Local Church And State Implications: Busing, Vouchers, And Politics

[0:00] Music.

[0:04] We give an update to a school busing dispute that has church and state implications. Speaking of public schools, what does the data show for Ohio’s expansion of school vouchers? And finally, how did Ohio’s recent primary election day turn out for the conservative racists?

[0:23] Music.

[0:24] I’m Doug Berger. And this is Secular Left.

[0:39] Probably at least two years ago, I covered a story. It was a lawsuit that had been filed by a couple of families in the Sylvania School District, which is a suburb of Toledo, concerning the bus transportation for their elementary age students or children. And they were being bused to their Catholic private school on the other side of town. And the families were upset because the children had to get on the bus at like six o’clock in the morning, five, or they had to get up at five 30 and get on the bus. It was very early for somebody in the elementary school. Cause usually elementary school kids don’t go to school that early, Usually. And so they were upset that, you know, they had tried to work with the school district to get accommodation, better accommodation for their kids. And the reason being, because in Ohio, under state law, public school districts are required to transport all school aged children to their schools.

[1:50] And it doesn’t go into details about how to do that, but because the school districts get money from the state to not only pay for the buses, but to provide the transportation, that’s part of the deal. I don’t particularly agree with it, but that’s part of the deal.

[2:11] And so Sylvania School District, along with other school districts in our state, are having real trouble coming up with drivers, bus drivers, because it’s a special breed. I’m telling you, you don’t work the whole day. Usually it’s supposed to be retired people. You have to have a CDL to drive a bus and you’re dealing with all these kids several, you know, a couple of times a day. So you know more power to them i tip my hats to bus drivers uh because i don’t think i’d had the patience to do it and uh so a lot of school districts have been having problems especially after the pandemic after the covid 19 hit um and i think because a lot of the people that would have been bus drivers decided not to do it anymore because of the covid or maybe they They passed away and they weren’t available. And so Sylvania had to redo their bus routing. And come to find out during this lawsuit period that this lawsuit had come out in 2022, come to find out that these Catholic families had actually been getting a special deal from the school district, their own bus route, which went away because they had to reallocate their resources.

[3:41] So basically you had little John and Tina Q Public getting on the bus with teenagers, going to the high school and being dropped off and then getting on another bus to go to their Catholic school. And the parents did not want that to happen. And one, they didn’t think the kids should be getting up that early. And second, they didn’t want them riding with teenagers, you teenagers, whatever. And and they thought that the school district should do something different so that they would take them from their house to directly to the school.

[4:20] And the school district was like, you know, we can’t do that. So they fought. So the parents filed a lawsuit in Lucas County Common Police Court, I believe it was. And in the initial ruling, the judge that they got agreed that the kids had were getting up too early, which she made that decision without any evidence that that it was bad for kids or anything like that. And ordered the school and the parents to work on a plan. And that didn’t happen.

[4:56] So they wanted to continue the lawsuit. Well, the school district decided, well, and the other part of the lawsuit, besides the kids getting up too early, riding with teenagers, ew, was that they claimed that it violated their First Amendment rights to freedom of religion because they were being treated differently than other people that were not Catholic, or I guess, or not, that weren’t religious, or something like that. And so, you know, they were going to continue the lawsuit, and the school district decided to request that it be moved to federal court, because it was dealing with First Amendment issues, and any time you deal with civil rights, usually you want to move it to a federal court. Well, I guess the parents decided, hey, you know, that’s going to be dangerous for us because we might get a bad ruling, so they dropped their lawsuit. So then they refiled in September of 2022, tried to get a class action status to include everybody, not just the two Catholic families that were complaining, but all of the families that have their children transported to non-public private schools.

[6:21] But then they still included religious freedom questions, but they applied it to the Ohio Constitution, which has a little bit more strict religious freedom clause in the Ohio Constitution. Constitution. So that’s how it was. And so I’ve been following this thing, and I noticed that they were going to have a preliminary hearing in December. This is September 2022. They were going to have a preliminary hearing by December of 2023, and they were going to have to have the evidence and depositions and everything done by then. And then they were going to have another another hearing in March of this year, 2024. That’s a long time. These lawsuits take a long time. And I’m thinking, are these kids still in school? Is this going to be moot because these kids aren’t in school anymore? But that’s how civil rights cases work sometimes, is they take a long time.

[7:30] So on the week of March the 19th, there was a ruling issued in this case, finally.

[7:41] This happened on Tuesday, March the 19th, which also happened to be primary day here in Lucas County Lucas County Judge Stacy Cook ruled that the Sylvania City School District bus transportation plan for students of non-public schools Doesn’t violate Ohio law or the Ohio Constitution.

[8:02] And one of the questions that it was asking was that the parents thought it was unlawful because it violated Ohio law and violated the Equal Protection and Religious Freedom Clauses of the Ohio Constitution.

[8:17] And in the ruling, the judge stated, The evidence submitted by Plano’s consists of several affidavits by the parties and a non-party spouse. These affidavits recite that they choose Catholic education because of their personal Catholic Catholic faith. The affidavits also recite the various inconveniences the plaintiffs and their children face because of the district’s transportation scheme. However, the court finds that plaintiffs have offered no evidence of any coercive effects on their religious practice. There is no evidence that the transportation plan has compelled plaintiffs to do anything anything forbidden by their religion or that it has caused them to refrain from doing something required by their religion. Plaintiffs have also not offered any evidence that the transportation plan has compelled them to affirm or disavow a belief forbidden or required by their religion. Accordingly, the court finds that plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate any coercive effect upon their religious practice. us. The plaintiffs have therefore failed to show that defendants’ transportation plan violates their right to free exercise of religion under the Ohio Constitution.

[9:33] And so, and that’s when I started initially talking about it, you know, that is one of the arguments, rebuttals that I made. Is just because a little kid has to get up at 5.30 in the morning and ride a bus with teenagers, ew, and get dropped off at a central location, get on another bus, and go to their school doesn’t keep them from being Catholic, doesn’t prevent them from practicing their Catholic faith.

[10:09] You know, it would be different if they had to attend an evangelical Christian church service before they could be taken to their school. Then you would have a problem. But because the judge found, and the evidence also showed, that it did not keep them from being religious, then it did not violate their free exercise of religion. You know, and that’s what a lot of these, some of these conservatives think is that anything that affects their church going or their praying or something is denying them their right to free exercise. And I did kind of, I did kind of blanch when they said that they claimed it caused them to refrain from doing something required by the religion. And that gets into the whole, you know, the website, having a website for same-sex marriages, and that’s supporting same-sex marriage, and that’s against my religion. I disagree with that kind of reasoning, but I can agree with this reasoning that the judge came up with.

[11:26] And so in this case, the Sylvania case, both parties had asked for a summary judgment since the facts in the case weren’t in dispute. You know, the school was saying, yes, we have to transport these kids. And the families were like, yes, they’re doing all this stuff. So usually that makes the case easier because then a judge can rule based on the documentation that they get and the depositions and all that. And it says, in the original lawsuit, the families asked the court for an injunction to order the school to, quote, fix, unquote, the transportation plan. Judge Cook said the court couldn’t do that. It could only rule if the district’s act was lawful and not unconstitutional. Now, it’s kind of a semantic thing, but if Judge Cook had ruled that the plan was unlawful and unconstitutional, then they would order the school to correct it. They wouldn’t tell them how to fix it. They would just say, you need to fix it. That’s usually how the civil rights case works.

[12:35] One of the ideas that the families had suggested was that the school district not transport high school kids to free up buses to transport their kids directly to their private school. And one of the things that the judge pointed out was that a corrective measure shouldn’t harm a third party. And that would harm people who were not involved in this lawsuit if the school district stopped transporting high school students.

[13:10] And as I mentioned before, the original lawsuit was dismissed by the parents on August 30th, 2022. They refiled September 16th, asked for class action status. And as the judge noted in the ruling this month, that the class action was never certified. So they’d asked for class action. I don’t know what the process is for that. I think you have to go and find people and they have to sign on to it and go to the judge and the judge says, yes, this is class action. They never went through that part.

[13:44] Now, what’s also interesting is a lawyer for the family had been a party to the original lawsuit, the one that was dismissed in August of 2022. But because they wanted that guy to be the lawyer for the families, he had to drop out of the lawsuit. So, instead of him being on there with his wife, and I’m assuming that because they said it was a non-party, well, a non-party parent, but he’s the lawyer and he’s a Perrysburg lawyer that has TV commercials occasionally. And so he dropped off the lawsuit. And so they interviewed him in the newspaper article about it. And they said that they were probably going to appeal the ruling. And so this is a very interesting case. And it’s a church and state case and one that was properly decided this time. And so I just wanted to give everybody a update on the case. For more information about any of the topics covered in this episode, check out our show notes at SecularLeft.us.

[14:59] Music.

[15:04] I’ve covered school vouchers previously in different episodes. The major voucher program we have here in Ohio is called EdChoice, which is a weird name. And the last time that it came up was that schools such as Washington local schools, which is near where I live, were losing millions of dollars to voucher students, students who left the district to go to a private school and took the money with them. Because at the time, I don’t know if this might, this is not the case now, but at the time, the education dollars that the state would provide per student, that’s how usually the schools are funded in the state, is the state money goes to school districts on a per student basis. Some are a few thousand dollars, Some of the higher-end income suburban school districts, they’re like $8,000 or $9,000 per student.

[16:20] And so this is money that is allocated based on student population. So if a student left a public school district to go to a private school, that money would leave the public school and be used for the voucher to give to the private school. And so a lot of these school districts that are already financially on the edge because of the underfunding by the state and having to depend on property taxes for funding, they couldn’t afford to lose this kind of money. So they complained, and there was a fix that was done to prevent that. And I think when they decided to expand the voucher program and make it a universal voucher program, they made sure that the public school wasn’t going to lose money. So what’s the problem then, Doug? Why do you hate vouchers? If the schools are not going to lose money, how come you hate vouchers? The premise of a school voucher, at least if you listen to the conservatives that support it or other people that support voucher programs, is that you’re trying to help children in broken public schools, typically urban public schools.

[17:47] To get out of that broken system and into a private school where the education opportunities are going to be better. The theory being that if their education opportunities are better and they learn, then they’ll be less likely to be a burden on the system when they become adults. It’s a good premise. That’s not the only reason why people support vouchers, but that’s That’s what they tell people to try to get voting support for it.

[18:22] It’s still transferring money that could be better spent to fix any broken public schools or to properly fund the public schools that we have than to give it to third-party private schools that aren’t under the same oversight that public schools are. Because public schools have a large oversight apparatus because you have your local school boards that are elected by voters. They watch the schools. Then you have the state because they set curriculum and policies and things like that. They watch it because they’re giving you state money. So they have a say. These private schools, they don’t have any of that. Oh, Oh, and teachers unions, you have unions that also operate in public schools so that that teachers are treated fairly and paid adequately. You don’t have any of that in a private school system. And it’s not required anymore.

[19:28] And so you’re transferring public tax dollars from from an entity that is has a lot of oversight by the voter to one that does not have any. And and this has happened before. We had this this online school system called ECOT. And they sucked up millions of state tax dollars and had nothing to show for it. And people went to, I believe people went to jail because of the corruption, because these people that were running this online school would take the money, but they had no student, you know, they couldn’t justify what kind of money that they were spending. Anyway, so last year they passed a law here in Ohio that allowed for universal vouchers. This has been a long time goal of conservative Christians and conservative political people to have these universal vouchers that didn’t have any strings attached. You could use them anywhere and anyone. You didn’t have to have a certain income.

[20:36] And they called it that the parents could make school choices, their proper school choices. And so they had some people at cleveland.com and some other news organizations looked into it. And they looked into seeing what the effect of the vouchers are on the public schools. And so what they thought that they would see would be a huge increase in the use of vouchers. And then they would see a sizable reduction in population, student populations in the public schools as the people that get the vouchers then would move to private schools. And what they found out was that was not the case. Actually, and they did this study, they looked at all the school systems in Ohio. They found that the vouchers were going up multiple times. Like in one year, one place had like 39 vouchers. And then the next year, They had 700 vouchers. And they had maybe 20 people leave. So 700 of those vouchers were going to students who were already in a private school somewhere.

[22:03] A majority of these EdChoice vouchers are being scooped up by families already in private schools. And David Pepper, who was formerly in charge of the Ohio Democratic Party, has a good article about this on his substack. And he has some details from these news reports. For example, Rocky River is an affluent area. Private vouchers went from 16 in February 2023 to 309 this year. The public school student shift was 22 people left. left. So 309 vouchers were being used, but only 22 people left the public school. That means that, you know, 200, my math is bad, 290 some odd vouchers are going to students who are already in private school. Bay Village vouchers went from 13 to 229. Public school student shift was 30 people left, all right? Now, here you go. This is going to give you an example. Strongsville, which is another affluent area, vouchers went from 61 to 791.

[23:27] Vouchers. Public school student shift, Strongsville gained 17 students. So all 791 of those vouchers went to students who were already attending private school. And the other thing that they found out that the vouchers disproportionately were helping people who could already afford to go to private school. school.

[23:56] The median income in the state’s median income is $41,132.59. And some of these communities that were having these increased voucher uses boasted more than twice the median income. It says communities with less wealth, both rural and urban, are seeing little to no voucher growth.

[24:25] So David Pepper also put in some information from Steve Dyer, who analyzed the data, said more new voucher recipients come from families making more than $150,000 a year than families making less than $120,000 a year. There are more new vouchers flowing to subsidize private high school students whose families make as much as $250,000 a year or more than there are flowing to subsidize private high school students whose families make less than half that much. And an astounding $1.3 million of your tax dollars went to subsidize the private school tuitions of families who make more than $250,000 a year.

[25:15] On the regular EdChoice voucher, $242 million of the $272 million sent out to subsidize private school tuition went to families in the highest income brackets. That’s nearly nine out of every $10 going to subsidize private school tuitions to subsidize families who could already afford to send their kids to private schools. schools. Of the 32,236 new applications for EdChoice expansion, which used to be called the income-based voucher but isn’t anymore, a stunning 28,238 went to white students. Nearly 9 in 10 of the 44,839 new vouchers issued this year in all five voucher programs, programs. 33,874 went to white students, about three of every four.

[26:18] Finally, of those small percentage students who that did use a voucher to actually switch from public to private, the data has been clear that their scores actually fell precipitously. They are being subsidized to go to worse schools. And so that is why some rural Republicans in Georgia joined with Democrats in shooting down universal vouchers in Georgia, because it wasn’t going to help the rural communities. That need help. And then so Cleveland.com featured the story on the top of the front page when it first came out. They wrote an editorial.

[26:58] Pepper quotes, lacking conscious targeted efforts to make sure low-income Ohioans and poor-performing schools primarily benefited, Ohio’s EdChoice expansion as implemented was not the school choice program statehouse leaders promised. The data suggests instead it became a big taxpayer subsidies for those students already in private schools. That should outrage every Ohio taxpayer and every parent of students in struggling districts who were supposed to benefit. The editorial board then called on Ohio’s legislature to be true to its stated school choice motive, to rewrite the rules to guarantee that this money goes to children in underperforming schools, schools, possibly relying on state report cards to set the standard. And then Pepper makes the choice, makes the comment that the corrupt and gerrymandered Ohio legislature is being true to its actual goals. It is achieving exactly what it is intending. Many of them say this as directly.

[28:00] So, of course, they’re not going to rewrite the rules. The rules, non-rules are accomplishing their clear intent. And I agree with it because that was the whole intent was for these rich people to have the state subsidize their kids’ private school tuition. So that’s just one more thing that they don’t have to pay for. They don’t have to pay their proper taxes. And now they don’t have to pay for their kids’ education. And I think that that does a disservice to everyone here in the state of Ohio. This is Doug. While we take a short break between segments, I wanted to let you know about another way to get content from Secular Left. I started a sub stack. It will be a place to jot down some quick thoughts about something going on in the news or about some kind of political issue that may or may not show up in an episode of the podcast. I call this notepad of ideas, is Secular Left Nuggets, and you can find it at

[28:55] secularleft.substack.com. I hope you can check it out. Well, we just completed another primary election season here in Ohio where I’m at.

[29:08] We did have the racist, as I talked about in the last episode, had the racist Derek Marin get It picked to be the Republican nominee for the 9th Congressional District to run against longtime incumbent Marcy Kaptur.

[29:27] And he got 52% of the vote, but it was maybe 27,000 people. He got 27,000 Republican votes out of probably half a million voters in the 9th District, something like that. I think it’s about that number. So, so yeah, he got 52% of the vote, but it’s a small thing. And I had, you know, I have to tell people that sometimes just to walk them back from the ledge, you know, cause you know, we had this, uh, in a, uh, previous segment, I talked about free speech at city council and school board meetings. And, and some of my progressive friends freak out about these people and thinking, oh my gosh, you know, people are trying to take over the school board and everything. And I have to keep talking them back from the ledge and I have to keep telling them, I said, this is just a small subset of conservative people. This is like less than 10% of the population are extremist enough to want to ban books and take over school boards. they are the most vocal and the most active. So, I mean, they’re dangerous and we need to keep an eye out on them. But it’s not, you know, the planet’s not falling apart, put it that way.

[30:49] So then on the other side, on the left side, some of my progressive friends, you know, as we’re moving into the general election, because Trump, for whatever reason, Well, we know the reason. Grift and other shenanigans is going to most likely be the Republican nominee for president. He’s got enough delegates. And unless he’s in prison, he’s probably going to be campaigning this fall for the presidency. So and then President Biden more or less has enough delegates now that he’s probably going to be the nominee on the Democratic side.

[31:33] And so as we’re moving into the period where we’re starting the general election period, where we’re going to see a lot more campaigning and then you’re going to have the conventions this summer, and then more campaigning, I have quite a few of my progressive friends are very upset with Joe Biden. And the reason why they’re upset with Joe Biden is because of how he’s been handling the whole Israeli genocide of Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas terrorist attack on October the 7th. And the need for an immediate ceasefire and the U.S. Needs to stop giving Israel’s weapons to kill Palestinians, which is pretty much points that I agree with. But my progressive friends have taken it one step further.

[32:32] And there’s like two or three of them so far, and I’m sure there’s probably a lot more, that are saying that they’re probably not going to vote for Biden in November because of that. During the Michigan primary earlier this year, we had Rashida Tlaib, who represents the 12th congressional district of Michigan. She had promoted the voting, instead of voting for Biden in the primary to vote uncommitted to send a message. Ohio doesn’t have something like that. That’s just something unique to Michigan or some other states might have had that too. And the uncommitted got like 17,000 votes or something like that. I don’t know how much of a message that sent. But anyway, so that’s some of the reaction. But then, like I said, some of my progressive friends are saying that they’re probably not going to vote for Biden. And they get mad when you point out, well, if you don’t vote for Biden, that’s a vote for Trump.

[33:39] Unfortunately, some of these people that are saying that they’re not going to vote for Biden are privileged enough to be able to do that because they’re either white or they’re male, or both.

[33:53] Because like I’ve said in previous segments That, you know, for me I am a white cisgendered man It doesn’t matter to me which old guy gets elected, I’m good, I’m the default, So it’s really not going to really affect me too much I mean, there’s still some things about me That could possibly be affected The people that are going to be affected the most, if Trump is president again, it’s going to be women, minorities, Muslims, you know, everybody. Everybody that is marginalized is going to really not be happy for four more years. And I’ve said this before. I said, it’s not so much Trump, because he’s just an asshole, but it’s going to be the people that he hires that’s really going to make it bad. And so that’s why it upsets me every time I hear my friends talking about that they’re picking one issue out, and they’re not going to vote for Biden because of that one particular issue. It’s a good issue. I’m not saying that they should be upset. I am upset, too. I think the U.S. government should stop supporting Israel as long as they keep killing Palestinians.

[35:20] But that’s not going to keep me from voting for Biden because I’m afraid what’s going to happen to my friends and loved ones that aren’t privileged enough to where it doesn’t matter who gets the job. Okay. And so, you know, call that voting, shaming somebody for voting, not voting. I’m all there. I’m shaming you. if you do not vote because of this one particular issue that you normally would vote for the guy, I’m shaming you because you need to be shamed because you’re willing to throw out the feelings and rights of friends and loved ones, because you’re not getting your way on one particular issue.

[36:13] And the thing is, you know, I’ve read articles and some other news reports where President Biden is trying to rein in Israel. But there’s only really only so much they can do now. Now, progressives will say, well, they just need to stop selling weapons to Israel. And I’m like thinking, yeah, that’s the that’s an easy solution. But then you’ve got then you got the people the anti-semitism people that come up and talk about anti-semitism if you don’t support israel you’re anti-semitic you know so that’s that’s the other side of the coin that he has to do so he has to try to handle israel without pissing off uh.

[36:58] Necessarily the Jewish block of supporters, but, you know, people who support Israel. But it just really, it really angers me. And then I have a conservative friend who is expressing his support for Robert Kennedy Jr. Jr. Now, originally, Robert Kennedy, Jr. Tried to run as a Democrat because the Kennedy family is famously a Democratic family. And he originally tried to run for that. But Robert Kennedy, Jr. has some serious baggage. The most serious part, the reason that I’m not supporting him ever, is he’s an anti-vaxxer. He’s against vaccinations. And I don’t care. That is one issue. I will not vote for somebody. If you’re anti-science, if you dismiss the science, if you’re anti-vaxxer.

[38:02] That’s why I pretty much don’t vote for Republicans anymore. It’s because they just totally dismiss science or think that they know better than scientists. And so Robert Kennedy Jr., he decided to make that a plank on his platform, his anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. And so he got a lot of blowback from Democrat, establishment Democrats, so much so that he stopped. He dropped his campaign, his Democratic campaign, and he moved to this Republican front group called No Labels. And it’s funded by Republicans or Republican PACs and things like that. Because what they’re trying to do, what they think is going to happen is if you introduce a third party, especially if it’s a third party aligned closely to some of the stuff that Joe Biden does, that you’ll sap some of the votes from Biden, and that will increase the chances for Trump. And so that’s what we have here is no labels. Now, I’m telling you right now, Robert Kennedy Jr. Has no chance of winning the election in November. No chance. Because it’s either going to be Biden or it’s going to be Trump.

[39:23] The major parties have a lock on the election system.

[39:30] There’s only been a few third party candidates that have even made inroads. You know, we had John Anderson in 1980 who messed up Jimmy Carter real bad, even though Jimmy Carter kind of messed himself up quite a bit in his reelection bid. But John Anderson didn’t help. And then, of course, then we had Ross Perot, who ran a couple of elections.

[39:56] He he got some some juice, mainly because he was good, good press. He had a lot of sound bites and stuff. But the election system is just geared towards two major parties. So, you know, unless he’s got more than anti-vaccination stuff, Robert Kennedy Jr. Is not going to win. And it’s because of his anti-vaccination stance is I think pretty much why my conservative friend did support me. Because my conservative friend is one of those people that dismiss science and think that it was all a hoax and, you know, get in these arguments about wearing masks. And he’s like, well, people that wear masks still get COVID. And it’s like, you have to explain to them, unless you’re wearing a respirator, a mask isn’t going to keep you from getting sick. It’s going to keep other people from getting sick. You know, it keeps the stuff in so it’s not floating around. But anyway, yeah. So my conservative friend is supporting him, which I don’t understand.

[41:08] But I do know that this no-label group is being funded by some Republican PACs, and I’ll throw some information in the show notes about it. And like I said, they’re there to sap votes away from Joe Biden. They’re trying to dilute the Democratic vote or the Liberal vote Because they think they can And that’s not the case So it’s going to be interesting what happens this November, I am really, really nervous that Trump is still in the race I do know that, It’s mind-boggling that as many

[41:54] indictments as Trump has had and he’s been convicted of fraud already. He’s been convicted of sexual assault.

[42:06] And all the stuff that’s happening to him. Everybody knows that he incited the insurrection. The Colorado court determined that that was true. We’re still waiting on a Supreme Court decision on whether or not he has presidential immunity.

[42:27] Which is going to be an interesting decision, because one of the arguments that they used in that court case before the Supreme Court was the hypothetical, could a president use SEAL Team 6 to assassinate his political rivals? rivals. And Trump’s team argument is unless Congress impeaches him, then he has immunity from prosecution, even if he directs his military to commit murder of his political opponents. So it’s going to be interesting how that turns out through the Supreme Court. But it’s just It’s interesting that Trump has all these legal issues, and he is still running. And so, you know, the justice system is two-tiered. If you’re a rich white guy, it’s just an inconvenience. Your legal troubles are just an inconvenience. But if you’re a poor minority or a woman, and you’re in legal trouble, it can mean life or death. And that’s like, welcome to the United States.

[43:42] Thank you for listening to this episode. You can check out more information, including links to sources used, in our show notes on our website at secularleft.us. Secular Left is hosted, written, and produced by Doug Berger, and he is solely responsible for the content. Send us your comments, either using the contact form on the website or by sending us a note at comments at secularleft.us. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using Amplify Studio.

[44:29] Music.