Fenger Pointing
Treaties from hell
Ten Most Wanted
The rest of the story
With voting in the recall election of Arizona State Senate President Russell Pearce underway, it’s high time that voters in Legislative District 18 learned something about the content of the character of challenger Jerry Lewis. Here’s a sampling.
Lewis was superintendent of Sequoia Schools, a publicly-funded charter school chain.
In 2005 he approached the owners of Joy Christian School, a privately-funded Christian school, with an offer to contract Sequoia’s distance learning system to provide learning tools that Joy lacked to some of Joy’s students. Joy accepted the offer and began to have Joy students log into Sequoia’s program from Joy School’s facility.
Note: Joy Christian academy charges parents between $6,000 and $8,000 a year in tuition. It is fully privately funded. As such, they do not report anything to the state in terms of attendance.
Sequoia is publicly funded, based upon each student’s average daily attendance. As each Joy student logged onto Sequoia’s website, he or she was counted as a Sequoia student and was added to the daily average attendance report for Sequoia. This increased the amount of money Sequoia received for state funding.
In 2009 a parent contacted the Arizona Department of Education, asking why she was paying for tuition at Joy when her child was educated at Sequoia.
An audit was conducted. It was discovered that Sequoia received $1.9 million for the additional students. The audit also revealed that Sequoia had shown an increase of slightly over 400 new students on a daily basis by counting the Joy students.
Lewis (r) was confronted with the facts from the audit and advised to step down as superintendent of Sequoia. Lewis stepped down, and no charges were pressed. Since he had used state funds, Sequoia was forced to reimburse the funds.
Several months later, Maricopa County Supervisor Don Stapley was instrumental in removing Sandra Dowling as superintendant of the Thomas J. Pappas School for the homeless. Stapley aided in transferring control and administration of Pappas to the company that owned and administered Sequoia Schools. Shortly after Dowling left, Jerry Lewis took over as superintendent of Pappas in Tempe. (The name has since changed to Children First Academy.)
During this time, the light-fingered Lewis was caught taking items earmarked for a large garage sale the school held every year as a fundraiser. He was seen taking the donated items which he gave to a woman who later sold them at a yard sale.
The teacher who reported this was fired by Lewis. Since she was under contract she in turn sued Pappas. That suit is open and pending in Maricopa County Superior court. As a result of reporting Lewis’ theft, the teacher lost her home and possessions. How about those apples?
Here’s the real disgrace. The Arizona Republic and other media have kept a lid on the story; such is their hatred of Russell Pearce and burning desire to see him ousted. Many, many column inches have been written about ex-candidate Olivia Cortes, beating that story into the ground, but not a peep about the shenanigans of Jerry Lewis, even though they had the story. Laughably, a headline on one of their lead editorials read: “Voters Armed With the Truth.”
Finally, this past Sunday, the Arizona Republic came up with a tricky move. In an attempt to inoculate themselves against having to write a real news story on Jerry Lewis’ misdeeds, they planted eleven puny paragraphs into their “Political Insider” column. With their heading, they attempted to label the valid accusations against Lewis as “mud slinging” and quoted a Ron Neil as saying that “not even 1 cent was raised from any yard sale of items donated to our school.” This ignores other reports that the lucky friend of Lewis said she made $1,000 off the purloined items. No story here?
The Republic must be forgetting their motto: “It’s For the Children.”
Contact Becky:
Taxpayer subsidized racism
If you aren’t familiar with the Raza Studies program taught in the Tucson Unified School District in Tucson, Arizona, be prepared for a shocker. To say it is controversial is putting it mildly.
La Raza means “The Race” in Spanish. Now the name of the program is called “Mexican-American Ethnic Studies” (to sound less racist), but the content is just as odious. In order to learn more about it, I attended a three-hour panel discussion last Saturday hosted by the Arizona Mainstream Project (www.ArizonaMainstreamProject.org).
Panelists included Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, who was serving as Superintendent of Public Instruction when the state legislature passed HB 2281 in 2010 to prohibit public schools from using curriculums that included objectives such as overthrowing our government, ethnic resentment, redefining the family and other such nonsense. Rather than complying with state law, TUSD is fighting tooth and nail to continue teaching, as Horne calls it, their racial chauvinism.
For his efforts in trying to end the Raza studies, Horne found himself the central character in a street play in Tucson titled, “The Killing of Tom Horne” in all its gory glory. The current Superintendent, John Huppenthal, may not describe the program’s supporters as a “cult,” but his public relations director, Andy LaFevre isn’t as circumspect when it comes to describing the cult tactics used to indoctrinate the kids.
Students of Mexican descent are taught that they, as part of the “bronze” nation, are superior to the white race and must depose whites from land “stolen from them.” Never mind that this is the Gadsden Purchase to which they are referring. That slight detail is never taught to them. Instead, they are taught that they are all Aztecs and not descendants of the tribes who crossed the Bering Straits. Classes are punctuated with chants and the Caesar Chavez clap.
The kicker is that these themes start as early as the third grade and continue through high school. Worse, the Raza studies qualify for American history requirements for graduation! The slanted, racist view of the world may be all these children ever learn of their America.
Rey Torres, president of a Latino Republican organization and a researcher of Mexican history, stated that revisionist history, with giant dollops of Marxism, is being fed to these students in Raza classes. Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, who is running for Congress against Raul Grijalva (who called for the boycott of Arizona upon the passage of SB 1070) agrees with Torres that “Aztlan” is an imaginary, non-existent land.
Saucedo Mercer tells how her daughter was recruited into the “Si Se Puede Club” back around 1997 at her school in Sierra Vista on the basis of her skin color (even though her father is white). She came home mumbling that the stupid club wanted her to hate her daddy and to become a Chicana. Saucedo Mercer regards the Chicano label as an insult. Torres sees the need to belong to a group as so strong in kids that they will succumb to the induction into clubs like this and MEChA.
There is no space to describe the insidiousness of the “Plan of Santa Barbara” or the group called MEChA, which is Spanish for “Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan,” whose official national symbol is an eagle holding a machete-like weapon and a stick of dynamite. I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with them. Suffice it to say, it is a travesty that MEChA has an office on the second floor of the Student Union at ASU. Did you know you can get a degree in Chicano Studies there?
Today is the last day for hearings on the Raza Studies program. The press came the first day and never came back, just so they didn’t have to report the sordid details that emerged. Then it is in the hands of the Administrative Hearing Officer to decide whether the program is out of compliance with state law. TUSD then has two choices. It can decide to continue teaching this tripe, in which case it will lose about $15 million in state funding (not a small piece of change in this economy), or it can drop the program.
Militants don’t just set the ball down and go home, however. I fear TUSD will pretend to comply, but after the dust settles they will go on their merry way teaching Raza classes. What are we going to do? Send in the National Guard? I don’t think Huppenthal has the cojones.
Contact Becky:
LGBT favoritism
Too Richie for words
The chains that bind
Union full court press
Political potpourri
I didn't think I could find a match for Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey for telling-it-like-it-is, but, as one person describes it, the new Maine governor is making Christie "look like an enabler." He is Paul LePage, and he doesn't suffer fools or union thugs gladly. (I wonder if he knows about the long-running corruption with Falmouth's town government?)
Too Richie for words
Scottsdale, Arizona, is poised to garner the kind of national attention not seen since the Pink Taco opened in town and gave Mayor Mary Manross feminine heartburn. Read the rest of this entry »
On the Road to Democracy: The Czech Republic from Communism to Free Society
