Have nothing to do with the [evil] things that people do, things that belong to the darkness. Instead, bring them out to the light... [For] when all things are brought out into the light, then their true nature is clearly revealed...

-Ephesians 5:11-13

As Public-school Enrollments Drop, So Do School Budgets

Monday, 02 May 2022 14:07
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, May 2, 2022:  

Public schools are opening across the country but, as The New American has reported, many students aren’t returning. And that, as the Associated Press noted, is causing many public schools major budgetary difficulties.

In Houston, for example, 11,000 students haven’t returned, forcing the district to cut $60 million from next year’s budget.

In Olathe, Kansas, 800 students haven’t returned, forcing the district to cut 140 jobs.

In Albuquerque, so many students are being homeschooled that the school district is facing a budget shortfall of $25 million. In Minneapolis, the school district has lost more than 4,000 students, resulting in a budget deficit of $27 million.

In Lawrence, Kansas, school officials are being forced to deal with a $7 million shortfall, while in Des Moines, 1,600 students haven’t returned, causing a $9 million deficit.

Strategies for dealing with these shortfalls range from laying off substitute teachers and aides, merging upper and lower age classes, cutting athletic and other budgets, closing schools altogether, and some districts are even selling school buildings to raise revenue to cover the deficits.

The one exception is Florida, where the influx of young families has offset the loss to homeschooling. As Jazz Shaw, writing for Hot Air, noted:

School enrollment is actually up in the Sunshine State and school revenue has increased with it.

 

Could that be because of the state’s policies requiring schools to involve parents in decisions affecting their children? Could it be the fact that so many people fleeing failing cities in blue states are heading for Florida? It’s probably a combination of both.

Although many districts are blaming Covid shutdowns, that is likely only a partial answer. Many public schools have turned from education centers to indoctrination centers, and parents were shocked to learn just what their students were being subjected to. As Keri Ingraham noted in the Washington Examiner:

[Homeschooling] parents were especially delighted to have their children escape the far-left political indoctrination that dominates today’s K-12 public education classrooms (the daily promotion of the LGBT agenda, critical race theory divisiveness, and woke academics).

 

Their children have been freed from the political agenda of teachers’ unions and school personnel using them as pawns in their power plays.

In addition, as public schools attempt to implement “equity,” they have cancelled TAG (talented and gifted) programs and honors classes.

Those being homeschooled often get better educations. As homeschooling parents have learned, their youngsters become motivated to learn more as their learning styles are recognized and teaching strategies are tailored to fit them.

Instead of sitting at a desk for six hours a day, homeschoolers enjoy field trips, socialization with other homeschoolers, and an agenda more in line with what their parents believe is the best for them. The recovery of family time is a bonus.

In just one year, the percentage of students being homeschooled across the country jumped from three percent to nearly 12 percent. And as that option becomes more widely recognized as viable and financially attractive, its growth is likely to continue apace.

Parents who have enrolled their youngsters in Freedom Project Academy, an online classical education program affiliated with The John Birch Society, have been delighted with the change:

This is our first year with FPA and we’re extremely happy. You have a wonderful program and my children are learning more than they ever have in a public school setting.

 

We can’t wait to register for next year!

And:

[Our son] is thrilled and oozing with confidence. As an FPA student, he has learned how to learn. He has been surrounded by teachers that care and willing to give him a second chance while expecting him to rise to the challenge.

 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

And:

This is our first year at FPA. We were a little anxious to move our kids to a private online school. As the school year started our anxiety was relieved quickly. FPA does an excellent job with the classroom environment.

As English King Henry VI said in the Shakespeare play Henry VI, “Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”

Covid may have been a “ill wind” indeed, but it is resulting in the happy exit of millions of young students from public schools and into true learning experiences that can only bode well for the future.

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Oklahoma to be the First State to Ban All Abortions After Heartbeat

Friday, 29 April 2022 12:43
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, April 29, 2022:  

The moment Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt signs two bills into law — expected today — Oklahoma will be the first state effectively to ban all abortions in the state from the moment a heartbeat is detected onward to birth. Sooner State legislators aren’t waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, expected in June, to act.

The state’s Senate passed the “Oklahoma Heartbeat Act” — Senate Bill 1503 — on Thursday, which prohibits abortions any time after a heartbeat can be detected, usually around six weeks into a pregnancy.

The Senate also passed House Bill 4327 (after reconciliation) on Thursday, allowing private citizens to file civil lawsuits against abortion providers or anyone assisting an abortion. That includes not only the individual performing or attempting to perform an abortion, but also anyone who knowingly “aids and abets” an abortion. That would include anyone paying for the abortion, providing information leading to an abortion, or providing transportation to or from an abortion facility — in other words, anyone who assists in abortion in any way could be sued. If convicted, that individual would pay a fine of at least $10,000 plus other penalties and legal fees.

This mirrors the “Texas Heartbeat Act” — SB8 — that has effectively all but shut down abortions in the Lone Star State.

When combined with previous legislation that Governor Stitt has already signed making performing an abortion a felony (with a $100,000 fine and 10 years in jail), Oklahoma can now boast the most protection for the unborn of any state in the union.

While the previous bill that the governor signed making performing an abortion a felony won’t become effective until later this summer, the two bills on his desk become effective immediately upon signing.

This will effectively shut down the traffic abortion clinics have enjoyed from Texans fleeing that state in order to kill their unborn legally. Before the Texas ban, about 40 women from that state traveled to Oklahoma for abortions. That number jumped to over 240 in October — a 600-percent increase.

Once the bills are signed into law, those deciding to kill their unborn child will have to travel to states that still don’t consider abortion as murder, such as Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Arkansas.

Abortion providers are suing to prevent implementation of the Oklahoma felony law and are threatening to sue over the two bills sitting on Stitt’s desk once he signs them. They can see what’s coming, as Nancy Northrup, president for the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, noted:

We are asking the state courts to uphold the State Constitution and apply Oklahoma precedent to block these insidious abortion bans before they take effect.

 

Oklahoma is a critical state for abortion access right now, with many Texans fleeing to Oklahoma for abortion care. These bans would further decimate abortion access across the South.

Abortion facilities in Oklahoma are already refusing to schedule abortions for next week in anticipation of Stitt’s signing those two bills into law shortly. Tony Lauinger, chairman of Oklahomans for Life, said that “we are hopeful that [these bills] will save the lives of more unborn children here in Oklahoma.”

Through these bills, Oklahomans are declaring that the sanctity of life must be protected. In a world where there are clearly efforts to destroy the foundations of the culture, it’s comforting to know that states such as Oklahoma — along withTexas, Idaho, and others — are defending those foundations.

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New York’s Highest Court Rejects Democrats’ Redistricting Gerrymander

Thursday, 28 April 2022 15:22
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 28, 2022:  

The ruling on Wednesday by New York State’s highest court, its Court of Appeals, tossing the Democrats’ obvious and unconstitutional gerrymander of the state’s voting districts dashed the last chance Democrats had to overcome (or at least mitigate) the Republican Party’s momentum in the November elections. Democrats were counting on the blatant gerrymander of New York’s districts to offset Republican gains from redistricting in Republican states such as Kansas and Florida.

Democrats have a supermajority in both houses of the state’s legislature, and the Court of Appeals’ seven justices were all appointed by Democrats. What could go wrong?

New York has a tawdry history of political gerrymandering that is so offensive that the state’s constitution was amended in 2014 in an attempt to limit, if not eliminate, the ability to stack the deck in favor of the ruling party.

But the high court surprised and disappointed those counting on the gerrymander to give the Democratic Party at least a fighting chance to ward off the coming Republican tsunami in November. From the majority opinion:

During the first redistricting cycle to follow adoption of the 2014 amendments, the IRC [Independent Redistricting Commission] and the legislature failed to follow the procedure commanded by the State Constitution.

 

A stalemate within the IRC resulted in a breakdown in the mandatory process for submission of electoral maps to the legislature.

 

The legislature responded by creating and enacting maps in a nontransparent manner controlled exclusively by the dominant political party — doing exactly what they would have done had the 2014 constitutional reforms never been passed.

 

On these appeals, the primary questions before us are whether this failure to follow the prescribed constitutional procedure warrants invalidation of the legislature’s congressional and state senate maps and whether there is record support for the determination of both courts below that the district lines for congressional races were drawn with an unconstitutional partisan intent.

 

We answer both questions in the affirmative and therefore declare the congressional and senate maps void.

The left-leaning FiveThirtyEight political analysis website said the ruling “just cost Democrats their big redistricting advantage,” adding:

The decision was a huge blow to Democrats, who until recently looked like they had gained enough seats nationally in redistricting to almost eliminate the Republican bias in the House of Representatives….

 

That’s because much of Democrats’ national redistricting advantage rested on their gerrymander in New York.

Under the map created by the Democrat supermajorities and signed into law by New York’s Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul, Democrats were expected to win 22 of New York’s 26 House seats. It didn’t matter that this is way out of proportion with how New York State voters vote. It was designed to give Democrats three more seats in the House and cost the Republicans four seats – a swing of seven. Since the Democrat margin in the House is just five seats, Democrats were looking to New York’s gerrymander to keep the House under Democrat control.

In his revised analysis, Nathanial Rakich, writing for FiveThirtyEight, said:

Now, however, Republicans clearly have the advantage.… I estimate that redistricting currently positions Republicans for a net gain of around four or five House seats and Democrats for a net loss of about four.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has concluded that it’s all over for the Democrats in November:

The overturned New York Congressional map was widely viewed as an aggressive Democratic gerrymander that likely would cost Republicans 4 seats.

 

At the very least, a marginally fair map would likely return [the House] at least to GOP control. In the current political environment, a partisanly neutral map could give Republicans as many as ten of The Empire State’s 26 seats.

Dave Wasserman, who is affiliated with The Cook Political Report, thinks the ruling will have catastrophic consequences for Democrats in November. On Wednesday he Tweeted:

In a 4-3 ruling, NY’s top court has turned Dems’ 2022 House outlook from terrible to potentially horrific. A court-appointed special master will draw a remedial map, perhaps costing Dems three NY seats they otherwise would have gained & making R[epublican]s clear redistricting winners.

And all because, in New York State, there are Democrat judges who followed the Constitution. As New York Republican Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis said:

Today, New York State’s highest court confirmed the decision by two lower courts and the opinion of editorial boards, good government groups, academics, and voters across the state.

 

I am heartened to see that the judicial system worked and that the will of the people is being preserved.

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Federal Judge Ends Challenge to Texas Heartbeat Law

Wednesday, 27 April 2022 13:57
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 27, 2022:  

In a terse statement, a federal appeals court has dismissed all lawsuits pending against Texas state officials and administrators who have challenged the state’s “heartbeat” law:

Having received the ruling of the Texas Supreme Court that named official defendants may not enforce the provisions of the Texas Heartbeat Act … this court REMANDS the case with instructions to dismiss all challenges to the private enforcement provisions of the statute and to consider whether plaintiffs have standing to challenge.

Put another way, the ruling dismisses all attempts by pro-abortion advocates and providers to overturn Texas’ “Heartbeat Act.” And it requires the lower court to consider whether those bringing those challenges even have legal standing to do so.

In short, this ends the matter: Texas’ “heartbeat” law stands, and will continue to save an estimated 100 babies from being murdered in their mothers’ wombs every day.

The Texas law prohibits Texas officials from enforcing the law but allows private citizens to do so. It empowers them to sue anyone suspected of aiding or abetting an abortion after a heartbeat is detected (usually after six weeks of pregnancy). That would include physicians and their assistants, those providing advice and counsel to a woman considering ending her pregnancy, and those providing transportation to and from the abortion clinic.

The penalties against those providers are tough and have, for all intents and purposes, ended the abortion holocaust in the Lone Star State.

More than 20 lawsuits have been filed since the law became effective last September, and 14 of them were filed against Texas Right to Life (TRL). Said TRL President Jonathan Saenz:

This final federal court decision for life leaves no doubt that the Texas Heartbeat Act is the law of the land in the Lone Star State. We are grateful to the federal courts for upholding this groundbreaking law and protecting pre-born babies.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott celebrated the ruling: “Another legal loss for those challenging SB8 — the pro-life law that is saving babies every day.” So did Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, tweeting:

Very proud of my team for bringing win after win for the unborn in Texas! The Texas Heartbeat Act is one of the greatest pro-life laws in the nation, and I’m glad to defend it. Tens of thousands of babies have been saved in Texas because of SB 8 and our victories in court!

One lawsuit — Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson — sought to exploit an opening the Supreme Court allowed back in December: that anti-life challengers could bring action against state licensing officials. That opening has now been firmly shut.

All eyes are now on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, heard by the Supreme Court in December with an expected ruling in June. Optimists are hoping the high court will overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to the states, where it rightfully belongs.

But they could be disappointed, as the Supreme Court is only considering “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.”

For now, pro-life supporters are celebrating, as well as thousands of babies who have been saved from the holocaust since the Texas Heartbeat Act became effective last September.

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Musk’s Plans for Twitter: Cut Board Salaries, Make Algorithm Open-source

Tuesday, 26 April 2022 12:52
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 26, 2022:  

In his announcement on Twitter that he was taking the company private, Elon Musk revealed his plans:

Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

 

I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.

 

Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.

The first thing Musk will do, once the transaction has been completed, is to cut the board members’ salaries to zero. He warned them in this Tweet just days earlier:

Board salary will be $0 if my bid succeeds, so that’s $3M/year saved right there.

The transaction will take months to close, thanks for the need to gain approval from regulatory agencies and the shareholders.

But not from the board. After reflecting on Musk’s original offer, and the legal consequences if it moved ahead with its “poison pill” strategy, it folded like a Hohner accordion. The board was suddenly unanimous in approving Musk’s original offer. Wrote board chairman Bret Tayler:

The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing.

 

The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.

Musk had boxed them in, using his own Twitter account to accomplish his purpose. On April 14, he reminded them of their fiduciary responsibilities:

If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty.

 

The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale….

 

Taking Twitter private at $54.20 [per share] should be up to the shareholders, not the board.

Those shareholders have seen their Twitter stock holdings drop from $80 per share in February 2021 to just over $30 a share a year later. The $54 bid will likely persuade the vast majority of them to agree to Musk’s buyout offer.

Regulatory approval will take longer, but the purchase is scheduled to close before the end of the year.

That will allow disaffected Twitter employees to find other work. They would chafe under Musk’s new open-algorithm policy where users can see exactly where they stand.

Musk is likely to uncover secrets being hidden successfully from shareholders, regulators, and the public until now. A techie named Sundance, writing at The Last Refuge, speculated as to what one of those secrets might be:

I share this perspective having spent thousands of hours in the past several years deep in the weeds of tech operating systems, communication platforms, and the issue of simultaneous users. What Twitter represents, and what Musk is attempting, is not what most would think.

 

In the big picture of tech platforms, Twitter, as an operating model, is a massive high-user commenting system.

 

Twitter is not a platform built around a website; Twitter is a platform for comments and discussion that operates in the sphere of social media. As a consequence, the technology and data processing required to operate the platform does not have an economy of scale.

 

There is no business model where Twitter is financially viable to operate…. UNLESS the tech architecture under the platform was subsidized.

 

In my opinion, there is only one technological system and entity that could possibly underwrite the cost of Twitter to operate. That entity is the United States Government.

If Sundance is correct, then Musk may uncover the greatest secret of all: The U.S. government has infiltrated Twitter, and used it to punish a sitting president of the United States by permanently removing him from the platform.

Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton agrees that Musk is likely to uncover many such secrets: “Twitter has been lying to shareholders, regulators, and Congress, about its censorship abuses. [It’s no wonder] the [board had] a keen interest in keeping Elon Musk from further exposing this fraud.”

So does Matt Vespa. Writing for Townhall, Vespa noted:

[Musk] did a flank march and outmaneuvered the Left who for years enjoyed censoring and banning conservatives with impunity. We all knew these Silicon Valley types were left-wing and biased. It entered a new and disturbing phase during the 2016 and 2020 elections.

 

Twitter literally censored The New York Post from reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. They intervened to help Joe Biden win the election.

Hopefully Musk means what he says about the importance of free speech and that, once in control, he’ll fumigate Twitter and turn it into a legitimate public forum where free speech is enjoyed and encouraged on issues of the day.

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Trump’s Media Platform “Truth Social” Moves to Rumble

Monday, 25 April 2022 17:17
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, April 25, 2022:  

The online video-hosting platform Rumble, currently enjoying 44 million visitors every month, is about to get much, much larger. On Friday, the company announced that

Truth Social, the social media platform created by the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), has successfully migrated … to Rumble’s cloud infrastructure. This migration will enable the Truth Social platform to scale significantly on a new and cancel-culture-free cloud platform.

“Scale significantly” is the operative phrase. Prior to being unceremoniously booted from Twitter following the faux Capitol “insurrection” in January 2021, Donald Trump had nearly 90 million followers.

In October Trump formally announced the creation of TMTG, named former California Congressman Devin Nunes to head it up, and initially launched in February using hosting service Mastodon.

So many of Trump’s followers stampeded onto the platform that more than a million were wait-listed while the system underwent its beta testing.

Naturally, the anti-Trump media chortled about the “failure” of Trump’s launch. Chris Cillizza of CNN predicted that it was doomed to fail. Noah Berlatsky of The Independent said that if it were successful Trump’s new platform would be a potential “threat to democracy.” The Forward expressed concerns that antisemitism would pervade the platform, while The New York Times expressed “skepticism” about whether Trump’s platform would be able to compete with other rival social media services like Gettr, Parler, and Gab.

And Wikipedia reported that “some commentators pointed out the similarity with the name of the newspaper Pravda (‘Truth’ in English), a notorious propaganda outlet in the Soviet Union.”

On the other hand, Rumble’s founder and CEO Chris Pavlovski was happy to welcome his newest and largest customer:

We are excited to partner with one of the fastest-growing social media companies on the internet. Providing top-notch cloud infrastructure is essential, and Truth Social users will start to see the fruits of our labors immediately.

More than a million of those wait-listed until the end of the testing period have already been added to the new platform, according to Nunes, who added:

[On Thursday], Truth Social and Rumble took a major stride toward rescuing the internet from the grip of the Big Tech tyrants. Our teams have worked tirelessly to realize this great endeavor.

 

Rumble’s cloud infrastructure is second to none and will be the backbone for the restoration of free speech online for ages to come.

Rumble, founded by Pavlovski in 2013, has enjoyed enormous success on its own. It currently hosts Alex Jones of InfoWars, Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Reuters.

Trump’s TMTG has a massive $1.25 billion to ensure the new platform’s success. And, according to Nunes, “engagement” on the new platform is already ramping up:

We have opened the new Rumble cloud. Yesterday … early in the morning … it went off flawlessly….

 

You’ve got half of America [who] should be concerned about being canceled by those crazy woke companies.

With Elon Musk’s pending takeover of Twitter, one of those “woke” companies, it is not clear just how many of Trump’s former followers will migrate over to Rumble. Musk has promised to turn Twitter into a “free speech” subscription platform in order to eliminate corporate influence over its platform’s conversations.

As House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene — who had her personal Twitter account permanently suspended last month — said after setting up her account on Truth Social: “Options are always good for consumers.”

And likely to be good for Donald Trump, as well, as he continues to tantalize his followers with increasing intimations about running for a second term in 2024.

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Musk Obtains Financing to Buy Twitter; Next Move Is Up To the Board

Friday, 22 April 2022 14:33
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, April 22, 2022:  

In amending his original filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday Elon Musk in effect said: I’ve got the money. What are you going to do? I’m waiting.

The amended filing served notice on the board that his plan to purchase the company and take it private (he plans to make it “the platform for free speech around the globe”) is serious. He is putting up $21 billion of his own money that, when added to commitment letters from Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and some European banks, totals $46.5 billion. This is more than enough to buy up every single outstanding share of Twitter (currently trading at $49 a share) and pay off all of Twitter’s bonded indebtedness.

He also warned the board, through his filing, that he is still considering going directly to those shareholders — doing an end run around the board — if it fails to accept his offer.

From the filing:

The Reporting Person [Musk] is exploring whether to commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding share of Common Stock … at a price of $54.20 per share, net to the seller in cash … but [he] has not determined whether to do so at this time.

 

 

He also put the board on notice that he “may engage in discussions with the Board and/or members of [Twitter’s] management team, including … the Proposal, potential business combinations and strategic alternatives … the strategy of [the board] and other matters.” In other words, Musk in essence is saying: I’m not going away; If you fail to deal seriously with me, I have other options; I intend to buy your company and take it private; you have my phone number.

The final warning from the filing was this: “[Musk] reserves the right to change his plans at any time … in light of his ongoing evaluation of numerous factors, including … the relative attractiveness of alternative business and investment opportunities.”

In other words, the clock is ticking. Musk is in a buying mood but that won’t last forever.

If the board fails to respond, or worse, rejects Musk’s original offer altogether and continues to impose its “poison pill” strategy, each member could expose himself or herself to litigation for failing to act as a fiduciary. As an attorney watching the situation closely said: “The directors have to act in a way that’s in the best interests [of shareholders and] not in the way that allows them to keep control of the corporation.”

The only thing missing from Musk’s updated filing is a drop-dead date. Musk is holding all the cards. It’s time for the board to man up and call, or fold.

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In Blatant Political Move, Biden Administration Demotes Temporary Head of ATF

Friday, 22 April 2022 08:20
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, April 21, 2022:  

With Joe Biden’s poll numbers dropping out of sight and the obliteration of his first nominee to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), progressives were screaming for something good to happen.

The New York Times responded, sounding the death knell for the agency’s present temporary head of the agency, Marvin Richardson, back in January, and on Wednesday the White House confirmed his demotion from temporary director to deputy director.

The timing has everything to do with the November elections. Richardson, a 30-year veteran of the ATF, is due to retire next year. His relationship with the gun industry was professional and cordial. But in today’s toxic political environment, even being black couldn’t save Richardson.

From the Times:

In late January, Marvin G. Richardson, the acting director of the [ATF], told a gathering of weapons manufacturers that the rule banning online sales of [ghost gun parts] would not be completed until June….

 

This infuriated some Biden allies….

 

Progressives see Mr. Richardson’s low-key leadership … as part of the problem.

Richardson was just doing his job. The “ghost gun” initiative has generated the largest-ever response to any ATF anti-gun move: More than 250,000 comments were received in opposition to it during the “public comment” period required before the initiative could become active. Richardson was forced to dedicate 30 ATF employees to go through the comments before he could make the rule permanent.

Biden’s first nominee, David Chipman, went down in flames thanks to his odious anti-gun position. Biden’s second, Steve Dettelbach, is cut from the same cloth, and his Senate confirmation is increasingly unlikely.

So, in a signal to progressives, Biden and his handlers decided Richardson was expendable. In an exclusive, Stephen Gutowski, writing for the pro-Second Amendment blog The Reload, detailed what he learned from his contacts inside the agency:

The reshuffling was announced by Richardson on a conference call on Monday, which left many ATF officials surprised and dismayed….

 

“The news that he was being replaced came as a shock to most of us within the agency,” one ATF official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told The Reload.

Richardson was too friendly with the firearms industry, according to the Times. He had worked hard to maintain cordial relations with the industry for a very good reason: Many good tips on potential violators came from gun dealers. Said one of Gutowski’s sources:

A lot of the tips that we would get on illegal firearms activity from straw purchasers to traffickers came from dealers.

 

The reality is just a very, very small percentage of gun dealers are bad. So, those partnerships are important, and Marvin really did a good job at nurturing those relationships….

 

The fact that he has those relationships may not have sat well with the current administration. And I’m sure that that might’ve helped them push him out.

Indeed, the Biden administration is intending to weaponize the ATF against those very gun dealers, hoping to put many of them out of business for even the most minor infractions of the agency’s rules.

As far back as October 2020, Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the firearms trade association National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), saw what was coming in the event Biden somehow won the White House:

The Biden-Harris ticket will weaponize the ATF against retailers to close them down for even minor errors in inspections….

 

Kamala Harris … has vowed to turn the ATF from an agency which assists family-owned retail businesses to stay within the overwhelming labyrinth of federal and state laws and regulations to one that carries a heavy hammer and will shutter federally licensed retailers for minor administrative errors.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki announced that the U.S. attorney for the district of Arizona, Gary Restaino, will take Richardson’s place until such time as a permanent director is confirmed.

The move could be costly politically. As Ed Morrissey noted in Hot Air:

Put the optics of demoting one of the few black agency heads there are in the Biden administration, and it’s a recipe for embarrassment and chaos, if not disaster.

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Musk Reveals “Plan B” for Twitter: Buy Out Shareholders Directly

Wednesday, 20 April 2022 17:27
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, April 20, 2022:  

When Elon Musk learned of the “poison pill” being adopted by Twitter’s board of directors in an attempt to thwart his bid to take the company private, he tantalized his followers by suggesting he had a “Plan B” in mind.

On April 16 he revealed his plan by tweeting: “Love Me Tender,” the hit song by Elvis Presley in 1956. Plan B: go directly to the shareholders and make them an offer they can’t refuse. That would be, in Wall Street vernacular, a “tender” offer.

If successful, he would circumvent the board and its “poison pill” strategy, fire the board and replace them with his own people, buy out the rest of the shareholders, take the company private, and turn it into a “free speech” entity by charging subscribers a minimal monthly fee. He would stop selling ads, removing corporate influence. And, if his past successes with Tesla and SpaceX are any indication, he would make his investors even richer.

The bidding at the moment is this: The company’s market capitalization (its present share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding) is $37 billion, not the $43 billion popular commentators keep repeating.

Musk would put up another $10 to $15 billion of his own money (he already has more than $3 billion invested in Twitter shares). If his tender offer is successful, all he needs is for somewhat less than half of the present shareholders to accept his offer. That would require about $19 billion, so Musk might need a little help.

He already has a line of credit at Morgan Stanley, and a slew of private investors who have enjoyed success in investing in Musk’s other ventures.

Musk needs to hurry. It will take time for the board to implement its “poison pill” strategy. The next board meeting is scheduled for May 25. He would like nothing better than to ride the public’s current fascination with his latest move into that board meeting, announce that they are all fired and that he will be putting his own people in place, that the “poison pill” strategy is dead, and that he is taking the company private, selling the company’s San Francisco headquarters building, offering Twitter employees a buy-out option, implementing a subscription model at $3 a month for those subscribers who want to continue to use the service, thus ending all corporate advertising (and influence).

His Plan B, when officially announced within the next few days, puts the board in a difficult position. Collectively, the 13 board members — excluding Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who is leaving — own less than 0.3 percent of the stock. If they proceed with the “poison pill” strategy, they would likely be violating their fiduciary duty to the company’s other shareholders. As Adam Candeub, a law professor at Michigan State University, put it, “[Twitter’s board of directors] have to act in a way that’s in [the shareholders’] best interests, not in the way that allows them to keep control of the corporation.”

So, Musk’s Plan B could be a head-fake, forcing the board to accept his initial offer. Shareholders would pocket a nice gain (Musk is offering $54 a share for the company’s stock, which is currently selling at $46 a share).

In any event, expect the unexpected, which is Musk’s style. The New American will keep its readers informed.

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Homeschooling Surge From Covid Is Permanent, Says AP

Tuesday, 19 April 2022 13:21
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This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, April 19, 2022: 

Following what the Associated Press (AP) said is “the most rapid rise in homeschooling the U.S. has ever seen,” homeschool parents “continue directing their children’s educations themselves.”

Prior to Covid, about three percent, or two million, young people were being homeschooled, according to the Census Bureau. That number tripled during the 2020-2021 school year, said AP, and fell off only slightly the next year.

The media outlet blamed the initial increase on the Covid shutdowns but had trouble dealing with the reasons homeschool parents are staying with the program. It gave three reasons: “health concerns, disagreement with school policies, and a desire to keep what has worked for their children.”

But, as Jazz Shaw, writing for Hot Air, explained, there is much more behind the move than just a “disagreement with school policies.” Parents, once forced to see exactly what their children were being taught in public schools, were aghast. Wrote Shaw:

I would imagine that a much bigger factor is the realization by many parents that too many public schools simply don’t do a very good job, despite the endless amounts of money that state and local governments flush into them. This is particularly true in more economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, where graduation and college acceptance rates remain unacceptably low.

 

On top of that, there is obviously a growing realization among parents that the nation’s public schools have largely turned from being centers of education to centers of indoctrination.

 

Doing away with honors programs (because they are supposedly racist) and adding in highly sexualized “gender awareness” programs isn’t helping matters either.

 

For every parent who learns that the school told their children “don’t tell your parents,” there are probably a dozen more families pulling the plug on public schooling.

 

And as an added bonus, children being educated at home don’t need to put on a d**n mask.

AP learned from the Census Bureau that black families have benefited the most from the surge in homeschooling: “The proportion of Black families homeschooling their children increased by five times, from 3.3% to 16.1% … while the proportion about doubled across other groups.”

Parents with children in public schools are learning the real purpose of public schools: socialization and integration. Said the late Horace Mann, a 19th-century politician known for his support for public schools, “Public Education is the cornerstone of our community and our democracy.” He knew, of course, that the Founders never intended to establish a democracy but took pains to avoid one by instituting a constitutional republic instead.

John Dewey, another educational “reformer” living at the same time as Mann, was more blatant about the real purpose of public schooling: “A socialized mind … is the method of social control.”

As Briana Brockbank wrote in Family Today:

Home education allows parents to adapt the curriculum to the student’s needs. Also, parents have a say in how the student will learn and what they will learn.

David Harper, principal of Freedom Project Academy, an affiliate of The John Birch Society, took it to another level. In a conversation with The New American, he said, “We teach our students how to think, not what to think.” He went on to say that his online program teaches students critical-thinking skills, how to defend positions, and how to present ideas, all based on a classical education model.

One parent’s testimony reveals just how effective Freedom Project is:

I would like to thank the faculty and staff of Freedom Project Academy for equipping my children with strong academic courses taught from a Christian worldview by teachers who integrated their faith in their teaching and their rapport with their students.

 

My daughter, a former FPA student, just graduated from Eastern Nazarene with a BS in Business and a minor in Biology. My son will graduate FPA this year and head to Florida Polytechnic University.

 

My deepest appreciation to everyone at FPA!

In the past two years, according to Harper, online enrollment at FPA has doubled, and enrollment for the 2022-2023 school year, which opened just two weeks ago, is ahead of schedule. For more information, go to https://fpeusa.org.

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Many of the articles on Light from the Right first appeared on either The New American or the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor.
Copyright © 2021 Bob Adelmann