Step up and help elect Ken Bennett AZ Governor

Qualifying for Clean Elections funding is essential

Ken Bennett is running for Governor of Arizona and needs our help. He has a unique message, saying he believes honesty still matters. Bennett notes, “Obamacare is the biggest job killer and destroyer of small business in history. And the entire U.S. has it because of Gov. Ducey and Sen. McCain.”

It’s impossible to argue with Bennett’s conclusion, “We have been fighting for 10 years for the full repeal of Obamacare and electing members of congress and governors based on that campaign promise. (Gov. Ducey made that promise four years ago.)  During the Obama administration, congress wrote a great repeal bill and we watched the House vote on that bill every year but it either died in the Senate or was vetoed by Obama.  So we deliver the Senate, then we deliver President Trump who is waiting, pen in hand, to sign it, but it never reaches his desk because Gov. Ducey loves Obamacare and is telling his senators it must not be repealed.”

“Ducey will never support the full repeal of Obamacare because he is now sweeping the money into his bad plan for education. The latest Arizona budget just increased the Medicaid Expansion tax, so the federal matching amount also increases, to pay for “education funding.”  I call this the good old ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ accounting gimmick,” says fiscal watchdog Ken Bennett.

Bennett is clear, saying he wants to be the Governor of Arizona and restore the Republican principle of State independence from the Federal Government as defined in the 10th amendment of the U.S. Constitution which reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Former Arizona Secretary of State and Senate President Ken Bennett has abundant credentials for the job. Equally important is the fact that he is not tied to the McCain syndicate and big spending lobbyists as Ducey is.

Ken Bennett is running as a Clean Elections candidate and is asking for help with $5.00 contributions  and up to $160 in seed money donations to qualify him for matching funds.

If you’re tired of establishment control of our state, conservative Ken Bennett is the man to elect. The Hillary Clinton-endorsing Arizona Republic has repeatedly and insultingly called on him to get out of the race. Doug Ducey, like John McCain and Jeff Flake are the brand of Republicrats the liberal newspaper can tolerate.

Ken Bennett has incurred its wrath.  That speaks volumes.

This post, “Bennett’s in the race: AZ Gov. Doug McDucey should be nervous,” provides background. We also made this bold prediction: “Ken Bennett can and will be AZ’s next governor.”  He was able to collect his needed statewide nominating petition signatures in record time, including a 26% additional cushion to impede Ducey campaign challenges. 

Now it’s up to you.

Your help is needed for this to become a reality.

Advertisements

AZ Republic: Foolish reports take center stage again

Transgender “migrants,” carping school principals rate front page coverage

Last weekend we ran a post titled, “Major reason to steer clear of deceptive AZ Republic.” It was an instant hit, garnering an exceptionally high number of hits, proving common sense still resonates.

Today we bring our readers yet another couple of reasons to ditch the newspaper. These latest Page One offerings shared the same issue on Wednesday, May 30.

First we bring you “Looking for a safe place to call home.” You might be inclined to think this concerns abandoned pets up for adoption, but you’d be wrong. The article details the “new struggles” of “transgender migrants.” Their advocates — yes, they have advocates — say “U.S. officials haven’t done enough to protect transgender women from assaults and abuse.” The article continues to two full inside jump pages. The caption accompanying the above-the-fold photo identifies two of these “transgender migrants” by their femme name, continuing, “they often face difficulties in remote detention centers when applying for asylum in the United States.” They complain they are unable to get decent jobs and the only work open to them is in the “sexual servitude industry” working as prostitutes. One reported that “clients became enraged” when discovering the prostitutes ware born male. ‘Ya think?

Article two, also given prominent above-the-fold exposure is titled,” Principal: ‘D’ grade is public shaming.”  Numerous valley principals appearing at the State Board of Education meeting addressed their concerns that the low school grading labels hinder their success.

The principals have it exactly backwards. Their schools’ lack of success in teaching hinders the students, whose abysmal testing scores are reflected in the grades given to the schools by the state.

One by one, they requested their specific schools grades be bumped up a notch or the system that alerts parents to the success or failure rate of individual schools be discarded altogether. These are representatives of the same public schools that abandoned their students — over 180,000 of them statewide — for a week, while the REDsforEd teachers went out on strike demanding a 20 percent salary hike.

The Arizona State Board of Education’s website states:

Arizona Revised Statutes § 15-241 requires the Arizona Department of Education, subject to final adoption by the State Board of Education, to develop an annual achievement profile for every public school in the state based on an A through F scale. The development of the Accountability System was informed by public input through 17 public hearings across the state and a survey that yielded almost 1700 responses. Additionally, a broad-based committee consisting of school administrators, teachers, parents and data experts provided the Board with additional input.

The system measures year to year student academic growth, proficiency on English language arts, math and science, the proficiency and academic growth of English language learners, indicators that an elementary student is ready for success in high school and that high school students are ready to succeed in a career or higher education and high school graduation rates.

This accountability is what the left-wing union educrats* are fighting.

* Open Secrets notes its data for the current election cycle was updated by the Federal Election Commission on Monday, May 21, 2018.

 

Educrats advocate for shutting down schools …again, nationally

This time the concept of depriving American children of their rightful taxpayer funded education is even more odious than when the Arizona #REDSforED leftist union member schoolteachers, led by a 24-year-old self-identified Socialist and Bernie Sander’s Arizona presidential campaign organizer who teaches hip-hop music, abandoned students for over a week. They marched and shouted, demanding a 20% pay hike. When Gov. Doug Ducey foolishly acquiesced to their extortionist tactics, it wasn’t good enough. They are now pressing forward with a ballot initiative to impose higher taxes on “the rich,” who already pay the lion’s share. There was a time when people aspired to be successful and provide jobs for others. Now the risk takers who worked long hours to achieve their goals — not 8 1/2 months a year — are despised for their accomplishments.

Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education has responded via Twitter to a ludicrous suggestion by his former deputy, Peter Cunningham, that America’s 50 million school parents should keep their children out of school until the Second Amendment is eradicated. This came in response to the latest school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas by a teen mass murderer last Friday. Duncan called Cunningham’s suggestion, “brilliant.”

The U.K.’s Daily Mail covered the issue. With strict gun laws imposed in Great Britain, murderous assailants have taken to using knives and intentionally careening vehicles to carry out their bloody carnage, randomly slashing people or mowing down pedestrians in popular tourist locations. Do we outlaw auto dealerships and sales of butcher and kitchen knives as well?

Curbing violence as entertainment would be a better start.

School shootings: Who’s to blame?

Another school shooting has taken the lives of what is being reported as 9 students and a teacher‘s aide. Twelve others were wounded by the 17-year-old murderer, This time the massacre was in Santa Fe Texas, a small town of approximately 80,000 residents south of Houston.

The Houston Chronicle described the assassin with these words: “He posted a photo on his Facebook page of a “born to kill” T-shirt and wrote in a journal about shooting people and committing suicide. His Facebook cover photo comes from an album called “Dangerous Days” by a dystopian cyberpunk band called Pertubator with a track that took on a haunting quality before 8 a.m. on Friday morning: “Humans Are Such Easy Prey”

The newspaper wrote, “The signs of dark, violent fantasies were ubiquitous in (the killer’s) social persona and private ramblings.”

Like the 1999 Columbine High School killers, he had a penchant for wearing a trench coat. Presenting a dichotomy of personalities, he had been an honor roll student, played on the high school football team and expressed a wholesome desire to join the Marines.

Seventeen were killed at a Parkland, Florida high school just three months ago on Valentine’s Day. This list of school shootings goes back to 1990.

The immediate reaction by many on the left is to go after guns — confiscate and destroy them. Eradicate the Second Amendment as outdated.  Blame the NRA. Then comes the talk of mandatory mental health evaluations and permitting involuntary commitments.

Lost in the mix is the undeniable fact that violence, passing as entertainment,  has for far too long, permeated our society.  Music lyrics were once taken on by Tipper Gore, then-wife of Sen. Al Gore. She testified before a senate panel in 1985, saying, “…in virtually every medium, the communications industry offers increasingly explicit images of sex and violence to younger and younger children. In the course of my work, I’ve encountered a degree of callousness toward children that I never imagined existed. No one asks what is in the product or its effect on kids, only how well it will sell.”

Her efforts to expose the encroachment were vociferously fought by the music industry. In 1985, the graphic violence was mild compared to today. According to Quora, the Internet “became mainstream among researchers by 1989, among Silicon Valley movers and shakers by mid 1995, and by most US households by 2001.”

In 2018, many children are isolated, unsupervised and fatherless. The Internet provides them with explicit images and social media sites to “express themselves.”  Their entertainment is raw and often violent.  Fewer families than ever before are involved in a faith-based community. Values are no longer taught. Parents increasingly put their own pursuits ahead of their children. These are the areas that beg for attention, since they create the personalities that revel in violence.

Families owned firearms throughout our history and mass shootings were not perpetrated at schools by adolescents. The cause is too uncomfortable to address, but it’s time to remind parents that their children are their primary responsibility. Economic pressure must be applied to the entertainment and music industries. The NRA, which protects freedom, is not the problem.

Scottsdale schools ex-CFO could’ve used a 20% raise, too

Laura Smith indicted on 11 felony charges of fraud, conflicts of interest

It looks like there’s big trouble in the future for Laura Smith, Scottsdale Unified School District’s former chief financial officer. She faces 11 felony charges — two involving fraud and nine stemming from conflicts of interest — tied to a consulting company she previously co-owned and ran, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

A grand jury indicted Laura Smith on May 8. She is accused of facilitating the district’s employment of Professional Group Public Consulting, a Mesa-based company according to Maricopa County Superior Court documents.

Smith co-owned the consulting firm when she was hired as the district’s CFO in early 2017. Her sister, Caroline Brackley, then took over running the company. Smith failed to disclose the relationship and resigned in January after having been put on administrative leave due to an ongoing conflict of interest investigation.

In its well researched report, The Arizona Daily Independent cites the fact that Laura Smith was a member of the Arizona Association of School Business Officials whose Code of Ethics states, in part, that members should, “Avoid conflict of interest situations by not conducting business with a company or firm in which the official or any member of the official’s family has a vested interest.”

Read the 11 count indictment issued by the AZ Attorney General’s Office charging Smith.

With her yen for appropriated cash and Gov. Doug Ducey’s ability to magically produce $ millions out of thin air “without raising taxes,“ it seems there could have been a better deal in the works for this beleaguered school deceiver.

R U appreciating extortionist teachers during Teachers Week?

National Teacher Appreciation Week began on Monday May 7, and runs through Friday May 11. That’s obviously not a week, but the National Education Association (NEA) informs us that it is. Who’d want to take on a group that has mega $millions and marching goons at its disposal? 

We saw teachers at work here in Arizona last week. Not actually “at work,” as they abandoned the students they contracted to educate while they staged their brassy REDSforEd protests over salaries — led by a 24-year-old self-identified Socialist and Bernie Sander’s Arizona presidential campaign organizer who teaches hip-hop music.

When they got the outrageous 20% increase they demanded, it wasn’t enough. Baring themselves as lockstep liberal union thugs, they proceeded to file an extortive Initiative to permanently “tax the rich,” to enrich themselves.

Of course they’ll use that money judiciously, lobbying on behalf of candidates and causes that the organization believes will make our country better for the students entrusted to them. The question is, why are those issues and candidates they back overwhelmingly left-wing Democrats?

The organization is no fan of Charter Schools, which give parents the ability to make educational choices for their own children. Charters often outperform the government schools which have become hotbeds of liberalism, promoting “social justice” and illegal immigration over education — intentionally blurring the lines between actual immigrants and those who invade our country. The NEA site even includes this form to “Tell your representatives to oppose any private school voucher program for military-connected students.”  After it’s filled out, the ham-fisted NEA takes over getting the message to the representatives.

The NEA promotes the now-yearly ‘Day of Silence’ where students remain silent all day in support of all things “LGBTQIA.”  Not much learning going on but celebrating homosexuality in all its incarnations takes center stage. The NEA declares ”sexual literacy will be essential to address through critical comprehensive sexuality education in grades K-12.” It commends the “transition” of a kindergarten boy who became a girl halfway through the school year.

Diversity trumps unity. But their union activism takes first place.

Ninety-four percent of the funds teachers unions (NEA and AFT) contribute go to Democrats.

This video is from 2009, but it clearly spells out the views of the NEA regarding the children they are charged with educating. The words are spoken by Bob Chanin, the NEA legal counsel in a brief excerpt from his revealing retirement speech.

James O’Keefe latest Project Veritas undercover video “School Corruption Exposed” features New Jersey Teachers Union President Dr. David Perry. Watch as he blatantly states, “We need to know the truth so we can bend the truth,” as he covers up child abuse, protects drug-using and shoplifting teachers.

REDSforED socialist extortionists file initiative for $millions more

After holding parents and children hostage for a week with their demands for a 20% salary increase — and getting it — from the foolishly acquiescing Gov. Doug Ducey and legislators nervously facing reelection, Arizona teachers have a new scheme up their collective sleeves.

We use the term “collective” with intent. They are not to be appeased.  The teachers who staged a tantrum-like strike to get their way, followed Pied Piper leftist Noah  Karvelis, a 23-year-old hip-hop music teacher and Bernie Sander‘s Arizona presidential campaign organizer. Do yourself a favor and read Ralph Benko’s excellent expose of Sanders published in Forbes magazine. It addresses the resurgence of Socialism in America.

We’ve all seen the now-faded bumper stickers that said, “if you can read this, thank a teacher.”  Sadly, Americans are experiencing a new twist on that sentiment: “If your kids are Socialists, thank their teachers.”

‘Tax the Rich’ is the teacher’s latest Socialist plan that sounds suspiciously akin to the slogan popularized by Karl Marx:

 “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

In fact, Arizona teachers, clad in red tee shirts emblazoned with #RedforEd, while demonstrating at the state Capitol, have filed a ballot initiative raising taxes on “the rich” to get even more money. The ‘Invest in Education Act’  (read it) is aimed at higher wage earners who are their latest enemies.

Liberals conveniently forget that “the rich” supply jobs that raise up individuals and benefit families. None of them work 8 1/2 months a year as teachers do. They are the people who took risks and worked long hours to realize their dreams of entrepreneurship. They are those we should aspire to emulate. Liberals view them with contempt.

SRAZ added an “S” on the teacher’s slogan correctly identifying them in previous posts as REDSforED.

SIXTY PERCENT of the additional revenue they are now seeking would further pad teacher salaries. Forty percent would fund all-day kindergarten and provide raises for “support staff.”

The imitative was filed by former state legislator David Lujan, now VP of the liberal Arizona Center for Economic Progress and Mesa teacher Joshua Buckley — both left-of-center Democrats. Buckley is quoted as saying,  “It’s up to educators, parents and other community leaders to act if the legislature will not provide a new dedicated funding stream.”

That “funding stream” is nearly $700 million a year in forever money taken from taxpayers for the radical unionist and extortionist teachers, who show no commitment to their either their contracts or their students.

Don’t fall for their con.