Category Archives: Liberal

Paid family leave is somethingalmost everyone wants, and its important for workers to be able to take time off when a family or medical need arises. The great news is that paid family leave is on the rise, with the percentage of workers with access to paid family leave shooting upby 64%over the past five years.

But just as access to flexible and accommodating policies is rising, Democrats big-government socialism bill would halt that trend and impose a one-size-fits-all policy instead.

The problem is that liberal politicians propose a family leave policy that is unworkable and likely would be inaccessible to workers who need it most.

Here are four reasons why this new, unfunded entitlement shouldnt make the cut in the big-government socialism wish list.

1. Treasury says it cant implement the program. Even with an extra $80 billion for an army of IRS enforcement agents, Treasury Department officials say they are not equipped to run a paid family leave program.

According to a topline memo fromTreasury officialsto staff of the House Ways and Means Committee, Treasury has no responsibility for large, permanent benefit entitlement programs.

Treasury does not have the functional expertise nor the internal expertise, officials said, and is not staffed to administer large entitlement programs offering permanent benefits.

The memo goes on to detail what would be required of the Treasury Department to manage the proposed program. Treasury would have to create and staff an entirely new office (or division) to administer the paid leave benefit program, including determining individuals eligibility for the leave benefits and awarding grants to eligible States and employers that maintain leave programs.

Treasury also would be responsible for taking applications from individuals seeking the paid leave benefit, establishing a call center, and creating an appeals process for individuals to challenge denied benefits, among other administrative functions, the memo says. These are not Treasury functions.

2. The program would provide the highest benefits to those with the highest incomes. For the birth of a child, this proposal would provide up to $5,540 to a single mom who makes $30,000 a year, and up to $28,000 for a married couple with $500,000 of income.

And unlike past proposals, no payroll tax would fund the benefits, so this is a purely regressive program. Theres zero rational for enacting new entitlement programs that disproportionately help high-income earners who already receive these benefits from their employers or their own incomes.

3. The program would use taxpayer dollars to take control of employers plans.Paid family leave policies that are flexible and accommodating were already on the rise prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and theyve only increased further because of the need for such leave policies as well as the need for employers to respond to workers desires amid the record labor shortage.

But if you like your paid family leave program, youre unlikely to be able to keep it. Instead of just letting those policies be, the proposed paid family leave program would use taxpayer dollars to buy control over private employers plans. The federal government would cut large checks to corporations to cover up to 90% of their workers paid leave costs, but only if employers follow the programs rules and regulations.

That means putting the Treasury Department in ultimate control over why, when, and for whom workers may take leaveincluding Treasurys determining what constitutes an affinity relationship or the equivalent of a family relationship.

If employers denied requests for paid family leaveincluding instances when workers took leave without notifying employers and then applied for paid leave benefits a week latertheir employees could appeal those decisions to the Treasury Department. The employer could be liable for the cost of the appeal.

No wonder Treasury doesnt want to touch this program with a 10-foot pole. This is a whole lot of unnecessary costs and bureaucracy just for the federal government to gain control over paid family leave policies that already exist.

4. Low-income workers arent likely to benefit.Although in theory the program would expand access to paid family leave to almost all working Americans (and in some cases, even to those who arent working), the reality is that it would belargely inaccessibleto many low-income workers.

Across the globe, government paid leave programsconsistently failto provide meaningful benefits to low-income workers. Among women who took leave in California in 2016, for example, only 36% of those making less than $32,000 a year received paid leave benefits from the government, compared to 79% of those with annual earnings over $97,000.

And the proposal provides no job protection for the 45% of disproportionately low-income workers who dont qualify for job-protected family and medical leave.

As different factions of liberal lawmakers battle over what socialist policies to keep and which to abandon, spending $500 billion for a paid family leave program that barely would move the needle on low-income workers access to leave should be among the first to go.

Policymakers instead could expand access to paid family leave without spending a single dime more.

Congress could pass theWorking Families Flexibility Actso that lower-wage workers may choose to accumulate paid leave. Lawmakers also could enact Universal Savings Accounts and make it easier for companies to provideprivate disability insurancebenefits that cover most situations during which workers need to take leave.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

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4 Reasons Why Liberal Politicians Should Abandon Federal Takeover of Paid Family Leave - Heritage.org

Most every item on the Democrats' social wish list polls quite well.

Nevertheless, Democrats are deeply worried about the governor's race in Democratic-leaning Virginia and their ability to hold onto their bare majorities in the House and Senate. The reason is not honest disagreements over legislation. It's a small group on the left intent on slime-attacking Democratic moderates and scaring voters with their radical visions.

The bizarre part is that the lefties in the House number only about 17. Meanwhile, there are about 130 crazies in the Republican House caucus -- crazy defined by their January vote to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Yet the right-wing media has succeeded in portraying the Democratic fringe as the party's leadership. This couldn't have been done without the help of the supposedly liberal media, always ready to quote, profile and invite on camera the most strident voices in the left. We're looking at you, MSNBC and The New York Times, whose journalists inhabit the same elite urban circles as the attention freaks.

The party's real political magicians get scant coverage. Abby Finkenauer managed to win a formerly Republican district in northeastern Iowa only to lose it in 2020 amid radical chatter about defunding police. Republicans were able to flip 15 hard-won Democratic seats, even as Democrat Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by 7 million popular votes.

Fox News and Newsmax will always find some obscure professor with a pointedly offensive critique of America to showcase as emblematic of Democratic thinking. Democrats can't control that. But they can impose penalties for their politicians who are too dense or don't care about messaging that scares the public.

Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represent districts so safe that Steve Bannon could win them if he had a "D" after his name. They do politically dumb things like attaching the term "people of color" to issues having nearly nothing to do with race, thereby confusing white voters who might want what they're proposing, like universal pre-K.

As for people of color, most aren't subscribing to the radical agenda, witnessed in the recent mayoral primary in New York City. Former police official Eric Adams won handily over the ultra-woke Maya Wiley, whom Ocasio-Cortez enthusiastically endorsed.

Guess what. Blacks and Latinos want public safety, especially at a time of rising crime. They also tend to be more socially conservative than white liberals, particularly members of the white liberal gentry.

That's a big reason, Democratic political analyst David Shor says, for Democrats having lost about 2% of support among African Americans. Hispanic support dropped by 8% to 9%.

Some of it was all that socialism talk by the radicals. Cubans, Colombians and Venezuelans don't care for socialism. But there was more.

"The (strikingly large) decline in Hispanic support for Democrats," Shor says, "was pretty broad. This isn't just about Cubans in south Florida. It happened in New York and California and Arizona and Texas."

Democrats can hope that Trump continues to favor candidates seriously accused of domestic violence. The estranged wife of Sean Parnell, one of Trump's endorsements, has two protection-from-abuse orders issued against him. Parnell is now running for the Senate in Pennsylvania.

Democratic voters really have to think strategically. That might include raising primary challenges to candidates more interested in their Twitter following than securing real power in Washington. The very democracy could depend on them.

Froma Harrop is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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Froma Harrop: The lefties, not liberals, are toxic to Democrats - Grand Forks Herald

Describing the dilemma faced by democracies when threatened by those using their own rules to undermine them, the late United States Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson wrote in 1947: The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either ... There is danger that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

Justice Jackson was objecting to a decision by the court not to punish a far-right priest whose racist rants had inspired a riot in Chicago. The judge, who during the Nuremberg Trials prosecuted Nazi war criminals who came to power democratically, meant that liberal democracy must put structures in place to protect itself when under threat, even if that meant sacrificing freedom of speech or resorting to illiberal means.

The concept of militant democracy became a norm throughout much of post-Second World War Europe, especially in countries emerging from dictatorship such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia. New tools were put into place, and old ones revived. But bafflingly, liberal democracies nowadays are proving incapable or unwilling to use the various array of tools at their disposal to fend off threats by the far right. Meanwhile, the far and hard right is constantly trying to manipulate the rules of liberal democracy to undermine it.

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Why are liberal democracies so scared to save themselves? | Borzou Daragahi - The Independent

The Supreme Court is seen on the first day of the new term, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The Supreme Court denied a request brought by healthcare workers seeking to skirt a vaccine mandate.

The court declined to stop Maine from requiring those with religious exemptions to get vaccinated.

Justices John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberal justices.

In a ruling Friday, the Supreme Court declined to block Maine from requiring vaccine mandates for healthcare workers who object on religious grounds.

Maine requires all healthcare workers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and does not grant religious exemptions.

A group of healthcare workers sought an emergency order from the Supreme Court that would block the requirement for those with religious objections.

The court voted 6-3, with conservative Justices John Roberts and Trump-appointees Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the liberal justices.

The majority did not give a reason for the decision, but conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, issued a long dissent.

"Unlike comparable rules in most other States, Maine's rule contains no exemption for those whose sincerely held religious beliefs preclude them from accepting the vaccination," Gorsuch wrote, adding that the healthcare workers who sought relief from the rule have served on the frontlines throughout the pandemic.

"Yet, with Maine's new rule coming into effect, one of the applicants has already lost her job for refusing to betray her faith; another risks the imminent loss of his medical practice," he continued.

Barrett, joined by Kavanaugh in a concurring opinion, briefly remarked on their decision to block the request, citing the fact that the case was brought on the shadow docket, or as an emergency appeal. Shadow docket cases do not involve oral arguments or full rulings that are part of normal cases.

Barrett said the shadow docket should not be used for such a case, and that the court should not make this decision "on a short fuse without benefit of full briefing and oral argument," implying she and Kavanaugh could vote differently if the case came before the court in a different way.

Story continues

Maine has required healthcare workers to receive certain vaccinations for decades. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, a state law removed religious and philosophical exemptions. The law, which took effect in September of this year, was adopted after 73% of Maine voters supported it in a referendum, according to The New York Times.

In August, Barrett also rejected a request to block Indiana University's vaccine requirement for students, though she did not provide a reason. However, she made the decision without consulting other justices, as justices are allowed to do on emergency appeals, suggesting she did not think there was much legal justification for the request.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett side with liberal justices, decline to block Maine's vaccine mandate for health workers...

Life, Liberty & Levin" host Mark Levin laid out what he called a coordinated attack on American elections by left-wing dark-money groups, billionaires, and the Democratic Party in his Sunday monologue.

People aren't supposed to talk about issues with the 2020 election, Levin said, lest they be labeled conspiracy theorists by the media.

"If we don't address this, the next election for president in 2024 is going to wind up the same way now," he said.

Levin read out extensively from several reports, including TIME's "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election," the New York Post's "Mark Zuckerberg spent $419M on nonprofits ahead of 2020 election and got out the Dem vote," and Breitbart's, "Report: Top Democrat Lawyer Uses Dark Money Network to Fund Progressive Lawsuits."

BIDEN'S DOJ COMING AFTER PARENTS IS STUNNING: BRENT BOZELL

TIME's lengthy piece on behind-the-scenes machinations in the 2020 race, discussing "a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."

"Their work touched every aspect of the election," TIME reported. "They got states to change. Voting systems and laws helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter suppression lawsuits. Their word recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time."

The Post's report found the Facebook CEO "funded a targeted, private takeover of government election operations by nominally nonpartisan but demonstrably ideological nonprofit organizations" that significantly aided Joe Biden's vote share in swing states he narrowly carried like Georgia and Arizona.

Breitbart reported Democratic attorney Marc Elias and Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign general counsel has "been using a dark money network to fund lawsuits geared toward advancing progressive causes, from fighting voter ID laws to enshrining universal mail-in voting."

Wealthy Democratic donors were able to pour money into dozens of dark-money funds, Levin argued, meaning there's no transparency about who's giving what, in order to fund liberal lawsuits that targeted election laws and benefited Democrats.

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: 2020 ELECTION WAS UNLIKE ANY WE'VE EVER HAD

"Hundreds of lawsuits targeting the election laws to make it easier not for people to vote, but for the Democrat Party to enshrine the voting systems that they wanted," Levin said. "That's what that's all about."

Levin said people may not agree with Donald Trump on every point, but he called it crucial to discuss.

"Dark money, front groups, hundreds of millions of dollars race changing the voting systems to accommodate the Democrat Party and the Democrat nominee and can affect, of course, Senate races and House races too," he said. "This is something that needs to be investigated."

Attorney Marc Elias preps with attorneys Roopali Desai (far left), Sarah Gonski (left) and Amanda Callais on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016, before the hearing for his lawsuit against Arizona over voting rights. Elias is the general counsel for the Hillary Clinton campaign. (Photo by David Jolkovski for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Levin said President Biden's administration and Democrats wouldn't investigate the shadowy forces that are changing American elections without the knowledge of most citizens.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our election system is in fact under attack, and it's under attack by very, very wealthy people in combination with radical, left-wing Democrat party organizations. There is no getting around it," he said. "There is no question about it. Dark money, all this money flowing into the coffers, organizations that don't have to report who's giving what to whom. A combination of the corporatists and the left-wing groups."

Levin said no one wanted anything "reversed," and he went after "RINOs" and "NeverTrumpers" who have contributed to the situation.

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"We want the light shed on what took place and we want to make sure it never happens again. So while you're chasing shiny objects set up by the Democrat Party, while you're chasing issues that are not going to affect the next election but are attacking Trump even while he's a private citizen, this is going on, ladies and gentlemen, under the radar and in the shadows."

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Mark Levin: Network of liberal dark money groups, billionaires, and Democrats attacking our elections - Fox News

Russian liberal party Yabloko announced Monday it will cut ties with members who had backed jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalnys anti-Kremlin voting initiative, a move that underlines bitter divisions in the countrys fragmented opposition.

Yabloko, which has not been represented in Russias parliament for the past two decades, accused Navalny of playing into the Kremlins hands with efforts to coalesce supporters around mostly Communist Party candidates during last months legislative polls.

Our opponent is not only the government, but also what can be described as modern Bolshevism, Yabloko said in a statement.

The party defined the term as a reaction to leadership corrupted by irremovability, a populist appeal to all the weak and offended and a call to unite around a charismatic leader who combines nationalism with primitive egalitarianism in his appeals.

Any vote for the Communist Party, LDPR and A Just Russia is playing a game on the side of the authorities, it added, referring to the so-called systemic opposition parties that gained a handful of seats in Russias lower house of parliament, the State Duma.

Authorities had banned nearly every other independent and opposition member from running in Septembers parliamentary elections, clearing the field for the pro-Putin United Russia party to retain its supermajority in the 450-seat Duma.

In its statement, Yabloko called support for Navalnys Smart Voting initiative which directed supporters to cast ballots for any registered candidate with the best chance of defeating United Russia members incompatible with membership in the party.

Yabloko members who ignore the partys instructions are subject to de-registration, the statement said.

According to the liberal-leaning Dozhd broadcaster, Yablokos press service said support for Navalny does not entail automatic disqualification but exclusion from future decision-making.

Founded in 1993 and an influential political player in the Yeltsin years, the party was virtually wiped out in the 2003 Duma elections as its middle-class, urban electorate rewarded Putins United Russia for a booming economy and political stability.

The only officially registered party in Russia committed to liberal democracy, Yabloko has enjoyed exaggerated importance as one of the last routes into politics for otherwise marginalized Kremlin critics.

Navalny made his political start with Yabloko in the late 1990s but was expelled in 2007 for attending an ultranationalist, anti-immigration demonstration and agitating against the partys founder Grigory Yavlinsky.

Yavlinsky denounced Navalny as a populist in an open letter this year amid nationwide demonstrations against the opposition leaders imprisonment.

Navalny allies have denounced Yabloko as a Kremlin front after the party refused to nominate several of his organizers who were otherwise barred from running for this fall's elections.

Originally posted here:

Russia's 'Last Liberal Party' Cuts Ties With Navalny Supporters - The Moscow Times

The University of Connecticut has recognized two faculty members with the 2021 Provosts Outstanding Service Award. The award honors faculty whose volunteer service is exemplary in enhancing the Universitys mission in teaching, research, service, or engagement.

This years two recipients are Carol Atkinson-Palombo, professor of geography, core faculty in urban and community studies, affiliate faculty of the Human Rights Institute, and director of environmental studies; and Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, professor of history, an affiliate of American studies, and founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music.

I am so pleased to recognize these two stellar members of our UConn community. They have both contributed significantly in sustaining a rigorous, collaborative, and creative environment for colleagues and students. I am grateful for all they have done, and will undoubtedly continue to do as leading citizens of our university, said Carl Lejuez, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

Carol Atkinson-Palombo has been a faculty member at UConn since 2007. Nomination materials highlighted her sound reputation as an excellent, caring educator in tandem with her profile as an internationally recognized scholar of human-environment interactions. In terms of service, she has made substantial contributions in numerous areas, notably in environmental studies and engagement in faculty governance.

Atkinson-Palombo has been a central figure in the advancement of environmental studies and sciences opportunities at UConn. In addition to serving as the director for environmental studies and teaching the capstone course for that major, she has also served on the environmental sciences board that supported the undergraduate program since 2016. As a further step to embed human-environment issues in students academic experience, she was a leading advocate in the successful adoption of an environmental literacy general education requirement.

Atkinson-Palombo has also been an active presence in University Senate since 2015. She joined the Senate Executive Committee in 2018 and served as its chair during the 2020-21 academic year, skillfully managing the many new challenges that accompanied university concerns amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that, she chaired the Senate University Budget Committee, where her knowledge from the business sector and attention to detail were key to bringing more transparency in this area. During her tenure on Senate and SEC, Atkinson-Palombo has been an advocate for diversity and equity for women. She was also involved in University Metanoia serving on the Steering Committee for the Metanoia on the Environment.

Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar has been a faculty member at UConn since 1997. Ogbar has been the model of a productive scholar, dedicated university citizen, and sterling UConn ambassador. While producing pioneering scholarship in the fields of history and African-American studies and teaching some of the most popular undergraduate courses, Ogbar has developed an extensive record of service that reflects his commitments to excellence, diversity, and engagement benefitting virtually every sector of the UConn community.

He served as director of the Institute for African American Studies (now the Africana Studies Institute) from 2003-2009, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences from 2009 to 2012, and vice provost for diversity from 2012-2014. Countless university-level committees and advisory boards have consulted with Ogbar for his expertise, across a breadth of areas. Committee memberships have ranged from advisory roles in support of the African American Cultural Center, Disability Studies, First Year Programs, UConn Athletics, Study Abroad and beyond. Hes had a hand in bringing many of the best and brightest to UConn, serving on search committees for University president, director of Womens Studies, director of African American Studies, the heads of Philosophy and English, director of the Institute for Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Indigenous Studies faculty, and even the director of Public Safety and Chief of Police. He has also been a tireless advocate and mentor for students of color and first-generation students in a variety of capacities, formal and informal. He is a mentor for faculty of color and a model for all UConn faculty members. In addition to a recruiter and a mentor, he is also a program-builder, serving as the founding director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music.

The 2022 Provosts Outstanding Service Award will open for nominations in the spring semester. More information is available on the Provosts Office website.

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Provost's Outstanding Service Award Recognizes Faculty in College of Liberal Arts and Sciences - UConn Today - UConn Today

This is a rush transcript from "Life, Liberty & Levin," October 17, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MARK LEVIN, FOX NEWS HOST: Hello, America. I'm Mark Levin, and this is LIFE LIBERTY & LEVIN. We have two great guests tonight -- Brent Bozell, where we're going to discuss the corrupt media at some level, particularly with respect to school boards, and so forth. And the great Charles Payne, our money man to talk about what Congress wants to do to you, your bank accounts and your wealth, which is basically take a lot of it.

But before we do, you know, I'm going to discuss a subject I'm not supposed to discuss -- the 2020 election, and I'm going to discuss some conspiracies that took place in the 2020 election, not with voting machines, not even with ballot counting, just conspiracies that took place -- dark money, billionaires, the Democratic Party, corporatists, and others. And if we don't address this, the next election for president in 2024 is going to wind up the same way.

Now, first, there was a piece in "Time" Magazine some time ago, last February, "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election." Saved it for whom? Well, the Democrats and Joe Biden.

So to lay the foundation here, it says in part, "Trump said on December 2nd, within days after the election, we witnessed an orchestrated effort to anoint the winner, even while many key states were still being counted."

Well, he wasn't wrong about that, ladies and gentlemen. Later in the piece, it says, "Their work" -- whose work? Left-wing groups, corporatists, Democratic Party operatives and of course, the media. "Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states that change voting systems and laws, helped secure a hundreds of millions of public and private funding. They fended off voter suppression lawsuits," their word, "Recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time."

"They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and use data driven strategies to fight viral smears." You can see how partisan it is. I'm reading this to you so you can recall what was done.

"They executed national public awareness campaigns that helped Americans understand how the vote count would unfold over days or weeks, preventing Trump's conspiracy theories and false claims of victory from getting more traction."

Conspiracy theories? This whole articles about a conspiracy theory.

"After Election Day, they monitored every pressure point to ensure that Trump could not overturn the result. The untold story of the election is that thousands of people of both parties who accomplished the triumph of American democracy at its very foundation says Norm Eisen, a prominent lawyer and of course, former Obama administration official who recruited Republicans (aka never Trumpers) and Democrats to the board of the Voter Protection Program." That's number one.

Number two, "The New York Post."

"Mark Zuckerberg spent $419 million on nonprofits ahead of the 2020 election and got out the Democratic vote."

"During the 2020 election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars to turn out likely key Democratic voters. But this wasn't traditional political spending, he funded a targeted private takeover government election operations by normally nonpartisan, but demonstrably ideological nonprofit organization."

"Analysis conducted by our team ("New York Post") says demonstrates this money significantly increased Joe Biden's vote margin in key swing states, in places like Georgia where Biden won by 12,000 votes, and Arizona where he won by 10,000. The spending likely put him over the top."

"This unprecedented merger of public election offices where private resources and personnel is an acute threat to our Republic, and should be the focus of electoral reform efforts moving forward."

Now, how did he do this? "The Center for Technology and Civic Life and the Center for Election Innovation and Research passed a staggering $419.5 million of Zuckerberg's money into local government election offices and it came with strings attached. Every CTCL and CEIR grant spelled out in grant detail the conditions under which the grant money was to be used."

"Big CTCL and CEIR money had nothing to do with traditional campaign financing, lobbying, or other expenses that are related to increasingly expensive modern elections. It had to do with financing the infiltration of election offices at the city and county level by left-wing activists and using those offices as a platform to implement preferred administrative practices, voting methods, and data sharing agreements, as well as to launch intensive outreach campaigns in areas heavy with Democratic voters."

"For instance, CTCL/CEIR funded self-described vote navigators in Wisconsin to assist voters potentially at their front doors to answer questions, assist in ballot curing, and witness absentee ballots signatures. A temporary staffing agency affiliated with Stacey Abrams, called Happy Faces, counting the votes amid the election night chaos in Fulton County, Georgia."

"CTCL demanded the promotion of universal mail-in voting through suspending election laws, extending deadlines that favored mail in over in-person voting, greatly expanding opportunities for quote 'ballot curing' unquote, expensive bulk mailings and other lavish 'community outreach' quote- unquote, programs that were directed by private activists."

"CTCL drove the proliferation on unmonitored private drop boxes which created major chain of custody issues and opportunities for novel forms of mail-in ballot electioneering, allowed for the submission of numerous questionable post-Election Day ballots, and created opportunities for illegal ballot harvesting."

"CTCL greatly increased funding for temporary staffing and poll workers, which supported the infiltration of election offices by paid Democratic Party activists coordinated through a complex web of left-leaning nonprofit organizations, social media platforms and social media election influencers."

"Funding and managing elections has always been a government function, not a private one. And for good reason. Private organizations are not subject to the rules for public employees and institutions. They are not required to hold public hearings, cannot be monitored via open records requests, and other mechanisms of administrative and financial transparency, are not subject to the normal checks and balances of the governmental process and are not accountable to the voters if the public disapproves of their actions."

"The practical effect of these massive privately manipulated election office funding disparities was to create a shadow election system with a built-in structural bias that systematically favored Democratic voters over Republican voters. The massive influx of funds essentially created a high powered concierge like get out the vote effort for Biden that took place inside the election system rather than attempting to influence it from the outside."

William Doyle PhD, and he is an election and research expert.

But there is more over a Breitbart: "Top Democrat lawyer uses dark money network to fund progressive lawsuits." Remember all the lawsuits brought between 2016 and 2020 to change the rules in the states to accommodate the Democrats.

"Top Democrat attorney Mark Elias has been using a dark money network to fund lawsuits geared toward advocating progressive causes from fighting voter ID laws to enshrining universal mail-in voting, according to a watchdog group Americans for Public Trust. Elias who previously helped push the Russia collusion hoax after serving as Hillary Clinton's top campaign lawyer recently parted ways from Perkins Coie law firm to start the Elias Law Group, a firm dedicated to advancing the Democratic Party's agenda."

But he worked within the Perkins Coie law firm during the lead up and during the last election.

"Prior to the formation of his new firm, Elias formed extensive ties with a dark money network headed by Arabella Advisors, a company that manages several nonprofits, Hopewell Fund, the 1630 Fund, the New Venture Fund and the Woodward Fund."

"According to FOX News, in July 2020, Elias created the Democracy Docket Legal Fund, which was a fiscally sponsored project of the Hopewell Fund."

So you have this mothership, the Arabella Advisors Fund, then you have the second tier funds with the connections like this, and money moves between the funds and they are setup, why? Because legally, depending on what fund spends the money, it can't get transparency.

"Wealthy Democratic donors use these funds to pour cash and the dozens of initiatives that fall under Arabella's umbrella. According to the network's most recent tax forms, the four funds combined to haul in $715 million in cash from secret donors in 2019 alone. That cash for the most part went to fund lawsuits to try and promote the Democratic Party, position the Democratic Party, defeat the Republican Party, and specifically Donald Trump."

"The group also pushes money to outside organizations that do not fall under its auspices. In addition to the Democracy Docket LLC, Attorney Elias created the Democracy Docket Action Fund to raise money for voting rights lawsuits. 'The New York Times' reported last year, according to an Act Blue donation page (another left wing fund), the Action Fund is a project of the North Fund, which also boasts connections to the Arabella Advisors."

So all these funds are set up -- all these funds are set up so multibillionaires and millionaires can pour their money into these organizations. There is no transparency, which is why they call it dark funds. So, we, the American people have no idea what's taking place. And these funds were set up by Democrats, by the Democratic Party. These funds were used by this guy, Mark Elias, to bring lawsuits, lawsuits brought all over the country in all 50 states, hundreds of lawsuits, targeting the election laws to make it easier not for people to vote, but for the Democratic Party to enshrine the voting systems that they wanted.

That's what that's all about.

And in Pennsylvania alone, two serious Federal constitutional cases were brought in connection with Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, to challenge what had been done in Pennsylvania and the rogue Supreme Court there, which changed the voting system in the last days of the election, against the will of the Republican state legislature that violates the Federal Constitution, state legislatures determine election procedures for appointing electors under Article II Section 1 Clause 2.

Why am I bringing this all up?

Because Donald Trump has a point. You may not agree with every point, and depending on the state, there may be evidence, there may not be evidence. But the idea that we can't talk about what took place in the last election, so the Democrats can now lay the foundation in the 2024 election to do the same thing and double what they're doing is unacceptable.

Dark money, front groups, hundreds of millions of dollars raised, changing the voting systems to accommodate the Democratic Party and the Democrat nominee and can affect of course, Senate races and House races, too, this is something that needs to be investigated.

Now, it is not going to be investigated by Biden and his administration, they've benefited from it. It's not going to be investigated by the rogue Attorney General because he supports everything that's being done.

And apparently it's not going to be investigated by the Democrat House and the Democrat Senate. The House is on January 6th on a phony insurrection.

Ladies and gentlemen, our election system is in fact under attack, and it is under attack by very, very wealthy people in combination with radical left-wing Democratic Party organizations. There is no getting around it. There is no question about it.

Dark money, all this money flowing into the coffers, organizations that don't have to report who is giving what to whom? A combination of the corporatists and the left-wing groups, and it goes on and on and on. And they are there today and they are plotting right now.

And of course, you're not allowed to talk about this because the media has said this is all conspiracy stuff, and the media has said, well, if 66 lawsuits were brought in, and you couldn't win a single one. This has nothing to do with bringing lawsuits. This has everything to do with changing the voting system so we have a corrupt, fraudulent voting system.

And you, RINOs out there and you Bushies out there and you Cheneyites out there and you never Trumpers out there, you've contributed to this. You've contributed to this.

Nobody is trying to reverse anything. We want the light shed on what took place, and we want to make sure it never happens again.

So while you're chasing shiny objects set up by the Democratic Party, while you're chasing issues that are not going to affect the next election, but are attacking Trump even while he is a private citizen, this is going on, ladies and gentlemen under the radar and in the shadows.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEVIN: Welcome back, America. Brent Bozell is the founder, President Media Research Center. And by the way, the author of a brand new book that's coming out in December, "Stops Along the Way." It's a fantastic book. I've read it already, and we'll talk more about that later.

Brent Bozell, the Loudoun County School District is the ground zero for the war against parents and taxpayers, the teachers unions, the educational bureaucracy, school boards, and the Biden administration through the Justice Department, and the American media corrupt as it is, seems to be taking the side of the totalitarians against the people. What do you know about this?

BRENT BOZELL, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER: Well, it's a story of -- to cover-up -- and they are equally horrific. One, a cover up the radical left of their policies and the consequences. And the second one, the media aiding and abetting in this cover-up.

Let me walk you through this, Mark, if I can.

We've seen for the last two to three years this raging debate about transgender bathrooms. The overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to this, but then the radical left said they wanted to insert it in the public school system where boys could go into girls' bathrooms, and just say that they're transgender.

Now, the overwhelming majority of parents against this had three things going for them. One, morality. This is immoral, B, Biology, this is not biological, but C., commonsense, because everyone said on our side that this was going to lead to a rape. And when it did, we were going to be horrified.

Now, the media, in turn attacked the pro-family movement everywhere we went and they just -- they said to America, these are carnival barking troglodytes. They said this has never happened before. Everything they're saying is just carnival barking, you have to ignore them. This is the way of a woke world, of a new world that we're introducing. That's your backdrop.

January 12th, a newly elected Democrat school board in Loudoun County announces that they're going to have a new policy allowing transgender children to go into the public school bathrooms with girls. It is going to happen in the next semester.

Well, it doesn't wait until the next semester, May 28th, a boy puts on a dress, goes into the girls' bathroom, gets a 14-year-old ninth grade, a little child and rapes her. Not only rapes her, Mark. The father doesn't talk about this, but we have to talk about this.

He sodomizes her. In the police report, it is not just sodomy, it is forced fellatio that he makes this girl -- poor girl -- go through.

The parents are contacted. The father is contacted and told that there is some incident that he needs to come into. He isn't told anything about this. Only when he arrives does he learn that his little girl has been raped. He goes ballistic in there, start yelling. He is escorted out of the school by the security guards.

Now what does the school do in talking to the parents about this and letting the parents know about a rape? Nothing. Nothing is told to the parents.

Instead, a notice goes to the parents about the father and what the father had done. It's an unbelievable cover-up of the consequences of what the school board had thrust down the throats of the parents in Loudoun County.

What's the media coverage of the rape? Nothing.

What's the media coverage of the cover-up of the rape to the parents in Loudoun County? Nothing.

Go further. June 22nd. There's a hearing now to expand this policy, not to stop it, but to expand it to allow quote-unquote, "gender expression." This means anybody can go into the girls' room, don't have to even say you're transgender, just want to express yourself, i.e. wear a skirt.

They actually push this new policy knowing that a rape had occurred. The father attends this. The father tries to speak out. He is muzzled by not just the school board that denies this, but also this transgender army that is brought into the school board hearing.

A tussle breaks out with the police. You've seen the footage and he has tackled, he is arrested, and he is sent to jail.

Now, the media know all this stuff is going on. Where are the media asking the question, what happened? Does this man's daughter -- has she been raped in this school? Why isn't anyone talking about this? Why is the school board denying this?

No media coverage.

October 6th. That same boy is arrested again, in another school, this time in a classroom with a sexual charge against another girl. What's the media coverage? Mark, no media coverage of this.

On Tuesday, "The Daily Wire" comes out with an expose. They connect all the dots in a massive story, telling the story the media didn't want you to know. And for God's sakes, the school board didn't want parents to know about the cover-up. What's the media coverage of this explosive story? Nothing on the networks. Not ABC, NBC, CBS -- those 24-hour news network like MSNBC and CNN, only FOX and "The Washington Times" and "The Washington Post."

But wait a minute, it wasn't just "The Washington Post." It was the washingtonpost.com, the paper didn't even report it, the paper that covers this and then when they did the dot-com, they didn't talk about the rape, it was about the father.

On Wednesday, that the school board comes out with its report. It just washes its hand on the thing. It says, we knew about it and the school says, within minutes, we alerted the police.

So we know they alerted the police to a crime. We know they covered it up. We know the parents were never told and we know the media deliberately participated in this cover up.

LEVIN: You know, I'd say that is unbelievable, Brent, but these days, the media are so corrupt, and so in the back pocket with the American Marxists movement, it's unbelievable.

When we come back, I want to pursue with you what the Attorney General of the United States and the Biden administration want to do to our school systems, our school boards, targeting our parents and taxpayers.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JON SCOTT, FOX NEWS CHANNEL ANCHOR: Welcome to "FOX News Live." I'm Jon Scott in New York.

Former President Bill Clinton is back home in suburban New York after spending six days at a Southern California Hospital earlier today. He walked out from the University of California Irvine Medical Center with wife, Hillary, thanking doctors and nurses as he left. He was hospitalized for a non-COVID related infection that spread to his bloodstream. He is expected to finish his course of antibiotics from home.

Haitian Police now blaming a notorious gang for kidnapping a group of 17 missionaries that includes 16 U.S. citizens and one Canadian. Five children also part of that group snatched from a bus. It happened as they were returning from building an orphanage near the country's capital of Port-au- Prince. The group is part of the Ohio based Christian Aid Ministries.

I'm Jon Scott. We take you back now to LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN.

LEVIN: Welcome back, America. Brent Bozell, the Biden administration has done something I've never seen in my life and as a Chief of Staff to an Attorney General, it never would have crossed our minds.

They have decided to criminalize public protest and input at school board meetings, to federalize public input and protest at school board meetings. It violates the First Amendment, and of course, the Federal government has no nexus to this, but we now know, thanks to a letter that was sent to the Inspector General of the D.O.J. that the Biden administration at the White House conspired with the Attorney General's Office to unleash Federal law enforcement against parents and taxpayers who, quote-unquote "threaten or harass" school board members or teachers, and there is going to be a domestic terrorism hotline that people can call, I guess, so the F.B.I. can show up at your doorstep and ask you questions. What do you make of that?

BOZELL: I'm frightened. I'm frightened. Let's look at what should be the consequences of this horrific story. Number one, every person involved who knew about this should either resign or be removed. That means the principal, that means all the administrative staff that knew about this, that means every single teacher who knew about this, that means the school board itself.

Second, I hope that parents sue the crap out of the school board for what happened, and I think they will.

Third, every Democrat who participated in this should be exposed. This is the Democratic Party at work. This was a Democratic school board.

And then finally, the media need to be denounced for the cover up of this horrific story, but what is the actual consequence of this? It is stunning to me, Mark, that the parents are on trial for this, and the fact that the father is on trial, and then our Federal government has sided with those people who are covering up this policy and our Federal government is putting that poor dad on trial, is putting every parent who is horrified by this on trial.

You dare not speak out about this policy that resulted in the rape, the sodomizing, the forced fellatio of this poor darling, 14-year-old girl.

LEVIN: And then we have a Democrat running for Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, who says parents really have no say in what goes on in the classrooms. Can you imagine that? We pay for the classrooms. The teachers, we pay their salaries, we elect the school boards, and we have no say.

So the knuckleheads in charge of the school boards, the teachers unions, all these people are in charge of our children and we have no say. This is -- you're correct. This is the position of the Democratic Party.

Terry McAuliffe is a quintessential Democrat, is he not?

BOZELL: Think about when George Allen ran for Governor with the famous "macaca" moment. There were 56 stories in "The Washington Post" about "macaca," about the mistake that George Allen made. What is more important, saying "macaca" or supporting a school board that has this policy saying that parents have no right to object to that kind of a policy.

What's more important, and yet, where was "The Washington Post" on this. An online local news story that just ignores it and on we go. That's a cover- up.

This should be "The Washington Post," the media, they should be going right to Terry McAuliffe, and say how do you feel now? How do you feel now, Mr. McAuliffe, that you support it, and you continue, and you've doubled down on a policy that says parents have no right to participate in the decisions about their own children in school?

Now, what do you say, Mr. McAuliffe?

LEVIN: I'll tell you what they're going to say, they will endorse him for Governor when the time comes, as they always do, the Democrats, and what do you make of a line of Democrats going to campaign for McAuliffe given these facts? Given this situation, Barack Obama, shouldn't he be asked? Jill Biden, shouldn't she be asked? Joe Biden, shouldn't he be asked? Stacey Abrams, shouldn't she be asked?

Should they all be asked about this policy and what took place in the school district?

BOZELL: America, listen to the silence. That's all I can say. Listen to the silence. Joe Biden will speak out about anything, any conservative did anywhere. Joe Biden, who has also supported these policy, where is the President of the United States on this story? The President should be speaking out.

Where is Kamala Harris? You know, she is putting golf or something. Where is she?

Where is the Attorney General of the United States? Where's the investigation, Mark? Where's the Federal government saying, we're going to investigate this? After all, it is a Federal school system. Where are they on these things?

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'Life, Liberty & Levin' on liberal 'dark money' spending ahead of 2024 election - Fox News

In his much-debated book The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World, the celebrated writer Scott Hartley describes techies as anyone who studies and picks up a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and Fuzzies are those in liberal arts.

Hartley believes the prevailing STEM only concept is a problem of the mindset, quoting examples from the business world to prove his point.

Hartley brings up the likes of Stewart Butterfield of Slack, Jack Ma of Alibaba, Susan Wojcicki of YouTube, Brian Chesky of Airbnb and others as examples of people who studied languages, humanities or fine arts and not STEM.

While defending the need and relevance of technocrats, Harley reiterates the importance of people who understand human behaviour. He convincingly argues for a background both in hard science as well as other softer subjects, as it helps businesses remain open to opportunities and develop products that respond to real human needs.

Across the world, well-known business leaders, economists and authors support this view.

David Deming, a Harvard economist who researched the importance of social skills, says, Success will be determined by ones ability to deal with what cant be turned into an algorithm and how well you deal with unstructured problems and new situations.

The Indian scenario

Career choices in India have been sharply skewed towards STEM subjects like Medicine and Engineering. As a norm, our students prefer taking up specific, predetermined career paths, and in the process are less able to explore their passions.

From my own experience of mentoring students and entrepreneurs, I agree with Hartely that the bigger challenge is of the mindset.

While technology is necessary to build our businesses, including start-ups, it is critical to gain an understanding of human behaviour, needs and wants, communication and collaborative skills.

In his book In defence of a liberal education, journalist Fareed Zakaria highlights creativity, problem-solving, decision-making, persuasive arguing and management as some of the skills developed by the graduates of literature, philosophy and social sciences.

As Hartley and others argue, the future business world will be a collaboration between technocrats and those from a liberal arts background.

Anand Mahindra, Chairman, Mahindra Group says, Hartley makes a timely and compelling case for the humanities and humaneness in an era of the coder and the engineer.

Other Indian business leaders like S D Shibulal, Co-Founder and former CEO, Infosys, concur. The main aim of technology should be to address critical human concerns. Liberal arts education can help people apply their insights into human desires, to create path-breaking innovations, he says.

And a STEM education is finding real-world applications too.

In the automobile industry, companies are discovering the use of anthropology to understand human behaviour patterns and build a safer, self-driving car.

There are also other examples, like businesses using sociologists, historians and linguists to better understand consumer behaviour.

Way forward

Consider this: most of the jobs in demand today didnt exist a few years back, and some jobs of today will not exist tomorrow.

According to a survey by Aspiring Minds, a job skills credentialing company, approximately 80% of engineering graduates are not employable in the current knowledge-driven economy.

Further, future jobs will need radically changed skill sets.

Moving away from skewed STEM careers to broad-based STEAM careers is, therefore, a future necessity.

Career aspirants would be securing their future by considering either liberal arts career if thats their passion or by even adding a similar subject to the chosen stream, which is now a possibility with National Education Policy.

Entry barriers of technology in businesses have vastly reduced, enabling even those with no technical expertise to easily collaborate with technocrats. As future businesses will be driven by collaboration, there will be great career opportunities for both Techies and Fuzzies to build the world of the future.

(The author is a management and career consultant)

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Will the liberal arts have a place in the digital world? - Deccan Herald

To understand 21st century America, Kelly Kennington would argue you must also understand 18th and 19th century America. Kennington is the Draughon Endowed Associate Professor in Southern History at Auburn University.

Her research on the antebellum period and slavery in America help provide an understanding of events and stories that sometimes go undiscussed in American classrooms.

Over the last few years, discussions about history curriculum have become increasingly common. Comments like I never learned that in history class, are not unusual when discussing details of the history of slavery, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement.

Kenningtons research can help us better understand the antebellum south, slavery in Alabama, the Domestic Slave Trade and how it all relates to our experiences in 21st century America. Her discussion on this episode of the Things You Didnt Know You Didnt Know podcast uncovers how our past shapes the present and how we can all get a better understanding of the history of America and the South.

To read the full story, click here.

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Kennington featured on latest College of Liberal Arts podcast - Office of Communications and Marketing