I have been accused of being a paid shill for COVID vaccine companies so many times that I must have gotten some income from it, right? Right??!?

America’s schools are facing a huge shortage of qualified teachers. There’s no clear data on how many teacher shortages we have nationally, but it’s massive.

The Nevada State Education Association estimated that roughly 3,000 teaching jobs remain unfilled across the state. Illinois reported in January >2,040 teacher openings were either empty or filled with a “less than qualified” hire. And in the Houston area, the largest five school districts are all reporting 200-1,000 open teaching positions.

To combat this, counties and states are trying different approaches. Rural school districts in Texas are switching to four-day weeks this fall due to lack of staff. Florida is asking veterans with no teaching background to enter classrooms. Arizona is allowing college students to step in and instruct children.

And who loses in all this? Obviously the kids, who won’t benefit from experienced and skilled teachers.

Teaching is hard. And under immense scrutiny these days. Few other professions have so many people who seem to think they know how to do the job better than those who’ve studied and gained hands on experience. Because teaching isn’t just about subject knowledge, but how to help others learn, how to build curriculum, how to adapt learning styles, how to engage different students, and a huge amount of empathy.

But it’s not just the kids who will suffer.

To compete in the economy of tomorrow, we need educated citizens. Education has long been one of the things that attracts people to the US. And yet again we are failing our kids and ourselves.

It’s time we learn to invest more in ourselves and our communities to build better for tomorrow. Starting with investing more in our teachers and our schools.

After criticism for his repeated promotion of Replacement Theory - a root cause cited in the Buffalo shooter’s manifesto - Tucker Carlson unsurprisingly turned criticism into oppression and doubled down on his awfulness.

Cuz that’s his view of free speech: he can say whatever he wants, but any criticism is somehow oppressing his rights to free speech. Ignoring that it’s our free speech to say how destructive he is and that he has a moral liability from spreading his conspiracy theories and hate. He’s a mouthpiece for destruction.

The Buffalo shooter left a “manifesto” claiming hoods actions were motivated by The Great Replacement, a racist conspiracy theory that claims whites in America are being deliberately replaced by people of color.

Great Replacement messaging is prominent on Tucker Carlson and other Fox News shows, and repeated by several high profile Republicans congress people.

And now it’s leasing directly to the death of innocent Americans.

We must push back against this racist rhetoric.

One of the more disheartening political realities is the mainstreaming of Q Anon into one of the two major political parties of the US. Yes, the lines about pedophiles go back further to antisemitic and homophonic movements. But the recent surge of legislation is rooted in the Q Anon conspiracies about child trafficking and such that led to false stories like Pizzagate.

Each time you hear a politician pumping talking points about groomers and pedophiles you can hear them mainlining the repeatedly debunked conspiracies from Q Anon.

It’s scary.