I want to wish you the merriest of Christmases, the happiest of Chanukahs, and the blessings of Kwanzaa.
Relax. Enjoy friends and family. Don’t get stressed out. Peace.
If only there were peace in the world. And joy.
Let’s drink to that!
Diane
PS: I won’t post anything else today. But I have great stuff in store for you tomorrow and in the days ahead.
I have gone through nearly three years of COVID without getting it. One of my sons called me a unicorn.
Unicorn no more! Thursday morning I was feeling washed out, tired, sniffles, etc., took a home test, and it was positive.
I felt sick on Thursday. Rested and drank water. Had a small fever.
The second day, no fever. Feeling better.
Today, I’m still resting but on the mend.
My illness will mess up plans for Christmas, but I don’t want to infect anyone. It is what it is.
I have taken all the recommended shots and boosters. It’s clear by now that I have a very mild case, and for that I thank the vaccines.
I truly don’t understand the people opposed to being vaccinated during a pandemic. Do they also oppose vaccines for smallpox, polio, measles, mumps, chickenpox, etc.?
I’m glad I got all my shots. Everyone should.
If you watched the hearings of the January 6 Committee, you might agree that the most compelling testimony came from a young woman named Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.
She testified that Trump knew he lost the election. She described Trump’s fury when he heard that Bill Barr said that Trump lost the election: Trump threw his hamburger at the wall and splattered ketchup everywhere. This was not a one-time event, she said. Other times he ripped the tablecloth off, throwing everything on it to the floor.
She described the stories she had heard about Trump demanding to be driven to the Capitol to lead the rebellion, then physically struggling with his driver when the Secret Service wouldn’t let him go.
Her testimony was by far the most dramatic of the hearings.
What we did not know was the prolonged internal struggle that she endured when faced with the decision of whether to tell the truth or to follow the advice of her Trump team lawyer, who advised her to say, “I don’t recall.” If she said nothing, she would have a job in Trump world. She would be taken care of. It sounds like a Mafia movie.
Her Trump lawyer Stefan Passantino wouldn’t tell her who was paying him, but she assumed it was Trump.
Passantino, Hutchinson testified, told her the goal with her testimony was to “get you in and get you out.”
“Keep your answers short, sweet, and simple, seven words or less,” Passantino said, per Hutchinson’s testimony. “The less the committee thinks you know, the better, the quicker it’s going to go. It’s going to be painless. And then you’re going to be taken care of. You’re going to be done. It’s going to be off your hands.”
She decided she had to tell the truth. She had to have her own lawyer.
Her decision to testify—and the pressure put on her not to testify—is documented in the January 6 report.
Jake Tapper reports it here, and it is a compelling story of a woman with a conscience. A woman who decided she had to testify truthfully.
John Merrow shares his wisdom and makes a list of worthy recipients of your holiday giving. I’m happy to note that he included the Network for Public Education.
In a remarkable bipartisan move, Congress passed a budget bill to finance the federal government until September 2023. Heather Cox Richardson describes the political maneuvering behind its passage. Republicans in the House wanted to wait until the new Congress is seated. They hold a slim majority. With Kevin McCarthy courting the MAGA caucus, who knows if the House would ever agree on a budget.
Jim Jordan—the Trump lackey from Ohio who seldom wears a jacket— keeps tweeting snide comments about the budget. But he never mentions that half the budget—$850 billion—is defense spending. I enjoy tweeting that fact to him.
Heather Cox Richardson wrote yesterday:
Today, by a vote of 225 to 201, the House passed the 4,155-page omnibus spending bill necessary to fund the government through September 30, 2023. The Senate passed it yesterday by a bipartisan vote of 68–29, and President Joe Biden has said he will sign it as soon as it gets to his desk.
The measure establishes nondefense discretionary spending at about $773 billion, an increase of about $68 billion, or 6%. It increases defense spending to $858 billion, an increase of about 10%. Defense funding is about $45 billion more than Biden had requested, reflecting the depletion of military stores in Ukraine, where the largest European war since World War II is raging, and the recognition of a military buildup with growing tensions between the U.S. and China.
Senators Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) and Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) and Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) hammered out the bill over months of negotiations. Leahy and Shelby are the two most senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and both are retiring at the end of this session. Shelby told the Senate: “We know it’s not perfect, but it’s got a lot of good stuff in it.”
House Republicans refused to participate in the negotiations, tipping their hand to just how disorganized they are right now. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insisted that the measure should wait until the Republicans take control of the House in 11 days. This reflects the determination of far-right extremists in the party to hold government funding hostage in order to get concessions from the Democrats.
But their positions are so extreme that most Republicans wanted to get the deal done before they could gum it up. Indeed, right now they are refusing to back Republican minority leader McCarthy for speaker, forcing him to more and more extreme positions to woo them. Earlier this week, McCarthy publicly claimed that if he becomes House speaker, he will reject any bill proposed by a senator who voted yes on the omnibus bill. After the measure passed the House, McCarthy spoke forcefully against it, prompting Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) to say: “After listening to that, it’s clear he doesn’t have the votes yet.”
The measure invests in education, childcare, and healthcare, giving boosts to the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and investing in mental health programs. It addresses the opioid crisis and invests in food security programs and in housing and heating assistance programs. It invests in the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service and makes a historic investment in the National Science Foundation. It raises the pay for members of the armed forces, and it invests in state and local law enforcement. It will also provide supplemental funding of about $45 billion for Ukraine aid and $41 billion for disaster relief. It reforms the Electoral Count Act to prevent a plan like that hatched by former president Donald Trump and his cronies to overturn an election, and it funds prosecutions stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“A lot of hard work, a lot of compromise,” Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, (D-NY) said. “But we funded the government with an aggressive investment in American families, American workers, American national defense.” Schumer called the bill “one of the most significant appropriations packages we’ve done in a really long time.”
And so, members of Congress are on their way home, in the nation’s severe winter storm, for the winter holiday.
Please open the link and read the rest of her post.
I hope you will consider making a donation to the Network for Public Education—either a one-time gift or a monthly gift.
NPE is working on behalf of students, families, teachers, public schools, and communities every day.
We have a small but mighty staff. We don’t waste money on a physical office. We produce reports, letters to legislators, and work with journalists to spread the good news about our public schools and their incredible teachers and students.
We need your help!
From Carol Burris, executive director of NPE:
December Newsletter: A new “Conversation with Diane Ravitch” and more
Can you spare just $5.00 a month to save public education?
Your monthly gift provides a dependable source of funding, enabling our team to put out Action Alerts, newsletters, seminars, and reports that inform the public, the press, and policymakers about the war on public schools.
Please commit today to a monthly amount of $5, $10, $15, or even $20. For NPE, monthly donations add up to make a big difference.
The stakes are getting higher all of the time. Just this week, the outgoing Oklahoma attorney general declared that it is unconstitutional to prohibit religious charter schools.
Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children and the Oklahoma governor applauded.
A Catholic online charter chain is ready to put in its application. The time is now to act to save public education.
Please sign up to make a monthly donation today.
I was happy to discover this post on the Network for Public Education, which is curated by teacher-blogger Peter Greene. It was written by South Carolina teacher Steve Nuzum.
A South Carolina think tank has issued a “report” that connects every organization in sight to an indoctrination conspiracy in the state. It would be easier to dismiss if the head of the think tank weren’t the state’s newly elected superintendent of education. Teacher Steve Nuzum looks into the work.
This week, incoming Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver’s “think tank” dropped a crazy “dossier”. Or sometimes it’s “a report”— one without citations for most of its central and most outrageous claims. And sometimes it’s a “handbook”— one without much in the way of advice, except some version of support us and be mad at those teacher unions in NC and VA).
The document, and especially its accompanying graphics, are breathtakingly stupid. Aligning yourself with Aristotle on education policy— a philosopher who, on the one hand, explicitly called for public funding of education1 and, on the other hand, believed some human beings are physically and mentally designed to be slaves2— is quite a look for a pro-voucher think tank that doesn’t want people to think about “segregation academies” every time they hear “school choice”. Openly labeling “progressives” as “villains” is another. This thing was clearly cobbled together hastily by political hacks masquerading as scholars, in the vein of the 1776 Commission Report from the Trump Administration, and they clearly thought lots of colors and graphics would keep us dumb South Carolinians from thinking too hard about any of it.
Even a quick gloss over the “dossier” reveals claims that are unfounded and contrary to the general argument (privatization is good; Leftist woke indoctrinator teachers are “villains”). For example, the report claims that grassroots teacher advocacy group SC for Ed (I’m a board member) was primarily founded to oppose “schools of innovation” legislation. This seems to be a garbled reference to SC for Ed’s opposition to the education omnibus bill H. 3759, a legislative beast with a few good ideas glued to a lot of bad, often ALEC-drafted ideas. There is no citation provided, of course, because it isn’t true— I was there at the rally the “dossier” mentions, which was centered around many educational issues, and I was also there as a member of the group when the bill was just a twinkle in Jay Lucas’ eye. The omnibus bill, thankfully, did not pass, and the “schools of innovation” legislation that did pass, although not supported by SC for Ed, was certainly not some kind of major motivating factor for starting the group. The “dossier” goes on to use the “public-private partnership” Meeting Street Schools as its sole example of why the “schools of innovation” legislation was a good move. This is a weird rhetorical move during a week when, on “almost every criterion, Meeting Street Schools fell below both district and state performance,” according to Nick Reagan of WCSC.
But the thing is, it doesn’t need to make sense.
Read the full post here for more details.
You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/steve-nuzum-palmetto-promises-conspiracy-corkboard/
Last week, the Supreme Court of Kentucky declared a voucher program unconstitutional. The legislature is controlled by Republicans, the Governor is a Democrat. The ruling was met with delight by friends of public schools.
A Kentucky Supreme Court judge struck down the state’s so-called school choice program Thursday.
The state’s highest court unanimously ruled House Bill 563, officially called the Education Opportunity Account Act, as unconstitutional.
The legislation creates an almost dollar-for-dollar tax credit for Kentuckians who donate to scholarship-granting educational nonprofit organizations.
The measure sparked controversy last year and narrowly passed the Kentucky General Assembly with a 48-47 vote in the House. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) vetoed the bill, but both the state House and Senate overrode the veto.
Opponents of the bill argued the measure would divert tax money from Kentucky public schools, while supporters said the measure would help open up new educational opportunities for families.
In the ruling, judges agreed with the bill’s critics, stating that the substance of the bill was “obvious.”
“The Commonwealth may not be sending tax revenues directly to fund nonpublic schools’ tuition (or other nonpublic school costs) but it most assuredly is raising a ‘sum… for education other than in common schools,” the ruling states.
Eddie Campbell, president of the Kentucky Education Association, a labor group that represents thousands of educators in the state, applauded the court’s decision, calling the ruling a “victory” for the state’s public schools and public school students.
“It’s always been clear to the plaintiffs and their supporters that the Kentucky Constitution prohibits any attempt to divert tax dollars from our public schools and students without putting the question to voters,” Campbell said in a statement.
“We simply can’t afford to support two different education systems — one private and one public — on the taxpayers’ dime, and this ruling supports that concern. This decision is proof that the courts continue to serve as an important check against legislative overreach,” he added.
Arthur Camins, a retired science educator, poses a question that everyone should answer.
He asks: What if our basic needs were met, as they are in some other countries?
He writes:
Step back from the day-to-day slog to meet your pressing needs. Put aside the daily onslaught of depressing bad news. Take a deep breath to take five away from the insecurity of its all.
Imagine what life would be like if the needs of you, your family, friends, and community were met. What if you didn’t have to worry about any of it?
Step back from the day-to-day slog to meet your pressing needs. Put aside the daily onslaught of depressing bad news. Take a deep breath to take five away from the insecurity of its all.
Imagine what life would be like if the needs of you, your family, friends, and community were met. What if you didn’t have to worry about any of it?
What would it change if ….
What if we were not alone in dealing with all of it?
Pie in the sky? It’s not possible? Not so, fast. A lot of folks in a lot of other countries get some, most, or all these needs met. In the U.S. none of it is assured.
It’s not just that. Unmet needs fester, driving insecurity, toxic resentment, and helplessness.
Shifting that dynamic is all about organizing to shift who has voice and power. It is all about a shift perspective from, “I wish I had that,” to “That is my right!” And then, “We demand it.”
To achieving it, we need to know what we are up against. A recent example: Dismissing the voices of workers, Congress just preemptively stepped in to settle a private labor dispute ahead of a potential strike–undermining the only leverage unions have, withholding their labor–without even stipulating the modest demand for seven paid sick days. Railroad owners won. Railroad workers lost. Elected Democratic and Republican lawmakers regularly prioritize the voice and power of corporations and the wealthy over that of workers and their families.
Another: With a writ of certiorari, the Supreme Court appears to be preemptively poised to take up a case that may block President Biden’s modest student-debt relief program ahead of the customary wait for lower court rulings. Lenders will win. Students will lose.
The list of such examples is just too long. Why? Campaign contributions, surely. But not only.
Please open the link and read on.
RonnDeSantis rewards losers, if they agree with him.
The Miami Herald reported that he gave a promotion to an anti-abortion judge who was rejected by voters.
Jared Smith, the Hillsborough circuit judge whom voters ousted in August after his controversial ruling in an abortion case, won’t have to hang up his judicial robe after all. Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Smith to fill one of the three vacancies Tuesday on the newly created 6th District Court of Appeal, which will be based in Lakeland. Smith’s appointment will take effect Jan. 1.
Smith lost the August election for his judicial seat to Tampa attorney Nancy Jacobs.
The unusually contentious race saw abortion loom as a key issue.
Smith became a target of criticism from reproductive rights advocates after an appeals court overturned his decision in a case involving a 17-year-old girl who sought a judicial waiver to obtain an abortion without her parents’ consent.
He’d concluded that the girl did not demonstrate the maturity, intelligence and other qualities necessary to make the decision. In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel found that Smith abused his judicial discretion.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article270280807.html#storylink=cpy
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