Day: March 11, 2019

Knox County Schools Spending $170,000 on ‘Cultural Competency’ In-Service Training for Teachers and Staff This Year

Jason M. Reynolds

Knox County Schools are spending $170,000 out of their $928,677 in-service budget on “cultural competency” training for teachers even as the Williamson County School System uses increased expenditures to tell white teachers they are over-privileged. Knox County’s Fiscal Year 2019 expense is in the KCS General Purpose School Fund, under “Disparities in Education Outcomes.” The “In-Service/Staff Development – Schools,” is located under the “Other Expenses” line. The note for the $170,000 line item specifies, “Cultural Competency training.” The school budget details are here. Another note on the page, E-6, says, “The Disparities in Education Outcomes programs is a district initiative aimed at eliminated education disparities. The FTEs contained in this program are Restorative Interventionists. Also included in this program are resources for Cultural Competency training and supplies needed to support the program.” The overall Disparities in Education Outcomes budget for FY 2019 is $1,533,099. Knox County Schools’ general fund budget for 2019 was $484.5 million, an increase of $13.4 million from the previous year, according to the FY 2019 Knox County budget. The overall in-service training budget for FY 2019 is $928,677, a 4.2 percent decrease from the previous year total of $918,635. In 2016, a school board task force…

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Williamson County Schools: ‘White People Have the Privilege of Seeing Their Skin Tone Reflected Daily in the Goods and Public Spaces Around Them’

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Dr. Mike Looney, superintendent of Williamson County Schools, wants to make sure every teacher in the system knows how to teach students about “white privilege,” a left wing concept that, while it has no standing in law,  has been pushed to indoctrinate public school teachers and and students alike in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of American civics and American exceptionalism. Towards that end, Looney has taken steps that began with the creation of a “cultural competency committee” in January 2018, the hiring of a WCS diversity officer, and the creation and development of a series of in-service training videos known as the Williamson County Schools Cultural Competency Series. The series has at least three modules, and possibly four. According statements Looney made to The Tennesseean, Williamson County Schools launched system wide in-service training based on these “cultural competency” videos in August. A spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Education told The Tennessee Star that the department has not reviewed or approved this series. The Star secured a copy of Module 3 of this series last Tuesday, a 26 minute video which can be seen in its entirety here. Because the video advances so many alarming concepts, The Star…

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Commentary: The Clarity Accompanying the Democrats’ Takeover of Congress

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by Julie Kelly   Months before the midterm elections last fall, several self-described “conservatives” implored Americans to vote for Democrats. Still stung that Republicans ignored their advice to reject Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and unmoved by Trump’s solid record of conservative accomplishments in office, these embittered outcasts claimed that a legislative branch controlled by Democrats would cauterize Trump’s alleged “authoritarian” tendencies. The most notable of these windmill tilters, attacking an authoritarian impulse that wasn’t there, was George Will. For decades, Will occupied a vaunted perch in the hierarchy of the conservative commentariat. He also was deemed acceptable by media outlets hostile to the Right including the Washington Post, where he now is a contributor. Disgusted at the Trumpification of the Grand Old Party in 2016, Will officially renounced his party affiliation just weeks before the Republican National Convention. Two years later, in a disorganized rant, Will instructed voters to oust Republicans from power. “In today’s GOP, which is the president’s plaything, he is the mainstream,” Will wrote in June 2018. “A Democratic-controlled Congress would be a basket of deplorables, but there would be enough Republicans to gum up the Senate’s machinery, keeping the institution as peripheral as it has been under their control and…

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New Cases of Armed Citizens Stopping Criminals in February

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by Amy Swearer   Last month, we documented some extraordinary examples from January of armed citizens relying on their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves and others. We pointed out that these were average, everyday Americans who were just going about their lives. They did not go looking for evil but were nonetheless prepared to deal with the evil that found them. February has produced even more evidence that the fundamental right to keep and bear arms is not an anachronism that no longer deserves constitutional protection, but a vital tool safeguarding individual liberty. Studies routinely indicate that every year, Americans use their firearms in defense of themselves or others between 500,000 and 2 million times. Very few of these defensive gun uses receive national publicity – if they receive publicity at all. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Below, we’ve highlighted just a handful of the many times during the month of February that law-abiding Americans demonstrated the importance of the Second Amendment. Feb. 2: A restaurant owner in Akron, Ohio, scared off a masked man who attempted to rob him with a knife. The man fled, and…

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Bernie and Biden Are Leading the Field in Iowa by Enormous Margins

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by Chris White   Former Vice President Joe Biden and self-avowed socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders are leading the polls in Iowa, according to a poll published Sunday. The two septuagenarians are so far besting their younger, female Democratic opponents in the race to unseat President Donald Trump. Nearly 27 percent of likely Democratic caucus attendees say Biden is their first choice for president, according to a new Des Moines Register poll. His numbers are down slightly from the 32 percent who said the same in December, but it still tops every other Democrat vying for the top spot. Biden is leading the pack even though he has not yet entered the race. Biden has a 2-percentage-point advantage over Sanders, a Vermont Democrat who runs to the left of the former VP. The poll of 401 likely Democratic caucus attendees was conducted March 3 through 6 and contains a 4.9 percent margin of error. Analysts argue the poll should put some wind in Biden’s sails as he considering an announcement. “If I’m Joe Biden sitting on the fence and I see this poll, this might make me want to jump in,” J. Ann Selzer, president of the Des Moines-based Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll,…

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Clarence Thomas Clerks Dominate Trump’s Judicial Appointments

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by Kevin Daley   One credential in particular has been a boon to candidates President Donald Trump considers for judicial appointments: a clerkship with Justice Clarence Thomas. As of this writing, the president has appointed seven Thomas clerks to the federal appeals courts, while an eighth is expected in the near future. As such, Thomas’s legal approach — sometimes branded unusual or idiosyncratic — can claim adherents among a new generation of judges. “At this point, Justice Thomas is clearly the leading intellectual force on the conservative side of the bench,” said Carrie Severino, a former Thomas clerk who leads the Judicial Crisis Network, an advocacy group that supports Trump’s efforts to recast the judicial branch. “His principled approach to the law is very much in the ascendency and those are the kind of judges that this president has pledged for the courts,” Severino added. Thomas generally hires law clerks who share his originalist judicial philosophy. Among the Supreme Court’s conservatives, he is somewhat unique in that respect: former Justice Antonin Scalia periodically hired liberal “counter clerks” to sharpen his work, while the hiring practices of other conservatives like Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh appears slightly more varied. “I’m…

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Facebook’s New ‘Privacy Vision’ Raises Questions but Offers Few Answers, For Now

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Mark Zuckerberg’s abrupt Wednesday declaration of a new ‘privacy vision’ for social networking was for many people a sort of Rorschach test. Looked at one way, the manifesto read as an apology of sorts for Facebook’s history of privacy transgressions, and it suggested that the social network would de-emphasize its huge public social network in favor of private messaging between individuals and among small groups. Looked at another way, it turned Facebook into a kind of privacy champion by embracing encrypted messaging that’s shielded from prying eyes – including those of Facebook itself. Yet another reading suggested the whole thing was a public relations exercise designed to lull its users while Facebook entrenches its competitive position in messaging and uses it to develop new sources of user data to feed its voracious advertising machine. As with many things Facebook, the truth lies somewhere in between. Facebook so far isn’t elaborating much on Zuckerberg’s manifesto. Here’s a guide to what is known at the moment about its plans. What’s happening to Facebook? In one sense, nothing. Its existing social network, with its news feeds and pages and 2.3 billion global users and $22 billion in 2018 profit, won’t change and will…

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Trump to Request an Additional $8.6 Billion to Complete Border Wall

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by Jason Hopkins   President Donald Trump will ask Congress for an additional $8.6 billion for wall construction on the U.S.-Mexico border, a move that will likely set up another fierce battle over border security funding. The president is expected to roll out his 2020 budget proposal Monday, which will include billions more than his previous demand for wall funding. The budget will request $5 billion for the Department of Homeland Security and another $3.6 billion for the Defense Department’s military construction budget to build more sections of wall along the U.S. southern border, The Washington Post reported. Announcement of the new budget proposal comes shortly after the federal government ended a historic 35-day partial shutdown over wall funding. Trump in December demanded $5.7 billion to help fund massive wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border. However, following major gridlock between Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Congress allocated only $1.375 billion to finance 55 miles of barrier in Texas. The president accepted that funding in February but also declared a national emergency that ultimately gave him a total of $8 billion in funding. A number of lawsuits have since been filed against the national emergency, and the Senate is set to pass a resolution that disapproves of the…

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Commentary: Ballot Harvesting Corrupts Elections

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by Ned Ryun   People think the real problems with the integrity of our elections involve non-citizens voting, or lack of photo ID, or voter rolls needing to be cleaned, or ballot box stuffing. While those are all problems, people are missing the elephant quietly sitting in the corner of the room. The real threat moving forward is the practice of ballot harvesting. Observers of our elections know something fishy went on in Orange County, California and in Arizona last fall, and they know that there are strange happenings in North Carolina. For most, however, the details remain fuzzy. These happenings have to do with the practice of ballot harvesting: that is, the practice of having union members or partisan volunteers coordinate and go house to house to pick up absentee ballots that haven’t been returned and then drop those ballots off at a polling place or precinct board within the voter’s correct jurisdiction. Mind you, these volunteers or activists don’t have to be election officials. They can be literally anyone. It feels like a complete understatement to ask, but what could possibly go wrong in this scenario? In a word, everything. When you put millions of ballots into an…

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Parliament Facing Brexit Decisions, More Drama, Deadline

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Theresa May

After months of Brexit deadlock, this is it: decision time. At least for now. With Britain scheduled to leave the European Union in less than three weeks, U.K. lawmakers are poised to choose the country’s immediate direction from among three starkly different choices: deal, no deal or delay. A look at what might happen: Deal deja vu  The House of Commons has a second vote scheduled Tuesday on a deal laying out the terms of Britain’s orderly departure from the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May and EU officials agreed to the agreement in December, but U.K. lawmakers voted 432-202 in January to reject it. To get it approved by March 29, the day set for Brexit, May needs to persuade 116 of them to change their minds – a tough task. Opposition to the deal in Parliament centers on a section that is designed to ensure there are no customs checks or border posts between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. Pro-Brexit lawmakers dislike that the border “backstop” keeps the U.K. entwined with EU trade rules. May has been seeking changes to reassure them the situation would be temporary, but the EU refuses to reopen the withdrawal agreement.…

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Bolton: ‘No Illusions’ About Possible North Korean Missile Activity

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The White House said Sunday it does not “have any illusions” about whether North Korea is preparing to resume missile testing, but refused to assess commercial satellite imagery suggesting Pyongyang is assembling a new rocket. National security adviser John Bolton told ABC News the U.S. watches North Korea “constantly,” but added, “I’m not going to speculate on what that commercial satellite imagery shows.” The Feb. 22 imagery seems to show new North Korean missile activity at an assembly operation, but Bolton said the U.S.”relies on its own” satellite surveillance and draws its conclusions from those images. “We see exactly what they’re doing,” he said. “We look every day at the intelligence. I don’t want to get into speculation as to what they’re doing.” After last month’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, U.S. President Donald Trump said he trusted Kim’s pledge to him that he would not resume nuclear or missile testing. Bolton said that Trump “is confident in his relations with Kim Jong Un.” Asked about the commercial satellite images on Friday, Trump said he would be “very disappointed” if North Korea resumed nuclear testing. He said he has greatly improved U.S. relations with North…

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Keith Ellison, Alleged Domestic Abuser, Celebrates International Women’s Day

Anthony Gockowski

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who has been accused of domestic abuse twice, spoke Friday at a press conference to celebrate International Women’s Day. “This International Women’s Day 2019 we celebrate the passage of the ERA in the Minnesota House. Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their sex or gender, When women succeed, America succeeds,” Ellison wrote on Twitter with a picture of him speaking to the crowd gathered. This #InternationalWomensDay2019 we celebrate the passage of the #ERA in the Minnesota House. Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their sex or gender. When women succeed, America succeeds! pic.twitter.com/CZujNjINmn — Attorney General Keith Ellison (@AGEllison) March 8, 2019 Ellison was accused of abusing his ex-girlfriend, Karen Monahan, during his 2018 campaign for the Attorney General’s Office. The allegation nearly derailed his campaign, but it wasn’t the first time he was accused of domestic abuse. In 2005, a woman named Amy Alexander accused Ellison of domestic abuse, and there’s an alleged police record to support her allegation. A police record dating back to 2005 reveals that an “Ellison/Keith/BM/41” was reported in 2005 for assaulting a woman. Ellison was born in 1963, which means he was…

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First Medicinal Marijuana Processor To Open in Ohio

Andrew Shirley

Friday, Ohio’s state Commerce Department awarded the first medicinal marijuana processor its certificate of operation. This processor will allow medicinal marijuana to be processed, refined, and distilled into cannabis-infused products. These products include: ​oil, wax, ointment, salve, tincture, capsule, suppository, dermal patch, cartridge or other product containing medical cannabis concentrate, or usable cannabis that has been processed so that the dried leaves and flowers are integrated into other material.​ The move is a major step forward for advocates who wish to see the ubiquitous use of cannabis adopted in the Buckeye State. The process of earning this certificate from the state of Ohio is very competitive. Per the rules outlined the Ohio Medicinal Marijuana control program. “The Department received 104 processor applications. From these, the Department is authorized to award up to 40 provisional licenses.” In addition, the cost of operations is shockingly high. It costs $10,000 to apply for the initial certificate. If approved, the actual certificate costs an additional $90,000. Furthermore, to continue operations at a plant, there is an annual fee of $100,000. While these fees may seem high, relative to other business fees, one of the most appealing arguments to marijuana legalization was the idea that the drug would be taxed heavily and…

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The Tennessee Star Wants to Hear from Parents, Students, and Teachers for Eyewitness Accounts of Alleged ‘Racist Incident’ at Sunset Middle School in Brentwood 

Chris Butler

An alleged “racist incident” occurred in January at Brentwood’s Sunset Middle School, according to Friday’s Tennessean, five months after the Williamson County School System launched a system-wide “Cultural Competency Series” of In-Service training days for teachers. Allegedly, some students at the school linked arms in between classes, formed a human chain, and then barred non-white students from passing as a play on U.S. President Donald Trump’s border wall. As The Tennessee Star reported, the In-service training for teachers included several videos the school system created that focused on “white privilege.” The Tennessean offered rather thin evidence to support their assertion that a racist incident had, in fact, occurred Jan. 18. The paper’s evidence included on-the-record statements from two members of the WCS cultural competency committee. Neither of the two women quoted apparently witnessed the alleged incident. Williamson County Schools addressed the details of the alleged incident in a way that was unusual. A Tennessean reporter emailed school system officials to confirm the event. But rather than respond to The Tennessean reporter, WCS officials printed out the email and someone hand wrote “Yes it happened,” on it and included that document — unsolicited —in a package to The Tennessee Star, along…

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