A WaPo article discusses a quiet, but very clever effort by America’s theocratic CN (Christian nationalist) wealth and power movement to get access to more tax dollars:
Texas may pay schools to usecurriculum critics call overtly ChristianTexas public education leaders are proposing to pay school districts to teach elementary language arts lessons that critics say disproportionately focus on Christianity.Worries about the separation of church and state in the Texas curriculum were previously reported by the 74, an education news website, when the materials were released last week.Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath denied that the lessons push Christian beliefs. [that is not credible]“It’s hard to understand or to teach Western civilization or European history without understanding the impact or the influence religion had on Martin Luther and his treatise and Martin Luther King Jr.,” said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers. “But there’s a difference between providing context of the circumstances and actually injecting stories and fables and religious indoctrination into the curriculum.”Capo said the state starved school districts for money to the point that they have to adopt this curriculum because districts get $60 per student to offset the costs. “You’ve created a funding shortage for school districts and then thrown them this carrot,” he said.
Despite the rise of inflation, Texas legislators have not given teachers a significant raise in about five years, said Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity with the nonpartisan tax policy group Every Texan.
The new curriculum gives a chance for some districts to replace their books that could be five or 10 years old with new materials at a defrayed cost.
“It’s not like there’s much of a choice,” he said.
Many view the new curriculum as part of a ploy by Republican state leaders to hollow public schools and eventually privatize education. [that is how I see it]
Note the brilliant simplicity of the CN tactic to claw its way into more tax dollars. They starve public schools and then offer some desperately relief in the form of stealth radical Christian theocracy education.
For decades, getting more tax dollars has been a key piece of CN dogma. By arguing there is no separation of church from state, tax dollars could be more easily used to pay for literally all CN activities.
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
An interesting WaPo article focuses on Faux News’ Sean Hannity’s persistent but failed efforts to get DJT to say he will not employ political persecution of political opponents if he gets re-elected:
Even Sean Hannity can’t get Trump to back away from wanting revenge[Last December, Hannity tried to get] Trump to disavow any intent to subvert democracy and seize power, to kneecap the hand-wringers on the left and in the old guard who were offering warnings about Trump’s second term.
“Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight,” Hannity lobbed to Trump, “you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.”
“Except for Day One,” Trump chirped, to the amusement of the audience. Trump has since argued that this was just a joke, .... But this was not the answer Hannity was seeking. The Fox News host spent decades tuning his antenna to understand what candidates should and shouldn’t say and was trying to keep Trump on-radar. He failed.[Then on Wednesday June 5, 2024,] Hannity overtly wanted Trump to assure viewers and America that he wasn’t going to target his political opponents if reelected — an assurance, in effect, that he would close the barn door even though the horse was well over the horizon.
“My question is a very serious one,” Hannity said. “People are claiming you want retribution. People are claiming you want what has happened to you done to Democrats. Would you do that ever?”
“Look, what’s happened to me has never happened in this country before,” Trump replied, “and it has to stop, because—” Hannity jumped in. “Wait a minute!” he interjected. “I want to hear that again. It has to stop.”
There you go! Trump said the thing that will give him enough cover for the next few months. Whew. But then, as when Trump was asked about Jeffrey Epstein this month, the former president kept talking.
“Focus on those that want people to believe that you want retribution, that you will use the system of justice to go after your political enemies,” Hannity repeated after Trump had gone on a tangent about how he’s “a very legitimate person.”
They’re wrong, Trump said, repeating the line Hannity enjoyed that it had to stop. Uh, but! “I would have every right to go after them,” Trump continued. “And it’s easy, because it’s Joe Biden, and you see all the criminality, all of the money that’s going into the family and him, all of this money from China, from Russia, from Ukraine.”
Another tangent, this time accusing Biden’s family of taking money from a Russian woman, which isn’t true. (“Turned out to be true,” Trump said of the story, without Hannity offering any objection.) More riffing from Trump and then Hannity tried again.
“Will you pledge to restore equal justice, equal application of our laws, end this practice of weaponization?” he asked. “Is that a promise you’re going to make?”
“Well, you have to do it,” Trump replied. “But it’s awful.” Then he gave the game away. “Look,” Trump continued, “I know you want me to say something so nice.” “No, I don’t want you to say!” Hannity objected, a claim that you may evaluate for yourself. “I’m asking.”
“But I don’t want to look naive,” Trump continued. “What they have done to the Republican Party, they want to arrest on no crime. They want to arrest the person that won the nomination in a landslide.”He’s popular, the indictments are bad, etc., for a while. And then: “I will do everything in my power not to let — but there’s tremendous criminality here,” Trump said. “What they’re doing to me, if it’s going to continue, we’re really not going to have much of a country left. It’s really — it is weaponization. You call it ‘lawfare.’ You call it — some people call it just ‘warfare.’”
It is clear that DJT will abuse his power and try prosecute and imprison at least some political opponents if he gets re-elected. Faux News and Hannity are idiots for not realizing by now that DJT usually cannot be reasoned with.
____________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________
From the Canceling Germaine Files: From time to time I check out a different pro-Trump site to see how it deals with inconvenient comments and how or if Disqus relays that feedback to the commenter. The usual response I get to posting inconvenient fact and reasoning is being blocked or banned. Today I tried out the pro-Trump site BizPac Review, which has this pro-Trump article posted:
Russell Brand: ‘I don’t know how you could do
anything other than vote for Donald Trump’
Actor and comedian Russell Brand was clear this week that he sees through the smoke screen that is the Democratic Party’s approach to counter Donald Trump.
Brand interviewed RNC spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko on his new Stay Free podcast premiering Friday and shared his thoughts on the November election, questioning how any freedom-loving American could pull the lever for President Joe Biden.
“In a straight choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, if you care about democracy, if you care about freedom, I don’t know how you could do anything other than vote for Donald Trump for precisely the reasons that they claim that you can’t,” he told Pipko.
“They act as if a vote for Donald Trump is almost like you’re directly voting for Armageddon, like you see hysterical performances outside of courtrooms, endless MSNBC bombast,” he continued. “But I’m starting to think that no, a greater threat to democracy is this kind of technological feudalism, that tells you that it cares about you and that it’s protecting vulnerable people, all the while increasing censorship, increasing the funding of wars, increasing the division between ordinary Americans.”
The weaponization of the legal system is proving to be harmful for Democrats as Brand took note of the difference between reality and discourse.
“For a long time, I’ve been concerned about the snobbery and the contempt and condemnation in which people that support Donald Trump are plainly held by his detractors,” Brand said. “And this is while you have an administration that’s emulating his policies, plagiarizing from Donald Trump, while simultaneously criminalizing him from the weaponization of the legal system.”
I checked BizPac’s credentials and the site seemed to be reasonably characterized as pro-Trump. MBFC did an assessment, and the site claims to be a conservative news and opinion website founded by Jack Furnarni in 2009. The about page says it is a “political news website that provides breaking news and analysis unfiltered by the liberal bias that has eroded the media’s credibility. With public trust in the press sputtering at an all-time low, BizPac Review fills the void with its unparalleled coverage of current events that the mainstream media intentionally ignore.”
Out of curiosity, I posted this inconvenient comment in response to the crackpot blither that Mr. Brand spewed:
In the old days, Disqus would change the status of pending to blocked or banned. Now it doesn’t do anything, and just leaves comments in pending status. I presume that has to do with making more money by keeping users in the dark and allowing paying sleaze sites to do their dirty work in secret.
So far, so good. BizPac moderates comments. Good for them. An hour later I checked to see what Disqus said about my comment. Pending, so so far, so good.
I want back to BizPac to check on my comment. As I suspected, BizPac deleted my comment. Disqus told me nothing about it.
The comments to Mr. Brand’s nonsense
did not include my comments
Q: Where did Germaine’s comments go?
A: Into the black hole of radical right cancel cultureThe tally so far is I’ve been blocked or banned at all 11 (or is it 12 by now?) pro-Trump sites I’ve tried to post inconvenient truth at. I am losing count, but the result is now quite predictable.
DJT, his GOP and propagandists constantly complain about cancel culture by the left. What a bunch of shameless hypocrites.
No comments:
Post a Comment