On Wednesday, the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration revealed the state’s revenues exceeded budgeted estimates for the month of September. September’s total tax revenues were $1.9 billion, which is $321.5 million more than September of last year and $378.1 million more than the budgeted estimate. The total growth rate for the month was 20.28 percent.
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As Tennessee begins looking at revamping its Basic Education Program (BEP) to fund public schools, one factor looming in the discussion of a new funding formula is teacher pay.
Legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle recognize teacher pay and how the BEP funds teacher pay are an issue.
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When 13 U.S. service members were killed by suicide bombers as American citizens were abandoned in Afghanistan last August—in perhaps the most ill planned military operation since our efforts in Somalia which resulted in naked U.S. servicemen being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu—it should have given us a clue about the Biden Administration’s priorities. Much as the Somalian disaster led to a massive influx of Somali immigrants, which is changing the makeup of the Midwest, we can soon expect a surge in Afghan immigration.
In retaliation for the Kabul airport bombings, the United States conducted a drone strike on what the world was told were ISIS-K members. When confronted about the irregularities of the operation, General Mark Milley described the air attack as a “righteous strike.” We later learned this “righteous strike” killed an innocent aid worker and nine members of his family. No one has been held accountable for this tragic political slaughter.
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A bipartisan coalition of 17 former state attorneys general, including one from Tennessee, this week urged the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court to preserve the current number of nine U.S. Supreme Court justices. In a letter, these attorneys general proposed accomplishing that through a “Keep Nine” amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment simply states that “the Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices.” The former attorneys general said this will protect the independence of the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Joe Biden delivered a short speech from the administration’s fake White House set, Thursday, urging all Americans, including children as young as five, to get vaccinated. Biden claimed that the administration’s draconian vaccine mandates are working, and boasted that the seasonal decline in COVID cases is due to his policies.
Biden stressed that there is still more work to do to get the remaining 66 million American holdouts injected with the experimental jabs.
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Many Americans today assume that the threat of Communism subsided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But “We continue to see Communist and socialist regimes pop up and spread not only in Latin America – for example, in Venezuela and Nicaragua – but around the world,” says Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC). “These regimes regularly kill their own citizens and have a devastating effect on human rights and their national economies.” In fact, over 1.5 billion people – including those living in Laos, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and, of course, China – currently live under oppressive Communist and socialist governments.
Founded in 1993 by a bipartisan, unanimous Act of Congress, VOC is “devoted to commemorating the more than 100 million victims of communism around the world and to pursuing the freedom of those still living under totalitarian regimes.”
Before coming to VOC, Bremberg served as the Trump administration’s Representative of the United States to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva. During his time there, which he describes as a “profound and life changing experience,” he “became aware of the challenge of China,” which was “far worse” than he had realized. He notes that the U.N. International Human Rights Council made investigating the United States’ record on racism during the summer of 2020 its highest priority – putting it above China’s appalling human rights violations against Uyghurs, among other ethnic groups within its borders.
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A Seattle elementary school cancelled its Halloween parade citing concerns that the annual event “marginalizes students of color who do not celebrate the holiday,” according to Jason Rantz of radio station 770 KTTH.
Benjamin Franklin Day Elementary (B.F. Day), part of Seattle Public Schools (SPS) also said black males do not celebrate Halloween, Rantz reported on 770 KTTH. The school administration said its decision to cancel involved “foundational beliefs around equity for our students and families.”
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Andrew McCabe, the disgraced former Deputy Director of the FBI, has reached a legal settlement with the Justice Department that allows him to receive his pension, as well as reimbursement for hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, CNN reports.
McCabe was one of the leading figures in the anti-Trump efforts from within the federal government, which ultimately led to the infamous “Russian collusion” hoax and subsequent federal investigation by Robert Mueller. Despite no evidence whatsoever of any such plot, McCabe continued to defend these efforts during his time as Deputy Director. In March of 2018, he was fired by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, on orders from President Trump, just two days before McCabe’s retirement date; this ultimately prevented him from being eligible for his pension and other retirement benefits.
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The tony, bucolic town of Dublin, Ohio would be one of the last places in America expected to host a convention of white supremacist militiamen. Nestled along the Scioto River, the Columbus suburb’s biggest claim to fame is hosting the PGA’s annual Memorial Golf tournament every summer.
But in June 2020, days after the nation was roiled by Black Lives Matter looting and rioting, a man from Wisconsin named Stephen Robeson sponsored a “National Militia Conference” at a Dublin hotel. (Yes, that was the real name of the event.)
According to BuzzFeed’s exceptional July 2021 investigative report on the FBI-led plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, Robeson “helped organize the national meeting, and he was enthusiastically pushing people he knew to attend.” The purpose of the conference was to recruit people who ultimately would stoke “political violence” against governors who refused to reopen their states after lockdowns supposedly necessitated by COVID.
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The pharmaceutical chain Walgreens will be closing five stores in San Francisco, California due to a spike in “organized” shoplifting impacting its locations, according to MarketWatch via MSN.
The decision was made by Walgreens’ parent company, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., which will relocate all employees to new locations and ship all outstanding prescriptions to other stores within one mile of the original stores. The stores will be shut down sometime between November 8th and November 17th.
“Retail theft across our San Francisco stores has continued to increase in the past few months to five times our chain average,” the company revealed in the statement announcing the decision. “To help combat this issue, we increased our investments in security measures in stores across the city to 46 times our chain average, in an effort to provide a safe environment.”
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Northern Virginia parents plan to protest in front of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Sunday, according to a flyer posted online.
A flyer reveals plans for a “Parents Are Not ‘Domestic Terrorists’ Rally Oct. 17. “Stand up, speak up, fight back!” the memo reads. “Bring friends, be heard … you can make a difference!”
News broke Wednesday that a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) student was allegedly raped in a school bathroom in May by a male student who wore a skirt. The victim’s father, Scott Smith, was arrested at a LCPS school board meeting weeks later for resisting arrest, and the perpetrator – who was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy – allegedly assaulted another girl at the school he transferred to following the initial incident, Daily Wire reported.
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A plethora of politicians and government officials across the globe screwed up in their handling of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Chinese government, however, was acutely damaging with its ineptitude, because it, more than any other entity, had a chance to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus when it first emerged in late 2019. Instead of trying to contain the virus with the help of the international community, however, the Chinese government lied, misled, and stalled. All of humanity has experienced the disastrous result of this negligence.
In his new book, Uncontrolled Spread, physician, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb focused his considerable expertise on pointing out the ways in which the world’s response to COVID-19 fell short, and how we can better prepare for the next inevitable pandemic. Early on in the book, he chronicled numerous examples of the Chinese government’s inept, corrupt handling of what was then an emerging outbreak. Here are ten of them:
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Saule Omarova, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), is refusing to hand over to the Senate Banking Committee her university thesis on Marxism written during her time in the Soviet Union.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, ranking member of the committee, had sent a letter to Omarova on Oct. 6 asking the Cornell Law School professor to hand over her Moscow State University thesis, titled “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital,” by Oct. 13, citing the committee’s need to “fully assess the fitness of individuals to serve in Senate-confirmed executive and independent agency positions.”
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Seven Democratic U.S. representatives have asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, to not target the oil and gas industry in the budget reconciliation bill before Congress.
Despite the concerns they and those in the industry have raised, Democrats in the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee pushed through a section of the bill, which includes billions of dollars in taxes, fines and fees on the oil and gas industry in the name of climate change.
Committee Chair Raúl M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., said the section of the bill that passed “invested in millions of American jobs” and put the U.S. “on a more stable long-term economic and environmental path.”
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A Saudi activist is suing Twitter for allegedly hiring two Saudi spies who, the activist claims, used their positions within the social media company to steal his personal information.
The complaint, filed by activist Ali Al-Ahmed on Wednesday a California federal court, alleges that two Saudi citizens and former Twitter employees, Ahmad Abouammo and Ali Hamad A Alzabarah, used their jobs to access Al-Ahmed’s email addresses, contacts, phone numbers, birth dates, and IP addresses between 2013 and 2015. The two men then sold this information to the Saudi government, the complaint alleged.
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Public schools across the country are eliminating gifted and talented programs, removing advanced courses and overhauling admissions processes to achieve equity across racial categories.
Removing gifted and advanced courses is a no-cost way to cover up the racial achievement gap while ignoring its root causes, according to Harry Jackson, president of the Thomas Jefferson High School Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA).
“Gifted programs and advanced courses provide a mechanism for low-income households to achieve a stellar education for their children and serve as a ‘great equalizer’ to those families that opt for private education,” Jackson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “By eliminating gifted programs and advanced courses in the name of equity, they will create greater inequities,” he said.
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Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) wrote a letter to the Biden Administration questioning their use of COVID vaccinations for military members. Allegedly, military members may not be receiving COVID vaccines that are approved by the FDA.
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The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has been removed from the Sarasota County School district’s fifth-grade curriculum in accordance to the Florida Department of Education’s ban on critical race theory (CRT) that was passed in June.
Sarasota parents with fifth-grade students received a letter from the FDOE this week discussing the change of a “reading passage” in the students’ textbook, but did not directly mention Black Lives Matter as the subject of removal.
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Four Minnesota legislators signed a letter asking for a forensic audit of the 2020 election in all 50 states. The letter has been signed by 138 legislators within 38 states. The Minnesota legislators who signed the letter include State Senator Bruce Anderson (R-Buffalo Township), Representative Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe), Representative Erik Mortensen (R-Shakopee), and Representative John Poston (R-Lake Shore).
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The parents of a seventh-grade student in an Arizona school district claimed that a teacher disregarded an “opt-out” from an assignment while speaking before a school board Thursday.
“After being made aware of inappropriate racial and political content being taught in our daughter’s seventh-grade social studies class, we reached out to the teacher, then the principal, then the curriculum department, and finally the superintendent to obtain curriculum for us to review ahead of time,” Amy Souza told the Peoria Unified School District Governing Board in a video posted to Twitter by Free to Learn.
After relating how she and her husband finally obtained the curriculum following “exhaustive efforts to get it,” they determined an upcoming lesson would be “gruesome, violent, and inappropriate” for their daughter.
They emailed their concerns to the teacher, announcing they would “opt out” of that lesson. They stated in the video that the teacher emailed back, agreeing to an alternate assignment.
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Ohio Republican Representatives Jamie Callender (R-Concord) and Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville) said Tuesday they will introduce a bill that allows Ohioans to use marijuana for personal use.
In the bill, any Ohio resident who is 21 or older to “buy, possess and grow” marijuana in the state. Also, people would only be allowed to have up to five ounces of marijuana and grow six plants, according to cincinnati.com.
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Multinational technology company Cisco will expand its operations in Georgia, creating 700 new jobs, Gov. Brian Kemp and company officials announced Wednesday.
Cisco plans to invest up to $41 million in opening a Talent and Collaboration Center in the Coda Tech Square in Midtown Atlanta. The new positions would add to the more than 1,000 Georgians currently working for Cisco across the state.
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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is scrambling to contain a growing scandal after she promised to remove lead from drinking water in Benton Harbor within five years.
Benton Harbor, a depressed community of about 9,600 residents in southwest Michigan, has been struggling to deal with the poison in the water, and after negative national media attention, Whitmer this week vowed an “all-hands-on-deck” approach to dealing with the problem.
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The James Madison Institute (JMI) released its list of legislative priorities that they want Florida lawmakers to tackle in the upcoming legislative session of 2022.
JMI’s proposed policies include the advancement of; innovation practices, education opportunities, expanded healthcare solutions, the protection of individual liberties, and the safeguarding the values of free markets, choice, and liberty in federal policy.
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Some more thoughts on the FOX News poll showing former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe up by 5 points over Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin just three (and now two) weeks out from the November 2nd election.
One of the numbers in the poll? McAuliffe’s support among black voters at +63. Which is shorthand for a 79/16 gap — which sounds atrocious (and quite frankly, is atrocious for a party built on the premise that all men should be free).
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Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has urged Congress to reject “burdensome legislation that would increase fees on energy producers and hit American consumers with even greater price hikes as heating bills surge this winter.” Carr announced the news in an emailed press release Friday. He said he and 19 other state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress on Thursday.
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Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has endorsed the ONE Casino + Resort proposal that Richmond voters are currently considering.
“I mean, think about what’s going to happen here in Richmond,” McAuliffe said in a Twitter video Thursday. “Construction: 3,000 jobs. 15,000 permanent jobs. $50 million in revenue that will help schools, hospitals, everything else. I’m so excited.”
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Lawmakers from across the state are set to return to Nashville for the upcoming special session, aimed to pass incentives for a new Ford development.
Governor Bill Lee called the special session, which will begin on October 18, last month and is urging the legislators to approve nearly $500 million in incentives.
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