Expanding on positive work
FOR nearly 30 years, Positive Tomorrows has given homeless children in Oklahoma City a fighting chance, through education. A new school building will allow this good work to expand.
School officials, board members, donors, and current and former students were on hand Tuesday for groundbreaking on a 36,000-square-foot facility to be built at 901 N Villa.
When the project is completed, it eventually will allow more than twice as many children to be served. Positive Tomorrows has about 75 children in prekindergarten through fifth grade— and turns away roughly 100 kids each year due to lack of space. The new building will have room for students in grades 6-8, pushing potential enrollment to 180-plus.
The new building is the result of a $10.2 million fundraising campaign led by businessman Todd Lechtenberger, who is chairman of the school’s board of directors, and philanthropist Judy Love. The new school will have a gymnasium, library, spaces for art and music, a special education classroom and a storm cellar. Plans are to move in fall 2019.
“There have been lots of us who have been waiting for this day to come for many, many years,” said Susan Agel, the school’s president and principal. Positive Tomorrows, she said, “can make a huge difference in these little lives and that’s what we’re all about.”
We offer our congratulations on this successful campaign and salute Positive Tomorrows for its ministry.
Playing chicken
The CEO of Twitter made a huge mistake last weekend — he admitted he likes Chick-fil-A. For many liberals there is no greater sin, as Jack Dorsey found out. Dorsey tweeted a photo showing he had saved 10 percent on his order. “Boost @ChickfilA,” he tweeted. This prompted outrage because Chick-filA’s CEO opposes same-sex marriage. “You must love the taste of bigotry!” one person tweeted. “Why is Twitter boosting a notoriously antigay company during #PrideMonth?” wrote another. When former NBC and CNN personality Soledad O’Brien tweeted the same point to Dorsey about June being LGBT Pride Month, Dorsey — of course — apologized. “You’re right. Completely forgot about their background.” That “background” also includes providing exceptional service to everyone, and adhering to federal fair hiring practices. But those are no match for political orthodoxy.
Not so tolerant
Rhetorically, Democrats are more likely to proclaim the importance of tolerance and diversity. But the younger generation of Democrats appears less eager to put those beliefs into practice than it is to talk about their importance, based on the recent results of a poll of undergraduates at Dartmouth College. The poll found 55 percent of those Ivy League students who identified as Democrats would be less likely to befriend another student who had “political beliefs opposite of your own.” Just 12 percent of Republican students gave the same answer. The poll found 22 percent of Democratic students at Dartmouth didn’t even want to work on a class project with someone who didn’t share their political worldview, compared with 8 percent of Republicans who answered that way. In short, tolerance and diversity are great, but not if it means stepping outside the liberal bubble.
Digging the hole deeper
We recently noted that former President Bill Clinton has not come to terms with today’s zeitgeist regarding sexual harassment and how that affects public perception of his career. Clinton is well known for accusations of sexual harassment, both proven and alleged. Well, he continued to dig the hole deeper with recent comments regarding former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who resigned from office after being accused of groping women, and was once photographed acting as though he was about to grope a sleeping female colleague. In a PBS interview, Clinton said the allegations against Franken represented “a difficult case,” adding, “I think the norms have really changed in terms of, what you can do to somebody against their will …” Clinton later partially walked back that comment, but many suspect his initial comment reflected his true thinking: If grabbing an unconscious woman’s breasts is wrong, he doesn’t want to be right.
Seattle tax fight
In May we wrote about the Seattle City Council’s plan to impose a “head tax” of about $275 per employee each year. The tax would be imposed only on companies with $20 million or more annually in taxable gross receipts. Amazon, which would pay millions in new taxes, responded by halting planning on a massive construction project scheduled in Downtown Seattle and warned other local company jobs could be on the line. The council passed the tax anyway on May 14. But this week Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and seven of the nine city council members released a statement saying they had reconsidered and would repeal the tax. This occurred even as tax opponents announced they had gathered sufficient signatures to put a repeal measure on the ballot. Even in liberal Seattle, it seems, there’s a limit to citizens’ support for the “tax and spend” mantra.
Sanford’s strange career
The long, strange political career of Mark Sanford may have ended this week. Sanford, a Republican, first served several terms in the U.S. House then eight years as South Carolina governor. Initially known as a true budget hawk, he became better known for erratic personal behavior. In 2009, as governor, Sanford disappeared for a week. It turned out he was having an affair with a woman in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After his divorce, Sanford became engaged to his Argentinian girlfriend, then broke up with her via a 2,000word announcement on Facebook, then reportedly reunited with her again. In 2013, he won a low-turnout special election for a U.S. House seat, but this week he was ousted in a primary. Some political commentators argue Sanford lost due to anti-Trump statements he has made, but it’s a safe bet his pattern of bizarre behavior also played a role.
Coarse culture wars
One thing President Trump’s critics note is that the man is often crass, and they reasonably argue this has coarsened our national culture. Yet Trump’s opponents aren’t covering themselves in glory on this front, as was shown at Sunday’s Tony awards when actor Robert De Niro earned a standing ovation for a non sequitur F-bomb attack on Trump while introducing a music act. Conservative critics of Trump’s rhetoric will have no problem criticizing De Niro’s antics, but one suspects many left-wing Trump critics will remain silent, or even try to defend him. We’re among those who dislike Trump’s use of coarse language and rude comments, which are not befitting a president. But his political opponents are wrong if they believe such comments are the key to Trump’s success, and that their path to regaining power lies in a game of crude-behavior one-upmanship.