Day: February 26, 2018

Williamson County Citizens Issue Call for the Resignation of Mike Looney Following Alleged Assault of Troubled Student

Admin

Former Williamson County School of Board candidate and outspoken textbook reform activist Laurie Cardoza-Moore is leading concerned Williamson Country residents in calling for WCS Superintendent Mike Looney to step down. Cardoza-Moore and the quickly organized informal group have asked the Williamson County District Attorney’s office to launch a full and thorough investigation into a bizarre incident that resulted in Looney being charged with the assault of a student last week. A public meeting of the Williamson County School Board is scheduled for 6:30 pm tonight in Franklin to discuss the Looney situation. “This past week, a criminal charge was filed against Williamson County Director of Schools Mike Looney following an incident at Franklin High School,” Cardoza-Moore said in a detailed statement Monday morning: Given public statements by Williamson County School Board members, one has to question their level of objectivity and if they see their primary role as defending their employee at all costs or seeking the whole truth, not just Looney’s version of it. If you have been trusting your elected board members to hold their employee accountable, you may want to start paying closer attention. Mike Looney, the director of WCS should be held to the same professional standards…

Read the full story

House Ethics Committee Confirms Investigation of Rep. Jimmy Duncan

Admin

In a rare move Tuesday, the House Ethics Committee confirmed it was investigating Republican John “Jimmy” Duncan, Jr. for possible violations related to alleged improper funneling of campaign funds to a family member. In 2013, Duncan III – then a county trustee – plead guilty to a felony charge of official misconduct when he was caught paying himself and six staffers bonuses for completing a training program they did not, in fact, take. The plea came after he lied to investigators, claiming he did not know it was improper to award the money before the training was completed. He ended up serving a year of probation. Subsequently, a series of payments Representative Duncan paid to his troubled son totalling approximately $300,000 came to light, apparently, for services rendered during over the course of the elder Duncan’s successful re-election bids. This, presumably, is the subject of the House Ethics investigation. In their statement, the Ethics Committee said it received a referral January 4 regarding Representative Duncan from the Office of Congressional Ethics, an outside agency charged with reviewing ethics allegations against House members. The committee is required to publicly disclose the subject of a review within 45 days of receiving a referral from the office.…

Read the full story

NRA Accuses Companies of ‘Cowardice’ after Severing Ties under Threat of Boycott

Admin

The National Rifle Association has swung back at companies severing their partnerships with the gun-rights advocacy group under threat of boycott, accusing them of “political and civil cowardice.” In a Saturday statement, the NRA said its five million members would not be deterred after a string of businesses, including Symantec, MetLife, Hertz, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, TrueCar, and airlines Delta and United, announced they will no longer offer discounts for NRA members as the boycott campaign gained steam after the Parkland school shooting.

Read the full story

Fired Googler Warns Social Media Users About Censored Speech

Admin

Bias and mass censorship from extraordinarily powerful tech companies create an enormous problem that Americans have to come to terms with, says a former Google employee who was fired for his politically incorrect views. While tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are incentivized to create a “safe and civil” environment for their customers, problems emerge when “they get to define what offensive is,” James Damore said during a breakout session at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

Read the full story

Commentary: Stop Disarming Teachers When They Enter Classrooms

Admin

by Tom Mullen   In the wake of yet another mass shooting in a public school, a host of familiar recommendations have resurfaced about how to “prevent this from ever happening again.” Predictably, both sides of the aisle are looking to the government for a solution. Americans have somehow arrived at a point where they cannot conceive of human action that is not either prohibited, mandated, or, at the very least, centrally planned. Just Like Drugs The first problem is the goal. It is absurdly unrealistic to believe any set of rules is going to prevent anything from “ever happening again.” If you doubt that, I invite you to examine the war on drugs. Many decades ago, politicians decided American citizens taking heroin was never going to happen again. They banned that drug completely. You aren’t allowed to possess or sell it under any circumstances. Not after a background check. Not with a doctor’s prescription. Not at all. Ban them completely for the civilian population, they say, and mass shooters won’t be able to obtain them. Today, that drug is at the center of what the same government calls an opioid “epidemic.” Epidemic. So much for heroin overdoses “never happening again.” Yet,…

Read the full story

Mexican Leader’s Visit with Trump Shelved Over Wall

Admin

Mexico and the United States have shelved tentative plans for a visit to Washington by President Enrique Pena Nieto as tensions persist over a proposed border wall, US media reported Saturday. Pena Nieto had already cancelled a visit in January last year because of US President Donald Trump’s insistence that Mexico pay for the wall, which he wants as part of his efforts to curb immigration.

Read the full story

US Seeks UN Ban on 33 ships, 27 Firms over North Korea Smuggling

Admin

The United States is seeking to have the United Nations ban 33 vessels from ports worldwide and blacklist 27 shipping businesses for helping North Korea circumvent sanctions. The US request to a UN sanctions committee, a copy of which was obtained by AFP, came as President Donald Trump announced Friday the “heaviest sanctions ever” on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Read the full story

Commentary: Is ‘Groupthink’ the Root Cause of Climate Change Hysteria?

Admin

by Christopher Booker   Since we’ve now been living with the global warming story for 30 years, it might seem hard to believe that science could now come up with anything that would enable us to see that story in a wholly new light. But that is what I am suggesting in a new paper, just published in the UK by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, thanks to a book called Groupthink, written more than 40 years ago by a professor of psychology at Yale, Irving Janis. What Janis did was to define scientifically just how what he called groupthink operates, according to three basic rules. And what my paper tries to show is the astonishing degree to which they explain so much that many have long found puzzling about the global warming story. What Is Groupthink? Janis’s first rule is that a group of people come to share a particular way of looking at the world which may seem hugely important to them but which turns out not to have been based on looking properly at all the evidence. It is therefore just a shared, untested belief. Rule two is that, because they have shut their minds to any…

Read the full story

Beijing Protests US Sanctions on Chinese Firms over North Korea Ties

Admin

Beijing has protested against Washington’s decision to impose sanctions against Chinese companies accused of conducting illicit economic deals with North Korea, the foreign ministry said. US President Donald Trump on Friday announced measures targeting more than 50 North Korea-linked shipping companies, vessels and trade businesses, hailing the package as the “heaviest sanctions ever” levied on the nuclear-armed regime.

Read the full story

States With Higher Taxes Lose Population While States With Lower Taxes, Like Tennessee, Gain Population

Jason M. Reynolds

News flash: People move out of states with high tax burdens, more regulations and fewer jobs to states with fewer taxes and regulations and more jobs. The former tend to be in Democratic-controlled states, while the latter tend to be in Republican-controlled states. That report comes last week from Mark J. Perry at AEIdeas, a public policy blog from American Enterprise Institute, a think tank. Perry is a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. He is known as the creator and editor of the economics blog Carpe Diem. Perry refers to a Carpe Diem post he made last month in which he studied household moving data from North American Moving Services’ US Migration Report for 2017. Measures included economic performance, business climate (right to work, for example), business climate and individual taxes. The top five outbound states (where people leave) are: Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, California and Michigan. Illinois, Connecticut and New Jersey tied for the worst at 38 percent inbound but 62 percent outbound. The top five inbound states (which gain population) are: Arizona, Idaho, South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee. For example, in 2017, Tennessee had an inbound rate of 58 percent…

Read the full story