Don't know who wrote this little note on reality, and I don't care actually, because I think it is spot on explaining the clarity of unpolluted minds, and how the delusional progressive socialist diseased megalomaniac minds that roams the land as we speak, following Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, pays testament to our biggest problem in this country, the people don't know how well off they are, and that they are about to lose what they don't know the have, their freedom to chose.
Know this and keep it close, "Freedom means having nothing else to lose".
[(Author Unknown) and so what!!]
Recently, while I was working in my flower bed in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as usual while returning home from walking their dog. During our usual friendly conversation, I asked their little girl what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said she wanted to be President someday.
Both of her parents (staunch Democrats) were still standing there so I asked her, "If you were President what would be the first thing you would do?" She replied... "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people." Her parents beamed with pride! "Wow...what a worthy goal!" I said..."But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that!"
"What do you mean?" she replied.
So I told her, "You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and trim my hedge, and I'll pay you $50. Then you can go over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."
She thought about it for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye, put her hand on her hip and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"
I said, "Welcome to reality." A beautiful silence followed our last exchange.
What is so scary is so many are willing to fall in line without even the slightest sign of understanding how devastating the loss of freedom of speech or movement is in a society that prides itself on being the very center of freedom for all the world to see. Welcome the new wave mentality that is progressive socialism that now rules on so many college and university campuses and government institutions, where anything is acceptable as long as that option or idea is approved by others that have the power to demand your silence. The new world of 1984 fame is here. Except it or be eliminated.
Colleges Use Tax-Exempt Status to Excuse Restricting Free Speech Natalie Johnson /@nataliejohnsonn/
Universities point to the tax code as an excuse to suppress free speech on campuses across the United States, an education rights group told a House panel. Students, professors, and others, testifying Wednesday before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, said college officials often are reluctant to eliminate “microaggression” policies and allow free speech for fear they will lose tax breaks.
Campus activists define microaggressions as actions or comments that unintentionally offend or discriminate against minority groups. Alex Atkins, a second-year student at Georgetown University Law Center, told the House panel that the university stopped him and other students from campaigning on campus for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Atkins said administrators prevented the activity, saying the school’s status as a tax-exempt nonprofit limited the ability of Atkins and his group to use campus resources for partisan political activity. Georgetown University denied Atkins’ request in September 2015 to reserve a table to campaign for Sanders. The next month, it forced his group to stop canvassing on school grounds to attract students to a debate watch party.
Atkins said administrators told him his group was violating campus policy, pointing to Georgetown Law’s 501(c)(3) exemptions under the tax code. They said the IRS required the university to restrict students from using campus resources, including space, to express political views, Atkins testified. Lawyers for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit civil liberties watchdog, last month wrote a letter to Georgetown Law’s dean on behalf of Atkins’ group, charging that the school misinformed students about the law’s restrictions.
“Despite the seeming severity of the restrictions on political activity at private colleges and universities imposed by the requirements of section 501(c)(3) … it is extremely important to note that these prohibitions apply to the institution itself … not to individual students, faculty, or staff engaged in clearly individual, unaffiliated activity,” the lawyers wrote.
While Georgetown is moving to revise its policies in response to the letter, Atkins said, the university’s actions hindered his group’s ability to campaign earlier in the election season. The student testified:
These changes cannot undo the nearly six months that we lost—six months where all we wanted to do was engage in the type of basic civic expression long considered emblematic of America’s educational campuses. Colleges and universities across the country need to be reminded of their obligation not just to permit, but to protect, the vital free exchange of ideas.
Catherine Sevcenko, associate director of litigation at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, testified that the practice of private and public schools pointing to their tax-exempt status as justification for policies that silence speech is a growing bipartisan issue.
“[Colleges] were granted tax-exempt status because they have an educational mission,” Sevcenko told the subcommittee. “I think it’s deeply ironic that the universities, in an attempt to preserve their 501(c)(3) status, are in fact censoring people, censoring students, which is undermining the very purpose that they’re there for.” Of the 450 colleges and university policies studied by her organization, Sevcenko said, 50 percent have unconstitutional speech codes.Modesto Junior College in California, for example, blocked Army veteran Robert Van Tuinen from handing out copies of the Constitution to classmates on Constitution Day two years ago.
A campus security guard told Van Tuinen that if he wanted to express himself in public, he had to sign up for the school’s free speech zone, which wasn’t available until the next month. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education represented Van Tuinen in February 2014, ultimately winning a court ruling compelling Modesto Junior College to pay the student $50,000 and change its free speech policies.
But Sevcenko said legal action is time-consuming and expensive, often meaning that students remain censored for extended periods of time. The Internal Revenue Service, she said, needs to clarify its guidance on political activity restrictions for 501(c)(3) organizations so that free speech on school grounds is properly protected. “Confusion over the IRS guidelines is a likely cause of this censorship,” Sevcenko said. “General counsels are not going to allow political activity that they fear would endanger the school’s tax-exempt status. As long as the IRS guidance is ambiguous, censorship will win out every time.”
This is another take on the Republican governor of South Dakota vetoing the bill that would have stopped the insanity of making girls locker rooms and restroom open to boys that believe they are girls. This question of common sense is just that simple to understand.
The duplicity of Republicans that say one thing and then fold when it comes time to deliver on their principles is now on center stage to the question. Like so many university administrators that have shown their collective backsides as they head out the door rather then confront the student fascists and moral criminals that are destroy civil university policy of free speech and society in general.
South Dakota GOP Governor Has No Problem With Boys in Girls’ Locker Rooms Ryan T. Anderson / @ryantand /
South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, officially has no problem with boys in girls’ locker rooms. There’s no other way to say it. Special interests and big businesses effectively lobbied the governor to veto a good bill because of the threats they made. Welcome to cultural cronyism at the bathroom. Yesterday Daugaard caved to those lobbyists and vetoed a bill (H.B. 1008) that passed with overwhelming support from both chambers of the state legislature. The bill would have prevented biological males who identify as girls from using girls’ restrooms or locker rooms in public schools, but it also would have required local school officials to make reasonable accommodations for such students.
Instead of a winner-take-all approach favored by the left, the bill created a win-win outcome for everyone. It protected the privacy and safety of all students, and it created new accommodations for transgender students.
Ask yourself: Why do we have girls’ locker rooms and boys’ locker rooms in the first place? We have sex-specific restrooms and locker rooms not because of “gender identity”—however one defines it—but because of biology. Men and women have bodily differences, and that’s why we have men’s rooms and ladies’ rooms. It’s not about gender identity, but biology—and protecting privacy related to our bodies.
So the South Dakota bill continued the bathroom policy we’ve always had in America while also creating obligations for local schools to find reasonable accommodations for transgender students—biological males who identity as females and biological females who identify as males.
But LGBT activists attacked the state. And big businesses threatened boycotts. South Dakota was being accused of “transphobia” for reaching this commonsense compromise. As the bill reached the governor’s desk for his consideration, the head of the Human Rights Campaign warned that “history will not treat kindly those who support this discriminatory measure.”
The official policy of LGBT activists is that boys who identify as girls should have unfettered access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities. They believe that anything less than full access to the bathroom and locker room of their choice is transphobic, a denial of civil rights and equality. This is an extreme position, out of step with the majority of Americans, and utterly inconsiderate of the concerns of the non-transgendered community. And Daugaard gave in to it.
The bill respected local control while ruling out one, and only one, bad option: boys in girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms.
Remarkably, the governor justified his veto by claiming that the bill would undermine local control and “impose statewide standards.” Nothing could be farther from the truth. The bill respected local control while ruling out one, and only one, bad option: boys in girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms.
If this bill undermined local control, it can only be because Daugaard thinks local schools should be able to allow boys in girls’ bathrooms. Or, to put it another way, he thinks local schools should be able to require girls to undress in front of, or be exposed to, boys who identify as girls in showers and locker rooms as a condition of going to school.
Daugaard claimed that the bill “removes the ability of local school districts to determine the most appropriate accommodations for their individual students and replaces that flexibility with a state mandate.” Again, though, this is false.
The bill specifically required local schools to find reasonable accommodations for transgender students. The bill mentioned three examples of reasonable accommodations explicitly—single-occupancy restrooms, unisex facilities, and faculty locker rooms—and it left lots of room for teachers and principals to work out tailored solutions that would be sensitive to everyone’s interests.
In closing his veto statement, the governor claimed that the bill would expose local school districts to lawsuits from transgender students “in an area where no such liability exists today.” Again, the governor is wrong. If a school creates any reasonable accommodation short of full and unfettered access to the bathroom of one’s choice, those lawsuits will come. And now local schools won’t even be able to point to the state law in their defense.
The nation is primed for yet another clash in the culture war—this time over school bathroom policy. The South Dakota legislature gave the entire United States an example of principled leadership on how to defuse controversy and craft public policy that creates good outcomes for everyone.
Daugaard likewise had an opportunity to show courage and do the right thing by signing the bill. He could have stood up to the special interest lobbyists and the cultural cronyism of big business, but he caved. He could have protected the rights and interests of all children in South Dakota. Instead, he said he’s fine with boys in girls’ locker rooms.
The man-made climate change advocates are criminals by any standard that can be considered common sense law of nature and man, but are held up to levels of propriety and the common good unheard of for any other groups that claim they are doing the taxpayer due diligence to protect them and their families from disaster.
This is nothing more then outright theft of taxpayer's money, and they know it, but also know the general public is to distracted by so many other criminal acts by government, the general public can't take the time to understand just how corrupt and criminal the environomntatl industry is on man-made climate change.
That the environmental industry, from the totally corrupt EPA, to local universities and dedicated private environmental groups that extract $billions in tax dollars over the years without any perceivable results, from hard work people, that these organizations have been proven to be nothing more then a scam for personal gain, to outright willing fraud, seems to fall on so many deaf ears.
How in the hell is it possible that this criminal activity is allowed to continue???
House Probe Reveals Audit Detailing Climate Change Researcher’s ‘Double Dipping’ Kevin Mooney / @KevinMooneyDC /
Congressional investigators have obtained an internal audit from George Mason University that suggests that one of its professors—a major proponent of man-made climate change—mismanaged millions of dollars in taxpayer money by “double dipping” in violation of university policy.
The professor, Jagadish Shukla, received $511,410 in combined compensation from George Mason University and his own taxpayer-funded climate change research center in 2014 alone, without receiving required permission from university officials, the audit found.
The audit looking at more than a decade of Shukla’s finances is disclosed in a letter sent this morning from Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, to the inspector general of the National Science Foundation. “The committee’s investigation has revealed serious concerns related to Dr. Shukla’s management of taxpayer money,” Smith writes in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Daily Signal.
Since 2001, Shukla used his research center to pay himself and his wife more than $5.6 million in compensation, “an excessive amount for a nonprofit relying on taxpayer money,” Smith writes.
In the letter, Smith offers to assist Allison Lerner, the National Science Foundation’s inspector general, in any investigation she “may deem appropriate” in response to the GMU audit.
The Daily Signal previously reported that the Texas Republican began making inquiries last fall about reports that Shukla had received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants to study climate change in addition to his publicly funded salary.
Shukla, 71, who specializes in atmospheric, oceanic, and earth studies at GMU, is also the founder and president of the Rockville, Md.-based Institute of Global Environment and Society, or IGES, a nonprofit outfit that is now the focus of congressional scrutiny.
Smith writes:
IGES has apparently received $63 million from taxpayer funded grants since 2001, comprising over 98 percent of its total revenue. These grants were awarded by the NSF [National Science Foundation], National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Since 2001, as president of IGES, Dr. Shukla appears to have paid himself and his wife a total of $5.6 million in compensation—an excessive amount for a nonprofit relying on taxpayer money. This information raises serious questions about Dr. Shukla’s financial management of IGES.
Jagadish Shukla
An environmental institute run by Jagadish Shukla is the beneficiary of more than $60 million in taxpayer funds. (Photo: Evan Cantwell/George Mason University)
The RICO 20 Steve McIntyre, a statistician noted for challenging the data and methodology used in United Nations reports on climate change, offers a detailed analysis of Shukla’s compensation and how it squares with university and government policies in his Climate Audit blog.
The India-born Shukla, who joined the faculty of Fairfax, Va.-based George Mason University in 1993, drew a salary there of $314,000 by 2014, according to Climate Audit. Smith also raised concerns about the relationship between Shukla’s “partisan political activity” and taxpayer funds in a letter he sent to the professor in October. Shukla’s name appears on top of a list of 20 signers of a letter sent to President Barack Obama; Attorney General Loretta Lynch; and John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy asking them to investigate corporations and other groups skeptical of climate change under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.
Federal prosecutors typically use that law, known as RICO, to pursue organized crime. Some who hold that man-made climate change is not established scientific fact say Shukla’s “RICO 20” letter essentially calls for the federal government to prosecute companies and scientists who dissent from the Obama administration’s views on climate change.
However, signatories who spoke with The Daily Signal said they advocated RICO investigations only if it could be demonstrated that certain climate change skeptics had “knowingly deceived the public.” No such RICO investigations appear to be under way. But by putting his signature at the top of the letter to Obama and Lynch, Shukla drew scrutiny and attention to his own activities.
Taxpayers ‘Picked Up the Tab’ In the new letter, Smith details key findings of the George Mason University audit. He writes:
It appears IGES may have improperly commingled taxpayer funds with private charitable contributions when it shifted $100,000 to an education charity in India founded by Dr. Shukla, the Institute of Global Education Equality of Opportunity and Prosperity Inc. This raises concerns that taxpayer money intended to be used for climate research was redirected to an overseas organization favored by Dr. Shukla.
The Texas Republican adds:
The recent audit conducted by GMU appears to reveal that Dr. Shukla engaged in what is referred to as “double dipping.” In other words, he received his full salary at GMU, while working full time at IGES and receiving a full salary there. This practice may have violated GMU’s university policy, his employment contract with the university, and Virginia state law.
For example, according to GMU’s Faculty Handbook, ‘outside employment and paid consulting cannot exceed the equivalent of one day per work week without written authorization from the collegiate dean or institute director.’ Dr. Shukla violated this policy [in] five different time periods from 2003 to 2015 because he failed to receive approval for paid consulting in excess of one day per week. This allowed Dr. Shukla to double dip by receiving his full salary from GMU while receiving an excessive salary for working 28 hours per week at IGES.
In another instance, in 2014, Dr. Shukla received $292,688 in compensation from IGES for working 28 hours per week while simultaneously receiving 100 percent of his GMU salary. In total, Dr. Shukla received $511,410 in compensation from IGES and GMU during 2014, without ever receiving the appropriate permission from GMU officials, apparently violating university policy.
Instead of serving the public interest with his nonprofit research center on climate change, Smith concludes in the letter, Shukla put taxpayers in a position where they “picked up the tab for excessive double dipping salaries, nepotism, and questionable money transfers.”
‘Serious Risks’
“The irony here is over the top,” said Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who writes on global warming and energy policy, among other issues. “First, Shukla appears to have made millions from taxpayers through funding improprieties,” Lewis said. “But Shukla also led the call for a RICO investigation of organizations challenging climate orthodoxy—a campaign which his co-ringleader at GMU admits aims to impose financial penalties on political opponents while yielding payouts to further underwrite the climate alarm movement.”
Last year, CEI asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate Shukla’s nonprofit research center, the one now the subject of the House probe. “We hope Congress’s progress spurs the IRS to turn a serious eye to our November complaint,” Lewis said, adding:
Shukla and his comrades … accuse fossil fuel companies of hiding climate risks from the American people, an impossible offense given the billions in annual government, pressure group, and media spending on climate advocacy. Yet, they refuse to acknowledge that their agenda, which would put an energy-starved world on an energy diet, poses serious risks to the world’s people, especially the poorest of the poor. By hiding climate policy risk, Shukla and his allies have deceived the American people. By his own logic, he should be the target of a RICO investigation.
This report has been updated to include the comments from Marlo Lewis Jr.
But it's not just Hillary that is getting the deception treatment, so is Trump but for different reasons.
The progressive socialist media has their collective sights on Trump because they believe they have another ''maverick'' like they had in McCain back in 2008. Someone they can 'pump up' during the run-up to the national debate where it comes down to 'them against us', and that's when the big guns come out to do diligence for the media's selected candidate, Hillary Clinton and against Trump, which they know would be a target rich environment.
The bottom line for Hillary , of course, will be if Hillary is indicted for her email treachery. Still the possibility of the department of justice (DOJ) actually indicting her is remote. Mr Objma will do whatever is necessary to protect his legacy of social change, and the media will do exactly what they are told by their betters in the democrat national committee, which is to attack all opposition to her push for the White House and total control of the government.
This is a slam dunk of epic proportions for the progressive democrats, but given the state of our county that is in decline, this will be a complete disaster for the nations as Hillary has promised a 'lock step' march with Mr Objma's plan for "fundamental change for America".
There is also an important deviation here from what Hillary say she will do and what she actually does and for different reasons. Hillary probably doesn't give a dam about fundamental changing of the country, her aim probably is solely about the power to control outcomes, and those outcomes that directly effect her and her agenda to be able to rub shoulders with the real rich and powerful.
This I believe is her driving force above all else. Hillary, I believe, has a terrible inferiority complex that is more important then anything else to her, and the only way for her to alleviate the pain is to focus on taking as much power as she can from anyone and anything, and that includes the ultimate source of power to her is the United States Treasury as a bottomless source of money. The mothers milk of all power in the world.
I wonder if anyone in our elustrous government can explain where and when the free market hasn't worked to the advantage of everyone, especially the poor and the disadvantaged? It is strange when compared to government controlled school systems, the free market systems are decidedly better.
Who knew?
Will the Nation’s Capital Have Universal School Choice?
By Carole Haynes
Recently, United States Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced the Educational Freedom Accounts Act (S. 2455), which would create a universal private school choice program in Washington, D.C. for every public school student, including those enrolled in public charter schools. Companion legislation (H.R. 4426) has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.). Modeled after the recently passed Education Savings Account (ESA) law in Nevada, the bill allows the amount normally spent per pupil in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to be placed in a parent-controlled account. The funds can be used for tuition, fees, tutoring, curricula and other qualifying expenses to customize the child’s education.
An overarching concern of many is that federal strings will be tied to the ESA funds, resulting in changing the character of the private school and creating the same problems from which the public is fleeing. However, if the bill is passed as written, the education provider or program can continue to enforce its own admission requirements and accept only those students deemed best qualified to attend the school. The exception is that discrimination cannot be based on race, color, national origin or sex, although single sex schools, classes and activities would be permitted.
Citing the First Amendment, the bill protects the right of religious schools from being required to make changes including: their teaching mission; removal of religious symbols or scriptures; removal of religious terms in the school name, mission statement or board documents; or the selection of board members on a religious basis. Critically important, the bill prohibits the federal government from controlling the school’s curriculum.
While there are some school choice options available now in the federal district, with public charter schools and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, waiting lines are long and thousands of parents are seeking alternatives to the bottom-ranked DCPS. Furthermore, if the Educational Freedom Accounts Act bill is passed, DCPS stands to lose a substantial amount of money to parent-controlled, taxpayer-funded accounts. According to the Heritage Foundation, per-pupil spending was $29,400 and with an elementary/secondary enrollment of 44,179 in 2013. Should even 5,000 parents move their children out of traditional and public charter schools, D.C. public education would lose nearly $148 million dollars.
At a loss of 10,000 students, DCPS could face a staggering loss of almost $295 million dollars. Central planning has not been successful for education in spite of massive taxpayer funding. Free market competition in other areas, such as telecommunication, has brought far better services, greater options, and lower prices. Free market competition in education also will bring far better options. Faced with loss of funding that can cripple the system, DCPS has its own “choice” to make significant changes and to provide a high quality education for D.C. children. The other choice is whether lawmakers will pass the bill to restore the right of D.C. parents to educate their children as they wish.
If history is any indictor of how the Republican's react to the pressure that comes form the White Hose, the national media and let alone the progressive socialist liberal democrats, it seems a slam dunk that the vote will held. One thing that can be relied on as Chuck Schumer stated, the Republicans will eventually cave.
Mitch McConnell Promises House Members He Won’t Back Down in Supreme Court Fight Philip Wegmann /@PhilipWegmann/
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell left the Senate to address House Republicans’ weekly conference meeting Tuesday morning. His message was simple: Senate Republicans will hold fast to their promise not to advance a Supreme Court nominee.
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., summed up the closed-door appearance this way: “Mitch McConnell said to members, ‘Read my lips: No new Supreme Court hearings until we have a new president.'” The message came before McConnell and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, walked into a likely negotiations storm at the White House later Tuesday. President Obama along with top Democrat lieutenants was expected to work over the duo in the Oval Office. At issue is which president will nominate someone to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Democrats say Obama has a right to name Scalia’s successor, and the Senate has a duty to consider the nominee. But Republicans reply that that’s a job best saved for after the election and the inauguration of a new president. “The Senate should not consider any nominee until after the election,” McConnell wrote in a commentary, “when the people have spoken, and we have a new president.”
Since Scalia’s Feb. 13 death, GOP leadership has remained consistent in that message.
No one appeared to leave the meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden with a different opinion than they brought to the Oval Office. If Republicans were “willing to meet with the president,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters, “they could at least meet with the president’s nominee.” And in a written statement, Grassley said consideration of a nominee during an election year would do significant harm.
“Whether everybody in the meeting today wanted to admit it,” Grassley wrote, “we all know that considering a nomination in the middle of a heated presidential campaign is bad for the nominee, bad for the court, bad for the process, and ultimately bad for the nation.” McConnell and Grassley weren’t expected to budge. White House spokesman Josh Earnest admitted that a specific conversation about nominees would be “a pretty dramatic reversal in position for Mr. McConnell.”
Senate Democrats are more bullish. They have said Republicans eventually will crack under mounting public pressure. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., predicted that Republicans will relent, as they have during similar hotly contested battles.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., dismisses that forecast. The freshman senator, who also addressed the House conference Tuesday, said he doesn’t “see any signs of the GOP blinking on this one, to say the least.” Lankford said, “That’s wishful thinking from Democrats and Schumer, who in 2007 said President Bush shouldn’t have any more nominees in his final year, with 18 months left in his term.” It wasn’t McConnell’s first visit to the House side of Congress. The majority leader last week huddled with members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus as part of an ongoing campaign to build Republican resolve.
Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, praised that effort—and McConnell—for keeping Republicans “admirably unified” on the Supreme Court vacancy. Though the House won’t play an official role in the fight over the next Supreme Court nominee, congressmen will do much to shape public opinion. McConnell is “attempting to explain and educate,” Severino told The Daily Signal.
Whether that lesson sticks, Senate Republicans will have to stay unified to keep Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court open until after Obama leaves office Jan. 20. Public opinion could swing against them. A national survey of more than 1,000 Americans by Pew Research Center found that 56 percent say “the Senate should hold hearings and vote on Obama’s nominee.” This report has been updated to reflect the White House meeting.
I'm not sure how many times we have to address this subject, climate change, to convince a lot of people that the insistence on the part many environmentalists is only about the money and the power to control others. Mostly it's about the money and with the money comes the power to control.
What's so worrisome is that no matter what the facts are, and then presented to those politicians that control the public money make little or no difference on their decisions. It's clear if the envros-fascists didn't have access to the public trough, the climate change insanity would disappear.
The important thing to remember is everyone believes in climate change, especially those of us that live in the Midwest or the north. We love the seasons. What a grand feeling of renewal that comes in the spring. Of course, some don't believe in climate change and that's okay, they can move to Arizona or Florida or some other state where the climate never changes.
Now how easy is that to have the option to believe in climate change or you don't.
The Inconvenient Facts the Media Ignore About Climate Change Rep. Lamar Smith /@LamarSmithTX21/
Americans in large numbers are turning off TV newscasts, canceling subscriptions to newspapers, and seeking other sources of news. Distrust of the national media has hit an all-time high.
According to a recent Gallup poll, six in ten Americans now have little or no confidence in the national media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 65 percent of Americans believe that the national news media have a negative effect on our country.
Americans are frustrated because they know that many of the “news stories” they read are only opinion columns in disguise. If the story does not fit the liberal worldview, then facts are ignored, dissent is silenced, and Americans are told what to think. Perhaps one of the worst examples of one-sided, biased reporting involves global warming.
Those who reject the liberal viewpoint that climate change is the greatest threat to our country are ridiculed and ignored. For example, the Associated Press recently amended its stylebook to recommend that those who question the science behind global warming be called climate change “doubters” instead of “skeptics.” But this is inaccurate, since many “skeptics” don’t doubt that climate change has occurred.
Liberal groups continue to attempt to silence debate. The repeated claims that “the debate is over” and that “97 percent of scientists agree that human-caused global warming is real” are false and mislead the public. In testimony before the Science Committee, a lead author of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that the 97 percent estimate “just crumbles when you touch it.”
The source of this “97 percent” myth is a discredited study that attempted to categorize scholarly articles on climate change by the position the papers took on the issue. But most of the papers never took a position on climate change at all. This has not stopped the liberal national media from touting this illegitimate statistic.
Silencing debate is contrary to the scientific method. If these groups were confident about their arguments, they would welcome more debate to test their theories. However, some media outlets, such as the Los Angeles Times, have changed their policies and no longer accept letters to the editor from those who question human-made climate change. That this would happen in a democracy where free speech is enshrined in the Constitution is unbelievable.
Scientists who are not alarmists agree that climate change is a complex subject with many variables. But the liberal national media instead chooses to focus on human contributions and usually fails to provide both sides. For example, the national media hyped NASA’s finding that 2014 was the hottest year on record. Ignored was the footnote that revealed that NASA was only 38 percent certain this was accurate. Less than fifty-fifty. Americans would have been better served by a coin toss.
Too often, these alarmist announcements are based on manipulations of existing data. And when Congress or independent researchers question federal agencies about the data, they are criticized as “attacking scientists.”
Particularly regrettable is that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fails to include all relevant data sources in its monthly temperature news releases. Atmospheric satellite data, considered by many to be the most reliable, has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. This fact is well documented, but it does not fit the liberal politics of the administration or the national media.
Americans deserve all the facts that surround climate change, not just those that the national media want to promote.
NOAA also published a controversial study last year where scientists altered global surface temperature data and widely publicized their results as refuting the two-decade pause in global warming. This week, a new peer-reviewed study was published in the journal Nature that, according to one of the authors, shows “reduced rates of surface warming” and “essentially refutes” NOAA’s study. Shouldn’t the media acknowledge that their alarmist headlines are based on incomplete information?
Americans will continue to distrust the liberal national media until the media provide objective coverage of the news. Americans deserve all the facts that surround climate change, not just those that the national media want to promote.
The march toward the loss of the individual Constitutional right to freedom, prosperity and the pursuit of happiness is going the way of 19th century Europe. The population was disengaged and uninterested in making decision that they didn't understand or cared about at the time.
Sadly, when the time came to care, there wasn't anyone left to take a stand. Most everyone was on bended knee. The results of this ideology in South Dakota that is infecting our politics, progressive socialism, is the very problem that Europe suffers under today. Little wonder, they as group, are in chaos.
South Dakota Governor Vetoes Transgender Bathroom Bill Kelsey Harkness / @kelseyjharkness /
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, vetoed a controversial bill Tuesday that would have prohibited public school students from using bathrooms, lockers, and shower rooms opposite from their biological sex, saying the measure “doesn’t address any pressing issue concerning the school districts of South Dakota.”
Before making his decision, Daugaard met with transgender students and parents. Meeting them, Daugaard told reporters, “helped me see things through their eyes a little better and see more of their perspective.” The bill passed overwhelmingly in the South Dakota House and Senate, but fell short of securing a veto-proof majority. State Rep. Fred Deutsch, R-Florence, who sponsored the bill, told The Daily Signal that he wasn’t overly surprised by Daugaard’s decision to veto it.
Over the weekend, Deutsch said, “a number of different businesses came out and said this would reflect poorly on South Dakota if the governor signed it into law.” “When business starts talking like that, you think, ‘what impact might that have on the governor?’” he said. Supporters of the legislation argue the Student Physical Privacy Act would have protected the safety and privacy of all students by ensuring that girls aren’t forced to change or shower in front of biological boys, and vice versa. For students who identify as transgender or as gender nonconforming, the bill would have required school districts to provide a “reasonable accommodation.”
“A reasonable accommodation may include a single-occupancy restroom, a unisex restroom, or the controlled use of a restroom, locker room, or shower room that is designated for use by faculty,” according to the bill, H.B. 1008. Opponents argued the measure would discriminate against transgender and gender nonconforming students and would be harmful to them both mentally and physically. “If I were a student in South Dakota right now, chances are I would not survive into adulthood,” American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio, who identifies as transgender, wrote in an open letter to South Dakota lawmakers last week.
Ryan T. Anderson, the William E. Simon fellow at The Heritage Foundation, said it was “unfortunate” Daugaard vetoed what he calls a “commonsense bill that protects the rights and interests of all students.” “Special interests and big businesses effectively lobbied the governor to veto a good bill because of the threats they made,” Anderson said. “Remarkably, the governor justified his veto by claiming the bill would undermine local control. Nothing could be further from the truth. It respected local control while ruling out one, and only one, bad option: boys in girls bathrooms.”
In a statement explaining his veto, Daugaard said “this bill seeks to impose statewide standards on ‘every restroom, locker room, and shower room located in a public elementary or secondary school.’”
“It removes,” he added, “the ability of local school districts to determine the most appropriate accommodations for their individual students and replaces that flexibility with a state mandate.”
The Student Physical Privacy Act was a direct response to what conservatives believe is an overreach by the Obama administration. The Department of Education threatened to withhold federal funding from a school district in Cook County, Ill., after a high school resisted giving a biological boy who identifies as a girl unrestrained access to the girls’ showers and locker rooms.
By forcing the transgender student—known in the media as “Student A”—to use a separate locker room, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights ruled, Township High School District 211 had discriminated against the student “on the basis of sex.” Unless the school changed its policies to allow Student A into the girls’ locker rooms, the education office warned, the district’s federal education dollars could be suspended or terminated for violating Title IX regulations.
Title IX is the federal law that bans discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program. Experts disagree whether the law applies to transgender persons’ use of separate facilities, although courts have ruled both ways. “Because of the pressures put on schools by the federal Department of Education since Title IX was reinterpreted, it’s only a matter of time before we get a transgender student who wants to use the shower room of the opposite biological sex and all hell will break loose,” Deutsch said. “There’s not going to be parents who will stand for that.”
The purpose of his bill, Deutsch added, “was to prevent that—to establish standards that have been in place since statehood that boys go into boys rooms and girls go into girls rooms.”Pro-transgender rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota praised the governor’s veto; the ACLU called it a “historic win for equality.”South Dakota is home to an estimated 1,360 transgender youth ages 13 to 19, according to the Williams Institute, a think tank at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law.
The frustration level among parents at this school has to be very high in that common sense says a 5 or 6 year old cannot comprehend a concept so psychologically difficult even for most adults, but this school expects a child of that age to understand they can be something that they know instinctively what sex they are and have been thought about their sexual difference among the other children.
But never mind the problems that are created to satisfy one child who at age 5 who believes he is not happen being who he is, and his parents that are willing to agree with him, and the ideology of some administrators caught up in the national weakness for political correctness instead of individual moral strength to solve complex problem with common sense and logic, results in the destruction of the entire school as well the lives of the children and parents that must fight for their right to an unbiased education.
Minnesota Kindergarten Students Forced to Confront Gender Identity Kelsey Harkness / @kelseyjharkness /
It all started with a book: “My Princess Boy.” On Oct. 14, 2015, the elementary school principal of a Minnesota charter school informed parents that in the coming days, the school would be taking steps to “support a student who is gender nonconforming.” Their 5- and 6-year-old children, parents were told in an email, “will listen to various books that celebrate differences and will be teaching children about the beauty of being themselves.” One of those books, the principal noted, would be “My Princess Boy,” a story that centers on a boy who sometimes likes to do traditional girl things like wear dresses.
In the email, the principal encouraged parents of kindergarten children to “have conversations at home about the appropriateness of comments or teasing relating to all protected classes,” specifically pertaining to gender identity. Details regarding the gender non-conforming student at the school, Nova Classical Academy in St. Paul, Minn., were kept confidential. But shortly after that initial email went out, parents at Nova Classical Academy learned that the child was also in kindergarten.
Immediately, some parents raised concern about the issue of gender identity being introduced to their 5- and 6-year old children. The concept, they believed, is too complicated for kindergartners to grasp.
And although the school hadn’t yet announced any new restroom policies, parents were concerned about their children using bathrooms with students of the opposite sex.
In their attempt to push back, parents grew frustrated with the school’s response. At least 10 students, The Daily Signal learned, transferred to another school. One mother, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her daughter’s identity, said she transferred her child because the classmate was having a “traumatic” effect on her daughter. “Our daughter—because she is a normal kindergartner who was raised in a family where we had some social norms regarding biological gender and sex—now she’s asking questions like, ‘How does a boy become a girl when they’re born with a penis?’ She has two brothers, so she’s wondering, how is this possible, as the boy is wearing a jumper and has ribbons and ponytails in his hair,” her mother said. Another mother, whose daughter is still in the same class as the gender nonconforming child, described a similar effect. That mother also requested to remain anonymous. “She said, ‘Mom, I think you can choose if you want to be a boy or a girl,’” the second mother said.
‘That Bothers Me’
Similar to how the debate over transgender rights has caused a culture war in states such as Washington and South Dakota, the situation at Nova Classical Academy also caused a rift in the tight-knit community.
The school is a competitive public charter school that consistently ranks high in school ratings. When it was granted its charter, Nova Classical Academy requested a waiver so that a majority of its school board members would be parents instead of educators. One goal of doing so, parents told The Daily Signal, was to foster parental involvement and oversight of curriculum. “We as a school community go through processes that are very lengthy, but in the end it always ends up being a conversation and a win-win situation,” one mother said. “And this situation, this is not what happened.”
For example, this mother explained, deciding when to begin the gender and sex curriculum required “a long, painful process.” Eventually, parents and educators agreed the program would begin in fifth grade, and address the topic of being transgender in 10th grade. But now, they thought, that decision was being flipped on its head, and the school was bypassing parental input to introduce these topics starting at a younger age. Parents were divided—many fully supported the reading of “My Princess Boy” and the curriculum that would go along with it. Some of those supporters launched a petition drive in which they and others—some from outside communities—could speak out.
“I am in favor of using materials such as this as part of the curriculum,” wrote Stephanie Schweser. “Teaching and promoting tolerance, understanding, and inclusion will better our school community and our community beyond.”
“I fully support the reading of ‘My Princess Boy’ or another book that specifically addresses gender nonconformity,” added Josephine Chung on the same petition. “A book is a useful and necessary tool for educating our children.” Those who objected were particularly concerned because Nova Classical Academy is a K-12 school. Although the school had not yet addressed bathroom policies, their 5- and 6-year-old children, some parents feared, might now be forced to share a bathroom with a senior of the opposite sex. “We are in a K-12 school, and that bothers me—there are some bathrooms that are shared. So I could have my daughter in the bathroom and a senior,” the mother whose kindergartner still attends the school told The Daily Signal, adding:
If we start to desensitize our children at a young age that it’s fine—and right now, I’m not worried that something bad is going to happen to her in her elementary school, but that she would get used to this. And eventually she could get put in a situation where she could be in harm’s way, because she’s innocently in the bathroom with someone who intends to cause harm.
The Daily Signal attempted to speak with Gender Justice, a group that is working with the Edwards family. They did not respond to a request for comment. In the radio interview, the Edwardses suggested Holden had been subject to bullying in the classroom, and thus, the gender curriculum was necessary. But the real problem, they said, stems from parents who objected to the school’s handling of their child.
“I would say his teacher has been pretty integral in stopping the bullying, at least in the classroom. I know that he comes to school now in the jumper, and that’s within the last month,” Holden’s father, Dave Edwards, said during the interview. He added:
I feel comfortable with what’s happening in his small, little classroom world. It’s these other parents coming in and objecting or starting petitions. And I think that really comes from a place of fear and ignorance on their part.
‘Understanding Gender Diversity’
Eric Williams, the school’s executive director, confirmed to The Daily Signal that in December, Nova Classical Academy invited the president of the National Association of School Psychologists, Todd Savage, “to educate the staff and community about gender nonconforming and transgender students.”
Parents who attended the event and spoke with The Daily Signal said they thought the session came from, in one parent’s words, ” a very progressive perspective.”
During the session, Savage highlighted a number of “school issues” that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students face.
The father who eventually removed his daughter from kindergarten at Nova Classical Academy over the situation said he had “no problem” with the presentation but thought it fell short in addressing his personal concerns.
“He had some specifics about how transgender kids have been oppressed in the past, and I think they’re legitimate,” the father said of Savage. “But he didn’t present anything in ways of addressing the argument of how the issue could be damaging for the education, especially of pre-adolescent kids. He didn’t address that issue at all.”
In an attempt to learn more, parents who objected to the book “My Princess Boy” organized their own informational session with a conservative group, the Minnesota Family Council. Unlike the session with Savage, the school refused to associate itself with the event.
Multiple sources told The Daily Signal that advocates of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons—affiliated with Out Front, Gender Justice, and Transforming Family—attended the session. Five minutes before the event ended, parents said, the LGBT advocates lined the hallways leading to the exit holding signs that read, “We love our transgender kids.”
“A piece of that was hard, because I just wanted to say I love transgender kids, too,” the father, who attended the meeting with an older daughter who continues to attend Nova Classical Academy, said. He added:
This was so obviously orchestrated; their only purpose was to try to be intimidating. And my eighth-grade daughter was intimidated. It caused her stress and anxiety. And if you look at the definition of bullying, the irony of this whole thing is, that qualifies as bullying.
‘No One’s Having That Conversation’
Four months after the lower school principal sent out the initial email, the situation is ongoing. In an attempt to quell concerns, Nova Classical Academy adopted an “emergency” policy for transgender and gender nonconforming students. A parent at the school said that policy states:
1) Boys and girls may wear whichever uniform they want.
2) Students requesting access to a bathroom conforming to his or her gender identity will be granted or denied permission on a case-by-case basis.
3) Preferred gender pronouns also will be required on a case-by-case basis.
Some parents were unhappy with the temporary solution and called on the school to answer one simple question: Will their elementary school children run into a student of the opposite sex in bathrooms and locker rooms? So far, the school administrators have evaded that question by telling parents in a Q& A handout that “no student or family has made that request.” Other parents are asking the school more daunting question: What kind of impact does introducing the concept of transgender and gender identity have on their 5- and 6-year-old children? “I don’t think anyone has taken the time to think about what are the developmental stages of each age bracket and how might that superimpose something that is not natural into their development?” the mother who removed her daughter from the school said. “That piece to me, as a mom, is really, really valuable. No one’s having that conversation.” The mother added:
If physiologists and medical doctors don’t quite understand gender fluidity, then why do we try to impose this on people who are just trying to figure out how to tie their shoe? It’s not fair. It’s not just.
The Daily Signal learned that as of the last school board meeting, some students have left the school since the dispute over “My Princess Boy” began. And for the first time in Nova Classical Academy’s 12-year history, applications were down significantly . In an email to The Daily Signal, Dr. Eric Williams, executive director of Nova Classical Academy, sought to explain the decline.
While it is correct that a handful of prospective parents have indicated that the reason they did not re-apply to Nova for the 2016-17 school year or declined offers of enrollment was due to the gender nonconformity issue at the school, there are multiple reasons that have contributed more substantially to the lower number of applications received at this time.
For the first time in a almost 10 years, Nova did not host an annual School Showcase/Open House at our school this year– an event that typically draws 200+ prospective parents and their children. Also, this year we chose not to host weekly tours throughout the fall and early winter for families of children entering kindergarten through grade eight. These decisions were made almost exclusively on the basis of allocation of staff resources and the long waiting lists the school has year after year.
Although the school eventually replaced “My Princess Boy” with poems portraying a similar message, the three families who spoke with The Daily Signal said they fear there’s no turning back.
“It seems like they’re very influenced by the way the culture is moving,” said the mother whose daughter remains enrolled. She and her husband said they intend to “stick it out,” but they’re “trying to decide at what point is just too much.”
“The daily influence of this little boy, who very much looks like a girl, all the accessories … they’re really doing it up with him,” she said. “But for now we’re feeling convicted to stay and be a part of the work of making sure that we did everything we could do save this school.” Since publication, this article has been updated to reflect the number of students who transferred out of Nova Classical Academy because of “nonconformity issues.”
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