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Nancy Bailey: It’s Time to Take Back Kindergarten!

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2024 //
34

Nancy Bailey is a retired educator who has seen the damage wrought by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and the nonsensical grandchild called Every Student Succeeds Act. We can say now with hindsight that many children were left behind, we did not make it to the Top, and every student is not succeeding.

Nancy knows that the greatest casualty of these ruinous federal laws and programs are young children. Instead of playing, instead of socializing, instead of living their best lives as children, they are being prepared to take tests. This is nuts!

Nancy explains in this post (originally from 2021 but nothing has changed) why the status quo is harmful to small children and how it should change. I should mention that Nancy and I wrote a book together—although we have never met!

EdSpeak and Doubletalk: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling https://a.co/d/bXKYsZG

Here’s Nancy on what kindergarten should be:

Let’s remember what kindergarten used to be, a happy entryway to school. Children attended half a day. They played, painted pictures, dressed up, pretended to cook using play kitchens, took naps on their little rugs, learned how to take turns, and played some more. They listened to stories, proudly told their own stories, described something unique about themselves during show-and-tell, mastered the ABCs, counted to 10, printed their names, and tied their shoes. They had plenty of recess and got excited over simple chores like watering the plants or passing out snacks. They had art and music and performed in plays that brought families together to generate pride and joy in their children and the public school.

Then, NCLB changed kindergarten in 2002. The Chicago Tribune described this rethinking well, which I’ve broken down.

  • In some schools, kindergarten is growing more and more academically focused–particularly on early reading. 
  • The pressure to perform academically is trickling down from above, many experts say, because of new state and federal academic standards.
  • . . . in one Florida classroom some children “cried or put their heads on their desks in exhaustion” after standardized achievement tests. 
  • One Chicago public school kindergarten teacher quit in part because of what she considered unrealistic demands of administrators who expected kindergartners to sit all day at desks, go without recess and learn to read by year’s end. The teacher wanted to create centers for science, art and dramatic play but was forbidden.
  • In some places, kindergarten, once a gentle bridge to real school where play and learning easily intermingled, is becoming an academic pressure-cooker for kids, complete with half an hour of homework every night. 
  • Some parents are alarmed enough that they’re “redshirting” their children, holding them back from kindergarten for a year so they will be more mature.

So how will they rethink early childhood again? Instead of kindergarten being the new first grade will it become the new third or fourth grade, with more standards piled onto the backs of 5-year-olds?

What happens to the children who are developing normally and can’t meet the standards, or children who have disabilities and need more time? Will they be labeled as failing, sorted into the can’t do kids who get bombarded with online remedial programs?

The harder they make early learning for young children, the more likely parents will seek more humane alternative placements that treat children like children.

It’s time to start caring more about the children and less about driving outcomes or results that don’t make sense.

I am sharing the best standards for children of all time, written by now-retired teacher extraordinaire, Sarah Puglisi.

Here’s a sample. Please go to the link and read all 100 of them. Then bring back kindergarten!

Categories Childhood, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Play, Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Texas: Big Money Floods Republican Primaries on Behalf of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
15

As I noted previously, the richest man in Pennsylvania, Jeff Yass, gave Governor Gregg Abbott a gift of more than $6 million to push hard for vouchers, and he did. Abbott lost his fight for vouchers in the regular session of the Legislature, and he called four additional special sessions to keep trying. He refused to give increases to public schools and raises to teachers unless he got vouchers, but he didn’t get vouchers. Some rural Republicans held out against him, because they didn’t want to hurt their local public schools, the schools they graduated from. So Abbott spread the $30 billion state surplus as a property tax cut, schools be damned. After failing to pass vouchers, Abbott threatened to primary the rural Republicans who did not support vouchers. And now it begins, as big money flows into the primaries in Republican districts to defeat the public school supporters.

Robert T. Garrett and Philip Jankowski wrote this article for the Dallas Morning News:

AUSTIN — A looming dogfight over “school choice,” fast emerging as a litmus test issue within the Texas GOP, has triggered a rush of huge campaign contributions in the run-up to the March primary.

Most of the money is flowing to legislative candidates who favor voucherlike programs that proponents say will rescue some Texas families from ill-suited public schools — and to committees such as those controlled by Gov. Greg Abbott that are bent on defeating “school choice” opponents.

Republican House lawmakers who oppose Abbott’s proposed education savings accounts as a potentially budget-busting entitlement are receiving some financial help to ready their defenses, according to new campaign finance reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission.

Generating applause and protests was Abbott’s receipt late last year of $6.25 million from Wall Street billionaire Jeff Yass, an options trader who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Yass, a longtime crusader for voucherlike programs, also gave $500,000 last month to AFC Victory Fund, a new entrant in the Texas school voucher wars.

Its parent, the American Federation for Children, has long been associated with former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

“The richest man in Pennsylvania may want a school voucher program in Texas, but Texans don’t,” said Nicole Hill, communications director of AFT Texas, referring to Yass. Hill’s union represents 66,000 teachers and support personnel in Texas school districts, along with higher education employees.…

Abbott’s push

Abbott has vowed to help defeat fellow Republicans who tanked his ESA proposal. While the three-term Republican governor has restored his war chest to nearly $39 million, he hasn’t begun spending in the House primary battles taking shape — at least, as of Dec. 31, according to his reports, which covered the last six months of 2023.…

In addition, the AFC Victory Fund had nearly $3.3 million in cash. It and other pro-school choice PACs are expected to open their checkbooks soon.

Meanwhile, the 7-month-old Family Empowerment Coalition PAC, a pro-ESA group cofounded by Dallas businessman DougDeason, showered $175,000 on Republican insurgents trying to unseat seven of the House GOP incumbents who defied the governor.

Risk to incumbents

Speaker Dade Phelan, who remained neutral in last fall’s fight over using public money to help subsidize private school for certain families, is defending incumbents, including the “rural 16” who defied Abbott.

Of the 21 Republicans who joined Democrats in killing ESAs in November, 16 are seeking reelection. Most are from rural districts, though some hail from suburbs.

Phelan purchased $942,950 worth of polling to help House GOP incumbents and gave $15,000 to each of seven of the embattled voucher opponents.

H-E-B grocery magnate Charles Butt of San Antonio, a longtime opponent of vouchers, gave $20,000 to each of the 16 Republican representatives who refused to bend.

Some of the targeted House incumbents reported huge cash advantages over their challengers, such as Rep. Reggie Smith of Sherman, who had about $262,000. Challenger Shelley Luther, a Dallas hair salon owner who defied COVID-19 edicts, had less than $7,000 as of Dec. 31, her report showed.

But Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston was behind one of his opponents, Linden grocery store owner Chris Spencer, in cash, thanks to a $300,000 loan by Spencer to his own campaign.

GOP Rep. Glenn Rogers of Graford, with $71,000 in cash, was running behind his opponent from Aledo, Mike Olcott, who loaned himself $140,000, while GOP Rep. Steve Allison of San Antonio had about the same amount of cash on hand as his challenger, Marc LaHood.

University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus said the rural 16 have to be concerned.

“We’re seeing more incumbents with multiple challengers, which is dangerous territory for sitting legislators,” he said. “A key conservative talking point, a huge pile of money, and several challengers to dilute the vote leads to runoffs where incumbents might fare worse.”

Turnout in the March 5 Texas primary could dwindle if former President Donald Trump sweeps the early-voting states in the Republican presidential contest, Rottinghaus said.

“That crystallizes the power a few dedicated groups may have to move the needle on school choice,” he said.

North Texas business leaders are supporting Abbott in the fight.

Last summer, Deason, a conservative activist on criminal-justice issues, joined former conservative Democratic state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. of Brownsville and longtime Houston GOP activist Leo Linbeck III to create the Family Empowerment Coalition PAC, or FECPAC.

It gave $25,000 each to seven of the 16 House Republicans who in November voted with Democrats to strip ESAs from a school-funding bill: Allison, Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, DeWayne Burns of Cleburne, Travis Clardy of Nacogdoches, Drew Darby of San Angelo, Hugh Shine of Temple and VanDeaver.

Also emerging as a North Texas donor in the ongoing fight over vouchers is Joe Popolo, chief executive of Dallas-based Charles & Potomac Capital, a private investment firm. Last week, Popolo, who gave $125,000 to FECPAC, posted on social media about a new national poll by the DeVos-backed American Federation for Children. It showed wide support for school choice.

“Politicians should listen to their voters! @TXlege,” he wrote.

Popolo, who formerly ran Farmers Branch-based Freeman Co., a live events firm, gave $50,000 to AFC Victory Fund.

Rockwall GOP Rep. Justin Holland, whose district includes part of southern Collin County, voted against ESAs.

Holland, a Phelan lieutenant, raised $407,000 in the last half of 2023 and had a cash balance of about $288,000.

Challengers Katrina Pierson, a former tea party activist who served as a national campaign spokeswoman for former President Trump, raised just $48,000 and had about $22,000 in cash; and Dennis London, a California transplant who lives in Rockwall, raised $37,000. London entered the year with a balance of about $21,000.

Rottinghaus, though, said it’s dangerous to read too much into the early fundraising tallies.

“There is a lot of soft ground to traverse in these primaries so, with two months until the election, much can happen,” he said.

Paxton’s pull

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is campaigning against numerous Republican incumbents in the House who voted for his impeachment in May.

While the powerful Republican has endorsed several challengers, Paxton’s support has not translated to a cash windfall.

With few exceptions, the targeted incumbents outraised Paxton-backed opponents and maintained significantly more cash than the attorney general’s preferred candidates, according to the new campaign finance reports.

Those included four of the five Republican incumbents in Paxton’s backyard of Collin County.

For instance, Allen Rep. Jeff Leach, once a close ally who argued forcefully for Paxton’s removal from office, had more than $500,000 in his campaign war chest at the end of 2023. His challenger, Allen City Council member Daren Meis, had about $57,000, Ethics Commission records show.

McKinney Rep. Frederick Frazier’s campaign finance report showed he had slightly more cash than his Paxton-backed challenger, Keresa Richards of McKinney. However, Richards raised more money in the last half of 2023.

Frazier’s reelection campaign has been dealing with controversy after he pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor charges of attempting to impersonate a public servant and was dishonorably discharged from the Dallas Police Department.

Phelan, who has been speaker since 2021, contributed to many of the incumbents Paxton wants tossed from the House. Phelan, R-Beaumont, is also facing a Paxton-backed challenger in David Covey.

Phelan dwarfed his opponent’s campaign cash with more than $5.3 million, compared with Covey’s $23,674.

Paxton’s finance report shows his campaign did not donate directly to his preferred House candidates in the last six months of 2023, though he has been on the campaign trail for some, including at an event Tuesday in Rockwall for Pierson, one of the challengers to Holland.

In Dallas-area state Senate races, the finance reports showed Dallas Democratic Sen. Nathan Johnson had a significant advantage over his primary opponent, state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, D-Dallas. Johnson had more than $820,000 in cash on hand, compared with Neave Criado’s $58,268.

Meanwhile, Republican Senate hopeful Brent Hagenbuch loaned his campaign more than $1 million, giving him far more spending cash than the three other Republicans in the race.

Controversy costs PAC

The reports showed Defend Texas Liberty, a conservative political action committee, all but ceased action in the aftermath of a Texas Tribune report that revealed its former head met with an avowed neo-Nazi for hours in October.

The organization received less than $2,000 in small donations and received no cash from oil magnates Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, whose big spending previously made the organization a major player in Republican politics.

The political action committee made only three contributions to candidates since the Tribune report.

It gave $10,000 to Republican Brent Money, who is running in a special election to replace former Rep. Bryan Slaton. Slaton was also backed by Defend Texas Liberty but was expelled from the House after an investigation found he gave alcohol to a 19-year-old staff member before having sex with her.

Defend Texas Liberty also gave $10,000 to Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, and $5,000 to Edgewood Republican Sen. Bob Hall. The organization did not return a message seeking comment.

rtgarrett@dallasnews.com,

Tags , , , ,
Categories Education Reform

Michael Tomasky: The Rightwing Takeover of the Media

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
63

Writing in The New Republic, Michael Tomasky describes how the rightwing has deftly invested in buying up media properties, even those that lose money. They play the long game, Tomasky argues, while Democrats and liberals ignore the reality of media control. Sinclair has been so successful in rural areas that Democratic candidates don’t have a chance. He wonders whether Democratic big wheels will ever catch in.

I subscribe to The New Republic. So should you.

He writes:

You have no doubt seen the incredibly depressing news about the incredibly depressing purchase of The Baltimore Sun by the incredibly depressing David Smith, chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, the right-wing media empire best known for gobbling up local television news operations and forcing local anchors to spout toxic Big Brother gibberish like this.

The Sun was once a great newspaper. I remember reading, once upon a time, that it had sprung more foreign correspondents into action across the planet than any American newspaper save The New York Times and The Washington Post. It had eight foreign bureaus at one point, all of which were shuttered by the Tribune Company by 2006. But the Sun’s real triumphs came in covering its gritty, organic city. And even well after its glory days, it still won Pulitzers—as recently as 2020, for taking down corrupt Mayor Catherine Pugh, who served a stretch in prison thanks to the paper.

Smith wasted no time in showing his cards during his first meeting with the staff Wednesday. He was asked about a comment he made to New York magazine back in 2018, when he said, “Print media is so left wing as to be meaningless dribble.” (“Dribble”? Let’s hope he won’t be on the copy desk.) Did he feel that way about the Sun specifically? “In many ways, yes,” Smith said, adding that he wants the paper to emulate the local Fox affiliate, which is owned … by Sinclair.

But this column isn’t about the Sun and Smith. In fact, I applaud Smith and Sinclair in one, and only one, respect. They get it. They understand how important media ownership is. They are hardly alone among right-wing megawealthy types. Of course there’s Rupert Murdoch, but there are more. There’s the late Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who, after he got rich from his Unification Church, sprouted media properties, most notably The Washington Times, still owned by the church’s News World Communications (once upon a quaint old time, it was shocking that the conservative newspaper in the nation’s capital was started by a cult). And Philip Anschutz, whose Clarity Media Group started the tabloid newspaper The Washington Examiner in 2005. These days, the list includes Elon Musk with X/Twitter, Peter Thiel and Senator J.D. Vance with Rumble (a right-wing YouTube alternative), Ye with his attempted purchase of the now-defunct Parler, and, of course, Donald Trump, with Truth Social. They all understand what Viktor Orbán told the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022: “Have your own media.” Shows like Tucker Carlson’s old Fox show, the Hungarian strongman said, “should be broadcast day and night….”

The right-wing media is now the agenda-setting media in this country, and it’s only getting bigger and more influential every year.

And how have the country’s politically engaged liberal billionaires responded to this? By doing roughly nothing.

I’ve been in the trenches of this fight for many years. Back in the George W. Bush era, the late Rob Stein, a Democratic insider and good friend of mine, mapped for the first time the conservative infrastructure in a PowerPoint presentation that became such a hot ticket in Washington liberal circles that The New York Times Magazine did a story about it. He showed, from looking over conservative groups’ 990s (because they were mostly all nonprofits), how much was spent on policy development, how much on field operations, how much on youth training, and how much on media. I don’t remember the numbers, but the media figure was high.

Much of this spending was coordinated. Murdoch’s empire didn’t count, because his properties were for-profit, as was The Washington Times. But a lot of the nonprofit spending was directed by a handful of anointed movement leaders, and they made certain that a big chunk of money was spent on media.

I used to try to argue, whenever I was lucky enough to get the ear of one of our side’s rich people for five minutes, that we needed to build an avowedly liberal media infrastructure. I was told that they just weren’t that interested. They had other priorities. They were concerned with the issues. They weren’t prepared to lose all that money, and for what?

For what? Ask Viktor Orbán. He knows. Ask Rupert. Why has he held onto the New York Post? News Corp., the parent company, makes a profit. But the Post loses kajillions. Nobody knows how much, but here’s an estimate from 12 years ago that put the paper’s losses at $60 to $120 million a year.

So why does he keep it? Because it’s worth every penny. It gives him power. The Post’s editors know how to use its front page and its news pages to shape discourse. Where did last fall’s New York crime scare come from, the one that had Westchesterites convinced they dare not set foot in the city, and which elected all those Republican members of Congress? From the Post, that’s where.

I used to be told sometimes, “Yes, but we have The New York Times, The Washington Post …” Really? No, not really. Sure, they endorse Democrats mostly. And sure, much of their social and cultural coverage proceeds from liberal assumptions. They, and almost all of the mainstream media, will not write a story today suggesting, for example, that undocumented immigrants across America should be rounded up en masse and deported. This has been a hard-won reality forged by many activists and intellectuals over many years, and it is a good thing.

But it isn’t capital-P Politics. On capital-PPolitics, The New York Times and The Washington Post often let liberals down. I was having these arguments, as I said, back when Dubya was president, and he and his vassals were ginning up their phony case for invading Iraq. Which newspaper published the infamous “aluminum tubes” story charging that Saddam Hussein was seeking material that could only be used in nuclear centrifuges? The Times, on its front page on a crucial Sunday in the fall of 2002, as Bush officials spent the day fanning out onto the political chat shows touting the article.

It was false. Eventually, the Times itself debunked the story—but in 2004, well after the war had started. And as for the Post, that liberal paper’s editorial page was one of the most important promoters of the Iraq invasion in all of American media. (Speaking of the unreliability of liberal media outlets at that time, it would be evasive of me not to mention The New Republic’s own fervent support of the war, but that wasn’t me; I was helming The American Prospect at the time, and we opposed it.)

I used to say to people: What we need is a full-throated liberal tabloid in Washington—a Washington version of the New York Post that would use its front pages and its news columns to promote embarrassing stories and scandals about Bush administration officials, evangelical grifters, and other prominent right-wingers. It would be agenda-setting. It would have some juicy gossip columns and a great sports section because a tabloid newspaper has to. And most of all, it would have done the vital work of connecting liberal values to a proletarian tabloid sensibility.

Everyone I mentioned this to laughed in my face, and maybe you are too. But Phil Anschutz didn’t laugh. He started a conservative tabloid right around the same time I was saying our side should start a liberal one. And what’s happened? I suppose he’s lost money, although I don’t really know. But The Washington Examineris a respected property (it gave up on print in 2013, but that was fine; by then it was an established presence). I see its people on cable news, and it has produced some legit stars like Tim Alberta. It has influence, I assume its reporters have Hill press credentials, and I don’t see anybody laughing at it…

And now let’s return our thoughts to Sinclair. How different would things be out there in America if, 15 or 20 years ago, some rich liberal or consortium of liberals had had the wisdom to make a massive investment in local news? There were efforts along these lines, and sometimes they came to something. But they were small. What if, instead of right-wing Sinclair, some liberal company backed by a group of billionaires had bought up local TV stations or radio stations or newspapers all across the country?

Again, we can’t know, but we know this much: Support for Democrats has shriveled in rural America to near nonexistence, such that it is now next to impossible to imagine Democrats being elected to public office at nearly any level in about two-thirds of the country. It’s a tragedy. And it happened for one main reason: Right-wing media took over in these places and convinced people who live in them that liberals are all God-hating superwoke snowflakes who are nevertheless also capable of destroying civilization, and our side didn’t fight it. At all. If someone had formed a liberal Sinclair 20 years ago to gain reach into rural and small-town America, that story would be very different today…

What will the result be 20 years from now? Will we be raising a generation of children in two-thirds of the country who believe that fossil fuels are great and trees cause pollution, that slavery wasn’t the cause of the Civil War, that tax cuts always raise revenue, and that the “Democrat” Party stole the 2020 election? Yes, we will. And it will happen because too many people on the liberal side refused to grasp what Murdoch, Anschutz, Smith, and Viktor Orbán see so clearly. Have your own media.

Categories Bias, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Extremism, Fake News, Media, Republicans, Trump

Amplifying Democracy’s Voice: BustEDpencils, a Daily Rally Cry for Public Education!

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
3

Tim Slekar has been active in the fight against privatization of public education for more than a decade. He has created videos, written articles, posted on blogs, and recently he has run a regular radio show. He’s always fighting for public schools, teachers, and students against the long and ugly arm of corporate reform.

He writes:

Dear Advocates for Democracy and Education,

As BustEDpencils expands to a daily radio show on Civic Media, we’re not just talking about education; we’re championing the cornerstone of a healthy democracy—robust public schools. Our show is a clarion call to defend and rejuvenate public education, the bedrock of informed citizenship and democratic engagement.

By tuning in daily, you’re not just listening; you’re actively participating in safeguarding our public schools. Each episode is a step towards a more informed, democratic society, where public education is celebrated and protected as a vital public good.

And we’re not stopping at the airwaves. We’re planning to bring the heart of our message into your communities with live appearances. These events will be more than just talks; they’ll be rallies for public education, celebrating its critical role in maintaining a thriving democracy.

Join this urgent mission. Tune in, engage, and prepare to welcome us into your community. Together, let’s ensure that public education remains a pillar of our democratic society.

In Solidarity for Public Education and Democracy,

Tim and Johnny

P.S. Every listener, every conversation, every community we visit is crucial in our fight to preserve and enhance public education. This journey is about more than just a radio show; it’s about nurturing the very roots of our democracy.

Timothy D. Slekar PhD
412-735-9720
timslekar@gmail.com
https://civicmedia.us/shows/busted-pencils

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Media, Resistance, Students, Teachers and Teaching

New Hampshire: Voucher Bills Split Along Partisan Lines

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
3

Garry Rayno writes a consistently informative report on legislative activity in New Hampshire.

In his latest report, he describes the partisan split concerning ghe state’s voucher program, euphemistically called “Education Freedom Accounts,” which means that taxpayer money will follow if you leave public schools.

The voucher program has already exceeded the costs projected by the state Department of Education. The state commissioner, appointed by Governor Chris Sununu, is Frank Edelblut, who home-schooled his 10 children. He is no fan of public schools.

Republicans, who are in the majority in both houses, have proposed expanding the voucher program and raising the income limits. Their ultimate goal appears to be a universal voucher program where everyone is eligible for a voucher.

Democrats have proposed laws to limit the number of students who get vouchers, to require that income limits are enforced beyond the first year of use, to ban vouchers in religious schools, and to impose accountability on voucher schools.

Rayno writes:

Few programs in state government have an open-ended budget limit, instead most have to stay within the budget lawmakers set.

Some federal programs where the state shares the costs such as Medicaid do not have set limits, but have to serve all who qualify under federal guidelines.

But the fairly new Education Freedom Account program approved three years ago in the state’s two-year budget package has no limit on what is spent from the state’s Education Trust Fund. Sort of like Santa Clause this time of year.

Although the program is fairly new, many attempts have been made to change it during the past two years and this the third session since its passage is no different.

Supporters want to expand the eligibility for students, while opponents and skeptics seek to put restraints and accountability measures on the program that has grown 158 percent since its inception, while the cost has increased 174 percent in figures released earlier this year by the Department of Education.

The future of vouchers depends on which party wins control of the legislature in November.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, New Hampshire, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Texas: When Billionaires Fund the News….

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
6

This story by Michael Hardy was published by the Texas Monthly. It goes to the heart of serious problems in today’s journalism: is the Internet destroying the audience for daily newspapers? Can daily newspapers survive? The Baltimore Sun was just purchased by the rightwing Sinclair Network, which already owns a large number of local radio stations. Can newspapers be independent when they are owned by billionaires with a political agenda?

Billionaire Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post but he doesn’t seem to have imposed his political views on the newspaper. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch famously bought The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News. He has pushed his properties to match his politics.

The Los Angeles Times was purchased by a billionaire doctor, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, in 2018. He has not imposed his politics, but he has ordered drastic layoffs in newsroom personnel, which led to a one-day walkout last Friday by the newsroom guild, the first such work stoppage in the newspaper’s 142-year history. The pending layoffs would be the third round of cuts since June.

This is not a good sign for the health of our democracy.

The death of major newspapers over the past few decades has created “news deserts,” regions where there are no newspapers. It is more important than ever to support local journalism, which provide the sole source of information about local events, school board elections and meetings, elections, and local government.

Into the gap comes a new form of journalism, the nonprofit newspaper. Most such enterprises are supported by subscribers, advertisers, and foundation gifts. I support the Mississippi Free Press, which does an amazing job of covering news in the state. I also support the Texas Observer, which is a low-budget newspaper whose scrappy staff is known for investigative journalism. (I also subscribe to The Texas Tribune and The Texas Monthly).

In some cases, even the nonprofits depend on billionaires to keep them afloat. As this story shows, relying on billionaires can be hazardous. In some cases, their gifts come with long strings attached.

In a recent issue of The Texas Monthly, Michael Hardy reported what happened to a new nonprofit journal called the Houston Landung.

In its mission statement, the nonprofit Houston Landing describes itself as an “independent, nonpartisan news organization devoted to public service journalism,” one that “offer[s] solutions to pressing problems” and “holds the powerful accountable.” Its stories are free to read, and its website runs no ads or clickbait. Its vision of an independent, well-funded outlet built on rigorous investigative reporting attracted some of the city’s brightest journalism stars after its soft launch two years ago with financial backing from the philanthropic American Journalism Project and Houston billionaires John Arnold and Richard Kinder.

Among its first hires were Houston Chronicle investigations editor Mizanur Rahman, who became the Landing’s editor in chief (and helped write the mission statement), and the Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Alex Stuckey, who became the Landing’s top investigative journalist. Rahman and Stuckey helped build a newsroom of about thirty editors, reporters, photographers, and web designers that routinely punched above its weight, producing major stories about an epidemic of deaths in Harris County jails and a plague of stopped trains in Houston’s East End. Since the website’s official debut in June, it has regularly scooped the competition—including Texas Monthly—on stories ranging from the state takeover of Houston ISD to predatory lending at the Colony Ridge development north of Houston.

The Landing’s success made it all the more shocking when, on Monday morning, Rahman and Stuckey were summarily fired by CEO Peter Bhatia, a fifty-year newspaper veteran and former Detroit Free Press editor in chief who had been in the job for less than a year. Bhatia is longtime friends with Landing board member Jeff Cohen, a senior advisor at Houston philanthropy organization Arnold Ventures—a major funder of the Landing—and a former Chronicle editor in chief. The six-member board of directors appears to have brought Bhatia in to shake things up at the website. (None of the Landing’s six board members agreed to interview requests for this story; the author of this story worked briefly under Cohen at the Chronicle in 2017 and did sporadic freelance copy writing for the Arnold Ventures website from 2019 to 2020.)

“Over recent months I’ve become concerned about whether or not we were fully engaged in the process of being effective in the digital spaces,” Bhatia told Texas Monthly this week. “We’ve been putting out a newspaper on a website. There’s been some really good journalism and some high-impact stuff, for sure. But after a lot of conversations with Mizanur, I reached the conclusion that we had to make a change if we’re going to be as effective as we can in the digital space.” A document prepared for the November meeting of the Landing’s board and obtained by Texas Monthly showed that the site exceeded its 2023 goal for annual page views (1.5 million) and was within striking distance of its goal for unique visitors (1 million). For comparison, the nonprofit San Antonio Report, founded in 2012, claims 500,000 monthly page views.

Stuckey told Texas Monthly that she was blindsided by her firing. Just two weeks earlier, she had received a glowing performance review and a 3 percent pay raise. In a recording of Monday’s termination meeting provided by Stuckey, Bhatia can be heard saying he has “enormous respect for you as a journalist . . . you are an investigative reporter of the highest level.” But, he explains, there is no place for her in the “comprehensive reset” he believes is necessary at the Landing.

“If you had ever come to me and said, ‘I want you to revamp how you do stories,’ I would have done that in a heartbeat,” Stuckey tells him.

“It’s not my job to do that,” Bhatia replies. “It’s the editor’s job.”

“So I’m getting cut off at the knees because you felt that Mizanur didn’t do that?”

“Well, you can jump to that conclusion.”

At the end of the meeting, human resources director Susie Hermsen offered Stuckey three months of severance pay if she signed a nondisparagement agreement. Stuckey refused. “I believe in transparency,” she can be heard saying in the recording. “This is insanity, and I am absolutely not signing anything.”

The Landing’s newsroom was similarly dumbfounded by the firings. Much of the staff converged upon the organization’s sixth-floor office, in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, on Monday to show solidarity with Rahman and Stuckey. Later, the staff wrote a collective letter to the Landing’s board of directors warning of “significant damage to employee retention and recruitment” and predicting that “the optics of such a massive restructuring during a moment of forward momentum will hurt our fundraising and financial efforts.”

Bhatia acknowledged that the newsroom was in open revolt against his leadership. “I have no illusion that some people are going to leave over this, and I respect that,” he told Texas Monthly. The Landing’s managing editor, John Tedesco, will temporarily take over for Rahman while Bhatia leads a search for a new editor in chief. Tedesco told me that he disagrees with the decision to fire Rahman and Stuckey and fears that “this turmoil will cause our best and brightest journalists to look for the nearest exit ramp.”

The Landing is one of dozens of local nonprofit newsrooms that have sprung up around the country in the past couple of decades. Often funded by a combination of wealthy donors, foundation grants, NPR-style membership drives, and paid events, these nonprofits have been touted as a supplement or even a replacement for declining local newspapers. But some observers worry that such publications are beholden to the whims of their billionaire patrons. (Texas Monthly is a for-profit magazine whose chairman is Houston billionaire Randa Duncan Williams.)

Where did the staff go wrong? Did they write anything critical of charter schools (billionaire John Arnold has poured many millions into promoting charters)? Or did they praise pensions for public service workers (another of Mr. Arnold’s pet peeves)? Or was it something that stepped on the toes of the other billionaire funder, Mr. Kinder? The publication was launched with $20 million, so it would not have been a financial issue.

This is what Thomas Jefferson said about the importance of a free press:

Jefferson believed that a free press was necessary to keep government in check. He wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”:

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Houston, Texas

Leonie Haimson: The Myth of Accountability Under Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2024 //
7

Leonie Haimson is a tireless advocate for better public schools and reduced class sizes. She leads a small but powerful organization called Class Size Matters. I am a member of her board (unpaid, of course, as she is).

CSM is powerful because Leonie is tireless. She attends meetings of the City Council, the Panel on Education Policy (I.e., the Board of Education); she testifies at City Council hearings and goes to Albany to testify when the education committees meet. She finds lawyers to work pro bono and files lawsuit to seek more funding for the schools. She works with parent groups to support or oppose the latest decision by the mayor. She meets with elected representatives. She writes op-Ed’s for the local press. She almost single-handedly collapsed Bill Gates’ inBloom, which hoped to collect personally identifiable information about every student in every state. She scrutizes the budget of the NYC public schools, even more intensely than those who are paid to do it. She once blocked a bad deal that saved the city $600 million, by exposing the sordid record of the contractor.

The elected officials in Albany are now considering whether to renew mayoral control of the public schools. Michael Bloomberg persuaded the Legislature to give him control soon after he was elected in 2001. He promised all sorts of miraculous improvements. He would be accountable, he said.

Leonie testified recently at a hearing on mayoral control and explained that mayoral control did not increase accountability. In fact, it decreased accountability. No one listened to parents. One of Bloomberg’s chancellors (his second, who lasted only 90 days) mocked parents who expressed their grievances at a public hearing.

The mayor hired a lawyer with no experience in education to be the schools’ chancellor. He did not trust educators and surrounded himself with people from the corporate sector.

The mayor had a majority of appointments on the city’s “Panel on Education Policy,” a toothless replacement for its Board of Education. When the members of the Panel threatened to reverse one of his decisions, he fired the disobedient appointees on the spot and replaced them with others who served his wishes.

The mayor could do whatever he wanted, regardless of the views of teachers, parents, students, communities. Beloved public schools that served the neediest of students were closed and replaced with small schools that did not accept the neediest of students. He opened scores of charter schools that were free to reject or exclude students they did not want, then crowed about their test scores. (Now a private citizen, Bloomberg continues to give hundreds of millions to charter schools; no big deal for him, as his assets exceed $60 billion).

Leonie stands on a solid foundation of knowledge, experience, and persistence. Sometimes I think she wins battles because the electeds don’t want her to pester them anymore.

She is the undisputed champion of reduced class sizes.

More power to her!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Class size, Class Size Matters Org, Corporate Reform, Courage, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, History, Klein, Joel, New York City

Beware Deep Fake Videos! Protect Our Democracy!

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2024 //
18

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed (or not) that I never mention artificial intelligence. I think it’s ominous. I don’t like simulations of real people. I don’t like technology that can write even better than most humans. I prefer to deal directly with humans, not fakes.

Artifial intelligence may be deployed as a deceptive weapon in the upcoming elections.

2024 is a crucial year in our politics. On the ballot in the primaries and in the general election will be candidates who are offering theocracy, dictatorship, or democracy. They will use AI to woo and confuse voters.

New Hampshire blogger and former state senator Jeanne Dietsch has posted a warning about deep fake videos. The video she posts is titled “This Is Not Morgan Freeman.” The face is Morgan Freeman, the voice is Morgan Freeman. But it is not Morgan Freeman.

She also offers a warning about the three factions that are competing in New Hampshire.

She writes:

Elected officials no longer act as individuals. They vote as teams. In NH we have three types of teams:

  • “LIBERTY” CANDIDATES who do not believe in majority rule or public services. They want to privatize education, public lands and government services. They believe the only behaviors that should be illegal are theft and bodily harm. People may make fentanyl, pollute the water supply, sell body parts, or do anything else on their private property. That includes corporations that want to buy up state forests to lumber or entire swaths of housing to rent.
  • FASCIST & THEOCRATIC CANDIDATES also want to replace democracy with minority rule. Unlike liberty candidates, they want stricter laws set by a dictator or by religious leaders. Their goal is to control society, as in Putin’s Russia or a Christian version of Iran.
  • PRO-DEMOCRACY CANDIDATES may disagree on how large government should be and many other issues. However, they will stand up against those who support lawlessness or dictatorship. They will ensure we regularly hold fair elections. They believe in the rule of law.

Political parties no longer define the teams in this state. Undeclared voters outnumber either party by a third. In 2020, the “liberty” team temporarily took over the NH House Republican Caucus. Even though they were a minority of the 400 House members, they controlled the agenda. Pro-democracy legislators in both parties were powerless.

The story in DC is similar. The functions of the American republic are being held hostage by a small minority.

Will we fall for the deep fakes? Will we be deceived by AI? Or will we protect our democracy?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read

Haaretz: A Surprising Effort to Build Bonds Between Arabs and Jews

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2024 //
6

Haaretz is an Israeli newspaper that is an invaluable source of news and opinion. It harshly criticizes the Netanyahu government and publishes articles critical of the war in Gaza. I began subscribing after the October 7 attacks by Hamas because I wanted to read the news firsthand from an Israeli source, especially one that did not parrot the government’s line. I have not been disappointed. The articles about Netanyahu are far more scathing than anything I read in the American media. And there are sometimes inspiring stories of Jews and Muslims who together seek understanding and peace. The following is one of those stories. This group—Standing Together— has participated in anti-war demonstrations. May they prosper.

It begins:

“You’re not alone,” said the Jewish woman to the Arab woman. Shedding tears, the two Israelis, who were meeting for the first time, embraced. The scene played out in the modest Lod apartment of the Arab woman, Isra Abou Laban Oudi. She’s a single mother, and her 3-year-old son, Tareq, scampered merrily among the 14 strangers, Jews and Arabs, who were guests in his home.

From the beginning of the school year, Oudi says, her son, who speaks only Arabic, had attended a municipal Hebrew-speaking preschool. After October 7, when the children returned to school, Tareq too was happy to reunite with his friends after what had been a two-week break. However, Oudi says, when she heard him speaking Arabic, his teacher hit him and demanded he not use “that language.”

Oudi filed a complaint with the police, which is still under examination, but since then, for some weeks, Tareq hasn’t been going to nursery school. The teacher, who denies hitting Tareq and claims that she only scolded him, also filed a complaint with the police, alleging that Oudi was accusing her falsely. She is still employed in the preschool.

The whole situation left Oudi feeling helpless and very much alone. That is, until the solidarity encounter that took place in her home, when members of Standing Together – an Arab-Jewish social movement that seeks to advance a beneficent, egalitarian society in Israel through joint grassroots activity – came to show their support.

Three days after that visit, Oudi and her toddler son attended an event organized by the movement in the nearby city of Ramle which, like Lod, has a mixed population. There, in a banquet hall that had no banquets to host, Arabs and Jews were working side by side to prepare food packages for Jewish, Muslim and Christian families whose source of livelihood had been truncated because of the war.

Oudi and her son did not join in the activity of Standing Together (“Omdim Beyahad” in Hebrew) by chance. It’s part of the “recovery plan” that the movement recommends for people who have been hurt by racism: to transform the affront into constructive activity. “It gives people the strength to translate the hurt into joint activity, restores a renewed sense of control and also brings us new and highly motivated members,” explains Omri Goren, 24, who oversees the movement’s activity in the Ramle-Lod area and also heads its student division.

After the volunteers finished packing all the food products, and just before the care packages were dispatched to addresses across the city, the 30 volunteers gathered in a dialogue circle. Goren asked them to introduce themselves and describe how they were feeling at this tense time.

One man, an Arab, related that his wife was frightened about the war’s implications for Israel’s Arab citizens and had gone abroad with one of their children, while another son, an electrical engineer, had been fired from his job because of “the situation.” A Jewish man sitting next to him said that for three decades he had been the proprietor of a store in Ramle where Jews, Christians and Muslims shopped, and that he had warm, close relations with all of them. “We are like brothers,” he said. “There is respect and genuine love. I am proud to be a Ramle resident who has friends in Ramle.”

A Jewish woman told the others that her niece was killed on October 7, and that she was worried about the shared future in Israel. “And that’s why I am here.”

Although many may be surprised – though the movement’s leaders are not among them – demand for Standing Together’s message of solidarity and vision of a shared future has been on a constant rise since the war started. Those who thought that the uptick in mutual suspicion between Arabs and Jews is causing the fragile fabric of Israeli society to unravel, is invited to take part in the movement’s activity and discover that they are wrong.

Standing Together, which was founded in 2015 and espouses values of equality, peace, social justice and socialism (and in normal times, is involved in environmental, educational and social issues, in a number of different campaigns), is currently gathering momentum. Its membership is growing daily. The purple color associated with the movement, and its newly minted slogan, “Together we will get through this,” can be seen in more and more places in both the real and online worlds. Most of the new joiners are young people, Arabs and Jews, the movement’s directors note. Since October 7, a dozen joint Arab-Jewish groups, dubbed “solidarity guards,” have been established across the country, joining the eight already active branches. Eleven student chapters have also been created, besides the nine that previously existed…

Tamar Asadi is someone who joined the movement in the wake of October 7. Asadi, 28, is from the village of Deir al-Asad, in the country’s north. She’s a homeroom teacher for 12th-graders at a Jewish high school in the area, where she’s worked for the past six years. She too says she has been “very worried” since the start of the war. “I also knew some people at the [Nova] party and in the Gaza border communities, and in general I was concerned about what would happen,” she says.

“In the social media,” she continues, “all the posts were dark and frightening, and suddenly I saw a purple-colored post, which said something about partnership, in both Hebrew and Arabic. I felt like someone had thrown me a lifebelt of grace. I wrote to the people behind the post, who were from Standing Together, to ask whether the movement had a branch in Deir al-Asad.

“They said they didn’t, so I decided to take the initiative and set up a solidarity guard of Arab and Jewish communities in the Galilee. Within hours, we had 350 new members. We held our first meeting via Zoom, and the feeling was so good that we decided to continue with a face-to-face meeting.”

Asadi continues: “We invited everyone to us, to the community center in Deir al-Asad. One of the people who came, from Kibbutz Tuval [nearby], apologized for having to leave early, because he had guard duty at the kibbutz – ‘to protect us from you,’ he said – and everyone laughed. I haven’t stopped talking about that remark, and I understood how important what we are doing in Standing Together is.

“Since then, my activity has only picked up momentum. We visited joint medical teams of Arabs and Jews at health-care facilities; we paid a solidarity visit to Maayan Sigal-Koren, five of whose relatives were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, two of whom are still being held in Gaza; I invited friends for an encounter at my place, which left me very emotional; and much more.

“Standing Together gives me a place to be who I am,” she explains, “along with the hope I have been searching for for a long time. My activity in the movement is also a message to my students. They see an Israeli homeroom teacher, an Arab woman, a Muslim, a Palestinian, who on the one hand identifies with Israel, yet is not ashamed of her [Arab] identity. The change has to come from the public. Our generation is confused about its identity, and is sad and fearful, but Arab society is behaving with solidarity, dignity and empathy at this time – not only out of fear, but mainly because of a shared destiny.”

Sigal-Koren, a resident of Kibbutz Pelekh, in the Misgav region, describes the solidarity visit that movement members paid her as “the most powerful and most hopeful I have experienced since all this started. The encounter touched me in a way that no other meeting in this period has,” she tells Haaretz.

The Standing Together activists asked Sigal-Koren how they could help her and other families of the captives, and suddenly it occurred to her to that the campaign being conducted online and via posters and billboards calling for the captives’ release should be translated into Arabic too. That was in fact speedily done with the aid of members of the solidarity squad. Sigal-Koren was subsequently invited to tell her story at a meeting of Standing Together in the Arab town of Nahaf. Speaking before an audience of 300 Arabs and Jews, she called for the return from Gaza of her uncle, Fernando Marman, and Louis Har, her mother’s partner (her mother, Clara, was released on November 28).

Since that hellish Saturday, the movement has conducted more than a hundred activities, including joint conferences for Arabs and Jews in Hebrew and Arabic in Tamra, Nazareth, Abu Ghosh, Lod, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv and other venues. They have visited hospitals to meet with wounded soldiers and speak to Jewish and Arab medical teams; cleaned out public shelters; sent food packages and other things to families whose source of income has dried up; monitored cases of racist violence in Israel; and made solidarity visits like the one in Oudi’s home.

One of their significant actions is the setting up of an emergency hotline, offering assistance to anyone who’s been harmed by racism or requires physical accompaniment in order to get to their place of work, the local clinic – or the police station in order to file a complaint about racism. The hotline, which operates seven days a week, has taken hundreds of calls from people whose cases are in various stages of treatment.

The hotline is currently being staffed by 90 volunteers, says Oded Rotem, their coordinator. Many more wanted to join, he notes, but the movement has declared a hiatus on accepting new volunteers, as it’s unable to meet the pace of training.

* * * 

Some 700 people showed up for Standing Together’s Haifa conference, held on November 4. Not unusually in these parts, the event took place only after an alternative was found to the original location, which they were forced to abandon following pressure by right-wingers. At the event, Sally Abed, who directs the movement’s resource development team, spoke about her mother, who works for the northern district of the National Insurance Institute (social security administration), which deals with the social-welfare needs of bereaved families and the families of the Gaza hostages. She related how, after a hard day of emotionally draining work, her mother comes home, turns on an Arabic news channel and sees what is being perpetrated against members of her family in the Gaza Strip.

“We’re told that we have to take a side,” Abed said. “But that choice inevitably denies the humanity of the other side. I refuse to have my humanity robbed. I refuse to be deprived of my Israeliness,” she declared, to the applause of the audience. After the meeting, Abed was approached by an elderly Jewish man wearing a kippa, who had tears in his eyes. Embracing her, he said, “Thank you, this is the first time I’ve breathed since October 7. You made it possible for me to feel pain for the other side and to feel like a human being again.”

The story continues. I hope you are able to open the link and finish reading. Standing Together is a candle in the darkness, an effort to bridge differences and build an awareness of common humanity. It has 5,000 members at present, with another 2,000 who join their activities. May their candle create light and hope.

Categories International

“Democracy” Weighs In on Controversy in Atlanta About Fani Willis and Prosecutor

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2024 //
59

There has been a heated debate on the blog about charges that District Attorney Fani Willis was romantically involved with prosecutor Nathan Wade. Defendants’s lawyers suggest the case should be thrown out or the entire prosecution team be replaced. Clearly, the public needs to know more about what happened before reaching judgment. As Nikki Haley has said repeatedly about Trump, “wherever he goes, chaos follows.” That may be why he’s been so successful in the courts in more than 3,500 cases—evasion, delay, chaos.

Our reader “Democracy” added this insight:

Here’s more on the Fanni Willis “scandal” from today’s NY Times, and other media, along with some comments from me:

“the bombshell accusations have rocked the criminal case — one of four Trump faces this year as he also seeks a second term in the White House. Trump blasted Willis and Wade over the allegations again on Friday, calling the prosecutors ‘the lovebirds’ and accusing them of targeting him ‘to ENRICH themselves, and to live the Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous!’ In posts on his social media platform, Trump called for the prosecutors to ‘face appropriate consequences’ and for charges against him to be dismissed.”

•• It’s rather rich for Trump to be ridiculing ANYONE about trying to enrich himself, and it’s the height of hypocrisy for Trump to be demanding “appropriate consequences” for Fanni Willis when he is doing everything he can to try and evade accountability for himself.

“Roman’s motion argues that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade violated the state bar’s rules of professional conduct, the county code regarding conflicts of interest and, possibly, federal law. It calls for the case against Mr. Roman to be dismissed, and for Mr. Wade, Ms. Willis and Ms. Willis’s entire office to be disqualified from the case.”

•• Whether or not Fanni Willis violated any code of professional conduct remains to be seen, and it seems that a pretty good case can be made that she did not. But, yeah, optics matter. Still, there is a STRONG legal case AGAINST Mr. Roman that is completely UNRELATED to WIllis taking a private trip or two with Mr. Wade.

“On Saturday morning, Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment, who has been vocal in supporting the Georgia prosecution, called on Mr. Wade to step down, saying that the recent allegation of an affair ‘had become a distraction.’ ”

•• That’s the WHOLE point of this sordid nonsense, is it not? To cause a distraction from the fact that Trump AND his accomplices tried to steal the electoral votes in Georgia away from Mr. Trump by throwing out the verified, certified election results. Also, if in fact Wade were to resign, wouldn’t THAT be a legitimate end to the issue?

“For years, Mr. Wade was a regular at county Republican breakfast meetings, and he served for a time as a delegate to the county convention, said Jason Shepherd, who chaired the Cobb County Republican Party at the time…In 2016, during one of his unsuccessful attempts to run for Cobb County superior court judge, he was supported by Ashleigh Merchant — the lawyer who filed the motion this month on Mr. Roman’s behalf that seeks to have him removed from the Trump case. The motion questions Mr. Wade’s qualifications. But in a Facebook post in the midst of his judge’s race, she praised him for his extensive résumé…’Nathan has practiced in every area of the law that appears before the Superior Court bench,’ she wrote.”

•• Ahem…

Let’s rehash here. As PBS News Hour reported two short days ago,

“Trump and Roman were indicted by a Fulton County grand jury in August along with 17 others. They’re accused of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to try to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four of those charged have already pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump, Roman and the others who remain have pleaded not guilty…Roman was the director of Election Day operations for the Trump campaign and also had worked in the White House…Prosecutors say he helped coordinate an effort to contact state lawmakers on Trump’s behalf to encourage them to ‘unlawfully appoint presidential electors.’…He is also alleged to have been involved in efforts to have Republicans in swing states that Trump lost, including Georgia, meet on Dec. 14, 2020, to sign certificates falsely saying Trump had won their states and that they were the electors for their states. He was in touch with local Republican officials in several states to set up those meetings.”

And yet Roman (and Trump, and a whole cast of other weirdos), think that private “dating” or a few private trips somehow create an act of immense impropriety that should THROW OUT legally obtained indictments for subverting the 2020 presidential election returns in the state of Georgia, thereby disenfranchising every single voter who cast a ballot for Mr. Biden.

This is beyond stupid, is it not?

Michael Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant has asked not only that Fanni Willis and Nathan Wade BE REMOVED from this case but also that ALL CHARGES against Roman BE DROPPED.

Here are some other cases where Ashleigh Merchant demanded that charges be dropped. Take a peek.

2017: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ga-supreme-court/1862249.html

2021: “In addition to Matthews’s admission that he stabbed Young, his cell phone records and his knowledge of information about the crime scene that the police had deliberately withheld from the public supported a finding that he was present when the crime occurred. Evidence found in his home and in the adjacent dumpster, including the set of steak knives that matched the knife blade found on Young’s body, Young’s debit and credit cards, and the cap that one of the men using Young’s debit card was wearing just after the murder, also connected him to the crimes. The evidence was legally sufficient to authorize a rational trier of fact to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Matthews was guilty of malice murder and possession of a knife during the commission of a crime.”

“Count 6 of the indictment charged Matthews with knowingly taking without consent a Bank of America Visa debit card, which was “issued to Adrianne Young as cardholder and from whose possession the said card was taken.” A rational trier of fact could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Matthews was guilty of financial transaction card theft from the evidence presented, including evidence that debit cards and a credit card belonging to Young were found in the dumpster adjacent to Matthews’s residence, that Young’s purse was missing from the crime scene, and that Matthews attempted to use Young’s debit card within an hour of her murder.”

https://casetext.com/case/matthews-v-state-2093

2022: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ga-supreme-court/2162540.html

2023:  https://casetext.com/case/kim-v-state-60

Kind of makes one wonder.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Georgia, Justice, Trump
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