Paul Campos of New York Magazine has been following a curious story.
It seems that someone paid $1.6 Million to Shera Bechard, a former Playboy Playmate, not to disclose that she had an affair with him, got pregnant, and had an abortion. Former RNC Vice-chairman Elliott Broidy claims he did it. Bechard used the same lawyer that Stormy Daniel and another Playboy Playmate used, Keith Davidson, to negotiate the non-disclosure agreement.
Now Broidy has reneged.
Campos believes that Broidy was taking the rap for Trump as a big favor. In exchange, he got a deal worth $600 Million.
If the new Supreme Court overturns Roe V. Wade, what will men like this do to get rid of unintended pregnancies?
Trump’s evangelical fans won’t care, so long as poor folk can’t get abortions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This could be the end of him.
As long as he keeps appointing anti-abortion judges to the courts, his base will forgive him every trespass. Even abortions.
Here is yet more evidence that the Christian evangelicals will never abandon Trump or the Republicans.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/its-like-a-stealth-thing-andrew-wommack-explains-how-god-is-using-trump-to-enact-the-religious-rights-theocratic-agenda/
“During last night’s “Truth & Liberty” webcast, right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack said that God is brilliantly using President Trump to stealthily enact the Religious Right’s agenda without raising alarms that conservative Christians are trying to impose a theocracy on this nation.
Wommack and his guests were trying to answer a question from a viewer who wanted to know how evangelicals can support Trump despite his “immoral actions, behavior, character, and words,” to which they responded by insisting that “God is using Trump because He loves America, He loves the Christians, and He loves everybody that lives here.”
Wommack said that regardless of the fact that Trump is deeply flawed and “is always saying something offensive,” evangelicals can and must continue to support him because “he has done more to advance and protect Christianity than any president in our lifetime.”
Wommack went on to claim that he has a friend who serves as a religious adviser to the president who knows that Trump has been “born again” but has been instructed to keep his conversion quiet.”
jcgrim :“…God is using Trump because He loves America, He loves the Christians, and He loves everybody that lives here.”
God believes that all people are equal. All deserve a decent home and a place to care for their children. He believes that we are all responsible for caring for those in need. He does not approve of people like Trump who work to support only himself or other wealthy people. God wants healthcare for all and a decent living for all [minimum wage high enough that people working full time can live decently]. Those who wish, should be able to go to college without getting a loan so big that they are paying it off when they retire.
What of any of this has Trump brought? He works to destroy our respect for journalism, to destroy our faith in our government and to believe that only he has the answers to everything. This is achieved by never reading, never having press conferences, never listening to the millions who are fearful of loosing their healthcare, decimating the State department, alienating our allies while worshiping dictators and destroying the environment by picking worthless people to head his departments.
Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt? How great are they?
These Evangelical ministers have a block inside their heads and what they spew isn’t a bit related to reality..
Trump is a racist bigot who hates people who aren’t white. He is not my president..if I could have a choice.
Trump is a philanderer, a sexist, a racist. I wonder how many abortions he has paid for.
Diane, how long will it take for Trump to find someone equally worthless to head the EPA? He can only find the bottom of the pit. EPA stands for Environmental PROTECTION Agency.
……………………
The New York Times
Breaking News Alert
July 05, 2018
BREAKING NEWS
Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s E.P.A. chief, resigned after facing months of allegations over legal and ethical violations
Thursday, July 5, 2018 3:50 PM EST
President Trump accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, he said in a tweet on Thursday.
Mr. Pruitt had been hailed as a hero among conservatives for his zealous deregulation, but he could not overcome the stain of numerous ethics questions about his alleged spending abuses, first-class travel and cozy relationships with lobbyists…
Scott Pruitt’s deputy was a lobbyist for the coal industry.
The EPA will sink into the swamp.
I doubt it. Christian Nationalists are Trump’s most loyal base and he’s given them everything they’ve wanted: women-hating judges, anti-government school in DeVos, the US Embassy moved to Jerusalem & Mike Pence. Salvation awaits only those true believers in Jesus who support Trump & the Republicans.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/andrew-wommack-opposition-to-trump-is-demonic-and-a-sign-of-the-end-times/
“Before his regular Truth & Liberty Coalition livestream last night, right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack answered a few questions on Facebook, including one from a viewer who wanted to know why so many Christians are “blinded and can’t see how God can be using [President] Trump.”
Wommack responded by saying that opposition to Trump is demonic and a sign of the End Times.
Citing a passage from 2 Thessalonians in which Paul warns that, in the Last Days, God will send a “powerful delusion” on those “refused to love the truth,” Wommack said that this is precisely what is happening now.”
[spit take]
Really?!
Isn’t screwing the country enough for him?!
Nope.
“If the new Supreme Court overturns Roe V. Wade, what will men like this do to get rid of unintended pregnancies?”
The wealthy will always have access to abortions. Why not travel overseas and stay in a luxury hospital? I can see a lot of women traveling overseas for a ‘kidney condition’ or some such nonsense.
It is the poor and the middle class who will suffer.
I don’t understand why the Evangelicals are so committed to stopping abortions. As soon as the fetus is born, it is perfectly okay to have it subjected to all sorts of horrible conditions. I guess its a case of the poor, especially black or brown people, deserving bad services. Their children are inferior.
The entitled white religionists think the poor people deserve to be poor for they are sinners…. Calvinistic. Doesn’t make sense.
The LA Times ran a story about how the white Trump supporters who are losing jobs because of Trump’s trade war are fine to be making that sacrifice if it is what Trump wants. They will support him no matter what he does.
It’s a Cult of Personality. I’m so amazed that one has been created around Trump so quickly. It’s the one thing Trump knows how to do successfully, and he and his cronies have done very well. Look at the posts above about people feeling like God has sent Trump. Total cult of personality right there. These sorts of things are common around dictators–the entire Kim family, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. Not a great group to be associated with.
Trump is a natural demagogue. Years on TV have taught him to lie and appear not to lie.
Is it just a coincidence that the people successful at building their cult of personality always had a group to demonize — a scapegoat they threw at their deplorable supporters that they could blame for their problems and feel superior to?
They also believed god sent Bush II.
Christine: My aunt in Boise said that George W. was her favorite president. The reason was that God was telling him what to do.
That’s what you get when you marry politics to religion– &/or replace religion with nationalistic patriotism– cult of personality/demagoguery. Shall we soon see bldg-sized Trump images at parades & rallies?
bethree5: “Shall we soon see bldg-sized Trump images at parades & rallies?”
I still get and sign petitions against Trump’s military parade in D.C. Hope that thought isn’t still on his mind. It would cost billions. Trump could pretend that he is really important…sort of like Kim Jong Un in N. Korea.
I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. I’m hoping that we won’t have to study the “writings” of Trump. When I read the occasional one of his Tweets to my classes, I can’t help the very sarcastic voice.
the “writings” would not make a book. Better yet, “The Tweets of Donald J. Trump.”
heh, heh: zing! Trump’s writings belong in that old series of jokes about the shortest books ever written.
bethree5: Trump’s presidential library will have several books full of Tweets. The rest of the library will be filled with very large pictures of him. Many will be of supporters cheering him for being so wonderful.
I doubt that he really wants history to read what he actually did. Remember all the people who are busy taping up papers that he has torn and thrown in trash cans?
Farmers are losing their overseas markets, and their laborers. The seafood factories on the East Coast have lost their labor force. Meat processing plants in the Midwest have been emptied of laborers by ICE. Folks, these are hard, backbreaking jobs. No one else wants them, certainly not our kids, who all expect to go to college, not to clean the guts out of chickens and crabs.
The LA Times article was about white workers in a nail-making plant in Southeast Missouri who are being laid off because of Trump’s tariffs.
They may lose their jobs, their homes, and their cars, but they are good with making those sacrifices because it is Trump who caused their job losses, and their adoration of Trump seemingly knows no bounds.
NYC public school parent
First off nobody is losing anything yet. When they do then we will know how they react. If and when layoffs actually occur, workers will react. If and when sales and thus profits are affected then the markets will react.
Frankly, I am getting a bit tired of the MSM misrepresenting data. Don’t get me wrong to hell with my investments. I would like to see the economy and markets tank to give us a redo of 2008 and see if we can get it right this time. I don’t know whether the effects of his tariffs will be enough to counter the stimulative effects of the tax cuts. They certainly will neutralize the positive effects. My objection to the cuts was how they would be paid for not that I care whether they would be paid for but Republicans will.
Smoot Hawley did not cause the Great Depression a fall off in demand caused the fall off in trade. The tariffs and trade as a sector of the economy were too small to be significant. But we have weaved a great tale. They probably did not help but they did not cause it. That was Krugman’s take, not mine.
So what happens if the world does not come to an end because of the tariffs. What if the job loses in trade-related industries are offset by job gains in other industries. After all, we have 6.7 million open jobs with a shortage of labor and skills to fill them. Another myth that is a misinterpretation of a BLS dataset (JOLTs)that shows no such thing.
How will the Media explain the economic numbers? Will the public perceive that his policy was a failure?
Did you read the article in the LA Times? Some people have already lost jobs.
If this were Obama, those people would be screaming bloody murder at his policies. Even if only 20 people were laid off and not 60. They are the same people who think the words of the Declaration of Independence are evil if they are told it was a left winger who wrote them and that the words of a Nazi are patriotism if Trump says them.
Trump doesn’t provide good economic policies that will eventually lead to them having good jobs with good benefits. Trump provides them with scapegoats. He throws them some red meat and they eat it up. And gives them nothing else except empty promises.
I love how every single one of them just knew that Trump really cared about them. Come on — has Trump done anything except throw them scapegoats to demonstrate caring?
They are never going to be convinced of anything unless the great white leader tells them it is so. And then it can be exactly what the Democrats said or can be exactly what the socialists said and they will embrace it. We live in a very frightening time. And thinking that those people will ever be convinced by rational argument or even their own best interest is getting tiresome.
These people would never have voted for Bernie over Trump.
The only way the Democrats win is to get out the vote of the OTHERS. Why do you think the Republicans have spent so much of their efforts on disenfranchising voters? They aren’t worried about a Bernie attracting those true believing white voters who love the racist dog whistles. They are worried about the ones who aren’t voting and the ones who might have voted if they weren’t the target of a propaganda campaign telling them that there was absolutely no difference between Trump and whatever Dem was running so why bother to come out.
And Russ Feingold’s loss is exhibit #1. Feingold stood for everything that those voters supposedly wanted, and they preferred the right wing Republican incumbent who had thrown over the working class again and again. But gave them their scapegoats.
the undocumented workers swept up by ICE have lost their jobs and their freedom, and their employers lost them.
The parents at the border lost their children and may never be reunited.
There are two.
Tomorrow morning at 8:30 AM the Labor Dept will release the Jobs report. That is if the ass in the WH doesn’t tweet it out first. If ADP is right the number will be about 170k . CNN has an article today that the good number is not as good as it could be because employers are finding it hard to find workers. Of course, the Prime age 25-54 worker participation rate is 2% lower than it was from 89 -2000. We are told that this is because the men are sitting home playing video games. So do tell what are the women doing because their rate is also down close to 2 points. There is one more troubling thing. Wages at this stage of a recovery should be growing at 4-5% to make up for the last recession and the next recession that will come. They are relatively stagnant which is why the Federal Reserve has been in no rush to jack up rates. So throw Adam Smith out the window because the fundamental tenet of capitalism has been rewritten. When we have a shortage of workers (or any product ) wages rise as workers leverage their skills among employers for higher wages or other perks. That is the reason that the Job Openings (JOLTs) number goes up with every recovery. It is worth noting here that Obama has created any way you count it; more Jobs than Trump. 16/17 or as Trump likes to say in the 16months since the election vs the 16 months before the election.
However, the number that people will see is 170k so 100 jobs here or there means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Me I’m with Bill Maher bring on the recession. But I don’t think it is happening just yet.
And although the Markets are jittery they are still at record highs year over year. So they are not taking the trade war seriously YET!
But NYCPSP please stop. You should be a Trump supporter your sense of victimization is profound. Are you still waiting for de Blasio to magically lose the Mayor’s race because of Republicans superhuman powers? As I said before Big Bird should have been a stand down moment for your paranoia. Perhaps your analytical skills need a little sharpening when it comes to politics. There are more than a few here who warned that Hillary was going to get beaten. It gets a little tough listening to you rail against the progressives. They were not on the ballad and Feingold was running against an incumbent. Having lost in a sweep year before. Hillary losing the state did not help. Perhaps there are quite a few reasons for him not getting as many votes as she did. including people so stupid that they circle the top of the ticket and walk out.
My point was that I do not know how visible those numbers will be or how soon. I assure you that I have handed out more layoff slips then anyone you know and it doesn’t hit home with announcements sometimes it doesn’t hit home until several weeks of unemployment.
It certainly doesn’t hit home when someone else is being laid off.
My frustration with the media is their lack of honesty does not help. Both trade and immigration are places where we pick winners and losers and the rest I will address to Diane.
dianeravitch
I spend a lot of time on Building Trades facebook pages getting into heated arguments with Trumpanzees about immigration trade and Trump not as respectfully as I would argue on your blog.I have been called out numerous times with violent threats. I don’t do it to convince them because that is hopeless. I do it so that they do not infect others with their baseless hate. Or at least so that others hear something other than from the right. To my surprise, there are more progressives airing opinions than righties. Although I am certain that this is not the reality offline on the job sites.
That said every economic decision that is made picks winners and losers. Let us get rid of the myth that we have free or efficient markets.
As I have stated before Laswell’s definition of politics deciding ” who gets what when and how” is probably taught in Political Science as much as Samuelson is taught in Economics.
Both in Trade and immigration, we pick winners and losers. In trade, it goes all the way back to the founding of the country. Jefferson vs Hamilton. The Plantation owner vs Hamilton who envisioned a manufacturing society. Jefferson favored free and open markets and Hamilton wanted to protect nascent industries. Every developing nation has been protectionist till they were the gross exporter. Every nation uses tariffs to protect vital political interests. So the steelworker in Pennsylvania may win as auto workers in Michigan or South Carolina may lose. I won’t claim to know how these tariffs workout. I suspect the horse has left the barn and they will do more harm than good. China will soon have a larger middle class than the American population. Had I thought that Trump actually gave a crap about workers in the rust belt I would not be rooting against his success.
So let’s talk intellectual property rights. As none other than Lawrence Summers has said when asked who should care about property rights? “Bill Gates might care or Apple… ” We can add drug manufacturers to that list.
But why should I care as a consumer that an iPhone or a life-saving drug costs me more so that Pfizer earns more profits? Yet our trade proposals make protecting these anti-market mechanisms a high priority. In effect not levying a small tariff but in the case of drugs a huge tax; sometimes hundreds of times the cost of a generic. There are other ways to fund research. So we are picking drug companies and their shareholders as winners and have for decades decided that blue-collar factory workers were expendable. It is also worth noting that the Supreme court recently ruled that workers knowingly enter into contracts that limit their ability to sue employers in class action suits; overruling an NLRB decision that protected these workers right to sue. . Yet IBM or General Motors do not have the skills to negotiate to protect their own Intellectual Property rights in exchange for access to Chinese markets. Or access to low-cost Chinese manufacturing that the Chinese demand access to the technology for in exchange. Protecting these poor incompetent corporations has been central to Obama’s trade negotiators and Trump will declare a great victory when he protects Bill Gates…
Same with immigration. In the aggregate immigration is good for the country. It increases demand as immigrants are consumers and it provides workers needed for a growing economy and taxpayers .. But people are not aggregates. Employers have always used immigration as a wage wedge against native workers. It has encouraged backlashes against every immigrant migration from the Irish on. Banned Asians severely limited Southern and Eastern European immigrants in 1924. There is no doubt that workers in certain industries have been victimized by employers who are hiring undocumented immigrants abusing the immigrant with substandard wages and working conditions. While costing these Americans Jobs. We see this even with the abuse of the H1b program. We see Computer Programmers Nurses and even Teachers being brought in to lower wages break Unions and increase profits. Billionaire developers who built housing before 2008 profitably with union labor now employing 15-30% undocumented immigrant labor to break the backs of construction unions in NYC. Unemployment in these trades in the middle of a building boom.
So again we are picking winners and losers. These are labor issues which the oligarchy including Trump has no intention to solve. Trump the perfect Demagogue for the times. Of course, he will torture the poor refugees from the Northern Triangle a crisis manufactured by US policy as the Mexican migration was caused by NAFTA. His base cheering as if the Christians were being fed to the lions. But in the end, cheap labor will be brought in on temporary work visas depending on the employer to maintain their status. In effect, a modern form of slavery and there will be no path to citizenship.
You have a lot of chutzpah, Joel, claiming that I have a sense of victimization when you are the one who keeps insisting that the white Trump voters are the real “victims” and overlooking exactly what it is that drew them to Trump. I’m getting pretty tired of you attacking me because I am simply noticing how much they adore Trump when Trump attacks on women, minorities, etc.
Why, just today, those “victims” that you feel so sorry for were cheering him as he attacked “low IQ” Maxine. They were cheering him as he called Sen. Warren “Pocahontas”. They were cheering Trump when he made fun of the “me,too” movement.
Feingold lost. It’s laughable that you think it was because the voters preferred the right wing anti-worker Republican who proved his anti-worker bona fides over the last 6 years because they had 6 years to see how he screwed over workers. You think they will vote against a right wing Republican anti-worker who throws them the same red meat racism as Trump? They wouldn’t have voted for Bernie, either, if Feingold couldn’t muster enough votes against a right wing Republican who had done nothing for them for the last 6 years. Apparently they love the Republican policies. So quit pandering to people who love the Republicans because they don’t like you, Bernie or Russ Feingold and they never will. They would not still be cheering at those rallies if they weren’t buying everything Trump was selling.
Why can’t you just accept that they love Trump? It’s getting tiresome to hear you insisting that they just keep coming out for Trump’s rallies because the Democrats didn’t do enough for them. If that was the case, they would have abandoned the Republicans long ago.
Scratch ballad insert ballot.
NYC public school parent
Most of the places where Trump holds a campaign rally have never seen an immigrant. Further, if you read my response to Diane you will note that I said Trumpanzees cannot be reached. And compared them to the Romans feeding Christians to the lions. So I am not defending them those that voted for Obama twice and then Trump or those that just stay home figuring its, all the same, are reachable. And we dismiss their concerns at our own peril.
Immigrants are everywhere, doing the jobs that Americans don’t want to do.
Farm labor, stoop labor, meat processing, etc. The white guys are not hoping to do that work.
No one is dismissing the concerns of those who stayed home or those who voted for Trump and now understand they were conned. So it’s insulting to accuse some straw man of dismissing them.
I agree with most of the points in your second post (which I did not see until after I wrote my response to your first one. But I don’t understand the disconnect between what you write and your conclusions.
Somehow Andrew Cuomo can be one of the most co-opted Democrats in office and you aren’t worried about his policies turning off “the working man”, but then you turn around and blame democrats for not being more pro-worker! Cuomo’s big beef with de Blasio was that he was raising money to elect progressive Democrats and Cuomo wanted Republicans or the Dems who went as far as caucus with the Republicans so Republicans could control the Senate! That’s worse than anything even the right wing Dems in Congress would do — actually prevent their party from controlling the Senate or House! And THAT’S the guy you say the trade unions believe in? They’ll vote for right wing Republicans and Trump and Cuomo and you think it’s the Democrats’ for “dismissing” them? The progressive Democrats who actually care about them don’t get their support. You think it was white working class voters who gave Ocasio-Cortez her victory over the old “anti-worker” Dem Joe Crowley?
I would be interested to hear whether those white working class guys are impressed with Ocasio-Cortez or if they are listening to the same propaganda about how she is a lefty “socialist” or a secret rich girl from the suburbs who went to a fancy college and is just another fake sell-out. How much do those white working class guys like Elizabeth Warren? If they are voting for Andrew Cuomo, then why would you ever think that any Democrat who isn’t on the far right would ever appeal to them. So I don’t quite understand why you think progressives will ever get the vote of those who think Cuomo is a great guy. And those are the NY “working class” voters! You think the ones in the midwest aren’t far more conservative?
Look, I’d be happy to see you proven right by those white workers abandoning Cuomo. If they aren’t, that says a lot about how much being more progressive matters to those voters. I sure wish it did.
NYC public school parent
Almost every union in the state-backed Cuomo and Crowley including the AFT. But of course, you are the arbiter of what a progressive is as you attack every progressive politician. Cuomo does not meet my definition of a progressive. But he is far from a right-wing politician.
You may find this hard to believe but most Union Leaders are there because they want to secure benefits and wages for their members. And in NY State I would say they are doing fairly well.
In that politics is transactional you can rest assured Public Worker unions weighed the assault that Cuomo had launched on them vs what benefits they have received. The benefit can be as simple as being provided “shelter from the storm”. The leadership of my private sector trade Union made the decision to weakly endorse Hillary over Sanders in the primary. Having spoken to many of them it was not because they liked her better. As somebody said to me last night “you can be right or happy.” Think of that statement as Jefferson used the term happiness. So the decision to back politicians is often made on the basis of who they believe can win an election and being in their good graces vs who is the right choice. Sorry, Clinton and Cuomo are the same. Don’t worry because, in the end, Hillary was with the School Reformers. As Thomas Donohue (Chamber of Commerce )said” ignore what she says she’s with us on TPP. ”
But sometimes as I tell the Trumpanzees we have to judge those we support by who our enemies are attacking. Both Cuomo and de Blasio are being assaulted by the most right-wing forces in the Nation. From Berman and the “Center for Union Facts” who previously attacked teachers unions. To the “National Right to Work Committee” to the ABC contractors association. The social issues are a distraction the money behind the right don’t give a damn about social issues economic domination is their goal. They use the useful idiots; the low information voter to achieve this goal. “By distracting with anything that does not affect the corporate bottom line” Lofgren.
Trumpanzees? That’s new.
I’m sorry, Joel, but I’m really having trouble following your points.
The Democrats need to be more progressive, but white working class voters will vote for the guy who promises them something small and ignore the progressive because the progressive is not yet in power.
“But sometimes as I tell the Trumpanzees we have to judge those we support by who our enemies are attacking…”
Cuomo is not being attacked — his campaign is being underwritten by right wing REPUBLICAN billionaires. You have a lot of chutzpah putting Cuomo in the same category as Cuomo’s sworn enemy de Blasio. And unlike your typical smears and propaganda (That Chamber of Commerce quote has to be the most ridiculous smears I have ever heard – worthy of certain haters on here), I judge candidates on the ENTIRETY of what they have done. And Cuomo has supported the turncoat Democrats who made sure that the Senate remained in Republican hands and hates de Blasio for not going along with that pure unadulterated right wing action. Don’t sit here and tell me that the Democrat who works to keep Republicans in power is “progressive”. Andrew Cuomo. If that is the type of “progressives” you insist white workers demand, then they don’t want progressives — they want white men who will do the bidding of right wing billionaires. Stop accusing me of attacking “progressives” because I know Andrew Cuomo is no progressive. Hearing you repeat the nonsense that this guy who helps REPUBLICANS stay in power is “progressive” perverts the meaning of progressive. You are basically now saying those white workers will vote for RINOs. You are all over the map.
As usual, you might want to rethink that statement. Perhaps you haven’t seen the posters plastered on almost every subway station. Or the television ads “SubWay Scam” By Berman and the Center for Union Facts. The same Berman who ironically was working with Campbell Brown to slur the Teachers portraying them as child abusers. And maybe it is fitting that Cuomo is on the receiving end as that he was more than willing to accept their aid in his battle against de Blasio and the Teachers Union. Perhaps it is also fitting that Gary LaBarbera the head of the NYC Building Trades is given a prominent role. He in an attempt to court favor with the Governor Joined in funding an ad campaign sponsored by the Real Estate Board of NY RBNY. The campaign attacked public worker’s pensions and benefits as excessive. Cuomo has rewarded those Unions with plenty of Public infrastructure jobs and seen to it that they are done at the Union rate even though they are Private Public Partnerships. However, RBNY has launched a massive assault on the same Unions they partnered with. No longer content to make the same profits they were prior to 2008. It certainly is not that the Union wage went up; it’s been stagnant. And unfortunate they are using up to 30% undocumented labor in the assault. The Manhatten District attorney indicting a contractor for criminal wage violation; cheating over a hundred mostly undocumented immigrant workers. Who were building what is to be the tallest residential building in the City. At 11 west 57th in the heart of billionaires row.
But when you watch the video know that Cuomo de Blasio and Nixon are clueless. The Governor and the Mayor pointing fingers at each other over the conditions in the Subway and Nixon blaming workers for it. As I pointed out to Flerp months ago it made no sense that the system was falling apart almost the entire signal system was replace within the last 30 years. The system is working just the way it was planned to by the MTA; after an accident on the Williamsburg Bridge in 94.
Detailed in a great interactive article in the Times online about a month ago.
But enjoy the infomercial.
Joel, I have met with Cynthia Nixon. She is not anti-union. She is a genuine progressive.
Trump has given $70,000 to Cuomo. He is a genuine creature of Wall Street and the real estate industry.
You are very unfair to Nixon. On the issues I care most about, she is the real deal. Not just education, but a range of issues, all affecting people’s lives.
dianeravitch
Obviously, Nixon is better than Cuomo on Education. On healthcare on a lot of issues. If she wins I will certainly support her over any Republican. I supported Sanders not just because I had liked his positions for well over a decade. But I felt that he was the better candidate to defeat the Republicans. Nobody ever accused modern Union leaders of being brave. They are supporting Cuomo because they feel he will defeat a Republican and defeat Nixon her remarks just amplified the problem. A Republican Governor even without the assembly will be devastating on a whole host of issues and no one can guarantee that the assembly will look all that different than the Senate in the future.
But I am glad that you like the term Trumpanzee it has been around for over a year. . I obtained it from an online friend on a building trades FB page. Who I have since run into at several demonstrations. But in a sign, the trades are changing for the better: the friend is College grad a Democratic Socialist a Puerto Rican Gay a Woman and married to a Dreamer. All would have been disqualifying 45 years ago. And might I add furious with Nixon for making a tough job talking to people even tougher.
Joel says:
“and Nixon blaming workers for it”
Let me point out the lengths that Cuomo supporters will go to in order to destroy a progressive.
The notion that Nixon has been on the campaign trail blaming workers for subway problems is outrageous. Nixon made one comment about “shared sacrifice” and then clarified it when people immediately jumped on it to insist it meant she was blaming workers. So why would people lie about a woman by using a right wing smear job on her to make it seem like she has a secret plan to turn over the state to the right wingers and she blames unionized subway workers for all the subway problems?
This is the real reason progressive lose. People who don’t want an honest debate because smearing people with innuendoes — especially when they are those nasty women who are planning to do the Chamber of Commerce’s bidding or lying about their native american heritage or blaming subway workers for all the problems in the subway — really speaks to exactly what those white working class workers want. Someone to scapegoat. and if it can’t be a non-white immigrant, a woman is fine.
After the news that Trump’s minions are going to denaturalize citizens, I have to wonder whether prohibiting abortion isn’t also a way to keep up the numbers of white children. It’s crazy, but…
https://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/07/donald-trump-is-leading-the-republican-charge-to-preserve-a-shrinking-white-majority.html?__twitter_impression=true
Wouldn’t it have the opposite effect? (I thought “white” women got abortions at lower rates than the traditional “minority” groups.)
FLERP! Are you looking for reason?
I don’t know the statistics, but for now there are still more white women of childbearing age than non-white, so if the OWG (old white guys) can keep them from controlling their fertility, there’s a chance.
RE: link, efforts to de-naturalize — Sad. Old white men hanging off the cliff trying to leave their white legacy behind them. Guess they didn’t get the memo. For example, when I arrived in my chi-chi NJ town 26 yrs ago you never saw a black/white husb-wife in town. Now it’s not unusual (got one just up the block!) And by early 2000’s when my kids were in hisch, many (like 1/4) of their friends were mixed race incl white+ black &/or Hispanic, Indian, Middle-Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, Korean.
Denaturalize citizens? Our Dear Leader believes citizenship is like a club membership. I could never have conceived of this concept before reading this story.
It has already happened:
From this morning’s news. Army also targeting immigrants:
https://apnews.com/38334c4d061e493fb108bd975b5a1a5d/AP-NewsBreak:-US-Army-quietly-discharging-immigrant-recruits?utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&__twitter_impression=true
We are assuming that the evangelicals care about abortion. We jump through hoops to explain how they can support such a low life Sc****g . Time and time again we see failures on the part of right-wing politicians or Religious leaders and all is forgiven. Do you really think that his evangelical base does not suspect the same thing that we do? Of course, Donald paid multiple women to have abortions. He probably raped a thirteen-year-old girl as well. So if Trump or Moores behavior does not upset them what is their motivation. Perhaps lack of access to abortion is seen as punishment and it is seen as punishing the less worthy the poor and minorities. Similar reactions can be seen in their attitudes toward undocumented immigrants. From a labor standpoint, I have written numerous letters to the editor about undocumented labor being used as a wage wedge by unscrupulous employers. Yet how can you be a human being and watch desperate people mothers being separated from infants? Somehow they love it.
The Evangelical Religous Right was reborn as a reaction to school integration. Abortion adopted from the Catholic Church as a convenient cover. They couldn’t have these preachers standing at the pulpit throwing out racial slurs. Even though some are unrestrained. They don’t care perhaps because sexual conduct and abortion were never really the issue.
I don’t know about the evangelicals, but I can assure you that the Roman Catholics care about it deeply.
Agreed. I believe I said that.
Food for thought are American Catholics more Catholic than the Irish the Italians the French
FLERP!, this is an interesting article from just 3 months ago addressing exactly this subject:
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/evangelicals-not-catholics-are-now-the-rtl-base.html
Also, don’t forget that the Republic of Ireland voted by quite a large margin for a referendum to repeal the abortion ban. (Northern Ireland still has strong laws against abortion).
^^From the NY Magazine article:
” The eight most heavily Catholic states—in order, Rhode Island (42 percent Catholic), Massachusetts (34 percent), New Jersey (34 percent), New Mexico (34 percent), Connecticut (33 percent), New York (31 percent), California (28 percent) and Illinois (28 percent)—were among the 17 that had not passed legislation curtailing abortion rights. Conversely, the 13 states with the lowest percentage of Catholics—in order, Mississippi (4 percent), Utah (5 percent), West Virginia (6 percent), Tennessee (6 percent), Alabama (7 percent), North Carolina (9 percent), Georgia (9 percent), South Carolina (10 percent), Kentucky (10 percent), Idaho (10 percent) and Virginia (12 percent)—were among the 33 states that have curtailed access to abortions since 2010.
In sum, the relationship between the number of Catholics in a state and the intensity of the state’s anti-abortion policies is completely inverse.”
NYC public school parent
That was what I was getting to in my response to FLERP. You even did that without taking a swipe at progressives.
I have never taken a swipe at progressives. I take a swipe at people who insist that the only reason Democrats don’t win is that they don’t have the right candidates — they just aren’t progressive enough, those people say.
It’s obvious to me that Democrats aren’t winning because some voters in some states prefer the red meat racism and xenophobia that right wing Republicans offer them and it doesn’t matter whether the Democrat is progressive or moderate because neither type is offering that to voters who are looking for scapegoats.
What is clear to me is that some Dem voters will prefer a progressive in a primary and other voters will prefer a moderate. In Virginia, voters in the primary preferred the moderate (but he was the one who was pro-public education) and he defeated a Republican.
I don’t blame the Dems who decided to spend their time and money working to elect a DFER pro-charter “progressive” in the primary. If the voters had preferred that candidate, I would have been happy to see him win the general.
I personally prefer progressives (which is why I like Cynthia Nixon). But I’m not going to condemn primary voters who want a moderate Democrat. We need Democrats in power. And not the kind that Cuomo helps who actually caucus to make sure the Republicans control the agenda.
Well, this is pretty terrible. Looks like some guards at a child immigrant shelter (read jail) have been emulating the guards at Abu Ghraib:
https://apnews.com/afc80e51b562462c89907b49ae624e79
Christine Langhoff: This is absolutely sickening. Trump and his hatred and ignorance is causing shame to the US all over the world.
Notice the abuse began while Obama was still in office, though Robert Carey says he was not made aware. Under Trump it seems there are no brakes.
“Robert Carey, who served as director of Refugee Resettlement under the Obama administration, said Tuesday he only heard about the complaints at the Shenandoah center after he left office in January 2017. Had he known, Carey said, he ‘would have been all over that trying to figure out what needed to be done, including termination of contracts.’ ”
Absolutely horrifying.
This seems like a good place in the commentary to bring this up: newsman Ed Schultz died in his sleep today at the age of 64. He was a terrific news anchor, long the host of the MSNBC show bearing his name. In fact, his show–& he–was one of the few (if any others) covering the Madison, WI teachers entrenchment. He famously said (&, as usual, son’t have the exact quote; am sure someone here can even provide a link to the clip from “The Ed Show”), “President Obama, you said you’d be out w/us in your walking shoes in such an event. Where are you?” (I KNOW for sure this is far from what he said, but it’s the gist.) I’d not heard another newsperson (hadn’t watched Fox, save for Greta Van Susterin {think I got her name wrong, as well}–&–BTW–whatever happened to her?) ever say anything like this to Obama on msm. I think that is, in part, why/how his show & he were given the axe by MSNBC. Well, really, how dare him! (I’m pretty sure he’d slammed dear Arne & the D.o.Ed. a number of times–again, something no news person had ever done at the time. (And, as I recall, Rachel Maddow was his lead-in; she always briefly talks to the hosts (Lawrence O’Donnell {who they almost canned this year &, thank G-d, didn’t}; Chris Hayes), & the 2 of them had good banter.
Of course, he went on to RT (because there was nowhere left for him to go, just as is the case w/Chris Hedges–no msm news would have him, because he tells truth to power–&, yes, he IS brilliant, Diane!) where he reported the same kind of U.S. news in his same kind of way (direct, honest, ALL the stories). He was an anchor–along w/Larry King (who talked about Ed tonight & was choking back tears)–on Election Night 2016, & his reaction & reporting was something to see.
Ed, your voice will be greatly missed.
Amen! Although I can do without Hedges and stopped reading Truthdig. There was a lesser of two evils and we are having that reinforced daily.
Ed Schultz invited me on his show twice to talk about what Scott Walker was doing to unions.
Never invited on Rachel Maddox. She never talks about education, although she was outspoken about Flint water crisis.
He was great–covered EVERYTHING–&, of course, kudos to him for having you on. You had written in an earlier post, I believe, that you’d met Rachel, talked to her about being on her show, & that she changed the subject.
& that’s pretty much why I stopped watching her…WON’T cover the REAL stories about education…
Retired,
Thanks for remembering that story. It was 2010. I was booked for four minutes with Andrea Mitchell. Met Rachel in the dressing room. Asked her if she would have me on her show to talk about the national disaster called education reform. She replied, “oh, you are the one who turned against Bush?” Referring to a story in The NY Times. I said, “yes,” in eager anticipation. She complimented me on my jacket and asked me where I got it. End.
Maddow went to Stanford and is friends with the insufferable Cory Booker, so we shouldn’t expect charter school exposes on her show any time soon.
Anyway, that would interfere with her “Fox News For Liberals” strategy (after all, she did seek pointers from Roger Ailes when she started on MSNBC).
And on the topic of strategies, can we give up on the clearly failed one of thinking that Trump’s grotesque sexism, sexual pathologies and debaucheries are a realistic way of combatting him and what he represents?
Even if this was a way to dispose of Trump (and it’s not), it would do nothing to roll back Trumpismo. It’s a dead end, and a sign of political weakness, not strength.
Rachel Maddow is pro-charter. And yet I think many of us can realize that she is NOT pro-charter because she is secretly working for the neoliberal takeover of America and keeping white workers down, but because she just happens to have a different take on the issue — either in ignorance or for personal reasons. There seem to be a few people like that who believe themselves “progressives” and yet seem to truly believe that as long as a charter is non-profit and has great results and long waiting lists, one must support them even if some parents (usually African-American and poor) that those people feel superior to complain about how their children were treated so they would leave.
I don’t know why Maddow, Warren and Sanders absolutely refuse to ever criticize the white charter CEO who is the face of that “public” charter movement. Even when that charter CEO is the very same person who gave America her word that Betsy DeVos cared so much about children and needed to be given full power to promote her agenda. You’d think that would make Rachel Maddow, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Andrew Cuomo realize how corrupt the “public” (as Bernie calls it) charter movement is, but the fact that the CEO who is the most celebrated and given the most money from the pro-charter billionaires is the very same one who personally made it her mission to get DeVos confirmed doesn’t make them start saying “we need to endorse the NAACP’s moratorium on charters now.” They are just silent.
Maybe deep down Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren believe that some — not all but a disproportionately large number– of African-American kindergarten children are just as violent as Eva Moskowitz says they are, and that’s why Rachel Maddow with her silence is complicit. Why should Rachel Maddow care if one of her beloved charter schools suspends 18% of their kindergarten class as long as the kids being suspended aren’t white and a charter CEO is telling her that those kid were all violent and deserved it?
Let’s remember — the silence of the progressive politicians and commentators when they could and should be speaking out about these charters makes them complicit. And unfortunately, too many of the progressives seem to be willing to throw public schools under the bus.
I suspect those progressives’ opinion of the teachers’ union (and many teachers they probably believe are lazy) is very low and that’s why they remain silent as those “good public charters” and their CEOs do their best to undermine public education. Because otherwise I’d have to believe they were racists who thought high suspension rates of 5 year olds was only because of their certainty that so many non-white Kindergarten children act out violently and thus deserved such severe punishments.
At any rate, with their silence they are complicit. And the ed reformers couldn’t get away with what they are doing if these progressives were speaking out instead of enabling.
Bernie Sanders is NOT pro-charter. Get with the program.
Diane, I really enjoy your posting on education news. While I may not agree with you politically at all times I have learned a lot about public education. I appreciate your perspective on education. Thank you.
What I’m really growing weary from is the hyperbolic stigmatizing of certain groups like evangelicals. I’m not evangelical myself, nor did I vote for Trump, but lumping all evangelicals into one group that blindly follows a sexist, philandering, xenophobic and greedy power hungry president who cares nothing about the poor or women faced with unplanned pregnancies is not true. I have friends who are evangicals and devote their time serving the poor in their local communities. They give generously of their raising good families. They support public education by serving on PTO and volunteering in the classroom. They do not fit your characterization of them.
I see good healthy, challenging, and respectful political discourse unraveling and it frightens me. I fear for my children’s future when adults in positions of influence such as the presidency stoke the flames of hatred. How can we live together in peace when there is so much animosity of others?
Mary,
Thank you for writing. I understand and appreciate your comments. How should I characterize Trump’s base? Who are the people who cheer when he separates children from their parents? Who is he pleasing when he taunts and ridicules others, in a tone I have never heard from any other national figure? Who cheers him on as he removes regulations that protect the water we all drink and the air we all breathe? Who is so passionate about blocking abortion that they ignore his immoral, unethical personal life? Who doesn’t care that the president paid a porn star to keep her quiet during the campaign? How shall I refer to these people?
Just this morning, I heard on the news that Melania Trump was paid over $100,000 last year because she owns the rights to any photographs of her, and every time her picture is reproduced, she earns royalties. Can you imagine Laura Bush or Michelle Obama doing this without provoking a massive outcry?
Help me figure out how to describe the Trump people in a way that identifies why they see this man as a hero instead of a grifter.
Diane,
I am glad that people are calling out Trump on policies that are inhumane. That’s good. The way he bullies and ridicules others is distasteful and embarrassing to many people. I get that.
I live in a conservative state and have family members and friends who reluctantly voted for Trump, because to them the alternative was worse. My mother, for example, is not a racist. She doesn’t hate immigrants. She’s socially conservative. She’s a retired school teacher who worked for over 30 years in public and private education and raised five great kids, and I love and respect her a great deal as my mom. She’s a member of white, middle class America. Apart from voting for Trump, however, I wouldn’t call her a member of his base. I think she is probably representative of a sizable number of voters who helped elect Trump. When it came to electing a person of character as president, both candidates had major flaws, but of the two Trump’s populist and conservative message resonated with them. Plus, I think a lot of time voters vote out of fear of the alternative.
I think that there are others who voted for Trump because he promised to push through policies that would benefit their cause. Here I do smell hypocrisy on the part of leader of certain Christian religious organizations that rationalized enthusiastically supporting Trump – an ends justifies the means kind of approach to moral decision making, which never plays out well and flies in the face of Christian ethics and teachings. You can justify all kinds of evils if the ends of what you’re attempting to do are noble. That’s a big problem.
I think a lot of people are no longer paying any attention or have simply grown apathetic when it comes to politics because of all the corruption, which Trump personifies.
To answer your question on how to refer to these people (Trump’s base), I guess it depends on what motivated them to vote for him in the first place. Regardless, you and I absolutely agree that we have a president whose behavior, personal and public, is repugnant, not to mention his policies on immigrant families. At the end of the day these people as much as you are disgusted with their support of Trump are human beings. We can’t lose sight of that no matter how hard it can be. I fear the heated rhetoric and attacking on both sides can lead to dehumanizing those we disagree with, and I think that is very dangerous.
Thanks for responding to my comment.
“I see good healthy, challenging, and respectful political discourse unraveling and it frightens me.”
Did you see Trump’s speech yesterday? Did you hear him calling a woman “low IQ” and fill his speech with hateful slurs his supporters were cheering on?
Who were those people cheering him on? Where are the evangelicals calling it out? You think it is okay to remain silent when the President of the United States treats those who disagree with him like that?
Why would anyone attack the critics of people who remain silent or cheer on Trump instead of acknowledging that those people are deserving of criticism?
People here believe in respectful dialogue using facts and calling out those who use lies to foment hatred and distrust and violence. Attacking those who call out that hatred for what it is, while remaining silent about it, isn’t encouraging “healthy respectful political discourse.”
Those who believe in healthy and respectful political discourse are calling out Trump strongly. And if there are evangelicals doing that, more power to them. Enabling those hateful lies by silence is not good. Seriously, there were plenty of good Germans who helped their neighbors and did nice things and did not say one word as Jews disappeared. Sometimes being a good person is not remaining silent when you see someone lying and fomenting hatred. And certainly choosing to direct your criticisms to those calling out the person fomenting hatred instead of the person actually fomenting hatred speaks volumes. I’m sorry but it does.
Mary: “How can we live together in peace when there is so much animosity of others?”
I agree that peace should be the way that we respond to each other. I want that very much for everyone in the world…not just the discourse inside the US.
How are we to respond when the President of the US sends bullying and degrading messages to his critics? How are we to respond to continuously seeing news in the morning about the latest bit of chaos that is now happening inside our government and is affecting our allies? The hatred put out byTrump is a disease and it is spreading, even school children are now believing it is perfectly alright to bully and use bad language.
The Evangelicals voted 81% for Trump. Ministers have even called him as being close to god since god has forgiven him for all of his transgressions. How are respectable people supposed to respond to that? I believe in forgiving someone but also believe that the person involved must make some effort to change. What has Trump done to indicate any responsibility for the hatred, fear, chaos and disrespect he continuously shows? He never is wrong on anything, ever. How are we supposed to respond when a person who bullies and looks down upon the struggling people of the world? Where is any sense of caring from this small character of a person?
I want peace. How are we to get that when our military now has more equipment and manpower than the next 7 countries combined? This is being done while many inside this country have no healthcare and are stuck in ghettos with no hope for the future.
Trump is a disease and it is spreading overseas. I have friends overseas who totally dislike him as much as I do. Foreigners see how destructive he is to our national pride.
Don’t be upset by my ramblings. Diane Ravitch’s blog is one way that I can blow off steam. I look forward to expressing myself since I can’t yell at my neighbors, two of whom voted for this self-absorbed, unfit, ignorant, liar.
Carol, your rants are always well-informed, based on fact.