Archives for the month of: March, 2017
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Sarah Jaffe: Organizing to Hit Trump’s Corporate Cabinet Where It Hurts

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2017 //
3

Sarah Jaffe interviews labor organizers in a group called the HedgeClippers who are mobilizing against the corporations backing the Trump regime.

One of their campaigns is to organize bank workers. Bank workers in other countries are unionized. Why not in the U.S. as well?

The Hedge Clippers campaign looks at hedge funds and private equity, thus hedge clippers clipping their power. It basically says, “These are the finance capitalists that are driving political and economic inequality.” What we have done is both deep dive reports and exposés, plus lots of direct action to directly confront them. Our little joke is that we have either been incredibly prescient or Trump picked his entire Cabinet by looking at who we have been fighting. Pre-Trump winning, we were saying whether it is Goldman Sachs or Steven Schwarzman from Blackstone, these are the people who are really running the government. Lots of folks are laughing saying we are a conspiracy cult or something. Then, when Trump got elected, he put all of these people directly in charge. It is sort of an irony that Trump’s election was probably the best testimony to the idea that whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, a player is really who is running the show.

We are doing a lot of work on mapping the different Trump worlds. There are the people, like Steven Mnuchin and the Goldman Sachs folks, that are [working] directly in the administration and we map all the benefits that their companies will reap from that. Then, there are the Steve Schwarzmans and the Carl Icahns and this other set of players that run committees for him. So, they can essentially create government policies that will further enrich their companies. Then, there is a third set of people like John Paulson, who made all his money in the housing crisis, who may not be directly working for Trump, but who supported him and is now going to reap the benefits. For example, he is heavily invested in Puerto Rico.

What we have been looking at is, how do you identify the corporate collaborators with Trump, and then look at ways to start putting pressure on them so that they pay a price for the fact that they are in bed with Trump.

Categories Billionaires, Resistance, Trump, Unions

Betsy DeVos Loves For-Profit Schools: They Are a Disgrace

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2017 //
15

ProPublica writes about the abuses that occur in certain for-profit schools designed especially for difficult children. The very concept of a public school that operates for profit is absurd, because every dollar from taxpayers is meant for the children, the teachers, and the schools, not investors. But this article is specifically about a for-profit chain for difficult students.

An alternative school for sixth- through 12th-graders with behavioral or academic problems, Paramount occupied a low-slung, brick and concrete building on a dead-end road in hard-luck Reading, Pennsylvania, a city whose streets are littered with signs advertising bail bondsmen, pay-day lenders, and pawn shops. Camelot Education, the for-profit company that ran Paramount under a contract with the Reading school district, maintained a set of strict protocols: No jewelry, book bags, or using the water fountain or bathroom without permission. Just as it still does at dozens of schools, the company deployed a small platoon of “behavioral specialists” and “team leaders”: typically large men whose job was partly to enforce the rules.

Over six months in 2013 and 2014, about a half-dozen parents, students and community members at Paramount Academy — billed as a “therapeutic” day program — complained of abusive behavior by the school’s staff. One mother heard that staff restrained students by “excessive force” and bruised the arms of a female student, according to email exchanges between Camelot and the district. Another mother, Sharon Pacharis, said she visited the school to complain about manhandling and was told, “That’s just what we do.” Camelot’s own written reports to the district documented one incident in which a teenager was scratched and another in which a bathroom wall was damaged. Both resulted from “holds” — likely a reference to Camelot’s protocol for restraining students during a physical encounter.

Camelot tended to blame the students in its weekly reports to the district, calling them “out of control”; school officials referred several to police. It was, after all, a place partly for students whom the district had deemed too disruptive for a traditional school setting.

But an incident on April 24, 2014, abruptly shifted the focus to Camelot’s staff.

Ismael Seals, a behavioral specialist, walked into a classroom with several loud and boisterous students and commanded them to “shut the fuck up,” decreeing that the next one who talked would get body-slammed through the door, according to a subsequent criminal complaint. Moments later, Seals fulfilled his promise. After 17-year-old Corey Mack asked and received permission from his teacher, Teresa Bivens, to get up to sharpen his pencil, Seals pushed him repeatedly against a door and then shoved him into the hall, where a school surveillance camera recorded most of the rest of the incident. Seals, 6 feet 4 inches tall and 280 pounds, lifted Mack, 5 feet 8 inches tall and about 160 pounds, by his shirt and swung him into the wall headfirst, later pinning him to the ground as other staff members arrived, according to court documents.

Mack later showed a string of bruises and scratches on his back to a program director at a center for children with behavioral and mental health challenges. The program director called a juvenile probation official, who contacted the police.

Reached by telephone last fall, Corey Mack struggled to remember the details of his altercation with Seals, including what he had said just before the behavioral specialist shoved him, and the precise sequence of events. But he was clear on the essential point: “He beat me up,” Mack said.

Is this what taxpayers support? They should not.

DeVos should be challenged. For profit schools should be prohibited, not subsidized by taxpayers.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization

Mary Gonzalez: Texas Needs to Supports Its Public Schools, Not Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2017 //
8

Mary Gonzalez is a member of the Texas House of Representatives. She is now serving her third term in the House, and she is deeply concerned that the state and the federal government want to destroy public education.

The goal of school choice, she says, is to create a separate and unequal system of schools for the state’s 6 million students.

She writes:

In 2011, the Legislature cut $5.4 billion in public education funding and implemented a testing regime that centered accountability on a dehumanizing, ineffective standardized test.

In short, schools would get a lot less money while facing impossible standards. It was as if schools were intentionally being set up to be labelled as failures. Why do you think campuses are now being labeled A through F?

Creating the perception of failing public schools in the minds of the public was necessary to fuel the “school choice” movement.

Listening to the political rhetoric at the state and national level, this strategy seems to have been effective. Instead of a collective discourse on strengthening and funding our public schools, the conversation centers on supporting charter expansion and vouchers.

The expansion of “school choice” translates into the creation of multiple systems, facilitating a structure of separate and unequal.

Charter school quality, however, is questionable. Research demonstrates that, on average, they don’t outperform traditional public schools.

The real problem with “school choice” is the creation of an unequal, tiered system that allows students to fall through the cracks. These tiers are only created when money and resources are taken away from public schools.

In the long term, this approach is unsustainable for a state serving nearly 6 million students.

The unequal distribution of resources, along with the fact that charter schools do not operate under the same rules as public schools, exacerbates the problem.

Charters claim to be “public”, but are actually run by corporations or nonprofits, rather than locally elected school boards that are accountable to parents and the community.

Charters are not subject to the same regulations as public schools. Those regulations include class size limits, student-teacher ratios, and having school nurses and counselors on site.

Also, charters can control enrollment through admission requirements like geographical location, discipline records, sibling priority, academic ability, and through dismissal and expulsion procedures that differ from those of traditional schools. This allows charters to preferentially select students who are less-expensive to educate.

When we fragment the public school system, we create more opportunity for inequity without making any real gains.

Democracy requires a strong and equitable public school system. Choice will undermine that goal.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Equity, Privatization, Testing, Texas

New York: Parents and Educators Call for a New Round of Opt Out to Protest Flawed Tests

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2017 //
14

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 20, 2017
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE) http://www.nysape.org

Link to Press Release

New York’s Largest Grassroots Education Advocacy Organizations Join Forces to
Urge Parents to Opt Out of NYS Common Core State Tests

Across the state, grassroots education advocacy organizations including New York State Allies for Public Education (NYSAPE), Long Island Opt Out, New York BATs, NYC Opt Out and Stronger Together, are urging parents to opt out of the NYS Common Core state tests.

With New York State Common Core state tests in grades 3-8 set to begin this month, hundreds of thousands of parents have notified school officials that they will refuse these flawed and harmful tests. Despite Commissioner Elia’s claims that significant changes to these tests have been made in response to the concerns of the public, parents and educators know that nothing could be further from the truth.

Jeanette Deutermann, Long Island public school parent, founder of Long Island Opt Out and NYSAPE said, “We have made great strides over the past few years. As a result of the opt out movement, many agencies, organizations, and state leaders connected to education have either willingly or forcibly shifted towards a philosophy of whole child teaching and learning, recognizing the voting power that this movement possesses. However, this shift has not resulted in the legislative changes required to stop the misuse of test scores to rank, sort, and punish our schools. We must continue to refuse the tests until the NYS education law is amended.”

New York City schools are resorting to misinformation and scare tactics to discourage opt out in communities that have less access to information, especially in Title I schools. While our schools should be empowering parents to make thoughtful decisions on behalf of their children, what we are seeing instead is the usurpation of parental rights. To be clear, every parent has the right to refuse the state tests simply by notifying their child’s school officials.” said Johanna Garcia, NYC public school parent and Co-President of District 6 President’s Council.

“As always, there are those who wish to contain our influence and weaken our resolve. Sadly, misinformation meant to strip the rights of parents and quell opt out has been disseminated by organizations and school leaders charged with overseeing the education our children. Facts are our weapon. Information is our strength.” Eileen Graham, Rochester public school parent and founder of the Black Student Leadership Organization.

Nate Morgan, President of Hastings Teachers Association and Vice Chair of Stronger Together Caucus said, “The tests are longer than ever with young students sitting for up to five hours per day for 6 days of testing and even longer now with the Commissioner’s untimed testing policy. The common core standards remain essentially unchanged and the benchmarks used to determine proficiency continue mislabel hundreds of thousands of students as failures. Teachers continue to have minimal input in test construction and in fact, are not even permitted to read the tests they are compelled to administer! Parents and educators recognize the failure of both Commissioner Elia and Governor Cuomo to respond to our concerns. The opt out movement will continue.”

“While Governor Cuomo is desperate to present himself as a progressive champion of education, his actions prove that his education platform is most closely aligned with that of federal Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Coupled with his failure to fully fund our public schools, Governor Cuomo’s refusal to amend the Education Transformation Act–a law that requires the use of junk science, unfairly punishes schools serving the most vulnerable students, and supports privatization efforts–proves that he cares little for our children and the well-being of our schools,” emphasized Marla Kilfoyle, Executive Director of BATs, NYS public school teacher, and parent of a NYS public school child.

We are encouraging parents to reject harmful and developmentally inappropriate tests along with non-researched standards, the continued misuse of assessment data, and efforts to punish and privatize the most under-funded schools by opt outing out of the 2017 NYS Common Core state tests.

NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition with over 50 parent and educator groups across the state.

###

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, New York, Opt Out, Parent Groups, Testing

The Most Important Post You Will Read This Week: The Reclusive Tycoon Who Financed the Alt-Right and Trump

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2017 //
90

I will not post anything again for a while today, unless there is breaking news. You need time to read this article in full.

It is a long article by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, who has written major books about the dark money fueling rightwing politics.

The article is an in-depth analysis of the role of billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah in the creation of the Trump presidency.

It is a long read. It is an important read, to understand the threat to our democracy posed by the power of unaccountable billionaires.

It is fascinating, like watching a car crash, in this case, a political tragedy.

It begins with the shocking news that Patrick Caddell, who long ago was a pollster for Jimmy Carter, is now helping Trump behind the scenes.

Then it gets into the life and personality and actions of Robert Mercer, a billionaire who says little except with his vast wealth. Mercer hates the Republican party as much as he hates the Democratic party. He wants to destroy both. He has financed Breitbart and Steve Bannon. At first, he backed Ted Cruz, hoping he would be the outsider who smashed the system. But as Cruz faded, he poured his millions into Trump as the perfect outsider, the one who could break the Republican party and the entire system.

The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision paved the way for a politically active billionaire like Mercer to buy politicians.

Mercer doesn’t like to talk to anyone. He once said to someone that he prefers the company of cats to humans. He loves computer code.

Mercer hates the Clintons. Over the years, he has financed every conspiracy theorist who published anything that would smear the Clintons.

Mercer thinks that racism in America is vastly overstated. In his rarified life, he never sees any racism. He supported Jeff Sessions.

One of Mercer’s notions is that nuclear radiation makes people healthier. He strongly supports nuclear power.

Mercer doesn’t believe that climate change is real or important.

Mercer doesn’t believe we need a government. He wants to destroy it.

When you read this article, you will understand why every Trump cabinet appointee is determined to slash and undermine their agency; that is what Mercer wants.

The Mercers work closely with the Koch brothers.

Pollsters working for Mercer found “mounting anger toward wealthy elites, who many Americans believed had corrupted the government so that it served only their interests. There was a hunger for a populist Presidential candidate who would run against the major political parties and the ruling class.” This yearning to overturn the system worked in favor of Bernie Sanders but also Donald Trump. As Mayer notes, Mercer and a billionaire oilman named William Lee Hanley–two of the richest men in America–“paid [Patrick] Caddell to keep collecting polling data that enabled them to exploit the public’s resentment of elites such as themselves.” Caddell wanted a third-party candidate–“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”–but Trump was the one who capitalized on that public hunger for an outsider determined to smash the establishment (of which he was part).

To understand Trump, to understand the Alt-right, to understand the danger our country and our democracy is in, read this article.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Trump

Germany: Trump is Wrong: We Don’t Owe NATO Anything More Than We Pay Now

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2017 //
9

The German Defense Ministry sharply disagreed with Trump’s claim that it should pay more to NATO. Trump tweeted that he had a “great” meeting with Angela Merkel, but his famous art-of-the-deal left her unconvinced.

The U.S. keeps 62,000 military personnel in the European Union, compared to 1.7 million from EU states.

“On Sunday, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen called the criticism “inaccurate,” without mentioning the president’s name.


“NATO does not have a debt account,” von der Leyen said, according to her ministry.

“In reality, NATO has only a small logistical budget, which relies on funding by all member states. The vast majority of NATO members’ total resources are managed domestically.
The criticism echoed that of other experts, including former U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder. 

“Trump’s comments misrepresent the way NATO functions,” Daalder told The Washington Post on Saturday. “The president keeps saying that we need to be paid by the Europeans for the fact that we have troops in Europe or provide defense there. But that’s not how it works.

”
Von der Leyen also indirectly criticized Trump’s plan to reduce funding for U.N. peacekeeping missions. German defense expenditure was not exclusively dedicated to NATO missions, she emphasized, and additional German funding would be used for U.N. peacekeeping missions, for instance. “What we want is a fair burden-sharing, and in order to achieve that, we need a modern understanding of security,” von der Leyen said.
The rather unusual rebuke of Trump by a German defense minister indicates growing concerns in Berlin over transatlantic relations.

“The percentage of Germans who view the United States as a trustworthy ally has dropped from 59 percent in November to 22 percent in February.

“In recent months, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s outspoken vice chancellor and foreign minister, has even called Trump a “threat.

”
This is a shift in a nation that has long considered itself one of the United States’ closest allies, although at times an uncomfortable one. Germany’s foreign policy is still shaped by memories of World War II, and foreign military operations are deeply unpopular with German voters. Instead of boosting its defense spending, Germany has historically invested more in development aid and deepened its economic ties with other nations.



“But Germany is also the largest European host nation for U.S. troops, home to about 30,000 American service members.

“Theoretically, Trump could threaten to withdraw some of those troops and move them elsewhere. But such a move would make little strategic sense for the United States, which relies on its military bases in Germany such as Ramstein for operations in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Over the past decade, U.S. bases in Germany have mostly benefited America.”

Categories Trump

Webster’s Definition of “Trumpery,” 1983 Edition

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2017 //
21

1. Deceit, fraud

2. Anything calculated to deceive by false show; anything externally splendid but of little intrinsic value; worthless finery.

3. Things worn out and of no value; useless matter; trifles; rubbish; nonsense.

That’s the definition in the 1983 Webster’s Dictionary.

H/T: Andrea Gabor on Twitter.

Categories Humor, Trump

This Post is About Chicken Soup, Not Education or Trump

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2017 //
32

I am not much of a cook. When I was a little girl, I hung out in the playground, played baseball, read books, or climbed trees. I never hung out in the kitchen to learn about how to cook a dish or make a meal.

But now as an adult, I do know how to cook a few things. I have what you might call a very limited repertoire. I am great at making salads, guacamole, scrambled eggs, and chicken soup. Beyond that, well, I am over my head and just not interested. I was once asked to contribute a recipe to a collection that included recipes contributed by some important women. It was for our daughters, I recall, but I only have sons (both are better cooks than I am). I contributed my guacamole recipe. One of the contributors, I forget which one, offered this recipe: Open a box of cereal. Pour into dish. Add milk. My guacamole recipe was better than that! At least, it showed some thought and effort.

However, I just made my famous chicken soup. (Famous in an extremely limited circle of family, that is.) It is delicious, despite my lack of cooking skills and not that hard to make. It is the finish work that is time-intensive. It is best to make it in the winter, when hot chicken soup is needed. It is said to cure colds (Jewish penicillin), but I offer no guarantees.

To begin with, get good ingredients. Buy an organic chicken, if you can find it and afford it. They are cleaner than the packaged chicken in the supermarket (you can use that, too, just be prepared for more grit and stuff to float to the surface as you cook, which you must ladle off). The bigger the chicken, the better the flavor.

Put the chicken in your largest pot and add a lot of water. About 6-8 quarts, enough to cover the chicken. My soup pot is 9″ high and 12″ across. Do not skimp on the water.

Add the following:

A large onion, peeled and studded with about 3-4 cloves
Six big carrots, peeled and sliced.
An entire celery, cleaned and sliced.
3-5 large leeks, cleaned and sliced (don’t use the toughest ends of the leeks). Leeks can be dirty, so wash them well.
A bunch of parsley
A bunch of dill
Some peppercorns
Some salt
If you have it, throw in a peeled and cut-up turnip, a parsnip, scallions, etc.

Set the whole thing to a reach a low boil. When it comes to a boil, turn it down as low as you can without stopping the boiling or simmering. Cover with the top of the pot open very slightly to let off steam.

Let it simmer/boil for at least three hours. Then let it cool.

When you are done, this is the important thing you must do.

Put your largest bowl in the kitchen sink. Put a very large mesh strainer over the bowl. A colander won’t do, you have to go to the hardware or housewares store and buy a large mesh strainer, one that will sit comfortably over the bowl and the sink without touching the bowl. My mesh strainer is 10″ across and stretches across the bowl without touching it, balanced on the sink.

Use a large soup spoon and ladle out the greens and meat into the strainer, about a cup at a time. Separate the chicken meat and save it for chicken salad or whatever you want. Save the pieces of carrot for the soup.

Then as you put greens, onions, celery, etc in the strainer, mash it with the spoon until all the juice flows into the bowl below. That enriches the soup.

Repeat until you have squeezed out the juice from everything in the soup pot, saving the chicken and carrots for the future.

When you are done, you will have a large bowl of flavorful soup. Eat some now, freeze some for later. Be sure and date whatever you freeze. Depending on how much water you added, and how long you cooked it, you should have many servings of delicious chicken soup. And you will have a bowl of carrots that you can add to the soup now.

Now you have one of the very few dishes that I have ever cooked in my life.

Enjoy!

Categories Personal

What to Ask About Russian Hacking in the Hearings Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2017 //
12

Tomorrow, the House of Representatives intelligence committee will hold hearings to investigate allegations of links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. Members will also ask questions about Trump’s claim that Obama ordered the wire tapping of Trump Tower during the presidential campaign and that this alleged surveillance was carried out by the British spy service.

It should be an interesting day unless everyone takes the Fifth Amendment or asks to go into executive session.

Louise Mensch, a former member of the British parliament and now a New York-based journalist, suggested that specific individuals should be asked to testify, and she explains who and why in this article, which appeared yesterday in the New York Times:

It should be relatively easy to get at the truth of whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia over the hacking. I have some relevant experience. When I was a member of Parliament in Britain, I took part in a select committee investigating allegations of phone hacking by the News Corporation. Today, as a New York-based journalist (who, in fact, now works at News Corp.), I have followed the Russian hacking story closely. In November, I broke the story that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court had issued a warrant that enabled the F.B.I. to examine communications between “U.S. persons” in the Trump campaign relating to Russia-linked banks.

So, I have some ideas for how the House committee members should proceed. If I were Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the committee, I would demand to see the following witnesses: Carter Page, Paul Manafort, Richard Burt, Erik Prince, Dan Scavino, Brad Parscale, Roger Stone, Corey Lewandowski, Boris Epshteyn, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Flynn, Michael Flynn Jr., Felix Sater, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Michael Cohen, Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Stephen Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Michael Anton, Julia Hahn and Stephen Miller, along with executives from Cambridge Analytica, Alfa Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Spectrum Health.

There are many more who need to be called, but these would be a first step. As to lines of questioning, here are some suggestions.

To the White House director of social media, Dan Scavino: “You tweeted an anti-Semitic meme about Hillary Clinton from Donald Trump’s account during the election. That meme appeared to have come from an automated account on a Russian-controlled network of malware-infected computers, or botnet. What knowledge did you have of the existence of a network of fake Twitter profiles that supported your campaign and were partisans of Russia?”

To the Trump campaign adviser and businessman Carter Page: “You have said that the Trump campaign approved your July visit to give a speech in Moscow. Provide the committee with a full list of everyone you spoke to during that trip and describe precisely what was discussed. Were sanctions ever a topic?

“When you met the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, what was the conversation?

“When you returned to Moscow after the election, you presented slides comparing Rex Tillerson and Hillary Clinton as secretaries of state before Mr. Tillerson was announced as Mr. Trump’s choice. Who told you Mr. Tillerson would be the pick?

“Stephen Miller, then a campaign spokesman, stated that Jeff Sessions was putting together the foreign policy team. How were you recruited to that team? What contact did you have with its head, Mr. Sessions?

“Did you at any time discuss leaking, hacking, WikiLeaks, the release of emails phished from the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, or any other information not publicly available on Mrs. Clinton, or any person related to her campaign, with any Russian national, in the United States or elsewhere?

“Describe any and all financial discussions you had with any person during the campaign about the sale of a 19.5 percent stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.”

To the former Alabama senator, now attorney general, Mr. Sessions: “Describe any communications, not merely meetings, you had with Russian citizens during the campaign. Did you ever discuss a shift in policy on Ukraine to be exchanged for the lifting of sanctions?

“Describe in full the content of your conversations with Mr. Kislyak. Were you aware that the Russian ambassador was also alleged to be a recruiter of spies?

“Did you select Mr. Page as a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign? If not, who did? Why did you consider him suitable to serve on your team?

“To your knowledge, did you break the law during the campaign? If so, how? To your knowledge, did anyone else related to the Trump campaign break the law during the campaign?

“Did you have any knowledge during the campaign of serving F.B.I. agents and police officers whom Rudy Giuliani, Erik Prince and Mr. Flynn claimed were leaking information to them? Did you advise anybody involved that this was against the law? If not, why not?

“Did you know Mr. Flynn was lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his calls to Russia? Did you know Mr. Flynn misled Vice President Pence on the matter of his son’s security clearance?

“Do you have any knowledge, direct or indirect, whether Mr. Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, or any member of his family, traveled out of the country to meet with Russians during the campaign? Do you have knowledge of whether Mr. Cohen, or any Trump associate, directly or through shell companies, made payments either to hackers or to internet companies that ran a botnet of fake accounts and websites on behalf of Russia?”

On Nov. 7, I reported that sources had told me of the existence of a FISA warrant targeting two Russia-linked banks. That warrant gave permission for the communications of American citizens that were incidentally collected as part of that investigation to be examined. (I did not report the existence of a wiretap, nor do I have any knowledge of such.)

This is an issue of the utmost consequence. If Mr. Trump’s tweet alleging that Trump Tower was wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama was untrue, Mr. Trump is guilty of a slur. If, however, the president tweeted real news, he revealed the existence of intercepts that cover members of his team in a continuing investigation. That would be obstruction of justice, potentially an impeachable offense.

The framing of the committee’s questions matters immensely. Legally, witnesses cannot confirm or deny even the existence of a current national security investigation. The very mention of a “FISA warrant” would allow Mr. Sessions to avoid the substance by excusing himself from commenting. Committee members must therefore word their questions without reference to any case. I would simply ask Mr. Sessions this:

“Was the president’s tweet about a wiretap at Trump Tower, to your knowledge, illegal? If so, to whom have you reported this offense?

“To your knowledge, did any person illegally inform the president that there was a wiretap at Trump Tower?”

The president’s unwillingness to answer questions about contacts between his campaign team and Russian officials, and the pattern of contradictory and misleading statements on those contacts, are toxic. Never in American history has a president been suspected of collaborating with a hostile foreign power to win an election. The founders provided three equal branches of government to protect the republic. The American people now depend on the House committee to do its job and uncover the truth.

Categories Democracy, Lies, Trump

Democratic Senator Will Introduce Neil Gorsuch at His Hearing for Supreme Court Justice

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2017 //
25

Democratic Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado will introduce Neil Gorsuch at his Senate confirmation hearings for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gorsuch is from Colorado.

Bennett is one of the most fervent advocates for school privatization in Congress. Before entering the Senate (he was appointed to fill a vacancy, then was elected), he was superintendent of Denver, where he promoted high-stakes testing and charter schools. He is a DFER favorite.

Apparently, he forgot that not a single Republican senator was willing to support Merrick Garland, the highly respected federal judge nominated by Obama for the seat that Gorsuch is likely to take.

Ian Millhiser of Think Progress says of Gorsuch:

Gorsuch’s record suggests that he is to the right of the late conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia, and possibly as far right as the most conservative member of the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas. As a judge, Gorsuch voted to limit women’s access to birth control in the Hobby Lobby case. He tried to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood in Utah. And he is likely to provide the key fifth vote to uphold voter suppression laws that skew the electorate to the right and help keep Democrats like Michael Bennet from winning elections.

Those who have followed the rightwing tilt of Democrats like Bennett are not surprised.

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Privatization
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