Two Fulton County, Georgia election workers were fired after allegations that they shredded hundreds of voter registration applications over the last couple of weeks.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
“After 20 years of documented failure in Fulton County elections, Georgians are tired of waiting to see what the next embarrassing revelation will be,” Raffensperger said in a press release Monday. “The Department of Justice needs to take a long look at what Fulton County is doing and how their leadership disenfranchises Fulton voters through incompetence and malfeasance. The voters of Georgia are sick of Fulton County’s failures.”
Raffensperger’s office has also launched their own investigation.
The allegations against the unnamed employees comes just three weeks before Fulton County’s municipal elections.
“Elections are the most important function of our government,” Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts said in the release. “We have committed to transparency and integrity.”
The workers were fired on Friday after being reported by other employees earlier in the day.
“Those who believe their registration may have been impacted by the incident and are not registered on election day will be allowed to cast a provisional ballot while the investigation attempts to determined which voters were affected,” Fox News reports.
“Columbus Day commemorates the life and legacy of the Italian explorer who made Europeans conscious of the existence of the New World,” he observed, “and whose travels opened the door for the development of European settlements in the Western Hemisphere, which would ultimately lead to the establishment of the United States of America.”
Some of you may recall a poem about the navigator on an ocean of blue, and Gov. Ron tipped his hat to that very work:
[W]hen Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 as a Genoan traveling with the sponsorship of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, he and his crew…set the precedent for the contribution of European immigrants to the development of the culture and economy of the countries of the Western Hemisphere.
Columbus Day was first proclaimed, the order noted, in 1892 — the “400th anniversary of [his] discovery of America.”
And to hear Ron tell it, Christopher “stands a singular figure in Western Civilization who exemplified courage, risk-taking, and heroism in the face of enormous odds.”
Christopher Columbus displayed courage, determination, and perseverance when he sailed the ocean blue more than 500 years ago.
These days, risk-taking seems the opposite of what’s revered.
Would-be discoverers of new things now cling to “safe spaces.”
People can’t hardly ride their bikes without masking up:
I really like this message @JoeBiden’s team is projecting here. Not only is he fit, he is also wearing a mask while riding a bike. Super smart, now let’s see what Trump does. pic.twitter.com/yLUF2WEMdE
Since time immemorial, American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians have built vibrant and diverse cultures — safeguarding land, language, spirit, knowledge, and tradition across the generations. … Our country was conceived on a promise of equality and opportunity for all people — a promise that, despite the extraordinary progress we have made through the years, we have never fully lived up to. That is especially true when it comes to upholding the rights and dignity of the Indigenous people who were here long before colonization of the Americas began. … NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim October 11, 2021, as Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
Curiously, as I’ve indicated before, the lineage so celebrated is not indigenous.
But we live in times, perhaps, more political than precise.
And it seems to me Columbus Day sits at the core of a Great Divide.
The Right and Left have never been more at odds, and the issue of whether to praise the man who began what we are or strike him down defines our difference.
The question, at its core: Does America deserve to exist?
Fast forward to New York’s leader confirming their failure:
Back to Columbus, I recently covered Google’s staff training, which employs a Pyramid of “genocide.”
Among the foundations of mass murder: “Celebration of Columbus Day.”
Another graphic, titled "The White Supremacy Pyramid," advances the idea that conservative commentator Ben Shapiro is a foundation of "white supremacy" and that Donald Trump is moving society on a path toward "mass murder" and "genocide." pic.twitter.com/9s81yC1Cxd
As for “invective,” here’s a case in point (Language Warning):
And that — on this Columbus Day — is where we are.
Nonetheless, Ron DeSantis is here:
On this Columbus Day, as American entrepreneurs embark upon a new age of exploration, we acknowledge that without the heroism of explorers who ventured into the unknown some five centuries ago, we would not be here today in this hemisphere, on this continent, in this country, with the ones we love, as Americans propel humanity forward as the engine of innovation and the guarantor of global security and stability.
The potential problem underscores how little thought went into the offensive memo issued in the AG’s name.
As our Brittany Bernstein reported last week, parent groups are alleging that Attorney General Merrick Garland is laboring under a family financial conflict of interest as he directs the FBI to investigate people — mainly parents — who are protesting against the use of public schools to indoctrinate children in critical race theory and other far-left dogma. A week ago, I wrote about Garland’s memo laying out this initiative.
The potential conflict stems from the fact that Garland’s son-in-law, Alexander “Xan” Tanner, the co-founder and president of an outfit called Panorama Education, has a very lucrative gig pushing some of the indoctrination materials.
Brittany cites to some extensive reporting by the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy, which describes how “Panorama pushes race-focused surveys and conducts trainings on systemic oppression, white supremacy, unconscious bias, and intersectionality — all under the rubric of ‘Social-Emotional Learning [(SEL)].” The reporting includes an eye-opening look at some of the relevant materials — such as “SEL as Social Justice — Dismantling White Supremacism Within Systems and Self.”
Jerry followed up with another Examiner dispatch on Monday, which notes that the enterprise run by the attorney general’s son-in-law recommends a book of progressive essays for teachers. That book starts out with a ditty by Bill Ayers, the former terrorist and self-proclaimed “small-c communist.” Ayers writes, for example:
You should know that the system you’ll be joining hates Black and Brown and poor kids. . . . I have facial evidence that the system is organized to miseducate these children, and it includes the shameful lack of resources, enforced racial segregation, the dumbed-down and Eurocentric curriculum accompanied by a stifling top-down pedagogy, and arcane rules and routines that result predictably in social shaming and widespread exclusions.
These materials elucidate that the issue of Garland’s conflict, while relevant, is tangential. The attorney general may well have an ethical conflict in that his official actions potentially inure to the financial benefit of close family members and, therefore, create an appearance of impropriety. But I’d be surprised if Garland gave this appearance even the slightest thought before issuing his memorandum.
The Biden Justice Department’s embrace of progressive indoctrination, under the guise of safeguarding public-school administrators from “threats, intimidation, and harassment” is driven by ideology, not financial enrichment. If Garland had been alert and savvy enough to recuse himself, there is every reason to believe the exact same memorandum would have been issued by deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, or whoever is the next official down the pecking order who has no conflict. (I am not implying that DAG Monaco has one; I have no idea if she does.) DOJ’s wayward position results from its progressive orientation, not self-dealing.
On that score, as I noted when Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, his personal ties to Ayers were substantial when the former was an up-and-coming community-organizer-turned-Chicago-pol and the latter a terrorist-turned-educator. Obama blurbed Ayers’s book, A Kind and Just Parent?, which compared the U.S. criminal-justice system to apartheid South Africa. (Obama described the book as “a searing and timely account.”) Much of this information was brought to light by frequent NR contributor Stanley Kurtz, who has written widely on the Obama/Ayers alliance, including their joint effort to push left-wing radicalism on our schools.
The Biden administration regards the Obama/Biden administration as its model, and, as I argued in the aforementioned column from last week, Biden and Garland are running the Justice Department accordingly.
The Garland memo is a slipshod job by DOJ standards — a one-page screed that essentially rubber-stamps the claims of Democratic activists rather than offering a developed legal position. This is only natural, because developing such a position would have required addressing such inconveniences as the Justice Department’s lack of jurisdiction to intrude on interactions between parents and local schools in the absence of any federal crime, and its failure to grapple in a meaningful way with the First Amendment protection of dissent — even dissent that rises to the level of intimidation or harassment if the use of force is not involved.
The relevance of Garland’s potential conflict is that it underscores how little thought went into the offensive memo issued in Garland’s name, which is a patent effort to frighten and coerce parents into standing down by abusing the Justice Department and FBI’s raw power to conduct investigations.
As our Caroline Downey has reported, the vast majority of the incidents cited by the National School Boards Association (on which Garland relied in issuing his memo) did not involve threats of violence — which, to repeat, is a separate issue from the fact that the rare incidents that did involve violent threats appear to have been issues for state and local law-enforcement agencies, not the federal government.
The attorney general and his Justice Department did not think this through because the memorandum was not a good-faith effort to inform. It was an abusive effort to intimidate.
The potential ripple effect triggered by a vaccine mandate from President Joe Biden could severely disrupt America’s transportation infrastructure and further hamper the supply chain, a pilot explained Monday on Fox News.
What is the background?
Biden issued a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on Sept. 9 for all federal contractors. The mandate impacts several major airlines, like American and Southwest, because they contract business with the federal government. Contractors have until Dec. 8 to comply.
However, not every airline conducts business with the government. Such airlines, like Spirit, instead will be subject to a forthcoming vaccine mandate from the White House that forces every company that employs more than 100 people to require vaccination.
What are the details?
Speaking with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, American Airlines pilot Joshua Yoder explained a disruption in transportation infrastructure — which could happen if a significant number of pilots are dismissed for not complying with the vaccine mandate — will have a “catastrophic effect” on America.
“It’s going to affect commerce, it’s going to affect trade, and ultimately it’s going to affect the economy,” Yoder predicted.
“If you have flights reduced by 30% because 30% of pilots are fired because they won’t take the vaccine, this is going to affect how your goods get here from overseas, how they are distributed to the store,” he explained.
“The same thing is happening with the truckers, it’s happening in the shipping industry. Those Amazon boxes that typically show up in two days— you might be looking at three weeks,” Yoder warned.
According to Yoder, pilots and truckers — the people responsible for the success of the supply chain — “have all the control.”
First of all, we have all the control, and the control comes from a simple word, and that is “no.” We just don’t need to comply. As far as I’m concerned I will never promote a sickout or a work action that is illegal. With U.S. Freedom Flyers, the organization I’m with, we will never promote such a thing. With that being said, we also cannot control the actions of individuals. And I think that you will see massive disruptions in supply chain and in your travel if we just stand up and say “no.”
“If these companies fire us, and they fire 30% of the workforce, aircraft are going to stop moving and it’s going to affect you. It’s going to affect your air travel and it’s going to affect the economy,” Yoder warned.
Anything else?
Yoder’s warning came after Southwest Airlines canceled thousands of flights over the weekend. The airliner blamed bad weather and air traffic control, but the Federal Aviation Administration said neither inclement weather nor ATC were to blame.
A former nurse who was reportedly fired after his religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccine requirement was rejected has shed some rather harsh light on hysterical claims that ICU beds are at capacity because of all the sick unvaccinated people.
Speaking with LifeSiteNews, Brad McDowell, who was employed as an emergency room nurse at Valley Health Systems in Winchester, Virginia, explained that the “at capacity” status has less to do with unvaccinated patients and more to do with unvaccinated staffers that are being let go for their resistance to hospital, state and federal mandates.
“They can’t open a bed that they don’t have a nurse and a tech to staff,” he explained in a video interview that was published over the weekend, after being asked by interviewer Jim Hale if the health care worker shortage supposedly caused by the pandemic is, in reality, a result of strict vaccine mandates that many health care professionals have refused to adhere to.
“I can tell you that all those beds [at Valley Health] are not open, and I know that for a fact,” McDowell charged, referring to his former place of employment.
“There are beds closed, and they’re saying they’re … at capacity, but it’s not because there’s not enough beds,” he explained.
“It’s not because of the patient load. It’s because of the workforce load,” he said.
In other words, the unvaccinated patients aren’t overwhelming the hospital; the hospital has let go so many workers who refused to comply with the vaccine mandate that it’s now short-staffed as a result.
This is all rather remarkable when you consider that it’s health care workers who not only have been the most intimately familiar with COVID-19 throughout the whole of the pandemic, but they’re the ones you’d think would be most likely to be clamoring for a vaccine.
First of all, as is the case with frontline workers like firefighters, EMTs, and police officers, most nurses and doctors have been exposed to the coronavirus. Many have contracted and survived it themselves.
Although it’s highly inconvenient to those manufacturing and mandating the vaccine, the fact remains that there is ample evidence to suggest that natural immunity can protect against the virus at least as well as the vaccine itself.
“If you think about it, you have the political elite, the media elite, the people at the highest levels of the CDC, the pharmaceutical industry, they are running, they run the whole narrative,” McDowell explained.
“They’re the ones pushing it, they’re the ones who benefit the most from everyone taking a vaccine,” he stated.
A year ago, nurses and doctors were the celebrated heroes of the pandemic — now they’re being left in the dust for refusing to get a vaccine that they, with all their professional knowledge and experience with the virus, do not feel they should be required to get.
At the start of the pandemic, they were seen as the anointed saviors of all mankind. Their plight was often touted to convince the rest of us to shut up, get in line, and disregard any and all concern for our civil liberties and unprecedented violations thereof.
And suddenly, now that so many of them have their doubts about this vaccine and are willing and ready to work with COVID-19 patients without getting the vaccine themselves, they suddenly have no more clout?
Broad-reaching mandates by health care systems, states and the Biden administration are creating a health care worker shortage right in the midst of what they continue to tell us is a horrifically deadly pandemic that is being perpetrated by those who refuse to get vaccinated. Yet clearly, according to McDowell, this is far from the case.
How much longer are we going to tolerate this manufactured pandemic — and how much damage will be done to our nation’s vital health care infrastructure in the process?
The order applies to both employees and consumers who refuse to receive the vaccine.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order banning “any entity” in the state from enforcing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and our best defense against the virus, but should remain voluntary and never forced,” Abbott said in a press release Monday.
Abbott’s executive order prohibits “any entity” in the state from compelling an individual to receive a COVID-19 vaccine “who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience.”
The order applies to both employees and consumers who refuse to receive the vaccine due to “religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.”
The order will also “supersede any conflicting order” that has already been made by local jurisdictions, authorizing the “maximum fine” allowed under Texas law for any entity that fails to comply with the order.
Abbott also issued a message to the state’s Senate and House of Representatives formally requesting the legislature to consider drafting legislation codifying a similar order into law.
The governor’s move may have come in response to President Biden’s September executive order that will require employers with more than 100 workers to require the vaccine or submit to weekly testing for the virus.
“In yet another instance of federal government overreach, the Biden Administration is now bullying many private entities into imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, causing workforce disruptions that threaten Texas’s continued recovery from the COVID-19 disaster,” Abbott said of that order at the time.
Currently, 52% of Texas residents are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
(Tennessee Star) Two Williamson County commissioners have announced their choice to replace Brad Fiscus on the Williamson County School Board, and that person is Franklin resident Josh Brown, who also does top-level work for Pfizer.
Williamson County District Four Commissioners Chad Story and Gregg Lawrence selected Brown against nine other candidates, according to The Tennessean. The remaining commissioners are scheduled to vote on whether to formally appoint Brown to the position at their October 11 meeting.
Brown’s nomination does not come without controversy.
Brown, according to his biography on the California Life Sciences’ website, is a lobbyist. Brown, the website went on to say, currently serves as a national vice president of Pfizer, where he performs state government-relations work.
Gary Humble of the Williamson County-based Tennessee Stands told his supporters in a new column that Brown’s political ties and his lobbying work concern him. Humble said “the process of vetting Brown and the nine other candidates has not been very forthcoming” and that’s a problem, especially during a time of contentious school board politics.
“The process of vetting candidates for the nomination by the committee members has not been very forthcoming. Firstly, the timeline was rushed as the commissioners were uncertain as to exactly when Brad Fiscus would be stepping down from his post,” Humble wrote.
“While the process was in limbo, names of possible replacements were trickling in, but an ongoing list was never presented to the public as to who these candidates might be. It was clear from the beginning that public input was not a primary motivator in making this decision.”
Tennessee Stands, according to its website, calls on state and local officials “to restore our constitutional republic.”
None of the 24 Williamson County Board of Commissioners returned The Tennessee Star’s requests for comment before Friday’s stated deadline. Brown also did not return a request for comment.
Brown was one of five candidates seeking to replace Fiscus who did not return The Star’s requests for comment this week to share their views on COVID-19 mask mandates in schools. Brown also declined to say whether K-12 public schools should teach Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Executives with BioNTech, the vaccine maker collaborating with Pfizer, announced last month they would seek worldwide approval for its COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 5 and 11.
A report by the Odessa Accountability Project claims that a 17-year-old COVID patient suffering from breathing difficulties entered a hospital in Texas, only for staff to place a plastic bag over her head after she removed her face mask.
Yes, really.
A photo of the teenager posted to the group’s Facebook page shows the young woman with the bag, which features the words “equipment cover,” placed over her head and upper body. She is also wearing a face mask.
You don’t need to be a doctor to know the dangers of putting plastic bags over people’s heads, especially if they are already suffering from breathing difficulties.
The young woman was “humiliated and dehumanized by the staff” for apparently removing her face mask.
“The girl’s mother said she complained of not being able to breath well, taking off the mask, and was asked to put it back on,” states the post.
“The bag was over her head for roughly 30 minutes and she was instructed to save the bag for future use throughout the hospital.”
Respondents to the post reacted with horror.
“If that was my child, or grandchild, I’d walk her out of that hospital after telling them where to put that bag,” remarked one.
“I can’t believe they did this to her,” said another.
“I don’t believe in most medical lawsuits but in this case I would definitely be talking to an attorney,” commented another.
A new Superman is coming, and even he’s not immune to today’s cultural pressures.
On Monday, DC Comics announced the next iteration of Superman — Jon Kent, the son of Clark Kent — will take a “bold new direction” by coming out as bisexual. Much like his father, who fell in love with reporter Lois Lane, Jon Kent strikes up a romantic relationship with male reporter Jay Nakamura, who “is there to care for the Man of Steel.”
Tom Taylor, the writer of the comic, said “everyone needs heroes and everyone deserves to see themselves in their heroes,” adding he’s “grateful DC and Warner Bros. share this idea.”
I’ve always said everyone needs heroes and everyone deserves to see themselves in their heroes. Today, #Superman, the strongest superhero on the planet, comes out as bisexual. I chatted to @georgegustines at the @nytimes about what's coming for Jon Kent.https://t.co/rcIYLXl7FB
“Superman’s symbol has always stood for hope, for truth, and for justice,” he continued. “Today, that symbol represents something more. Today, more people can see themselves in the most powerful superhero in comics.”
The series’ artist, John Timms, said he is “honored to be working” alongside Taylor by “showing Jon Kent tackling his most complex modern life.”
According to The New York Times, the latest Superman is much more politically progressive. From the newspaper:
That same-sex relationship is just one of the ways that Jonathan Kent, who goes by Jon, is proving to be a different Superman than his famous father. Since his new series, Superman: Son of Kal-El, began in July, Jon has combated wildfires caused by climate change, thwarted a high school shooting and protested the deportation of refugees in Metropolis.
“The idea of replacing Clark Kent with another straight white savior felt like a missed opportunity,” Tom Taylor, who writes the series, said in an interview. He said that a “new Superman had to have new fights — real world problems — that he could stand up to as one of the most powerful people in the world.”
This marks the most famous superhero to come out as something other than heterosexual.
In May, Disney announced it would be revamping its erstwhile animated series “The Proud Family.” The forthcoming version of the show will center on two multiethnic, gay dads as they raise a teenage daughter who is a racial activist.
Set to stream on Disney+ sometime in 2022, the spinoff will be titled “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.”
The piece states that Fortune is “thrilled to see so many companies of all sizes and from around the globe” who are answering “calls for the world to reimagine capitalism and for companies to embrace stakeholder capitalism.”
The piece also promotes the far-left position that “the climate crisis, growing inequality and wealth disparity, inequitable access to health care, and long-rooted systemic racism and bias” are the “biggest challenges the world has faced.”
To tackle these alleged problems, Fortune advocates for the end of “traditional capitalism” while encouraging readers to welcome the “emergence of” and “transitioning to” stakeholder capitalism.
Stakeholder capitalism is part of the globalist “Great Reset” agenda to end American sovereignty and supremacy in order to usher in “a new world” order controlled by “stakeholders,” namely, corporations selected and controlled by the World Economic Forum.
NEW: Fortune's 2021 Change the World list is out!
These companies use the creative tools of capitalism—including the profit motive—to address society’s unmet needs. https://t.co/RW4RU8EQY9
Stakeholder capitalism is an idea coined by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman at The World Economic Forum (WEF).
The WEF advances “The Great Reset” agenda, an initiative aimed at consolidating global power under the control of multinational corporations, or, “stakeholders.”
After this Great Reset takes place, world populations “will own nothing. And you’ll be happy,” according to a video presentation created by the WEF. (See below.)
According to Schwab, stakeholder capitalism is meant to replace current free-market capitalism with a new “form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.”
“The most important characteristic of the stakeholder model today,” writes Schwab, “is that the stakes of our system are now more clearly global.”
A WEF report states that individual governments, such as the U.S. government, are no longer “the overwhelmingly dominant actors on the world stage” and that “the time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm of international governance.”
The Transnational Institute—a non-profit think tank in Amsterdam—explains Schwab’s vision as “a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make[ing] decisions on behalf of the people.”
The Institute characterizes Schwab and the WEF’s goals as “a silent global coup d’etat” to capture world dominance.
Fortune Magazine is owned by Fortune Media Group Holdings, which in turn is owned by Thai business tycoon Chatchaval Jiaravanon.
Purchasing Fortune for $150 million in 2018, Jiaravanon is a member of the billionaire family that controls Charoen Pokphand Group, one of the biggest Thai conglomerates, according to Bloomberg.
Charoen Pokphand is owned in part (here) by BlackRock Inc., a single corporate entity with power over every major world industry: social media, communication, information, technology, manufacturing, weapons manufacturers, retail, wholesale, food, agriculture, energy, oil, transportation, automotive, banking, credit, finance, insurance, travel, grocery, computer, pharmaceutical, health, real estate, and mainstream media (from CNN to Fox News, Disney to Netflix).
As of July 2021, The Wall Street JournalreportsBlackRock is approaching $10 trillion in assets. Excluding the U.S. and China, the value of BlackRock’s total assets is greater than the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) respectively of any country in the world.
BlackRock owns major shares of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Alphabet; AT&T, Verizon, Comcast; Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, Intel; Caterpillar, 3M; Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford, Honda; Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon; Amazon, Walmart, Costco, Target; FedEx; Delta, American Airlines, United, Southwest; Ross, Nike, TJX; Pepsi, CocaCola, Nestle, Sysco, Tyson Foods; Del Monte, Seaboard Corp; McDonald’s, Starbucks; Exxon Mobile, Shell, BP, Total Energies, Chevron, General Electric, Tesla; Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway; Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Citigroup, Capital One, Wells Fargo; Prudential, MetLife; Airbnb, Uber, Lyft; Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck; CVS, Anthem, Blue Cross; Zillow; CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, Disney, Netflix, Time Warner, The New York Times, Yahoo, Discovery, iHeartMedia, Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, News Corp, Viacom, and hunders more.
Many of the major companies owned by BlackRock are listed as “Partners” on the WEF’s website.
BlackRock’s website insists not only that globalism is a reality, but that globalism is “evolving” and that “Much of [the work of globalism] will fall on the shoulders of multinational corporations,” like those owned by BlackRock and partnered with the WEF. Its website says that “large corporations [need] to play a bigger role” in advancing globalism.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink—a board member and contributor at the WEF—endorses “activism from the far-left” and says, like the Fortune piece, that we must “focus” on advancing globalism by utilizing specifically stakeholder capitalism.
Pfizer Lobbyist Appointed to School Board That Sets COVID Policy For Kids
(Tennessee Star) Two Williamson County commissioners have announced their choice to replace Brad Fiscus on the Williamson County School Board, and that person is Franklin resident Josh Brown, who also does top-level work for Pfizer.
Williamson County District Four Commissioners Chad Story and Gregg Lawrence selected Brown against nine other candidates, according to The Tennessean. The remaining commissioners are scheduled to vote on whether to formally appoint Brown to the position at their October 11 meeting.
Brown’s nomination does not come without controversy.
Brown, according to his biography on the California Life Sciences’ website, is a lobbyist. Brown, the website went on to say, currently serves as a national vice president of Pfizer, where he performs state government-relations work.
Gary Humble of the Williamson County-based Tennessee Stands told his supporters in a new column that Brown’s political ties and his lobbying work concern him. Humble said “the process of vetting Brown and the nine other candidates has not been very forthcoming” and that’s a problem, especially during a time of contentious school board politics.
“The process of vetting candidates for the nomination by the committee members has not been very forthcoming. Firstly, the timeline was rushed as the commissioners were uncertain as to exactly when Brad Fiscus would be stepping down from his post,” Humble wrote.
“While the process was in limbo, names of possible replacements were trickling in, but an ongoing list was never presented to the public as to who these candidates might be. It was clear from the beginning that public input was not a primary motivator in making this decision.”
Tennessee Stands, according to its website, calls on state and local officials “to restore our constitutional republic.”
None of the 24 Williamson County Board of Commissioners returned The Tennessee Star’s requests for comment before Friday’s stated deadline. Brown also did not return a request for comment.
Brown was one of five candidates seeking to replace Fiscus who did not return The Star’s requests for comment this week to share their views on COVID-19 mask mandates in schools. Brown also declined to say whether K-12 public schools should teach Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Executives with BioNTech, the vaccine maker collaborating with Pfizer, announced last month they would seek worldwide approval for its COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of 5 and 11.