University of South Florida men’s basketball coach Amir Abdur-Rahim died on Thursday at 43-years-old, due to an "undisclosed illness."

On calling Donald Trump ‘Hitler’ in the words of a victim of the Holocaust, there are no words Sentinel can add to this. “Jerry Wartski, I’m 94 years old and a survivor of Auschwitz in the dead marches. Adolf Hitler invaded Poland when I was nine years old. He murdered my parents and most of […] The post A Holocaust Victim Talks About Kamala Calling Trump Hitler appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

The political Left fumed online Friday afternoon after The Washington Post announced that it was not going to be making any presidential endorsements this year. “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election,” the Editorial Board said in a statement. “Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” The paper cited its past position from more than five decades ago of not endorsing presidential nominees. “We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility,” the paper said. “That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way.” The announcement came after The Los Angeles Times announced this week that it was also not making an endorsement. The head of the LA Times Editorial Board resigned over the decision. A likely contributing factor in the newspaper’s decision is that its owner Jeff Bezos does not want to risk angering former President Donald Trump should Trump beat Harris. A draft of the paper’s endorsement of Harris had already been written, but it was reportedly killed by Bezos. Bezos is trying to catch up and compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX with his own rocket company that hopes to win lucrative government contracts. MATT WALSH’S ‘AM I RACIST?’ COMING TO DAILYWIRE+ OCT. 28 Numerous Washington Post employees and other Democrats fumed online over the lack of an endorsement. Far-left Washington Post editor Karen Attiah posted on X following the announcement: “Jesus christ.” The Post’s climate change alarmist reporter, Brianna Sacks, responded to the news by writing: “We won a Pulitzer for public service for our coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection.” Marty Baron, the paper’s former executive editor, said that the decision to not endorse Harris was “cowardice” with “democracy as its casualty.” “@realdonaldtrump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner @jeffbezos (and others),” he claimed. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.” “The first step towards fascism is when the free press cowers in fear,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA). Former Obama official Ben Rhodes posted: “There is no logic that isn’t damning as to why the Washington Post and LA Times feel they can endorse in every local, state and federal election other than a presidential race.” “It’s not that these endorsements tip the balance in an election; it’s that self-censoring because you are afraid of retribution from an authoritarian tells you everything you need to know about the priorities of management,” he wrote. He continued, “What’s truly depressing is how much this is a mirror to the rot in the American economy and society today: you end up governed by self-interested autocrats when there is no value higher than personal profit.” “A lot of the Russian oligarchs who owned media properties in the late 90s helped or enabled Putin’s rise to power thinking it would help them,” he concluded. “Today, Putin controls every major outlet in Russia.”

'Look, this is a profile in non-courage'

'More possible than people are giving credit for'

Rest in peace to a legend

WaPo staff are 'uniformly outraged'

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is likening former President Donald Trump’s upcoming weekend campaign rally at Madison Square Garden in New York to an infamous February 1939 Nazi rally held in a previous arena bearing the same name, but Republican leaders are firing back, calling the comparison “disrespectful” and “insulting.”  Trump is set to hold his rally on Sunday in the home of the NBA’s New York Knicks and NHL’s New York Rangers with a seating capacity of about 18,500 people.  On Thursday, Clinton told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Vice President Kamala Harris’ and former Trump Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly’s comments calling Trump a “fascist” were necessary to sound the alarm regarding a potential second Trump presidency.  “But please open your eyes to the danger that this man poses to our country, because I think it is clear and present for anybody paying attention,” said Clinton, who lost the 2016 presidential election to Trump. Clinton did not mention that the 1992 Democratic National Convention, at which her husband, Bill Clinton, won the party’s nomination for president, was held at the current Madison Square Garden, which opened in 1968.   On Fox Business on Friday morning, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko said she “knows fascism all too well.” Pipko, 29, is Jewish and a first-generation American whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from the former Soviet Union.   “I think it’s an embarrassing attempt to try to sway the momentum to her [Harris] when we know the American people know better, and she knows better,” Pipko said. “But it’s also so disrespectful, so insulting to so many of us. We know what happened on July 13. We know that this rhetoric can be so dangerous.” Trump was shot and nearly killed by a would-be assassin that day in Butler, Pennsylvania.  Pipko said that antisemitism is rising in the U.S. and around the world, “especially in this last year under Kamala Harris and [President] Joe Biden. So, to say something like this, knowing that fact, knowing she’s responsible for that, is incredibly disrespectful.”  In the three-month period following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, U.S. antisemitic incidents increased by 361% compared with the same period one year earlier, according to a press release from the Anti-Defamation League.  If Harris wants the American people to entrust her with executive authority, then she must abandon the rhetoric that “endangers both American lives and institutions,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a joint statement released Friday.   “The Vice President’s words more closely resemble those of President Trump’s second would-be assassin than her own earlier appeal to civility,” the statement said. “The man who was caught waiting in ambush in Florida left others with a chilling call to arms: ‘It is up to you now to finish the job.’ Labeling a political opponent as a ‘fascist,’ risks inviting yet another would-be assassin to try robbing voters of their choice before Election Day.”  The post Republicans Rip Hillary Clinton’s Likening Trump’s NYC Rally to Nazis as ‘Disrespectful,’ ‘Insulting’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Do you know how much you spend per student in your local public school? Surveys find that most Americans cannot answer this question. And public education interest groups such as teachers unions benefit from this knowledge gap because then they can ask for more spending and few, if any, taxpayers and voters know what the figures are or how the money is being used. This election year, lobbyists in states such as California, Missouri, and New Mexico are asking taxpayers directly to increase spending on K-12 schools through ballot initiatives, claiming schools are underfunded. Yet spending patterns tell a different story. In each of these three states—and nationwide—public education spending is increasing and has been for many years. Since the 1969-1970 school year, inflation-adjusted spending per child in California and Missouri has nearly tripled, while New Mexico school spending has more than doubled. How educators use resources is crucial. Missouri’s Show Me Institute, a research and policy organization, recently published a guide on education spending in the state and explains that school budgets are devoting less to instruction and more to noninstructional uses today than a decade ago. Notably, while the number of students in Missouri public schools has been on the decline, there has been a sharp uptick in the number of teachers—and administrative staff, in general. In fact, the number of staff has increased by 44%. The increase in administrative staff is part of a national trend. Our colleague, Lindsey Burke, testified before a U.S. House subcommittee in 2022 and reported that the number of principals and assistant principals has increased 37% since 2000. The number of school district administrative staff has increased 88%. Kennesaw State University professor Ben Scafidi studies administrative bloat in K-12 schools and finds that the increase in noninstructional staff over the last 30 years is more than double the size of student enrollment increases. Teachers make up only 48% of the K-12 workforce today. It’s not news that students are struggling in class, but the price tag on this underperformance is staggering. In California, the fiscal year 2023-2024 K-12 budget was the size of the entire state budgets of Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Tennessee—combined ($128 billion). Approximately 3 out of 4 students are performing below grade level in core subjects. Yet special interest groups have introduced a ballot proposal to authorize $10 billion in general obligation bonds for K-12 and community colleges. The bonds are estimated to cost state taxpayers a whopping $500 million per year for 35 years. The Reason Foundation finds that California school districts already have $220 billion in debt and liabilities, the equivalent of $40,000 per current enrolled student. These spending figures do not account for the substantial influx of federal funding that school districts nationwide received during the COVID-19 pandemic, amounting to $190 billion in additional spending. This was on top of the annual federal funding public school districts also receive. Prior to the pandemic, federal taxpayers provided K-12 schools about $70 billion each year. As part of the COVID-19 relief packages, California alone was awarded more than $23 billion, Missouri about $3 billion, and New Mexico around $1.5 billion in new federal funds. As of early August 2024, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education, each of these states still had roughly 10% of funds left to allocate. Forthcoming research by this op-ed’s co-author, Madison Marino Doan, and Kennesaw State’s Scafidi will reveal that school districts are more financially secure than ever before. Several factors contribute to this, including higher property tax revenues since 2020, which account for nearly half of most school district budgets; healthy cash reserves built up prior to the pandemic to manage economic downturns; the large influx of COVID-19 relief funds, which allowed districts to bolster their reserves and invest in infrastructure projects that reduce future costs; and record-high state “rainy day” funds put on reserve in 2022. Few Americans know how much taxpayers spend per student in their hometown, nor do they realize the extent of the increase in school district bureaucracy or the massive federal funding districts received during the pandemic. This surplus in funds has not reliably translated into more instruction or improved student achievement. So, before voters decide on whether to increase spending on public schools, they should know where their money is going and whether it’s truly benefiting students in the ways that matter most. The post The Myth of Underfunded Public Schools appeared first on The Daily Signal.