Archives for the month of: February, 2019
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The West Virginia Strike Is Not About Pay: It’s About Charters and Vouchers and the Fight for Public Education

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
19

 

Valerie Strauss sums up why the teachers’ renewed strike in West Virginia is different. It is not about pay. It’s about a fight for the future of public education. The teachers were fighting not only the local supporters of privatization. They were fighting the Koch brothers and ALEC.

Strauss writes:

This time, it wasn’t about pay.

West Virginia teachers walked off the job across the state Tuesday to protest the privatization of public education and to fight for resources for their own struggling schools.

It was the second time in a year that West Virginia teachers left their classrooms in protest. In 2018, they went on strike for nine days to demand a pay increase, help with high health-care costs and more school funding — and they won a 5 percent pay hike. On Tuesday, union leaders said that, if necessary, they would give up the pay hike as part of their protest. They are fighting legislation that would take public money from resource-starved traditional districts and use it for charter schools and for private and religious school tuition.

“Teachers are willing to forsake their raises for the proposition that public education must be protected and that their voices must be protected,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who went to Charleston, W.Va., for the strike Tuesday. “This was absolutely an effort to defund public education, and teachers fought it.”

Barely four hours into the strike, with hundreds of teachers packed into the statehouse, the Republican-led House of Delegates voted down the state Senate’s version of the omnibus education bill — despite pressure to pass it from conservative and libertarian groups, including some connected to the Koch network funded by billionaire Charles Koch.

It was not clear whether the House vote would put the bill to rest for good, but the episode underscored a growing determination among teachers around the country to fight for their public schools.

“I am DONE being disrespected,” Jessica Maunz Salfia, who teaches at Spring Mills High School in Berkeley County, W.Va., wrote in an open letter (see below) on Monday about why she was going to protest Tuesday.

West Virginia teachers remain at the forefront of a rebellion by educators throughout the country who began striking last year over meat-and-potatoes issues such as pay and health-care costs. But that movement has morphed into something broader: a fight in support of the U.S. public education system that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos once called “a dead end.”

In state after state, teachers are saying the same things: Pay matters, but the future of public education matters more. Privatization is intolerable, whether by charters or vouchers.

No compromise with privatization!

 

Categories ALEC, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice, Teacher Pay, Vouchers, West Virginia

Washington Post Fact Checker: The Walton Family Makes More in 1 Minute than Their Average Worker in a Year

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
18

 

Glen Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, reviewed Bernie Sanders’ claim that the Walton family makes more money in one minute than their average Walmart employee in one year. He said that Senator Sanders was right.

The difference is that the average Walmart worker has to go to work to earn money. The Waltons just sit still and get richer by the minute.

Kessler writes:

“The Walton family makes more money in one minute than Walmart workers do in an entire year. This is what we mean when we talk about a rigged economy.”

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in a tweet, Feb. 14, 2019

This tweet from the campaign Twitter account of Sanders, a potential 2020 presidential candidate, caught our eye. Whether this is a definition of a rigged economy is a matter of opinion, but we were curious whether his factoid was right — does the Walton family make as much money in a minute as the company’s workers make in a year?

Let’s take a look.

The Facts

The Sanders campaign acknowledged that the information in the tweet came from a union-backed website known as Making Change at Walmart. The math behind this factoid is pretty simple and easily confirmed with documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Though Walmart is a publicly traded company, more than 50 percent of its shares are in the hands of the Walton family — 51.11 percent, to be precise. These shares are controlled primarily through two entities: Walton Family Holdings Trust and a holding company, Walton Enterprises. Members of the Walton family also have shares they control individually.

The three most prominent members of the family are Jim, S. Robson (Rob) and Alice, each estimated to be worth about $46 billion. They are the surviving children of Sam Walton, co-founder of the company. Other members of the family include Ann Walton Kroenke and Nancy Walton Laurie, children of Bud Walton, the other co-founder; Christy Walton, the widow of one of Sam’s sons; and 10 grandchildren (such as Lukas, worth about $16 billion, and Steuart, who is on the company’s board of directors).

When you add it up, the Walton family controls 1,508,965,874 shares out of 2,952,478,528 total shares outstanding, according to the company’s 2018 proxy statement.

Walmart’s most recent quarterly dividend was 52 cents a share, or $2.08 a year.

In other words, the Walton family earns $3,138,649,017.92 just in dividends a year, before adding in income from salaries, director’s fees and so forth. Yep, that’s more than $3.1 billion.

We have no idea how many hours a week members of the Walton family work on business, but a standard workweek is 40 hours, or 2,080 hours a year. That works out to $1.51 million an hour — or more precisely, $25,149 a minute.

By contrast, the union-backed website says, “at $9/hour, Walmart workers make less than $16,000/year working 34 hours per week, which is Walmart’s definition of full-time.”

Payscale says the average Walmart wage is $12 an hour, including managers, with cashiers earning $9.97 and sales associates earning $10.40. Walmart has previously told The Fact Checker that an entry-level worker earns $11 an hour.

For the sake of argument, let’s give these workers a 40-hour week. Walmart considers 34 hours full-time, which means that’s when workers can qualify for extra benefits, but under the law it has to start paying overtime when work exceeds 40 hours in a week. During holiday seasons, Walmart has been giving extra hours to existing workers rather than hiring seasonal workers. So a 40-hour week seems reasonable as a baseline.

Cashiers: $20,738 a year

Sales associates: $21,632 a year

Entry-level worker (Walmart figure): $22,880 a year

Walmart average (Payscale): $24,960 year

Walton family: $25,149 a minute

Even under a 40-hour metric, the Walton family still earns more in a minute than Walmart employees do in a year.

While the Walmart workers making $20,000 to $25,000 a year may pay little in income taxes or even qualify for the earned income tax credit, we should note that dividend income is taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary income. (This lower tax rate applies to “qualified dividends,” which would apply to the Walmart family holdings.)

The Waltons will have to pay only 20 percent tax on dividend income, compared with a 37 percent tax rate on annual income above $612,000 — so their taxes are almost cut in half. The workers will pay the 6.2 percent Social Security tax on all of their income, while the Waltons will stop paying any Social Security tax once their income exceeds $132,900. (There is no income limit on the 1.45 percent Medicare tax.)

In other words, dividend income is much more valuable on an after-tax basis than ordinary income.

A Walmart spokesman declined to comment.

The Pinocchio Test

Even assuming a 40-hour week, the average Walmart worker earns less in a year than the Walton family earns in a minute just from dividends paid on the family’s stock holdings. It’s an astonishing statistic, and it happens to be correct. Sanders thus earns the coveted Geppetto Checkmark. Regular readers know that we reserve this rating for claims that are unexpectedly true — and that’s certainly the case here.

Geppetto Checkmark

 

Categories Billionaires, Walton Foundation

Paul Thomas: The Big Lie About the “Science of Reading”

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
94

 

Paul Thomas of Furman University in South Carolina reminds us that “the crisis in reading”  is a staple of American educational history. Every generation complains that young kids are not learning to read.it began long before Rudolf Flesch’s best seller “Why Johnny Can’t Read” in the 1950s.

Jeanne  Chall, Reading specialist at Harvard and experienced kindergarten teacher, explored the mystery of reading in her book “Learning to Read: The Great Debate,” 1967, where she recommended early use of phonics, them a transition to engaging reading.

The National Reading Panel (1997) popularized the idea of a “science of reading,” and the myth refuses to die.NCLB codified it into law, but the “crisis” persisted.

Thomas exposes The Big Lie.

Mississippi is the latest example of a state falsely claiming that it has used the “science of reading” to raise scores.

Mississippi hasn’t broken the code. Neither has Florida.

Thomas writes:

“The “science of reading” mantra is a Big Lie, but it is also a huge and costly distraction from some real problems.

“Relatively affluent states still tend to score above average or average on reading tests; relatively poor states tend to score below average on reading tests.

“Some states that historically scored low, under the weight of poverty and the consequences of conservative political ideology that refuses to address that poverty, have begun to implement harmful policies to raise test scores (see the magenta highlighting) in the short-term for political points.

“It is 2019. There is no reading crisis in the way the “science of reading” advocates are claiming.

“It is 2019. Balanced literacy is the science of reading, but it is not the most common way teachers are teaching reading because schools are almost exclusively trying to raise scores, not students who are eager, joyful, and critical readers.

“It is 2019. Political and public efforts to do anything—often the wrong thing—so no one addresses poverty remain the American Way.

“It is 2019. It is still mostly about poverty when people insist it is about reading and reading policy.”

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Lies, Mississippi, NAEP, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Research

Why Don Trump Jr.’s “Loser” Comment Struck Fear in the Hearts of Teachers Around the World

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
174

Recently at a political rally in Texas, Donald Trump Jr. sneered at teachers and called them “losers” who were indoctrinating their students into socialism.

Three teachers published a response on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog on the Washington Post website. They wrote that his words has a chilling effect on educators around the world.

Valerie Strauss wrote:

In this post, three teachers explain why Trump Jr.’s comment was more than simply mean.

Jelmer Evers of the Netherlands, Michael Soskil of the United States and Armand Doucet of Canada were featured authors in the 2018 book “Teaching in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Standing at the Precipice.”

I wish it was not behind a paywall, along with the rest of the Washington Post, which is a great newspaper. I love its slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” We are living through one of the very dark moments of our nation’s history.

They wrote:

For teachers around the globe, this was a chilling moment.

In a stadium filled with people chanting “USA, USA,” the son of the president of the United States called for hostility toward teachers because of their so-called political leanings. This is a message you would expect in an authoritarian regime, not at a rally for the U.S. president.

As teachers, we come from varied backgrounds and political leanings, but there is an undeniable core to who we are and what we stand for. Teachers nurture, care and protect students. Teachers champion the pursuit of knowledge.

By working daily with young people, teachers are the stewards of the future. Whether Democratic or Republican, liberal or conservative, right, left, center, blue or red — seeing and reinforcing the value of a teacher should be a national pillar that rises high above partisan politics and cheap applause.

Throughout history, schools and teachers have always been among the first to be targeted by authoritarian regimes and extremists. Independent thinking, creativity, compassion and curiosity are threats to dogmatic beliefs and rule.

Many of our colleagues in countries ravaged by war or in shackled societies teach in difficult circumstances. They are often ruthlessly persecuted and even killed for providing a well-balanced education to children, which should be a basic human right.

Echoes of these authoritarian practices are increasingly being heard in democratic countries as well. In Germany, the radical right party Alternative for Germany has launched a website where students and parents can report “left-wing teachers.”

In the Netherlands, right-wing parliamentarians have called on students to out their socialist teachers because they were indoctrinating their students in “climate change propaganda.”

In Canada, Ontario Premier Doug Ford has accused student unions of “crazy Marxist nonsense” and has raised alarms by throwing out one of the most progressive sex education curriculums, which dealt with topics from consent, to gender identity to “sexting” in the age of social media.

In Hungary, textbooks are censored to follow the government’s nationalistic agenda. After years of denouncing teachers and schools, President Jair Bolsonaro’s first education policy in Brazil is to go after the “Marxist” curriculums, which bars teachers talking about feminism and LGBTQ issues.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has fired thousands of teachers. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte is attacking teacher unions.

Research by the United Nations has shown that the globe is spinning toward a dramatic teacher shortage, with analysts predicting a shortage of 69 million teachers by 2030. This is the crisis we should be talking about.

We’ve seen overcrowded classrooms, long working hours, lack of professional development, burn out, low salaries, terrible retention rates and teachers across the United States striking to demand better teaching and learning conditions.

How does Donald Trump Jr.’s description of teachers as “losers” and the encouragement of hostility toward us solve these problems? How does it ignite passion in a new generation to pursue the world’s most important profession?

If we can be accused of anything, it is that we are on the front line of democracy. Education reformer John Dewey famously said, “Democracy has to be born again each generation and education is its midwife.”

As members of a global profession, we reject the narrowing of the mind and we stand by our colleagues defending academic freedom. We call upon parents, teachers and politicians to stand with us. Our academic freedom is what allows our democracies to remain strong.

My words, not theirs:

Without teachers, there is no education. Without teachers, there are no doctors, no scientists, no creators, no inventors, no advancement of humanity.

What has Donald Trump Jr. or his father or his brother or his sister done to advance humanity? What kind of person separates families and puts children into cages?

Who indoctrinated Donald Trump Jr. into his ignorance?

He is a loser.

 

Categories Education Reform, International, Teachers, Trump

Peter Greene: Time to Shutter Pennsylvania’s Failing Cybercharters

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
12

 

Cybercharters, especially the for-profit kind, have proven to be a huge scam. The largest in the nation, ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) in Ohio, went bankrupt last year, not because it wasn’t making money buy because the state uncharacteristically insisted on counting and getting refunds for phantom students.

Cybercharters produce poor results for students, no matter which measure you use, yet they are very profitable. The corporation gets full tuition without the overhead of brick-and-mortar schools.

Great business, lousy schools, with lots of money for advertising and lobbying.

No state has been worse than Pennsylvania when it comes to opening cybercharters and ignoring their poor performance and even criminality. The owner of the state’s largest cyber school, Nicholas Trombetta, was convicted of tax evasion when $8 million went missing but not held liable for the diversion of funds meant for educating students.

The state has authorized some 15 or 16 such virtual schools and none has ever met state standards. Real schools that had such dismal results would have been shuttered long ago. But those millions for lobbying legislators….

peter Greene says there is some hope that the reign of the failing cybercharters may be coming to an end. Maybe.

Ten of the state’s cybers are operating with expired charters.

Amazingly, a Bill was introduced in the legislature to end the scam.

“Several lawmakers in Harrisburg would like to put a stop to that.

”Senate Bill 34‘s prime sponsor is Judith Schwank of Berks County, a former dean at Delaware Valley College who’s been in the Senate since 2011. Her bill’s principle is pretty simple– if a district has its own in-house virtual school, it does not have to pay for a student to attend an outside cyber. If a family pulls a student from Hypothetical High and decides that instead of Hypothetical’s own cyber school they want to send Junior to, say, K12 cyber school, then the family has to pay the bill– not the school district.

““It’s crazy,” said State Sen. Schwank, of the fees districts pay to cyber charters. “It’s not based on actual delivery of educational programming.””

Operators of cybercharters say it’s unfair to hold them accountable for actually delivering educational services. Why not let the scam continue?

We willlearn soon enough whether the Pennsylvania legislature dares to hold the cybercharters accountable. Sadly that probably depends on the operators’ generosity to members of the legislature.

 

Categories Accountability, Failure, Fraud, Pennsylvania, Scandals, Virtual Charter Schools

“I Was Trained for the Culture Wars in Home School,” Waiting for Someone Like Mike Pence

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2019 //
57

 

I recently received this alarming article, which appeared right before Trump’s inauguration. 

The author describes his indoctrination in what he calls a “Christofascist” world view.

I think you should read it.

He writes:

“I grew up in the far-right evangelical conservative (Christofascist) movement; specifically, I was homeschooled and my parents were part of a subculture called Quiverfull, whose aim is to outbreed everyone for Jesus. I spent my teen years being a political activist. I was taught by every pastor I encountered that it was our job as Christians to outbreed the secularists (anyone not a far-right evangelical Protestant) and take over the government through sheer numbers. I was part of TeenPact, Generation Joshua and my local Teenage Republicans (TARS).

“When the Tea Party rose in 2009, that was my culture. The Tea Party was step one. I was laying the groundwork for those elections in 2006. These people didn’t come out of the blue like it seemed. This plan, this Christofascist takeover of the US government, has been in the works for decades. When evangelical conservatism started becoming popular and more mainstream around the 1970s, the foundation was being laid for the tragedy playing out right now.

“Evangelical conservatives started taking over their local republican parties and founding organizations like Operation Rescue, Homeschool Legal Defense Association, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, just to name a few.

“Michael Farris founded HSLDA in 1983 as a way to ensure that homeschooling was legal, but what he’s been striving for is the wild west. His organization is trying to keep homeschooling away from any interference so the children he trains through his sister organization, Generation Joshua, would be able to fly under the radar. Generation Joshua started in 2003, primarily catering to children homeschooled by extremely religious rightwing adults. Its purpose was to train us to fight in what the Christofascists have been calling the “Culture Wars.” It’s a loose and ambiguous term that basically means anything or anyone that doesn’t align with this very specific view of Christianity must not be allowed to continue.

“How do you do that? Well, you overturn Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Brown v. Board of Education and Bob Jones v. The United States. Each of these decisions currently protects reproductive rights or non-discrimination based on race. As retribution, you amend the Constitution to discriminate against queers, trans people, women and people of color. Then, you make laws legislating morality. The only way to do this is to infiltrate the government; so Generation Joshua, TeenPact and other organizations exist to indoctrinate and recruit homeschooled youth who have ample free time to participate in politics. The biggest resources for teaching civil discourse are the National Christian Forensics and Communications Association and Communicators for Christ (since renamed Institute for Cultural Communicators). Through these programs we learned how to argue effectively. As students, we were taught critical thinking skills but given only a narrow view of what was acceptable to argue for. We were, after all, being trained to take over the country for Christ, literally. We knew how to perform logical gymnastics about abortion, Christianity and any evangelical talking point you could throw at us.

“When we showed up to city council, local political party meetings and tours of the Capitol we asked intelligent questions, were respectful and had a vested interest in how our local political machine ran. We impressed every government official and staff member with our questions, earnesty and demeanor. In short, we were sneaky and polite Trojan horses; we had an agenda. Yes, even as 15-year-olds. It was forcefully handed to us by the adults in our lives who had been preparing for this since before we were born.

”I watched the Tea Party takeover and was surprised no one saw it coming. After all, this was part of the plan. Trump being elected is also part of the plan, although not Trump specifically; the true goal is Pence.

“Christofascists have been wanting someone like Pence in the White House and, until now, didn’t have a way to get one in. They know Trump is easily manipulated and will change his mind with the wind if it makes him feel more powerful and famous. Trump couldn’t care less about policy, a fact he’s made quite obvious. The Right has given a tyrant power and fame; he will do whatever they want him to do in order to keep it. This way they can sneak Pence in on a piggyback while filling Congress with even more evangelical conservative Republicans. Compared to Trump’s abrasive and terrifying behavior, Pence seems much less threatening. This is not the case. Pence has a proven track record of legalizing discrimination and acting against women and marginalized people. Those of us who didn’t leave the far Right are being elected to federal positions or are taking over states and cities. With Pence in office, even the reasonable-seeming incumbents – who have been and are still at the mercy of the Tea Party – are growing more bold in their attempts to further the Christofascist agenda: To Take Back The Country For Christ.”

Categories Education Reform

West Virginia: Legislators Do Not Pass Charter School Bill in Major Victory for Teachers

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
7

Hang on to your hats and your seat!

The West Virginia legislature did not pass the charter school bill. 

Stay tuned.

Categories Teachers, West Virginia

Atlanta: AFT Leader Asks School Board Leader Jason Esteves to Abandon “Portfolio” Model

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
10

This letter by the head of the Atlanta AFT local was addressed to the chair of the board of Atlanta Public Schools, who is an alumnus of Teach for America. Four members of the school board are TFA alumni, presumably trained by TFA’s Leadership for Educational Equity and primed to support charter schools, not public schools. What is the connection between TFA and privatization? Why does TFA favor charter schools over public schools? Why would a locally elected school board want to relinquish its responsibilities to corporate charter chains controlled by out of state entities?

February 18, 2019
 
Jason F. Esteves, Board Chair
Atlanta Board of Education
130 Trinity Ave., SW
Atlanta, GA 30303
 
Dear Board Chair Esteves:
 

You are now privileged to hold the position of Treasurer of the Georgia Democratic Party. That party has been pro-public education. Yet you are supporting the “Portfolio of Schools” model for Atlanta Public Schools.  This model is called “Innovative Schools” in Denver. And per your leadership, it is called “Excellent Schools” in Atlanta. “Excellent Schools” is not pro-public education. As you may or may not know, seven cities are being courted in order to turn their schools over to this model. 
In the interest of time and since I’ve not heard back from you, we are asking you once again to meet with some concerned Atlanta public school stakeholders and you are requested to walk away from the Portfolio of Schools plan.   We understand that you, one other board member, and the superintendent chose the facilitator to sell the Portfolio of Schools model to the board.

You, Eshe Collins, Matt Westmoreland, and Courtney English are TFA products.

  • What is the connection between TFA and KIPP?
 
In short, the direction of the board has amounted to preying on citizens and selling the district short. Black elected leadership has closed schools and brought in partnerships.
  • Does the board decide the partnerships or does the superintendent decide?
 
This superintendent served without goals or an evaluation for years.
  • Did the superintendent do her own evaluation, scorecard, and narrative?
  • How close to contract renewal did the board receive that information from the superintendent?
 
The superintendent’s contract is over in 2020. Unlike the previous process where Ann Cramer conducted various activities, we also want to discuss, vet and publish a process for a superintendent search that should be real and open. Unlike the last superintendent search, where we the union had reports from Austin, Texas, and St. Paul, Minnesota, it is time that Atlanta, all of Atlanta, know who is doing what. Atlanta taxpayers are being exploited. It is insane that you are awarding 25 to 40-year contracts to companies that are not about real evidence-based solutions for our children. The superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy was a failure. The Strategic Plan was a failure. “Excellent Schools” is a private takeover with failure built in. You are closing schools, giving large charter companies contracts at the taxpayer’s expense and restructuring communities. Some members on the board are disengaged in the community, keeping big funding sources pleased in order to stay in the political arena.
  • Are you planning on running for City Council?
 
You ran for the state house and now you are on the Board of Education. You are Afro-Latino.
  • Are you aware of the Austin Latino Chamber of Commerce Op-Ed per the now Atlanta Superintendent?
 
We applaud you for forming relationships with the Latino Business Community, but per the Latinos and Hispanics in APS, we have not seen a comprehensive engagement plan with them.
 
Please walk away from the Portfolio of Schools plan and paradigm and, when and if you are ready, we are ready to help with evidence-based solutions that work in public schools. Please review the NCSL, OECD and PISA reports. The GFT asked former Senator Vincent Fort to sponsor the Community Schools Bill. It passed the Senate 50 to 1 a few years back. Senator Emmanuel Jones is sponsoring it during this session. By the way, when you close schools you destroy communities and gentrify.  Controlled agendas hurt people at-large. Please help champion the Community Schools Bill as the Chair of the Democratic Party supports it.

Thank you.

 
Sincerely,
 
 
Verdaillia Turner, President, Atlanta Federation of Teachers
VT/ksf
 

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Portfolio District, Privatization, Teach for America

Where Have You Gone, Millard Fillmore? An Anxious Nation Turns Its Eyes to You

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
28

Max Boot, ex-conservative, says that Trump’s weekend tweets show why he is unfit to be president. These are the ravings of a nut on the street.

 

Opinions

His Presidents’ Day tweets showed why Trump is unfit to be president


President Trump in Miami on Monday. (Alicia Vera/Bloomberg News)
By Max Boot
Columnist

February 19 at 1:51 PM

Presidents’ Day weekend is traditionally a time for relaxation — and perhaps a little contemplation of two of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. In President Trump’s case, it was an opportunity to play golf in Florida and to tweet up a storm. He published 40 tweets from Saturday morning to Monday night. Taken together, they tell a story of just how “unpresidented” his behavior remains as he enters his third year in office.

Simply the fact that he sent so many tweets, and they were so personal and vituperative, is an anomaly. Twitter was founded only in 2006 and President George W. Bush never used it while in office. The first presidential tweet was sent by President Barack Obama in 2010 — an innocuous message to promote disaster aid for Haiti. Trump is the first president to unburden his id on Twitter in a way that Richard M. Nixon did only on the White House tapes.

By Trump’s standards, his first tweet of the weekend — at 11:43 a.m. on Saturday — was tame: It was a video clip of his declaration of a state of emergency on Friday. His second one was a little weirder: a clip from his State of the Union address with Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.” blasting in the background. At 7:10 p.m. on Saturday, Trump for some reason felt compelled to write “BUILDING THE WALL!” — his first lie of the weekend, since the border wall is not being built. Lie No. 2 followed just seven minutes later when he tweeted: “Billions of Dollars are being paid to the United States by China in the form of Trade Tariffs!” As a first-year economics student would know, tariffs are paid by domestic consumers, not by foreign governments.

Things started to get really weird late on Saturday night. At 10:51 p.m., Trump tweeted a demand that “Britain, France, Germany and other European allies” take back 800 Islamic State fighters captured in Syria. He warned: “The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them…….. The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go.” This is the president as mob enforcer: Nice country you have there; it’d be a shame if we had to release some terrorists there!

Near midnight on Saturday, Trump retweeted a tweet from the president of the far-right legal group Judicial Watch claiming“Strzok/Page Docs Show More Collusion to Protect Hillary Clinton.” This was the first of many weekend tweets in which the president attacked his own Justice Department — unthinkable for any other president, routine for him. He would go on to quoteRush Limbaugh: “These guys, the investigators, ought to be in jail.” Then: “The Mueller investigation is totally conflicted, illegal and rigged!” Followed by: “Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a ‘poor little Angel’ when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax – a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey.”

Trump was particularly exercised by McCabe’s confirmation that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had talked of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. “He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught…..,” Trump wrote at 7:15 Sunday morning, adding at 7:29 a.m.: “This was the illegal and treasonous ‘insurance policy’ in full action!” An hour later, he quoted a commentator on his favorite show, “Fox and Friends,” accusing Rosenstein of “an illegal coup attempt.” Pay no attention: It’s just the president accusing his own deputy attorney general of treason and coup-plotting. This type of vitriol has become so commonplace that it barely registered as news — yet in any other administration it would have produced front-page headlines for weeks.

The only group that Trump seems to hate as much as his own Justice Department is the news media. At 7:52 a.m. on Sunday, he complained about a “Saturday Night Live” skit poking fun at him: “Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC! Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution?” So the president thinks that a satirical sketch calls for “retribution”? What country is this anyway? It’s hard to tell, because four minutes later Trump echoed Josef Stalin’s attacks on the press: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Just six days earlier, a BBC cameraman had been violently attacked at a Trump rally. But Trump continues to incite his supporters against the media.

If someone were ranting and raving like this on the street, you would walk quickly away. Yet somehow we have become inured to this ranting and raving from the most powerful man in the world. We shouldn’t be. Over Presidents’ Day weekend, Trump again demonstrated why he remains as unfit as ever to follow in the footsteps of Washington and Lincoln — or even of Millard Fillmore and Warren Harding. The fact that we tolerate his disgraceful conduct makes all of us complicit in this ongoing diminution of our democracy.

Categories Education Reform

West Virginia Teachers Need Our Support

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
4

I just received this email from the “Campaign to End Child Poverty.” Open the link: parents, churches, and public libraries are offering meals and safe spaces for children and supporting the teachers’ just demands. The teachers are turning their backs on a pay raise because the legislature and governor broke their promise not to introduce charters and vouchers, which will further defund the public schools.

#55STRONG!

 

West Virginia Teachers and Service Personnel are again taking a stand – a bold, brave stand for OUR Children, Our public education system and OUR Future.

WE stand with them in full support! #55Strong!

With Senate leadership rushing a vote with little time for most to read and digest the changes, teachers and service personnel are standing against a bill that will benefit outside interests and line a business person’s pocket before it will ever support WV children in the classroom.

Our teachers and service personnel are fighting back against an omnibus education bill that does not lower classrooms size, support the needs of special ed students, fully fund counselors and a social worker in every school. They are not accepting a 5% pay raise, if OUR children are not put first!

The decision to stand against this bad bill is not an easy one. We know this. Lets show solidarity in our ACTIONS.

Here is what YOU can do:

  • Call YOUR House Delegate TODAY and let them know you stand with WV Teachers and Service Personnel and do not support this bill. Today is the day to let them hear from you!
  • Stand in solidarity with your teachers and service personnel at the school nearest you (Please support Putnam County teachers and service personnel. They NEED US!)
  • Donate, volunteer at your local church or organization feeding and supporting children and parents in this moment. For more info on who is offering meals and child care, join and follow Families Leading Change WV Facebook page
  • Come to the Capitol and STAND 55 Strong!
  • Talk to your neighbors, friends and fellow parents. Ask them to lift their voice on this issue. A show of power will win!

Stay tuned for more details as they develop!

We stand in power and solidarity! West Virginia Strong! 55 Strong!

Jennifer

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »