Day: March 24, 2019

Social Justice Warrior Reporters at The Tennessean Use Twitter to Lecture Williamson County Residents About ‘Racist Incidents’

Chris Butler

People in Williamson County this week accused two reporters at The Tennessean of having a bias that favors the “white privilege” training county school system administrators impose on teachers. Using their personal Twitter pages as their platforms, and not The Tennessean itself, these two reporters, Elaina Sauber and Emily West, seemed to favor the “Cultural Competency” videos school system officials force teachers to watch. These videos also preach about America’s supposed dysfunctional history. WCS teachers must watch them through an In-service training program. What Sauber and West say about these “Cultural Competency” videos on social media matters — that’s because they both write about Williamson County for The Tennessean. Sauber, for instance, co-wrote a story this week titled “Williamson GOP claims schools are ‘indoctrinating’ students with video series on inclusion.” Sauber seemed to use her Twitter page to try to make the case racial tensions may still exist in Williamson County and local GOP members are wrong to criticize the “white privilege” training. But Sauber cited racially-charged cases out of the county that are six to 20-years old. West, using her Twitter, seemed to lecture a Williamson County parent about social justice. West also seemed to say she knows more about…

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Attorney General Barr Sends Mueller’s Conclusions to Congress: No Collusion Found

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Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found no evidence President Donald Trump, his campaign or associates conspired or coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, according to a summary released Sunday by Attorney General William Barr. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” Mueller wrote, according to Barr. Barr handed over to Congress his main conclusions and summary of the long-awaited Muller report. Mueller spent 22 months looking into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians and if the president obstructed justice by trying to stop the investigation. Barr and his aides spent hours Saturday poring over the report Mueller handed them late Friday. Key lawmakers, opposition Democrats and some of Trump’s Republican allies, have all called for release of the full report, but it is not clear whether Barr will do so. Trump said last week he did not object to the full release to the public but also has said it is up to Barr, whom he appointed as the country’s top law enforcement official, to decide how much of it is disclosed. White House aides say Trump has not been briefed on the outcome…

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Washington County School Board Member Arrested on Charge of Simple Assault Involving Girlfriend

Jason M. Reynolds

A member of the Washington County Board of Education was arrested on a charge of simple assault related to his girlfriend, the Johnson City Press reported. David L. Hammond, 50, of Johnson City, was served with an arrest warrant Friday, the newspaper said. The alleged assault happened about 11:15 p.m. Thursday. WCYB reported: According to the arrest report, the victim told police that she and her boyfriend were having relationship trouble and had been fighting. She showed police bruises on her arms and torso where she said Hammond had grabbed her two days ago. She added that a similar incident occurred Thursday evening because of his “drug and alcohol consumption.” While police were talking to the girlfriend, Hammond called her, WJHL reported. Officers said his speech was allegedly slurred and he “sounded extremely intoxicated.” Police went to his home to arrest him. No one came to the door, but police saw someone look through a blind on an upstairs window. Hammond was arrested Friday at Restore Community Church, WJHL said. Hammond is in the Washington County Jail, WJHL said. The report said officers advised the girlfriend to get a protection order. Hammond’s arrest has not yet shown up on the…

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New Report Examines Impact of Ineffective Teachers on Students in Tennessee

Chris Butler

The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office has released a new report that explores how students in Tennessee’s public schools are impacted when they are taught by an ineffective teacher for two consecutive years. This, according to a press release Tennessee Comptrollers released this week. The report was prepared at the request of State Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville. “More than 8,000 Tennessee students (1.6 percent of students included in the study) had a teacher with low evaluation scores in both the 2013-14 and 2014-15 school years in math, English, or both subjects,” according to the Tennessee Comptrollers’ press release. “Students were less likely than their peers to be proficient or advanced on the state’s assessments when they were taught by ineffective teachers in consecutive years. Student achievement also suffered with the largest effects found for the highest and lowest performing students. These results are consistent with other research indicating that ineffective teachers have negative academic impacts on students.” Students in certain districts, grades, subjects, and subgroups were more likely to be taught in consecutive years by ineffective teachers, the press release said. “English language learners, students in special education, and students in high-poverty schools were over 50 percent more likely than other students…

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Commentary: A History Lesson for Jeb Bush

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by George Rasley   Jeb Bush is to Republican politics what the little mechanical moles are to the arcade game Whack-A-Mole; an annoyance that bursts forth according to some malevolent algorithm and the faster you beat it down the quicker it pops back up. Jeb! surfaced most recently to encourage some as yet unidentified sacrificial lamb to run against President Trump in the upcoming 2020 Republican primaries. Bush’s reason for encouraging the challenge was that it would be good for the GOP to “have a conversation about what it is to be a conservative…” “I think someone should run. Just because Republicans ought to be given a choice,” Bush said in an interview with Obama advisor David Axelrod on CNN’s “The Axe Files.” “But to have a conversation about what it is to be a conservative I think is important,” Bush added. “And our country needs to have competing ideologies … that are dynamic, that focus on the world we’re in and the world we’re moving towards rather than revert back to a nostalgic time.” Former Governor Bush has apparently forgotten, or maybe he never figured out, what such a conversation about what it is to be a conservative did…

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Trump Orders Policy U-Turn on North Korea-Related Sanctions

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by Evie Fordham   President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Friday he was reversing course on new sanctions on Chinese companies doing business with North Korea. “It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” Trump wrote. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!” The U.S. Treasury had announced the new sanctions Thursday, not Friday as Trump wrote, and they immediately received “swift pushback” from the governments of both China and North Korea, reported Fox News. “President Trump likes Chairman Kim [Jong Un] and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said when asked about Trump’s tweet. Trump’s decision came a day after Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin detailed the U.S. decision to impose sanctions on two China-based companies. “The United States and our like-minded partners remain committed to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and believe that the full implementation of North Korea-related UN Security Council resolutions is crucial to a successful outcome,” Mnuchin said in a statement Thursday according to Fox News. “Treasury will continue to enforce our sanctions, and we…

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Spinoff Trump Cases Will Continue Long After Mueller Report

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The nearly 2-year-old probe into potential ties between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian election interference has come to an end. Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Friday submitted his confidential report to U.S. Attorney General William Barr. But will Mueller’s report be the end of the story? Hardly. Prosecutors from outside the special counsel’s office, including the U.S. attorney’s offices in New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C., are all pursuing cases that have spun off from the Mueller investigation. State investigators in New York and Maryland have ongoing Trump-related investigations. And in Congress, the House and Senate intelligence and other committees are actively looking into Trump’s finances, potential Russia-Trump ties and other matters. Besides Mueller, here’s a rundown of who’s investigating what: Violations of federal campaign finance law. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is investigating Trump’s role in silencing former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film actress Stormy Daniels with hush payments in August and October 2016, respectively. The two women have previously claimed to have had affairs with President Trump. Inauguration funding. Trump’s inaugural committee received a subpoena in February 2019 from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.…

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Trump Unilaterally Declares Islamic State in Syria ‘100 Percent Eliminated’

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U.S. President Donald Trump declared the end of the Islamic State terror group’s self-declared caliphate Friday, saying the terror group had been “100 percent defeated” —a claim that was quickly refuted by U.S.-backed forces on the ground. Trump made the announcement following a briefing from Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan aboard Air Force One en route to Florida. Trump then showed reporters onboard a map with no IS presence in Syria. “The territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria,” added White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. At its height in 2014, IS ruled over large swaths of Syria and Iraq, boasting dual capitals in Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq. Since then, the U.S.-led international coalition, along with partners on the ground, have rolled back the terror group’s hold. The very last territory under IS control — a couple of scraps of land in the northeastern Syrian town of Baghuz — began to slip through the terror group’s grip for good late Thursday into early Friday, after the U.S.-led coalition launched a new wave of airstrikes targeting the remaining IS-held positions. But shortly after Trump’s announcement, SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali told VOA’s Kurdish Service he could not confirm IS’s defeat, as his…

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Trump to Nominate Stephen Moore for Fed Board

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President Donald Trump said Friday that he will nominate Stephen Moore, a conservative economic analyst, to fill a vacancy on the Federal Reserve’s seven-member board. Moore, a well-known and often polarizing figure in Washington political circles, served as an economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that role, he helped draft Trump’s tax cut plan. Trump has been harshly critical of the Fed’s rate increases last year even after the central bank this week announced that it foresees no hikes this year. Moore, who has served as chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation, has also been critical of policy moves made by Chairman Jerome Powell, who was hand-picked by Trump to be Fed chairman. An ardent defender of tax cuts, Moore is close to Larry Kudlow, head of the White House National Economic Council. The two collaborated in shaping the tax overhaul that Trump signed into law at the end of 2017, leading to changes that largely favored tax cuts for corporations and wealthier Americans with the idea of spurring investment and faster growth. Reshaping Central Bank Trump in his first two years in office has been able to reshape the central bank. He nominated four…

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Adam Schiff Says House Intelligence Committee Is Willing to Subpoena Mueller

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by Chris White   House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff said Friday that his committee might subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller to get a fuller understanding about the details of his report. “If necessary, we will call Bob Mueller or others before our committee,” Schiff told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, noting also that the Judiciary Committee might summon Attorney General Bill Barr to answer questions as well. The California Democrat’s comments came shortly after Mueller delivered Barr his report on Russia’s intervention into the U.S. election. Schiff added: “This began as a counterintelligence investigation by the FBI. It began as the same in our committee, and we have a right to be informed and we will demand to be informed about it.” The Department of Justice is required by regulations governing the special counsel to disclose whether the agency rebuffed any major investigative requests from the special counsel. Mueller was never ordered to stand down on any major areas of inquiry throughout the more than two-year-long probe, according to Barr. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he believes the public should have the opportunity to see the document, though the president added he would ultimately like to see it beforehand. –…

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Commentary: Capitalism Saved Sweden

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by Michael Munger   Josh Billings famously diagnosed a problem with beliefs: “I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.” I am astonished at how many students, and for that matter adults, in the U.S. honestly believe that the U.S. should model itself after Sweden because Sweden has shown that socialism works. I will leave aside the question of whether the U.S. should try to “be like” Sweden; they are very different countries, with different histories and different institutions. But it is important to refute, using simple and widely available empirical evidence, the claim that Sweden is “socialist.” It is not. In fact, Sweden is one of the most robustly capitalist nations on earth. By socialism, I mean a system that relies on state ownership and control of the means of production, state direction of production decisions, and direct state control of education and employment decisions of individuals. If one does not mean those things, then that would require a little more thinking about what “socialism” means. If by “socialism” you mean prosperity and rule of law, then you are confused. There are several important issues to discuss, to understand the differences between…

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Alabama Has a Plan to Allow Tax Refunds to Help Pay for the Border Wall

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by Jason Hopkins   A bill that would allow taxpayers to donate a part of their refunds to a nonprofit collecting money to build more border wall has successfully passed the Alabama Senate. Alabama state senators voted 23-6 along party lines Thursday in favor of SB 22, the Montgomery Advertiser reported. The legislation would add We Build The Wall Inc. to a list of about 20 groups and programs on state income tax forms that residents can check off and donate with their tax refunds. “I think it’s a way for Alabamians to say to the president and to the nation that we think strong border security is important. We want to promote that. We want Washington to build that wall,” GOP Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh, the bill’s sponsor, stated according to The Associated Press. “This bill is about sending a message to Washington that we support President Trump and his mission to secure our southern border,” Marsh said, who is mulling a 2020 U.S. Senate bid. We Build The Wall — which began in December as a viral GoFundMe campaign by Air Force veteran and triple amputee Brian Kolfage — is a nonprofit group that is raising…

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Portman and Brown Join Forces to Solve Pension Crisis

Anthony Gockowski

Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at giving Ohio workers and retirees a seat at the table when it comes to solving the nation’s looming pension crisis. As The Ohio Star previously reported, an estimated six million retirees and four million workers in the United States rely on multi-employer pension plans, called “MEPPs” for short, which are collectively bargained plans maintained by more than one employer to limit risk. A report conduct by Matrix Global Advisors CEO Alex Brill and sponsored by Protect Our Workers’ Earned Retirement (POWER) predicts that the Pension Benefit Guarantee Program—the federal backstop for MEPPs—is itself expected to “be insolvent in less than a decade.” The Central States Pension Fund, one of the largest MEPPs in the country, will also be insolvent by 2025, according to the report. “Even after legislative fixes to improve plans’ financial status in 2006 and 2014, one-third of the 10 million participants are in plans that are headed toward either a funding deficiency or insolvency. More than 1 million people are in plans expected to be insolvent within 20 years,” Brill states in his report. This could have a devastating effect on the…

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Walz Administration Recommends ‘Sensitivity Training’ in Response to Child Care Fraud

Anthony Gockowski

Gov. Tim Walz wants staffers involved in Minnesota’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to undergo “cultural sensitivity and implicit bias” training after a recent report confirmed widespread fraud in the program. As The Minnesota Sun has reported, the Office of the Legislative Auditor’s long-awaited report confirmed that millions of dollars in government payments have gone to fraudulent child care centers, and described a “serious rift” among CCAP officials. The report suggested that some “child care center owners have recruited CCAP eligible mothers by offering to pay kickbacks to entice the mothers to advise county CCAP staff that their children are attending a particular center.” Walz decided to intervene this week, and had Deputy Department of Human Services Commissioner Chuck Johnson deliver a set of recommendations to the Minnesota House Early Childhood Committee. Among them was a proposal to require staffers to “undergo training on cultural sensitivity and implicit bias,” Fox 9 reports. The recommendations are now included in a bill introduced by House Democrats this week. “The commissioner of human services shall develop equity and implicit bias training for state and county licensors and require all licensors to receive this training within 30 days of initial hiring and once every…

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Ohio Senate Breaks Even Further from Governor DeWine, Lowering Gas Tax to Six Cents

Andrew Shirley

The Republican-held Ohio Senate joined Republicans in the House of Representatives in opposing Gov. Mike DeWine on his proposed gas-tax hike. House Bill 62 (HB 62), the 2020-21 Ohio transportation budget, first proposed by DeWine on Feb. 12, originally called for an 18 cent increase to the current gas tax. This was the first major bill proposal of his term. He called the measure “a minimalist, conservative approach, with this being the absolute bare minimum we need to protect our families and our economy.” In his State of the State address, as well as in other forums, he maintained that this was the absolute lowest the tax could be and would have to go into effect immediately. After being referred to the House, the Republican-held legislature broke significantly from the governor, lowering the rate to 10.7 cents and ordered it to be phased in over three years. “If they pass the House bill, we’re going to end up with the worst of all worlds,” DeWine said in response. He was insistent that the 18 cent number was the only acceptable rate. While DeWine seemed hopeful he could convince the legislature to return to his 18 cent number, the Ohio Senate seems to be making it clear that 18…

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Beto Slams Trump Over Lordstown Comments During Visit to Ohio

Anthony Gockowski

During his recent visit to Ohio, 2020 Democratic hopeful Beto O’Rourke slammed President Donald Trump for his criticisms of Lordstown union leader David Green. Green is president of United Auto Workers Local 1112, which represents the workers at Lordstown’s General Motors plant. After the plant was unallocated earlier this month, Trump said Green “ought to get his act together and produce.” “The president with his actions has added insult to injury,” O’Rourke told NBC in a recent interview after meeting one-on-one with Green. “Not only has he done nothing to prevent this job loss, he actually blames the workers and their leadership in the UAW president here in 1112 for something GM and his administration caused.” O’Rourke went on to suggest that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “financed GM’s ability” to “move jobs elsewhere” and to “choose their shareholders over the community that has created their value.” “Not only has President Trump failed in his commitment and failed this town of Lordstown, he’s also done nothing to reverse the losses that we’ve seen here,” O’Rourke continued. O’Rourke said, as president, he would make sure the country’s “trade policies and our tax code” don’t “incentivize offshoring these jobs.” “GM pays…

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