Remembering Dr. King’s Courage, Brilliance, and Integrity

 

Billionaires’ 2025 Plan to Bankrupt TN Schools, Part 1: From Amway to Bill Lee’s Way

Betsy Devos and her family amassed their billions by exploiting untold numbers of people around the globe with delusional schemes of becoming rich by buying in to the Devos family’s de facto Amway pyramid scheme. With promises of wealth and financial independence spouted during capitalist cult revival rallies, generations of the gullible and desperate have fallen prey to the siren song sung by agents of the corrupt, immoral, and unethical Devos clan and their army of recruiters and marketers. (Check out this NBC segment of Dateline here, or read the transcript here.)

Hoping to escape its international reputation as a corporate bloodsucker based on recruiting, exploiting, and discarding its distributors, Amway is now rebranded as Quixtar.  

Co-founded in 1959 by Richard Devos,  the enormously profitable Amway scam grew alongside the Devos patriarch’s extremist conservative political commitments and the family’s white nationalist religious fundamentalism.  Richard Devos was instrumental in founding and financially supporting the Council for National Policy (CNP), an ultra-right  John Birch Society spin-off that sought to “remove all humanists from public office and replace them with pro-moral political leaders” (Dallek, 2022). DeVos served as CNP's President from 1986-88 and 1990-93.

For the Devos clan, “pro-moral” translates to mean Christian nationalist.  As the school voucher movement failed to justify its existence on sound policy or empirical grounds, libertarian and fascist oligarchs like the Kochs and the Mercers turned to white Christian nationalists like the Devoses to sell their educationally-bankrupt and racist school voucher privatization scheme. After all, the Devos empire was built on a foundation of zealous propaganda, and these were exactly the skills needed to sell a voucher scheme that had been demonstrated inferior to public schools in terms of educational value. 

And so Betsy Devos was the “chosen one” for the Lout’s first-term Education Secretary, not because of any educational knowledge she had but, rather, for her already well-established and zealous connections to a right-wing infrastructure built to destroy public education, specifically because of public education's non-sectarian, humane, and democratic foundations.  Betsy’s leadership and support of voucher marketing organizations like American Federation for Children and Alliance for School Choice placed her front and center as the mouthpiece, albeit an ignorant one, for the latest fascist scheme to destroy public schools.

But the fascist oligarchs needed something else to sell increasingly unpopular school voucher schemes besides a theocratic billionaire zealot intent upon establishing her version of a white heaven on Earth. They needed willing politicians, either guided by greed, ignorance, and/or religious zealotry. 

Enter Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.  

Stop the Wrestling Promoter from Becoming Education Secretary

 

The Syllabus Purge at Florida’s Public Universities

The only governor wearing lifts, Ron Desantis, has made it his mission to push a relentless, oppressive, and racist agenda to turn back the clock on civil rights in Florida. In January of this year, the fascist majority in the state legislature passed a new law to root out and eliminate any and all efforts in state universities to implement the democratic values of equity, equality, diversity, and inclusion. You know, those core aspirations in the founding documents of the United States of America.

This clip is from the Press Office of the Florida Department of Education (FDOE):

The State Board of Education also replaced the course "Principles of Sociology" with a comprehensive general education core course in American History. The aim is to provide students with an accurate and factual account of the nation's past, rather than exposing them to radical woke ideologies, which had become commonplace in the now replaced course.

“Higher education must return to its essential foundations of academic integrity and the pursuit of knowledge instead of being corrupted by destructive ideologies,” said Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz, Jr. “These actions today ensure that we will not spend taxpayers’ money supporting DEI and radical indoctrination that promotes division in our society.”

Florida remains committed to providing our students with a world-class education rooted in the pursuit of truth, rather than biased indoctrination, which is why the state’s higher education system has been ranked #1 in the nation for seven consecutive years by the U.S. News & World Report.

These bellicose bullies have gone so far now as use AI to screen course syllabi and to flag even the mention of diversity, inclusion, and/or equity.  In the process, academic freedom is being trampled and democratic values are being jettisoned.

Open Letter to Knox County Schools Regarding Book Banning

Dear Ms. Searles:

I was shocked and saddened to see that Knox County Schools has published its list of 48 books that will be banned from school libraries in Knox County.  As a former librarian in the system (1982-1996), I believe this preemptive action by KCS represents a capitulation to the politically-backward and oppressive ideologues who must be rigorously opposed if the Right to Read, the Library Bill of Rights, and the freedom to think and intellectually and ethically grow are to be preserved in our public schools, which are our most vital laboratories of democracy.  

According to news stories, KCS librarians actively participated in this unethical capitulation and professional malfeasance by identifying books that they believe violate a nebulous and untested state statute that does not require the identification and expurgation of books by librarians. 

The American Library Association, the Association of School Librarians, and the Office of Intellectual Freedom all provide guidance for how to deal with censorious demands by astroturf groups like Moms for Liberty, who in fact represent the interests of anti-democratic influencers whose mission includes the destruction of democratic values in our communities and our country.

Librarians have an unambiguous professional responsibility and a moral duty to offer inclusive, quality collections and to refuse to engage in the expurgation of books. Librarians are obligated to protect the children and parents they serve and to resist efforts to violate the rights of their students (https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations):

Access to Library Resources and Services Regardless of Sex, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, or Sexual Orientation: The American Library Association stringently and unequivocally maintains that libraries and librarians have an obligation to resist efforts that systematically exclude materials dealing with any subject matter, including sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Amended 2020

Access to Resources and Services in the School Library: The school library plays a unique role in promoting intellectual freedom. It serves as a point of voluntary access to information and ideas and as a learning laboratory for students as they acquire critical thinking and problem-solving skills needed in a pluralistic society. Although the educational level and program of the school necessarily shapes the resources and services of a school library, the principles of the Library Bill of Rights apply equally to all libraries, including school libraries. Amended 2014

. . . . Expurgation of Library Materials: Expurgating library materials is a violation of the Library Bill of Rights. Expurgation as defined by this interpretation includes any deletion, excision, alteration, editing, or obliteration of any part(s) of books or other library resources by the library, its agent, or its parent institution (if any). Amended 2014

 See Library Bill of Rights below:

LIBRARY BILL OF RIGHTS 

The American Library Association affirms that all libraries are forums for information and ideas, and that the following basic policies should guide their services.

I. Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation.

II. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

III. Libraries should challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment.

IV. Libraries should cooperate with all persons and groups concerned with resisting abridgment of free expression and free access to ideas.

V. A person’s right to use a library should not be denied or abridged because of origin, age, background, or views.

VI. Libraries which make exhibit spaces and meeting rooms available to the public they serve should make such facilities available on an equitable basis, regardless of the beliefs or affiliations of individuals or groups requesting their use.

VII. All people, regardless of origin, age, background, or views, possess a right to privacy and confidentiality in their library use. Libraries should advocate for, educate about, and protect people’s privacy, safeguarding all library use data, including personally identifiable information.

Adopted June 19, 1939, by the ALA Council; amended October 14, 1944; June 18, 1948; February 2, 1961; June 27, 1967; January 23, 1980; January 29, 2019.

Inclusion of “age” reaffirmed January 23, 1996. 

Although the Articles of the Library Bill of Rights are unambiguous statements of basic principles that should govern the service of all libraries, questions do arise concerning application of these principles to specific library practices. See the documents designated by the Intellectual Freedom Committee as Interpretations of the Library Bill of Rights.

Source: https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill

I believe that the Age-Appropriate Materials Act of 2022 and the subsequent passage of Public Chapter 782 do not, in fact, require the most recent actions taken by Knox County Schools.  Rather, the identification of the 48 titles in KCS libraries represents a dangerous form of “submission in advance,” whereby legitimate institutions preemptively take self-censoring actions that serve to encourage the ignorant audacity of book banners to demand more and more titles be removed from library shelves.

There are many Tennessee citizens who are very upset by this latest bow to authoritarian demands. KCS should be aware that lawsuits are not the sole prerogative of angry fascists.

Sincerely,
James Horn, PhD

ec: Dr. Jon Rysewyk, Superintendent

 

 

TN Lawmaker Calls Out "Bait-and-Switch" Voucher Scheme by Andy Spears

Nashville's Hemmer is having one of Bill Lee's latest scam

Read on Substack

Maddow: Trump's shameless abuse of pardons, nepotism disqualifies him fr...

If you are one of the Dems or a media outlet such as the NYTimes still clucking over Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter, please take a few minutes to understand what this is about.

What He Said . . .

 

🔥 🗣️STURGILL SIMPSON: “This toxic patriarchal energy is an age coming to an end… that energy is clawing for its survival bc it knows it’s dying. We’re heading to something beautiful, we just have to go through some dark shit first. So love everybody.” (H/T @wutangforchildren.bsky.social )

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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) November 24, 2024 at 5:08 PM

Linda McMahan’s Sexual Abuse Allegations

Sagan Flashback

Carl Sagan nailed it back in 1995.

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— NightDiver13 (@nightdiver13.bsky.social) November 18, 2024 at 9:46 AM