Peter Hancock gets the facts wrong--again

Liberal activist Peter Hancock of the Lawrence Journal-World reported on the GOP gubernatorial primary election shortly after it was clear that Gov. Brownback had won the election. According to Hancock, Brownback won despite a "surprisingly strong showing by a virtual unknown in politics." In the same article, Hancock noted that "Secretary of State Kris Kobach handily won his GOP primary." Note that Brownback won over Winn 63% to 37%. Kobach won over Scott Morgan 65% to 35%. Apparently, Hancock believes the difference between winning "handily" and facing a "surprising strong showing" from an opponent is two percentage points.

Not content with reporting on just the election results, Hancock continued with this tidbit: "Brownback's primary win came on the same day that a new Gallup poll showed Kansas is the only state in the nation to see an increase in the number of uninsured residents since enactment of the federal health insurance law, commonly known as Obamacare." Hancock provided a link to a Kansas City Star article about the poll, but he obviously failed to read that article. If he had, he would have noticed the headline: "Kansas is the only state to see a significant increase in its uninsured rate, survey says." (My emphasis) Hancock dropped the word "significant" from his reporting. If you check out the actual Gallup poll, you'll find that two other states--Iowa and Virginia--also saw increases in their uninsured rates.

Hancock also failed to include a qualification from Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who supports Obamacare. According to Praeger in the Star's article, the number “appears to be an anomaly that needs more review. To have the uninsured jump that much in one year would be unprecedented.” Praeger added, “We will try to find out where the discrepancy is.”

According to the Star, Dan Witters, research director for the Well-Being Index, "did not offer an explanation for the growth in the uninsured population in Kansas. However, Kansas is among the states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs to cover more people with low incomes, an option through the Affordable Care Act."

That is true. However, 21 states that also did not expand their Medicaid programs saw decreases in their uninsured rates.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article1093005.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article1093005.html#storylink=cpy

Journal-World reporter throws hissy fit after his liberal bias is exposed

Lawrence Journal-World reporter/liberal activist Peter Hancock didn't care much for Douglas County Conservative's item about his biased reporting two months ago. Here is what Hancock wrote to Douglas County Conservative in an email:

Dear Douglas County Conservative: Yes, I put my name on my stories. And you are free to quote me and attribute information in my stories to me. But if you're so opposed to the use of anonymous sources, why don't you put your name on your stories? Or is that a standard you only apply to other people? 

Your information about Public Citizen's contributors is a matter of public record. And you can thank Public Citizen for that, since they are the ones who, in 1974, lobbied hard for Congress to pass - over President Gerald Ford's veto - a certain "radical liberal" law known as the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), which is basically why you were able to access to that information in the first place. Don't worry. You can thank them later. 

It might be worth noting, though, that you left off a few other major contributors, like the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, just to name a few. And that's not counting the 300,000-plus individuals who freely contribute because they support Public Citizen's mission. 

Meanwhile, just out of curiosity, where is your financial disclosure list? Or do you even have one? I only ask because when I click on the link to your Blogspot Profile, I see that you only have one follower, which I assume to be yourself. 

Peter Hancock
Reporter | Lawrence Journal-World
phancock@ljworld.com | (785) 832-7259645 New Hampshire, Lawrence, KS 66044

Hancock seems to believe that those Foundations balance out the liberals and socialists who sit on Public Citizens boards. However, the Capital Research Center reports "Since the 1960s, [the] Ford [Foundation] has funded many radical social experiments and it remains a major donor to liberal causes, especially the defense of racial preference programs." Martin Morse Wooster, senior fellow at Capital Research Center, describes the Rockefeller Brothers Fund as “a second-tier member of the liberal philanthropic establishment.” Regarding the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation, Wooster characterizes it as a "bastion of liberalism."

Hancock's history is off a bit regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He claims that President Gerald Ford vetoed the act. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed FOIA into law on July 4, 1966, eight years before Ford became president. Also, Hancock says we should thank Public Citizen for lobbying hard for Congress to pass FOIA. Public Citizen was founded in 1971, five years AFTER Johnson signed FOIA into law.

By the way, before Hancock joined the Journal-World, he wrote an opinion column from the liberal perspective for the Topeka Metro News. In that capacity he lied about Phill Kline running a racist ad in 2006. You can read about that here.

Lawrence Journal-World blames Democrat's education cuts on Brownback

In the October 19 issue of the Lawrence Journal-World, "reporter" Peter Hancock engages in the mainstream media practice of citing a study from a far-left think tank without telling readers that it is a far-left think tank with a far-left agenda. In this case, Hancock cites the Center for Budget Policies and Priorities (CBPP). In The Practical Progressive: How to Build a Twenty-First Century Political Movement (2008), Erica Payne, co-founder of the Democracy Alliance and former Deputy National Finance Director for the Democratic National Committee, lists CBPP as an organization that is part of the "Progressive Infrastructure." It's board of directors includes many who would be recognized as those on the left.

But what was really egregious about Hancock's article, which claims, according to CBPP, "direct state funding for public schools in Kansas is still nearly 15 percent less than it was before the start of the Great Recession," is that Hancock blames Gov. Brownback for education spending cuts that took place under Mark Parkinson, Brownback's Democratic predecessor.

Below is a chart that shows the average spending per pupil in Kansas from 2005-06 to 2014-15. As you can see, the average amount per pupil dropped during the 2009-10 school year and then again in the 2010-11 school year. The average amount then began to increase again year after year beginning with the 2011-12 school year.

Note that Gov. Mark Parkinson became governor in 2009 when Gov. Kathleen Sebelius went to Washington, D.C., to serve in the Obama administration. Parkinson was also governor in 2010, when the state budget was set for fiscal year 2011.

However, this is what Hancock reported: "Kansas began cutting budgets in 2008, under then-Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat, when state revenues began to plummet following the collapse of the financial industry and national housing market that fall. They continued in 2009 after Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, took office."

Again, Brownback did not become governor until January 2011 (also, note that Sebelius, and not Parkinson, was governor in 2008).

Is this a case of liberal historical revisionism or extremely sloppy reporting? Who knows? However, the Journal-World's readers deserve a front-page correction to this front-page article.

Peter Hancock's reporting is on shaky ground

Peter Hancock has replaced liberal activist Scott Rothschild as the Lawrence Journal-World's statehouse reporter. However, he appears to have the same odd obsession with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as Rothschild had. In a December 5 article, Hancock writes about Kansas state legislators attending an ALEC meeting. In the article, Hancock makes the following claim:

ALEC has come under fire in recent years, and several of its corporate members have dropped out. Some of those, such as General Motors, have cited ALEC's support for "Stand Your Ground" laws that allow people to use deadly force to defend themselves in any place where they have a lawful right to be if they reasonably believe they face an immediate threat of bodily harm or death. 

A Florida version of that law was used in 2013 to acquit George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.

Of course, Stand Your Ground was not used to acquit George Zimmerman, as ABC News noted earlier this year:

When a Florida jury deadlocked on the first degree murder charge against software developer Michael Dunn, the state's controversial "Stand Your Ground Law" was once again hoisted into the media spotlight. 

Dunn was convicted on four other charges in the case, in which he fired 10 times at an SUV after an argument with the teens inside about how loud their music was, and will likely be sentenced to a minimum of 60 years behind bars.

As in the case of George Zimmerman, acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, the public outrage was often directed or misdirected, at the Florida law. 

Many, including legal commentators who should know better, repeatedly citing the statute as a crucial issue in both cases. 

And yet neither defendant invoked the controversial aspects of Florida's law. In fact, both defendants argued basic self defense law that would have been similar in just about every state in the nation.

Peter Hancock portrays left-wing group as a consumer-protection group

In an May 11 article about a possible FBI investigation involving former officials in Gov. Sam Brownback's administration, Lawrence Journal-World reporter/political activist Peter Hancock shared several quotes from Craig Holman of Public Citizen, which Hancock characterized as "a Washington-based group that advocates for consumer protection and campaign finance reform."

This is yet another example of why it is important to look behind the people associated with groups with innocuous-sounding names. We can find Public Citizen's board of directors on its website.

Public Citizen Foundation board members include David Halperin, who "has advised groups including Greenpeace, Democracy for America, Public.Resource.Org, and, in the 1990s, Public Citizen." Democracy for America is listed as an organization that is part of the "Progressive Infrastructure" in Erica Payne's The Practical Progressive: How to Build a Twenty-first Century Political Movement. Halperin was also an adviser to Howard Dean's presidential campaign and a senior vice president of the Center for American Progress, which is also part of the "Progressive Infrastructure."

Cynthia Refro, another foundation board member, was a consultant to the Iraq Peace Fund of the Tides Foundation. Wade Rathke was a founding board member of the Tides Foundation and continues to serve as senior advisor of the San Francisco-based organization. Rathke was also the founder of ACORN.

The Public Citizen, Inc. board includes Barbara Ehrenreich and Jim Hightower, who are both associated with Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Ehrenreich is a DSA honorary chair, while DSA honored Hightower with its Eugene V. Debs Award in 1995. That award, presented annually, is named after the Socialist Party presidential candidate.

Joy Howell, another board member, was the communications director to U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.).

Obviously, Public Citizen is a far-left organization, yet Hancock presented it as being merely a consumer-protection group.

Scott Stanford: Liar

Conservatives in Douglas County are well aware of the liberal bias exhibited by the Lawrence Journal-World (J-W). For many years, Scott Rothschild served as that newspaper’s Statehouse reporter. It didn’t seem to matter to J-W management that, at the very same time he was supposed to be providing objective reporting, he was also serving as the president of a liberal organization in Topeka. Last year, Rothschild left the J-W and accepted a position as a propagandist for the Kansas Association of School Boards. Unfortunately, he was replaced at the J-W by Peter Hancock, who, like Rothschild, is merely a Democratic Party operative with a byline.

What some conservatives may not be aware of is how the J-W’s liberal bias excludes many conservatives from sharing their opinions on the newspaper’s online forum. These conservatives essentially broke an unwritten forum rule, i.e., "posting while conservative." In the process, those left to comment on the J-W website make up a virtual Council of Coprophagia, in which liberals feed off the waste deposited by their fellow liberals.

I had this happen to me at the end of May. My account was suddenly gone and all the comments I had offered were removed as well. I reviewed the forum rules again to see if I may have violated one. However, I could not find any rule that I could have violated. I emailed Nick Gerik, the J-W’s digital editor, and asked him why my account was removed, but received no answer. Therefore, I can only speculate as to why my account was removed. I had written a letter to the editor about the Pacific Educational Group and USD 497 earlier in May, and then added more information in the comments section. I believe I may have raised questions that caused some in the local educational establishment a little discomfort. 

While J-W General Manager Scott Stanford was with the Steamboat Pilot & Today in Colorado, his wife, Kelly, was the director of curriculum and instruction at the Steamboat Springs school district. After the couple moved to Lawrence, Kelly took a position with Communities In Schools of Mid-America, Inc. Like the Pacific Educational Group, Danette Clark's education blog lists Communities in Schools as a liberal indoctrinating organization. In Texas, Clark has noted that the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development "partners with many liberal education organizations, including the Houston Annenberg Challenge, CES Small Schools Project, and Communities in Schools of Texas." Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground terrorist and current education "expert," has been associated with both the Annenberg Challenge and the "small schools movement." As I noted in a blog item last year, Ayers is also closely associated with the "critical race theory" upon which Pacific Educational Group's program is based.

 I was on vacation for the beginning of June, so I dropped the issue for a while. But then I read a letter to the editor from an individual who bashed Kansas and said he was moving to California. I don't like when people denigrate my adopted state, so I responded with my own letter to the editor. After reading several personal attacks (which are violations of the forum rules) directed at me, I decided to contact the J-W’s general manager, Scott Stanford, on July 7. I will include the full exchange with Mr. Stanford so that I cannot be accused of taking his comments out of context:

Mr. Stanford: 

This comment was offered on your forum today by a David Carson: 

"More 'blah blah blah' from Kevin. In my 48 years I have never run across someone so arrogant, hateful, and unhappy."
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/jul/07/letter-kansas-not-so-bad/ 

I'm trying to figure out why comments such as this one are allowed to stand on your forum, yet I was booted from the forum after violating not a single one of the forum rules 

I have spoken with many conservatives in Lawrence over the past several years, and, like me, they believe that the J-W inconsistently enforces its forum rules. Conservatives are routinely kicked off of the forum, while liberals are allowed to violate the rules with impunity. Many conservatives say they simply refuse to comment on the forum since they are subjected to many personal attacks when they do so. 

There are also several forum users who are obviously violating the forum's rule regarding the use of actual names. These folks set up bogus Facebook accounts in order to start an account on the J-W forum. It's probably not a coincidence that these same users tend to be among the least civil. Among these users are "Lawrence Freeman," "Paul Beyer" (whose sole Facebook friend is John Ayo from Nigeria), and James Howlette (a comic book character).* 

It's your forum and your rules, so I suppose you can enforce them as you like. However, the inconsistent enforcement does not reflect well on your publication. 

Sincerely,
Kevin Groenhagen

I received a response the same day: 

Kevin: 

Thanks for your email and feedback. Enforcement of rules on the forum involves a fair amount of subjectivity. Our editors try to be fair and reasonable.

Unfortunately, history has proven that debating forum decisions is generally counter-productive. Instead, I encourage users who are unhappy with our forums to participate in other community forums that are moderated differently. 

I have passed along your note about Lawrence Freeman, Paul Beyer and James Howlette so that those fake users can be removed. 

Thanks again for your note and feedback.
 ----
Scott Stanford

My second email:

Thank you. 

I have asked your moderators to give me an explanation concerning why my account was terminated several weeks ago. I never heard a response. I have read the forum rules, and cannot see where I violated any of them. 

BTW, the user "Barb Gordon" has also set up a fake account at Facebook. See https://www.facebook.com/barbara.gordon.92798 

Like "James Howlette," Barb Gordon is a comic book figure, i.e., the alter ego of Batgirl. 

Kevin Groenhagen

I received no response to this message. After noticing the users with bogus names continued to have active accounts, I emailed Mr. Stanford the next day:

Mr. Stanford: 

"I have passed along your note about Lawrence Freeman, Paul Beyer and James Howlette so that those fake users can be removed." 

 Looks as if those three fake users, as well as Barb Gordon and Philipp Wannemaker (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009691412326&sk=friends), are still there. A bogus account is a violation of the forum rules:
 http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/oct/09/journal-world-websites-require-commenters-identify 

David Carson's personal attacks (which are explicitly against your forum rules) are also still there:
 http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/jul/07/letter-kansas-not-so-bad/?letters_to_editor 

Meanwhile, I cannot post after following the forum rules. Again, the J-W seems to have one set of rules for liberal users and another set for conservative users. That does not reflect well on your publication and its employees. 

Sincerely,
Kevin Groenhagen

Mr. Stanford's final response to me:

Kevin: 

Thanks for your email. 

This isn't something we're going to debate. As you have noted before, it's our forum to moderate as we think best. 

I understand and accept your criticism of our publication and our employees. That criticism does not change any of our decisions. 

Best regards,

 ----
Scott Stanford

My final message to Mr. Stanford:

So you lied to me when you said the bogus accounts would be removed?

It’s been six days since Mr. Stanford wrote, "I have passed along your note about Lawrence Freeman, Paul Beyer and James Howlette so that those fake users can be removed." However, all those users, as well as Barb Gordon and Philipp Wannemaker, continue to have active accounts. Unless I am misreading the meaning of Mr. Stanford’s words, he clearly lied to me.

While Mr. Stanford does not appear to be a man of integrity, he did say something we conservatives should consider:  “I encourage users who are unhappy with our forums to participate in other community forums that are moderated differently.”

We have had the discussion before about having our own forum, but really haven’t moved on making that happen. Would it be beneficial to have our own forum, or is emailing to one another sufficient? Is there anyone who can set up a decent forum for us? If it costs a little to buy the software and host the forum, are there others who would join me in providing the funds to make it possible? Can we come up with a set of rules that, unlike the J-W’s, are consistently and uniformly enforced.

Any ideas?

* If you visit the Facebook pages of those I mentioned to Mr. Stanford, you will find that they have no listed friends or, as in the case of Paul Beyer, just a single friend, i.e., John Ayo from Nigeria. Perhaps Mr. Beyer is a bit like Jack Nicholson’s character in “About Schmidt,” where the only person he seemed able to talk to was a Tanzanian boy named Ndugu Umbo. However, I think Nicholson’s character would also have family members, fraternity brothers, former co-workers, etc., listed as friends. It appears to me that these individuals started bogus accounts on Facebook so that they could skirt the J-W’s new forum rules, which allows them to issue personal attacks against others anonymously.

Is Weather Underground agenda now part of USD 497 curriculum?

"We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution." - Bill Ayers, Weather Underground leader, in a 2006 speech at the World Economic Forum in Caracas, Venezuela

"John Dewey suggested that schools must be the engine of social transformation." - Glenn E. Singleton and Curtis Linton, Courageous Conversations About Race (2006)

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." - Vladimir Lenin

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn

In their 1974 political manifesto, Prairie Fire, leaders of the Weather Underground, a communist terrorist organization, wrote, "We believe that radical teachers should work in schools in working class neighborhoods, in community or junior colleges. Radicalize other teachers, organize the parents, teach and encourage your students."

Bill Ayers was among those signing for the Weather Underground at the end of the introduction of Prairie Fire. His opinion about radicalizing teachers was unchanged four decades after the publication of Prairie Fire. "Revolutionaries want to change the world, of course, and teachers, it turns out, want to change the world too—typically one child at a time," he wrote in Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident (2013). "It wasn’t as much of a reach as you might imagine."

While the McCain-Palin campaign briefly (and ineptly) focused on Ayers’ days as a domestic terrorist, it failed to discuss Ayers’ work in education during the past several decades. Ayers earned an Ed.D. from Columbia University’s Teachers College, which was founded by Dr. John Dewey. For Ayers, attending the Teachers College was probably a natural choice. Dewey was active in the League for Industrial Democracy (LID), while Ayers was a community organizer with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) during the 1960s. SDS developed from the Student League for Industrial Democracy, the youth branch of LID. LID, which descended from the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, was founded in 1905 by notable socialists Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Clarence Darrow, and Norman Thomas.

Ayers became a vice-president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2008. In addition, Ayers’ younger brother and fellow communist, Rick, serves as the co-president of the National Association of Multicultural Educators (NAME). Conveniently, Bill was on the co-president nomination team.

AERA’s president in 2005-06, Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor in curriculum and instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was a keynote speaker at the Pacific Educational Group’s (PEG) Summit for Courageous Conversation in 2009. Another keynote speaker at that summit, Antonia Darder, was also a keynote speaker at a NAME event in 2011. Her speech was entitled "The Neoliberal Restructuring of Cities, Education Policy, and Possibilities for Social Transformation Through a Marxist Lens."

In 2008, both Ladson-Billings and Darder signed a statement that read, "We write to support our colleague Professor William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who is currently under determined and sustained political attack." Lisa Delpit and Sonia Nieto, featured speakers at PEG’s Summit for Courageous Conversation in 2013, also signed the statement.

Last month I noted that the Lawrence school district spent $10,200 on a two-day program presented by PEG’s Leidene King. The program, "Beyond Diversity: An Introduction to Courageous Conversations and a Foundation for Deinstitutionalizing Racism and Eliminating Racial Achievement Disparities" is based on a book, Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools, by Glenn E. Singleton, PEG’s CEO, and Curtis Linton, and is rooted in a discipline known as Critical Race Theory (CRT). In addition to writing the foreword for Singleton and Linton’s book, Ladson-Billings wrote the foreword for Ayers’ To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher (2001), and co-edited City Kids, City Schools: More Reports from the Front Row (2008) with Ayers.

Unfortunately, PEG’s involvement with the Lawrence school district is much more extensive than I noted last month. Lawrence district and school administrators actually began using Singleton and Linton’s book as a study guide in 2005. A group of administrators, teachers, and community members attended the aforementioned Summit for Courageous Conversation in 2009. In 2012, a group of administrators and teachers attended the PEG summit and received the Summit Leadership Award. Rick Doll, Lawrence Public Schools superintendent, and Angelique Kobler, director of curriculum and instruction, were presenters at the 2013 summit.

According to a May 4, 2013 Lawrence Journal-World article, a PEG consultant asked Lawrence school board members and a handful of administrators what they thought "whiteness as property" means. That phrase comes from the title of a 1993 Harvard Law Review article by Cheryl I. Harris.* In 2000 Harris served on the Coordinating Committee of the Black Radical Congress (BRC). According to BRC leaders in a June 15, 1998 email, "It seemed to us the idea of bringing together the varied sections of the Black radical tradition—Socialists and Communists, revolutionary nationalists, and radical Black feminists and womanists—was long overdue."

Is it possible that Lawrence school board members were unaware of the fact that the major progenitors and proponents of CRT—including Harris, Ayers, Cornel West, and the late Derrick Bell—are almost exclusively Marxists?

Of course, one might overlook the Marxist nature of CRT if PEG showed signs of progress. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be the case. After paying PEG more than $850,000 over three years, the achievement gap between white and black students in St. Paul, Minn., remained unchanged. The achievement gap in math between white and Hispanic students actually widened. The Rochester (Minn.) School District spent approximately $238,000 with the PEG over a five-year period. Again, there was no evidence that the achievement gap between white and minority students narrowed.

At times, PEG even appears uninterested in demonstrating progress. "[PEG] could do better providing good reports on progress they’ve made," said Christine Stead, trustee of the Ann Arbor, Mich., school board in 2011. "You should never have a board be completely surprised at your findings and should be able to demonstrate your findings in some way that’s measurable. We’re not getting that from them." After a seven-year relationship with PEG, Ann Arbor Public Schools declined to renew its contract in 2012.

Between July 2010 and June 2012, USD 497 spent more than $225,000 with PEG for contracts, books, travel, summits, and other expenses. USD 497 also paid $79,700 to PEG as part of a no-bid contract during the 2013-14 school year. In addition, district costs for conference registrations and hotel accommodations at the PEG summit in St. Louis in October 2013 were approximately $15,607. That’s well over $300,000 spent on a program that is based on a controversial Marxist theory. Do the taxpayers really want to spend additional dollars on a dubious and, frankly, racist program, especially at a time when school districts throughout Kansas are saying they’re underfunded?

By the way, if you live in Topeka and believe only those crazy liberals in Lawrence would get involved with something as far out as CRT, think again. According to the February 2014 issue of Topeka Public Schools’ newsletter, "Three years ago our district and building leaders began to explore how race might be negatively impacting our student achievement levels. In order to have conversations about race, we needed guidance. We decided to solicit help and advice from Mr. Glenn Singleton with the Pacific Education [sic] Group."
----------------------------------------------------
* UPDATE: The Journal-World's Peter Hancock wrote that the phrase "whiteness as property" comes from the title of a 1993 Harvard Law Review article by Cheryl I. Harris. I have since found an earlier reference to this phrase from the late Prof. Derrick Bell of Harvard University. Bell, you may remember, was Barack Obama's professor at Harvard Law School.