The indispensable family:
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nominate-conways-husband-to-lead-doj-civil-division-2017-3
Archives for the month of: March, 2017
Warning: Satire, humor.
If there is anyway to find humor on a deranged president and budget director who cut meals-in-wheels because”it doesn’t work,” the Inion will find it.
http://www.theonion.com/article/curses-shouts-fist-shaking-meals-wheels-ringleader-55553
Read also The Onion piece about Big Bird’s hunger strike:
Listening to CNN. Sean Spicer said that British intelligence wiretapped Trump Tower on behalf of the Obama administration. British intelligence said the claim was nonsense, and the British Prime Minister demanded an apology.
When asked the source of this claim, Dpicer said he heard it from a commentator on Fox News. The right wing ideologue Judge Napolitano.
Christiane Amanpour said the Brits are scratching their heads and wondering why the president of the world’s most powerful nation is relying on Fox News for information, not the NSA, the CIA, or the FBI.
Two possibilities:
1. He is mentally unfit
2. He is distracting attention from something else. Budget cuts? The Russian investigation?
Hat tip to Bill Moyers’ website for this article in The Intercept:
Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercepr that Trump’s budget is copied from the Swamp-dwelling, Establishment, Beltway right wing Heritage Foundation.
Trump the Outsider Outsources His Budget to Insider Think Tank
Nothing in the budget protects the blue-collar and rural people who voted for him. Instead, they are likely to be hit hard by cuts to federal programs they rely on.
The only complaint of the Heritage Foundation is that Trump didn’t add enough billions to defense.
Unless they join the military, Trump voters are shafted along with the rest of us.
The Heritage Foundation has always spoken for corporations and the uber-rich.
Jilani writes:
“PRESIDENT TRUMP’S BUDGET proposal, released on Thursday, echoes none of the populist, anti-establishment themes of candidate Trump’s campaign for higher office. Instead, it calls for a large increase in defense spending while reducing spending for a variety of popular domestic programs.
“That’s not surprising considering where those ideas came from. Rather than bringing in new ideas from outside of the Beltway, many of its proposals are lifted straight from the recommendations of an elite ultra-conservative D.C. think tank: the Heritage Foundation.
“Founded in 1973, Heritage has served as a sort of a watering hole for the Republican establishment, providing policy papers and staffers for GOP members of Congress and presidential administrations. Its 2015 annual report listed almost $100 million in revenues — drawn from conservative mega-donors and corporations — which it uses to facilitate the spread of its ideas across Washington, D.C.
“And those ideas have found a home in the Trump administration, which leaned heavily on Heritage advice during the transition period. Many of the White House proposal’s ideas are identical to a budget blueprint Heritage drew up last year.”
Count on Mercedes Schneider to review Trump’s budget proposal.
It is as bad as you heard.
She says, “At least he doesn’t call himself an ‘education president.'”
True, he is the anti-education president.
He is the first who wants to tear down public education, not improve it.
He does not want to invest in our children or our future.
He is an enemy of the people.
The Network for Public Education is launching a campaign to fight back against the Trump-DeVos budget cuts to public schools and budget gains for privatization.
Open this link, join our action, and send it to your friends!
Peter Greene has a remarkable facility to read dreary documents and sum them up, so that we don’t have to read them. This is a public service that he does on behalf of all of us.
He reviews Michigan’s blueprint for the next 30 years, created at the behest of Governor Rick Snyder. The essential problem Michigan has is that it spent the last 10 years or so following the DeVos blueprint for change and saw its schools plummet to near the bottom of the national rankings.
So in this report it recommends nine principles for world-class education. None of them will surprise you.
Call this report a tribute to Betsy DeVos, who has worked so hard to push Michigan into becoming a right-to-work, school choice state. How can the state save itself? According to this report, by doing more of the same.
Tom Ultican teaches physics in San Diego after a career in the private sector. He likes evidence. He reviews the failure of various privatization schemes. Vouchers have failed to “save” children, and voucher schools are often far worse than public schools. Charters are scandal-ridden, supported too often by profit-seekers.
He writes: American Schools Rock!
Don’t be fooled.
“By the middle of the 20th century, cities and villages throughout the USA had developed an impressive educational infrastructure. With the intent of giving every child in America the opportunity for 12 years of free education, this country was the world’s only country not using high stakes testing to deny the academic path to more than a third of its students. The physical infrastructure of our public schools was of high quality and schools were staffed with well-trained experienced educators.
“This system that is the foundation – to the greatest economy in the world, the most Nobel Prize winners and democratic government – has passed the exam of life. It is clearly the best education system in the world. To diminish and undermine it is foolhardy. Arrogant greed-blinded people are trying to steal our legacy.”
The privatization steam roller continues to move through the Republican controlled states.
The Missouri House of Representatives narrowly approved a bill to expand the number of charter schools in the state. The bill now moves to the Senate.
After more than five hours of debate Wednesday and more than an hour of debate Thursday, the measure advanced to the Senate on an 83-76 vote.
Charter schools are tuition-free public schools that operate independently from elected school boards. They currently operate in St. Louis and Kansas City only; the plan would allow charter schools in places like Columbia and Springfield.
The sponsor, Rep. Rebecca Roeber, R-Lee’s Summit, touted the legislation as a way to provide students and families with more choices. The changes, she said, will bring competition to schools, triggering improvement and innovation in education.
Public education advocates warned that charter schools have not fulfilled their promises of success and innovation, but Republicans were determined to pass the bill anyway.
Media experts warned that the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will bring an end to public media in small and rural communities. The giants in large markets like New York City will survive, but not the smaller markets.
“Public radio and television broadcasters are girding for battle after the Trump administration proposed a drastic cutback that they have long dreaded: the defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
“The potential elimination of about $445 million in annual funding, which helps local TV and radio stations subscribe to NPR and Public Broadcasting Service programming, could be devastating for affiliates in smaller markets that already operate on a shoestring budget.
“Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s president, warned in a statement on Thursday that the Trump budget proposal, if enacted, could cause “the collapse of the public media system itself.”
“But the power players in public broadcasting — big-city staples like WNYC in New York City — would be well-equipped to weather any cuts. Major stations typically receive only a sliver of their annual budget from the federal government, thanks to listener contributions and corporate underwriters. Podcasts and other digital offshoots have also become significant sources of revenue.
“Rural affiliates, however, rely more heavily on congressional largess, which can make up as much as 35 percent of their budgets. Mark Vogelzang, president of Maine Public, called the Trump proposal “the most serious threat to our federal funding” since he started in public broadcasting 37 years ago.
“We’re always living on the edge in this ecosystem of public broadcasting,” Mr. Vogelzang said in an interview.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports about 1,500 stations that carry a range of educational, journalistic and arts-related programming. The corporation dates to the administration of President Lyndon Johnson. Its funding, while a minuscule part of the federal budget, has been under regular peril since the 1970s from conservative lawmakers, who often denounce what they view as the liberal bent of public media.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 