Tag Archives: society

Editorial, Elite Media, Gangsta Govt, Lies

Evidence: Trayvon Martin was at 7-11 buying chems for home made drug cocktail

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It is amazing how the elite media hid this for so long, but as Winston Churchill said, “A lie gets half way around the world before the truth can get its pants on”.

Lean – it is a street drug popular with the “gangsta rap” scene and one of the more popular recipe’s is Robitussin DM, Watermelon flavored Arizona Tea and Skittles. Guess what kind of tea Trayvon Martin bought at 7-11 along with his Skittles.

ABC News:

It’s more than a drug; it’s a culture. It’s what’s known on the street as “Lean,” a highly addictive cocktail of cough syrup, cold medicine, alcohol and candy — so potent it makes you “lean” over when high. The drug first began to get attention a few years ago, when a popular Houston DJ overdosed on it. At that time, it was easy to make and easy to get, says Ron Peters, a professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health. “As far as across Texas, across also the southern part of the United States, estimates have shown that it to be at one time a pretty common drug of choice amongst kids…anywhere from ninth grade all the way up to young adults,” says Peters.

We also know from Trayvon Martin’s toxicology report (2):

Martin had 1.5 nanograms of THC – the active ingredient in marijuana – and 7.3 nanograms of another THC substance found in his blood. Traces of cannabis – marijuana – were also found in his urine.

The liver damage from Martin’s drug abuse was also apparent in Martin’s autopsy report:

trayvon martin liver autopsyWhat causes patchy yellow discoloration due to fatty metamorphosis of the liver? Well, morbid obesity, Reye’s Syndrome, alcohol addiction, and drug abuse.

Trayvon Martin’s social networking showed that he was actively involved in “Lean” production:

trayvon martin drug use facebook
George Zimmerman said in his call to police that Martin was behaving strangely like he was on drugs. This is the kind of trouble our inner city youth are in today and the elite media, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and President Obama could not seem to care less.

Communications Theory, Culture War, Dirty Tricks, Lies, True Talking Points

LGBT Conference: The gay equality argument is a lie. The institution of marriage should not exist…

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A pro Gay marriage protester called ‘Queen’ dances in front of the US Supreme Court on March 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
A pro Gay marriage protester called ‘Queen’ dances in front of the US Supreme Court on March 26, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Via The Blaze:

A 2012 speech by Masha Gessen, an author and outspoken activist for the LGBT community, is just now going viral and it includes a theory that many supporters of traditional marriage have speculated about for years: The push for gay marriage has less to do with the right to marry – it is about diminishing and eventually destroying the institution of marriage and redefining the “traditional family.”

The subject of gay marriage stirs powerful reactions on both sides of the argument. There are those who argue that legalizing it would diminish traditional marriage. And those advocating for gay marriage have long stated that the issue will not harm traditional marriage. Ms. Gessen’s comments on the subject seem to contradict the pro-gay-marriage party lines.

Gessen shared her views on the subject and very specifically stated;

  • “Gay marriage is a lie.”
  • “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there.”
  • “It’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.” (This statement is met with very loud applause.)

As mentioned above, Gessen also talked about redefining the traditional family. This may have something to do with the fact that she has “three children with five parents”:

“I don’t see why they (her children) shouldn’t have five parents legally. I don’t see why we should choose two of those parents and make them a sanctioned couple.”

Academic Misconduct, Culture War, School Indoctrination

New York middle school forced girls to ask for lesbian kisses

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It gets better, the boys had a class on how to spot “sluts”.

Ironically, this kind of forced behavior is exactly what every homosexual person I know opposes. The school’s excuse ‘state law made us do it so we are going to do more’ and no, parents will not be notified.

Keep in mind that all of the teachers and administrators went along with this. ALL of them. It was students and parents who had to blow the whistle. We report “school administrators gone wild” stories every week and most of the stories we ignore or it is all we would have time to do, and in almost every case, not a single school administrator or teacher stood up to even question.

Parents often say that “when I went to school it was fine” as if somehow that means that things have not changed a great deal. Other parents will say “oh it is the other school district that is the problem not mine”. In the same manner Congress has an 11% approval rating and yet 83% of members of Congress get get re-elected. Odds are, the problem is in your district too.

WND (video at the link):

Outraged parents say a New York middle school instructed young female students to ask one another for a lesbian kiss – and boys learned how to spot young sluts – in an anti-bullying presentation on gender identity and sexual orientation, according to Fox News’ Todd Starnes.

According to Starnes’ Report, the children attended a special April 11 health class taught by college students at Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, N.Y. Parents say they were not notified of the presentation.

The students were introduced to terms such as “pansexual” and “genderqueer.”

Some of the young female students said they were told it was common for 14-year-old girls to have sex and their parents couldn’t stop them.

Mandy Coon, a mother of an eighth-grade student said, “I am furious. I am her parent. Where does anyone get the right to tell her that it’s OK for her to have sex?”

According to Fox News, Coon said her daughter was distressed by the presentation and wondered why she’d been required to ask another girl to kiss her.

“She told me, ‘Mom, we all get teased and picked on enough – now I’m going to be called a lesbian because I had to ask another girl if I could kiss her,’” Coon said.

According to the mother, the school said the lesson was meant to “teach girls boundaries and how to say no.”

“They also picked two girls to stand in front of the class and pretend they were lesbians on a date,” Coons said.

The Poughkeepsie Journal reported that Red Hook Central School District Superintendent Paul Finch said the class focused on “improving culture, relationships, communication and self-perceptions.”

Finch said it is mandatory that the middle school teach those issues in accordance with the state’s Dignity for All Students Act.

Parent Tara Burns told Fox News, “The school is overstepping its bounds in not notifying parents first and giving us the choice. I thought it was very inappropriate. That kind of instruction is best left up to the parents.”

Parents of middle-school boys were outraged by the school’s lessons on condom usage and determining whether a girl is a slut.

“I was absolutely furious – really furious,” said one parent of a 13-year-old boy. “They were teaching the boys how to decipher if a girl is a slut.”

According to the parent, who wished to remain anonymous, boys were told to determine whether girls are promiscuous by the way they dress or the number of boys they date.

“We don’t judge people like that in our family,” she said. “We don’t call women names because of what they wear or who they date.”

Culture War, Editorial, Taxes, True Talking Points

The tax code is a poor argument for gay marriage

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I ask you, why are two sisters who group up and decide to live together not entitled to inheritance rights and such the same as married people? So married couples and perhaps lesbians should get this but not sisters? This is not an argument for gay marriage, it is an argument for fixing the tax law, abolishing estate taxes altogether because they are so unfair, and a simple tax code that works for people no matter if they are married, straight, gay, or even just sisters.

The tax code argument for gay marriage is an argument about a crappy tax code, not for gay marriage. I say keep our eye on the ball, the tax code is a behemoth disaster and a tool for the corrupt. Toss it out and replace it.

Editor

Academic Misconduct, Culture War, Education, Obama, Thomas Sowell, Treason, True Talking Points

Sowell: Public Education Creating a Mindset that Undermines American Society

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Dr. Sowell is our greatest living philosopher and he is black, which means of course, that if you disagree with him it automatically makes you a racist.

UPDATE – And here is a small example of what Dr. Sowell is talking about: Fort Collins students read Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic

Dr. Thomas Sowell:

Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened.

Among the factors he cited were the country’s educators. That struck me as odd, and not very plausible, at the time. But the passing years have made that seem less and less odd, and more and more plausible. Today, I see our own educators playing a similar role in creating a mindset that undermines American society.

Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell

Schools were once thought of as places where a society’s knowledge and experience were passed on to the younger generation. But, about a hundred years ago, Professor John Dewey of Columbia University came up with a very different conception of education — one that has spread through American schools of education, and even influenced education in countries overseas.

John Dewey saw the role of the teacher, not as a transmitter of a society’s culture to the young, but as an agent of change — someone strategically placed, with an opportunity to condition students to want a different kind of society.

A century later, we are seeing schools across America indoctrinating students to believe in all sorts of politically correct notions. The history that is taught in too many of our schools is a history that emphasizes everything that has gone bad, or can be made to look bad, in America — and that gives little, if any, attention to the great achievements of this country.

If you think that is an exaggeration, get a copy of “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn and read it. As someone who used to read translations of official Communist newspapers in the days of the Soviet Union, I know that those papers’ attempts to degrade the United States did not sink quite as low as Howard Zinn’s book.

That book has sold millions of copies, poisoning the minds of millions of students in schools and colleges against their own country. But this book is one of many things that enable teachers to think of themselves as “agents of change,” without having the slightest accountability for whether that change turns out to be for the better or for the worse — or, indeed, utterly catastrophic.

This misuse of schools to undermine one’s own society is not something confined to the United States or even to our own time. It is common in Western countries for educators, the media and the intelligentsia in general, to single out Western civilization for special condemnation for sins that have been common to the human race, in all parts of the world, for thousands of years.

Meanwhile, all sorts of fictitious virtues are attributed to non-Western societies, and their worst crimes are often passed over in silence, or at least shrugged off by saying some such thing as “Who are we to judge?”

Budget, Econ, Obama, Stuck on Stupid, True Talking Points

Government spends $100,000 studying to see if Jesus died for Klingons (not kidding)

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And remember – YOU don’t pay enough in taxes according to Democrats…

Worf is not pleased
Worf is not pleased…

Jaci Greggs:

Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) latest report on spending by the Department of Defense shows, among other things, defense spending used for a lecture series involving fictional alien species.

“Did Jesus Die for Klingons too?” was just one session at a recent workshop funded by the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency:

Further, DARPA paid nearly $100,000 for a strategy planning workshop on the 100 Year Starship project last year included an interesting discussion involving the Klingons, a fictional alien species who were villains and then later allies of humanity in the Star Trek series. The session entitled “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” featured philosophy professor Christian Weidemann of Germany’s Ruhr-University Bochum who pondered the theological conflict to Christianity if intelligent life was found on other planets. (page 17)

At another DoD-funded gathering, the brainstorming sessions covered topics such as how to make deep space travel most efficient, how scientists would go about creating a “warp bubble,” and whether or not humans would need to wear clothing during space travel.

2012 Primary, Budget, Health Law, Obama, Stuck on Stupid, Taxes, Treason, True Talking Points

Government spends $100,000 to teach young girls “condom negotiation”

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We are printing up money and borrowing it from China for this? Can anyone say that Obama and the Democrat leadership is at all serious about getting the spending under control? There is no attempt at fiscal discipline. They literally say one thing and do another.

All of the talk about deficit control is just that, the tax they want to raise targets small domestic businesses to make it hard to compete against the mega-corps that fund the Democratic Party and assuming such a tax increase passes it will only raise enough money to run the government for a few days. Yet Democrats have the audacity to call their tax hike proposals “Deficit Reduction”.

The Democrat Leadership knows the spending and printing and borrowing will blow up the currency and make it collapse, and yet they are doing everything that can to bring it about.  The only question left to ask is why.

Washington Examiner:

The [Obama] administration is funding a $100,000 study of pregnant and “at-risk” 14-17-year-old girls on probation in Houston, Texas, to determine ways to help them choose safer lifestyles and avoid pregnancy, including better “condom negotiation” tactics.

The National Institutes of Health, part of the Health and Human Services Department, is providing a University of Houston researcher the money because of the lack of study of female teen juveniles in trouble with the law.

The school said the study, “Choices – Teen: A Bundled Risk Reduction Intervention for Juvenile Justice Females,” will include 30 at-risk girls, ages 14-17, on intensive probation with the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.

The goal, said the school, is to determine if intervention programs will help the kids make better life decisions.

According to Danielle Parish, the assistant professor at the school’s Graduate College of Social Work who is conducting the NIH-funded effort, one of the big problems young girls need to learn is how to talk their boyfriends into using condoms.

According to the school’s release, “Parrish notes one of the big issues for this population of adolescent girls is condom negotiation. They may have a boyfriend who says it isn’t ‘cool’ to use a condom. To prepare the girls for these types of situations, the counselors and pediatricians will teach them how to negotiate condom use with their partner. The intervention also helps empower and motivate girls to make healthier choices regarding their alcohol use, smoking and prevention of unplanned pregnancy.”

2012 Primary, Culture War, True Talking Points

Lewis: The Death of Ordinary Decency

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James Lewis:

This has been a mean-spirited campaign, and the meanest, most destructive people won.

So be it.

In the last two Democratic administrations we have seen a sleazier, angrier and more selfish part of America rising up more and more in our political class. The Founders told us that ultimately our elected politicians are a mirror of ourselves. Just like you, before November 7, 2012, I lived in the fervent hope that the degradation of the Clinton and Obama years might be an exception to the long trend of American history. But two times eight years of radical leftists in high office can’t be an accident. We can’t just blame our sleazy media, or just the leftist political class, as corrupt and malevolent as they truly are.

No — the balance of decency in America has changed. Every society has normal, decent people and the other kind. The America we grew up in was fundamentally decent. Decency was the expected standard.

Now the balance has changed.

The evidence for our sleazified culture can be seen all around. It is in our pop music, which has lost melody and now just has rhythm. We have a President who won on revenge against middle class values. That’s what he meant by telling his people to vote for revenge. And they did — showing us exactly who they are.

We are now a society divided between the makers and the takers, and the takers are on a campaign of theft and revenge.

We have a President who takes dangerous pride in his hatred for “middleclassness” as Jeremiah Wright taught him to believe. We have a President who culminated his campaign with a ghetto singer rapping about hoes and bitches, about drug-ridden and broken families, as if all those cruelties were good.

This is not normal, decent America.

It is not.

We need to face that.

Morality and values are not small things. The new tide in the affairs of America also means that we can no longer be trusted to defend civilized values around the world, as we have done for the last hundred years.

It’s a sea change. Fools around the world will applaud Obama as a savior, but wise people will see us crumbling. They know they will be the worse for it.

Today the world is far more dangerous place than four years ago.   If you doubt that, keep an eye on the rise of barbarisms around the world. Obama constantly facilitates barbarism, and the barbarians understand that much better than decent people do.

History buffs will remember that we’ve had decades of sleaze before. The Founders were followed by Jacksonian corruption. Abraham Lincoln was followed by Reconstruction. Yet we somehow found our way back. Come-backs can happen, but probably not soon.

So this is an elegiac moment, a moment of mourning for what has passed. From Truman and Eisenhower to Bush 43 we have had leaders of character.

No longer.

Republicans by and large still look, act, and speak like normal, decent people. But they have a hard time even understanding a thoroughly sleazified America. Normal, decent people do not know how to live in this new, barbaric society. We live in protected communities, we drive around in SUVs, like armored cars.

The left knows exactly how to act in this Brave New World. They’ve made it. We are now ruled by sleazy demagogues who take bribes from foreign nations that do not wish us well. Obama is the worst example so far. Even the Clintons, both selfish narcissists, were somewhat better.

With the decline of American decency, the civilized world has lost its foremost defender. America wasn’t a world power in earlier times of corruption. We could afford to make mistakes. Today, our national decay endangers the world. The left has purposely attacked our self-respect, our pride in our morality and decency, and our crucial role in the defense of civilized values. We are no longer the Leader of the Free World, because we have lost — for now — the values that guided us.  America can no longer be trusted, as we saw so clearly in Benghazi and the fraudulent Arab Spring. Any nation that places any trust in our promises today is run by fools. Our allies must arm up to protect themselves, or they must find new, trustworthy allies.

For sixty years Europe has lived off our willingness to come to its defense.  The southern rim of Europe is now going bankrupt, and even France looks ready to crumble. Without our leadership Europe has to rely on itself, or on Russia, or on the spreading Muslim empires. But Europe has shown no capacity to defend itself. Maybe they will learn. Or maybe they will be swamped.  We can no longer be trusted.

Read more HERE.
Civility, Elite Media, Stuck on Stupid, True Talking Points, Unhinged

Atlantic Magazine Editor: Kill Boy Scouts Like Rabid Dogs….

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Here is yet another example of civility form the left wing media elite…

Breitbart News:

Remember how the far left in America has said since the rise of the Tea Party that the right is awash in “violent rhetoric”? What about the proposition to kill the Boy Scouts like one would kill a rabid dog? That is what a columnist for The Atlantic has implied.

James Hamblin, the magazine’s health editor, proclaimed his desire to kill Boy Scouts based on his distaste for their recently re-affirmed policy of refusing to admit openly gay members. Hamblin feels justified in using violent, even hateful rhetoric to attack the Boy Scouts merely because he disagrees with them.

Boy Scouts is an organization that was and is so close to being great. Remember when they had to put Old Yeller down because he got rabies? It’s not like he was a bad dog, but he got a brain infection and he tried to eat Travis

Apparently the First Amendment only applies if you agree with gays?

It should be noted that Hamblin posted his desire to kill Boy Scouts the day after another gay activist tried to do just that, kill people with whom he disagrees. Hamblin posted his hate-mongering screed the day after a gay activist entered the Washington DC headquarters of the Family Research Council intent on mass murder.

Hamblin next went on a hyperbolic trip of accusations that the Scout’s policy will “cause.”

Perpetuating a culture where gay teenagers — who are already commonly battling notions of inferiority and self-hatred — can be openly and decidedly told they aren’t welcome among a preeminent organization that purports to represent and define a standard of behavioral ideals, is dangerous. It’s a decided step back in rejecting the culture of gay bullying. We will see more depression, and more suicide. We’ll see more discrimination of every sort, and more hatred.

But notice the absurdity in Hamblin’s statement. He says that the Scouts “define a standard of behavioral ideals.” But how can one have standards and ideals if one simply pushes them aside for every disgruntled group that comes knocking at your door claiming discrimination? The Boy Scouts aren’t breaking any laws and aren’t illegally discriminating and since the Scouts base their ideals on Christian principles, they have steadfast principles quite regardless of whether Hamblin likes them or not.

Read more HERE.

2012 Primary, Elite Media, Lies, Obama, True Talking Points

Former NBC Producer: Liberal Bias is Real

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No kidding.

Greg Kandra, who last worked at NBC for Katie Couric, says it is true and he is done defending the network:

Seriously.

First, there was the Trayvon Martin boondoggle a few months ago.

Then yesterday, evidence of some creative editing regarding Mitt Romney’s visit to a Wawa in Pennsylvania.

Today, we have Andrea Mitchell’s spectacularly lame followup to “criticism of the Romney clip edit” — which amounted to Ms. Mitchell saying, with a sigh and a frown, “Oh, bother.  Fine.  Here’s what we left out.”   She failed to acknowledge what the “criticism” entailed; she neglected to point out how the editing misrepresented the event being covered; and she offered nothing resembling an apology or an admission of responsibility for something that was, as a matter of fact, irresponsible.

I’m tired.  Truly.  I’ve grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible and explain the inexplicable.  For years, people have stomped their feet and pounded their fists and snorted “Liberal media bias!” and I’ve always tut-tutted and shooshed them and said, “No, no.  Calm down.  They meant well.  It was just a misunderstanding.  A mistake.  These things happen.”  I spent over 25 years working in the oft-reviled Mainstream Media and I saw up close and personal how the sausage was made.   I knew the people who wielded the knives and wore the aprons, and could vouch (most of the time, anyway) for their good intentions.

But now?

Forget it. I’m done.  You deserve what they’re saying about you.  It’s earned.  You have worked long and hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you.   You have successfully eroded any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in objective reality any more.  You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of democracy, a free press.

Good job.

I just have one question:

What the hell is wrong with you guys?

Academic Misconduct, Education, Unions

Caught on film: School officials abusing special needs student

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This will turn your stomach:

Via The Blaze:

Not long after a New Jersey father filmed a number of teachers brutally mocking his autistic son, footage from South Carolina’s St. John’s Elementary is showing the school‘s behavioral manager and a teacher’s aide slapping, shoving, and demeaning a 10-year old special needs student on a school bus.

Seemingly trying to put on his safety harness, the first woman literally throws the device on top of the child’s face.  Unable to speak, according to reports, he sits there calmly.

Next, the boy holds his arms out so the woman can put on the device properly, and she shoves his head forward so that his whole upper-body bends.

As her rough-handling continues, the child starts whimpering and crying.

“Hush! Hush!” the other woman can be heard saying, as she slaps him across the face.

Then the women, identified as Tomeka Self and Rosanna Dudley, both start shoving and rough-handling the student to get the harness, shoving him forward and to the side with excessive force as he cries.

Here is the clip:

According to reports, the bus driver found the incident so appalling that he turned the bus’s footage over to school authorities, who put the women on administrative leave without pay before notifying the police.

After the cops began investigating the matter, the women were arrested and charged with simple assault and battery.  They are due to appear in court on May 9th.

“This behavior is unacceptable, especially coming from adults who have been entrusted with the care of our children,” Dr. Rainey Knight, superintendent of the district, said in a release. “We do not condone this behavior anywhere in our district for any child.” [After they got caught… – Editor]

Academic Misconduct, Culture War, Education, Gangsta Govt

Girl Defends Disabled Students From Bullying, School Labels Girl as Bully…

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So typical. It is a story we have heard time and time again. The bullying is reported over and over and the school refuses to lift a finger to stop it. Finally either a hero or the victim raises a big enough stink about it,  so the school bureaucrats rush in to punish and silence the victim or the one reporting it. After all if no one reports it than technically they have a bully free school!

This is why school administrators have protected bullies for years and continue to do so. Occasionally a victim snaps and kills the bully or kills themselves, and that is when the school starts scrubbing records and labels everyone who new the bullying was happening a liar.

Stormy Rich
Stormy Rich, hero who stood up to bullies.

We have said it many, many times, by and large it seems that only the most incompetent people manage to get jobs as school administrators.  This story is example 2, 348, 812 of why this is true.

The Daily Commercial (Umatilla, Florida) :

THERESA CAMPBELL | Staff Writer

theresacampbell@dailycommercial.com

“Caution: This campus is 100 percent against bullying. Speak out,” reads a sign outside Umatilla High School, and one senior said she did speak out and has been punished for doing so.

Stormy Rich, 18, thought she was doing the right thing in reporting bullying incidents she witnessed against a mentally-challenged middle school girl by a group of girls on morning bus rides to school.

“I’m a very outspoken person,” Rich said. “I stick up for what I feel is right. In the school code of conduct handbook, it is clearly stated that bullying is a non-tolerable offense.”

Rich was riding that middle school bus because she earned enough credits to avoid having to take a first-period high school class and an earlier high school bus. The two schools are only a few blocks away.

Rich — who said she felt compelled to speak out because the girl couldn’t even comprehend she was being pick on — first complained to the bus driver but the bullying continued. She then complained to a high school official, who said he would contact the middle school, but nothing changed.

“I would sit on the bus every single day and see the bullying was still going on and nothing was being done,” Rich said. “It was aggravating.”

The senior demanded the bullies stop, which worked for a while. She said they then began threatening her, even though she complained about this to school personnel on almost a daily basis for about two weeks. The mother and daughter even contacted police.

“Enough is enough,” Rich said in her written complaint. “Something should be done.”

That something was a letter sent to Rich’s mother, Brenda, on May 4, saying her daughter was kicked off the middle school bus. A district school official said Rich displayed bullying behavior in her comments.

“She said what I did made me the bully, with me telling the kids that if they didn’t stop, and if the school didn’t do anything, that I would have to handle it,” Rich said. “To me, it was just going too far.”

According to Christopher Patton, communications officer for Lake County Schools, a courtesy had been extended to Rich to ride the middle school bus.

“Due to circumstances on the bus, the privileges were revoked,” he said.

Patton said he could not discuss the bullying complaints filed by Rich or her mother. He also could not say if any action was taken about those complaints.

“I can’t comment about student discipline, unfortunately,” Patton said. “I think you’re heading down a dangerous path because you’ve got one side of the story. … There are other parents that are involved in this.”

Asked if the district had additional complaints on the issue, Patton replied: “Just this one parent.”

“My daughter was punished incorrectly,” said Brenda Rich. “Stormy was standing up for a child with emotionally challenged disabilities that should not have been bullied. The district’s policy clearly states that anybody in good faith files a report on bullying will not face any repercussions and she is.”

Brenda Rich said she has met the bullied student and the young girl does not comprehend sarcasm or even understand what “hate” means. She views everybody as her “friend.”

“Just because she doesn’t understand what people are doing to her is wrong, it doesn’t mean its OK,” said Brenda Rich, who questions if the schools’ anti-bullying policies are really working.

“…This child doesn’t have the ability to stand up for herself, she has no voice. Stormy was her voice, even more so than the girl herself.”

Her daughter won’t have school transportation issues much longer.

Stormy Rich will graduate next week with a 3.67 GPA and has been awarded scholarships. She strives to continue to help others and plans to start nursing studies at Daytona State College.

Communications Theory

A Definitive Guide: When to Block Someone & How to Handle a Social Media Crisis

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by Chuck Norton

A social media crisis can happen to just about anyone or any organization. Sometimes they can be a result of a mistake you or your organization has made, or it can come from a mistake made by a media organization, or it can be a deliberate and planned attack.

1. In most cases do not delete the negative comments

While The first instinct is to just delete the offending comments, actually in most cases this is exactly the wrong thing to do. Your good customers and close friends are probably not stupid so an unfair attack will appear just as such to most people who matter to you.

There is ALWAYS a reason why attacks and negative critiques happen. It is NEVER for nothing so getting defensive and reacting in a knee jerk fashion is exactly the wrong thing to do. Blocking and deleting may make you feel better for a few minutes, but such actions can really hurt you in the eyes of others. Why are you facing negative comments and criticism? Find out why as fast as you can, and do so objectively with a willingness to accept fault. It is in your best interest to take critique seriously.

In the case of a real mistake made by you or someone else, something has happened to upset your customers and they are simply expressing themselves to you. Let them vent, really it is therapeutic. The more they vent the more you will learn. This reality is difficult for some to come to terms with. So before you hit DELETE, keep the following in mind:

  • It is in your best interests to have your customers or voters voice their concerns, anger, etc on your web site, Facebook page or other platform that you control.You can monitor it and keep tabs on it.  If you just delete it they will become more angry and post in places that you do not have control. I promise you this is exactly what will happen. It will happen because by blocking you are telling them that you do not care what they have to say or what their feelings are.

Posting my complaint on other blogs and publications when an injustice was done to me is how I dealt with hostile and unfair professors and administrators when I came under unfair attack at Indiana University after “in house” communications proved fruitless. Do not be so foolish as to let a situation come to that as IU did.

2. Respond the RIGHT way. 

People like to have an honest dialogue because it is a sign of respect. They recognize and appreciate the effort of being heard and understood. Show how much you care about them by taking the time to respond to each and every negative comment, concern and question (with exceptions noted in number 5 below). Someone has just vented on you and/or your company/product that you worked hard to produce. Your feelings are hurt and you are not thrilled to respond to them with a positive, understanding, human tone. GET OVER IT. This is not about your feelings rather it is about the best interests of your brand, your company, your product, your profits and about your customers. Take a deep breath and go into with the right attitude or hire someone who can speak for you.

There are seven rules to follow when giving your response:

  • Write a unique and custom response to each comment, complaint, and question. The value of a unique response cannot be stressed enough. A canned response such as “Please address your concern to me at BLAHBLAH@email.com” will be perceived as a complete fail and willmake things worse. Be smart and offer them the option of discussing the issue privately or openly however they wish. It is important to not give the impression that you have something you want to hide.

Politicians often use canned responses that do not really address the concern or genuinely answer the question. Such responses usually make things worse, not better. I have been known to make political contributions and ONE canned letter that does not seriously address my specific question means no donation from me, ever.

  • Make the response sound human, real, sympathetic and not corporate.
  • Does your response actually address the specific concern or question with a real answer? A good way to show that it does is to state the customers specific question in the letter.
  • Avoid “Escape Hatch Language“. Make certain that your answer is not so ambiguous that it can mean most anything (depending clarify your statements later), this means avoiding “escape hatch language” as it is insincere, insulting, and most people will spot it in an instant. Politicians think they are masters of this and I give examples of escape hatch language in a post on my old college blog where use of escape hatch language resulted in a huge PR disaster for President Obama  – LINK.
  • Don’t apologize before having all of the facts. You may make things worse. People will likely catch onto it and your apology will come across as rushed to shut everyone up. You may come across as incompetent because you missed a key fact or fundamental truth.
  • Do not try to hide certain facts or be less than truthful. This also means telling your PR people everything they need to know, not just selected tidbits. If you are caught doing this, in the eyes of the public you are a liar who deserves the label. Indiana University at Indianapolis made a combination of this mistake along with some of the others on this list and ended up with a nationwide PR disaster that they well deserved – LINK  – LINK.
  • When you say you’re sorry, mean it! Show a little humility and make a real apology. Reasonable people know that you are human and stuff happens. If necessary, ask for a way to get in contact with them directly so that you may continue to resolve the problem.

3. React in real-time

See what is happening on your blog or social media page? Well that is how fast you should be responding. It happens in real-time so that is when you need to respond. There’s no time to go through the layers of management and attorneys to “craft” the perfect response to be posted in a day or two because by that time the problem will have snowballed and can be a disaster. It will be too late and too much avoidable damage has already been done (besides that group of people are all too often the last ones you want writing your apology anyway). Show your customers that you care by demonstrating that you understand “the fierce urgency of now”.  You are on top of the situation. Respond to attacks, complaints and questions in real-time.

4. Let your social networking community and satisfied customers stand up for you

You have worked hard at building a relationship with your customers. They can be your best ally. Remember that your competition can likely provide your product or services at a similar price point to you, but since you have worked to have a superior relationship with the customer, client, or voter, some of them will come to your defense. Let them! You have worked hard at building those customer relationships, allow them to come to your defense and help you resolve the situation.

Although negative criticism can be hard to accept, it’s in your best interest to take it seriously, and see it as an opportunity to reconnect with your audience. By taking the time to respond and apologize, you’re showing your customers just how much you value them, and that can go an extremely long way for your brand.

5. When is it OK to delete a comment or start blocking?

There are three circumstances where deletion/blocking is the correct action to take.

  • If and when the comment is so profane and offensive that it violates social and ethical norms. Verbal abuse and threats etc go against social media policies so remove such offending remarks after you screenshot or otherwise archive them. Depending on the circumstances a good practice may be to send the offending individual a private message telling them that their comment has been deleted and why, and that you encourage them to express their point of view in a way that is sociably acceptable.
  • When the complainant is not interested in solving their problem and only wants to complain. We all have dealt with people like this. You have gone as far as reasonability will take you. It is time to move on.
  • When you are under a coordinated attack by a group of people. This happens more often than one might expect. Radical extremists use this tactic a great deal and with some effectiveness. Far left “occupiers”, anarchists, eco-extremists, and some overzealous ideologues use these tactics as a matter of course. At times other companies or even other political campaigns engage in such coordinated attacks simply because you may be a competitor.

When under such attack explain to your community why you are deleting such posts, although at times leaving a few up as an example may actually be helpful. Often times fake Facebook accounts and fake Twitter accounts will be used to make such attacks. Not only should you delete and report them, but such accounts will usually have 15 friends or less; block every one of those friends as the fake account they are posting from may be the very account used to coordinate the attack. They may make new accounts, you just keep blocking. Also, some blogs allow you to track the IP address of every comment. Check and see if the attacks are coming from the same IP address or a specific IP range, if so there are ways your IT pro or web site settings can ban any traffic coming from the offending IP addresses.