The Ferguson verdict was announced last night. To no one’s great surprise, Darren Wilson was not charged. In fact, the prosecutor released all the evidence collected, much more than normal, to the media. The evidence was overwhelming. Michael Brown attacked Wilson, not once but twice. Wilson defended himself and shot Brown.
Violence erupts in Ferguson: Fire, looting, arrests
But that doesn’t make any difference to those who are determined to riot regardless of the verdict. Before the night was over, thirty-one people had been arrested, numerous businesses were looted, a dozen buildings, along with at least two police cars, were burned, and shots were fired. None of those shots were fired by police. All were fired by members of the mob.
Missouri Govenor Jay Nixon sent members, upwards of 1,000, of the National Guard to St. Louis. However, he didn’t release them to quiet the rioting until almost midnight, well after much of the damage had been done.
I should not be but I’m continually amazed at Nixon’s incompetence and stupidity. What Nixon should have done was to deploy those Guard troops around the expected hotspots well before the announcement. With them in place, with orders to stop any looting and burning at first sight. And, if they were fired upon by the mob, to return fire.
For those of you too young to remember the LA riots of the ’60s, rioters and snipers fired upon National Guardsmen from the roofs and upper stories of buildings. The Guard returned fire with vehicle-mounted machine guns. In some cases turning the buildings into sieves. The sniping and rioting quickly stopped.
(I tried to find some links for the Guard responding to the Watts riots, but couldn’t find any that reported the events accurately. I remember those 1965 riots quite well. I was in college at the time taking a modern history class. We analyzed the riots closely. Now, some fifty years later, little can be found on the internet about the riots in Los Angles, the Watts Riots, that hasn’t been tainted with liberal viewpoints. The use of National Guardsmen has been painted as a counter-riot when it was not.
I remember watching live TV when a Guard jeep driving slowly down a street on patrol was taken under fire by several snipers on rooftops. The Guardsmen returned fire using their personal arms and the jeep-mounted machine gun. The sniping quickly ended with the snipers dead or having fled. The rioting ended soon after the arrival of the National Guard. Many of the Guardsmen were also combat veterans.
That real story can’t be found today. It’s been censored by the left.)
The bottom line is that the liberal government of St. Louis and Ferguson, abetted by Governor Jay Nixon, allowed the rioting to happen. Most of the damage was to locally-owned residents of Ferguson, minority owners. The liberal politicians of St. Louis and Jeff City, the leaders who were obligated to act and prevent violence, did nothing.
Al Sharpton and other thugs are on the way to Ferguson. They have no intention of quieting the situation. They will do anything and everything to cause the situation to get worse. The greater the disturbance the more their agenda will be enhanced. If Nixon and the St. Louis Police Chief were smart, they’d meet these thugs at the airport gate and put them on the next plane out from St. Louis to any destination.
But, they won’t. The trouble in Ferguson will continue until someone in authority gets fed up and deals with the situation. In the end, Ferguson will be a burned-out hole in St. Louis County. It will be area where no business will come, where insurance companies will not insure existing businesses and without insurance, no business can survive. Jobs will be lost, more than have already been lost, and Ferguson will turn into another blighted area, with no jobs and no hope of jobs.
In the coming months and years, residents will leave. None of them will return. Ferguson and the surrounding area will turn into another Detroit littered with abandoned buildings amid weeds, debris and crumbling infrastructure.
Why did this happen? Because there exists a culture of self-destruction that is dependent on the largess of government, governments, local, state and federal that really does not care what happens to the residents as long as they vote for democrats, a party that keeps them enslaved. Just look at the history of Detroit for the last fifty years and you will see the future of Ferguson and probably St Louis.
The Ferguson situation isn’t whites oppressing blacks. There are more blacks in Ferguson, by a large majority, than whites. No, the residents of Ferguson chose their government, did it to themselves. There is a lesson there in full display. Few in Ferguson and elsewhere, will learn from it. It isn’t politically correct.
The Missouri Legislature passed HB 1490 that required the state of Missouri to create new educational standards. The purpose, while not explicitly stated, was to block the spread of Common Core in Missouri. The first of the meetings of the committee began this week. Attendees were surprised to find the meeting co-opted by the Missouri Department of Education. The Department of Education was purposely not invited to host the meetings by the Legislature. That didn’t stop Governor Jay Nixon from interfering.
Last Friday, I received confirmation from the Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives office that I was picked to be a participant on a work group established by HB 1490. This allows for groups of parents and educators to work together to develop standards for our schools. The language of HB 1490 is as follows, as related to the makeup of these work groups:
3. Work group members shall be selected in the following manner: (1) Two parents of children currently enrolled in grades kindergarten through twelve shall be selected by the president pro tempore of the senate; (2) Two parents of children currently enrolled in grades kindergarten through twelve shall be selected by the speaker of the house of representatives; (3) One education professional selected by the state board of education from names submitted to it by the professional teachers’ organizations of the state; (4) One education professional selected by a statewide association of Missouri school boards; (5) One education professional selected by the state board of education from names submitted to it by a statewide coalition of school administrators; (6) Two education professionals selected by the president pro tempore of the senate in addition to the members selected under subdivision (1) of this subsection; (7) Two education professionals selected by the speaker of the house of representatives in addition to the members selected under subdivision (2) of this subsection; (8) One education professional selected by the governor; (9) One education professional selected by the lieutenant governor; (10) One education professional selected by the commissioner of higher education; (11) One education professional selected by the state board of education from names submitted to it by nationally-recognized career and technical education student organizations operating in Missouri; and (12) One education professional selected by the state board of education from names submitted to it by the heads of state-approved baccalaureate-level teacher preparation programs located in Missouri.
This would be a total of 16 members for each of the designated work groups. Notice that nowhere in this language will you find a role for DESE or their designees.
When I arrived at the Capital this morning, I was energized to be a part of the process that would determine the future of our children’s education, while preserving the local control of our school districts set forth in our state Constitution. As a parent in one of the state’s smallest school districts, the opportunity to work with parents and educators to define our State’s path in education is an honor. The responsibility of being appointed to these work groups is one that I definitely felt as I walked through the halls of our State Capital.
As I told the fellow members of our work group (History and Government, K-5), this is the single most important thing I have ever done in my life. I felt a swell of pride when I made that statement, along with a rush of emotion.
It is a responsibility not just to my children, but to all children, and parents, in the state of Missouri.
When I made my way to the Truman Building to meet the members of our work group, I was ready to get about this serious work. Upon arriving, I found myself faced with a reality that was the anti-thesis of what I was expecting and completely contrary to the language in HB 1490.
I walked in to find a small group of people, considerably less than the full 16 member panel clearly defined in HB 1490. Only ten members of our group were assembled. This was the first disappointment of the day.
I was greeted by a ‘facilitator’ when I entered the conference room. This person had assumed the role of leadership over our work group and was flanked by two other representatives from the Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary education. I was puzzled. DESE, according to HB 1490, was not supposed to be a participant in these work sessions. While they are open to the public (and I encourage anyone who can attend to do so), DESE is not supposed to have a role in these groups. The state legislature went to great lengths to determine who is supposed to participate in these sessions. They did not list DESE in the language above, defining the makeup of these groups.
I didn’t say anything at first. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was witnessing. Soon after I took my seat, it became abundantly clear.
I was witnessing the same assumption of authority by DESE that has become the standard in schools across Missouri. DESE’s ‘facilitator’ was lying in wait to execute a coup of the process set forth by HB 1490, perched behind her Power Point presentation like a Black Widow ready to devour any hapless fly who dissented from DESE’s darling, the Common Core Standards.
The column continues. The DESE packed the room and then used those non-workgroup attendees to ram-rod the meeting to conform to the goals set by the DESE, not the work-group members. Other reports about the session mirror the comments above.
By SUMMER BALLENTINE and DAVID A. LIEB, September 22, 2014
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — An effort to rewrite Missouri’s educational standards got off to a tense and sometimes confrontational start Monday as parents and educators opposed to the Common Core guidelines clashed with those reluctant to ditch them.
Under a new Missouri law, eight task forces each comprised of more than a dozen appointees are supposed to recommend new learning benchmarks for public school students to replace the national Common Core guidelines by the 2016-2017 school year.
But not all of the appointees had been named in time for Monday’s initial meetings. Those who were present first argued about whether to actually meet, then about whether officials from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education should be present, who should take notes, and whether the public should be allowed to watch their work.
More than an hour into its meeting, one task force decided to shut off an education department video camera that had been recording its proceedings.
After resolving issues about how to meet, task force members sparred over the merits of the Common Core standards, which were developed by a national organization of state school officers and the National Governors Association. They are used to gauge students’ progress from grade-to-grade and create consistency between states. But opponents say they were adopted without enough local input.
Missouri is among 45 states to have adopted the Common Core standards but is one of several now backing away from them. Indiana, Oklahoma and South Carolina also have taken steps to rewrite their standards, North Carolina is reviewing its guidelines and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has suspended his state’s testing contracts in an attempt to halt Common Core standards.
Missouri’s attempt to forge new standards got off to such a shaky start Monday that some wondered whether it ultimately could succeed.
“If they can’t come to a consensus, what do you do at that point?” said Sarah Potter, spokeswoman for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “We’re not really sure.”
There was a clear divide among task force members between Common Core opponents appointed by Republican legislative leaders and supporters of the standards appointed by public education officials.
Before the official meetings began, about two dozen appointees of Republican legislative leaders met in the House chamber for a strategy session. Among those addressing the group was Mary Byrne, co-founder of the Missouri Coalition Against Common Core, who asserted that the standards violate state law.
In some meetings, members at times spoke over each other. While some pushed to fully abandon Common Core, others sought more of a revision of the standards.
“I get told every day by parents, ‘We’re sitting at the table for hours with tears in our eyes,'” trying to do homework under the Common Core standards, said Brad Noel, of Jackson, a parent representative appointed by House Speaker Tim Jones to the elementary math task force. “A lot of it is, in my opinion, not appropriate.”
But “how do we know Common Core is not going to work? We’re barely into it,” said Ann McCoy, coordinator of the mathematics education program at the University of Central Missouri, appointed by the higher education commissioner. “It’s frustrating to me as an educator to change and change and change.”
James Shuls, a Jones appointee who is an associate professor in educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, argued that the state doesn’t need detailed standards and should instead adopt minimal requirements, leaving the rest to local districts.
The task forces are to make recommendations by October 2015 to the State Board of Education, which then must gather additional public comment.
The motivation of DESE to sabotage these meetings is their determination to retain central control over the state’s education and education policy. Loose requirements that allow local school boards to determine what is best for their schools lessens the need of state oversight—and calls in question why Missouri needs such a large Education Department…or even if we need a state Department of Education at all. When their rice-bowl is threatened, it is not surprising DESE has acted the why they have. Why, if something isn’t done, these bureaucrats could find themselves out of a job!
There will be another issue on the ballot—raising the sales tax for Transportation. The state and counties like St Louis, has been wasting their highway maintenance money for decades. A couple of years ago, the state started repairing a number of small bridges throughout the state.
If you read the description from Ballotpedia above and scroll down the page, you will see the list of supporters for this tax increase. There is a wide spread surge of political ads across Missouri in support of this tax increase. Most of the funding is by MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC. This organization is a front created by the construction unions in Missouri.
I was given a link yesterday that disclosed the contributions to this orgranization. Here is the contributions for one day, June 25, 2014.
C131133
06/26/2014
MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC
The Monarch Cement Company PO Box 1000 Humboldt KS 66748
6/25/2014
$10,000.00
C131133
06/26/2014
MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC
Central Plains Cement LLC 2200 North Courtney Road Sugar Creek MO 64050
6/25/2014
$25,000.00
C131133
06/26/2014
MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC
Ash Grove Cement Company PO Box 25900 Overland Park KS 66225
6/25/2014
$10,000.00
C131133
06/26/2014
MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC
Continental Cement Co LLC 10107 Highway 79 Hannibal MO 63401
6/25/2014
$20,000.00
C131133
06/26/2014
MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC
Pace Construction Company 1620 Woodson Road St Louis MO 63114
6/25/2014
$17,500.00
C131133
06/26/2014
MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC
Massman Construction Co PO Box 8458 Kansas City MO 64114
6/25/2014
$50,000.00
If you add the contributions, it adds up to $132,500 in just one day! If you want a real eye-opener, use the Advanced search option on that webpage, enter the month of June 2014 for the beginning and end search dates, with the Committee ID (MECID) of C131133.
Never let it be said the dems—and a few RINOs, never saw a tax increase they didn’t like. Especially if they can grab some of it for themselves. Unions are having trouble justifying their exorbitant pay scales. Here, they have a captive supplier and they see an opportunity to seize taxpayer money and they’re willing to spend millions to get it.
Elections, and actions, have consequences. Missouri is suffering under those consequences as more and more revelations are uncovered about the illegal release of confidential information to the FedGov—in particular, to the DHS and the IRS.
The first case of individual data being illegally collected was disclosed when the Department of Revenue, through their licensing bureau, refused to issue a CCW permit. The DoR has been collecting and scanning private documents and forwarding that information out of state in violation of Missouri law.
One CCW applicant refused to submit the requested documents. The Dor refused to issue the permit—although the DoR has no legal authority to refuse a permit once it has been approved by the county’s Sheriff! That applicant sued the DoR and a Judge issued the Injuction prohibiting the DoR from collecting any further data pending the resolution of the suit.
Today, new allegations broke about illegal actions by the Nixon administration. By Missouri law, personal information of the state’s CCW holders is confidential. That data is held by the DoR and can only be released for criminal investigations—individual information. The Missouri Highway Patrol admitted this week it had requested the complete CCW database from the DoR, twice, and had sent that information to the IRS. Again, in violation of Missouri law.
JEFFERSON CITY – The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.
Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.
After the meeting, he said Replogle had given him sketchy details about turning over the list, enough to raise many more questions. Testimony from Department of Revenue officials revealed that the list of 185,000 names had been put online in one instance and given to the patrol on a disc in January.
Schaefer has been investigating a new driver licensing system. He and the committee grilled the revenue officials for several hours in the morning and again at midday before they admitted the list had been copied. The investigation was triggered by fears that concealed weapons data was being shared with federal authorities.
Under Missouri law, the names of concealed weapon permit holders are confidential. The only place in Missouri where the names of all concealed carry permit holders is stored is among driver license records. Permit holders have a special mark on their licenses indicating they have been granted the privilege of carrying a gun.
The list was given to the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General, Schaefer said he was told.
“Apparently from what I understand, they wanted to match up anyone who had a mental diagnosis or disability with also having a concealed carry license,” Schaefer said. “What I am told is there is no written request for that information.”
Chris Koster, Missouri’s Attorney General, whose office is administratively under the Governor, has not, so far, investigated these violations of state law despite numerous request for him to do so.
What has all this to do with today’s post title? It’s the fact that Jax Nixon and Chris Koster was re-elected to office by a large margin last November. Does anyone truly believe if either, or both of them had lost that election, that the heads of the DoR, the DMV and the Highway Patrol would still be in office? If Ed Martin had beaten Koster last November, I guarantee that all three agency heads would be under investigation. If Nixon had lost his election, all three agency heads would be under suspension pending the results of that investigation.
But—neither lost and now we have a massive cover-up by Nixon’s department heads. Those are the consequences of that election. The voter’s action in that election has lead directly to this situation. Yes, elections have consequences.
All those efforts and wasted funding, well in excess of a billion dollars, lead to this point. The KC School District cannot educate its students.
One solution that is being proposed is school vouchers. That concept appears to be gaining ground but there are a number of issues, such as, will schools be allowed to voluntarily accept those vouchers, or will they be required to accept those vouchers. Many advocates of vouchers feel that schools should be required to accept vouchered students, after all, it’s just shifting tax dollars from one pocket to another.
Another issue is whether vouchers could be used to send students to private and/or religious schools? The proponents of vouchers want that ability as well. But what of the right of the schools to choose curriculum according to their religious beliefs and doctrine? Would those rights now be controlled by the state since the state is now funding those private/religious schools via vouchers? And, what if some parent objects to having their child being taught a doctrine that is in conflict with that taught at home? Whose rights take precedent?
All those are good questions. But there is another hurdle that appears to be overlooked by the media…the Blaine Amendment.
The term Blaine Amendment refers to either a failed federal constitutional amendment or actual constitutional provisions that exist in 38 of the 50 state constitutions in the United States both of which forbid direct government aid to educational institutions that have any religious affiliation.
The proposed text was:
“No State shall make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; and no money raised by taxation in any State for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund therefor, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”
Missouri is one of those 38 states that has adopted a form of the Blaine Amendment.
The Blaine Amendment was a topic on a local KC radio show recently. Evidently that caught the attention of the KC Star and this article appeared on Sunday, March 4, 2012.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/04/3469028/blaine-amendment-brings-challenges.html#storylink=cpy
The full-sized public school bus, yellow and rumbling, pulled up at the front door of St. James Catholic School right on time as usual.
“There’s my bus,” 8-year-old Matthew Nelson said.
He meant his bus; 40 feet long. Just for him.
He had slipped out of art class at his school in Liberty with a gentle wave to the teacher and her whispered “ Bye, Matthew.” He’d climbed the steps to the main hall with his second-grade teacher and seen the sun-brightened bus outside the glass doors ahead.
He hates missing art. He’d rather remain in his familiar school than make this daily sojourn in his Catholic uniform to spend an hour in his neighborhood public school.
But if he’s going to get the federally funded special education services promised him, he has to go to the public school to get them.
Missouri’s Constitution won’t let any publicly funded teacher come to him.
Religious education backers are making a hard run this year at trying to force a statewide election to ask voters to eliminate Missouri’s “Blaine Amendment,” which blocks all manner of public funding from any religious-based entity.
It is a politically volatile battle, with many public education backers fearing that a change in the constitution would open the door to private school vouchers.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/04/3469028/blaine-amendment-brings-challenges.html#storylink=cpy
…
“Public money should not be used to support private schools that are not accountable to the public,” Missouri School Boards’ Association spokesman Brent Ghan said.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/03/04/3469028/blaine-amendment-brings-challenges.html#storylink=cpy
And that is the core issue…”public” control of private education.
My Grandson and Granddaughter attend a private, Christian school. The school has a religious curriculum. The school provides what they call a “classical” education that includes subjects such as teaching Latin and Greek. When they have a school student performance, some songs are sung in Latin. It’s not a Catholic school either.
The discussion has arisen in the school whether to accept state education vouchers if, at some future time, students from the failed Kansas City School District want to transfer to this private school. The school does NOT want the state finger in their pie.
As it currently stands, I would not want my Grandkid’s school to accept vouchers. State educators would want strings attached to acceptance any such vouchers and with those strings will come requirements contrary to the school’s principles and doctrines. With or without a Blaine Amendment, the state must not be allowed to manage private education. As it stands now, the state cannot competently manage the state’s public schools.
The only solution that I can see and accept would be for the vouchers to be issued to parents for them to use as they, the parents, see fit. Realistically, I have no real hope of that form of voucher being passed. It would block those educational tyrants from controlling the private schools. Those at the state level cannot allow that much freedom to the parents in Missouri. Why, the next thing you know, schools will refuse to follow the state dictates on some important educational issue such as teaching self-esteem, or, or, sex education, or, or following state or federal mandated lunch menus.
No, the repeal of the Blaine Amendment would not be that great of a benefit to the state. Let’s keep it.
