[JustTheNews] Previously the Houston school district was taken over after the FBI raided HISD’s headquarters; the home of the district’s former COO was raided and he was later indicted for allegedly embezzling $6 million of taxpayer money.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has taken over another school district in Texas, this time, La Joya Independent School District in Hidalgo County in the Rio Grande Valley.
The takeover occurred after a TEA investigation last year found that two LJISD trustees and three central office administrators engaged “in acts of extortion, receiving kickbacks, bribery, theft, wire fraud, and money laundering,” all felonies, for which they were convicted nearly two years ago.
The previous board of trustees argued their actions didn’t represent the entire board but fell on deaf ears. On Thursday, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath announced a new superintendent and seven new board members had been appointed to replace them. They are all Hidalgo County residents; four reside in LJISD boundaries.
Morath said they are “tasked with guiding the focus of the district toward good stewardship of public resources and ensuring public trust while continuing to align district goals and efforts toward positive student outcomes and academic success,” also publishing a list of their bios.
“Their willingness to serve under unique circumstances is a testament to their character and care for kids,” Morath said, adding that he was “confident they will succeed in charting a path forward that will enable the LJISD elected board to eventually resume its role and sustain a culture of success in the district.”
The action was in line with TEA’s recommendation issued last year, prompting Hidalgo County DA John Scott’s attempt to block a TEA takeover. Last summer, the State Office of Administrative Hearings heard the case; last October, judges sided with the TEA.
The TEA investigation responded “to multiple complaints regarding allegations that members of the LJISD Board of Trustees [and central office administrators] engaged in fraud as well as violated conflict of interest an contract procurement laws.” Its investigation was based on a review of court documents, documents submitted by LJISD and interviews with several individuals, its report states.
The state investigation began after a multi-law enforcement agency criminal investigation was launched by the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Department of Agriculture, Texas Department of Insurance and McAllen Police Department. Five officials pleaded guilty to federal charges and were convicted and sentenced, according to a series of announcements by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas.
In one announcement, one LJISD trustee, Armin Garza, pleaded guilty to receiving more than $234,000 in bribes and “participated in a conspiracy to steer lucrative energy savings contracts at various political subdivisions in Hidalgo County, including La Joya ISD.” In another, former LJISD assistant superintendent Jose Luis Morin pleaded guilty to taking $28,000 in bribes and participating in the scheme.
In another, officials Andres Morales and Alex Guajardo were convicted of bribery and receiving kickbacks as public servants and officials “in exchange for official votes or recommendations in support of granting energy savings contracts at various Hidalgo County political subdivisions,” U.S. Attorney Jennifer Lowery said. They forfeited $1 million between them. Morales also admitted he lied about having a felony conviction on an application to purchase a firearm.
Former LJISD board member Oscar Salinas also pleaded guilty to extortion charges related to LJISD contracts, as did former Penitas mayor Rodrigo Lopez for committing fraud against LJISD, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
TEA’s investigation found that former LJISD board president Alex Cantu failed to disclose a conflict of interest with a Rio Grande Valley nonprofit that contracted with LJISD, paying Cantu and his wife over $271,000 in “consulting services” in 2018-2019.
Around the same time, LJISD officials were criticized for using $20 million of taxpayer money to construct a water park, natatorium
...a fancy word for a swimming pool, especially one that is indoors...
and planetarium, in a district where 94% of its students are economically disadvantaged, ABC 13 News reported. The Texas Public Policy Foundation found that while LJISD lost revenue of up to $250,000 in its first year running the park, taxpayers were on the hook for nearly $300,000. The former LJISD superintendent resigned but still received a severance package of $320,000.
TPPF has urged state lawmakers to implement stronger transparency and accountability measures to limit severance packages and ensure they aren’t awarded to “bad actors.”
Last year, the state legislature passed a law making it easier for TEA to implement measures to respond to failing schools and corruption. Last year, the TEA’s takeover of Houston ISD was finalized after years of litigation, which followed a pattern similar to that of LJISD’s.
The takeover occurred after allegations of corruption were made and after the FBI raided HISD’s headquarters in early 2020. Subsequently the home of the district’s former COO was raided; he was later indicted for allegedly embezzling $6 million of taxpayer money.
[BostonHerald] What follows is an account from someone who works in a different one of these “converted” hotels which are decimating the entire communities around them.
This report has been lightly edited to protect the source from retribution by the woke comrades:
There are 200-plus families, he begins, and more than 500 people currently living at the (facility).
It’s not only a roof over their heads and three squares a day, but “free” diapers, wipes, toiletries, free tablets and phones, free English lessons, state case workers making sure all entitlements are taken, free Uber and Lyft rides, free bus passes from (redacted).
All with no end in sight.
All are going to the (redacted) immigration office in Ubers… round trip is more than $130 per trip.
All get DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance, i.e., welfare) benefits, EBT cards. They have more expendable cash than I do.
If DCF (Department of Children & Families) says they need a crib, stroller, toys, etc., management is required order them. Everything is new and arrives the next day from Amazon.
They all have MassHealth, free legal services, free tax-filing services.
Most now have Social Security cards and many are getting work permits, as many have been in the “shelter” for months.
They are learning they can make more on DTA than from working.
The biggest cost that you can’t put a price tag on is the burden on the schools and public-safety budgets.
We daily have local police or fire at the hotel. Police have had to help with fights, guns, drugs, overdoses….
They call 911 for a headache. I even heard someone called 911 for a paper cut. Nuisance calls, because they don’t have to pay for them, or anything else.
I know people in public safety, including some on command staffs. They are fed up with this and concerned about keeping staff.
The brass put on a good face, but are beyond overwhelmed and have no staff or plan. They flat out admit the educations of “regular kids” are being impacted.
The task is to get housing for the immigrants. Not very realistic around here.
Few are working, most who do work for FedEx or Amazon. They have no concept of saving $$ or the cost of housing. The Walmart in (redacted) loves the first and 15th of the month, as that’s when they get their direct (welfare) deposits.
The amount of Amazon and Temu packages delivered every day is crazy. DoorDash is also loving them in (redacted).
The post office just drops off piles of mail for them in the lobby every day, a lot from the state agencies. Many either misspell their names or write them backwards so they can double dip. I assume that the welfare agencies are so overwhelmed, most of it isn’t caught.
Many now have cars. Somebody here’s always chasing them for insurance and registration info. Most try to avoid anybody making inquiries. They buy the vehicles here, pay here. Dealers must be making a fortune. Most still do not have drivers’ licenses.
Most are nice people, but they are now conditioned to think everything is free and that we work for them. Many are rude and have zero respect for rules, police, hotel cleanliness, etc.
DCF has removed quite a few children for abuse.
Local churches have been great with donations of clothes, but the hoarding by and the entitlement of the residents is startling.
The hotel provides breakfast and lunch. There is also a catering contract just for dinner. I’ve heard that one alone is for more than $2 million a year, as it feeds more than 500 people a day, 7 days a week.
The hotel is getting $130 a night for the rooms, charges for other rooms where the food is served, and for the rooms used for computer labs and ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms.
Plus $12 per each breakfast and $15 per lunch times 500 people.
Hotel is making a killing with cash flow, but the property is being destroyed. Will need an entire remodel.
I keep my mouth shut while at work, as I don’t blame the residents. I blame the president and even more so Gov. Healey.
This whole situation is mind-boggling to me. What about all the little old ladies, low-income seniors and homeless veterans down on their luck? They’re taxpayers, they’re American citizens.
Posted by: NoMoreBS ||
02/05/2024 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[28 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
I wonder when/if an enterprising undercover reporter masks as an illegal, etc.
#2
We got out just in time. Between the time we sold our house and started our drive south we stayed at a Homewood Suites. When we were making the reservation my wife asked if they were housing immigrants or homeless. The manager told us that Hilton management had made a decision not to participate because they knew it would cause more trouble than it was worth.
The state is buying or renting as much space as it can to house both classes of undesirables at great expense to the taxpayers.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Reparations advocates had the wind in their sails last year. Cities across the US set up teams to hash out plans to compensate black people for the legacy of slavery, taking their cue from a successful pilot in Evanston, Illinois.
The landscape in 2024 is very different.
Squad member Cori Bush, the Missouri Democrat who has championed payouts, is under investigation for campaign spending violations. Her bid for a $14 trillion federal compensation package is dead in the water.
The reparations task force in Detroit — a hub for African-American culture — has descended into a 'shambles' of quitting and in-fighting.
And California's black lawmakers this week backtracked on plans to pay $1.2 million to each resident.
While many black voters are keen to get checks in the mail, only a fraction think they'll see such a day in their lifetimes.
Mike Gonzalez, an analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said support for reparations peaked amid the protests over the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. Now, it is waning, he added.
'Like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory, anti-racism trainings, and other features of the collective hysteria, the call for reparations has begun to fall apart under intense opposition by the American people,' he told DailyMail.com.
Supporters of reparations say it's time for America to repay its black residents for the injustices of the historic Transatlantic slave trade, Jim Crow segregation and inequalities that persist to this day.
From there, it gets tricky.
There is no agreed framework for what a scheme would look like. Ideas range from cash payouts to scholarships, land giveaways, business startup loans, housing grants, or statues and street names.
Critics say that payouts to selected black people will inevitably stoke divisions between winners and losers, and raise questions about why American Indians and others don't get their own handouts.
The pro-reparations movement took a major hit this week with revelations that Bush is being investigated by the DOJ. The squad member and progressive has spent more than $750,000 on security since she was elected in 2020, including payments to her husband. She denies any wrongdoing, but faces being booted from Congress if she's found guilty.
The allegations hurt her signature piece of legislation — a $14 trillion federal package for black Americans to atone for chattel slavery and centuries of racist policies that followed. The bill was floundering even before her probe over iffy payments.
Similar resolutions have been introduced at every congressional session since 1989 and have never won enough support for a floor vote.
The outlook is not much better in Detroit, where the city's reparations task force is mired in resignations and in-fighting. It has barely made any progress, critics say.
California's first-in-the-nation reparations task force held emotionally-charged meetings for two years before greenlighting last May more than 100 proposals for overturning past sins. The state's descendants of slavery could expect payments of as much as $1.2 million, it was reported at the time.
On Wednesday, the state's black lawmakers introduced a package of 14 bills backtracking on those plans. Their proposals made no mention of cash reparations. Instead, they called for the state to apologize for its role in slavery, to ban involuntary servitude in prisons and to return property officials had unfairly seized from black families.
Law scholar Jonathan Turley added that voters could well see it as 'bait-and-switch given the building expectation of huge cash awards.'
California Gov Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has signalled that he did not support cash reparations payouts, especially when the Golden State is struggling with a $38 billion budget shortfall.
While popular among black Americans, the other groups who would foot the tax bill are less keen. A survey last year of 6,000 registered California voters found that only 23 percent supported cash reparations, while 59 percent were opposed. Public attitudes have only hardened since then.
Conservatives are pushing back against all types of DEI efforts and affirmative action policies.
Giving a leg-up to one group inevitably means another loses out, the critics say.
The filing on Friday in Fulton County Superior Court by DA Fani Willis has confirmed what we all suspected to be true. She admitted to an ongoing relationship with her handpicked lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade in the Election Interference RICO case. At least our friends at the AJC and national media can now stop adding a caveat of "if true" every time the subject comes up.
Any practicing attorney (such as myself) can tell you the moral and ethical boundaries to which we swear allegiance should never be crossed. We know full well that even the APPEARANCE of a conflict of interest is enough to derail justice. Not only was there an appearance of a conflict, we now know there WAS a conflict. This gives an appearance of financial motivation for both Willis and Wade. All the while our friends in the media cheered the process along for three years with fawning admiration about the "slow, careful, and methodical" nature of the investigation.
Additionally, Attorney Andee Hastings, representing Mr. Wade’s estranged wife, sat down with WXIA for an extended interview. In that interview Ms. Hastings claimed Mr. Wade stonewalled the court of their request for any and all documents. She also claimed his employment as Special Prosecutor was unknown until they saw him on television the night Ms. Willis announced the indictment. If true, this raises serious ethical questions.
Ms. Hastings also asserted that she felt threatened by Ms. Willis after requesting her deposition. She said, "I was astonished that she (Willis) would make that assertion against an individual (Hastings), a fellow member of the bar... if we proceeded with this deposition we would be prosecuted criminally for it. That’s how I took it." The conflict of interest regarding Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade is just the tip of the iceberg of troubling allegations we learned last week.
The United States House of Representatives has now subpoenaed Ms. Willis after a whistleblower came forward with audio recordings apparently proving Ms. Willis’ knowledge of misuse of federal funds. According to the Daily Caller News Foundation, Ms. Willis fired the whistleblower shortly after bringing the issue to her attention.
But that’s not all...
The Washington Free Beacon published a documented report that Willis’ office paid at least $10,000 of taxpayer funds to New York City Public Relations Firm "Critical Mention" to monitor the public profile and image of DA Willis. Documents in the WFB report show Ms. Willis' office made initial contact on February 1, 2021. Ten days before she announced the investigation.
But that’s not all...
We learned in court that the Fulton County DA’s office was in contact with the Biden White House during the course of their investigation after denying any coordination with federal officials.
Now we find ourselves with four separate investigations at the local, state, and federal levels into what is becoming clear to be widespread mismanagement by Willis’ office since her inauguration in 2021. Meanwhile, the streets of Atlanta remain unsafe. The county jail looks like something you’d see in a third world country. The backlog of cases in Fulton County remains long. It’s becoming clearer by the moment that Ms. Willis was not prepared for this position. Not ethically, not administratively, not morally.
One thing Ms. Willis said in her filing is actually truthful, this is a circus. A circus she built by her attempts to criminalize politics, interfere with the 2024 General Election, build her own national profile, and make her friends (her word) wealthy with taxpayer funds.
This entire case should be dismissed or at the very least be removed from the Fulton DA’s office.
Ms. Willis should resign and a more qualified individual should be elected to administer justice to the citizens of Fulton County.
[Zero] While the House has gone full 'Israel or Bust', the Senate has come up with a $118 billion bipartisan agreement which would allow 1.5 million illegals to enter the US every year, allocates $2.3 billion towards NGOs and other organizations which traffic them, gives $14.1 billion in security assistance to Israel, and a whopping $60 billion in support to Ukraine.
Making the unlawful, lawful. Just WTF? Just WTF is this ?
#8
The Republic is dead. What we're determining now is what comes next. Our leaders have simply decided to end the experiment. This scenario I did not see coming, where our entire pol structure simply decides that the era of the Orange Man was the signal to chuck it all aside. Discovery phase is gonna be lit.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
02/05/2024 10:52 Comments ||
Top||
#9
One thing in the new bill the media isn't covering.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
02/05/2024 12:28 Comments ||
Top||
#10
^^^#9
Essentially making every legal challenge to immigration linked solely to the DC court-perhaps the single most far-left demokrat judicial stronghold in the nation!
#1
SCOTUS made the judicial decision to count all population not just citizens for apportionment. Well to another muck up by the life sitting judiciary.
[WND] As the State Department weighs its options on the possible U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza, Speaker Mike Johnson and several other prominent human rights advocates called for a greater commitment to protect the Israeli and Jewish people from antisemitism and violence both here in the U.S. and abroad. Nothing escapes him.
Johnson on Wednesday addressed the annual International Religious Freedom Summit, a bipartisan gathering of coalition leaders, nonprofits, and human rights activists supporting the right of all individuals worldwide to worship in the faith of their choice or not to worship at all.
"Sadly, the same antisemitism that led to the Holocaust is now being spread through new tools and once again rearing its ugly head," the Louisiana Republican told the audience. "Since Hamas slaughtered thousands of Israeli citizens on October 7, we’ve seen a frightening and seemingly coordinated rise of antisemitism, including here on our own shores, and it’s been alarming." Solutions, remedies, actions required? No, he didn't mention any.
All those who value religious pluralism, he said, need to demonstrate their solidarity with the Jewish people.
[Gateway] On Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was on ABC’s This Week with Democrat operative George Stephanopoulos to discuss the 2024 election.
Jeffries represents New York’s 8th Congressional District.
"As we enter into the campaign season, the American people are beginning to focus on President Biden’s incredible track record of results," Jeffries absurdly claimed.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[GA GOP] - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[Gateway] On Sunday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was on ABC’s This Week with Democrat operative George Stephanopoulos to discuss the 2024 election..JPG)
