Kansas Voters Do Not Want Tax Hike to Satisfy Judge's Ruling for more School Money


{And so we will shortly enter 2019 or phase infinity of the worthless Kansas legislature still having no concept of the separation of powers, a band of Beau Brummels and thespian lawyers. The public education system is a complete failure, a white elephant but the ruling judicial junta has commanded more money.  Thus the courts dictate to the erstwhile state assembly how much of the people's money must be allocated for public schools. But why stop there? Shouldn't the courts handle the whole budget and legislative process themselves? After all, they have decades of experience legislating from the bench so just deep six the legislature, it's a pathetic joke anyway. - ED}

by  Kansas Policy Institute


Legislators heading to Topeka are going to have to find a way to address a 3 billion-dollar shortfall due to a massive school funding increase brought about by the Kansas Supreme Court. However, a newly released poll, conducted on behalf of Kansas Policy Institute by SurveyUSA, found that 51% of Kansas voters do not want their legislators to add another $365 million dollars to comply with the court’s demand; only 39 percent said funding should be further increased.

James Franko, vice president, and policy director of Kansas Policy Institute remarked, “Low-income kids are more than two years’ worth of learning behind their more affluent peers and overall achievement in Kansas is depressingly stagnant. These achievement trends are especially discouraging because the Department of Education says we’re on track to soon spend over $15,000 per pupil on education. Voters clearly want that level of investment to improve achievement with accountable and efficient schools.”


Kansas voters are growing increasingly concerned about high education administration costs at the local level. A survey last year found that 78 percent of voters believe spending on out-of-the-classroom costs (administration, building operations, transportation, etc.) should be provided more efficiently on a regionalized basis, with the savings put into the classroom.  In the poll released today, the number jumped to 89 percent of Kansas voters who would like to see more efficiency within their school system. 

Franko observed, “The more voters seem to understand the reality of our achievement crisis and the increasing costs of education in Kansas the more they seem to rethink how education decisions are made.”

Calculations by Kansas Legislative Research Department show $3.7 billion revenue shortfall exists over the next four years to pay for approved and proposed school funding increases. [emphasis mine] With many assurances being made throughout the campaign cycle about school funding being met without raising taxes, legislators will be forced to specifically identify how this massive shortfall will be met. According to the newly released data, only 37% of Kansas voters are willing to pay higher taxes to close the $3 billion shortfall caused by school funding.

The latest polling data revealed that a startling number of Kansans voters are in the dark about education spending trends in Kansas. According to the SurveyUSA data, only 10% of Kansas voters understand what our Kansas school districts currently receive from taxpayer sources per student, and that has a major impact on their opinions.  For example, 93 percent of those who oppose a constitutional amendment to prevent courts from setting funding levels either don’t know how much schools receive or they believe it’s less than $10,000 per-pupil; only 7 percent of the opposition comes from voters who think funding is over $10,000 per-pupil. Similar disparities exist within voters' willingness to pay higher taxes and whether additional funding should be provided. [Why is this a surprise to anyone? A majority of college students can't name one Supreme Court justice, can't formulate a simple sentence where subject does action through a verb to an object and have no knowledge of the Constitution or it's bill of rights. What passes for education in Kansas is nothing but a PAC that gives its votes to the candidate(s) delivering the most largess. - ED}

Franko concludes, “Just like last year, roughly 60% of Kansas voters say they want to revisit how education funding decisions are made in the state. The Kansas Constitution vests all political power in citizens and those citizens seemingly understand that they, and their elected representatives, are best-suited to decide state spending priorities.”

School District Under Fire From Parents After Banning Fast Food

By Cillian Zeal


Parents of children at a Missouri school are fighting back after the school district announced it was banning fast food from being eaten on campus during school hours.

A terse announcement on the Facebook page of Dear Elementary in the Richmond School District in Richmond, Missouri, stated that “(n)ew board policy states that no fast food is allowed at lunch or during school hours for students.”

One would assume that there isn’t a Carl’s Jr. anywhere inside Dear Elementary or any of the other schools in Richmond. However, this means that parents can’t even make choices regarding what their own children bring to school.

It didn’t take long after the Aug. 15 announcement for the district to start receiving significant backlash.

“At the end of the day, we want to be able to decide on our own,” Chris Swafford, who has five kids in the district and two at Dear Elementary, told WDAF-TV.

“I thought it was overstepping at its finest,” he said. “It’s up to parents what their children eat.”

Swafford also contended that fast food was being made a popular scapegoat, claiming that there wasn’t a whole lot of nutritional difference between some of the bagged lunches that parents give their children and the fast food lunches the school was banning.

“Just because I don’t personally bring fast food to my children at school doesn’t mean other parents shouldn’t be able to do,” Swafford said.

“Parents’ lives are busy. They sometimes have things going on, and sometimes, grabbing a 10-piece nugget from McDonald’s and taking it to their child shouldn’t be an issue.”

Richmond School District Superintendent Mike Aytes told WDAF that district personnel were too busy to comment on the issue. Parents on Facebook, however, weren’t. School lunches, as those who remember Michelle Obama’s tenure as first lady know, are a hot-button issue.

“I don’t agree with this. At all,” one parent wrote.

“I’m the parent. It is my job to parent my child and make those decisions. What she eats, how much she eats, what she wears, how she does her hair, if I keep her home because she is sick, those are MY decisions The schools sole responsibility is to provide a safe, positive learning environment for my children to get an education. They are not, and will not be making parenting decisions for my children.”

“They don’t get money from students that bring a lunch from home. Why can’t they have a burger with family on special occasions?!” another wrote. “This is stupid as can be!”

One of the more common arguments for the policy wasn’t health outcomes, however, but the fact that fast food represents privilege.

“My kids take their lunch,” parent Karen Williams said. While she opposed the policy, she said she understood fast food might make other kids feel bad. “Kids have been getting their birthday lunch brought to them since they were in kindergarten. I think it’s kind of silly, but I could see how other kids would feel sad if they didn’t have anything ever.”

“Oddly I support this,” another Facebook commenter wrote, according to Fox News. “I would hope they are doing this for the right reasons though. That being it’s simply not right for kids who do not ever get these things to watch the other classmates eat it in front of them. Some parents can’t afford to bring child fast food.”

“So what about all of the other kids that are going to be complaining that your kid got a happy meal and they didn’t? What about the kids who parents can’t afford to bring their children lunch or something like that? Are you really gonna let your kid eat their happy meal in front of all these other kids? They’re avoiding those issues all together with this policy,” another person defending the plan wrote.

Head, meet hand.

I can marginally understand the concept behind banning fast food in schools for health reasons, although I’d point out that school-provided or home-cooked lunches aren’t necessarily any healthier. However, since when did fast food become a status symbol? Maybe it’s just me, but I was under the impression it was the other way around.

Here’s a novel idea: Let’s go further in eliminating outward vestiges of privileges. Why stop at burgers and fries?

Let’s put all these kids in school uniforms so nobody has to worry about being clothes-conscious. Students can’t be bused to school, since those buses might stop in front of their houses and other students would see how rich their families are. All kids will be henceforth driven to class in school-issued 2003 Kia Rios so that nobody will seem any richer than anyone else. Trained dogs will be stationed at all entrances, sniffing out any students that may try to smuggle in a Whopper or a Frosty.

Busybody educators of the world, unite and take over!

Yes, this is wholly ridiculous — just as ridiculous as banning fast food from schools that happily serve pigswill, all in the name of health consciousness and privilege-checking.

Report: Liberal News Outlets Dominate Google Search Results with 96 Percent of ‘Trump’ Stories

by Jack Davis


New evidence that technology’s giants are muzzling conservatives has emerged after the web site PJ Media wanted to find out if Google did in fact lurch to the left when users wanted the latest information on President Donald Trump.

Writer Paula Bolyard on Saturday reported on the results of her experiment, which the site was fully upfront about admitting was not scientific.

The headline of her article said it all: “96 Percent of Google Search Results for ‘Trump’ News Are from Liberal Media Outlets.”

The concept was simple. Bolyard typed “Trump” using Google’s “News” tab and let Google do the rest. “I was not prepared for the blatant prioritization of left-leaning and anti-Trump media outlets,” she wrote, noting that no single right-leaning site appeared on the first page of search results, and that CNN, dubbed by Trump as “Fake News” for its coverage of him, is far and away the leading site listed

She then looked at the first 100 items, and the trend continued. There were 21 articles from CNN, 11 each from The Washington Post and NBC, and 8 from CNBC. Other sites at the top of the list included The New York Times, Atlantic, Politico, Vox, CBS and the Wall Street Journal.

Fox News was listed twice.

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said that tech giants are trying to influence the midterm elections.

“This is their great offensive to try to silence differing opinion,” he said Monday on “Fox & Friends,” Fox News reported. “And make no mistake, it’s not because the conservative voices are offensive. It’s because they are effective.”

Kirk said conservatives must fight the tech giants.

“We need to push back because it could be a huge, huge problem moving forward,” he said.

“The very bottom line is the left hates the idea that there are other ideas. And they control these public forums or these vehicles of conversation. They’re going to use every piece of power and influence they can to try to suppress our voice. And we cannot stand for it,” he added.

Bolward was hardly the first to suggest that Google buries the right while promoting the left.

A 2017 study by the website “Can I Rank” said that the bias in Google was clear.

“Among our key findings were that top search results were almost 40% more likely to contain pages with a “Left” or “Far Left” slant than they were pages from the right. Moreover, 16% of political keywords contained no right-leaning pages at all within the first page of results,” the study said.

“Our analysis of the algorithmic metrics underpinning those rankings suggests that factors within the Google algorithm itself may make it easier for sites with a left-leaning or centrist viewpoint to rank higher in Google search results compared to sites with a politically conservative viewpoint,” it added.

Google denies doing anything to skew the results.

“Google does not manipulate results,” said Google spokeswoman Maggie Shiels. “There are more than 200 signals taken into account when someone does a search which include freshness of results.”

Bolyard’s conclusion was that Americans need to be aware that their searches are being manipulated.

“With all the talk and hand-wringing about fake news and bad foreign actors using social media outlets to attempt to manipulate election results, far too little attention has been paid to power brokers like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and their ability —  and perhaps even desire — to manipulate public opinion and shape the world into their own Silicon Valley image,” she wrote.




Colorado Ignores Supreme Court Ruling to Continue Persecution of Jack Phillips

by Gerald Weston


The assault against the Bible and anyone who believes and lives by its directives continues. The owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop is under attack once again for refusing to celebrate an anti-biblical behavior, this time by refusing to bake a specially designed cake (pink in the middle and blue on the outside) for an attorney intending to celebrate and do the impossible—“transition” from male to female.

According to a National Religious Broadcasters newsletter, “Apparently undeterred by the strong rebuke they received from seven U.S. Supreme Court justices in June, Colorado authorities are renewing their assault against the religious convictions of one of their state’s citizens. In fact, they are targeting the same citizen, Jack Phillips.”

The newsletter quotes Phillips, “The state is doubling down on its hostility against my beliefs, even though that’s what the Supreme Court said they couldn’t do. . . . It seems I’m the only person in the state of Colorado who can’t live out my beliefs.”

This is clearly a deliberate attack to tear down biblical values. There are, no doubt, many cake-makers who would happily bake such a cake, but liberal activists, aided by leftist politicians, cannot stand for freedom of expression if it is different from their own. This should not surprise us at a time when God is so openly rejected. The Apostle Paul explains why: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Romans 8:7) [emphasis editorial staff]

Yes, these physically minded activists have a hostility toward God and His law. Many people passively reject Divine Law by ignoring it, even while they profess to believe in God. But, these activists are openly and militantly against it and cannot stand anyone who chooses to live by its dictates.

One mistake to avoid is to think that “secular” means “neutral.” Nothing can be further from the truth. Secularism is opposed to godliness. An example is abortion. The secular view is that religion must stay out of the discussion, because religion is a private matter that should not influence public debate. But to remove religion is to reject Divine Authority, and the result is the belief that it is okay to kill one’s baby. Political correctness frames the debate as “a woman’s right to choose,” when the real question is whether it is right to kill the most vulnerable and innocent among us.

I do not write these things to condemn anyone for past mistakes. We have all made decisions in the past that we would like to change, but that is not possible, and that is why Christ had to die that we might live. I write these things, because we must not allow satanic influence through secular humanists and anarchists to sway our thinking.

The LGBT movement from time to time adds other letters to its acronym. For example, I have seen all of these letters strung together to describe various perversions: LGBTTIPQQ2SA+. The + at the end leaves the door open so that newly minted perversions can be added. In a government directive to all schools (public, private, and charter), in Alberta, Canada, there is a list of eight expressions of sexual deviation. “Trans” is one of the eight, but the list includes this footnote regarding this word: “Some individuals identify with terms such as transgender, transsexual, gender fluid, gender diverse, and agender. We have chosen to use the word trans in these guidelines as an inclusive, continually evolving, umbrella term commonly used to describe individuals whose gender identity and gender expression differ in some way from the sex they were assigned at birth” (Guidelines for Best Practices, 2016).

A number of points may be drawn from this, but here are two. Note the expression, “continually evolving.” Even these activists do not have a clue where this may end. This assault against biblical values will continue to evolve. Next, note the words, “the sex they were assigned at birth.” This is political correctness framing the discussion, and you should not fall for it. An XY-chromosome male is not changed into an XX female by mutilating his body.

The acronyms describing these behaviors sometimes contain the letter “A,” and it is important that we understand what it stands for—allies. There are relatively few people, certainly a minority of individuals, who fall into these categories, even when we add all of them together. In order to be the majority opinion, and therefore wield the power of the courts and laws, they rely on gullible allies. These are people who buy their lies.

By way of example, to convince Americans that they should accept permissive abortion, false numbers were passed along to the press to generate sympathy. Famous abortionist turned anti-abortionist Bernard Nathanson confessed that he and Lawrence Lader simply added zeros to the numbers of estimated “back alley” abortions and deaths that supposedly resulted (The Marketing of Evil, Kupelian, p. 191).

Now comes a movement to indoctrinate very young children to accept something that God calls an abomination (Deuteronomy 22:5). From their own website: “Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like—drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores. DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real” (www.dragqueenstoryhour.org). The DQSH website lists 27 chapters across the United States and invites other cities to form chapters.

Jesus warned us: “And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man. . . . Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot” (Luke 17:26, 28). How much worse can it get? And how much longer do we have to accomplish this Work?

Do you see the big picture of what is happening? Or are you, without realizing it, being persuaded by the very clever god of this age, who directs its course and is bringing about a new dark age similar to that of Noah’s day, turning whole nations into Sodoms and Gomorrahs (2 Corinthians 4:3–4; Ephesians 2:1–2)? I pray that God will give each of us courage to stand up for our beliefs, as Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop has, at appropriate times and in appropriate ways (not carnal ways) against the forces of darkness (2 Corinthians 10:3–5).

We know that in the end we shall win, if we remain faithful. The last book of what is called the Old Testament contains this encouraging passage: “Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His name. ‘They shall be Mine,’ says the Lord of hosts, ‘On the day that I make them My jewels. And I will spare them as a man spares his own son who serves him.’ Then you shall again discern between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him” (Malachi 3:16–18).

Thank you for your sacrifices and your courage to stand firm against the forces of darkness.