Month: January 2022
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott introduces ‘Parental Bill of Rights’ targeting state education system
Gov. Greg Abbott announced Thursday evening plans to amend the Texas Constitution with a Parent Bill of Rights if he is re-elected. The proposal follows Abbott’s introduction of a Taxpayer Bill of Rights this week.
Abbott publicly signed the bill at an event hosted by the Founders Classical Academy of Lewisville, where he criticized schools shutting down during the pandemic and issuing mask mandates. He said the bill will help restore parents as the primary decision-makers of their child’s education and healthcare decisions.
“No government program can replace the role that parents play in the education of their children,” Abbott told the audience. “Our focal point is to ensure that parents are put at the forefront, both of education of their children as well as the decision-making for their child’s healthcare.”
Abbott continued to impart that the government often intrudes on parental decision-making and threatens the role guardians have in their child’s wellbeing. “Many parents are growing increasingly powerless about what to do to regain that control,” Abbott said. “That must end.”
Under the bill, Abbott said the state’s constitution will be amended to “make clear that parents are the primary decision makers in all matters involving their children.” The bill will expand parents access to school curriculum and ensure material is available online or in other easily accessible ways, he said.
“We will make sure parents concerns about school curriculum or policies will be heard quickly and respectfully,’ Abbott said, adding that under his plan the state will give parents the option if their child will repeat a course or grade level instead of leaving the decision solely to the school district.
To protect children’s privacy in schools, the state will also prohibit the selling or the sharing of students’ personal data outside of the Texas public education system, Abbott said.
Abbott, who is running for reelection, has made it a point to target inappropriate content in schools. In November, he directed the Texas Education Agency to develop statewide standards preventing “obscene content in Texas public schools.” Shortly after he told the agency to investigate criminal activity related to “the availability of pornography” in public schools, saying the agency should refer to such instances “for prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.”
Under the Parent Bill of Rights, Abbott said any educator convicted of providing minors with “obscene” content will lose their educational credentials and state licensing, forfeit their retirement benefits and will be placed on a “do not hire” list. The state will also require schools to post the bill online for parents to access.
“Also school districts will be required to provide parents with information and options for charter schools, magnet schools and other public schools as alternatives for their children,” Abbott said.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, who served under President Ronald Reagan, congratulated Abbott on the bill and reiterated the importance of parents involvement in classroom issues. He said the bill will likely be imitated in other states. “Not every teacher is a parent but every parent is a teacher,” Bennett said. “We know that the parents influence on the child is the greatest influence of any adult…We need to restore the priority of the parent to the classroom and to the child’s education which is what you are doing.”
Bennett also advised parents to not be “intimidated by the cult of expertise.” “When it comes to education of children, if you don’t understand what they’re talking about, you’re probably right and they’re probably wrong,” he said. “It’s not complicated what to teach children and what parents want schools to do is teach children how to read, write, count and think and develop reliable standards of right and wrong.”
Abbott’s action follows the lead of other Republican leaders across the U.S. who have issued similar bills. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a Parents Bill of Rights in June of 2021. The Intercultural Development Research Association, which has voiced opposition to Abbott’s “critical race theory” bill that went into effect in December, issued a statement Thursday denouncing the governor’s bill, calling it another coordinated attack on the rights of students, parents and teachers in public schools.
“All families must be part of building excellent and equitable schools regardless of their racial or ethnic background or socio-economic status,” the statement said. “Unfortunately, many schools have not prioritized or invested in developing authentic relationships with families, particularly those of color, those with limited incomes, and immigrant families.”
The IDRA also called out groups attempting to pit families and schools against each other with the goal of passing legislation that “whitewashes and simplifies” history.
“These groups, who purport to represent values such as ‘equality’ and ‘transparency’ are feeding some families inaccurate information about their schools and encouraging them to make harmful demands and violent interventions in school policymaking to advance policies that actually widen inequalities and exclusion,” the statement said. “They are pushing their economic, social, and political agendas under the name of ‘parent engagement.’ This is dangerous.”
Please notice it is the right wing ideas and parents that are being encouraged to interfere, given authority over the classroom, and are being touted as needing to tell schools what to teach. If you are progressive, believe in equality, understanding, and tolerance, then keep it to your self. This is simply an attempt to legalize brain washing kids into a right wing 1950’s agenda / propaganda. Remember get the kids young, drill into them to be good little republican worker bees and you got a bunch of future white supremacist running around. Not all kids will go that way, but look at the problems we have in the rural areas of red states where this basically has been done in their schools. The Christian white nationalist right wing Republican is a minority trying desperately to keep the power and advantage the had to continue to rule as they did. It is that simple. They are using the same tactics Putin used and farmed out to other authoritarian states to demonize and then erase LGBTQ+ people from their societies. They idea of no mask or never shutting schools is to keep the parents working. The wealthy lost a lot of profit of the workers, need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Why is the only parents that matter over healthcare are the anti-maskers? Why do those kids get to make other kids / families sick? Also notice the constant slam that the educators and the educated are wrong. If you don’t understand what the teacher is saying then the teacher is wrong! Don’t trust science and facts, go with myth and make believe to again be a good dumb worker bee. Scottie
Let’s talk about Sinema, dollars, and sense….
Let’s talk about agents, influence, and cultural opinion makers….
Florida GOP Priority: Protect White People’s Feelings
CT Republican Elections Official Charged With Murder
Anti-Vax Man Dies Of Something In Texas After Family Sued Minnesota Hospital That Wanted To Pull The Plug
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:
A severely ill COVID-19 patient flown from Minnesota to Texas during a legal battle over whether his ventilator should be turned off died Saturday.
Scott Quiner, who was unvaccinated, was being kept alive by the machine at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, north of Minneapolis, after contracting COVID-19 in October. His family sued the hospital over a move to disconnect Quiner, and a judge issued a restraining order Jan. 13 blocking Mercy from turning off the machine.
Last weekend, the family flew Quiner to Texas, where he was being treated at a Houston hospital. He died Saturday morning. The family’s story drew national attention as the surge in COVID-19 patients strained hospitals across the country.
The New York Times reports:
On Jan. 12, Ms. Quiner pleaded for a lawyer’s help on the “Stew Peters Show,” a podcast whose host has falsely called coronavirus vaccines “poisonous shots” and given a platform to pandemic conspiracy theories.
She said that aside from her husband’s lungs, his organs were functioning and “there was nothing wrong with his brain.” Only a couple of days earlier, she said, her husband had opened his eyes “and was more alert.”
“I’m thinking, ‘Why are you killing him?’” said Ms. Quiner, whose husband had made her his health care agent in 2017. Under Minnesota law, that means she has the authority to make medical decisions on his behalf if he is unable to himself.
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: There is much more to life than work, and there should be in our advanced time.
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Scottie’s world today
For the first morning since last Sunday I feel almost normal. I have been sick for a week, Ron thinks we had a version of Covid. I don’t care what the name of the thing is all I know is it put me in my bed. I like my bed but not anywhere that much. But the roundup still got done. Ron said I was crazy and I told him it is an addiction to editorial cartoons. Scottie
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You can’t save democracy with seditious traitors, Christofascists, and white nationalists.
Would you work with bank robbers to protect a bank?
So it’s not the filibuster, it’s the Voting Rights Bill they are against. Unbelievably disgusting.
https://truth-has-a-liberal-bias.tumblr.com/post/674103618548400129
https://truth-has-a-liberal-bias.tumblr.com/post/674104099885793280
Republicans can’t defend their policies. Killing the political conversation is their mission.
Republican religion, nor their pro-life gaslight, will ever look to help the poor/vulnerable.
Helping the richest is their zero sum game.
Also, people like Putin create refugees through their military/foreign policy, [see Syria], yet conservatives love Putin.
By creating refugees, conservatives always have a boogeyman to frighten their base.
Conservative policies are about isolation and lonerism. Inclusion is a threat.
We are a society of different people, and that scares people who only value whiteness.
Empathy evolves in stages. Some people will always be stunted at the lower levels. Unfortunately, those at the lower levels can’t experience/see/feel what the people at the higher levels experience. That discrepancy between levels is what defines our current politics.
Under funding schools and education is criminal.
Teachers are long a target of conservative cuts. Teachers are 75% women.
We will never have strong communities until we invest in schools and teachers as core infrastructure. This is the foundation.
https://twitter.com/duffyink/status/1485106144855183362?s=20
The biggest threat to a cop is themselves. They make selfish decisions, then claim victimhood.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Unfortunately, there are Not two sides of the same. The GOP Big Lie is a Fact… and So is their attempt at voter-suppression. The Dem side is a Big Truth, and should be noted as such. At least he has confessed the “Big Lie” to be a lie. That’s progress. His lame attempt to both-sides the dishonesty is no more blameworthy than the snarls of a cornered beast. With apologies to Upton Sinclair, It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his standing within his tribe depends upon his not understanding it. Scottie
Is that not the job of the press secretary? It has been done in every administration I can remember. Often it is a deliberate attempt to get a conversation going in the media or to change the Overton window. I would point out the prior administration went through a lot of press secretaries because they were required by their boss to flat out lie to back up his many lies. Scottie
Other than a small minority of cult like followers no one likes tRump nor wants him to run in 2024. More and more Republicans are openly saying it as tRump’s influence over the base is shrinking. The 2020 presidential election was not about Biden and his polices, but a referendum on tRump. tRump was rejected. He will be rejected by an even larger margin if he runs again. Scottie
The right wing media is desperate to bring Biden down. Think on it, what have the Republicans done they can brag about? They are reduced to lying about supporting bills they voted against. So they hammer on Biden’s poll numbers. It is partly the Biden’s peoples fault, they don’t brag enough on what they have accomplished, unlike the former guy who had to make most things up. Scottie
The distinction is extremely clear to me. If you don’t get it, try being a pregnant female. BEFORE birth, there’s a woman who has bodily autonomy or she’s less than a full human. AFTER birth there are two humans.
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And now some for fun
Scottie's Playtime 
This is BS propaganda. Abortions after gestational age of 21 weeks are extremely rare (<1%). They are fundamentally illegal unless medically necessary. The vast majority of those abortions are when the fetus is no longer viable. Overturning RvW most likely will not even ban these types of abortions more than they are now.
That fetus abandoned in the trash was most likely a baby that the mother had to conceal because she didn’t know what else to do. This is often caused by the stigma created by families about pregnancy outside of marriage by young women incapable of taking care of the child. It speaks to the fact that American society does less to encourage a mother to keep her child by supporting both the mother and child (the infamous “welfare mother” stigma). It’s so much easier for conservatives to punish the mother for getting an abortion and forcing her to carry the baby’s to terms and then abandon both mother and child. Scottie