All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[PwrdOn]

People's political ideologies are shaped by their economic background. Betsy Devos was raised by her billionaire father and was sent to a private Christian school at a very young age. Believe me, if she could ensure that every impoverished child in America (Regardless of race, Black, White, Hispanic) would attend a private Christian school, you better believe that she would do it.

I wouldn't be surprised if she denotes charity to poor minority neighborhoods, and despite rolling with Trump, it wouldn't surprise me in the least, if she is in Koch Libertarian camp, more so, than the Mercers, and their brand of right wing nationalism.

Not a chance in hell. The only reason this push toward private schools started in the first place is because white parents wanted to avoid integration, and figured out that they could reimpose de facto segregation by just pricing the black students out. As far as her donations, it seems like most of it goes toward religious organizations and lobbying groups, not seeing anything about helping disadvantaged youths.

[The no face guy]

Not a chance in hell. The only reason this push toward private schools started in the first place is because white parents wanted to avoid integration, and figured out that they could reimpose de facto segregation by just pricing the black students out. As far as her donations, it seems like most of it goes toward religious organizations and lobbying groups, not seeing anything about helping disadvantaged youths.

Provide the evidence to your claim. If you think her schooling was primarily about racial integration than post a credible link. Provide the empirical evidence. What we do know is that her husband and her have both donated tons of money to voucher schools in poor black & white communities in Michigan because they believe 1) private schools are more effective (because they are libertarians) and 2) they are Christians who are part of America's cultural war that has been raging for decades.

If you provide a credible link to your claim, I will consider your statement a truth, otherwise it sounds like your drinking the whiteness theory kool aid, and should be debating the likes of Alex Jones and his fantasy land.

[PwrdOn]

Provide the evidence to your claim. If you think her schooling was primarily about racial integration than post a credible link. Provide the empirical evidence. What we do know is that her husband and her have both donated tons of money to voucher schools in poor black & white communities in Michigan because they believe 1) private schools are more effective (because they are libertarians) and 2) they are Christians who are part of America's cultural war that has been raging for decades.

If you provide a credible link to your claim, I will consider your statement a truth, otherwise it sounds like your drinking the whiteness theory kool aid, and should be debating the likes of Alex Jones and his fantasy land.

The connection between school vouchers and segregation should really be common knowledge:

https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...hool-vouchers/

Also, I just looked up whiteness theory on Wikipedia, and I must say, white people creating an entire field of study devoted to a bunch of topics that are blatantly obvious to everyone else is just about the whitest thing ever.

[The no face guy]

The connection between school vouchers and segregation should really be common knowledge:

https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...hool-vouchers/

Also, I just looked up whiteness theory on Wikipedia, and I must say, white people creating an entire field of study devoted to a bunch of topics that are blatantly obvious to everyone else is just about the whitest thing ever.

This article provides no empirical truth to the claim that Betsy DeVos is seeking to extend the voucher system to impose racial segregation. The article talks about the history of voucher schools and it's link to racism in the state of Virginia 60 years ago, and than attaches Betsy Devos name to it, and while I whole heartedly agree that racial segregation, has been a consequence of many voucher schools, particularly in the racist south, she is not going to bed at night with a white hood over her head dreaming of racial segregation. We know this because I have provided empirical proof that she has donated to voucher schools in poor black communities, because she is a libertarian, and libertarians believe that everything should be privatized.

Here is some more empirical truth that Betsy Devos is promoting private voucher schools because she believes it offers better opportunities to urban poor children. Here is Success Academy, the Conservative darling of private charter schools that they love to cite in articles like the Weekly standard, as to why public schools are inefficient.

https://nypost.com/2019/09/07/new-bo...ing-academics/

and here is the empirical evidence that she supports it, what did Betsy Devos donate $150,000 dollars to, oh I know... the success academy!

https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/m...-giving-217695

Betsy Devos is a country club republican, who believes that everything is better off privatized, (Schools, old age pensions, health care, electricity, prisons) she's an ideologue, and libertarianism is the scary kool aid ideology of the rich.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

FDA Chief Warns Coronavirus ‘Not Yet Contained’ As U.S. Begins To Reopen

Photos showed crowds of people gathering without masks in various states over Memorial Day weekend.

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GOP Gov. Rejects Divide Over Wearing Face Masks: ‘This Is Not About Politics’

Ohio’s Mike DeWine joined North Dakota’s Doug Burgum in urging people to set aside politics and put on masks.

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Arkansas Gov. Defends Easing COVID-19 Rules After Largest Single-Day Case Rise

Asa Hutchinson said people can’t “cloister” themselves at home and that handling the epidemic is a matter of practicing self-discipline and testing.

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The New York Times Fills Entire Cover With Names Of Coronavirus Victims In The U.S.

The Sunday paper lists the names and lives of nearly 1,000 victims, which only represent around 1% of the total death toll in the U.S.

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2 Missouri Hairstylists Potentially Exposed Over 100 Clients To Coronavirus

The Springfield-Greene County Health Department said it would contact all relevant customers and staff members at the Great Clips location.

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Trump Flips Out After Biden Ad Rips Him For Golfing Amid Growing Death Toll

Trump golfed twice over the weekend as the coronavirus death toll in the United State approached 100,000.

[worstblogever]

Trump Flips Out After Biden Ad Rips Him For Golfing Amid Growing Death Toll

Trump golfed twice over the weekend as the coronavirus death toll in the United State approached 100,000.

Passed 100,000. CDC has it at 105,000. (Add the "Covid-19" category with the "Covid-19 and Pneumonia" category.)

And that number, per CDC leadership, would be under-counting the real number.

[The Cool Thatguy]

The counterargument would be that the federal government is spending a lot to offset the costs of COVID-19. One could certainly see funding to private schools in these unique and rare circumstances as being part of that, as this is not an appropriate time to play favorites, especially with mandated school closures creating new expenses and complications.

The private schools here didn't do anything wrong, but are still suffering financial costs as a result of the pandemic.

They do something wrong by teaching hate. They opted out of public education, so they should pay their own way

[jetengine]

Well this sounds potentially awful and dangerous to those with food allergies.

How does this help the food companies ? What does it actually DO for them ?

[The no face guy]

I use the term libertarian loosely btw, as a Christian Devos is a social conservative, so unlike the Koch family she most likely does not support the war on drugs, but from an economic standpoint she is strictly libertarian. Privatize, privatize, privatize.

What bugs me most about private schools, is that they get to cherry pick the students they want, so they siphon all the bright lights, and leave all the problem kids for the public school system to deal with. They have smaller classroom sizes and then turn around and say, see we teach better, it's such bull.

[The Cool Thatguy]

I use the term libertarian loosely btw, as a Christian Devos is a social conservative, so unlike the Koch family she most likely does not support the war on drugs, but from an economic standpoint she is strictly libertarian. Privatize, privatize, privatize.

What bugs me most about private schools, is that they get to cherry pick the students they want, so they siphon all the bright lights, and leave all the problem kids for the public school system to deal with. They have smaller classroom sizes and then turn around and say, see we teach better, it's such bull.

Yeah, pretty much

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/n...06private.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/educatio...chools/282416/

[JamesonAnders]

nIf the text of the law clearly excludes private schools, than I would have a problem with this. I'm not sure it does.

A politician saying something doesn't make it true.

Private schools are not excluded and that's not the issue. This administration is arbitrarily and purposely reinterpreting the rules specifically spelled out in the act to give preference to rich white people over brown poor people.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted a profile of Matt Richardson, who was a candidate for the Washington State Senate back in 2010 trying to unseat the legendary CSGOPOTD, Pam Roach. The main problem with his candidacy was that at the age of 16 he was charged with molesting two family relatives, aged 8 and 5 at the time. Richardson’s far lesser flaw that’s still pretty wild, was that his campaign website compared abortion to slavery, even using the phrase “Modern Emancipation” in his calls to prevent it. He’s not exactly suited for office, just given those two facts.

It was on this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted a profile of Molly White, whose background prior to being elected to office was as a radical anti-abortion advocate. She still proudly traveled with displays of plastic fetuses in her SUV ready to go, and blames the fact that she herself got two abortions and blames it on rampant substance abuse at that stage of her life. There’s also her fervent passion for the 2nd Amendment that saw her pander to fellow gun enthusiasts by posing with guns almost as big as she is. But then, the Texas GOP learned how off her rocker Molly White really is as she proceeded to then make headlines for all the worst reasons but weeks into being sworn into office. On January 29th, 2015, a group of Muslim constituents had planned to visit Austin for Texas Muslim Capitol Day, where they would seek out lawmakers to discuss policy, as part of an event hosted by the Council of American Islamic Relations. Molly White, however, had heard somewhere that CAIR was considered to be the 82nd top terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates, and that was good enough reason for her to make sure that no Muslim coming to the event had nefarious intent. So, she went on Facebook, where she made a post instructing her staff to confirm that these Muslims they were good, loyal Americans, by taking them to her office where an Israeil flag would be present on her desk, and where they would “ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws. We will see how long they stay in my office.” All right, there’s a lot to unpack here. First off, that’s bigoted as all get out. Second… why did she have an Israeli flag in her office? And why did she think that Muslims would turn away for it like a vampire seeing a cross? Not even two months went by, and Molly White was at it again, shaking her fist at the sky, and showing she probably flunked social studies, because she was under the impression that she could undermine a Supreme Court ruling, drafting Texas’ HB 2555, which was meant to overturn rulings to overturn bans on same sex marriage. She also filed HB 2553 around the same time, a bill meant to allow Texas businesses the right to refuse goods or services to anyone based on their own religious grounds. (Because that wasn’t something that Southern states didn’t argue to try and keep discriminating against African Americans after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, either.) Her love of denying LGBTQ rights really does mean something to her, as she was photographed with several Texas Republicans celebrating the state amending the Texas constitution to ban same sex marriage with delicious cake. It seemed like White might get through the rest of 2015 without making an arse of herself, but on December 9th, 2015, she decided to give her opinion about President Barack Obama (uh oh). She apparently thinks he’s in league with the Muslim Brotherhood and should be arrested and tried for treason against the United States. Mercifully, Molly White was defeated by Hugh Shine by 104 votes in the 2016 GOP Primary for her Texas House seat. As such, we'll move on and start profiling a different wacky Republican on this date instead.

It was on this date in 2017, as well as 2018, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted a profile of Bob Gannon, a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly who should not be confused with the pig-faced nemesis of Link in The Legend of Zelda series, but we could understand how people could get him mixed up with an evil warlord with a pig face. In his short one term and change in office, Gannon has already made an ass of himself on numerous occasions. It was in December of 2015 when Gannon reacted to a shooting in a Wisconsin mall by advising more citizens to practice concealed carry and “help clean society of these scumbags” in vigilante killings. On January 6th, 2016, Gannon put out a press release with false statistics blaming a higher murder rate on “the black population”, who he seemed to claim were also deliberately choosing crime over employment. Well, that story gets worse. When Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca began to criticize Gannon for his comments on the floor of the Wisconsin State Assembly, he didn’t exactly take it too well, with his rebuttal coming in the form of a middle finger flashed at Barca. And you know it’s bad when even fellow Republicans find your behavior distasteful. Bob Gannon tends to get called out for his rhetoric, or dishonesty, or d***ishness within the Wisconsin State Assembly, and likes to throw around the phrases “leftists” and “liberals” in response to Democrats, using the terms deliberately as epithets. The victimization complex in him is strong, nearly as strong as his desire to shoot black people in the street before they have a chance to commit a crime, apparently. Looking to Bob Gannon’s brief legislative record, and he’s already managed to support legislation as heinous as SB 533, which was designed to disenfranchise voters by prohibiting municipalities from carrying out the issue of identification cards (you can’t vote without the Voter ID the GOP require in Wisconsin, and guess what? They’re closing everywhere you can get one!) But he also co-sponsored AB 950, which would have blocked local police departments from preventing immigration status inquiries, had it passed. Add in his sponsorship of AB 192, to drug test welfare recipients (which never ceases to be overturned as unconstitutional, or a failed conservative policy prior to judges tossing it out as a violation of the Fourth Amendment), and his vote for a ban on abortion at 20 weeks. In October of 2017, Bob Gannon was found dead in his pickup truck, apparently of natural causes, at the age of 58.

On this date in 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Alaska State Senator Pete Kelly, who originally served for six years in the Alaska state legislature from 1994-2000 before taking twelve years off and returning to office in 2012. In that first tenure, Kelly’s most noteworthy legislative victory was to pass legislation to allow for wolves to be hunted by helicopter. Because nothing is more charming than trying to side-step federal wildlife protections for douchebag hunters with their own personal choppers looking to trophy hunt. During Pete Kelly’s second term in office, though, he started to turn more heads, and not just because he advanced to be the President of the Alaska State Senate. Back in 2014, Alaska’s state legislators were debating an increase in cases of fetal alcohol syndrome being documented in newborns around the state, when Kelly threw his two cents in during the discussion on providing better access to birth control around the state, and instead submitted legislation that would use state funding to place pregnancy tests in vending machines in bars around the state. His colleagues were baffled. Anyway, Kelly had other embarrassing things that weren’t his own mouth to also help make him face a tougher road to re-election… like the fact that his 30-year-old son was arrested for sexually assaulting a 13-year old, as well as exposing his genitals and masturbating in public to another child under 16. That earned the younger Kelly. because of course he did) a six year prison sentence. Meanwhile, Pete Kelly and the ministry he founded, Humble Raven Ministries, would rather protect families from the dread threat of same sex couples getting married… If that wasn’t enough to sink his campaign, during his debate against his opponent, Democrat Scott Kawasaki, Kelly also denied the science proving the threat of Climate Change, which in Alaska, where they literally are watching the glaciers melt, was enough to topple Pete Kelly fom office, as he lost by 179 votes. We hope that he does not get a third chance at reaching office, and will set aside his profile at this time and take a look at another kooky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 872-45, since this was established in July 2014.)

[worstblogever]

Cody Henson

Welcome to what is the 872nd original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be discussing Cody Henson, a former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives who served District 113 from 2017 until his resignation in July of 2019. Now, while we were concerned with Henson’s voting record, including how he was the co-sponsor of Voter ID bills to attempt to suppress the vote, or that he co-sponsored a bill to allow guns to church services, or how he voted for a bill to force local sheriffs to cooperate with ICE agents during immigration sweeps…


We’d more like to talk about how Henson’s career was undone by accusations from his wife of domestic abuse, which she followed up by getting a protective order against him. Henson was charged with cyberstalking, and plead guilty to avoid jail time, settling for a sentence of 18 months probation for all the mental abuse and harassment he directed towards his wife. At first, he plead guilty, and wanted to finish out at least the rest of his term without resigning, but under pressure to leave office, caved in and announced his resignation in July of 2019. He won’t be missed, and we hope that his wife and children thrive without him lurking about.

[Kieran_Frost]

What bugs me most about private schools, is that they get to cherry pick the students they want, so they siphon all the bright lights, and leave all the problem kids for the public school system to deal with. They have smaller classroom sizes and then turn around and say, see we teach better, it's such bull.

Well there is something to be said for creating an academic environment where doing well, and good grades is encouraged, rather than shamed by the student body. One major advantage (in the UK, at-least) of private schools is you can kick out the trouble pupils very easily. In state schools... it is NOT easy, and takes up so much time for the teachers and senior staff.

[Mister Mets]

Not a chance in hell. The only reason this push toward private schools started in the first place is because white parents wanted to avoid integration, and figured out that they could reimpose de facto segregation by just pricing the black students out. As far as her donations, it seems like most of it goes toward religious organizations and lobbying groups, not seeing anything about helping disadvantaged youths.

Many conservatives support a system of charter schools/ school choice, where private schools would be reimbursed for taking in the children of parents who would otherwise be unable to afford it.

The nofaceguy notes that DeVos has been rather active in sending money that way.

They do something wrong by teaching hate. They opted out of public education, so they should pay their own way

I suspect that not all private schools teach hate.

This also gets into the question of whether the government should use COVID-19 funding to select winners and losers, or whether those arguments should be paused until afterwards.

I use the term libertarian loosely btw, as a Christian Devos is a social conservative, so unlike the Koch family she most likely does not support the war on drugs, but from an economic standpoint she is strictly libertarian. Privatize, privatize, privatize.

What bugs me most about private schools, is that they get to cherry pick the students they want, so they siphon all the bright lights, and leave all the problem kids for the public school system to deal with. They have smaller classroom sizes and then turn around and say, see we teach better, it's such bull.

There isn't a perfect solution.

If you take away charter schools, and vouchers, all that happens is that less lower-class and middle-class students have the opportunities afforded to kids from upper-class families. There will never be the political will to ban private schools.

A ban on vouchers and charter schools can prevent some of the siphoning of the bright lights, although that is worse for those students.

If public schools are hindered by policies that make it difficult to deal with problem students, the solution wouldn't be to bring in more "bright lights," whose parents wanted to take them out of schools where problem students cause disruptions, but to give public schools more flexibility to deal with disruptive students.

Private schools are not excluded and that's not the issue. This administration is arbitrarily and purposely reinterpreting the rules specifically spelled out in the act to give preference to rich white people over brown poor people.

If the rules were spelled out in a way that include private schools, DeVos' guidance is accurate.

Well there is something to be said for creating an academic environment where doing well, and good grades is encouraged, rather than shamed by the student body. One major advantage (in the UK, at-least) of private schools is you can kick out the trouble pupils very easily. In state schools... it is NOT easy, and takes up so much time for the teachers and senior staff.

I certainly agree.

I also suspect that a school's ability to kick out trouble pupils encourages many of them to exhibit better behavior.