Right-wing radical and enemy of public health Breanna Funke quit the Rapid City school board this month after less than six months of public service. In a statement read at the end of the November 2 board meeting, Funke said she had to move out of Area 2, the school board district in which she’d been elected, because she found Rapid City was not the safe haven she thought it would be when she moved from Kentucky for Freedom™:
We are moving out of my school board area, because I refuse to live in a home that robs my peace of mind, and keeps my family and I from attaining goals that we have set.
My neighborhood has become increasingly unsafe. My heart goes out to those who live in even worse areas of town. I commend out police force and their efforts, but it is out of control. We have experienced multiple murders down the street, gang shoot outs right outside our door, and multiple interactions with aggressive homeless people. I don’t think anyone knows what the solution is, but I know things need to change [Breanna Funke, written statement, read aloud at end of Rapid City school board meeting, as documented in RCAS draft school board minutes, 2021.11.02].
Funke also suggested that she found serving on the board because issues were too complicated for her absolutist right-wing mindset:
I will say that one of my flaws as a human being is the tendency to be very black and white, with no room for gray areas. Tonight was a perfect illustration of one of the many learning experiences I have had while serving on the board [Funke, 2021.11.02].
Funke’s reference to “tonight” serving as “a perfect illustration” of a “learning experience” is curious: given that she prepared her statement before the meeting (I doubt she composed these six paragraphs during the meeting), how could she anticipate that the meeting would perfectly illustrate her “learning experiences”? The paragraph reads more like a parting shot of veiled frustration (hey, Breanna, and all Trumpists: why can’t you just say exactly what you mean instead of playing word games?) at the board anticipating that the board backed away from her black-and-white proposal to cancel the board’s membership in the Associated School Boards of South Dakota over her perception that the ASBSD was improperly supporting the federal government’s efforts to check her base’s nationwide campaign of domestic terrorism against public schools.
Funke’s departure has allowed the Rapid City school board to become more black and less white: on November 30, the board picked Troy Carr from among six candidates to replace Funke and swore him in December 7.
Troy Carr is pastor at Faith Temple Church in Rapid City. (Hey, which it is: temple or church?) His people call him not just Pastor but Bishop, even though his degrees are in business, not divinity. (But hey, Paul’s only credential when he went off to build his breakaway fringe one-off congregation was his certificate from the Tarsus Institute of Tent Technology, so go ahead, do your thing, FTC.)
The Rapid City Journal reports that “Carr’s appointment was met with applause, and a spirit of calm seemed to permeate the short meeting” on November 30. But Carr is Gordon Howie’s pastor, so I’d suggest that parents, students, and teachers fighting for science, fact, and sensible policymaking won’t feel calm for long.
Consider Carr’s opinion that LGBT kids are doing the devil’s work. In a July 2014 interview with his fellow Faith Temple Churchinarian Howie, Carr complained that he had read that there were more applications for gay pride parades in more cities in the country and wishes there were more applications for RW Schambach/Oral Roberts-style Christian tent revivals. (Tents, Paul… it’s all coming together….)
Carr goes on to say, “…we need to obviously do more, because the devil is not ashamed about promoting what belongs to him.”
Howie immediately follows up with, “…you talk about the gay pride parades—it’s very clear that God commands us to love the sinners… but loving the sinner doesn’t mean condoning the sin.”
“Exactly, exactly,” says Carr. He talks about Jesus choosing not to stone the woman caught in adultery and exhorts his fellow believers, “Let’s come from the approach of loving the sinner and hating the sin.”
“And when we talking about loving the sinner,” says Howie, “it really is loving to give them the truth so that they have an opportunity to choose.”
“Correct,” says Carr amid Howie’s sentence. “Correct.”
Read Rapid City school board member Carr’s words carefully, kids: he responds with dismay to displays of gay pride because he views them as the devil’s shameless promotion of what belongs to him. He agrees with parishioner Gordon Howie’s position that he properly shows his love for homosexuals by telling them they are sinning and that their homosexuality is a choice that they can correct.
Pastor Carr says he plans to run for election to the Area 2 seat in the June special election. Let’s hope a strong candidate rises to foil his election and prevent him from practicing on the school board much more of what he preaches.
“it really is loving to give them the alternut reality truth so that they have no choice but to follow orders
There, I ficks tit for Howie..” This is the real truth.
Ms. Funke, like so many of the Blue State Refugees, didn’t do due diligence – or probably even asked a single question – before moving to Rapid City or she would have noted the high crime rate earlier.
Meanwhile, God help Rapid City, with what seems like an endless parade of MAGA / Trump Christians moving there and taking over their civic institutions. You’re not going to have much “civic” left when they’re done.
Just say it: radical christianic terrorism.
From Sheila Kennedy’s blog 12/11/21…. What magats want taught in publlc schools
How do you justify attacks on accurate education without admitting that your motivation is protection of White Supremacy?
Thanks are due to the Williamson County, Tennessee, chapter of Moms for Liberty for once again clarifying what the “critical race theory” (CRT) uproar is really about. We can say until we’re blue in the face that critical race theory is a graduate-level school of thought not taught in K-12 schools, and along comes an anti-CRT group to show that what they really object to is any teaching that shows that racism is or has ever been a real thing.
The group, run by a woman whose children do not attend public school, filed a complaint with the Tennessee Department of Education claiming that some texts being taught to grade-school students violate the state’s new law against teaching about “privilege” or “guilt” or “discomfort” based on race or sex. The texts? Books for second-graders including Martin Luther King, Jr. and the March on Washington and Ruby Bridges Goes to School, along with Separate is Never Equal and The Story of Ruby Bridges.
Lest you think “Moms for Liberty” isn’t racist to the core, the book they recommend to replace “Ruby Bridges” was written by one W. Cleon Skousen, a conspiracy theorist and John Birch Society supporter. It characterizes ‘black children as ‘pickaninnies’ and American slave owners as the ‘worst victims’ of slavery, and claims the Founders wanted to free the slaves but that “[m]ost of [the slaves] were woefully unprepared for a life of competitive independence.”
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Mr. Howie is the original overgodder, who does not pay his debts in a timely fashion. Mr. Howie, keep your god out of my government or I will bring my government into your church. I may even attend this week and heckle from the back pew.
Eve makes a good point: Funke moves to Rapid because Noem promises “Freedom™”, then is disappointed when her simplistic radical thinking on the school board doesn’t have an impact on any of the real problems the community faces. The Funke cabal’s efforts to resist public measures and “critical race theory” while tactly promoting domestic terrorism aren’t doing anything to make Rapid City a safer place to live. Quite the opposite, actually.
The Funke phenomenon is hardly new.
When we bought the house in Spearditch in 1983 the sellers were Mike and Heidi O’Neill whose folks owned the big furniture store there. They had already been witnessing the dumbing down of western South Dakota and they left for the Bay Area.
The biggest change was about 1994 when Rich Harr left Homestake, started his real estate business and marketed Lawrence County to motorcycle clubs especially during the Sturgis Rally. Property prices skyrocketed and a building boom made some of us some real money.
Cocaine was everywhere and gambling brought even more. Property in Rapid City was cheap, the Banditos built a compound in Rapid Valley and now Nazis run everything: red state collapse on parade.
Any of this look familiar?
https://jbs.org/alerts/south-dakota/
Well, she beat my record for absconding from Area 2. I had a better reason: a job at double the salary.
She thinks the crime rate in Rapid is high. On a per capita basis, it’s actually quite a bit lower than when I lived in Rapid in the 1988-2001. The 90’s were a time of higher crime, and East and North Rapid had more than its share. The crime wave was set off by legalized gambling, which the Republicans encouraged. The big conservatives in the town were busy converting convenience stores into gambling parlors all along East North Street. When all you are selling is being able to pull a lever or push a button, you don’t need a lot of employees, so there was added unemployment to an already depressed area of town. Our nearby neighborhood was inundated with a lot of petty crime, but some murders, too. We didn’t just whine and move, though. We formed a neighborhood watch group that did did have an effect . We worked with police to move some drug houses and such out of the neighborhood. We tried to get the gambling houses shut down, or at least put under more regulation, but that industry had too much power. Meanwhile, conservatives were trying to shut down the strip joints, which had relatively little crime associated with their operation. Soon the East North area had a lot of title and payday loan outlets, two industries that had a lot of Republican support, because they fed the gambling businesses. The impact on the neighborhood was devastating. We lost a grocery store and other businesses. Fewer jobs, more misery and higher crime is what conservatives brought to my old Area 2 neighborhood.
It’s obvious that Ms. Funke grew up on The Question, Steve Ditko’s creation that came out of his even more black and white boy Mr. A. Oh the troubles that Ayn Rand has wrought, and I’m objective about it.
Years ago I had this art restorer ask me to make a head of Ayn Rand, he was going to have it cast in multiples and put in library’s. I didn’t know who she was but he knew her personally. I made the head, he gave me half the pay in cash. I called him about the rest of the pay after a couple of weeks and he said he changed the head, (it was in oil clay), so he reasoned that it wasn’t my work any longer so he wouldn’t pay me. That’s objectivism for you.
The other guy Carr, it goes way back, Howling Wolf’s mother refused anything from her son because he was playing the devils music. So it goes. I was always a Rolling Stone fan. It took the white English kids to establish the blues for white kids in America. It’s a cultural thing that must not be taught in schools.
When Garrison Keillor opened A Prairie Home Campanion in the Rapid City Civic Center Theatre on November 20, 1999 he cited a statistic that Pennington County has the highest per capita gun ownership in the United States. A nervous chuckle rolled through the audience.
Theodore Roosevelt enabled the Klan, who enabled the Birchers who enabled the TEA movement who enabled the Trumpettes like Funke.
Mexican nationals were already doing the skilled labor in the Hills when I left for Montana in 2006 now they’re working for Hani Shafai and Jim Scull on unceded treaty lands. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.
Young Mr. Scull does a swell job all around the Hills, and he’s a good carrier of water for Elevate Rapid City. Some of those employees of his do pretty good work.
Jim Scull is often the first respondent at Mayor Steve Allender’s personal blog. Jim and Mary Scull are Future Fund recipients; also, they have given at least many thousands to the South Dakota Republican Party. J. Scull Construction Services has enjoyed years of tribal contracts mostly funded by the US Department of Education.