President-Elect announced that Bruce Reed will be his Deputy Chief of Staff. This is alarming news, though not surprising. Reed previously served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president. The toxic Broad Foundation gave grants to some of Betsy DeVos’s favorite causes.
This report from TYT (The Young Turks) describes why we should keep a close watch on Reed. He is not a friend of public schools. The Broad Foundation has spent many millions of dollars underwriting charter schools and funding campaigns for candidates who oppose public schools. Eli Broad has tried to buy control of LAUSD to replace more public schools with charters.
Reed has been an outspoken proponent of charter schools for decades, championing their rise inside the Clinton White House, where he led the Domestic Policy Council. But although Reed has publicly drawn the line at for-profit charter schools and vouchers, the Broad Foundation funded organizations that support both.
Reed also frowned on community, or “mom-and-pop” charter schools, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2014, “There are high-quality charter management organizations that do extraordinary work.” He said, “School districts have made the mistake of thinking they know best.”
Pressed about Eli Broad’s controversial donations to pro-charter candidates for Los Angeles school boards, Reed said, “My general experience with political elected bodies is that the odds of them being thoughtful and well informed are never very good.”
It’s not clear how involved Reed was in directing the foundation’s funds, but in his L.A. Times interview, Reed named some of his allies. “We’re looking to partner with other like-minded foundations — Bloomberg, Gates, Walton, the Emerson Collective,” he said. (The Emerson Collective is a project of Laurene Powell Jobs.)
Reed did not name Dick and Betsy DeVos, but they had spent years building alliances with Democrats interested in education reform. Eli Broad, a Democrat, had sat alongside Dick DeVos on the Children’s Scholarship Fund advisory board co-chaired by John Walton. And although Broad in 2017 publicly opposed DeVos’s nomination to lead the Dept. of Education under Trump, he and Reed were backing her groups just a couple years before.
DeVos Connections
The Broad Foundation had already been funding groups tied to the DeVos family when Reed came on board in November 2013.
The Alliance for School Choice, for instance, was an early proponent of charter schools, including for-profits. A partner of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children, the Alliance’s founding board included both her and Walton.
According to In These Times, the two groups were “at the center of the pro-privatization movement.” One of the Alliance’s first project directors, James Blew, is now DeVos’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development.
Soon after the Alliance launched, the DeVoses reached out to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who was then a Newark City Council member. Booker joined the group and found common cause with the DeVoses. The board has also included Carrie Walton Penner, the Walton Family Foundation chair who was reportedly close to Hillary Clinton.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reed said, “My general experience with political elected bodies is that the odds of them being thoughtful and well informed are never very good.”
It’s as if democracy is government by deplorables. This is the neo-liberal attitude that brought us Trump, and will tank the Dems once again. As long as Dems go with the Ivy League/Wall St Technocracy, they will lose the American people. Americans just don’t like “elites,” as Andrew Jackson demonstrated long ago in the 1820s and ’30s.
Matt Taibbi put it well when he wrote: “Trump’s pitch was, would you rather vote for an unrepentant pig like me, or someone who goes to Oxford to learn how to make selling you out to Johnson & Johnson or Lloyd Blankfein sound like it’s your idea?”
And yet Biden went to non-elite schools. And his wife teaches at a community college. And Trump and his cronies went to elite schools.
Matt Taibbi should have said “Trump’s pitch was, would you rather have an unrepentant pig like me appoint similarly elite guys who will reward themselves from the public trough, cut taxes on billionaires, and privatize Medicare and Social Security and programs that benefit you to pay for that tax cut, or vote for the Democrats who won’t give you Medicare for All and are too friendly to corporate interests but will do something – if not nearly enough – for you.”
That is what Bernie Sanders and AOC say. But then, Bernie and AOC are both way too smart and wise to repeat the right wing propaganda that those voters are actually getting something good from Trump that they would not get from the Democrats. Bernie and AOC are both way too smart and wise to push the false narrative that Americans aren’t being irreparably harmed by the empowerment of the Republicans and Trump — on the contrary, AOC and Bernie tell the truth — that Americans are getting something better – if not good enough – from the democrats and electing democrats isn’t the end of the fight, but the beginning of the ability to have that fight!
There is no fight. The corporate Dems won. They will do as they want. They care about the African American and Hispanic vote. If these groups support charters, we will never be rid of them.
Biden, like Trump, is utter trash.
Steven, you are correct. The system was so broken that Americans elected Trump. Now it is even worse. If Biden and the Dems go back to that, then yes, they will be thrown out at the next election.
My comment: PUKE 🤢🤮😩 !
Diane From your note above: “Reed also frowned on community, or ‘mom-and-pop’ charter schools, telling the Los Angeles Times in 2014, ‘There are high-quality charter management organizations that do extraordinary work.’ He said, ‘School districts have made the mistake of thinking they know best.'”
First, “Mom and pop” is usually associated with small business as distinct from huge corporations. Translated to education, it doesn’t really apply, except to associate PUBLIC schools with local voices on school boards to: a non-professional, degenerate set of ideas.
Second,If truly “high-quality,” those who run charter management organizations would understand the importance of PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS to a DEMOCRATIC STATE as a set of political principles regardless of specific curriculum qualification (as Diane says in her book review with many relevant quotes regarding public education); and so if truly qualified in the broader sense, private concerns should know their subsidiary or even disconnected place at the beginnings of the democratic body politic and culture. (I won’t hold my breath.)
Third, if school districts make mistakes in thinking they know best, I guess charter management never commits that fallacy? One part of that fallacy is to capitalize everything; another is to set private organizations (by any clothing or name) against PUBLIC institutions, as if they were competitors “on an uneven playing field,” along with paying only lip service to, or eliminating altogether, LOCAL voices in establishing guidelines, in watchdog accountability, and in maintaining the intimate relationship between education and the political foundations of a democratic culture. (I won’t hold my breath on that one either.)
Finally, this quote disgusted me: “Reed said, ‘My general experience with political elected bodies is that the odds of them being thoughtful and well informed are never very good.’”
So let’s just quash any hope about it and go with a hired CEO and researchers who hail from STEM, Gates’, or Koch-inspired, etc., university programs whose politics is already dead-set against all-things-public.
Pardon me while I go puke. CBK
How disgustedly convenient. Biden announced Reed on Christmas Eve, the equivalent of a Fri afternoon news dump to exploit news viewing slow times.
Reed is also a proponent of cutting social security & medicare in ways as viscious as any Republican & the Kochs.
I guess Biden doesn’t give a damned about the people who got him elected.
I apologize for my foul language but I am too upset to constrain myself.
Jcgrim I’ll run your off-color comments by GregB. On that criteria, your post is sterling. CBK
😂🤣😂🤣
jcgrim And if you read Diane’s book reviews, underlying they whole idea is a racist, and now xenophobic and provincial mentality, which is also ELITIST. . . . an irony that, apparently, has not been missed by the NAACP but is totally overlooked by so many Trump supporters. “Clean the swamp” is not even a joke any more. CBK
Reed was intimately involved with the Clinton administration crafting policies such as the “tough on crime” bill known as three strikes and the welfare “reform” bill that ended “welfare as we know it.
He also co-wrote a book with Rahm Emanuel(!) called THE PLAN: BIG IDEAS FOR AMERICA. The main idea of the book was that Democrats should stop defending the New Deal.
He is a deficit hawk who will use “balanced budge” as an excuse to enforce austerity while he pumps money into corporations.
Odd choice for the president who is supposed to be “the next FDR”.
I am confused about who was calling Biden “the next FDR”? Was it Bernie or AOC, when they both explained to us why it was important to elect Biden and disempower Trump and the Republicans?
I have seen a couple random pundits who referred to whether Biden could be the next FDR. But it’s not like everyone was saying “vote for Biden, the next FDR”. If anything, the use of the FDR reference was to quash the false Republican narrative about how Biden was a tool of left wing socialists by explaining that some of the more progressive ideas were more similar to FDR than communism, but that was only to normalize progressive ideas that the right wing propaganda was trying to paint as left wing “no more private property” socialist.
But I have never seen anyone here who referred to Biden as the next FDR nor were they arguing that Biden should win because he would be the next FDR. The FDR reference was only used because the far right had demonized Bernie and AOC to scare voters and by presenting their progressive ideas as what FDR did, it stopped that right wing propaganda being pushed to scare voters that progressive ideas were frightening.
I think it is more likely Biden is the next Jimmy Carter, who sorely disappointed progressives, but who was clearly superior to both Nixon and Reagan. (Although some on the left might blame Carter for the rightward turn of this country, I don’t think that is fair to Carter.)
NYC PSP Not to counter your argument or its language, but I think Biden referred to FDR’s New Deal in one of his speeches. I didn’t get the impression that he was “copying” FDR, but rather trying to refurbish a flailing nation, as FDR was trying to do, drawing on their similarities of which there are many.
We’ve been around long enough not to have to recreate the wheel at every turn . . . I took him to mean THAT and not that he was the new FDR, or anything like that. CBK
CBK,
Thank you, that makes sense. I wouldn’t call that Biden being “the next FDR”, but now I understand why someone else might think so.
Not a fan of Bruce Reed but do like other Biden picks who are more progressive. I think Biden probably does truly want to do some New Deal-like sweeping recovery program although I don’t know how strongly he will fight for it.
I still a reserve a 10% chance that appointing Reed is a brilliant move to have the guy who isn’t progressive selling his New Deal program to conservative/moderates. (Like Nixon in China or Reagan with the USSR). Unlikely, I know, but even if not, there are still progressives in the cabinet and their voices will be stronger if they are backed up by the voices of all of us and other Americans fighting for the progressive vision. Criticism is very important. I love how Bernie and AOC strongly criticize without demonizing.
So here’s my take on the “Biden is the next FDR” false claim. Historical revisionism has a way of blinding people to actual fact. Here’s an actual fact: FDR did not run against Hoover on a platform of the New Deal. He ran and was elected, much like Biden did with [the Idiot], on not being Hoover. If anyone wants to take the time to actually read any of many, many histories of the campaign, it is clear that Roosevelt ran on very few substantive issues. He just wasn’t the failed leader that Hoover was and he would do things differently. How he would do things differently was never really articulated. That alone propelled him to the presidency.
The policies of the New Deal were not his idea. They were largely the ideas of Frances Perkins, a valued and close colleague he knew since about 1910, a Hull House reformer, a witness to the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, his appointee to labor issues when he was governor of New York. He nominated her to be his Secretary of Labor (and the Department of Labor building at the foot of Capitol Hill is named for her). She was largely responsible for setting the policies of the New Deal and the elbow grease that made them happen. FDR was generally disinterested, supported her and valued her judgment, and was relatively lazy when it came to the details of policy.
With Biden, I am amazed at the backlash of some of his appointments that I see here. The next few months will be the time to shape and influence the course of his presidency. It is not predetermined by perceptions of how he will (might) act. It will very much be shaped by the actual circumstances of today and the unforeseeable future of the next few months. It will be shaped by public pressure and reaction to it (as I argued just now on another post on this blog).
For me, the “Biden is the next FDR” comparison is grounded in the FDR who took office in 1933, not of backward looking FDR hagiographies. The next 2-5 months will be the only time for public opinion and pressure to shape this administration. You can be a pundit or you can be a foot soldier. I fear too many of you (us) are comfortable being pundits and whining, just waiting for the opportunity to crow, “I told you so.” Remember that LBJ that did not support a single civil rights initiative–indeed he opposed them–until the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and later became the president who drove passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Pundits who bet on the pre-1957 views of him looked very stupid seven years later.
Well said, Greg.
FDR ran on a promise to balance the budget.
To Dienne (& all who care to may repeat after me):
You told us so.
&, please, end of that discussion.
All I’m sayin’–Job #1 was getting it45 gone, & we all know that.
But Job #2 is going to be even harder, if possible. Time to organize, & then get out into the streets, just as BLM has done (in every city & state), just as the protesters against the Viet Nam War, just as the Chicago Teachers Union & every other organization that has since come out to protest on every street, in every city, in every state.
This time, it may be our last chance to save our children & future generations.
The NYT daily email a couple of days ago had an interesting intro concerning the concept of “pundit accountability”: “A decade ago, the journalist Dave Weigel — now a Washington Post reporter — introduced a concept he called pundit accountability. The idea was that journalists make a lot of analytical judgments and that we should occasionally revisit them to acknowledge what we got right and wrong. Doing so is a sign of respect to readers and can make us better at our jobs going forward.”
As you quite rightly observe, the only goal of our resident commentator is the chomping-at-the-bit, desperate need to pounce and write “I told you so.” But at the NYT comment above rightly analyzes, it ain’t that simple. I encourage our readers to do a Google search on “Diane Ravitch Dienne 77” and peruse the comments. When read through the lens of “pundit accountability,” they don’t stand up so well. And that’s being charitable. They don’t stand up at all. Indeed they are embarrassingly silly. Hillary is the same as [the Idiot]. Neoliberals are same as fascists. [The Idiot] is not a tool of Putin. It’s a black-white view of the world that doesn’t stand up to pragmatic, historical, or logical scrutiny.
Kamala Harris’ sister was a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton.
I picked the same quote. “My general experience with political elected bodies is that the odds of them being thoughtful and well informed are never very good.”
Bruce Reed as chief of staff will be the gatekeeper Biden’s calendar and that means Reed is unlikely to be friendly to anyone in education who hopes to inform Biden of issues in public education unless these are from businesses organized as an industry.
Biden is shaping up as a person who either has no coherent view of the difference between public schools and the charter franchise industry or does not think the distinction is important. He is against for-profit charters…but there is beyond ample evidence that charters operate if they are profitable, and die if they are not. That is the business model the Broadies love.
Bless the Young Turks and Diane for this reveal.
Laura . . . and then there’s Jill Biden? CBK
“My general experience with political elected bodies is that the odds of them being thoughtful and well informed are never very good.”
So Biden’s deputy chief of staff doesn’t believe in democracy. That idea has little distance from the southern racists who shut down public schools to oppose Brown (1954) and Koch libertarians who knew privatizing education, social security, our park systems, and prisons would never happen if people were to vote on the policies.
Every union in the country should demand Reed resign or be replaced.
Don’t forget Biden’s brother Frank, made quite a handsome bit of bank off of his Mavericks charter schools.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/frank-biden-leveraged-famous-business-gain/story?id=68202529
Reed was under consideration as an economic adviser. Perhaps as “gate keeper” he will fewer opportunities to make economic decisions.
The President’s chief of staff and deputy are crucial roles. They decide who gets in the door and which decisions require his attention.
Elected school boards ‘thinking they know best’. We can’t have this.
Also from The Young Turks’ article:
“Bruce Reed has been opposed as a potential member of the Biden administration due to his past support of austerity measures. Congressional progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), signed a petition calling on Biden not to appoint Reed, who advised Biden on tech issues during the campaign.”
“Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, told TYT, “Centrist Democrats urging progressives to be ‘team players’ would have better standing to do so if they actually rejected [Pres.] Trump, [Sen. Maj. Leader Mitch] McConnell, and the rest of the corrupt leaders of the modern GOP. What part of working with Betsy DeVos is being a ‘team player’ on behalf of any progressive goal?”
This guy is a poison pill who has no business being anywhere near any Dem admin period let alone Chief of Staff. Did Biden completely miss the fact that he only won because young/ progressives turned out for him instead of sitting home like last time??
“Did Biden completely miss the fact that he only won because young/ progressives turned out for him instead of sitting home like last time??”
I assume that Biden appointed Ron Klain as Chief of Staff because he knew that fact.
I assume he made Bruce Reed a top deputy because he has always been close to Reed.
If the entire Biden cabinet was filled with Bruce Reed types overseeing domestic policy, this would be a sign that Biden plans to completely throw the progressives under the bus. This just confirms that progressives have to make their case to the public and apply pressure, as many have said. Bruce Reed will be an important and loud voice in the Biden administration but he won’t be the only voice in the Biden administration, and I assume Ron Klain’s voice will be just as loud.
I sound Pollyanna-ish and I don’t mean to say that this appointment isn’t the wrong move. But if Ron Klain’s more progressive vision is what Biden wants, having a Bruce Reed to “sell” that progressive vision to the conservative/moderate wing would be useful in helping to enact that vision.
The other possibility is that Reed is the real power and Klain, despite having the higher title, is a figurehead with no power. But I don’t think Klain wants to be in the administration to push a corporate, right wing agenda.
just can’t help grumbling – the guy doesn’t even sound lie a Democrat
Somebody needs to school the president-elect in the sad fact that the distinction between for-profit and non-profit charters is a distinction in name only. All charters have a goal of making money. Once the public money disappears behind a wall of private opacity, it is often impossible to find out where the public money has gone. Charter schools are a way to shakedown public schools and undermine them. Charter schools have a long, sordid history of waste, fraud, embezzling, nepotism, segregation, union busting and general corruption.
The appointment of Mr. Reed sends a message of more neo-liberalism from Democrats. Americans are tired of these failed economic policies that favor the Silicon Valley and Wall St over Main St. Other than selecting Kamala Harris as a running mate, which may have been a calculated political move to energize minority voters, where are the progressive appointees? How does the appointment of Reed contribute to building unions and the middle class back better? Biden is appointing the some of the same people that helped Democrats lose the blue collar vote. Biden promised a new day, which we will never achieve with the same old neo-liberal retreads.
Of course, Kamala Harris’ appointment was a calculated move.
Both Wall Street and Big Tech heartily approved.
Harris’ brother-in-law is Tony West, Uber’s lead attorney who helped author Proposition 22, which guts protections for gig workers and will be coming to a state near you soon.
Politico recently reported that West was in the running for attorney general.
Time to switch out the barf bag for a five-gallon bucket.
Explains why Democrats lost 1000 seats. The money and influence behind the Democratic Party doesn’t care if Democratic candidates win or lose, as long as the rich are protected.
“My general experience with
political elected bodiesunelected chiefs of staff (Republican or Democrat) is that the odds of them being more than just puss-filled boils are never very good.”Fixed.
Well, it didn’t take long for Corporate Joe to show his true colors.
I remember being excoriated on these threads, even being accused of being a Russian plant (or something to that effect), for posting factual information about Mr. Biden,
Remember, Biden told his donors that nothing would change.
Feeling played yet, Bidenites?
Just learn to suck it up, like we progressives were told to do.
I was a Bidenite because the alternative was unthinkable. I still prefer him to Trump. Are you sorry he won? I’m not.
To be honest, Diane, I am sorry that the Democratic party has strayed so far from that of FDR and LBJ. There were plenty of indicators out there that a Biden presidency would be similar to a Clinton/Obama presidency. I had a bit of relief, but very little joy in seeing a Biden presidency.
LOTE voting produces the very results we are seeing right now.
I’ve been voting for 44 years, and I’m tired. I’m hoping I can get the energy up to get back out and fight, but it really stinks when one must use their energy to fight against our supposed allies, instead of working together to bring our nation up to the rest of those first-world countries which truly take care of their people.
There should be no honeymoon for the Biden administration. As far as I’m concerned, it’s time to get out in the streets and in front of the halls of Congress as soon as it’s safe to do so.
Trying to find the enthusiasm to do it is a different story.
My shoes – and my spirit – are pretty threadbare.
I understand, Eleanor. Sadly the lesser of two evils is better than the pure evil. Yup, back to pressure, protest, and pushing.
We may be obliged to support yet another neoliberal in order to avoid Tom Cotton or worse. 70 million voters were sure trump was the preferable candidate. If the opposition to reactionary candidates is not united, the country will continue in its present swing to the distant right, where questioning anything about private companies is communism, and a peculiar, narrow religiosity is the only true path.
Roy, you always are the voice of wisdom.
Roy Turrentine I wonder what they feel about the pardons of all those criminals? CBK
Eleanor,
Maybe that is because you only focus on the negatives and seem not to even notice the positives. It isn’t posting “factual information” if you present a false reality where the only thing Biden does is appoint far right corporate shills and promote racist and right wing legislation.
For example, Biden’s Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, was praised by AOC.
Did the moderate/conservative wing of the party immediately start saying that conservatives were suckers and got played to get them to vote for more Republicans? Did the moderate/conservative wing start ignoring every moderate and conservative position Biden had and say that Biden was a left wing socialist? Nope, but the right wing Republicans certainly pushed those false narratives because they don’t care about the truth. There is no need for you to mimic that kind of dishonesty.
You are dishonest when you call people here “Bidenites” because they understood that Biden was far better than Trump. So it seems the height of hypocrisy for you to whine about being called a Russian troll just because you happened to be posting the same anti-Biden propaganda that the far right was also pushing.
Biden also announced that Gautam Raghavan, an early transition adviser and former chief of staff to Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal, would become deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel. Does that mean there will be too many progressives embedded into the Biden Administration?
I really despise Bruce Reed. But we voted for Biden because Biden is not Bruce Reed. He also isn’t Bernie but that is why he won the general election – because no one except some far right wingers thought Biden was a leftist.
There is a difference between giving up – which progressives should not do – and pushing false narratives that empower the far right and not the progressive movement – instead of fighting for progressive legislation.
Biden is exactly as advertised — some progressive and some corporate appointments to his cabinet.
Elanor: My bet is that the next trump will be willing as all American politicians have for the past 125 years to try to paint the opponents as socialist. Since the labor riots of 1877, no one has been elected who has not fought the socialist label. In recent times, the right wing has even characterized public education as socialist. We have to convince the swing voter that this is poppycock.
The cry of “socialist” and “radical leftist” was the heart of the GOP campaign playbook. It was used against Biden and every Democratic candidate, no matter how moderate.
Hmmmm, should I vote for Biden or Trump, hmmm? Or should I vote for some loser 3rd party that will never ever win or not vote at all, hmmmm, (which would amount to a vote for Trump)? I voted for Biden because the alternative of 4 more years of Trump was untenable and unbearable. We are stuck with this 2 party system for the foreseeable future and the only way to progress is through people like Bernie, AOC, Warren and other progressives. About 73 millions voted for Trump, we have a really long way to go in this country with so many people who are that delusional or doctrinaire.
Yes, it is really insulting when people say that you “got played” because Biden makes some conservative appointments. Does that mean that they “got played” whenever Biden appoints a more progressive cabinet member, as he did on the environment and for the position of Chief of Staff?
Bernie, AOC and everyone here who voted for Biden didn’t “get played”. They made a reasonable choice. Had more people made that choice in 2016, this country would have a Supreme Court that likely repealed Citizens United, a federal judiciary with judges committed to civil rights and stopping the Republicans’ constant and harmful moves to disenfranchise voters. Progressive legislation would be a lot more likely than now, because the role of money in politics would be less corrosive and low-income voters would be able to vote without so many hurdles placed in their way. But regardless of the past, no one here got played for voting for the only choice that will lead to a more progressive future.
NYC
What will persuade Biden to be progressive?
Eleanor That would be fine IF it were only a case of Republicans against Democrats, or even of divisions within the Democratic Party as you suggest . . . but THIS was a case of DEMOCRACY against Trump and his followers. BIG DIFFERENCE.
I wrote here awhile back that we need to hold together IN THIS TIME, and hold off criticism of our own “family” . . . UNTIL such case as Biden won . . . so as NOT to give ammunition to the Republicans and Trump followers. Now that Biden has won, we can resume our normal and normative criticisms that keep our democracy alive and well.
So that, what may look like hypocrisy in some situations and by those who cannot see the nuances, need not be so when we take into account the movements (like the one above) in historical situations. CBK
CBK,
Thank you for those points.
All one has to do is look to AOC and the squad and Bernie who model how to fight the progressive battles now that Biden has been elected and will (hopefully) take office.
They aren’t ranting about how Biden fooled them and is a completely shill of corporations and how Trump is no worse. They are criticizing the appointments of Biden’s that are terrible, fighting against them, without pushing the false narrative that Biden “fooled” Americans and he shouldn’t be trusted on anything. And they praise the good appointments Biden makes.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everyone. 2020 wasn’t all bad. Remember January and February, still feeling the palpable momentum of Red4Ed? I was thrilled to meet you in person, Diane. I thought a new progressive era was about to begin when Sanders won the Nevada Democratic Caucuses. I was singing Viva Las Vegas and dancing in private and in public. Then March came. Bernie had just lost South Carolina by thirty points. And, Covid-19. Beware the ides of March. At least Trump lost is all I can say about the rest of the year.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to our election winner, President-elect Joe Biden. Harken to some of the great words of our new president-elect: “Will you shut up, man.” That’s who we have stepping into the Oval Office. He is not exactly Ashoka the Great, is he. We knew that a long time ago. We know we are getting just middling more of the same, as oligarchs are still firmly in charge.
Merry Christmas And Happy New Year to Diane Ravitch, who is great like Ashoka, and to the great likes of her, AOC, Jamaal Bowman, and the growing Squad. To the Justice Democrats. To the future. This fight is not over yet. When we fight, we win. Happy New Year! And to Bruce Reed and Eli Broad and the rest, Happy New Year, and will you shut up, man.
OK. Status Quo Joe is a heckuvalot better than the wannabe fascist autocrat Donnie Boy. But this is just awful. Gotta keep the pressure on this man who promised to rebuild the union movement in our country. Not likely with these privatizers in the room where the decisions are made. Very disappointing. And dangerous. If the rich don’t give some, this country will not last. We will either evolve toward Social Democracy, or we will become a fascist state because the current inequities cannot be sustained.
The danger is that modern fascism, like Putin’s version, is imperceptible in ways. Given the cry of socialist that crosses the lips of so many followers of trump, I can see a majority of voters electing some future slick leader-with-a-brain. We are just lucky that trump was clueless. A well placed phrase would have put him back in for another term of moving us more to the right.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Roy!
Does anyone know Reed’s views and/or history with the Gulen affiliated charters? There are so many Gulen affiliated charters in the U.S.
Those who love charters never have a problem with Gulen
Biden = puke.
Trump = road kill.
I am putting neither in my mouth.
Sad that some people think we have to vote for a neoliberal to avoid a Tom Cotton. Sad that the attitude is not “Fight to the dickens to grow the progressive movement” . . .
I have more than my piece of the American pie, but I still think and feel like the working class family I come from. I will support MPP to compete with the DNC. Accepting anything less is no longer an option, given what Biden is doing now. Reed is a very bad sign.
I guess we were warned. Critiquing the DNC and advocating are among the healthiest things we as individuals and organizations can ever do . . . .
Since I was the one who mentioned Tom Cotton, perhaps I should explain. We did not avoid a second term of trump by electing somebody we felt was perfect, just somebody we got elected. It takes awhile.
Absolutely, Roy, I agree. TY! Our civic participation anything but stops after this election.
“Biden = puke”
If you really think that is the equation, you haven’t been paying attention at all. Biden was not my first choice, but he is an honorable man who has made mistakes and is trying to heal this nation. To equate him with vomit says more about your narrow ideology than it does about his character.
Your view is character assassination, pure and simple.
Well then, I guess I’ve just assassinated the character who has appointed Broadie Bruce Reed.
BTW, the folks who brought you emancipation after the Civil War, women’s right to vote, unions in the 30s, desegregated schools, Social Security, Medicare, and a 5 day workweek with no child labor were also VERY narrow ideologists, and they had their reasons.
Thank goodness for them!
That second paragraph is a doozy! Educator, educate thyself.
Hey everyone:
https://peoplesparty.org
You really don’t understand the difference between a parliamentary system of governing and one based on a plurality of 50 percent plus 1, do you? Time for civics lesson.
Under the American federal system, one is elected with 50 percent plus 1 of the vote, meaning the candidate who achieves that threshold represents 100% of the people in that constituency. Hopefully, that representative understands the difference between governing for the 100% as opposed to those who support him or her. The reason our system of governing has broken down is because virtually all elected Republicans today deny that fact and only represent their supporters.
Under a parliamentary system (virtually all) nations apportion representation according to the votes a party receives in particular jurisdictions if the threshold is above 5%. Therefore, in order to govern at the local, state or national level, coalitions of parties must coalesce to reach a 50% plus one threshold to form a government.
American third parties will never reach a 50% plus 1 vote total. Therefore, as the framers understood more than 240 years ago, but for some reason, people, generally on the far left, still don’t understand that fact, the decision-making process of takes place within parties, not in parliamentary-style governing coalitions.
So if you want to live in the delusion of third parties as an American, carry on and remain a frustrated outsider pundit who snipes at the heels of people who understand how this system under which we live actually functions according to the rules that exist.
But if you want to be an agent of change, then work to change the party that is closest to your interests. You know, like AOC does (that one’s for you, NYCPSP). Or you can wallow in the uselessness of the “People’s Party” and continue to complain.
I am doing both, Greg, and it’s part of my free rights under the Constitution to do so. The two party system might end up working again, but in case it doers not, we will have potential other options mechanistically for it to change. Cornell West is no dummy, and perhaps you should listen to him for a lesson in civics. He kind of has walked the walk.
Third party members and those who identity as such – if numerous enough – can put enormous pressure and have influence on the current DNC:
“https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/change/science_egalitarians.html”
Do bother to read the WHOLE article . . .
The Broad Foundation also provided scholarships to underprivileged students. Scholarships went to students with the greatest improvement in academic achievement in HS. The scholarships were quite generous. I had 9 college bound students get $3500/yr renewable scholarships. Betsy DeVos wouldn’t get involved in helping poor students go to college.
I’m glad to know that billionaire Broad helped some children directly with scholarships. That does not counterbalance the immense damage he did and continues to do by imposing his personal views on education and trying to destroy public schools.
Susan Such educational efforts are wonderful . . . in abstraction . . . and for some of the recipients. If you read about fascism, however, you will see that efforts are never all bad. For that mentality, such efforts are stepping stones, so to speak, or sheep’s clothing, meant to cover the fuller intentions.
If you have $25.00, and you spend $1.00 on some good, and make sure everyone knows about the $1.00, then what you do with the other $24.00 is what will define your character and intent.
Multiply THAT by the Broad and DeVos fortunes and you can imagine . . . and know, . . . that watching the whole history will reveal what’s going on as intentional in their abstract efforts.
For a good reading of such thinking, see Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism.”
CBK
In other countries, philanthropy is a very distant thing because college is nominal cost or free. Your taxes pay for it.
I won’t be impressed – or even appreciative – with philanthropy because it sends the wrong message. Yes, if you are someone going to college and in desperate need of financing, then it feels good and has utility; but in a sense, it’s blood money because it comes with all sorts of politics attached to it. And that’s exactly what the ruling class in this country want: desperation soothed in exchange for acceptance and mind shaping to a classist system.
Not buying it. But I speak strictly for myself.
At this point in history, in which any notion or defense of charter schools as laboratories of innovation rings hollow, any distinction between for-profit and non-profit charter schools, is a meaningless distinction, without a substantive difference. Sure, the former are more likely to be corrupt. However, both erode public schools and the very idea of community responsibility and democratic control over what should be common good goal- equitable high-quality education for all. Except possibly for highly-specialized special needs, I oppose all public $ to non-public schools, and none for for-profit or religiously-affiliated schools. Back in 2014 I wrote about the Corrosion of Community Responsibility for the Answer Sheet blog on the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/26/education-reform-and-the-corrosion-of-community-responsibility/). Valerie Strauss in her introduction, wrote about this as an unintended consequence of the spread of charter schools. I think we can now see it as an intended goal of privatizations’ big promoters. We need to opposite with all our energy.
This is out of bounds. Obviously, it is unacceptable on Biden’s part. But even worse would be failure to attack this choice before 2020 is done, and make a lot of noise about it by the media…..like……what the hell is he doing? Failure by the media to make loud notice would be compounding the mistake. It has to be established that Biden cannot behave like a right wing centrist democrat (they have wrecked the democrat party in Missouri) without there being a reaction.
Presumably, the intent of a corporate and billionaire-serving Biden administration is to guarantee the ushering in of a GOP win in 2024 that installs an authoritarian leader.
The Democratic Party’s strategy is to remain silent (1) about conservative religion’s covert attacks on separation of church and state and, conservatives’ overt and false claims that religion is under attack (2) about of concentration of wealth (3) about the theft of America’s most important common good (4) about the economic decimation of Main Street and, (5) et cetera.
Elect a right-wing trashcan, get right-wing policies and advisors. My vote for Gloria La Riva feels better every day.
All the persuasion in the world won’t sway a politician if he thinks our ideas will cost him support or votes. The Republicans have done well by relentlessly promoting their ideas, no matter who their candidate is. All their candidates have to do is toe the line and support is automatic. We must create widespread support for public schools, public roads, and public health as the best solutions for these public needs. People in this discussion have obviously been doing that. We lay people need to do more.
A politician is someone who finds a parade and gets in front of it. Let’s create that parade!