On a mission: Rutgers teaching CRT to county & town administrators

By Rubashov
 
The Principal at New York City's High School for Law and Public Service has fully embraced Critical Race Theory – and she is doing something about it, she's being “anti-racist”. All of which has led her to being formally accused of attempting to fire “white” staff because of their race.
 
The Daily Mail reports:
 
A Washington Heights principal accused of wanting to oust white staffers reportedly created a learning environment plagued by 'utter disorganization and insanity.'
 
Students attending New York City's High School for Law and Public Service claim their lives have become 'miserable' under the leadership of Principal Paula Lev.
 
They also allege their quality of education has declined after Lev ousted 'fully experienced and qualified' staff as part of her alleged diversity crusade.
 
A student-created petition claims a handful of Lev's new hires 'are super under-qualified' and that their 'lack of knowledge' has affected students' ability to learn.
 
The petition also cited fears of attending class due to a 'dangerous' environment fueled by an 'insane number of fights, constant arguing and improper administrative action.'
 
Lev was hit with a probe last year by the NYC Department of Education (DOE) after she allegedly told a teacher she was 'going to get rid of all these white teachers that aren't doing anything for the kids of our community.'
 
The complaint will now go before the New York State Division of Human Rights.

The probe was launched after faculty members at High School for Law and Public Service accused principal Paula Lev of discriminating against staff and conspiring to get a white colleague fired.
 
Faculty filed a complaint with the Education Department and also voted they had 'no confidence' in Lev's leadership.
 
The complaint alleged Lev 'flagrantly but unsuccessfully attempted to divide our school by race' and told an employee that she 'was going to get rid of all these white teachers that aren't doing anything for the kids of our community.'
 
To continue reading…
 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10977709/Principal-accused-trying-fire-white-staff-race-created-school-insanity.html
 
Meanwhile, over in New Jersey, Rutgers is on a mission to turnout more ideological administrators like Paula Lev. Here is a program that specifically targets the county and municipal administrators who run local governments across New Jersey. It’s called the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training/ Certification Program at Rutgers University.
 
Rutgers’ website explains its mission:
 
“The Connection Between Race, Power, and Privilege: A series of four courses designed to provide public managers an opportunity to increase individual aptitude and knowledge in foundational concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Coordinated through the Center for Executive Leadership in Government at Rutgers University. NJ DCA Approved.”
 
This program is the holy grail of “Wokeness” and designed to inculcate the perspective of Marxist Critical Race Theory in the people administrating our counties and municipalities. It is nothing short of an ideological training course on how bureaucrats can corrupt the democratic outcomes of elections and radicalize communities from within.
 
The program begins with a self-assessment course:
 
Building Awareness
Course Description:
This diversity, equity and inclusion course is designed to provide public managers an opportunity to increase individual aptitude and knowledge in foundational concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion. In this interactive session, you will be challenged to explore and unpack your own biases and identify personal development areas of improvement. Through a range of individual and group experiences you will begin to recognize blind spots connected to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this program, you will be able to:

• Identify and understand where you are on your personal diversity, equity and inclusion journey and how it impacts your actions and beliefs

• Recognize blind spots connected to diversity, equity, and inclusion

• Develop personal goals to increase the intentionality of actions

 
The program follows with three prerequisite courses:
 
Exploring Race & Racism
Course Description:
This diversity, equity and inclusion course for public managers is designed to explore the concept of race and the impact of systemic racism in our daily lives. Through a variety of experiences, you will uncover some of the realities of race and racism for us and the people that we interact with on a regular basis. This course is a continuation of the first DEI course that focuses on building awareness.
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Discuss how race is a man-made construct

• Explain systemic racism and its impacts

• Identify how individuals can disrupt systemic racism 

 
The Connection Between Race, Power and Privilege
Course Description:
This diversity, equity and inclusion course for public managers is focused on building awareness that leads to action. The course explores the concepts of race, power, and privilege and through a variety of experiences, you will unpack how intersectionality impacts us all. We will also identify the hidden burden that people of color face at the intersection of race, power, and privilege.
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the difference between race, power, and privilege

• Explain the term intersectionality and apply it to their lives

• Identify where individuals can use their power and privilege to disrupt system racism

 
Building a Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive organization
Course Description:
This diversity, equity and inclusion course for public managers is focused on building awareness that leads to action in the workplace. It will allow participants to use what they learned in the three prior courses to explore how a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace looks, sounds and feels.
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace

• Identify aspects of a workplace culture that is strong in diversity, equity and inclusion

• Identify their role in building a diverse, equitable and inclusive organization

 
And finally, a two-day “team building” course is offered for the administrative management of a municipality or county:
 
Course Description:
This diversity, equity and inclusion course is designed for organizational leaders who are seeking strategies to improve their organizations’ culture and performance. Organizational leaders will begin by grounding in their identities and building foundational knowledge about diversity, equity, and inclusion and will then explore the role that race, power, and privilege play in the workplace. The course will focus on the staff experience as the lever for change. Participants should have the authority to impact organizational practices.
Course Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Identify and understand where they are on their personal diversity, equity, and inclusion journey and how it impacts their actions and beliefs

• Explain the term intersectionality and apply it to their lives and workplace

• Explain the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace

• Identify strategies in creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive organization

 
Rutgers scored big in the state’s FY2023 budget with an additional $300 million. This while funding for local districts has been slashed by millions. Maybe the Legislature should push to uncover how much is being spent on programs like the one above? 

Kenny Xu, author of 'An Inconvenient Minority'

He argues that Asian-American success disproves critical race theory.

Like in 1991, the NJGOP needs to hold a convention.

Take yourself back to September 1991.  The legislative midterm elections were less than two months away.  New Jersey was in the second year of a Democrat Governor, following eight Republican years.  The State Senate had not been in GOP hands for 18 years.  The Assembly was last Republican in 1989. 

1,032 delegates from across New Jersey attended the State Republican Convention that year.  They were exhorted by former Governor Tom Kean, who reminded them “that they must do more than criticize Florio and Democratic lawmakers” to wrest control of the Statehouse in the November elections: “People want to know what you're for, not just what you're against,” he said. “Attacking the present administration is not enough.”

The delegates discussed and debated issues… adopted a state party platform… and defined who they were.  In November, Republicans won a landslide victory and took control of both chambers of the Legislature.  Two years later, they took the Governor’s office too.

In contrast to last month’s gathering of the GOP in Atlantic City, the 1991 convention at Rutgers University was about policy, message, and people – it had a grassroots feel to it.  While the current state party operation is dominated by Trenton-centered professional operatives and consultants, in 1991 the party was still one of stakeholders – people with networks in their communities and districts.

New Jersey Republicans are suffering a crisis of identity.  And it’s not just the old controversies over social issues.  The current “favorite” for Governor in 2021 – former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli – called Donald Trump a “charlatan” who is “out of step with the Party of Lincoln” and an “embarrassment to the nation.”

The NJGOP can’t seem to make up its mind on something as basic as the tax restructuring package – championed by former Governor Chris Christie – that ended the Estate Tax, cut a bevy of other taxes, prevented a huge property tax hike, and provided enough property tax relief to enable places like Warren County to actually cut property taxes.  Some Republicans seem determined to run against one of Governor Christie’s hallmark accomplishments.  Let’s hash this thing out once and for all.  

Legalizing the sale and use of recreational marijuana is another issue.  Although both Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr. and Assembly Republican Leader Jon Bramnick have done admirable jobs of holding their delegations together on this – there are all these lobbyists occupying party office who are nibbling away at the resolve of individual legislators and there is no formal party position on this or any other issue of substance.

A convention could be just the thing to resolve these conflicts, to pull everyone together around what we agree on, our principles and objectives, to create a message, and build that message out with a platform of policies – which could then be fleshed out by people like Regina Egea and her Garden State Initiative.  Thus far, the only prescriptions offered by the NJGOP have been which consultant a candidate should hire or new “game changing” technology to employ.  These do not take the place of having an actual message to run on – as the past few election cycles have shown. 

Once upon a time, New Jersey Republicans knew how to tell their story.  Now it seems they’ve lost the art – or at least the plot.  Nothing like a gathering to bring everyone together to remember who they are, put it down on paper… and then go out and sell it.

Democrats piss on Vets… butt kiss traitor Jane Fonda

It figures. But what a way to celebrate last Tuesday!

The servants of corrupt political machines – politicians like Democrat Assemblywoman Britnee Timberlake – have learned to cry “racist” as a way to take the focus off their own bad behavior.  No doubt Timberlake and fellow Democrat Shavonda Sumter will soon be crying “racist” after inviting the infamous traitor and Hollywood One Percenter “Hanoi Jane” Fonda to an event designed to destroy the jobs of thousands of New Jersey workers.

While we have no argument with raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, swapping a minimal wage plus tips for a totally reportable hourly wage might help the government collect more taxes, but it will leave most tipped workers with less real income than they have now.  We don’t expect members of the political class to understand such working class considerations.  Timberlake pockets a six-figure income from two public jobs, Sumter also earns a nice six figure income, and as for Hanoi Jane – that harridan has spent enough on beauty products to provide hot meals to an average-sized school district for an eternity.

Maybe Timberlake and Sumter are too young and ignorant to know better, but once upon a time, their “hero” Ms. Fonda had these kind thoughts about the members of our military who had been captured by the enemies of America:

Yeah, this really happened and it happened in the lifetimes of people who are still alive today.  This isn’t some historical notion.  But hey, these are the Democrats. This is who they are now.

It doesn’t need to be this way.  The Speaker of the Assembly can say something about it. 

So can the Governor…

So can Navy Pilot Mikie Sherrill…

Or Tom “Him Pretty” Malinowski…

Or Andy “winner of the hot cross bun with bar” Kim…

Come on boys (and Navy Pilot Mikie)… Say Something!

Show us that you are more than garden variety soft-core corporate fashionista lefties.  Show us.  We’d love to believe.

Hey Mikie… here are some of your fellow Navy pilots returning home.  Whose side are you on???  The “HERO” of your fellow Democrats would have had them all shot.

Here is the press release the scumbags put out:

Actress and Political Activist Jane Fonda to join Labor, Community, and Legislative Leaders for Policy Briefing on NJ’s Campaign to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour

November 14, 2018, 5:20 pm | in

Actress and Political Activist Jane Fonda to join Labor, Community, and Legislative Leaders for Policy Briefing on NJ’s Campaign to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour

NEWARK– New Jersey Working Families Alliance, Restaurant Opportunities Center Action, Rutgers Center for Women and Work, Rutgers Center for for Innovation in Worker Organizing, and Assemblywomen Shavonda Sumter and Britnee Timberlake will host a breakfast and policy briefing on the campaign to raise New Jersey’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. Joining them will be actress and political activist Jane Fonda, who has been a vocal advocate for One Fair Wage, a campaign to raise the minimum wage for all workers by ending the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers across the United States. The organizations expect to have several community and activist leaders from across the state in attendance.

Legislative leaders have pledged to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour will lift up the wages of over 1.2 million New Jersey workers and their families. Recently, Assemblywomen Timberlake and Sumter introduced Assembly bills to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over the course of 5 years and a bill to eliminate the tipped sub-minimum wage over the course of 8 years. The event is open to the press.

WHAT: Breakfast and Policy Briefing on New Jersey’s Fight for $15 with Jane Fonda

WHEN: Thursday, November 15, 2018, 10am-11:30am

WHERE: Ackerson Hall, Room 101, 180 University Avenue, Newark NJ

WHO:

Actress and Political Activist Jane Fonda

Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter

Assemblywoman Britnee Timberlake

Saru Jayaraman, Restaurant Opportunities Center Action

Analilia Mejia, New Jersey Working Families Alliance

Paula Voos, economist and professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations

Rutgers University Center for Women and Work

Rutgers University Center for Innovation in Worker Organization

Reason Study author says gas tax must go up

We've all heard about the Reason Foundation study that claimed New Jersey had the most expensive roads in America.  The Reason study was controversial and other studies refuted it -- such as the one coming out of Rutgers University's Voorhees Transportation Center.

Some politicians seized upon the Reason study to argue that cost-cutting efficiencies should be put in place before any more money went to repair and maintain the state's roads and bridges.  We wonder if they would feel the same about the grossly mismanaged Veterans Administration -- close all those hospitals and services and dump the wounded out on the streets until the VA operates more efficiently. 

Others claimed that they could fund the entire Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) with savings from efficiencies and cost-cutting.  No numbers were produced to support this, but in testimony, Barauch Feigenbaum (Reason's Assistant Director of Policy) offered some excellent recommendations as to the areas in which significant savings could be achieved. 

The lamentable fact is that not since 1990 has the state's user tax on gasoline and diesel produced enough revenue to cover the cost to maintain the state's transportation system.  That year the gas tax collected $404.9 million to fund a $365 million transportation program.  The tax on gasoline and diesel hasn't gone up for 28 years, hasn't even kept up with inflation, leading to more and more being borrowed to pay for road and bridge maintenance and repair.  Today the cost of the debt service alone exceeds $1.1 billion.  In contrast, the gas tax collected just a bit more than $750 million in 2015. 

No wonder the author of the Reason study, David Hartgen (Emeritus Professor of Transportation Studies at UNC Charlotte), recently told New Jersey media that there was no way around the revenue problem the now-bankrupt TTF faces: 

Even as some say his report proves that New Jersey must cut costs before hiking the gas tax, Hartgen says the opposite may be true. The transportation trust fund is now $30 billion in debt. Without new revenue from the gas tax or some other source, it cannot spend any money on new construction. 

“I don’t think budget cuts will work,” Hartgen said. “They need to look at the gas tax.”

The time has come for facts. Not rhetoric.

Here is a question for our friends over at AFP and SaveJersey and the Reason Foundation:  How is debt service a part of road construction?  

Debt service isn't caused by the workers, contractors, or engineers who actually build the roads and bridges that we depend on.  Debt service is caused by the political class of both parties. 

Correct us if we are wrong, but wasn't it a Republican-controlled Legislature that in the 1990's uncapped the Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) so that spending could spiral out of control?  And then didn't successive administrations extend the life of the debt so they could borrow and spend more?  Didn't they spend more and more while failing to raise the gas tax to pay for it?

Didn't they place us in the position we are in today, where it will take all of the 14 1/2 cents per gallon of gas that we currently pay to fund the TTF and the first 10 1/2 cents of any gas tax increase just to pay the interest on that debt our politicians ran up, year after year? 

It pains us to see lawyer/ politicians like a certain GOP Assemblyman and lobbyist/ politicians like a certain GOP Senator blame blue-collar workers for the high cost of transportation construction and then make as part of that denunciation the high cost of paying interest on the debt that they ran up.  Especially as their choice would be to run up that debt -- and those interest payments -- even further.

Do we really need to go through a very painful re-examination of who did what over the last two decades to put the TTF in the position it is in?  Does anyone really believe that the GOP will come out unscathed once the blame has been apportioned?  Let's depart from the Star-Wars meme for once and paraphrase Shakespeare, who reminds us that no cause, be it ever unspotted, has for it an army of all unspotted men.

Lacking any religious belief worthy of the name, some of the partisans in the TTF battle have imbued in it the stuff of a religious war.  Heretics are called pigs, with some adherents calling for their death.  The salivating gotchas and smell of overworked snark all shields the fact that this is a rather pedestrian debate over a means to an end. 

Does anyone believe that we don't need roads and bridges?  Does anyone not believe in the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, the universal law of decay -- that everything ultimately falls apart and disintegrates over time?  Does anyone dispute that material things are not eternal?

So if we believe these things, then the question becomes how to pay for them.  That is a question of the most mundane sort. 

And yet it is with a religious fervor that SaveJersey would like to claim that the Reason Foundation is infallible, that its pronouncements are "confirmed." This on a day when any person paying attention to the Senate Budget Committee hearing would have seen the Reason Foundation embarrass itself by attempting to compare a dirt road in Texas to a highway in New Jersey. 

If how we pay for roads and bridges has now become as religious a divide as transubstantiation, facts will not matter.  It will all come down to belief and to which priest or priestess you follow.  If, however, rational science still plays a role, we suggest bringing together those researchers from the Reason Foundation, with those from Rutgers University and elsewhere, to have them present their methods, discuss their differences, and using rational science, come to some useful conclusion -- more useful than a mere rhetorical device in some bizarre new liturgy. 

Rutgers bosses stonewalling about PAC

While the boss of the Rutgers SuperPAC makes fashion statements, the Rutgers President and the Chairman of its Board of Governors hide out from public scrutiny.

Three weeks ago, religious leader and family rights activist Rev. Greg Quinlan wrote to Rutgers President, Robert Barchi, and Chairman of the Board of Governors, Greg Brown.  Rev. Quinlan's letter was very respectful.  Like any taxpayer of New Jersey, he wanted to know how Susan McCue, as a member of the Board of Governors, can run a Super PAC whose sole purpose is to influence the election of legislators in New Jersey.  Those same legislators who are responsible for taxing and spending money on behalf of Rutgers.

Rev. Quinlan has yet to receive the courtesy of a reply from these two "role models for the leaders of tomorrow."  Does having a position of power give you the right to display contempt for the ordinary citizens who fund your institution and its salaries, perks, and benefits?  Apparently it does -- and apparently this is what they are teaching at Rutgers these days.

We have been assured that the issue is not going away and that eventually, Messrs. Barchi and Brown will have this placed under their noses so much and so often that they will end up commenting on it, if only by mistake.  Watch... and see if we are not correct. 

Here is the letter:

Garden State Families

Rev. Greg Quinlan, President

October 21, 2015

Mr. Robert Barchi, President

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

83 Somerset Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1281

Mr. Greg Brown, Chairman of the Board of Governors

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Chairman & CEO

Motorola Solutions, Inc.
1303 East Algonquin Road
Schaumburg, Illinois 60196 

Dear Messrs. Barchi and Brown: 

I would like to bring a serious conflict-of-interest to your attention. 

Susan M. McCue -- of Alexandria, Virginia -- is currently serving as one of the 15 members of the Rutgers' Board of Governors responsible for policy and oversight of the University.  Ms. McCue is a political consultant who controls a business called Message Global LLC, where she serves as President. 

Susan McCue is also President of the General Majority PAC -- an organization that in the last two election cycles has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to defeat or elect members of the New Jersey Legislature.  This is from her biography on the General Majority PAC webpage:

Susan M. McCue is one of the nation’s top political strategists and President of Message Global, LLC, a firm she founded... Susan served as Chief of Staff for U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for eight years, where she built and managed his leadership, policy and political operations.

She also co-founded the much-praised Senate Majority SuperPAC to elect Democrats in 2012 to the U.S. Senate, and in 2013 she founded the Fund for Jobs, Growth and Security, now called General Majority PAC, to elect Democrats in state races. 

The taxpayers, through their elected representatives in the New Jersey Legislature, fund Rutgers - The State University of New Jersey.  Should a member of Rutgers' governing Board be engaged in the election or defeat of members of that Legislature?  

What effect will her presence on the Rutgers governing Board have on legislators who, when exercising their own statutory oversight, find themselves facing a quarter-million dollar cable buy advocating their defeat or re-election? Will legislators think twice before taking up the cause of a disgruntled Rutgers employee or student.  Legislators must already know that they take on Rutgers' powerful and incumbent at their peril.  McCue's presence has already had a chilling effect on free expression in and outside the Legislature.  

Lastly, the source of Susan McCue's power -- Citizens United and other decision by that failsafe of the establishment, the national Supreme Court -- and her misuse of it to amplify the voice of rich corporations to drown out the voices of millions of American people makes a mockery of our democratic process and threatens democracy itself.  Is this the example you want Rutgers students to follow? 

Thank you for your time and consideration.  I look forward to your answers to my questions  and to any ideas you might have on how to address this threat to legislative independence and democracy. 

Sincerely,

Rev. Greg Quinlan

*Rev. Quinlan can be reached at: GQuinlan@gardenstatefamilies.com