Since becoming President of the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) Governing Board, Dr. Libby Hart-Wells has increasingly displayed hostility toward her fellow Board Members Amy Carney and Carine Werner.
At nearly every board meeting, Hart-Wells repeatedly interrupts and reprimands Members Carney and Werner, stifling any discussion or differing viewpoints, and repeatedly insists they stay on topic by saying “not on the agenda” whenever they attempt to ask a foundational question concerning an agenda item. This effectively curtails any potential for meaningful dialogue before it can begin.
Hart-Wells’ response to criticism is notably defensive, as evident in numerous board meetings throughout the year. Her authoritative and viewpoint-intolerant leadership style was particularly evident at the June 25th board meeting, where, knowing that Member Lindsay would not be present—a reliable progressive vote—she declined to include agenda items requested by Member Carney, despite a board policy that gives each board member an equal right to include agenda items for discussion.
Furthermore, during a public hearing at that meeting on the fiscal year 2024-2025 expenditure budget, Hart-Wells not only cut off Member Carney but also interrupted my public comments as well.
The agenda for the meeting specified that the board would hold a public hearing on the adoption of the SUSD proposed fiscal year 2024-2025 expenditure budget, in accordance with A.R.S. §38-431.02 and A.R.S. §15-905(D)(E).
A.R.S. §38-431.02 is often referred to as Arizona’s open meeting law (OML) and, as Dr. Hart- Wells should know because the former Attorney General successfully sued SUSD on this very issue just two years ago over the mask mandate debacle, the OML applies to “public hearings” just like any other board meeting.
A.R.S. §15-905 pertains to school district budgets, and subsection (D) mandates that the governing board must conduct a public hearing to present the proposed budget and explain it upon request of any person.
SUSD is a large district. The budget is not insignificant. The proposed fiscal year 2024-2025 expenditure budget totals $437,700,168 and before the board approved it, they were obligated to explain it to the public.
In line with Arizona law, I chose to address the board and seek clarification on the budget. However, just as she does with board members who bring up uncomfortable topics (for her), Dr. Hart-Wells repeatedly interrupted me during my discussion with staff who were explaining the budget, as required by law. At one point, she even turned off my microphone, effectively halting my comments. Under the OML, board members cannot simply interject and interrupt speakers during public comment. But as usual that doesn’t stop this district from doing things their own way and gaslighting parents if they object.
Dr. Hart-Wells, after breaking off my comments, insisted that discussions should focus strictly on “the proposed M&O budget for next school year” despite the public notice stating the purpose of the hearing was the adoption of the entire fiscal year 2024-2025 expenditure budget, not solely the M&O section of the budget.
Furthermore, the expenditure budget summary, as presented, explicitly mentions the ESSER funds. Therefore, discussing ESSER funding during the hearing, as I was trying to do, is directly relevant to the budget and “on topic.”
Dr. Hart-Wells had the audacity (and lack of self-awareness) to say publicly that she would “appreciate it” if I followed the state laws, yet her actions appear to violate both Arizona’s open meeting law and A.R.S. §15-905(D). Restricting meaningful discussion on pertinent budgetary matters outlined in the public notice and summary provided by the District is a clear violation of state law. By statute, the board is obligated to explain the budget – to the people who pay the taxes to support that budget. In this mandatory duty, she failed.
If you share my frustration with the way the Governing Board has been operating, continuously violating OML, disrespecting the rights of the public, preventing meaningful discussions on critical topics, and rubber-stamping Superintendent Menzel’s failing agenda, and if you believe our children deserve better, I urge you to vote for change this November. Let’s elect Jeanne Beasley, Drew Hassler, and Gretchen Jacobs to the SUSD school board. These candidates are committed to supporting parental rights, academic excellence, fiscal responsibility, and school safety.
Mike Bengert is a husband, father, grandfather, and Scottsdale resident advocating for quality education in SUSD for over 30 years.
The U.S. Olympic team will be supplied with room air conditioning units, joining other countries like Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Italy.
Organizers of the Summer Olympics Games to be held in Paris next month were hoping to force the games to be held sans air conditioning — what a wonderful virtue signal that would send to the climate-alarmed public!
The plan, as USA Today reported, was to force all event venues and athlete housing units to rely on a geothermal cooling system devised by the French. But, you know, it can get hot in Paris in the summer, and participating athletes and countries had some concerns about it.
So, despite the grand, centrally planned net-zero initiatives financed by trillions of debt-funded dollars and euros and pounds, many countries are planning to keep their athletes calm, collected and properly cooled with electricity-hogging room a/c units.
Note that the list of countries above includes some that are led by the world’s most aggressive and notorious climate scolds.
German leaders in this century have succeeded in largely destroying what had been the industrial powerhouse of Europe at the altar of climate alarmism, investing billions of debt-funded euros in a Quixotic attempt to power their society with windmills. That plan has been so successful to date that last winter, in a desperate attempt to avoid power blackouts, the government there resorted to reactivating mothballed coal plants and tore down a wind development to expand a domestic coal mining operation.
In the UK, the Tories — ostensibly the “conservatives” in Britain — now face an electoral wipeout of unprecedented proportions due in part to their buying whole hog into climate alarmist dogma.
In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose public approval rating would make President Joe Biden blush, faces a similar fate for similar reasons in national elections that will take place in 2025.
The governments of Australia and New Zealand, in nominally “conservative” or “liberal” regimes alike, have also embarked well down the net-zero path to deindustrialization.
Yet every one of these countries will be shipping out hundreds of energy consuming, greenhouse-gas-emitting air conditioners to Paris.
No national government has invested more time and more debt-funded dollars in virtue signaling and lecturing the public about climate change in recent years than the Biden regime. To hear President Joe Biden, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Climate Envoy John Podesta, former Climate Envoy John Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris tell it, a 1.5-degree rise in temperature is in fact an “existential threat,” one that requires us to saddle our great-grandchildren with trillions of more dollars in unsustainable debt to address right now, or — wait for it — we will all die!
But hey, we can’t have our Olympic athletes suffering in rooms where the Paris geothermal cooling system might only get temperatures down to an unbearable 78 degrees Fahrenheit, so it is imperative that the United States join the room a/c caravan across the Pond to gay Paree.
That is basically what USA Today quotes U.S. Olympic and Paralympic CEO Sarah Hirshland as saying: “We have great respect for the work that’s been done by the Paris organizing committee in particular and their focus on sustainability,” Hirshland said. “As you can imagine, this is a period of time in which consistency and predictability is critical for Team USA’s performance. In our conversations with athletes, this was a very high priority and something that the athletes felt was a critical component in their performance capability.”
But wait: If climate change is truly an existential threat to all mankind, shouldn’t the desires of a few thousand Olympics athletes to stay cool in their rooms simply be ignored? For the “greater good” and all that stuff?
After all, that is what the central governments in every one of these countries do whenever public opinion disapproves of their policy choices. Why should this become an exception?
The global religious belief that mankind can control the climate like it has a thermostat we can turn up and down at will is an example of unbridled hubris that is unrivalled in human history. That hubris is only exceeded by the rank hypocrisy practiced by the loudest and most visible of the religion’s adherents.
David Blackmon is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation, an energy writer, and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
We know exactly the cause of our disastrous immigration crisis. It was us. We voters have only ourselves to blame.
Biden didn’t even try to deceive us on this one. In the 2020 presidential debates, he vowed “on day one” to reverse Trump’s immigration policies. He promised to provide free healthcare to illegal aliens.
Unlike many other campaign promises, he faithfully kept these. He also terminated the Remain in Mexico policy and ended the ban on travel from centers of terrorism. He loosened the rules for seeking asylum so that millions of healthy appearing military-aged males were able to claim, “I am afraid” and be admitted to the land of the free.
Most Americans didn’t think through the consequences of an open immigration policy. Now, the associated problems are beyond obvious. Yet many, particularly religious NGOs, see welcoming all immigrants as an act of decency and compassion which all people of goodwill should applaud.
Is importing tens of millions of persons without qualifications into America, with only the hope they will somehow engage and become productive and independent, really the way to build a better world? There are 8 billion humans on this planet. They obviously can’t all be brought here.
Immigration does not increase the world’s net wealth. It merely redistributes it. The winners are those who are willing and able to make the arduous trek here and defy our laws. The losers are those still in their country of origin and the rest of us.
But the real force driving the illegal immigration surge came from Democrats and the political left. There is no other way to interpret the events over the last three years other than as a brazen attempt to attract millions of future Democrat voters and permanently alter the character of the American polity. Long after the political winds began to blow against the administration’s policies, the Biden gang was willing to take one for the team and keep on going.
The question now is: will the grand scheme work? Signs are appearing that racial minorities might not be Democrat wards forever, like the perhaps apocryphal one who told Democrats, “We’ve been voting for you for 60 years and we’re still poor.” Democrat-led big cities, which is virtually all of them, are getting fed up with the squalor and budget pressures that have come with thousands of demanding “newcomers” appearing in the night, not to mention luxury hotels filling up. The immigration disaster is looming as a major—possibly the decisive—factor in the upcoming election.
Immigration advocates claim that immigrants are actually valuable additions to our society. They are correct that modern America was created by immigrants, without whose efforts we wouldn’t exist.
Yet there’s a world of difference between the Ellis Island immigrants who loved America and were eager to fulfill the requirements of citizenship, and the millions streaming in today. To paraphrase JFK, they seem to care little about what they can do for their new country, but only what it will do for them.
Even if unlimited immigration were a great policy that benefited both immigrants and their hosts, the timing is terrible for two reasons. First is the rapid advance of AI and other labor-saving technologies that will replace many of the low-scale jobs that, in the brightest scenario, the uneducated masses would fill. The question for labor economists has changed from who will pick the lettuce and staff the fast food chains to how we find employment for the laborers—now including the “newcomers”—whose jobs are disappearing.
The other, more serious, problem is that we live in an increasingly dangerous world. With the rise of Islamist jihadists and the growing belligerence of international communism and other mortal enemies, it is lunacy for America to maintain an essentially unmanned border.
The solutions at this point have narrowed. First, we need an administration that will turn off the spigot. But now we have 20 million non-Americans who, as they age, will increasingly demand their share of benefits, which are already imperiled due to lack of future funding.
Repatriation, the ultimate solution, is logistically and politically fraught. We will be a long time regretting this massive foolishness.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Last weekend, the Arizona legislature completed its constitutional duty and finally passed a state budget, concluding its business for the year. Looming over the entire process was a budget deficit that needed to be filled—fluctuating from around $1.6 billion to just over $2 billion over the 3-year budgeting period.
Though the left and the media wanted to blame historic tax cuts and landmark school choice expansion for the shortfall, the real problem was record spending that resulted in Arizona’s budget growing by over 50% in the last five years. So, when lawmakers gaveled into session in January, the solution was to right-size state spending. Our organization even provided a roadmap for a successful budget process:
Cut spending to align with current and future funding projections
Don’t raid the rainy-day fund
Don’t use budget gimmicks to balance the sheets
Don’t roll back our school choice programs
Don’t raise taxes
So how did the legislature do? Here is a breakdown of the good and the not so good results from the budget:
Over the last few years, I observed how ignorant and dangerous college students have become. What’s worse is how older generations are playing along and encouraging the demoralization of society. And maybe it’s just me, but I sense this diabolical agenda, hellbent on shackling black folks to a race-based, trauma narrative, that incites outrage among some of the most privileged people in the world.
George Floyd is depicted wearing a crown of thorns at an ASU exhibit.
Yes, I said it. Twenty-first-century, black Americans are privileged, protected, and honored citizens. Those who discern this truth have seized every opportunity to innovate themselves. But those overcome by a victim mentality—the ones who see themselves as hopeless casualties of “systemic oppression”—are wasting away in a mental prison of personal failures and moral decay. The appropriate mascot for the latter could be none other than a black man who chose a life of substance and crime. If this is what it means to identify as a member of the black community, then we are to be pitied above all ethnic groups.
George Floyd was not a saint. He was an eight-time convicted criminal who didn’t think twice about robbing a pregnant woman while holding a gun to her belly. Floyd wasn’t targeted and murdered by Derek Chauvin. Floyd was high on drugs and resisting arrest after attempting to pass counterfeit bills in a corner store. An autopsy—that was strategically withheld from the public in 2020—revealed that he died from acute complications related to substance abuse while under the restraint of a trained police officer. Chauvin’s negligence in regard to seeking medical attention for Floyd’s condition is debatable, but this doesn’t change the facts.
Of course, George Floyd was a human being. He has children, family, and friends. Whether those relationships were loving or dysfunctional, kind or cruel, the world may never truly know. Floyd has been reduced to a token for the Marxist “defund the police” movement. He’s forever enshrined as the cash cow that overflowed the coffers of corrupt Black Lives Matter leaders. And for all the blood money amassed in his name, there’s no record of predominantly black neighborhoods, schools, or businesses receiving a dime. If so, it’s the greatest story yet to be told.
Various displays from the George Floyd exhibit at ASU.
When I consider the venom spewed by loud-mouth activists like Al Sharpton, lowlife politicians like Maxine Waters, and progressive pundits like Joy Reid—all privileged, racist, black people, by the way—I’m appalled at how they use their platforms to shamelessly perpetuate a culture of death among black Americans. Another disgraced public figure who totes the systemic oppression narrative is The View co-host, Sunny Hostin.
During an episode featuring South Carolina Representative Tim Scott, Hostin revealed that she’s convinced all successful black people (herself included) are an exception to the rule. What’s the rule? A life of crime, violence, poverty, discrimination, and dejection. Hmm… Well, the black people I know who wear these labels and wallow in these circumstances typically identify as Democrats. But regardless of political ideology, the black community must face harsh realities:
Black men are not going extinct at the hands of white cops—the 2019 black-on-black homicide rate of 80% to 90% tells me they’re predominantly victims of other black men. When I saw the “Stop Killing Black People” cardboard display at ASU, I immediately thought: “We need to stop killing our own people!”
Systemic racism is not an existential threat to black people—abortion is an existential threat to black people. With 2019 estimations between 35% and 39%, black women have the highest abortion rates in the U.S. In no uncertain terms, I’d say this is the culprit in the case of black genocide.
Single-parent families are the highest among black Americans—one 2022 statistic showed that over 50% of black children were living without a father figure in the home.
Now, I’ve yet to hear sound justification for how white people or white supremacy are to blame for these overwhelming demographics. How is it a white person’s fault if a black man murders another black man, or a black woman dismembers her unborn child? Exactly how is white supremacy the root cause of having unprotected sex with (multiple) people you’re not married to? Am I missing something? Is it because my mind is free that I’m incapable of connecting these dots? I’m a lifetime learner, so feel free to enlighten me.
I wasn’t alone when I visited the George Floyd shrine. I invited a friend, an ASU student, who happens to be a young, Christian, white male (white supremacy incarnate, according to the left). After chatting with him about his family history, I discovered he grew up under dire circumstances that I (a black woman) never experienced. During the tour, the volume and rapidity of our discussions convinced me that we shared the same frustration and sense of urgency about the communist movements overtaking America’s youth. Multiple times my friend expressed regret for wasting so much time and money studying at ASU.
Another display at the George Floyd exhibit at ASU.
For the record, I love my community. Black people are vibrant (a.k.a. loud), talented, beautiful, funny, accomplished, highly intelligent and influential. Unfortunately, black culture, like any other, has a tendency to be toxic and backwards. Of course, I’m not blind to our nation’s sinful past. History is recorded for a reason; Confederate statues should remain in open squares for a reason. Future generations must continue to engage in candid, ethical discussions about such issues as American slavery, racism, and bigotry—all intrinsically traced back to the Democratic Party. Inevitably, some in society will stereotype and profile black people, especially if they’ve only viewed them at their worst in the public sphere.
When I see a black columnist dub Larry Elder the “black face of white supremacy”; when I hear a black, pseudo intellectual say Winsome Sears has a “black mouth moving with white ideas running on the runway of the tongue”; when a black Democrat calls a black Republican an “Uncle Tom” —I’m only more convinced that the greatest threats to the black community come from within, not without. Furthermore, if you’re someone who thinks black lives only matter when criminals encounter white police officers, and don’t live to tell their side of the story, then your mind is pretty far gone. I’ll be praying for you.
I could say more, but I’ll leave my community with these words of encouragement: Your destiny is not tied to what white people will or won’t do for you. Nobody owes you anything. You are not a victim. Your identity is not bound to black culture. It’s unnecessary to put the word “black” in front of “excellence” or “joy.” We are not a monolith. We need to respect the fact that being “black in America” means different things to different people. Regardless of where you came from or what you’ve come through, God has given this generation the liberty to break off cycles of trauma and leave this world better than we found it.
Be set free.
Tiffany is the Founder of Restore Parental Rights in Education, a grassroots advocate for families, educators, and school board members. For nearly two decades, Tiffany’s creative writing pursuits have surpassed most interests as she continues to contribute to her blogBigviewsmallwindow.com. She encourages everyday citizens to take an active role in defending and preserving American values for future generations.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly called climate change an “existential threat,” worse than nuclear weapons.
Yet, Biden’s green energy mandates result in a greater U.S. demand for wind turbines, solar panels and electric batteries from China, made by coal-fired power plants, increasing the emissions Biden criticizes at home.
The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that in the absence of reductions in carbon emissions, temperatures will rise by about 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The idea that such a temperature change is worse than deaths from nuclear weapons is ludicrous. Over 200,000 people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after America dropped atomic bombs.
Temperatures have varied for centuries. Climate models are not reliable and accurate enough to attribute global warming to human activities. The observed rate of global warming over the past 50 years has been weaker than that predicted by almost all computerized climate models.
Thirty-six computer models overpredicted surface air temperatures during the summer growing season. The models all showed warming well above what happened in reality, with the most extreme model producing seven times too much warming.
Increases in hurricane frequency are erroneously cited as an effect of warming. Although carbon dioxide emissions and temperature — both in America and globally — have increased over the latter parts of the 20th Century, no meaningful increase in frequency and intensity of hurricanes has been observed.
Hurricane damage has increased over time, but this outcome is largely due to increased incomes and wealth, and therefore infrastructure creation, rather than more violent hurricanes. For example, homes in Florida have risen by a factor of 12 since 1975, according to the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank. The same hurricane that in 1975 destroyed a house worth $100,000 would now destroy a house worth $1.2 million.
Although some say that increased CO2 levels are detrimental to human health and welfare, deaths are more likely to result from medical events triggered by the cold than by the heat.
A 2020 study by Dr. Whanhee Lee and others in Lancet showed that cold-related morbidity and mortality — strokes, heart attacks, blood clots, and other problems — result directly from the influence of cold temperatures on the body, where the body is unable to maintain sufficient core temperature to guarantee survival.
In addition, Environmental Protection Agency data shows that death rates are about 10 percent higher in winter, and January is the deadliest month of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
If Biden truly thought that climate change was an existential threat, he would try to lower global emissions through greater U.S. exports of natural gas. This would enable other countries to reduce emissions by substituting natural gas for coal, just as America has reduced carbon emissions by 1,000 million metric tons over the past 16 years.
In addition, Biden would try to expand emissions-free nuclear power if he thought climate change was a threat. He would make uranium mining easier, because uranium is a critical ingredient for nuclear power. Yet he has taken swaths of land off the table for uranium development and made no attempt to solve the problem of nuclear waste.
Instead, Biden blocks a new liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, which results in greater worldwide use of coal, increasing global carbon dioxide emissions. Europe has already been turning to coal to deal with energy shortages in the aftermath of Russia’s cutoff of natural gas.
Over the past 20 years, U.S. emissions of CO2 have declined by a billion metric tons as natural gas has been increasingly substituted for coal use in the generation of electricity. Over the same period, CO2 emissions in China have risen by 8.7 billion metric tons.
Biden’s repetition that climate change is an existential threat gives him an excuse to impose more regulations and sign into law subsidies for favored donors.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste,” said Amb. Rahm Emanuel when he was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. Biden is inventing the crisis and the waste is following.
Diana Furchtgott-Rothis a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and directs the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at The Heritage Foundation.
