When I asked you to respond to a poll about whether I should write less about Trump, one reader sent this comment that explained my own feelings very well. I would have added: “I will not work together to privatize public education or turn it into a profit-making enterprise.”
The reader wrote:
Several of my conservative friends have said that we should “work together” with the President and the Republican majority because they won the election and he is “everyone’s president.”
This is my response:
•I will not forget how badly he and so many others treated former President Barack Obama for 8 years…
•I will not “work together” to privatize Medicare, cut Social Security and Medicaid.
•I will not “work together” to build a wall.
•I will not “work together” to persecute Muslims
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•I will not “work together” to shut out refugees from other countries.
•I will not “work together” to lower taxes on the 1% and increase taxes on the middle class and poor.
•I will not “work together” to help him use the Presidency to line his pockets and those of his family and cronies.
•I will not “work together” to weaken and demolish environmental protection.
•I will not “work together” to sell American lands, especially National Parks, to companies which then despoil those lands.
•I will not “work together” to enable the killing of whole species of animals just because they are predators, or inconvenient for a few, or because some people like killing them.
•I will not “work together” to remove civil rights from anyone.
•I will not “work together” to alienate countries that have been our allies for as long as I have been alive.
•I will not “work together” to slash funding for education.
•I will not “work together” to take basic assistance from people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.
•I will not “work together” to get rid of common sense regulations on guns.
•I will not “work together” to eliminate the minimum wage.
•I will not “work together” to support so-called “Right To Work” laws, or undermine, weaken or destroy Unions in any way.
•I will not “work together” to suppress scientific research, be it on climate change, fracking, or any other issue where a majority of scientists agree that Drumpf and his supporters are wrong on the facts.
•I will not “work together” to criminalize abortion or restrict health care for women.
•I will not “work together” to increase the number of nations that have nuclear weapons.
•I will not “work together” to put even more “big money” into politics.
•I will not “work together” to violate the Geneva Convention.
•I will not “work together” to give the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi Party and white supremacists a seat at the table, or to normalize their hatred and racism.
•I will not “work together” to deny health care to people who need it.
•I will not “work together” to deny medical coverage to people on the basis of a “pre-existing condition.”
•I will not “work together” to increase voter suppression.
•I will not “work together” to normalize tyranny.
•I will not “work together” to eliminate or reduce ethical oversite at any level of government.
•I will not “work together” with anyone who is, or admires, tyrants and dictators.
•I will not “work together” to give less support to government employees.
•I will not “work together” to find ways for the billionaires to cheat the system.
•I will not “work together” to implement a hiring freeze at government agencies.
•I will not “work together” to suppress reporters’ right to ask questions the administrations does not like.
•I will not “work together” to bully any country, big or small.
•I will not “work together” to craft a message diminishing women and young adults.
•I will not support anyone who thinks its OK to put a pipeline to transport oil on Sacred Ground for Native Americans that would run under the Missouri River, which provides drinking water for millions of people. An accident waiting to happen.
This is my line, and I am drawing it.
•I will stand for honesty and respect for all living beings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My response to “he’s everyone’s president” to my conservative friends has been the following: Then why do all of his policies aimed at only those who voted for him?
This is the problem of the infallible businessman idea. Running a business and being a political leader are not the same thing. A political leader must serve everyone. Trump has clearly decided he will only serve those who agree with him. So, he’s my president if I’m his constituent. It has to go both ways.
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My political views run in the middle and I don’t like to claim Dem or Rep as my affiliation, but don’t you think the Dems were guilty of the same thing? Pushing their agenda at the expense of the GOP voters and what they wanted? It runs both ways and there has been very little compromise for a long time. Kinda makes people a little edgy or downright surly IMHO!
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No, I do not think that Democrats were guilty of the same things. When the Democrats controlled the Presidency and both branches of Congress, President Obama did everything humanly possible to reach out to Republicans and incorporate their ideas into the legislation he proposed. Many of these ideas from “across the aisle” made it into the ACA, the stimulus that prevented an economic depression, and more.
What President Obama and the people got in return for this attempt to be bipartisan was
* Mitch McConnell’s “Our first priority is to ensure that he’s a one-term president”;
* a complete stonewall on Senate confirmations that required the Democrats to change the rules to get anyone appointed to anything;
* Donald T***p’s birtherism even after a birth certificate was made public;
* shutdowns of the government;
* a refusal to consider a Supreme Court nominee; and
* lots, lots more.
The Republicans’ refusal to work with President Obama for eight friggin’ years is unprecedented in U.S. history. There is no equivalence. Not. Even. Close.
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A little history is necessary , to the detriment of the American people and the their representation through what had been perceived as the party of the people . The Democrats worked like obedient puppets with Ronald Reagan. Even though they controlled congress . Reasonably well with George Bush . By the time Clinton came to office the NDC had turned the Democratic party into a mainstream Republican party. While the Republicans continued their long journey to Trumpland . Bill Clinton’s 5 Major accomplishments were all high on the Republican agenda. Welfare Reform , the Crime Bill , the Commodities Futures Modernization act,. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall NAFTA, And abill that allowed Murdoch 9and other media giants) to expand exponentially.
For all that he spent 8 years of being fried and tried for every crackpot conspiracy they could come up with.Obama was obstructed on day one . Dismal democrats lose
not because they are progressive the lose because the are republican light.
I will not work with these ——— ———- to turn the nation back to the 1920s . i want my representatives to resist and obstruct till Trump gets the needle for Treason. What are the odds that a special prosecutor will be appointed, that Sessions will recuse himself . That’s why we have all the leaks they are worried that the truth will be buried.. If Republicans were faced with the same situation they would be marching on the White House with AK47s.
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I don’t want to return to life prior to the 1950’s, although I do think the 70’s and early 80’s were much “nicer” times to come of age (my opinion only). I don’t like what is happening. All I’m saying is that life/people are like Physics…..if you throw an object at wall it comes back at you with equal yet opposite force. There are too many people far right and far left that there is little room for compromise or playing nice politics across the aisle. There should be more compromise, less lies and more telling of the “whole” truth….. it’s been a problem since the Bill Clinton era. The people are tired of the children fighting on the playground.
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Lisa B, the big difference is that Trump is inexperienced, hateful, want to undermine the First Amendment, and doesn’t have a clue about foreign or domestic policy.
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Diane, I know that! It’s just that both sides of the aisle are standing there pointing fingers at the other. There is an impasse and no compromise….and has been this way for many years. Too many lies, mistruths and omissions have been committed by the people elected to rule our country and now the citizens don’t know who/what to believe. Both sides have shot themselves in the foot. It’s equal and opposite reaction that citizens are seeing/experiencing. I believe we are headed for a civil war within our own country if there isn’t some compromise soon.
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A president should be inclusionary with a goal of serving everyone and the best interests of the country. Trump is used to running his company like a dictator, and his policies are mostly exclusionary except for serving himself and the 1%. He does not know how to build consensus or compromise, and these skills are necessary in a democracy.
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Does he want anyone to “work with him”? All he does is insult people and complain. He’s still bashing Hillary Clinton and he’s been President for a month.
I haven’t seen this slightest indication that he has reached out to anyone beyond his base.
I love how it’s now the public’s job to “reach out” to these people. I think it’s supposed to work the other way.
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He does not represent the interests of a good percentage of even those who voted for him. And we really don’t know whether he has been a successful businessman or a successful celebrity.
Resit , obstruct and lets make the Feb 25th make the woman’s marchs look like a small town flee market.
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flea market
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It’s a flee market for the unregistered immigrants.
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Would someone send this to the federal government? CC DeVos and Jeb Bush:
‘Students in Ohio’s burgeoning full-time online charter schools perform far worse on state assessments than similar students in brick-and-mortar charter and regular schools, according to a new study from researchers at New York University and the RAND Corporation.
The schools, which deliver instruction entirely or primarily via the internet, tend to attract lower-income, lower-performing white students, then fail to provide those children with the supports they need, the study concluded.
“Students in Ohio e-schools are losing anywhere between 75 days and a full school year of learning compared to their peers in traditional public schools and brick-and-mortar charter schools,”
this is the reputation of online learning in Ohio. Bad. We’ve had it for 15 years. it isn’t new.
People oppose your ideas because you have bad ideas. We already know they’re bad. We live in these places where the experiments are conducted.
The reason it’s important to have someone in the federal government who actually enters or uses a public school is because they push this stuff without even looking at the results of their experiments. WE HAVE every ed reform gimmick in Ohio- all of it- FOR YEARS we have had this stuff. When DeVos says we oppose her ideas because we’re dumb Luddites who are wedded to the status quo that is NOT reality in these states.
Not new. Same old ed reform. Decades now.
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Everyone was shocked at how unhinged that press conference was so I looked and while it was certainly unhinged what it mostly was is whiny.
Donald Trump blames everyone else for his problems. And they are HIS problems. No one told him to hire the people he hired and none of us had anything to do with his weird relationship with the Russian government.
Whine, whine, whine. Some tough guy he turned out to be.
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“Obama left him with a mess.” He’s such a thin skinned whiner. Where we are now is so far above where we were in 2008. We were at the precipice of collapse, and I do give Obama and the Democrats credit for a recovery that has been better than the European countries that went the slash and burn route. We still have problems, but at least we are growing.
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The press conference was red meat for his base. Hate the media. Dishonest media. Mainstream media can’t be trusted. Trust only FOX and Breitbart and other rightwing websites.
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This is a cliche that stupid people say because they think it makes them sound high-minded and they’ve seen politicians say it on tv. Presumably, it’s conveying that when there’s “work” that everyone agrees must get done, then people should put aside petty, personal disagreements and get down to that work. The principle doesn’t hold when the disagreements aren’t petty or personal, but rather are about whether the “work” must, in fact, get done.
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Interesting list. I guess the writer id not work together with the previous president on too much, either…
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Public schools in Ohio know why lower performing white students are going to the online charters. They go because it’s easier and they get less supervision. The teenagers THEMSELVES say this- they say they want to go to online school so they can graduate without summer school.
I don’t think they’re “listening” to public schools if no one at the US Department of Ed knows this.
This idea that they’re taking online school so they can access courses that aren’t “available” in rural schools or “create” original content is just nonsense and was wholly created by the ed tech industry helped along by people in government who are apparently vulnerable to sales pitches.
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I prefer to answer that we are working together with him.
We work together with him when we take action to respond to his unilateral actions. It’s his responsibility to hear our message and take our views into consideration, if he’s to be the president of us all.
We work together with him when we point out empirical facts that contradict the obvious lies that he and his surrogates insist on trying to sell. It’s his responsibility to accept that he may have been ill-informed, and to stand corrected.
We work together with him when we insist he appoint leaders who want to run, not destroy, Federal agencies. It’s his responsiblity to be honest about his, and their, intentions–and do the right thing.
We work together with him when we use the tools that are available to us as citizens of a democratic republic. It’s his responsibility to work with us, not to stubbornly insist that he can do no wrong and assault those publicizing his destructive foolishness.
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Also, I hate to nitpick, but besides signing unconstitutional executive orders and complaining about media, has Donald Trump actually done anything?
He doesn’t seem to be getting a whole lot done. I seem to hear him talking constantly, incessantly, every day he’s the focus of news, but it all seems to be about him and his personal complaints. Maybe he should drop out for a while and do some work.
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He flies to Florida a lot.
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Chiara, he has done a few things. He signed legislation to allow coal companies to dump coal waste into streams. He is also signing a rollback of regulations that prevented hunting predators in wildlife refuges.
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No doubt the writer’s “conservative friends” were appalled at how Republicans in Congress – as openly stated by Mitch McConnell – did everything they could to block legislation proposed by President Obama, which has led to their desire for “unity.”
It’s very high-minded of them.
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What tends to be forgotten is the “You’ll get to read it after you’ve passed it…”
No one seems to remember Schumer’s statement about doing everything possible to oppose legislation from trump
There seems to be a lot of tit-for-tat going on in the national kindergarten rooms
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Rudy, STOP, HALT and DESIST from formulating an equivalency between the two parties and between Obama and Trump. They are not equivalent, NOT. EVEN. CLOSE. The GOP is a far far right wing radical movement, it’s off the charts, off the rails. Trump is an unhinged narcissist, demagogue and incompetent megalomaniac. He should be removed from the presidency posthaste but sadly that’s not going to happen yet. I am certainly not saying that the Democrats are faultless saints, they are a big disappointment; they are too gutless and spineless and too ready to sell out to the big spenders. Obama’s educational policies were an abomination but he’s looking like a world class statesman when compared to Trump.
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If I were on your side, I would say the same thing. I am, however, not on your side as far as the legitimacy of comparing SAME kind of actions. For me, that is a legitimate process. It exposes the double standards used.
I’m anything but a trump fan. I am ashamed. I am worried about the next 2 years. Against my political leaning, I hope either Senate or House will be taken over by Democrats. Not both, because that would create even bigger problems (I know, hard to imagine).
But oranges are oranges.
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Joe,
Rudy is right. (Did I just say that?)
The democrats are GOP light and the GOP is a radical organization. Shame on BOTH parties. My relatives here have only voted Democrat, but they now see how far to the right the party has shifted, which is why they support Our Revolution and the Green Party.
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He is “everyone’s president”? Really? How? Hasn’t President Trump, in his constant preening, tweeting, and boasting, talked about “losers”? How, for example, do his verbal assaults on the Affordable Care Act, science, the environment, the intelligence community, the news media, Meryl Streep (for heaven’s sake!), and Senator Charles Schumer, just to name a few, make him “everyone’s president.” He’s more like a spoiled college boy who sits on his frat’s admissions committee, and uses it as a platform to ridicule others.
I mean, I hate to belabor the point, but I could go on ad nauseum about this flatly ridiculous trope.
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I have a problem with the fact that the writer did not at all state ,”I will not work with someone who wants to privatize, charterize, and voucherize public education!”
What gives?
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I like this list. It looks like it will be expanding every day.
In education, the techies are can no longer assume that E-rates for libraries and schools will be retained. Why?
The new FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, a Trumpster appointee has been against the current E-rate program since at least 2014. This program adds a surcharge to telephone bills in order to provide high speed Internet access to public libraries and schools. The program had been reshaped by Democrats to give priority to broadband and Wi-Fi among other telecommunications services, including some to rural areas. Pai is also working to reduce FCC spending on Lifeline, another universal service program.
According to Edweek, the percentage of schools meeting minimum federal requirements for connectivity had reached 77 percent, with a cost for bandwidth at $7 per megabyte per second.
In any case, as head of the FCC, Pai appears to be committed cutting these public services/subsidies. The American Library Association is on record in opposition to cuts in funding, in addition to the FCC’s decision to remove from the public record a report on the success of the program.
Trump’s FCC seems to have decided that the facts in the report are “alt-facts” without any importance or meaning. Our President, Twitter-in-chief and his appointees will not stand for any good news about public programs, including high-speed internet access for schools and libraries, rural communities, and for people in need of Lifeline communications.
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Alternative facts and fake news = DRUMPH. Why people don’t see his evilness is beyond me. He is arrested at age 2 and totally pscyho. I refuse to do anything to support Humpty Drumphty … Remember the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty? That’s DRUMPH.
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I don’t know if someone pointed this out, but this statement is making the rounds on Facebook without original credit. I’m not criticizing the content, but it would be nice to know the original writer.
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The original writer uses a pseudonym
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Trump & Bannon are anarchists -Honey Badgers-nothing stops them from having their way. See TIME.
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