School Counselors Push Critical Race Theory While Small Businesses Face New Burdens

On this Martin Luther King Day broadcast from January 16, 2023, Kim Monson examines how the American School Counselor Association has become a vehicle for pushing critical race theory and transgender ideology in schools, while also exploring the mounting pressures facing Colorado small businesses from new regulations including the Family Leave Insurance program.

Colorado’s War on Small Business

Start listening at 72:20 – Hour 2

Continuing with economic policy, Susan Kochevar, owner of the historic 88 Drive-In Theater, joins Kim to discuss the mounting regulatory burdens crushing Colorado small businesses. Kochevar explains how the new Family Leave Insurance program, which began collecting payroll deductions in January 2023, threatens to destabilize small business operations.

Kochevar notes that employers must collect 0.45% from employees and match it, paying into a state-run fund. The program allows employees to take up to eight weeks of leave, with a government board determining who qualifies. For a small business with only a few employees, having multiple staff members take leave simultaneously could collapse operations entirely.

“Small businesses are absolutely being strangled, just strangled. And that’s by design.”

— Susan Kochevar, Owner, 88 Drive-In Theater

The discussion also covers how economic development programs pick winners and losers, offering tax breaks to new businesses while established local businesses continue paying full rates. Kochevar emphasizes that if lower taxes help attract new businesses, those same lower rates would benefit existing businesses that have demonstrated stability and community commitment.

Exposing the School Counselor Indoctrination Machine

Start listening at 30:43 – Hour 1

In this segment, Alvin Liu of Courage is a Habit joins Kim to expose how the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) has transformed from guidance counselors into purveyors of woke ideology. Liu explains that his organization attended ASCA’s annual conference and collected videos, PowerPoints, and handouts that reveal counselors are the largest purveyors of transgender ideology in schools.

Liu details how Social Emotional Learning (SEL) serves as a delivery system for critical race theory. Terms like “empathy” and “responsible decision-making” sound innocuous but are taught through an ideological lens. He explains that empathy training conditions girls to accept biological males in their bathrooms and locker rooms, while responsible decision-making teaches white children they must vote for reparations due to their supposed privilege.

“Social emotional learning is a great scam because the moment you say the word mental health, everybody goes, oh, yeah, of course. But that’s the Trojan horse. And that’s why our schools look the way they do.”

— Alvin Liu, Courage is a Habit

Liu also exposes how in-class surveys data-mine children under the guise of measuring school climate. These surveys, given through an “equity lens,” manipulate results to justify more CRT content, more LGBTQ representation, and more social justice programming. When parents push back, administrators claim the changes are “evidence-based” using this manipulated data.