A judge declined Friday to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case against former President Donald Trump.
Judge Scott McAfee found that the defendants had “failed to meet their burden of proving that the District Attorney acquired an actual conflict of interest in this case through her personal relationship and recurring travels with her lead prosecutor.” However, he said that the record “highlights a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team,” stating that Nathan Wade must either withdraw or Willis and her whole office can choose to step aside to solve the problem.
McAfee wrote that disqualifying Willis was not necessary “when a less drastic and sufficiently remedial option is available.”
So, if I have this right, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee decided to pull a James Comey, Robert Mueller, and Robert Hur:
Write a ruling saying Fani Willis and Nathan Wade are guilty as hell, have no ethics, and aren't good role models….BUT Fani can stay
“The Court therefore concludes that the prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options,” he wrote. “The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment. See O.C.G.A. § 15-18-5. Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.”
Trump co-defendant Michael Roman alleged in a Jan. 8 motion that Willis financially benefited from awarding her romantic partner Nathan Wade a lucrative contract to work as special prosecutor on the case when he took her on vacations using money earned from his position.
Willis and Wade both denied the relationship began before he was hired, though a long-time friend of Willis, Robin Yeartie, testified that it began in 2019. They claimed the expenses were split roughly equally, with Willis paying him back in cash.
McAfee wrote that an “odor of mendacity remains” about the testimony of Willis and Wade.
“The Court is not under an obligation to ferret out every instance of potential dishonesty from each witness or defendant ever presented in open court,” he wrote. “Yet reasonable questions about whether the District Attorney and her hand-selected lead SADA testified untruthfully about the timing of their relationship further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.”
BREAKING: Judge McAFEE has *rejected* a motion to disqualiy Fani WIllis, saying Trump et al failed to prove an *actual* conflict of interest.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead defense counsel, said in a statement that they will “use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place.”
“While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade, including the financial benefits, testifying untruthfully about when their personal relationship began, as well as Willis’ extrajudicial MLK ‘church speech,’ where she played the race card and falsely accused the defendants and their counsel of racism,” Sadow said.
McAfee’s ruling addressed other grounds defendants used to call for disqualification, including Willis’ failure to disclose gifts from Wade on her financial disclosures and a church speech she gave in January blaming the allegations on race.
He called the speech “legally improper,” noting that this kind of public comment “creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into.”
“The time may well have arrived for an order preventing the State from mentioning the case in any public forum to prevent prejudicial pretrial publicity, but that is not the motion presently before the Court,” he wrote.
As for witnesses, McAfee found Yeartie’s testimony raised doubts about the testimony of Willis and Wade but “lacked context and detail.” He found that he could not “place any stock in the testimony of Terrance Bradley,” Wade’s former law partner.
Texts revealed Bradley, who said on the witness stand that he “could not recall” details about their relationship, shared many details with defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, even suggesting witnesses she could subpoena to confirm them.
“His inconsistencies, demeanor, and generally non-responsive answers left far too brittle a foundation upon which to build any conclusions,” McAfee wrote.
McAfee issued a ruling Wednesday dismissing six of the counts in the indictment that did not offer defendants “enough information to prepare their defenses intelligently.”
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Wouldn’t it be great if Canada had a few actual journalists who could look into the RCMP and military and maybe figure out if the same was done for Trudeau etc.?
Canada is much more controlled in most ways than the U.S. though.
Bombshell new report says the US government is hiding documents that incriminate the deep state for spying on Trump and election interference, sources tell @mtaibbi and @shellenbergerpic.twitter.com/qKBMNcDiei
A new study by The Heartland Institute finds that mail-in ballot fraud significantly impacted the results of the 2020 election and that Trump would have “almost certainly won” without the massive, often illegal expansion of mail-in voting.https://t.co/djJ87Py4hr
The ADJUDICATION ROOMS across every battleground state in the Nov 3, 2020 election,
“I read her a Trump Republican ballot, as soon as she entered it into the system the ballot DEFAULTED on the screen to a Biden Democratic ballot.” pic.twitter.com/qAqKyYbKFZ
🚨BREAKING🚨Your overthrown government CONFIRMS the back up plan the fascists orchestrated for the Nov 3, 2020 election.
“So 120,000 Mail In Ballots that already been counted, posted and done. So my question is where did the UNOPENED 70,000 ballots go? and no body knows.” https://t.co/aGszigpoXqpic.twitter.com/MbmiKULGXN
EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2024-02-15 04:34:032024-02-15 11:19:31ELECTION RIGGING: Not just by the FBI, but the CIA had a hand in trying to throw the election for Clinton in 2020
“It was so terrifying, these rioters tried to overthrow the most powerful government on earth armed with cameras, selfie sticks and flags. I’m shaking just thinking about it..”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2023-11-18 04:34:262023-11-18 07:12:12Newly released video from Jan 6 shows protestors LED THROUGH BUILDING by POLICE!
Documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests reveal that the main professional organization of obstetricians and gynecologists (OB-GYNs) in the United States accepted over $11 million in taxpayer money to promote the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines and claim that they are safe for pregnant women and their unborn children.
This is according to fetal-maternal medicine specialist Dr. James Thorp, who conducted an investigation into the massive damage the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are doing to women, especially to those who are pregnant and their unborn children.
In an interview with COVID-19 vaccine expert and Big Pharma critic Dr. Naomi Wolf, Thorp laid out how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) created what he called a “covenant of death” with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) – the largest professional organization for OB-GYNs in the United States and the rest of the Americas – in exchange for $11 million.
“What’s in this covenant of death? … They took well over $11 million. They signed the covenant with death, and they’re not allowed to deviate one iota from the lethal narrative of HHS. If they do, they will be liable for paying back every single penny, which they’ve already pocketed,” said Thorp.
Thorp and Wolf noted that the contract uncovered by the FOIA requests provided for the return of the money to the HHS if ACOG did not adhere to the government’s “‘safe and effective’ for pregnant women and new moms script presented to them” by the federal government.
He added that ACOG is not the only professional medical association to have accepted money from the government. Other recipients of government funding in exchange for promoting the COVID-19 vaccines include the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
“[These organizations], to this day, are the evil organizations that perpetrated this crime on the world,” said Thorp.
“Doctors who treat the most vulnerable population in the world – pregnant women and their unborn babies – have been and are coerced to lie by organizations that oversee these doctors, that were paid to lie,” remarked Wolf. “At least one primary goal, of all this madness and evil of the past three years, whatever brand you chose, was to ruin women’s menses and to damage human reproduction at a global level. Team Pfizer or Team Moderna? A distinction without a difference.” (Related: If your doctor told you to get “vaccinated” for COVID, they were BRIBED, evidence shows.)
$13 billion in funding redirected to “influencers” to promote COVID-19 vaccines
In addition to the approximately $11 million provided by the government to ACOG, Thorp noted that his FOIA investigations – launched with the help of his wife, attorney Maggie Thorp – revealed that $13 billion in taxpayer money went to fund “influencers” to promote the mRNA vaccines.
Most of this $13 billion went to a variety of individuals and organizations. Notable are the organizations like ACOG that focus on medicine for pregnant women, such as the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the main medical certification board for practicing obstetricians and gynecologists in the U.S. and Canada, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, an NGO.
According to Thorp, there are about 300 major organizations and influencers – including religious institutions like synagogues and churches – that accepted money from the HHS and the CDC in a “psyops campaign … to convince the United States and the entire world that this deadly shot was safe, effective and necessary in the most vulnerable population – pregnant women.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2023-09-07 05:18:502023-09-08 06:03:34Largest organization of OB-GYNs in America accepted $11 million from HHS to promote COVID-19 vaccines to PREGNANT WOMEN
Former President Donald Trump’s assertions during the 2020 presidential campaign about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings have proven to be accurate.
Trump routinely criticized then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden about his son’s dealings with Ukrainian, Russian and Chinese associates when he was on the campaign trail, most notably at the presidential debates leading up to the November 2020 election.
WATCH:
“China ate your lunch, Joe. And no wonder your son goes in and, wha—, he takes out billions of dollars. He takes out billions of dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars. And also, while we’re at it, why is it — just out of curiosity — the mayor of Moscow’s wife gave your son three and a half million dollars,” Trump said to Biden during a September 2020 presidential debate, according to an official transcript from the Commission on Presidential Debates.
“That is not true,” Biden retorted.
“What did he do to deserve it? What did he do with Burisma?” Trump pressed.
“None of that is true,” Biden shot back.
“My son did nothing wrong at Burisma,” Biden said later in the debate.
” I think he did,” Trump retorted.
“He doesn’t want to let me answer, because he knows I have the truth. His position has been totally thoroughly discredited,” Biden claimed.
“By who?” Trump asked.
“By everybody. Well, by the media, by our allies,” Biden answered.
Trump and Biden continued clashing at the September debate over the Biden family’s business dealings despite moderator Chris Wallace’s efforts to shift the conversation.
“And he threatened Ukraine —,” Trump said.
“Sir,” Wallace interrupted.
” — with a billion dollars,” Trump said.
“That is absolutely not true,” Biden said, before Wallace moved the conversation to racial issues.
“You got three-and-a-half million dollars. Your family got three-and-a-half million dollars and you know someday, you’re gonna have to explain — why did you get three-and-a-half?” Trump asserted, according to the official debate transcript.
“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life,” Biden responded.
“Number two, I don’t make money from China, you do. I don’t make money from Ukraine, you do. I don’t make money from Russia. You made three-and-a-half million dollars, Joe, and your son gave you— They even have a statement that we have to give 10% to the big man. You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not. But you’re the big man, I think. Your son said we have to give 10% to the big man,” Trump said later in the debate.
“I carried out U.S. policy. Not one, single, solitary thing was out of line. Not a single thing, number one. Number two, the guy who got in trouble in Ukraine was this guy, trying to bribe the Ukrainian government to say something negative about me, which they would not do, and did not do, because it never, ever, ever happened. My son has not made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about — China. I have not had it. The only guy that made money from China is this guy. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China,” Biden hit back.
“His son didn’t have a job for a long time, was sadly no longer in the military service, I won’t get into that. And he didn’t have a job. As soon as he became vice president, Burisma — not the best, not the best reputation in the world — I hear they paid him 183,000 a month. Listen to this, 183, and they gave him a $3 million upfront payment, and he had no energy experience. That’s 100% dishonest,” Trump followed up.
“Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of, is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani,” Biden said later on.
Joe Biden was citing a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials which claimed Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a “Russian information operation” without evidence to back it up. One of the letter’s signatories, former CIA official Michael Morrell, testified to the House Judiciary Committee about how Biden Secretary of State Tony Blinken orchestrated the letter, which Morrell signed to help Biden defeat Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s assertions about Ukraine, China and Russia appear to be based on a Senate report released in September 2020 detailing Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and the New York Post’s October 2020 reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop archive.
Trump made similar assertions on Twitter beginning in late 2019, before Biden won the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Trump tweeted on numerous occasions about the Biden family’s business dealings with Chinese, Ukrainian and Russian business partners.
Hunter Biden’s laptop is a disaster for the entire Biden family, but especially for his father, Joe. It is now a proven fact, and cannot be denied, that all of that info is the REAL DEAL. That makes it impossible for “50%, or 10%” Joe, to ever assume the office of the President!
Hunter Biden’s consulting firm was wired $3.5 million by Russian oligarch Elena Baturina in February 2014 as part of a consulting agreement, the Senate report found. Baturina was married to former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and her net worth is estimated at $1.3 billion.
Hunter Biden’s former business associate, Devon Archer, testified to the House Oversight Committee Monday about how Joe and Hunter Biden dined with Baturina in the spring of 2014 at a cafe in Washington, D.C., according to a transcript of Archer’s testimony.
Trump’s statement about Biden threatening Ukraine with a billion dollars was based on what then-Vice President Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in September 2016 when Biden bragged about getting Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired in early 2016.
“You remember last year I was authorized to say we’d do the second tranche of a billion dollars. And he didn’t fire his chief prosecutor. And because I have the confidence of the president, I was there, and I said: I’m not signing it. Until you fire him, we’re not signing, man,” Biden told CFR. Biden made similar comments at a January 2018 event with CFR when he was out of office.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified to the House Ways & Means Committee about a threatening text Hunter Biden allegedly sent a CEFC associate with Joe Biden in the room. Shapley provided a transcript of former Biden business associate Rob Walker’s interview with the FBI where Walker said Joe Biden met with CEFC officials in May 2017, shortly after his vice presidency concluded.
The House Oversight Committee revealed in late June a text allegedly sent by Hunter Biden on Aug. 3, 2017 to a CEFC associate about how the Bidens are “the best” at assisting his boss. The next day, Owasco P.C., one of Biden’s shell companies, was paid $100,000 by CEFC, the committee disclosed.
🚨BIDEN FAMILY COVER-UP🚨
In a WhatsApp exchange dated 8/3/2017, Hunter Biden tells CEFC associate Gongwen Dong, aka Kevin:
"The Biden's are the best I know at doing exactly what the Chairman wants from this [partnership]."
On Aug. 8, 2017, Hudson West III, a business entity formed by Hunter Biden and a CEFC business partner, was wired an estimated $5 million, the Senate report found.
Hunter Biden earned about $1 million from Hudson West III in 2017, according to his guilty plea agreement with Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors which fell apart in court. Biden admitted during his late July court appearance he made $664,000 from CEFC in 2017, court transcripts show.
IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler testified to the House Oversight Committee that Hunter Biden and his business associates took an estimated $17 million from Chinese, Ukrainian and Romanian business interests. The Oversight Committee released a memo in May 2023 outlining more than $10 million in alleged payments from foreign companies to Biden family members.
Two months prior, the House Oversight Committee released a memo showing Walker took $3 million from a Chinese energy company and allegedly sent $1.3 million worth of payments to Biden family members. Republican Kentucky Rep. James Comer, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in July more bank records would be released showing Hunter Biden’s alleged dealings with Russian business partners.
The White House said President Biden “was not in business with his son” when Shapley’s testimony was publicized, a shift from Biden denying any knowledge of his son’s business dealings.
“Any verifiable words or actions of my client, in the midst of a horrible addiction, are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family,” Hunter Biden’s lawyer said in the wake of Shapley’s testimony.
Hunter Biden was charged by the DOJ in June with two tax misdemeanors and a felony gun charge. Both IRS whistleblowers accused prosecutors of slow-walking and obstructing the Hunter Biden case based on their knowledge of the investigation.
The president’s son was expected to plead guilty to the tax charges and sign a diversion agreement for the gun charge, until a disagreement with the DOJ about the immunity clause hidden inside Biden’s diversion agreement caused Biden’s plea deal to implode. The DOJ investigation into Hunter Biden is still ongoing and
“He confirms President Biden was not involved in his son’s business,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams tweeted about Archer’s testimony. Sams told multiple media outlets the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings is an “evidence-free wild goose chase” following Archer’s testimony.
The day after Devon Archer’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee, Trump was indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith for charges related to his efforts to contest the 2020 presidential election results. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges Thursday at an arraignment in Washington, D.C. He continues to lead the 2024 Republican presidential primary by wide margins.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
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This satirical film reveals a disturbing truth about modern mainstream journalistic standards.
We all love the literary motif of the unwilling prostitute who, at the end of the story, does virtuous deeds to save herself and others. In Crime and Punishment, Sonya is instrumental in Raskolnikov’s redemption. Director Robert Davi uses the same formula to tell the story of President’s Biden son in My Son Hunter.
Grace struggles to pay for her college tuition, so she is a favourite escort of powerful men. As she encounters Hunter Biden in a world of cocaine, wild sex, and rampant corruption, she offers him a path to redemption — and of course, he rejects it.
Now, Davi is no Dostoevsky — nor does he intend to be. My Son Hunter is first and foremost political satire, all-too-frequently engaging in cheap shots. But it does take a stab at Dostoevskyan psychological profundity, and in that endeavour, it partly succeeds.
The shadow of successful Beau Biden — Hunter’s deceased brother — looms large over Hunter, who struggles to find meaning in life. Very much as Raskolnikov, he comes across as a pathological narcissist who engages in criminal activity as a way to prove to himself that he is so great so as to be above the law.
Overblown
Unfortunately, My Son Hunter often goes overboard and loses effectiveness. I lost count of the number of times Joe Biden sniffs the hair of women in the film. Is that necessary? That portrayal runs the risk of playing into the left-wing narrative that criticisms of the Bidens focus on petty things that can be easily dismissed.
The stakes are high, so a more focused and incisive portrayal was needed. Say what you want about Oliver Stone’s leftist politics and penchant for conspiracy theories, but he surely can strike an opponent in his films — Richard Nixon and George W. Bush being the most notorious cases.
The story of Hunter Biden lends itself to Stone’s sober cinematographic style, but My Son Hunter misses an opportunity, to the extent that it aims for low-hanging fruit. Yes, the Bidens are corrupt, but one is left wondering: can they be that corrupt? While the dialogues between Joe and Hunter are clever and amusing, the perversity defies credibility. Perhaps Davi was deliberately aiming more for Saturday Night Live’s lampooning style all along. If so, the film works at some level, but never entirely.
I would have personally enjoyed a more sober style because there is a far darker theme in the film. My Son Hunter is not about the moral failings of a privileged, corrupt drug addict. It is not even about crony capitalism and globalist elites. The real central theme is the media’s rot.
Media manipulation
Two scenes are particularly frightening. At the beginning of the film, Grace is at a Black Lives Matter protest, and records some of her comrades engaging in violent deeds. A fellow activist says: “You can’t post that video… it will make the protest look bad… Those people are too ignorant to understand complex moral issues. You have to withhold things for their own good. We choose truth over facts.” Grace acquiesces.
Towards the end of the film, Grace summons a journalist to expose Hunter’s corruption. The man tells her: “Even if what you are saying is true, it’s not news. We have the chance to take down a fascist dictator [Trump]… I’m sorry Grace, this one is not for me.” We now know that Twitter and Facebook — with their disturbing algorithms — were not the only ones trying to bury Hunter’s laptop under the sand.
As Mark Zuckerberg recently acknowledged, the FBI itself pressured him to do so, because they did not want the bad Orange Man to win the election — all with the excuse that the whole story was Russian disinformation. Later on, both the Washington Post and the New York Times had to reverse their stance and admit that, in fact, the laptop does contain compromising emails.
Plato infamously recommended telling people the Noble Lie. Very much as the Black Lives Matter activist in this film, Plato believed such lies were for people’s own good, as they were too stupid to understand things. In his seminal study of totalitarianism, Karl Popper persuasively argued that Plato’s plan became a central tenet of totalitarian regimes. That is the real fascism.
While being far from a perfect film, My Son Hunter provides meaningful insight on this issue, and hopefully it might become an important step towards much-needed media accountability in this woke age.
For the time being, we need to be realistic. Don’t hold your breath waiting for Hollywood to make an Oliver Stone-like blockbuster about the corruption and hypocrisy of the Left.
Rather, keep an eye out for low-budget productions like My Son Hunter that are bypassing the Hollywood production and distribution system. These include Uncle Tom I and II, various Christian films, such as Run, Hide, Fight.
They will not be great works of art, but at least they will be something. And from there, the quality of such films may gradually improve, until we again see mainstream studios portraying corrupt politicians from both sides of the political spectrum.
Gabriel Andrade is a university professor originally from Venezuela. He writes about politics, philosophy, history, religion and psychology. More by Gabriel Andrade
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-09-19 09:27:332022-09-19 09:31:56‘My Son Hunter’: An imperfect but necessary indictment of media’s corruption
The Big Government-Big Education alliance has also had positive trickle-down effects for professors, who have benefited with publishing contracts and grants for their institutions. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest funder of Common Core, continues to support universities that help in implementing their education initiatives. Professors hopped on the Common Core gravy train at the get-go. There was the curious fact that Bill Ayers gave a keynote address at the 2009 convention of the Renaissance Group, “a national consortium of colleges, universities and professional organizations” dedicated to teaching and education. Now if we could only learn how much Bill Ayers was paid for that keynote speech in Washington in 2009.
James O’Keefe’s undercover videos reveal what activists have been saying for years: Common Core is a set of standards written not for the benefit of students, but to enrich crony capitalists, such as mega-curriculum companies, Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt, Pearson, and National Geographic Education.
The latest, the fourth video, records former Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt executive Gilbert Garcia describing the constant “politicking” among school board members and superintendents, and former Pearson employee Kim Koerber describing how the 2013 $1.3 billion contract for supplying I-Pads to the Los Angeles school district was “written for Pearson to win.” After an FBI investigation into bid-rigging, Pearson, in 2015, agreed to pay the district $6.4 million in a settlement.
Pearson issued a statement calling remarks in the videos “offensive,” asserting that they do not reflect the values of the company’s 40,000 employees.
But the Big Government-Big Education alliance has also had positive trickle-down effects for professors, who have benefited with publishing contracts and grants for their institutions. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest funder of Common Core, continues to support universities that help in implementing their education initiatives. To name a few, in November, the Foundation announced a grant of $34.7 million for “transformation centers” to improve teacher preparation programs on the campuses of the University of Michigan, Texas Tech University, and the Relay Graduate School of Education, as well as at the National Center for Teacher Residencies, and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. That same month, a grant of $1,799,710 was awarded to “support collaboration between Vanderbilt [University] and the Tennessee Department of Education in the area of education research and improvement,” and $764,553 was awarded to the University of Florida for “teacher leader fellows.”
Professors hopped on the Common Core gravy train at the get-go, as I described in 2012, in my report for Accuracy in Media, “Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama’s Federal School Curriculum.” There was the curious fact that Bill Ayers gave a keynote address at the 2009 convention of the Renaissance Group, “a national consortium of colleges, universities and professional organizations” dedicated to teaching and education. Of course, I made no claim that Ayers wrote the standards; I just noted that he appeared at this conference in Washington with then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, his under secretary, and a representative from Achieve, the company that orchestrated Common Core. Ayers’s close colleague, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, led Obama’s education transition team and oversaw one of the two national Common Core tests.
Less well-known professors, who had bristled at the imposition of “standards,” suddenly began embracing Common Core standards. This was the case with education professor Lucy Calkins and her colleagues at Columbia Teachers College, Bill Ayers’s alma mater, long a bastion of anti-testing/anti-standards. These professors began writing teacher guidebooks, and presenting talks and workshops. Since co-authoring Pathways to the Common Core, Calkins continues to do work for the publisher, Heinemann, a part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her “Units of Study” curriculum is described by the publisher as a bestseller. She also writes performance assessments, including the Grade 1 “Units of Study” in “Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing.” (Yes, students in first grade are expected to write op-eds.) In a short video, Calkins explains her teaching philosophy that involves mini-lessons and group work.
In 2012, Marc Aronson, a lecturer in communications and information at Rutgers University, was advertising himself as a “Common Core Consultant,” speaker, and author. Today, he describes himself on his personal website as an “author, professor, speaker, editor and publisher who believes that young people, especially pre-teens and teenagers, are smart, passionate, and capable of engaging with interesting ideas in interesting ways.”
Aronson apparently believes that pre-teens and teenagers are smart enough to weed out the lies in his Common Core-compliant middle school and high school textbook, Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies. As I noted in my report, Aronson presents the KGB-fabricated lies about the FBI director’s homosexuality as probable. For the benefit of 11-year-olds, he posits that photographs of Hoover with his friend Clyde Tolson “might be seen as lovers’ portraits.” The book is filled with sexual innuendo and dwells on such irrelevant details in order to ascribe motives to Hoover for his presumably unfounded fears about the communist threat. The accompanying discussion guide is a masterpiece of disguise: as ideological questions bearing their own answers.
It is therefore not surprising that Aronson would now write an article in the School Library Journal casting a skeptical eye on O’Keefe’s undercover videos and asking readers to “consider the source,” as the subheading to the headline, “Is Common Core Just a Scam to Sell Books?” asks. He distances himself from the sales executives but never directly names the “source” that one should “consider.” (Innuendo seems to be his modus operandi.) The implication is O’Keefe. Aronson admits, “As a nonfiction fan, author, and editor, I have a stake in this.” He denies that his stake is in the rise in nonfiction sales that have come as Common Core standards have edged out literature in favor of “informational texts.” No, Aronson fell “in love with the standards” when he first read them, “years before they had any impact on royalty statements.”
Aronson also claims to have served recently on the New Jersey team that evaluated that state’s English Language Arts (ELA) and Math standards. Contrary to the executives’ statements captured in the videos, his “team” carefully examined the standards “one by one, grade by grade, and listened to extensive comments from teachers, administrators, parents, professionals, and business leaders.” He claims that he saw “commitment, not greed.”
He presents a “guiding principle” that sounds very familiar to those of us whose eyes have glazed and brains have flopped like dying fish from the Common Core sales literature: “From the first, our guiding principle was this: What will someone awarded a high school diploma be ready for? The group looked at each educational stage and benchmark to consider what students would need to know to be ready for the next step, and the next, so that after graduation they would have the skill set to begin the next phase of their lives.”
Aronson’s team included comments by Amy Rominiecki, a Certified School Library Media Specialist, on behalf of the New Jersey Association of School Librarians, in their report. (He links back to her statement when she testified in support of Common Core.) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has also funded studies for the American Library Association (the parent organization of the American Association of School Librarians) on such things as Technology Access, training, and participation in the federal E-rate program.
Aronson attributes the continuing low performance of 12th graders in math and reading to economic inequality, stating, “If more students had more resources (social, emotional, financial, cultural, and technological), more would be ready to meet the challenges and opportunities that follow after secondary education.”
Of course, this author and educational entrepreneur has only the purest motives: “the children.” Money may be important, “yet, there is a role for standards to play.” To that end, “as educators and communities who care about our nation’s youth, it is necessary we establish a path that’s best for as many students.”
Such bromides bring big bucks in the education world. I am reminded of words by Bill Ayers at an education conference in 2013, something about being finite creatures hurtling through infinite space. Now if we could only learn how much Bill Ayers was paid for that keynote speech in Washington in 2009.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/james-okeefe-project-veritas-common-core-e1454588145107.png376640Dr. Mary Grabarhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Mary Grabar2016-02-04 07:17:042016-02-04 07:18:43Catching Up with some Common Core Profiteers: Beyond the Project Veritas Videos
Great orators have a way of using a word to make a point that resonates with the masses. Some of these words later become part of a dialogue and perhaps even are added to Webster’s dictionary.
Donald Trump is a master at using simple words to explain complex issues. His latest is the use of the noun schlong as a verb when referring to Hillary Clinton.
If you think “The Art of the Deal” was a yuuuuuuuuuuge success — and it was — just wait until Donald Trump comes out with his latest masterpiece, “The Art of the Schlong.”
[ … ]
“The Art of the Schlong” is a political treatise, like “The Art of War,” only more devastating and infinitely more entertaining. It is more psychologically sinister than Machiavelli’s “The Prince.” It is like Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” only the opposite. Except for the influence part.
The treatise is a tactical primer for anybody thinking of getting into politics, especially as a Republican these days. Tough world out there right now.
It is a schlong or get-schlonged world, so you’d better learn how to schlong. [Emphasis added]
Americans increasingly believe they are getting schlonged.
Three in four Americans (75%) last year perceived corruption as widespread in the country’s government. This figure is up from two in three in 2007 (67%) and 2009 (66%).
While the numbers have fluctuated slightly since 2007, the trend has been largely stable since 2010. However, the percentage of U.S. adults who see corruption as pervasive has never been less than a majority in the past decade, which has had no shortage of controversies from the U.S. Justice Department’s firings of U.S. attorneys to the IRS scandal.
Donald Trump in one word has captured the essence of all of these examples of government out of control. Will his use of schlonged, along with Grubered, be added to the political lexicon? Only time will tell.
If you feel you are being schlonged please take our confidential survey and leave a comment and tell us how government has schlonged you.
RELATED VIDEO: Who are the biggest crooks in America?
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/trump-black-and-white-american-flag-e1451130991496.jpg353640Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2015-12-26 07:23:022015-12-26 09:35:52America: Are You being Schlonged?
“Anything is better than lies and deceit!” – Leo Tolstoy
It’s been a rather stunning week.
It began with Denver fans sitting stunned as they watched the Seattle Seahawks totally decimate the Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII.
Then, the President stunningly said the IRS targeting scandal had “not even a smidgen of corruption”. That was news to lots of Americans.
Sadly, the President said this in the face of what has already been presented from numerous Congressional investigations and hearings, and likely without having been briefed on an unfinished, albeit what appears to be a highly politicized Justice Department investigation.
Then three days after the interview, at Wednesday’s Congressional oversight hearing, Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp presented a June 14, 2012,email between Ruth Madrigal, a career attorney at the U.S. Treasury Department and several top officials with the IRS in Washington.
In this rather stunning email, Madrigal wrote, “Don’t know who in your organizations is keeping tabs on c4s, but since we mentioned potentially addressing them (off – plan) in 2013, I’ve got my radar up and this seemed interesting…” Folks, in Washington speak, “off-plan” means hidden or secret from public view. So much for transparency.
This was followed by yesterday’s explosive IRS oversight hearing. Attorney Cleta Mitchell charged, “First, the IRS scandal is real. It’s not pretend, it’s real. Number two, the IRS scandal is not just a bone headed bunch of bureaucrats in some remote office contrary to what the President of the United States told the American people on Sunday. And, number 3, the IRS scandal is not over. It is continuing to this day. And, the Department of Justice Investigation is a sham. It is a NON-EXISTENT investigation.“
Mitchell then chronicled a series of what she described as “lies” during a stunning, opening statement.
The combative hearing culminated with several Members beating the drum for a Special Prosecutor. There’s only one word for this – stunning!
One wonders if the President now regrets making his “smidgen” declaration.
What has happened with the IRS scandals cannot be undone and deserves a full and unbiased, non-partisan investigation led by someone other than a major donor to the current President of the United States. And, today’s clarion call for a special prosecutor is a wise next step. Going forward, there is only one way to ensure that this kind of political terror never happens again.
HR 25, the FairTax Act of 2013, currently before Congress and the Committee on Ways and Means is the only legislation that provides simple and fair taxation for all Americans.
More importantly, HR 25 is the only legislation that defunds and disbands the IRS in its entirety.
It is time that Congress stop the perennial IRS theatrics – theatrics created by 74,608 pages of special interests driven tax code approved by Congress – and pass HR 25 / S 122.
Finally, Americans For Fair Taxation® is a key sponsor of the Western States Conservative Caucus in Phoenix, AZ onFebruary 22, 2014. Approximately 1,000 attendees will receive a FairTax lanyard, FairTax button, FairTax pocket card and FairTax briefing information in their registration packet. In addition, Neal Boortz will be a keynote speaker during the plenary session and will lead an exciting panel discussion, “The FairTax: An idea whose time has come,” which also features FairTax spokesperson Steve Hayes and retired AZ State Senator and longtime FairTax advocate Lori Klein.
Our AZ FairTax team, supported by grassroots FairTax leaders coming in from across the nation, will have a booth to share more information on the FairTax Plan with participants. This conference promises great educational opportunities for the FairTax. If you would like to join the FairTax team, you can register for the conference here.
I look forward to seeing you in Phoenix!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/irs-logo.png450500Cynthia Canevarohttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCynthia Canevaro2014-02-07 20:08:072014-02-07 20:17:00A Real Stunner: Obama IRS “not even a smidgen of corruption”!
The United States Department of Education (USED) should be prohibited from making adoption of national English and math standards known as Common Core a condition or incentive for receipt of federal funding, and both USED and organizations like the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, whose dues are paid with taxpayer funds, should make public the amount of time and money they have invested in promoting Common Core according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.
Three federal laws explicitly prohibit the federal government from directing, supervising, funding, or controlling any nationalized standards, testing, or curriculum. Yet Race to the Top (RttT), a competitive $4.35 billion federal grant program, gave preference to states that adopted or indicated their intention to adopt Common Core and participated in one of two federally funded consortia developing assessments linked to Common Core.
USED subsequently made adoption of Common Core one of the criteria for granting states conditional waivers from the accountability provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
In his preface for the paper, Iowa’s U.S. Senator Charles Grassley writes that when government makes “decisions that affect a child’s education, these decisions should be made at a level of government close to the parents and students who are affected.” He goes on to criticize how what began as a plan to develop standards that states could adopt voluntarily has become a subject of federal coercion.
Scott notes that the adoption of new standards normally takes years from the time they are initially written by panels of educators, made available for extended periods of public review, and revised until they are adopted. But because of RttT’s deadlines, these periods were reduced to a few months or even weeks.
As a result of the rushed process, states adopted Common Core without knowing about assessments; the outcomes for which students, and in some cases teachers, will be held accountable. Other unknowns include what the passing score will be, who will set it, and whether it will be the same from state to state.
The three most populous states – California, Texas and Florida – also have systematic processes for adopting textbooks. These reviews happen on a regular cycle and would be disrupted and often expedited due to the need to adopt instructional materials aligned with the new standards in time for them to be implemented.
The expedited process by which Common Core was adopted in most states meant teachers had no opportunity to inform the standards’ content. In some states, the new standards are substantially different than what had been taught. In many cases, teachers will be teaching material in different grades than it had been before.
Scott describes all the “learning on the go” Common Core will require as a very expensive gamble. The one-year cost of new technology, instructional materials and teacher professional development is estimated at $10.5 billion for the 45 states and the District of Columbia, which have adopted the standards. With ongoing expenses, the cost is expected to rise to about $16 billion.
Scott also describes why Texas chose not to adopt Common Core while he served as commissioner of education. Disruption of the textbook adoption cycle, the lengthy process of making the standards available to the public and seeking approval from the state Board of Education, and the cost of changing procedures and parts of the education code were among the reasons for the decision not to adopt.
Texas would have been in line for a $700 million RttT grant, but “it costs more than $300 million per day to run public schools in Texas,” Scott says. “Giving up substantial autonomy to direct education policy in return for roughly enough money to run the schools for two days was not a trade-off we were willing to make.”
Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/us-doe.jpg375500Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2013-09-10 06:33:562013-12-12 16:40:25Study calls on US DOE to stop bribing states to adopt Common Core
In September a Gallop poll confirmed that 
