Posts Tagged ‘Jeremy Story’

LinkSwarm for May 20, 2022

Friday, May 20th, 2022

Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! The Biden Administration has done everything it can to worsen inflation, The Ministry of Truth’s Scary Poppins dissolves into a puddle, a whole lot of school groomer news from all across the country, and the world’s longest D&D game.

  • On inflation, Biden’s every move has been wrong.

    The Biden administration’s first response to any problem is to pretend that it isn’t a problem. That’s how inflation went from a minor problem to a major one. Unwilling to take the necessary steps to rein in inflation early — pushing the Fed to raise interest rates and slowing down the torrent of money going out the Treasury’s doors — Biden and congressional Democrats at first insisted that inflation wasn’t a real problem: “Transitory,” they called it.

    And then when inflation turned out not to be transitory, they thought they could just pin it on the Russians. Jen Psaki sniffed smugly at the “Putin price hike,” as though Americans were too stupid to understand that inflation at home had started long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That gambit fizzled, too.

    When you don’t have any fresh ideas or real principles — and when your long-term goals are limited by the fact that the president, who was born during the Roosevelt administration, isn’t exactly buying any green bananas — then the easiest thing to do is to throw money at every problem.

    Throwing money at things is how you make inflation worse.

    Washington had already thrown a lot of money at the economy during the COVID-19 emergency, and, predictably, the emergency spending outlasted the emergency. By the time Biden was elected in 2020, Washington had thrown $2.6 trillion in budgetary resources at COVID and had authorized as much as $4 trillion in subsidized federal lending. That was new money amounting to about a third of GDP sloshing around the economy. Biden’s first priority was pushing out another $1 trillion in a phony infrastructure bill (that has little to do with actual infrastructure) and a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, even though the Consumer Price Index was already rising steeply, according to the Federal Reserve.

    Stimulating an already overstimulated economy is how you make inflation worse.

    Our inflation problem is only partly an issue of dovish monetary policy and reckless spending. There are problems in the real-world physical economy, too, those “supply-chain issues” we hear about. The Biden administration has done extraordinarily dumb things to make these worse, too, keeping in place the worst of the Trump administration’s anti-trade policies. That “Made in the USA” talk sounds good on the stump, but the truth is we need a lot that we don’t make at home and aren’t going to — including much of the steel and other vital inputs for the high-value manufacturing we actually do here.

    The incredible fact is the Biden administration still had punitive tariffs on Ukrainian steel while it was seeking financial aid for the Ukrainians — it wasn’t until the Chamber of Commerce and conservative critics started making a stink that the administration changed its stance.

  • Historically, interest rates are are still too low to fight inflation.
  • Speaking of the Biden Administration spreading light and joy throughout America: “Energy Officials Issue ‘Sobering’ Warning About Widespread Summer Blackouts Triggered by Closure of Fossil Fuel Plants.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • More Biden magic: “Dow Suffers Longest Losing Streak In 99 Years.”
  • “Hunter Biden Took In $11 Million Over 5 Years.” I would treat NBC’s number as a floor rather than a ceiling…
  • Scary Poppins resigns from the Ministry of Truth because all those vicious right-wing bullies were mean to her about her gross bias and constant lying.
  • I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to find Taylor Lorenz attempt to ride to her rescue:

  • Democrats vote to create that national gun registry they swore up and down they were never going to create.
  • More and more Democrats are leaving the party over their fanatical treatment of abortion as the holiest of sacraments.

    I live in a manufacturing city with a very strong union voice speaking into the politics of our community. Yet a fascinating and unmistakable phenomenon has been occurring over the course of the last decade or two. Though the percentage of citizens in our area who post their “Proud Union Home” yard signs has likely increased, the percentage of them identifying as, or supporting, the Democratic Party has dropped precipitously during that same time frame.

    For the first time in my city’s history, Republicans swept all municipal offices in the last election. So what is happening, and is it a microcosm of some larger trend?

    I can’t offer any scientific study or analysis; I can only tell you what I have been told. Though former President Trump attempted overtures towards the “made in America” union mentality, that isn’t the most often cited rationale among Democrat dropouts. Instead, their disillusionment seems to stem from the prevailing belief that the party has been hijacked by single-issue ideologues that are willing to destroy party cohesion and solidarity if it means advancing their singular cause. More and more of these ex-party members now consider the Democrats the “Abortion First” party.

    Again, that may be just the frustrated sentiments of disgruntled Dems in rural Indiana who feel as though the once big tent that embraced them has become far more rigid and dogmatic in who they welcome under the awning. Gone seem to be the days of the party’s Rust Belt/Union Grit identity, replaced today with a coalition that obsesses over white guilt, pronoun pandering, and legal feticide.

  • “Tucson high school counselor accused of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old student…police officials in the Southern Arizona city said Zobella Brazil Vinik turned herself in to detectives on May 11.”
  • I know you’ll be shocked to find out that Vinik is “a radical queer nonbinary leftist” who put on drag shows.
  • Speaking of public school administrators sexually grooming students, Washington state school board director Jenn Mason tried to throw a party for children in her sex shop.

  • Speaking of sexual predators after your children, this is pretty horrifying: “Texas Teen Goes to Bathroom at NBA Game, Is Found 10 Days Later Sold for Sex in Oklahoma Hotel.”
  • A parent-filed lawsuit comes for the president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees.

    In another action-packed school board meeting in McKinney, the board president was served with a lawsuit for suppressing the free speech rights of citizens who disagree with her policies.

    Civil rights attorney Paul Davis served Amy Dankel, president of McKinney Independent School District’s board of trustees, during the public comments portion of Tuesday night’s meeting.

    “Your outrageous display of tyranny in how you trampled on the rights of the public at the last meeting was shocking,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

    In recent months, McKinney ISD’s school board meetings have featured a heavy police presence.

    On several occasions, police officers have ejected citizens, at Dankel’s direction, for failing to observe her rules of decorum during public comments.

    Davis said Tuesday that Dankel’s rules “placed an unconstitutional restraint on First Amendment rights by disallowing signs, clapping, and comments.”

    He also says Dankel enforced her rules unequally.

    She directed police to physically remove people who were wearing green—supporters of conservative trustee Chad Green, who Dankel is trying to oust from the board.

    “Those same rules were not applied to people wearing blue,” Davis said, referring to Dankel supporters. “For that, we have filed a civil rights lawsuit against you.”

    Kevin Whitt is one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

    During last month’s school board meeting, the pro-family activist spoke against the district’s failure to proactively identify and remove sexually explicit books found in students’ libraries—a contentious topic in McKinney and other districts across the state since last year.

    Later in that meeting, Whitt was dragged out by City of McKinney police officers for uttering a single word—“disgusting”—after a local mom finished comments that included excerpts from one of the explicit books.

  • Speaking of Texas school boards getting sued parents, Round Rock ISD is being sued over violating parent’s rights.

    The contentious saga in Round Rock ISD continues after two parents filed a federal lawsuit last week against five school board trustees, the district superintendent, and several district police officers.

    Last year, the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office arrested Jeremy Story and Dustin Clark on charges of “hindering proceedings by disorderly conduct” following a September school board meeting. Both men were released the next day.

    The lawsuit claims the defendants violated Story’s and Clark’s rights under the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Additionally, the suit accuses the defendants of violating 42 U.S. Code 1983, or misusing their power to deny their constitutional rights.

    The two men attended last September’s school board meeting to protest Superintendent Dr. Hafedh Azaiez’s continued employment and a proposed tax increase.

    Texas Scorecard chronicled multiple scandals involving Round Rock ISD in a special report and a podcast series, Exposed, which included investigations into the school district and Azaiez. Five of the district’s seven trustees, dubbed the “Bad Faith Five,” were also brought under scrutiny for allegedly covering up domestic violence allegations against Azaiez.

    At the August 16 board meeting, Round Rock ISD officers removed Story after he referenced the investigation into Azaiez. Amy Weir, president of the school board, instructed district officers to escort Story from the building, claiming his concerns about Azaiez did not follow the meeting’s agenda.

    At the same meeting, trustees Mary Bone and Danielle Weston walked out after accusing the district of intentionally limiting seating under the guise of following COVID-19 safety guidelines. Clark then demanded the board let more citizens in to witness the meeting, and Weir subsequently instructed district officers to escort him out.

    Three days later, Williamson County officers arrested Story and Clark. Although Story’s charges pertained to the August 16 meeting, Clark’s charges dated back to a September meeting of the school board. Their lawsuit, filed May 11, accuses all defendants of suppressing Story’s and Clark’s constitutional rights and claims they were arrested illegally.

    If successful, the lawsuit would void Azaiez’s contract and prevent Round Rock ISD from restricting attendance at school board meetings due to COVID-19.

  • Groomer teachers are even popping up in Ohio:

  • But the school Social Justice bullshit doesn’t stop there: “Fairfax, Virginia Schools May Expel Elementary Students For ‘Misgendering’ People.”

    Tar.

    Feathers.

  • “Michigan Businesses Sue Whitmer For Losses Due To COVID Lockdowns.”
  • Speaking of Michigan lawsuits over gross abuse of state power, a couple is suing Highland Park after the police seized their building and legal marijuana business, charged them with no crime, and then offered to give it back if they bought the police department two cars.
  • Speaking of crooked Democratic politicians, you would think that all that graft Bill De Blasio’s wife raked off would allow him to retire in style, but evidently that festering bucket of crooked failure just can’t stay out of the spotlight, and is now running for congress.
  • Texas counties ranks, from most Democratic to most republican.
  • Melvin Capital, the hedge fund that got clobbered when they were caught performing naked shorts of Gamestop stock, is shutting down.
  • Citadel head Ken Griffin threatens to leave Chicago over the spiraling crime rate.
  • People magazine may cease its print version. Bonus: “Sources told The Post that under Wakeford, People had been selling more than 200,000 copies at the newsstand a week. Since then, newsstand sales have been uneven, with a May 2 Prince Harry cover dipping to about 160,000 copies sold, and a March 14 Lizzo cover cratering to between 125,000- 150,000 copies sold, which is said to be one of the worst selling issues in People’s half-century history.” Funny how no one gives a rat’s ass about woke royals and the morbidly obese…
  • Larry Correia gives a deserved royal fisking to an article by a leftwing feminist who wonders why her boyfriend reads that primitive “science fiction” stuff rather than modern literary fiction that checks all the required Victimhood Identity boxes.
  • Archeologists in southern Turkey continue to uncover an 11,000 year old pre-agriculture civilization of six-fingered men protecting their penises.
  • Inside a D&D game that’s been running for more than 40 years. Including a truly jaw-dropping amount of painted miniatures and constructed terrain.
  • Good for a smile:

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Guns, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 8 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for September 24, 2021

    Friday, September 24th, 2021

    Greetings, and welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Unexpectedly, Austin’s fall started the first day of fall! That never happens!

  • The Biden Administration wants the IRS to have access to all your banking transactions of $600 or more. Good thing the IRS under Democratic Presidents has never abused IRS information in the past…
  • Speaking of the IRS, Slow Joe may owe may owe more than $500,000 in back taxes.
  • China bans all cryptocurrency transactions. I can’t possibly see this move backfiring on them in any way…

  • John Kerry’s commie connection. “Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics shows Teresa Kerry benefits from an investment of at least $1 million in a hedge fund specializing in private partnerships with Chinese government-controlled funds.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Duh: “Biden aides set up a ‘wall’ to shield him from unscripted events.” Like reporters questions…
  • “Hillary Clinton Is The Most Systemically Manipulative Politician Of Our Lifetime.

    The Indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman for allegedly lying to the FBI has a lot of people grumbling about how long it took prosecutor John Durham to finally come up with an indictment of someone with regard to the Russia collusion hoax. And even then, while Sussman was an important lawyer at an important Democrat operative law firm, his indictment has a “that’s it?” feel to it.

    But, the 27-page Indictment is a wealth of information, and hopefully a roadmap to wider and more substantial prosecutions (you can’t take my hope away!). What the indictment demonstrates is that the Russia collusion claim leveled against Donald Trump and the Trump campaign was a fabrication of Hillary Clinton operatives who peddled the fraud to the media and FBI, allowing Clinton to use the media reports in the campaign against Trump.

    Much like the fabricated Steele Dossier, also paid for and arranged by Clinton operatives, Hillary Clinton and Clintonworld perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public which not only manipulated the election process but also froze the Trump presidency and nearly paralyzed the nation politically for years.

    We have had some pretty terrible politicians in our lifetime, and it’s always dangerous to say “the worst” — but the Russia collusion hoax fabricated by Hillary Clinton operatives proves beyond little doubt that Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime.

  • “[EcoHealth Alliance head Peter] Daszak Admits Fauci Funded Chinese Coronavirus Research at Conference Featuring Hunter Biden-Linked Pandemic Group.” It’s like a giant debutante ball of all the last few years’ scandals rolled into one… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “Members Of Congress, Staff Exempt From Biden Vaccine Mandate.” Because of course they are.
  • Forget the MSM spin: Here’s what the Maricopa County audit really found:
    • None of the various systems related to elections had numbers that would balance and agree with each other. In some cases, these differences were significant.
    • There appears to be many ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.
    • Files were missing from the Election Management System (EMS) Server.
    • Ballot images on the EMS were corrupt or missing.
    • Logs appeared to be intentionally rolled over, and all the data in the database related to the 2020 General Election had been fully cleared.
    • On the ballot side, batches were not always clearly delineated, duplicated ballots were missing the required serial numbers, originals were duplicated more than once, and the Auditors were never provided Chain‐of‐ Custody documentation for the ballots for the time‐period prior to the ballot’s movement into the Auditors’ care. This all increased the complexity and difficulty in properly auditing the results; and added ambiguity into the final conclusions.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Old and busted: Illegal aliens on the border at Del Rio have Flu Manchu. The new hotness:

  • R. S. McCain on Missing White Woman Syndrome:

    That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.

    Beyond the cynical calculations of ratings-hungry TV news producers, however, what’s really wrong with Missing White Woman Syndrome is not the kind of “social justice” concerns Joy Reid is talking about. No, what’s wrong is that it feeds the public’s distorted ideas about crime.

    How many people are murdered in America annually? Nearly 14,000 in 2019, according to the FBI, and about 78% of the victims were male. In terms of statistical risk, then, males were nearly four times more likely to be murdered than women, but how many of those murdered men become national news? Not many. And how many murder victims are white? About 5,800 in 2019 — 42% of the total — whereas blacks were 54% of the total murders. There were 1,759 white women murdered in 2019 — 12.6% of the total, according to the FBI — compared to 6,446 black males, 46.3% of the total. So the death of Gabby Petito was anomalous, a comparative rarity in the overall crime situation in America.

    A blonde, blue-eyed “social media influencer” is not typical of murder victims, who are disproportionately male and black. During the month of August, when Gabby and her boyfriend were on their excursion across the West, 87 people were killed and 424 were wounded in Chicago. Did any of those Chicago victims make national news? Well, about 83% of the victims in Chicago were black, and none were blonde, blue-eyed 22-year-old “social media influencers.” Not newsworthy, you see?

    The selectivity of the news media in deciding which murders deserve national attention is a sort of bias that most people never notice. Why does the death of one black in police custody become a cause célèbre, while the vast majority of murdered black men — about 125 a week, on average — never get any national media attention? Because the death of George Floyd fit a specific political narrative. And why does the disappearance of a blonde girl with an Instagram account get hourly updates on the cable-news networks? Because it’s a convenient distraction from the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency.

  • Twitter is so scared of Nikki Minaj’s cousin’s balls that they suspended her account.
  • In fact, there were at least 46 reports of swollen balls (and another 76 of testicular pain) in the VAERS database of adverse reactions.
  • People who wanted Biden to win to see a “return to normal” are being gravely disappointed:

    In traditional Washington fashion, Biden has ignored that message voters sent and delivered the opposite. In less than seven months, we have found that Biden is far from that empathetic persona he has crafted over the years, and we have not returned to anything near normal.

    And Biden lies. Not tiny little lies, but ones that affect events that are deeply tragic. Last week, he told leaders in the Jewish community that he visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were slaughtered during a service in 2018.

    Synagogue officials said he was never there.

    One can only guess he said this as an attempt to continue the manufactured empathy he allegedly possesses. Forgetfulness is not an excuse anyone should accept.

    Nor is it normal.

    In fact, the only thing the Biden presidency has done most effectively is prove that we are not on the path to normality under his administration.

    From the uneven overall economy to soaring inflation to the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, and from Biden’s insistence to spend our money like a drunken sailor to the crisis at the Mexican border that he has blatantly ignored and to how he has politicized the pandemic: None of this is normal, none of this promotes stability, none of this is what an exhausted electorate bargained for.

  • “18 Months of Ammo Sales during a Pandemic, Protests, and the Biden Presidency.”

    Over the past 18 months our overall sales have increased as follows:

    • 590% increase in revenue
    • 604% increase in transactions
    • 271% increase in site traffic
    • 77% increase in conversion rate

    This data is from February 23, 2020 – August 23, 2021, when compared to the previous 18 months (August 24, 2018 – February 22, 2020).

    Leading the way: Texas, with a 736% increase.

    9mm was the most popular ammunition just about everywhere, followed by .223 and 5.56 NATO.

  • “Maspeth High School [NYC] created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — ‘even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,’ an explosive investigative report charges. Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.”
  • “A Chinese student in Canada had two followers on Twitter. He still didn’t escape Beijing’s threats over online activity.”
  • Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s gambit to have funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system stripped backfires, with the funding passing 420-9. Now there’s principled case to be made against the U.S. funding Iron Dome, as part of a broader initiative to eliminate all foreign aid because it’s not an enumerated responsibility of the federal government, because we’re already running huge budget deficits, and because Israel is a prosperous, modern country that shouldn’t need our charity. But we all know that not why The Squad presented this bill.

  • Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon drops the interim from his title.
  • Word is that pick isn’t popular with the rank and file:

  • Speaking of APD, they’ve announced that staffing problems means that they won’t be responding to non-emergency calls. All the more reason to vote for Prop A.
  • In the UK: “Our eco-obsessed government is sleepwalking into an energy crisis….we could be facing a hard winter of higher energy bills and even blackouts.”
  • More children have died from gunfire in Chicago than have died from Flu Manchu nationwide. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Some inconvenient truths:

  • Islamic terrorist dirtnapped in Indonesia. “The military earlier said the militants killed late Saturday were Ali Kalora, leader of the East Indonesia Mujahideen network that has claimed several killings of police officers and minority Christians, and another suspected extremist, Jaka Ramadan, also known as Ikrima.” (Hat tip: Rantburg.)
  • “Family Farms Won’t Escape Biden’s New Tax.”
  • Why freight rail makes money, and passenger rail doesn’t. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Round Rock ISD school board tries to censure dissenters.
  • Speaking of people on the Round Rock ISD enemies list, here’s the legal fee fundraiser page for Dustin Clark and Jermey Story.
  • “Does a professor have the right to say ‘China virus’? At UDallas, the answer is no.”
  • “Black People Who Oppose Critical Race Theory Are Being Erased.”

    Our current moment is often described as a “racial reckoning.” In reality, what this often means is that a narrative about Black victimization has gone mainstream. We hear endlessly about systemic racism, white supremacy, the black/white income gap, and police brutality. So powerful an ideology has this narrative become that those of us who pose a credible counter-narrative—black anti-woke writers, for example—frequently find our words being misconstrued in an effort to stanch their impact.

    This doesn’t happen to everyone who opposes the Critical Social Justice narrative of black victimization. White dissenters are simply called “racist” while many black dissenters are considered tragic victims of internalized racism. But things get ugly when woke Critical Social Justice proponents encounter a certain kind of black person who does not align with their preferred victim narrative and instead emphasizes his or her own individuality or self-regard. Such people present a threat to the woke narrative, since that narrative insists that all black people are victims of white supremacy, meaning anyone who insists on their individuality and their own power proves the falsity of that victim narrative; if the woke narrative were true, such people should not be able to exist.

    Which means that when we claim to exist, antiracist woke warriors need to erase us, using a logical fallacy I call “erase and replace.” Erase and replace is a combination of the strawman and ad hominem logical fallacies. The move involves taking the argument someone is making and substituting it for one that fits more neatly into the woke victim narrative by specifically targeting the character of the challenger—since it is, in part, their character that is the greatest challenge.

  • “Chris Cuomo accused of sexually harassing former boss at 2005 party.” “A former ABC executive producer has accused Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing her at a 2005 work party after he grabbed her butt in front of her husband and co-workers.” If she was his boss, does that technically count as sexual harassment? In New York, I believe such an offense would fall under the statute for “forcible touching,” which is a class A misdemeanor. Do you think that this is coming out now because, with his brother out of office, Fredo is no longer of any particular political use to CNN?
  • ACLU alters Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s words to eliminate #Wrongthink.

  • Shatner…IN SPAAAAACE! (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “CDC Cautions Against Taking The Red Pill.”
  • “I hope I’m getting union scale for this!”

    • Also, a technical note: Bluehost will be doing server maintenance Friday night and Saturday morning, so the blog might be temporarily down then.

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 2 Comments »

    Round Rock ISD Arresting Critics

    Saturday, September 18th, 2021

    So what the hell is this?

    A small protest was held outside the Williamson County Jail Friday night after two people were arrested in connection to a Round Rock ISD board meeting earlier in the week.

    The protesters said the arrests were unjust.

    On Tuesday, Sept. 14, Round Rock ISD board members were set to discuss extending the district’s mask rules. But attendance inside the meeting was capped. Board members said they were trying to maintain social distancing. But members of the public say they were unfairly kept out of a public meeting.

    One of the people who was escorted out was Dustin Clark. In video from Tuesday night, an argument can be heard between him and board members before a police officer made him leave the chamber.

    “Mr. Clark, you have to leave. You have to leave. You have to leave, Mr. Clark. We cannot continue this,” the school board member said.

    “You’re right, you can’t continue to keep the public out of here,” Clark can be heard saying.

    “You have been warned, sir. You have a choice. You’ve been warned to be quiet or leave,” the board member responds.

    “You’re not letting the public into an open meeting. Shame on you! Communists! Communists! Let the public in!” the man said.

    Eventually, the board ended the meeting early and pushed the mask discussion to next week.

    Clark is one of the people who was arrested Friday night. The other person arrested was Jeremy Story.

    So the meeting was Tuesday but Clark and Story were arrested on Friday? For a misdemeanor? How often do sheriff’s deputies go to someone’s home to arrest people for a misdemeanor three days after the fact?

    Story’s statement:

    More background:

    Like school districts across Texas and the country, the Round Rock Independent School District (RRISD) has grappled with the legal issues surrounding mask mandates for months. However, at RRISD, the local mask imbroglio has exposed divisions among the school board and dredged up allegations against the superintendent.

    After flirting with a parental opt-out system, RRISD adopted a mask mandate that allows exceptions for children with medical reasons. This mandate expires tomorrow, prompting the board to put the possibility of a lasting mandate on the agenda for the September 14 meeting.

    The proposed mandate would be a mask “matrix.” Under the proposed matrix, RRISD would adjust mask requirements based on Austin Public Health recommendations, which gauge the threat of COVID-19 in five possible stages. For example, a Stage 4 or 5 — the yellow and red options, respectively — would mean required masking at RRISD under the matrix. The Austin area has been in Stage 5, the highest stage, since early August.

    However, amid a ruckus in the hallway and disagreements between members, the school board decided to table this item until September 18.

    A number of attendees thronged outside the door of the meeting room, held at bay by RRISD police officers. The board was streaming a video feed of the meeting in an overflow room down the hall, but several attendees wanted to be in the meeting room with the trustees.

    The board voted 5-2 to keep the limited seating arrangement. The two nay votes came from Trustees Mary Bone and Danielle Weston, outspoken critics of the district’s past mask policies. Bone and Weston left the meeting afterward, with Bone expressing frustration over the seating rule.

    “They’re not upholding law. They’re upholding policy,” Bone said of the board’s decision to bar the attendees in the hall from entrance to the meeting.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently ended a suspension of the Open Meetings Act made necessary by COVID-19. Certain provisions of the law were paused during the pandemic to allow government bodies to keep crowds out of meeting rooms. This pause ended September 1.

    Snip.

    Backstage drama surrounding RRISD Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez thickens the plot.

    Similar to other votes, Weston and Bone were the only two trustees to vote against hiring Azaiez, who raised eyebrows after becoming the district’s lone finalist in a hiring process that the two trustees and some parents called opaque.

    Weston and Bone also issued a press release notifying the public that a woman claiming to be Azaiez’s mistress told the school board that he had assaulted her.

    Jeremy Story, a Round Rock father active in Republican circles who has confronted the school board at public meetings before about these allegations, said he brought the issue to the attention of the Round Rock Police Department yesterday and the Williamson County Sheriff today.

    Story was also one of the attendees at last night’s meeting. He was blocked and held by a police officer while trying to enter the meeting room and claims the board has targeted him for probing allegations against Azaiez.

    “I did not aggress against them. They wouldn’t answer any of my questions. Nothing. My offense was walking through the door to get into the open meeting, public meeting, of a school board,” Story said.

    The fact that Azaiez came from Donna ISD rang a bell with me, as that Rio Grande Valley district had a huge corruption scandal several years back, though Azaiez’s tenure as Superintendent there postdates the scandal.

    This is the same Round Rock ISD that just had a Texas Education Agency Monitor installed as part of a corrective action plan stemming from a complaint lodged against the board during the 2018-19 school year.

    TEA monitors report on the activities of the board of trustees or the superintendent. According to documents made public by the district Sept. 15, a complaint against the district from October 2019 found that previous board president Chad Chadwell did not recuse himself from discussion about a grievance against himself, alleging a conflict of interest and board overreach.

    This action, the letter states, violates Texas Education Code Chapter 11, Subchapter D-Powers and Duties of Board of Trustees of Independent School District. The letter states that the TEA requested documentation related to the complaint in August of 2020, which was then reviewed by TEA Special Investigations Unit Investigator Rebecca Clevlen.

    In other RRISD news, a Williamson County judge blocked their mask mandate because it violated Governor Abbott’s directive, only to have that block lifted by an appeals court the same day.

    Parents around the country are waking up and demanding answers on a host of issues, including mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory, and school boards don’t seem to like it one bit. There are agendas at work that have nothing to do with teaching and everything to do with indoctrination.

    Developing…

    (Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)

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    Posted in Austin, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »