she was caught uttering an offensive phrase to a parent after they had raised concerns over the district’s planned mask and vaccine mandates during a local school board meeting.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
WATCH: HOT MIC: Parents Call For Resignation After Unhinged California School Board President Caught Saying “F*ck You” to A Concerned Parent After They Questioned Mask and Vaccine Mandates for Children
By Julian Conradson
Published October 28, 2021 at 1:33pm
Calls for the resignation of a California Board of Education president are growing louder after she was caught uttering an offensive phrase to a parent after they had raised concerns over the district’s planned mask and vaccine mandates during a local school board meeting.
During Tuesday’s meeting, Marlys Davidson, who is the president of the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education, was unaware that her microphone was still on when she decided to say “f*ck you” to a parent after they had finished speaking.
Lauren Roupoli, the parent who elicited the nasty response from the unhinged activist-educator, simply voiced concerns over mandates placed on students requiring them to wear masks in class – as is her right as a parent and a tax-paying American citizen. She also questioned the decision to give the experimental Covid vaccine to children, arguing that she believes the risks far outweigh the benefits and pointing out that children are the least susceptible subgroup to Covid-19.
Roupoli even called out members of the board for their unwarranted criticism, in which they called parents “selfish,” among other things, for daring to speak up against the board’s radical agenda at the meetings.
Naturally, the crowd in attendance at the meeting burst out into applause for Roupoli once she had concluded her brave speech, which is when the triggered president of the board couldn’t hold back her contempt any longer and was caught on the hot mic using the choice words as she crazily slammed her gavel to regain order in the room.
Watch: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/wp...n_Recording_20211028-091701_YouTube_1.mp4?_=1 .34 min
Following the meeting, Davidson issued a weak apology in which she claimed to “reaffirm” her commitment to “serve our community” with what she calls “dignity and integrity.” She then ended her bogus statement by begging the same parents she had just insulted to accept her “sincere” apology for exposing her deep-rooted contempt and hatred for them.
Roupoli wasn’t buying it, she is leading the charge to see Davidson step down from her position because, according to her, the president “showed her true colors.”
According to KTLA:
Currently, parents are outraged over California’s decision to impose a state-wide mask mandate on around 6.7 million students. The decision was backed by the state’s radical Association of School Boards and teachers’ unions, who have gleefully begun to enforce the mandates on helpless children.
With people like Marlys Davidson in charge, things will only get worse. She must be held accountable and should be forced to step down from her post – Unhinged lunatics who literally cannot help themselves when a parent uses their first amendment rights, causing them to utter a phrase like “f*ck you” because of their unbridled contempt, should not be holding an important, non-partisan position like the president of the school board.
Get these activists out of education.
If you are a concerned parent in California, you can contact the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education here.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
1:51:59 min
LIVE HEARING: Social Media Platforms and the Amplification of Domestic Extremism & Other Harmful …
Streamed live 8 hours ago
Wake Up America Podcast
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Biden Gang Reportedly Running Secret Lists Used to Prevent Outspoken Political Opponents from Owning Guns - Laura Loomer Speaks Out on This Injustice | The Gateway Pundit | by Joe Hoft
Representative Paul Gosar accused Biden’s government of maintaining two secret lists that it uses to strip its enemies of their constitutional rights. These enemies, like activist and congressional candidate Laura Loomer, are those Americans who love God, their country, and freedom...
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Biden Gang Reportedly Running Secret Lists Used to Prevent Outspoken Political Opponents from Owning Guns – Laura Loomer Speaks Out on This Injustice
By Joe Hoft
Published October 29, 2021 at 8:53am
Representative Paul Gosar accused Biden’s government of maintaining two secret lists that it uses to strip its enemies of their constitutional rights.
These enemies, like activist and congressional candidate Laura Loomer, are those Americans who love God, their country, and freedom.
Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) released a letter this week he sent to Biden’s corrupt Attorney General Merrick Garland addressing the secret lists he has put in place illegally and unconstitutionally.
Here is Gosar’s letter:
page 2
page 3
Activist Laura Loomer released the following statement regarding these secret government lists:
Loomer also shared with TGP.
This should never happen in America. We must end the Biden gang’s assault on America for the sake of our children’s future.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
'You're the problem': AT&T shows staff articles saying whites racist
AT&T is encouraging staff to use an internal site called Listen Understand Act, which promotes articles such as: 'White America, if you want to know who's responsible for racism, look in the mirror'
'You are the problem': AT&T tells white staff they are racist, asks them to confess their 'white privilege' and to promote 'Defund the Police as part of re-education program by CEO John Stankey
- AT&T provides its employees with access to a learning resource called Listen Understand Act
- The internal forum provided recommendations for books and articles to read and films to watch
- One senior employee told journalist Christopher Rufo that staff at AT&T were pressured to engage with the portal
- Managers, the source said, had participation with some of the recommended material included in their annual review
- One of the recommended articles was from the Chicago Tribune, entitled: 'White America, if you want to know who's responsible for racism, look in the mirror'
- The portal recommends a '21-Day Racial Equity Habit Challenge', during which time participants are encouraged to interact with anti-racism activists and question their own actions
PUBLISHED: 01:02 EDT, 29 October 2021 | UPDATED: 09:17 EDT, 29 October 2021
White employees of AT&T have been told to read an article saying that they are racist, are told to confess to their 'white privilege' and acknowledge 'systemic racism,' and must engage with set texts or else they will be penalized in their performance reviews.
John Stankey, who took over as CEO of AT&T in July 2020, has encouraged his staff to make use of an anti-racism education program entitled Listen Understand Act
AT&T, in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, introduced an internal program called Listen Understand Act.
John Stankey, the CEO of AT&T, wrote to the company's 230,000 employees in an April 2021 email, obtained by journalist Christopher Rufo and published on his website.
Stankey, who took over as CEO in July 2020, urged his workers to make the most of the resources provided by AT&T's anti-racism portal.
'As individuals, we can make a difference by doing our part to advance racial equity and justice for all,' he wrote.
'If you are looking for tools to better educate and inform yourself on racial equality, resources are available at Listen. Understand. Act.
'We also encourage you to actively participate in our recently launched Equality First learning experience, a new initiative to increase awareness and action around our value to Stand for Equality.'
Most employees are not forced to engage with the Listen Understand Act program, but managers at AT&T are now assessed annually on diversity issues - with mandatory participation in programs such as discussion groups, book clubs, mentorship programs, and race reeducation exercises, according to Rufo's source.
AT&T's headquarters in Dallas, Texas, are pictured. The company has donated $21.5 million to causes working to enhance racial justice
The source told Rufo that employees are asked to sign a loyalty pledge to 'keep pushing for change.'
They are encouraged to sign up to 'intentions' such as 'reading more about systemic racism' and 'challenging others' language that is hateful.'
The source, described as a senior employee, said: 'If you don't do it, you're a racist.'
Rufo published several pages from the Listen Understand Act portal.
One of the recommended reading items was a May 31, 2020 article from the Chicago Tribune by columnist Dahleen Glanton, entitled: 'White America, if you want to know who's responsible for racism, look in the mirror.'
The portal also recommended books such as White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo, and White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White, by Daniel Hill.
DiAngelo's book was among those recommended to AT&T employees
In the 'Act' section of the training program, Rufo reported, AT&T encourages employees to participate in a '21-Day Racial Equity Habit Challenge'.
The plan, he said, relies on the concepts of 'whiteness,' 'white privilege,' and 'white supremacy' and those participating must commit to 'do one action [per day for 21 days] to further [their] understanding of power, privilege, supremacy, oppression, and equity.'
The challenge begins with a series of lessons on 'whiteness,' which claims, among other things, that 'white supremacy [is] baked into our country's foundation,' that 'Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated,' and that the 'weaponization of whiteness' creates a 'constant barrage of harm' for minorities.
Participants are told: 'Notice your biases and judgments as they arise. These are gold for you to excavate your subconscious!'
Among the suggestions are items such as: 'Prepare yourself to interrupt racial jokes. Click HERE for some advice about how.'
The authors of the 21 Day Challenge state: 'We think understanding white privilege is a powerful lens into the complexities of doing social justice work, so we’ve focused our resources on that specific issue.'
A man walks with an umbrella outside of AT&T corporate headquarters on March 13, 2020
AT&T is yet to respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment about Rufo's report, but has made no secret of its activist leanings.
On August 23, as part of a comprehensive review of corporate America's anti-racist activities, The Washington Post reported that AT&T had made lobbying for police reform part of some of their employee's job.
AT&T's Western region president, Ken McNeely, told the paper that employees in the legislative and public affairs teams had the lobbying for police reform included in their annual review.
'Our financial contributions to support police reform is but a slice of the pie,' McNeely said, after the paper reported AT&T donated $21.5 million to causes advocating racial justice.
'We actually took a more direct route: Filing testimony or a letter of support in our name — using our brand — is in many instances more impactful than giving money to a third party.'
Crusty Echo 7
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Loudoun County mama bear throws down… These are not your schools!
Posted by Kane on October 29, 2021 3:47 pm
Rumble video on website .55 min
Loudoun County mother: “My six-year-old somberly came to me and asked if she was born evil because she was a white person, something she learned in a history lesson at Loudoun school.”
or View: https://twitter.com/i/status/1454159814930706432
.55 min
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Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Who Decides What Kids Should Be Taught?
FRIDAY, OCT 29, 2021 - 03:15 PM
Authored by Pat Buchanan,
Virginia is a newly blue state, with a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators, that Joe Biden won by 10 points.
Hence, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe was an early and solid favorite to regain the office he vacated in 2017. But if McAuliffe loses Tuesday, the defeat will be measured on the Richter scale.
For if he does lose, it will be because of an elitist belief McAuliffe blurted out during a debate with Republican rival Glenn Youngkin:
Yet, during his own term as governor, one Virginia school district pulled copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn” out of the schools because of the books’ use of racial slurs.
What McAuliffe was saying was that the knowledge, truths and beliefs imparted to children in public schools are to be determined by school officials and teachers alone. Parents have no role and should butt out.
His dismissal of any parental role in education did more than cause a backlash against McAuliffe. It put on the national agenda an issue that will be engaged and fought long after this Virginia governor’s race is over.
Former President Barack Obama was not amused at Virginia’s reaction to McAuliffe’s rejection of any parental role in education.
But to the voters of Virginia, who have been moving to Youngkin since McAuliffe made his now-famous remark, these are real issues.
For what their children are taught and not taught in the public schools to which parents consign them from age 5 to age 18 are matters of grave concern for those parents. For it will affect the kind of adults and citizens their children will become.
“Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man” is a saying attributed to the Jesuits’ founder St. Ignatius of Loyola.
These schools are helping shape what children come to believe about the moral, social and historical issues tearing our country apart. These schools are helping shape the men and women these children will become.
Consider. Under the landmark Supreme Court rulings in Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges, abortion and same-sex marriage have been made constitutional rights. Yet both decisions contradict biblical truths, Catholic doctrine and natural law.
While both decisions are today the law of the land, have parents no right to object if public-school teachers instruct their students that these decisions were right, moral and just? Do students and parents have no right to dissent, both inside and outside the classroom?
According to the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” American history began when the first slaves arrived in Virginia, not when the colonies declared independence in 1776 or when the Constitution was ratified.
Do parents have no right to object if the tenets of critical race theory — that America is shot through with “systemic racism,” that whites are privileged from birth and blacks oppressed — are taught as truth about the country to which they have given their loyalty and love?
For generations, statues to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson stood on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. Now that the statues are torn down, both are reviled as “traitors.”
Yet, until he was 40 years of age, George Washington was a loyal British subject.
But when Virginia rose up against the British Crown, Washington joined the rebellion. Robert E. Lee was also a loyal U.S. soldier and hero of the Mexican War, until his home state Virginia seceded.
Both men were slave-owners. The great difference: Washington was victorious at Yorktown, and Lee surrendered at Appomattox.
President Dwight Eisenhower regarded Lee, whose portrait he hung in the Oval Office, as among the greatest of all Americans.
Whose view of Lee should be taught? Eisenhower’s or Harvard’s?
The question raised by McAuliffe is: Who decides? Who, in the education of America’s children, decides what is historically, morally and socially true? And who is allowed to participate in those decisions?
The nation is today divided over whether America is a good and a great country, or whether it has been irredeemably stained by its sins against the indigenous peoples and slavery. As the Dutch historian Pieter Geyl said, “History is indeed an argument without end.”
Again, the question: Who decides which version is taught in the public schools that are paid for with the tax dollars of the parents who send their children there?
Middle America’s view of the country is more than a little distant from the Ivy League’s, and somewhat closer to Merle Haggard’s. “When you’re running down my country, you’re walking on the fighting side of me.”
Whatever happens Tuesday, “the McAuliffe issue” will be on the table in the elections of 2022.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Maher: McAuliffe Saying Parents Shouldn't Decide What's Taught Is 'Applause Line with Teachers,' Dems 'Are So Used to Talking to Teachers'
On Friday's broadcast of HBO's "Real Time," host Bill Maher stated that education will be the big issue in the 2022 elections because "Parents vote, and | Clips
www.breitbart.com
Maher: McAuliffe Saying Parents Shouldn’t Decide What’s Taught Is ‘Applause Line with Teachers,’ Dems ‘Are So Used to Talking to Teachers’
IAN HANCHETT29 Oct 202125
Video on website 6:20 min
On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that education will be the big issue in the 2022 elections because “Parents vote, and they don’t like what’s going on in school.” And that Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s (D) statement that parents shouldn’t be telling schools what to teach happened because “Democrats are so used to talking to teachers. This is a mic drop applause line with teachers, not so much with parents.”
Maher stated, “Terry McAuliffe, he was the governor, he’s running again. He should walk away with it. Biden won the state by ten points. It has not gone statewide for a Republican since 2009. He’s neck-and-neck. Because he’s — the issue became schools. I said this months and months ago, that the issue in the coming elections is going to be what’s going on in the schools. Why? Parents vote, and they don’t like what’s going on in school. They feel like they are losing control, and this became the issue in this election. Trust me, this is going to be a huge barometer kind of election. Because if Terry McAuliffe loses, people are going to understand yes, oh, that’s right, it is going to be about that.”
Maher continued, “And here’s what Terry McAuliffe said, and then we’ll get into the backdrop of this. He said, ‘I’m not going to let parents come into schools –‘ not a good idea, that right there, is because Democrats are so used to talking to teachers. This is a mic drop applause line with teachers, not so much with parents. ‘I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision. … I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.’ Just on a political level, f*cking — excuse me, I mean, very stupid, right, very stupid?”
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marsh
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AG Merrick Garland Called On the FBI to Stalk and Harass American Parents Because They Objected to This Porn Book in their School's Library -- (Warning on Content) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
In early October Mark Levin broadcast a letter with insider information on the teachers union, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and the FBI who met and organized how to combat America’s parents who were speaking out at local school board meetings across the country.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
In early October Mark Levin broadcast a letter with insider information on the teachers union, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and the FBI who met and organized how to combat America’s parents who were speaking out at local school board meetings across the country.
The parents were outraged at the COVID masking and vaccination rules, critical race theory indoctrination and open porn disguised as literature promoted in American schools today.
The Biden administration and the teachers unions knew this would be a problem for the midterm elections. They knew they must act. The liberal group drafted and released a letter urging the government to use the Patriot Act to spy on American parents of school children for speaking out. Then just days later Attorney General Merrick Garland released his new plan to target and silence American parents of school children by using the FBI and intelligence agencies to crack down on American parents.
Merrick Garland even sent federal agents and a helicopter circling overhead to threaten parents attending the Fairfax County School Board meeting last week in Virginia.
AG Merrick Garland Sent HELICOPTER and the Feds to Intimidate Parents at Fairfax County School Board Meeting | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Merrick Garland sent federal agents and a helicopter circling overhead to threaten parents attending the Fairfax County School Board meeting last week.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
This was after Garland testified and said he was not sending the feds to threaten American parents who speak out at their local school board meetings.
Many of the parents around the country became aware of the illegal porn the schools are pushing on kids in the student libraries.
One book that was found in several libraries is titled, Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe.
The book is a graphic novel with drawings that explains in lurid detail the sexual interactions between two young men, has been inserted into high school libraries across America, despite it violating guidelines against pornography or sexually explicit materials being provided to minors and paid for with our tax dollars.
Gender Queer includes countless images of male-on-male sexual encounters, accompanied by words that one would expect to find inside literary works at adult porn shops or gay sex clubs and bathhouses. Even so, this book was purchased and pushed by school officials around the country, despite it clearly violating county guidelines.
Kevin from Texas sent us this email after he discovered this book was available at his daughter’s school.
(WARNING ON CONTENT)
Here are a couple pages from the book. Most Americans did not realize this is a PICTURE book with explicit drawings.
These are two pages from the picture book.
How do they get away with this in public schools? Why is this book necessary? Why do the kids need pictures of sex? And how is this even legal?
To be clear it really doesn’t matter if it is photos of gay sex or straight sex in the books. Both are objectionable for school libraries.
And why is Merrick Garland sending out the FBI to harass American parents for making a stand against this filth in our schools?
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Arizona School Calls Police On Parents for Protesting Masking And Segregation Of Children | The Gateway Pundit | by Jordan Conradson
On Friday night, Arizona parents planned on voicing their concerns about mask segregation in schools, in the parking lot of the Sweetwater School.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Arizona School Calls Police On Parents for Protesting Masking And Segregation Of Children
By Jordan Conradson
Published October 30, 2021 at 4:46pm
On Friday night, Arizona parents planned on voicing their concerns about mask segregation in schools, in the parking lot of the Sweetwater School.
After planning the protest and even inviting the School Board, the group received an email from a district employee stating that the protesters needed to have an insurance policy in order to practice their first amendment right.
They got an insurance policy that covers $250,000 per person but somehow this was not enough. The school wanted insurance worth $1 million per person.
When the parents and local leaders showed up for their peaceful protest, they were met by school security, who barricaded the parking lot and then called the Phoenix Police for backup.
Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem shared his disdain for these tyrants and their blatant hypocrisy.
The tyrannical educators failed to stop them. The Patriots moved their rally to a nearby public park.
Former State Representative Anthony Kern shared a photo of the rally giving thanks to the attendees.
Arizona Gubernatorial Candidate Kari Lake, again on the front lines of this war against medical tyranny, spoke at the rally and later expressed to the world, this is a hill she will die on.
Today in Scottsdale Arizona, Parents have planned a recall petition for Scottsdale Board members that are guilty of the same infringements. All SUSD residents need to be there to save their children’s education.
Liberal Educators and our tyrannical government label these concerned parents “Domestic Terrorists” and they’re even being met with force.
AG Merrick Garland Sent HELICOPTER and the Feds to Intimidate Parents at Fairfax County School Board Meeting | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Merrick Garland sent federal agents and a helicopter circling overhead to threaten parents attending the Fairfax County School Board meeting last week.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Patriots must continue to fight against this political persecution.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
New Hampshire and Pennsylvania Join Ohio, Missouri and Withdraw from the National School Boards Association Over Letter Labeling Parents ‘Domestic Terrorists’ | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hᴏft
Fourstates have decided toterminate their National School Boards Association membershipover a letter comparing the parents to domestic terrorists.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
New Hampshire and Pennsylvania Join Ohio, Missouri and Withdraw from the National School Boards Association Over Letter Labeling Parents ‘Domestic Terrorists’
By Jim Hoft
Published October 30, 2021 at 4:29pm
Four states have decided to terminate their National School Boards Association membership over a letter comparing the parents to domestic terrorists.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that Ohio and Missouri School Board Associations terminated their membership with the NSBA.
The New Hampshire School Boards Association is the latest to leave the NSBA after it sent a letter to Biden that begs him to use federal law enforcement agencies against parents and investigate them for “domestic terrorism and hate crime threats.” The National School Board was so outraged that parents were speaking out in defense of their children that they shamelessly urged the DOJ to use the Patriot Act, among other “enforceable actions” against them.
“This email is to inform you that NHSBA has decided to withdraw its membership from the National School Boards Association, effective immediately. NBA’s recent actions have made our continued membership untenable.”
NHSBA is finalizing its formal letter to the National School Boards Association relative to its withdrawal. They will share that letter with membership as soon as possible.
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association voted unanimously last October 14th to withdraw from NSBA.
“The Governing Board of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association has voted unanimously to cancel PSBA’s longstanding membership in the National School Boards Association. The decision was reached following significant deliberations and discussions with counsel and management.”
The National School Boards Association on October 22nd apologized to the Biden Administration characterizing concerned parents at school meetings as potential domestic terrorists.
This letter comes just one day after the Washington Free Beacon obtained emails revealing the Biden Regime was coordinating with the NSBA in the weeks leading up to the memo attacking parents.
“On behalf of the NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter. To be clear, the safety of school board members, other public school officials and educators, and students is our top priority, and there remains important work to be done on this issue. However, there was no justification for some of the language included in the letter,” the NSBA wrote.
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Middle School Teacher Ramona Bessinger On Racialized Curriculum: “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”
"All of the books had the same sort of narrative, the oppressor versus oppressed narrative."
legalinsurrection.com
Middle School Teacher Ramona Bessinger On Racialized Curriculum: “I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This”
“All of the books had the same sort of narrative, the oppressor versus oppressed narrative.”
Posted by William A. JacobsonFriday, October 29, 2021 at 09:30pm11 Comments
Ramona Bessinger is the Providence, Rhode Island, middle school teacher blew the whistle on the destructive racialized new curriculum, and then went public about the retaliation that followed, all in posts by her at Legal Insurrection:
- I’m A Middle School Teacher And See How Critical Race Curriculum Is Creating Racial Hostility In School (July 13, 2021)
- Ramona Bessinger: I’m A Middle School Teacher Facing Retaliation After Blowing The Whistle On Critical Race Curriculum (October 3, 2021)
- Harassment Of Providence Anti-Critical Race Whistleblower Teacher Ramona Bessinger Intensified
- Providence Anti-Critical Race Whistleblower Teacher Ramona Bessinger Taunted In Troubling Schoolyard Incident
- Providence Anti-CRT Whistleblower Teacher Ramona Bessinger Hit With Suspension And Transfer
4:02 min
TRANSCRIPT
(AUTO-GENERATED, MAY CONTAIN TRANSCRIPTION ERRORS)
Tucker Carlson: Ramona Bessinger is a middle school English teacher in Providence, Rhode Island. Over the summer, she wrote a series of very insightful blog posts exposing her school’s openly racist and divisive curriculum. For doing that, for daring to be honest, Ramona Bessinger was hauled in front of a disciplinary committee and suspended by the school district. Now the school district claims the suspension is unrelated to the blog post because obviously they lie. Ramona Bessinger joins us tonight. Ramona Bessinger, thank you so much for coming on. So give us just a quick example of what the school district was teaching that you objected to.
Ramona Bessinger: Well, first of all, I would just like to say that in all my years as being an educator, I’ve never seen anything like this. And sometime around last January, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books rolled into my classroom as well as educators all throughout the district. And immediately I knew something wasn’t right. The covers of the books were bizarre. They were cartoon-like. They were pamphlet style, very thin. All of the books had the same sort of narrative, the oppressor versus oppressed narrative. It was just strange not to mention the quality of the books, the rigor wasn’t there.
So the moment I started asking questions, the moment I started probing and asking why we’re teaching these books, as opposed to vetted, literary material, boom, that was it. I was public enemy number one. Um, you know, I w every single I could not do anything, right. Everything was, uh, I was brought to task on absolutely everything. It was just ridiculous. And rather than sort of cower and be silenced, I decided I was going to get louder. And that is exactly what I did.
Someone told me about this political blog, Legal Insurrection. I emailed them and I explained that this was going on in my school. You know, there are these very strange books and this odd curriculum rolling out, and I was concerned, I didn’t quite know exactly what was going on, but by the time I wrote the blog, I had a pretty clear idea, but more importantly, it was the students, the reaction of the students and seeing the sort of mistrust and the overall you know, devastation I was feeling it was having on the students in my classroom, but I was also making connections to other teachers and students all around the country.
And certainly in my own districts district, we were all talking about this kind of strange collection of books that seem to be very racially divisive. I don’t like to say critical race theory. I call it racialized curriculum because that’s in fact what it is. So I wrote about it in that blog, and that was met with you know the mob descending on me when I went back to school in September, with some very strange attacks by some colleagues, because God forbid you can have, you can have a reasonable discourse or an argument with any of these people. Not at all.
No, you know, what they have to do is cower and hide and attack and make public displays. So, that led to my getting louder and writing yet another blog about the harassment. And when I did that, then they upped the ante and involved children. You know, it’s always impressive when you use children as a political shields or political weapons to fight your bad health.
Tucker Carlson: Yeah. Just like the Khmer Rouge. I’m so grateful. You pointed out that a lot of these materials, these so-called books were stupid and badly written because they are because the people who write them are stupid and no one ever says that. So thank you for saying that and, and, and good luck. Thank you for being honest, Ramona Bessinger. Thank you.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Democrat Terry McAuliffe Trashes Parents in Closing Argument: Our School Boards Were Fine Until "THESE PEOPLE Started Showing Up" (VIDEO) | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe went on Meet the Press on Sunday morning in the final weekend before the November 2nd election.
www.thegatewaypundit.com
Democrat Terry McAuliffe Trashes Parents in Closing Argument: Our School Boards Were Fine Until “THESE PEOPLE Started Showing Up” (VIDEO)
By Jim Hoft
Published October 31, 2021 at 4:08pm
Democrat gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe went on Meet the Press on Sunday morning in the final weekend before the November 2nd election.
In his closing argument, McAuliffe blamed parents for speaking out against porn in the classrooms and critical race theory at the school board meetings.
McAuliffe lied again about critical race theory being taught in the schools and attacked Virginia parents.
It’s the parents’ fault for speaking out
.29 min
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Taxpayers Take School Board to Court for Trying to Silence Parents’ Criticism
Four taxpayers in Pennsylvania have decided enough was enough after footing the bill for a school board attorney who told them that the school system could limit their First Amendment rights. The taxpayers filed a free speech lawsuit in federal court that could set a precedent for invalidating...
americanconservativemovement.com
Taxpayers Take School Board to Court for Trying to Silence Parents’ Criticism
by Kevin Mooney
October 31, 2021
Four taxpayers in Pennsylvania have decided enough was enough after footing the bill for a school board attorney who told them that the school system could limit their First Amendment rights.
The taxpayers filed a free speech lawsuit in federal court that could set a precedent for invalidating policies that shield both school administrators and elected officials from public criticism.
“The left is trying to take over the English language in a way that might appeal to rational people with innocent-sounding words like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion,’ but it’s really about trying to divide people and distort history,” Simon Campbell, a former member of the Pennsbury School Board, told The Daily Signal.
In their suit, Campbell and three other taxpayers whose children are or were enrolled in Bucks County’s Pennsbury School District ask the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to strike down school board policies used to “censor” citizens who dissent.
The Institute for Free Speech, a Washington-based nonprofit law firm, represents the four plaintiffs. Their suit names Pennsbury School Board officers and other members as well as the board’s lawyers and current and former district officials.
Michael Clarke, an attorney for the Pennsbury School District who is among the defendants, is on record informing parents and other residents that they “don’t have First Amendment rights” during the “public comment” section of a school board meeting, according to the suit filed Oct. 1.
The lawsuit quotes Clarke at some length arguing that the First Amendment does not protect speech that violates what he describes as “reasonable guidelines.”
These guidelines could be extended to include comments that label government officials as “criminal” or “incompetent,” Clarke said during a Dec. 17 board meeting, one of several over the past year that figure in the litigation.
The Daily Signal called and emailed Clarke for comment, but he had not responded by publication time.
‘Educational Equity’ Policy
Parental participation in school board meetings has gained national attention in recent months, as parents protested school policies on transgender students, using critical race theory in classes, and imposing mask mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions.
In a controversial Oct. 4 memo, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the FBI and Justice Department to pursue and possibly prosecute what he described as “criminal conduct toward school personnel.”
Legal analysts for The Heritage Foundation were among those criticizing the move, saying in a commentary that the “Garland memo looks like an effort to use the FBI to threaten and silence parents who are outspoken opponents of critical race theory in schools.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
The controversy in Pennsbury revolves around the school board’s decision in May to adopt Policy 832, known as “Educational Equity.” The policy calls for “distributing resources, access and opportunity based on fairness and justice regardless of race, ethnicity, color, age, religion, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, language, disability, or socioeconomic status.”
School board members implemented the policy in response to an “Equity Audit” conducted between August 2020 and February 2021 by Cherrissa Gibson, the district’s director of equity, diversity, and education. The stated purpose of the audit was “to identify the common causes of inequities that exist in the district.”
But parents who spoke out against the policy at board meetings view “educational equity” as an extension of critical race theory, which some policy analysts view as a reloaded version of Marxism that, in the words of a Heritage Foundation report, “makes race the prism through which its proponents analyze all aspects of American life.”
The plaintiffs in the suit include parents who have spoken out against the school board’s policy and the findings of the audit see a strong correlation between the tenets of critical race theory and diversity initiatives in their school district.
Their suit alleges that parents have been silenced and censored at every turn during the board’s public comment periods, saying:
Defendants have purported to grant themselves the power to arbitrarily silence anyone speaking at school board meetings for any reason or no reason at all—and they have wielded it in dramatic fashion. They have done everything from shouting down citizens who dare question the official narrative; conspired to silence and denounce dissenters; and even ‘memory holed’ speech based on its viewpoint, deleting speech from public records as though it was never spoken.
The plaintiffs are asking the court to strike down two board policies (903, on “public participation,” and 922, on “civility”) as unconstitutional restrictions on free speech. They also seek unspecified damages.
‘Counter to American Tradition’
The Daily Signal sought comment on the allegations about the policies from the nine members of the Pennsbury School Board. None responded.
“Pennsbury officials are trampling on the First Amendment rights of parents and residents to speak their mind about their schools,” Alan Gura, vice president for litigation with the Institute for Free Speech, said in a press release. “They have cut off parents in the middle of sentences, yelled over critics to prevent them from being heard, edited remarks out of recordings of public meetings, and intimidated speakers by forcing them to publicly announce their home address.”
The four residents asked the district court to suspend enforcement of the new policies until the case is resolved, and a judge set a hearing Nov. 8 in Philadelphia to consider the motion.
In requesting the injunction, the four plaintiffs state:
When government officials declare themselves or their policies off-limits to criticism or open discussion, they run counter to the American tradition of free and open debate, and violate the First Amendment rights of speech and petition.
Defendant school board members, officials, and solicitors conspired to violate plaintiffs’ civil rights because they dared criticize the Pennsbury School Board, its members, and its ‘equity’ policy. They furthered and, if not stopped by this court, will continue to further their conspiracy through a variety of illegal means, including: censoring written comments that diverged from Pennsbury’s orthodoxy, memory holing and threatening to mute oral comments critical of their policies, and repeatedly interrupting and cutting short plaintiffs’ public comments that depart from the official narrative.
A motion in the suit, filed Oct. 8, highlights several incidents in 2020 and 2021 when the parents say school board members and other district officials made a concerted effort either to silence or expunge public comments criticizing board policies.
The court filing includes details of an email exchange between Gibson, the district’s equity and diversity director, and board President Christine Toy-Dragoni in which Gibson asks that comments made during the board’s March 18 meeting by one plaintiff, Douglas Marshall, be removed from the public record.
Marshall had criticized Gibson’s diversity and equity policy, then under consideration by the school board. Two days later, according to the suit, Gibson emailed Toy-Dragoni “to condemn Marshall” and “demand that his speech be removed from the meeting’s public record, and advocate for real-time censorship of comments alleged to violate Policy 903.”
Gibson’s reference is to the school board’s policy on public participation in its meetings.
‘Mr. Daly, You’re Done’
Altercations during the school board’s May 20 meeting, however, most dramatically highlights what is at issue for some parents.
Peter Amuso, the school district’s assistant solicitor, interrupted and cut off public comments from three men who are now plaintiffs in the lawsuit: Marshall, Tim Daly, and Robert Abrams.
Gibson delivered a presentation on “equity” as part of the agenda of the May meeting in which the board officially adopted its diversity and equity program.
“Amuso acted as the enforcer of Policy 903 during the public comment period,” according to the suit.
10:17 min
Amuso’s exchanges with Marshall, Daly, and Abrams are captured in a YouTube video.
The video opens with narration by Campbell, the former member of the Pillsbury School Board, who discusses the events that led to the litigation.
The video shows Daly being cut off after telling school board members that they had “misrepresented facts around equities in schools.”
Amuso interjects: “You know what? I’m going to stop you there … you can stop, Mr. Daly, you’re done.”
The board adopted its “civility” policy (922) at the conclusion of the same meeting.
‘A Political Agenda’
“The censorship that occurred before the May meeting is also very serious,” Gura, the lawyer with the Institute for Free Speech, said in a phone interview, adding:
We have emails where the defendants are discussing censorship of public comments. The May meeting is a manifestation of what happened previously and the videos of the May meeting offer the most dramatic examples of censorship. But they are by no means the first incidents.
This suit is about ensuring the people are free to express their views and petition the government to address their grievances. There is no requirement that the board has to like being criticized and they don’t have to agree with what’s being said. But there’s also no requirement that members of the public have to tell board members how wonderful they are.
The Daily Signal emailed Amuso for comment on the suit, but he did not respond.
Daly, however, agreed to an in-person interview. He has a daughter in ninth grade in the Pennsbury school system; an older daughter graduated last year.
“I initially became involved to try to get schools reopened during COVID-19. I then got asked by numerous community members to look into the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] program and the associated curriculum,” Daly, 47, told The Daily Signal. “What I found is that Pennsbury was not teaching diversity in a way that was honest or beneficial to students or the teachers. There appeared to be a political agenda being laid forward by the school board and administration.”
“The Equity Audit which the school district conducted showed only 8% of Pennsbury families stating they were unhappy with the [previous] diversity initiatives, while African Americans scored Pennsbury a 4.25 on a scale of 5,” he said. “It was clear data was being misrepresented in the board presentation to meet a predetermined conclusion as they dismissed these relevant first-party data metrics.”
Part 1 of 2
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Part 2 of 2
Daly continued, criticizing the school system’s focus on outward appearance:
Pennsbury’s issues are socioeconomic, not racial. I have had the opportunity to review the raw data used to construct the Equity Policy and DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] program; the influence of socioeconomic factors was overwhelming. The data also definitively showed that less affluent white Caucasian children were disciplined more frequently than more affluent African American children.
I strongly believe there is an approach to teaching diversity that would benefit the students and the community. But that’s not what they’re doing here as we are solely focused on a singular aspect of diversity. And when our school board and solicitors suppressed our right to free speech by silencing any dissent as ‘irrelevant,’ we cannot move forward to develop an improved, quality DEI initiative reflective of our community’s needs.
Gibson did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on Daly’s criticism of her audit and the diversity and equity curriculum.
‘About Trying to Divide People’
Campbell, 54, a member of the Pennsbury School Board from 2009 to 2013, has three college-age children who previously attended Pennsbury public schools.
Campbell said he has questions about the cost to taxpayers associated with the diversity curriculum and sees an opportunity to reinvigorate free speech at the local level.
Speaking to the school board at its June meeting, Campbell rebuked attorneys and administrators who cut off parents during the previous meeting, as seen in this YouTube video.
View: https://youtu.be/LxKu6-05n7k
5:01 min
“Gibson was promoted into a position that did not previously exist and should not exist, because taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the school board’s political agenda,” Campbell said in an email to The Daily Signal. “Our lawsuit seeks case precedent to establish that citizens cannot be censored or intimidated by government officials for exercising their First Amendment rights at a school board meeting.”
Campbell added:
The left is trying to take over the English language in a way that might appeal to rational people with innocent-sounding words like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion,’ but it’s really about trying to divide people and distort history. We are asking the federal court to declare the offending school board policies to be unconstitutional and for the offending public school officials to be held accountable. Perhaps in North Korea or China government officials can get away with behaving as Pennsbury’s officials did. But this is the United States of America.
In a YouTube video, Campbell goes into additional detail about the dispute in the school district over critical race theory and the censorship that allegedly occurred during the May 2021 school board meeting.
View: https://youtu.be/tszyTIquN2A
7:41 min
The school board doesn’t have the right to limit public comments that are germane to its agenda, the Institute for Free Speech’s Gura said.
“During the May meeting, the board voted on the equity policy and Gibson gave a presentation on equity,” Gura told The Daily Signal. “This was on the agenda, and the public can certainly say she was wrong and they can offer a different point of view.”
“This suit does not take a position on the merits of the equity program or items like the school budget,” the lawyer added. “This is about ensuring people have the right to express their views without being censored.”
The Pennsbury School District recently appears to be making changes to its “public participation” policy in light of state action on how local government bodies must disclose certain agenda items.
Jennifer Stefano, executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a free market think tank in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told The Daily Signal in an email that the Pennsbury School Board’s policies should be uprooted.
“School board members censoring parents is, first and foremost, suppressing free speech,” Stefano said. “That elected officials believe they can silence not just the taxpayers who voted them in, but the very people who are responsible for the education of and well-being of a child—their parents—is outrageous. And yet that’s been the status quo—and it’s been highlighted over the past two years, as parents have been forced to sit on the sidelines as bureaucrats and school boards make decisions for our children.”
An education bill advancing in the Pennsylvania General Assembly would create more public and private options for parents and students.
Known as HB1 and dubbed the Excellent Education for All Act, the legislation would increase the availability of scholarships funded with contributions encouraged by tax credits. The bill also would protect charter schools, homeschooling, and learning pods as viable options while offering roughly $6,000 per child for parents to use on education expenses as they see fit.
“The answer here is to put power and authority where it belongs: in the hands of the parents,” Stefano said. “The way to do that is to let the money follow the child—rather than just fund a system. That’s why legislation like Pennsylvania’s HB1 is vital.”
The education bill is moving forward in Pennsylvania as a recent poll from Real Clear Opinion Research found that a strong majority of independents, Democrats, and Republicans say they support school choice.
The poll of more than 2,000 registered voters also found that this rising level of support comes in response to ongoing battles over mask mandates and school curriculum.
Image via YouTube. Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.
Daly continued, criticizing the school system’s focus on outward appearance:
Pennsbury’s issues are socioeconomic, not racial. I have had the opportunity to review the raw data used to construct the Equity Policy and DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] program; the influence of socioeconomic factors was overwhelming. The data also definitively showed that less affluent white Caucasian children were disciplined more frequently than more affluent African American children.
I strongly believe there is an approach to teaching diversity that would benefit the students and the community. But that’s not what they’re doing here as we are solely focused on a singular aspect of diversity. And when our school board and solicitors suppressed our right to free speech by silencing any dissent as ‘irrelevant,’ we cannot move forward to develop an improved, quality DEI initiative reflective of our community’s needs.
Gibson did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on Daly’s criticism of her audit and the diversity and equity curriculum.
‘About Trying to Divide People’
Campbell, 54, a member of the Pennsbury School Board from 2009 to 2013, has three college-age children who previously attended Pennsbury public schools.
Campbell said he has questions about the cost to taxpayers associated with the diversity curriculum and sees an opportunity to reinvigorate free speech at the local level.
Speaking to the school board at its June meeting, Campbell rebuked attorneys and administrators who cut off parents during the previous meeting, as seen in this YouTube video.
5:01 min
“Gibson was promoted into a position that did not previously exist and should not exist, because taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the school board’s political agenda,” Campbell said in an email to The Daily Signal. “Our lawsuit seeks case precedent to establish that citizens cannot be censored or intimidated by government officials for exercising their First Amendment rights at a school board meeting.”
Campbell added:
The left is trying to take over the English language in a way that might appeal to rational people with innocent-sounding words like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion,’ but it’s really about trying to divide people and distort history. We are asking the federal court to declare the offending school board policies to be unconstitutional and for the offending public school officials to be held accountable. Perhaps in North Korea or China government officials can get away with behaving as Pennsbury’s officials did. But this is the United States of America.
In a YouTube video, Campbell goes into additional detail about the dispute in the school district over critical race theory and the censorship that allegedly occurred during the May 2021 school board meeting.
7:41 min
The school board doesn’t have the right to limit public comments that are germane to its agenda, the Institute for Free Speech’s Gura said.
“During the May meeting, the board voted on the equity policy and Gibson gave a presentation on equity,” Gura told The Daily Signal. “This was on the agenda, and the public can certainly say she was wrong and they can offer a different point of view.”
“This suit does not take a position on the merits of the equity program or items like the school budget,” the lawyer added. “This is about ensuring people have the right to express their views without being censored.”
The Pennsbury School District recently appears to be making changes to its “public participation” policy in light of state action on how local government bodies must disclose certain agenda items.
Jennifer Stefano, executive vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a free market think tank in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told The Daily Signal in an email that the Pennsbury School Board’s policies should be uprooted.
“School board members censoring parents is, first and foremost, suppressing free speech,” Stefano said. “That elected officials believe they can silence not just the taxpayers who voted them in, but the very people who are responsible for the education of and well-being of a child—their parents—is outrageous. And yet that’s been the status quo—and it’s been highlighted over the past two years, as parents have been forced to sit on the sidelines as bureaucrats and school boards make decisions for our children.”
An education bill advancing in the Pennsylvania General Assembly would create more public and private options for parents and students.
Known as HB1 and dubbed the Excellent Education for All Act, the legislation would increase the availability of scholarships funded with contributions encouraged by tax credits. The bill also would protect charter schools, homeschooling, and learning pods as viable options while offering roughly $6,000 per child for parents to use on education expenses as they see fit.
“The answer here is to put power and authority where it belongs: in the hands of the parents,” Stefano said. “The way to do that is to let the money follow the child—rather than just fund a system. That’s why legislation like Pennsylvania’s HB1 is vital.”
The education bill is moving forward in Pennsylvania as a recent poll from Real Clear Opinion Research found that a strong majority of independents, Democrats, and Republicans say they support school choice.
The poll of more than 2,000 registered voters also found that this rising level of support comes in response to ongoing battles over mask mandates and school curriculum.
Image via YouTube. Article cross-posted from Daily Signal.
marsh
On TB every waking moment
US lawmakers play with the idea of social media ID verification, following proposals from other countries
A draft discussion bill hints at future proposals.
reclaimthenet.org
US lawmakers play with the idea of social media ID verification, following proposals from other countries
A draft discussion bill hints at future proposals.
- By Tom Parker
- Posted 12:50 pm
Anonymity is often vital for those who want to speak truth to power and expose government wrongdoing. We only need to look to the US government’s treatment of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to see how far governments will go to target those that don’t have the shield of anonymity when they reveal information that governments want to hide.
And in 2021 governments have renewed their efforts to end online anonymity by proposing and introducing new laws that force users to hand over their identity documents (IDs) to use social media and by framing online anonymity as something that needs to be eradicated.
While most of these government efforts to end online anonymity have been widely covered in the media, America’s recent proposals have managed to stay out of the spotlight.
But despite flying under the radar, these proposals do exist in a discussion draft that was introduced by Congressman John Curtis in May.
The discussion draft aims to “require a provider of a social media service to verify the identity of users of the service, and for other purposes” and prevent anyone from creating a social media account without verifying their identity.
Not only does this discussion draft intend to make ID verification mandatory for anyone who wants to create a social media account but it also wants to force social media companies to report users to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) whenever they suspect users have submitted fake IDs. Additionally, it contains a requirement for the FTC to submit these reports to the United States (US) Department of Justice (DOJ).
Social media companies that fail to comply with the terms outlined in this discussion draft will be targeted under section 18(a)(1)(B) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B)) which allows the FTC to define “unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” impose additional requirements on companies to prevent these acts or practices, and introduce “significant civil penalties for rulebreakers.”
While the discussion draft does include an exception for social media providers that have annual revenues of less than $1 billion for three consecutive years, the large social media platforms where the vast majority of the more than three billion total social media users are registered will be forced to verify the real identity of their users under the discussion draft’s current requirements.
Alternative social media platforms will only be shielded from this requirement if their revenues stay below the annual $1 billion threshold and if the discussion draft becomes law, this limit could be encroached upon and lowered, as has happened many times before with other laws.
We obtained a copy of this social media ID discussion draft for you here.
This discussion draft is the latest of many attempts by local and federal US governments to erase online anonymity by forcing online service providers to verify the identity of their users. Some of the most notable attempts include:
The Communications Decency Act (CDA) (1996) which was signed into law on February 8, 1996 and prohibited the “the knowing transmission of obscene or indecent messages” to minors but allowed online service providers to protect themselves from prosecution by implementing age verification measures. The provisions related to age verification were ultimately struck down after the Supreme Court declared them an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) (1998) which was signed into law on October 21, 1998 and required website operators and content providers to prove that they had restricted children’s access to “harmful” content by requiring the use of a credit card, a debit card account, an “adult access code,” an “adult personal identification number, a “digital certificate that verifies age,” or “any other reasonable measures that are feasible under available technology.”
However, it was blocked from taking effect by multiple courts which declared it unconstitutional on First Amendment groups. After more than a decade of ongoing legal challenges, the Supreme Court killed the law by refusing to hear further appeals.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) (1998) which was signed into law on October 21, 1998 and requires websites and online service providers to obtain “verifiable parental consent” if they’re “directed to children under 13” or they have “actual knowledge” that they collect personal information from children under 13.
Louisiana’s Online Age Verification Law (2015) which required publishers of material that’s deemed to be “harmful to minors on the Internet” to age-verify every internet user before providing access to the material. The law was permanently blocked by a federal judge in 2016 for violating the First Amendment.
While this discussion draft is likely to ultimately fail for First Amendment violations, many other countries that don’t have these same First Amendment protections are pushing similar proposals that would end online anonymity.
UK lawmakers recently bolstered their calls for a social media ID system in the wake of the murder of Member of Parliament (MP) David Amess, despite it being unknown whether the murder suspect had previously targeted Amess on social media.
In Australia, the federal government recently released an exposure draft for an Online Privacy Bill that would require citizens to verify their age by submitting official ID in order to create social media accounts, days after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for social media platforms to be held responsible for anonymous users.
And in Canada, the proposed Senate Bill S-203, the “Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act,” would essentially mandate age-verification for all sites that host user-generated content by making these criminally liable whenever an underage user engages with sexual content on their service unless they implement “a prescribed age-verification method.”
If these governments succeed with their push to end online anonymity, protest and dissent are likely to be one of the first things they attempt to crush.
Australia’s authoritarian response to citizens who protest or oppose the government’s COVID response shows just how far governments will go to target those who dissent on social media. And if social media accounts were forcibly linked to real ID, it would be even easier for governments to use these tactics against their critics.
In fact, Lin Junyue, one of the early theoretical designers of China’s all-encompassing social credit system which links real IDs to a wide range of online data, has actually touted the ease with which it allows governments to crush dissent as one of its main benefits.
“If you had the social credit system, there never would have been the yellow vests,” Lin Junyue said in an interview with European public service channel ARTE.
“We would have detected that before they acted. One could have foreseen…these events would not have happened. It is one of the great advantages, the social credit system.”
Not only do these proposals to end online anonymity threaten citizens’ rights to protest and criticize the government but by forcing social media platforms to collect real IDs, they also create a huge privacy risk. Numerous vaccine passport systems which impose similar ID collection requirements have already exposed the personal data and IDs of millions of people. Forcing social media companies to collect real IDs would create an even larger honeypot that could be leaked or breached.
Even more concerning is that these attacks on online anonymity serve as a gateway to a dystopian digital ID system that would give governments even more control of people’s digital activities. COVID passports are already paving the way for such a system in the physical world by making access to certain premises and events contingent on showing a vaccine passport. Forcing users to associate their social media accounts with real ID would make it easy for governments to expand this control to the digital realm and dictate which websites and online services people are allowed to use.
Although the First Amendment will likely shield US citizens from this government encroachment, for now, the persistent push to end online anonymity shows that many Western lawmakers are more than happy to ignore these significant privacy and civil liberties concerns so that they can more easily control and monitor their citizen’s digital lives.
^^^^^^^^^^
Draft legislation document: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/social-media-ID-verification.pdf
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Re Facebook's facial recognition scan
View: https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1455582951727583236
View: https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1455582951727583236
marsh
On TB every waking moment
Election Day: Eight episodes that awakened parents to liberal indoctrination in schools
School trip to a gay bar, male student in skirt assaults girl in female bathroom, and a student sent to "the black class."
justthenews.com
Election Day: Eight episodes that awakened parents to liberal indoctrination in schools
School trip to a gay bar, male student in skirt assaults girl in female bathroom, and a student sent to "the black class."
Updated: November 2, 2021 - 12:02am
From the marquee Virginia governor's contest to school board contests across America's suburbs, parents of schoolchildren are expected to play an outsized role in Tuesday's off-year election and provide a measurement of just how potent an issue liberal indoctrination in the U.S. education system has become to a restless electorate.
The unexpected rise of the school curriculum movement was sparked by a pandemic that trapped students at home with parents for months, unmasking what was being taught in classrooms and how it was being taught.
Parents suddenly become incensed that their children were being forced to conform to transgender-friendly language or subscribe to the notion the color of their skin was predetermining their future in an inherently racist America. Soon a revolt was waged, with parents confronting their educators and their school boards about such concepts as critical race theory and equity learning.
Along the way, stunning revelations cemented the determination that change was needed, from proclamations that parents don't deserve a say in what is being taught to schoolchildren to disclosures that highly sexualized books involving abortion and pedophilia were being assigned to young students.
"I was able to see into the classroom and see what was being taught and how it was being taught," explains Lysa Kosins, one of three of moms who banded together in a bid Tuesday to oust long-term school board members in the Dayton, Ohio, suburb of Centerville. "And you know, it doesn't work. We need to start treating our kids like individuals, and we need to start allowing the parents who really know what is in the best interest of our children to make choices that better fit their educational needs."
Here are eight defining moments that catapulted the fight against liberal school indoctrination into a nationwide movement that has sparked more than 80 school board recall elections this year.
- A Washington suburb's push for equity learning and gender neutrality ignites a protest.
- A coverup of skirt-wearing male student's sexual assault on a girl in a female bathroom.
- The election in Southlake, Texas, affirms parents have the electoral muscle.
- Terry McAuliffe and the debate line heard around the country.
- Attorney General Merrick Garland unleashes the FBI on parent protests.
The reverberations were still being felt Monday, when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) renewed his request to have Garland retract his memo. "Mr. Attorney General, parents are not domestic terrorists, and you have only one reasonable choice," Grassley said from the Senate floor. "Withdraw your memo and focus on the real threats. Stop being a pawn for the White House by politicizing the Department of Justice."
- Teachers in one Missouri school district fight back against training they deemed racist.
- 'That's not the black class.' An Atlanta mom stands up to racial segregation of classrooms.
- A class trip to a gay bar ignites disbelief.