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“Democracy”: Where’s the “Conflict” in the Georgia Case Against Trump

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
39

I’m curious. Regarding the Georgia election case, where – exactly – is the Fanni Willis “conflict” that may have impaired, impinged or otherwise impacted the rights of those accused in that case?

The Associated Press reported this:

“A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty…Trump and eight other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the state Court of Appeals.”

So, again, what EXACTLY is the “conflict” that infringes on the rights of the accused in the Georgia, some of whom have already – in fact pleaded guilty.

CNN reported this:

“In March, after what amounted to a mini-trial where attorneys for Trump and his co-defendants sought to prove their case against Willis and Wade, McAfee found there was not enough evidence to firmly prove Willis financially benefited from the relationship.”

So, the prosecutors were put on trial and the judge found that there wasn’t evidence to say that Willis got some kind of financial favor from Wade. But even if she HAD, where is the “conflict” that harms the right of the accused?

The Washington Post put it like this:

“McAfee ruled that Trump and the others had ‘failed to meet their burden’ of proving Willis’s romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade and allegations that she was financially enriched by trips the two took together were enough of a ‘conflict of interest’ to disqualify her from the case..

To put it differently, the “conflict” in this case was that Willis and Wade slept together and sometimes took trips together– they were “bad” — and thus that should disqualify them from the case. But, What. About. The. Case? What about the facts of the case? What about the specific charges and the charges to which others have pled guilty?

Sydney Powell – yes, her – pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.” She also agreed to help prosecutors in other cases.

Guess who was involved in the conspiracy and the other cases?

Kenneth Chesebro, charged with seven felony counts, pled guilty to “one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. ” False documents to be used to overturn the election results. Guess on whose behalf Chesebro filed those false documents? Chesebro agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in other cases too.

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pleased guilty in Georgia “to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She has already written an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, and she agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors as the case progresses.”

So, there’s a pattern here. 

But where – exactly – is the “conflict” in the other cases? The cases of the ringleader Trump, and dirty trickster Mike Roman? The cases of Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman? Of Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark and the rest?

Meanwhile, the findings of fact in the Colorado court decision by Sarah Wallace that declared Trump an insurrectionist, which relied heavily on the January 6 Committee Report and included testimony by officers attacked in the January 6 riot, have gone unchallenged by any credible evidence, including that put forth by Trump or his attorneys. As noted in the decision,

“while Trump spent much time contesting potential biases of the Committee members and their staff, he spent almost no time attacking the credibility of the Committee’s findings themselves. The Hearing provided Trump with an opportunity to subject these findings to the adversarial process, and he chose not to do so, despite frequent complaints that the Committee investigation was not subject to such a process. Because Trump was unable to provide the Court with any credible evidence which would discredit the factual findings of the January 6th Report, the Court has difficulty understanding the argument that it should not consider its findings which are admissible under C.R.E. 803(8).”

The Colorado Supreme Court found that because Trump was – in fact – an insurrectionist, he could not be on the Colorado ballot because the United States Constitution explicitly prohibited it under Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Seems pretty clear: “no person shall…hold any office, civil or military, under the Constitution who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…”

The United States Supreme Court ignored the findings of fact in the Colorado trial court and overturned the Colorado Supreme Court decision to take Trump off the ballot. The Court said “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”

According former federal appellate judge Michael Lutting and constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, this was “a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation…Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/supreme-court-trump-v-anderson-fourteenth-amendment/677755/

Three members of the Supreme Court were – in fact – appointed by a seditionist, an insurrectionist, who took lots of help from Russian intelligence agencies to win* the 2016 election, and tried to violently overturn the 2020 results. One other justice flies seditionist flags over his houses, and another has a wife who is an open seditionist.

It appears to me that the “conflicts” some people, mostly Republicans, are worried about are the absolutely entirely wrong conflicts.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Georgia, Justice, Trump

Steve Ruis: Why Did the Supreme Court Take the Abortion Pill Case?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
23

Steve Ruis raises an interesting question: Why did four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court agree to take the abortion pill case, then rule unanimously that the litigants had no standing to sue? Wouldn’t the four who wanted to hear the case know that in advance? Why did they waste everyone’s time?

Steve has a suspicion that the six justices who voted to strike down Roe v. Wade were sending instructions for the next legal challenge to the pill: try again but avoid these pitfalls. Find a plaintiff with standing.

Just as he predicted, the plaintiffs are lining up to challenge the pill again. They are taking their cases to the same far-right judge in Amarillo, Texas, who previously said the Federal Drug Administration should never have approved the pill.

US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will have to decide later this summer if three conservative states that want to continue the fight against the drug can do so in his court. The decision is one of several in coming weeks that will determine whether – and if so, how quickly – the case against mifepristone makes it back to the Supreme Court.

Before Trump appointed him, the judge was an attorney for a Christian advocacy group. He is known for his anti-abortion views.

Three conservative states—Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas—want to block access to the pill, and they plan to file their case in Amarillo, knowing that it will be heard by a friendly judge.

An immediate question for Kacsmaryk is whether the states can continue to do so in his court. Generally, parties must be able to justify filing lawsuits in a specific federal court. The doctors and anti-abortion groups who sued over mifepristone incorporated a group called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in Amarillo  months before their lawsuit.

The groups’ move to bring the case in Amarillo, a far-flung court division in Texas’ panhandle, was among the most controversial aspects of the lawsuit. Kacsmaryk is virtually guaranteed to hear every case that is filed there, and his courthouse has become a favorite option for conservative litigants and states seeking to halt the Biden administration’s agenda.

Steve Ruis was prescient. A few days after he posted his warning, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, a lawyer, dug down into the decision about the abortion pill.

She wrote:

Just as they did when the Supreme Court managed to reject the utterly outlandish independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, too many credulous court watchers rushed forward last week to praise the high court for its “reasonableness” in rejecting a half-baked claim to restrict access to mifepristone, the medical abortion drug. It gets no brownie points for knocking down on technical standing grounds one of the more outlandish opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and antiabortion activist District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Despite headlines that the court was saving or preserving mifepristone, it did nothing of the sort. Worse, Americans have plenty of reason to fear what the most radical and aggressive Supreme Court since Dred Scott is up to.

The majority found that the respondent, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, lacked standing because the group’s members were already spared from any obligation to perform medical abortions by federal conscience clause protections, had only the most speculative injuries, and had to do more than prove it devoted resources to the issue to qualify for “associational” standing. (Plaintiffs cannot “spend” their way into standing, the majority held.)

As a preliminary matter, Justice Clarence Thomas (under fire for yet more unreported lavish gifts from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow) filed a concurrence that was downright scary. He argued that no organization or association should ever be allowed to assert organizational standing. Here, he went after a nearly 50-year-old precedent.

As Reuters explained, “Thomas essentially attacked a long-recognized legal doctrine relied upon by associations ranging from the nation’s biggest business lobby — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to environmental groups and gun rights advocacy organizations to challenge government policies by suing on behalf of their members.” By depriving the most able plaintiffs from challenging statutes, Thomas would give the federal government and states license to run roughshod over individual rights without necessarily changing the substantive law.

Following his attack on Brown v. Board of Education in the South Carolina redistricting case and his assault on Griswold v. Connecticut in the Dobbs case, Thomas once more reveals just how radical the Supreme Court, with the addition of more radical justices, might become in the future.

What was hyperbole is now a road map straight from the concurrences of one of the most radical justices. In the upcoming election, Democrats would do well to focus on the extremism of the Supreme Court as they explain how even more extreme the court would become with more MAGA appointees.

One could simply substitute Thomas for Robert Bork, the radical nominee whose appointment was scuttled in 1987, in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s famous denunciation:


[Clarence Thomas’s] America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

What was hyperbole is now a road map straight from the concurrences of one of the most radical justices. In the upcoming election, Democrats would do well to focus on the extremism of the Supreme Court as they explain how even more extreme the court would become with more MAGA appointees.

Drilling down on the majority opinion, one finds that the court says nothing that would restrict states from banning all abortions, medical or otherwise. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern remind us, “It remains unlawful to prescribe in states that criminalize abortion; it has even been deemed a ‘controlled substance’ in Louisiana.” Moreover, Thomas and other radicals’ pet theory for banning all abortions — expansion and contortion of the Comstock Act to prevent use of the mail to send abortion devices or literature — “will roar back with a vengeance,” the authors note, if Trump prevails and the Supreme Court, freed from worries about a national backlash, decides to take the issue on squarely.

Furthermore, while this particular plaintiff was denied standing, another party, such as a state or individual doctor, might easily establish standing to take another crack at outlawing mifepristone. Jenner & Block, a litigation firm, explains on its blog:

First and foremost, this decision does not spell the end of the mifepristone litigation. While this case was pending at the Supreme Court, three states — Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas — successfully intervened at the district court. Now that the case has been remanded, these three states will continue their challenge to the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone, and based on their complaint, they intend to make many of the same arguments as the Alliance. Specifically, the three states have challenged the FDA’s decisions to expand access to mifepristone from 2016 onward, including the ability to have mifepristone dispensed via telehealth services and distributed by retail pharmacies. Given the district court’s willingness to enjoin the FDA’s approval entirely and the Supreme Court’s failure to reach the merits, it is likely that the states will prevail on at least some of their claims. This would mean another year or more of appeals to the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court, with continuing uncertainty surrounding the regulation of mifepristone in the interim.

Mifepristone, therefore, has not been “saved” in any sense. If anything, it’s on life support, pending an election that would give the court a green light to go wild and/or offer felon and former president Donald Trump the chance to add to the ranks of the most extreme justices.

Categories Gender, Health, Hypocrisy, Science

Thom Hartmann: The 50-Year Trump MAGA Reich?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
26

Thom Hartmann says that Trump fans are dreaming of a 50-year MAGA reich:

Horrified critics blast Fox’s Ingraham for suggesting a 50-year MAGA reich is possible. If Trump wins, this will be referred to as the age of Trump,” Laura Ingraham told her Fox viewers, dreaming of a repeat of the kind of consequential presidency that stamps political eras. “He dominates the policy debate in ways that no one has done since Reagan. And if he picks a strong VP… this coalition could be in power for 50 years.” Ingraham — who I also once debated, at a Heritage Foundation event — could be right. If Trump becomes president this fall, he and his Project 2025 allies will transform America in ways that go far beyond FDR’s New Deal or Reagan’s war on working people. The Christian Taliban that has surrounded him will take over public school instruction and birth control policy, racist militias and skinheads will be running elections and immigration policy, the media will be finally and fully seized by rightwing oligarchs like in Russia and Hungary, unions and equality movements will be functionally outlawed, and Trump’s “enemies” (including reporters and commentators like yours truly) will end up in prison. Each of those things are already promised explicitly by Trump himself or part of the Project 2025 program for the next Republican presidency.

Categories Elections, Fascism, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Which Candidate is “Fit” to be President?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
35

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin responded to a biased article in the Wall Street Journal that derided Biden’s fitness for the Presidency. Its primary sources: House Speaker Mike Johnson and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, both Trump lackeys.

Rubin wrote:

A president’s gait, verbal tics and minor recall errors have virtually nothing to do with the job of being president. The White House occupant is not a “Jeopardy!” contestant, a stand-up comic, a talk-show host or guest; the president is the head of the executive branch and commander in chief.

The job of being president is executive management, something with which political reporters (as opposed to business reporters) have virtually no expertise. We should be asking whether a candidate can absorb necessary details, make good personnel decisions, reach sound conclusions, evaluate risk and consider the consequences of actions. Can the president separate personal interests from the interests of the nation, of allies or even the planet? That is what the president does, day after day.

And we do not need to be armchair psychiatrists to evaluate that sort of presidential fitness. As I have written, Trump’s closest colleagues tell us that he is willfully ignorant, cannot grasp basic concepts, cannot absorb written material. As for his hiring decisions, by his own admission, he has hired a slew of dumb or incompetent people. He gloms on to ridiculous quack theories, and he channels the ideas and rhetoric of America’s enemies and of historical villains.

Trump cannot keep national secrets — or understand they are not “his.” He is incapable of grasping the values and ethos of military service. Because he is so susceptible to flattery and so thin-skinned, he cannot tell friend from foe. And as his former national security adviser John Bolton put it, “Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.”

Part and parcel of good decision-making is impulse control. If one cannot refrain from lashing out in anger at allies, spilling secrets to U.S. enemies, or launching personal attacks and threats against fellow Americans (in defiance of court orders, no less), one cannot be entrusted with the immense responsibilities of the presidency. (There might also be something seriously wrong with you, but that is beside the point.)

Moreover, we know how Trump’s decision-making turned out. He downplayed the coronavirus, and hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily. He concocted the “big lie” about the 2020 election and, unable to admit losing, incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t want to reveal embarrassing sexual impropriety, so he broke the law in New York — 34 times.

You don’t need to make a specific medical diagnosis to see that the essential aspects of the presidency — judgment, reading comprehension, discretion, unselfish decision-making, appreciation for military sacrifice — are utterly beyond Trump.

At the most basic level, Biden, while three years older, can discern friend from foe, reveres the military, understands the value of alliances, generally hires capable advisers, puts together complex legislative deals and exhibits inexhaustible empathy for others’ suffering. He complies with the legal process (e.g., sitting down with special counsel Robert K. Hur), follows Supreme Court decisions (and then explores alternatives, as he did on student debt) and engages in successful international diplomacy. He talks in depth about policy.

It’s reasonable to conclude that, with age, Biden has gained immense experience, formed relationships and absorbed data that helps guide his current decision-making. Should we care that he walks more stiffly than he did 10 years ago? (FDR served 12 years in a wheelchair.)

In sum, the measure of a president — regardless of that officeholder’s level of spryness or eloquence — is the capacity to perform a singularly important job: making good decisions on behalf of others in keeping with our laws and national values. No reasonable person would conclude, based on all available evidence, that Trump can do so; no fair person would conclude that Biden’s age impedes him from doing so.

This article contains numerous links, none of which transferred to my blog. Please open the link to Rubin to see her extensive documentation.

Categories Bias, Biden, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Trump

Jan Resseger: Defunding Public Education with Vouchers and Tax Cuts

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
4

Jan Resseger writes with cogency and insight about the frightening trend to defund public education. Trump once said that he loves the poorly educated—the rubes who buy whatever lies he is peddling, the gullible who hang on his every word, the low-information voters who trust him—and that same philosophy seems to be dominant in red states. That is, to defund public schools with a costly combination of tax cuts and privatization, while enriching grifters, religious proselytizers, and stripmall charters.

Resseger writes:

Ohio’s fiscal troubles certainly have been exacerbated by the hugely expensive universal EdChoice Expansion voucher expansion now projected to divert over a billion dollars in the current fiscal year out of the school foundation budget line (that also funds the state’s public schools) to pay for private school tuition mostly for upper income students already enrolled in private and religious schools.

But the depletion of the state’s fiscal capacity isn’t merely attributable to the universal school voucher expansion.  In mid-May, The Statehouse News‘ Jo Ingles published a brief warning from Ohio’s Governor Mike DeWine about the tax cut his Republican legislative colleagues inserted into the budget he signed in June of 2023:  “Ohio’s tax revenue has come in below projections for four out of the last five months. And while some state leaders who advocated for tax cuts in the last budget say they’re still waiting to see more data, Gov. Mike DeWine said he thinks that’s why the state is seeing a shortfall.” Ingles elaborates: “The Office of Budget and Management had projected close to $23.2 billion in tax revenue by this point in the fiscal year, but it’s collected just under half a billion less… DeWine hasn’t included an income tax cut in any of the three budgets he’s proposed. But his fellow Republicans in the legislature passed $3.1 billion in tax cuts in the budget that took effect last July, largely through consolidation of four tax brackets into two. DeWine signed the budget into law.”

As part of a major report last November on the danger of state tax cutting, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reviews what happened in Kansas back in 2012, when according to  far-right dogma, the Kansas legislature and Governor Sam Brownback tried to boost the state’s economy through what they hoped would be economic growth followed by trickle-down economics: “Billed as a way to boost the state economy, the tax cuts led instead to plunging revenues and cuts in K-12 schools and higher education, as well as other public services… In 2017 lawmakers agreed on a bipartisan basis to repeal most of the tax cuts.” (States’ Recent Tax-Cut Spree Creates Big Risks for Families and Communities, report, p. 10)

Tax cutting in Ohio has never been quite as damaging as it was in Kansas, but it has been a persistent problem for years. Back in 2017 after the state passed a biennial budget without a tax cut, PolicyMatters Ohio’s Zach Schiller celebrated: “The biggest news about taxes in the new Ohio budget is what isn’t in it… Ohio has been on a tax-cutting spree that has lasted most of the last dozen years. These cuts have sapped the state of billions of dollars a year of vitally needed revenue….”

Times have changed, however. A week ago the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities launched a  project to track tax slashing today across far-right Republican states. One story features Ohio: “States have gone on a tax-cutting spree in recent years. More than half have slashed income taxes for wealthy people and corporations, in some cases by extraordinary amounts.” In Ohio: “Republican members of the state legislature are blaming slowing economic growth for the emerging revenue gap, but that is likely compounding the problem rather than causing it. The more straightforward culprit is a pair of personal income tax cuts passed in 2021 and 2023 (the two most recent biennial state budgets). The cuts are already costing the state nearly $2 billion in lost revenue each year… Ohio also made a flurry of other costly tax and budget choices last year. Most notably, the state cut its Commercial Activity Tax and removed income limits for its private school voucher program, leading to a spike in enrollment. These changes, which mostly benefit corporations and wealthy families, could exacerbate the state’s revenue shortfalls.”

When states cut taxes as Ohio just did in the two most recent biennial budgets, the result is not merely a one time revenue loss. In last November’s report, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities details what has been happening in Ohio and 25 other states: “State policymakers nationwide have embarked on a tax-cutting spree over the past three years, using the cover of temporary budget surpluses stemming from robust federal aid in response to COVID-19 and the economic recovery that followed. The tax cuts—-most of which are both permanent and tilted toward wealthy households and corporations—-will weaken state revenues by large and growing amounts over time, limiting these states’ ability to maintain support for schools and other vital public services….”

Permanent tax cuts affect state budgets again and again, year after year: “Twenty-six states cut their personal income tax rates and/or corporate income tax rates, 13 of them multiple times. Permanent cuts to tax rates are especially harmful to state balance sheets since they reduce revenues every year going forward absent further legislative action, in contrast to temporary or one-time tax cuts… Combined, the cuts will cost those 26 states an estimated $124 billion by 2028, including $13 billion that they have already lost (2022-2023) and $111 billion over the next five years….”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities projects that by 2028, the tax cuts that were part of Ohio’s biennial budgets passed in 2021 and 2023 will cost the state more than $10.5 billion.

The fiscal consequences for Ohio will, of course, also be complicated by the annual cost of the uncapped, ever-expanding universal EdChoice Expansion vouchers, enacted in the budget passed in 2023. Ohio has five different private school voucher programs. Earlier this week, the leader of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School funding, Bill Phillis published data showing that in the past year, due to the legislature’s action, the new  EdChoice Expansion vouchers grew explosively by 274.3 percent.

In late March, the Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Laura Hancock reported that the enormous expansion of EdChoice Expansion vouchers in Ohio will bring the state’s investment in its five private school tuition voucher programs to at least a billion dollars by the end of the current fiscal year on October 1, 2024.  In Ohio, a total of 152,118 students, according to Hancock’s data, now attend private schools using tax funded vouchers, with most of the new participants in the universal EdChoice Expansion program upper income students who were already enrolled in private schools at their parents’ expense. The state simply began giving away to these families $6,165  for each K-8 student and $8,407 for each high school student.

Ohio is on the cusp of completing the enactment of the Fair School Funding plan, a new public school funding formula designed to ensure that Ohio’s 610 public school districts can all afford the real costs of the services necessary to meet the needs of Ohio’s 1.6 million students in public schools, including the needs of disabled students, English learners, and students in districts where family poverty is concentrated. Our legislators have always said the phase-in must be renegotiated in each biennial budget because its full enactment will depend on the amount of state revenue available. In 2023, Ohio’s legislators completed the first two steps of the phase in.

Clearly the full funding of the third step of the plan in the budget that must pass by June 30, 2025 will be threatened by a revenue shortage created by not only the extravagant voucher expansion for the wealthy but also by the legislature’s repeated state tax cuts.

Categories Budget Cuts, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Privatization

NYC: Why Retirees Turned Against Their Own Union Leadership

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2024 //
61

The United Federation of Teachers in New York City is the largest chapter in the American Federation of Teachers. The UFT was created in 1960. It represents nearly 200,000 city employees, including about 60,000 retirees.

Since 1960, the UFT has been run by the Unity Caucus, which controls the officers, the executive committee and the delegate assembly. The president of the UFT is a powerful figure in New York City, New York State, and national politics. Its best known leaders were and are Albert Shanker and Randi Weingarten (Sandra Feldman served between their tenures, first as UFT president, then AFT president; she died of cancer at age 65). Shanker was president of the UFT from 1964 to 1985, then president of the AFT from 1974 until his death in 1997. Randi Weingarten was president of the UFT from 1998-2008 and became president of the AFT in 2008. The NEA has term limits, the AFT does not.

Weingarten was succeeded as president of the UFT by Michael Mulgrew. Since the union’s founding, the Unity Caucus has won every internal union election by large margins. Splinter groups came and went. Some persisted, but none ever won an election.

Until last week. Until June 15.

The UFT retirees rebelled. At the union’s annual internal elections, a dissident faction called Retiree Advocate upset the Unity slate. The retirees are angry because Michael Mulgrew made a deal with former Mayor DeBlasio to switch the city’s 250,000 retirees from Medicare to the for-profit Medicare Advantage. This switch was supposed to save the city $600 million a year.

The city government and the UFT told the retirees that the MA plan was better than Medicare.

The retirees were skeptical. How does a for-profit deliver make a profit while delivering better care than Medicare, many wondered. The answer, they soon discovered, were these two tactics: One, the person cannot use a doctor who is out of network; but even more important, the healthcare company may deny services. MA is very profitable for its executives.

Medicare accepts all licensed doctors and does not require the patient to get prior approval before they can get the treatment or surgery recommended by their doctor.

The retirees found a leader in a retired Emergency Medical Technician in the Fire Department named Marianne Pizzitola. She began posting videos on YouTube against the switch and collected a large number of retirees who agreed with her. She founded the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, Inc. She posted more videos, explaining that the city had broken its promise to retirees. Their contract promised Medicare, not MA. She argued that the city and some (but not all) unions were collaborating to deceive retirees. The city’s two largest unions—UFT and DC 37, which represents the city’s lowest paid workers—agreed with the city.

Marianne and her allies met with elected officials, organized rallies, and most consequentially, filed lawsuits to block the switch from Medicare to MA. All this activity was funded by retirees’ donations. Despite the huge disparity in resources, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees won every lawsuit. Judges agreed with them that the city had broken its promises to provide Medicare and a low-cost secondary plan.

The Retiree Advocate slate won 63% of the vote at the June 15 meeting. A majority of the retirees voted against the Unity Caucus slate because of the Medicare/MA issue. They poked a hole in the ironclad dominance of the Unity Caucus (which still has all the officers, 94 of the 100 members of the executive committee, and the vast majority of the delegates. But the retirees now control the retiree caucus.

I have a personal connection to this battle. I wrote an affidavit for the court case. In 2021, I was told by my cardiologist that I had to have open heart surgery to repair a damaged valve. People with this condition are walking time-bombs. I arranged to have my surgery done at New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell by an excellent surgeon. I got a second and third opinion. I did not need prior approval because I was covered by Medicare and my wife’s secondary (she is a retired NYC teacher, principal, and administrator). If I had been on Medicare Advantage, I would have been denied coverage because I was asymptomatic. I had no pain, no shortness of breath, none of the symptoms associated with a serious heart problem. But without surgery, I would have died. (P.S.: Al Shanker was a close personal friend. Randi Weingarten is a close personal friend.)

I wrote about the retirees’ most important victory in court here. Just a month ago, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees won a unanimous decision in the New York Appellate Division. The city will likely appeal to the State Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. I wrote “The NYC retirees’ group sued the City, on the grounds that the City was withdrawing benefits that were promised to its members when they were hired. Many had accepted lower pay because of the excellent benefits, especially the healthcare.”

The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees summarized their victory:

NEW YORK, May 21, 2024 — Today, the New York Appellate Division issued a unanimous decision holding that the City of New York cannot force its roughly 250,000 elderly and disabled retired municipal workers off of their
longstanding Medicare insurance and onto an inferior type of insurance called
“Medicare Advantage.” Unlike Medicare—a public program that has protected City retirees for the past 57 years—the City’s proposed new Medicare Advantage plan was a private, for-profit endeavor that would have limited
retirees’ access to medical providers, prevented retirees from receiving care prescribed by their doctors, and exposed retirees to increased healthcarecosts.


The Court confirmed what retirees have been arguing for months: that they are entitled to the healthcare they were promised for over 50 years. The Court wrote: “The City has made clear, consistent, unambiguous representations – oral and written – over the course of more than 50 years, that New York City municipal worker-retirees would have the option of receiving health care in the form of traditional Medicare with a City-paid supplemental plan. Consequently, the City cannot now mandate the proposed change eliminating that choice.”

The Court permanently enjoined the city from forcing the retirees to leave traditional Medicare and to transfer to a MA plan.

Here is a brief explanation of why the retirees fought against privatization of their healthcare.

Arthur Goldstein, who worked as a high school teacher for 39 years, celebrated the victory in a post called A New Dawn. He followed up with a description of the meeting where Randi spoke and the Retiree Advocate group won control of their caucus. He is a long-time critic of Unity; he’s now vice-president of the UFT Retiree Caucus.

The members and leaders of the Retiree Advocate group are passionately pro-union. They wanted their voices to be heard. The UFT’s acquiescence in the Medicare-to-MA was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. They could not believe that the Union would join with the city government to save money by puttting them into a for-profit plan.

Here is Marianne Pizzitola rejoicing on the day of the Retiree Advocate in the UFT meeting.

Here is Marianne Pizzitola talking about the ramifications of this victory on “Medicare for All.” About half of the nation’s retirees are in Medicare Advantage plans. MA represents the privatization of Medicare and will block Medicare for All.

It’s a shame that the retirees had to fight their own union to preserve their health care. It’s rumored that the city (and the unions?) might go to Albany to try to change the law. The unions should pay attention to their retirees. They may be old, but they are smart and relentless. They will not give up. And I will be with them every step of the way.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, For-Profit, Health, New York City, Teachers, Unions

What Trump Promised to Do for Israel if He Is Elected

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2024 //
20

Haaretz, a prominent daily in Israel, has been very critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu and of his failure to make a deal for peace. More than once, the journal’s writers have suggested that Netanyahu hopes to continue the war until after the U.S. presidential election, hoping that Trump wins.

In 2016, Trump’s biggest donor was Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino owner. He and his wife Miriam gave $90 million to Trump. There was a deal. In return for the first $20 million, Trump promised to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. When Trump won, he did just that.

Adelson died in 2021. His widow has an even bigger ask: she wants Trump to let Israel annex the West Bank. The West Bank is supposed to be the heart of a new Palestinian state. If Israel annexes it, there will never be a Palestinian state. She has let it be known that she will give more money to Trump’s campaign than she and her husband gave last time.

If Trump is elected, it will be a tragedy for Israel, for the Palestinians, and for peace in the Middle East.

Categories Elections, Trump

Chicago: Community Schools Are a Better Strategy than “Education Reform”

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2024 //
31

Jeff Bryant, veteran education journalist, writes here about the success of community schools in Chicago, in contrast to the failed ideas of “education reform.” The latter echoed the failed strategies of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top: testing, competition, privatization, firing staff, closing schools, ranking and rating students, teachers, principals and schools based on test scores. So-called “education reform” created massive disruption and led to massive failure.

Bryant describes the evolution of community schools in Chicago, led by grassroots leaders like Jitu Brown, where parents are valued partners.

Bryant writes:

“Until now, we haven’t even tried to make big-city school districts work, especially for children of color,” Jhoanna Maldonado said when Our Schools asked her to describe what Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his supporters have in mind for the public school system of the nation’s third-largest city.

Johnson scored a surprising win in the 2023 mayoral election against Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS), and education was a key issue in the race, according to multiplenewsoutlets. Maldonado is an organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which is reported to have “bankrolled” Johnson’s mayoral campaign along with other labor groups, and Johnson is a former middle school teacher and teachers union organizer. What Johnson and his supporters are doing “is transforming our education system,” Maldonado said. There’s evidence the transformation is sorely needed.

For the past two decades, Chicago’s schools experienced a cavalcade of negative stories, including recurring fiscal crisis, financial scandals and mismanagement, a long downward slide in student enrollment, persistent underfunding from the state, the “largest mass closing [of schools] in the nation’s history,” and a seemingly endless conflict between the CPS district administration and CTU.

Yet, there are signs the district may be poised for a rebound.

“The people of Chicago have had enormous patience as they’ve witnessed years of failed school improvement efforts,” Maldonado said. “And it has taken years for the community to realize that no one else—not charter school operators or so-called reformers—can do the transformation. We have to do it ourselves.”

“Doing it ourselves” seems to mean rejecting years of policy and governance ideas that have dominated the district, and is what Johnson and his transition committee call, “an era of school reform focused on accountability, high stakes testing, austere budgets, and zero tolerance policies,” in the report, “A Blueprint for Creating a More Just and Vibrant City for All.”

After experiencing more than 10 years of enrollment declines between 2012 and 2022, losing more than 81,000 students during this period, and dropping from its status as third-largest school district in the nation to fourth in 2022, CPS reported an enrollment increase for the 2023-2024 school year. Graduation rates hit an all-time high in 2022. The number of students being suspended or arrested on school grounds has also declined significantly. And student scores on reading tests, after a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, have improved faster than most school districts across the country. Math scores have also rebounded, but are more comparable to other improving districts, according to a 2024 Chalkbeat article.

Johnson and his supporters have been slowly changing the district’s basic policy and governance structures. They are attempting to redefine the daily functions of schools and their relationships with families and their surrounding communities by expanding the number of what they refer to as “sustainable community schools.” The CPS schools that have adopted the community schools idea stand at 20 campuses as of 2024, according to CTU. Johnson and his transition committee’s Blueprint report has called for growing the number of schools using the sustainable community schools approach to 50, with the long-term goal of expanding the number of schools to 200.

The call to have more CPS schools adopt the community schools approach aligns with a national trend where several school districts, including big-city districts such as Los Angeles and New York City, are embracing the idea.

Community schools look different in different places because the needs and interests of communities vary, but the basic idea is that schools should address the fundamental causes of academic problems, including student health and well-being. The approach also requires schools to involve students and their families more deeply in school policies and programs and to tap the assets and resources available in the surrounding community to enrich the school.

In Chicago—where most students are non-white, more than 70 percent are economically disadvantaged, and large percentages need support for English language learning and learning disabilities—addressing root causes for academic problems often means bringing specialized staff and programs into the school to provide more academic and non-academic student and family services, often called wraparound supports. The rationale for this is clear.

“If a student is taken care of and feels safe and heard and has caring adults, that student is much more ready to learn,” Jennifer VanderPloeg the project manager of CPS’s Sustainable Community Schools told Our Schools. “If [a student is] carrying around a load of trauma, having a lot of unmet needs, or other things [they’re] worrying about, then [they] don’t have the brain space freed up for algebra. That’s just science,” she said.

“Also important is for students to see themselves in the curriculum and have Black and brown staff members in the school,” said Autumn Berg, director of CPS’s Community Schools Initiative. “All of that matters in determining how a student perceives their surroundings.”

“Community schools are about creating a culture and climate that is healthy, safe, and loving,” said VanderPloeg. “Sure, it would be ideal if parents would be able to attend to all the unmet needs of our students, but that’s just not the system we live in. And community schools help families access these [unmet] needs too.”

Also, according to VanderPloeg, community schools give extra support to teachers by providing them with assistance in all of the things teachers don’t have time to attend to, like helping families find access to basic services and finding grants to support after-school and extracurricular programs.

But while some Chicago educators see the community schools idea as merely a mechanism to add new programs and services to a school’s agenda, others describe it with far more expansive and sweeping language.

“Community schools are an education model rooted in self-determination and equity for Black and brown people,” Jitu Brown told Our Schools. Brown is the national director of Journey for Justice Alliance, a coalition of Black and brown-led grassroots community, youth, and parent organizations in more than 30 cities.

“In the Black community, we have historically been denied the right to engage in creating what we want for our community,” Brown said.

In Chicago, according to Brown, most of the schools serving Black and brown families are struggling because they’ve been led by people who don’t understand the needs of those families. “Class plays a big role in this too,” he said. “The people in charge of our schools have generally been taught to believe they are smarter than the people in the schools they’re leading.”

But in community schools, Brown sees the opportunity to put different voices in charge of Chicago schools.

“The community schools strategy is not just about asking students, parents, and the community for their input,” he said. “It’s about asking for their guidance and leadership.”

It Started with Saving a Neighborhood

Chicago’s journey of embracing the community schools movement has been long in the making, and Brown gets a lot of credit for bringing the idea to the attention of public school advocates in the city.

He achieved much of this notoriety in 2015 by leading a hunger strike to reopen Walter H. Dyett High School in Chicago’s predominantly African American Bronzeville community. Among the demands of the strikers—Brandon Johnson was a participant in the protest when he was a CTU organizer—was for the school to be reopened as a “hub” of what they called “a sustainable community school village,” according to Democracy Now.

The strike received prominent attention in national news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post.

But Brown’s engagement with the community schools approach started before the fight for Dyett, going back almost two decades when he was a resource coordinator at the South Shore High School of Entrepreneurship, a school created in 2001 when historic South Shore International College Preparatory High School was reorganized into three smaller campuses as part of an education reform effort known as small schools.

Brown was responsible for organizing educators and community members to pool resources and involve organizations in the community to strengthen the struggling school. He could see that the school was being “set up,” in his words, for either closure or takeover by charter school operators.

“School privatization in the form of charter schools was coming to our neighborhood,” he said, “and we needed a stronger offer to engage families in rallying to the school and the surrounding community.”

Brown pushed for the adoption of an approach for transforming schools that reflected a model supported by the National Education Association of full-service community schools.

That approach was based on five pillars that included a challenging and culturally relevant curriculum, wraparound services for addressing students’ health and well-being, high-quality teaching, student-centered school climate, and community and parent engagement. A sixth pillar, calling for shared leadership in school governance, was eventually added.

After engaging in “thousands” of conversations in the surrounding historic Kenwood neighborhood, where former President Barack Obama once lived, Brown said that he came to be persuaded that organizing a school around the grassroots desires of students, parents, teachers, and community members was a powerful alternative to school privatization and other top-down reform efforts that undermine teachers and disenfranchise families.

Brown and his collaborators recognized that the community schools idea was what would turn their vision of a school into a connected system of families, educators, and community working together.

Open the link to continue reading this important story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Community Schools, Competition, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Failure, Innovation, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling), Vouchers

John Thompson: Oklahoma Hurtles Toward Environmental Disaster

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2024 //
19

John Thompson, retired teacher in Oklahoma, writes here about the environmental crisis in his state, propelled by greed.

He writes:

Oklahoma City is again in the national news. On one hand, it was ranked 16th in the nation in the U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Places to Live” in 2024-2025. On the other hand, The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health’s, (ICF) Climate Center just projected how Oklahoma City’s “temperature will change by mid-century under a moderate warming scenario.” 

From 1981 to 2010, the average annual days in Oklahoma City where heat put a strain on electric transformers was 10. This was due to “blistering daytime highs along with sultry nighttime lows, depriving electrical equipment of a chance to cool down.” By the midcentury (2036 to 2065) it is projected to reach 45 days. Also, Tulsa is expected to reach 44 days and Altus 65 days of heat waves. 

It also estimated that Phoenix, which is in the news for its current heat wave, “will endure an estimated 126 days each year with heat that reduces transformers’ performance, the analysis found. A power outage during a heat wave would kill thousands of people in the city, according to a peer-reviewed study published last year.”

Of course, the stress that heat waves dump on transformers is just an indicator of the predicted effects of a 350% increase in heat waves in Oklahoma City, and worse increases across the world. The distress imposed on infrastructure should be seen as a symptom of the devastation that humans, and other living beings will face.

The national press has also reported on possible ways that Oklahoma (and other places) could respond to global warming. In an editorial in the Tulsa World, Philip-Michael Weiner explained, “If we want to have a more stable climate in the future, we need to remove a lot of the carbon already in the air.” He adds, “Our elected representatives must not miss the chance to help Oklahoma become a global leader in carbon removal.”

Weiner explains that Oklahoma is “well-situated to become a global leader in carbon removal and reap meaningful economic benefits for our state.” He cites “Oklahoma’s geo-workers, technology, and resources, [and] vast geologic capacity, subsurface geology, needed for carbon storage.” And Weiner adds that, “Exxon Mobil Corp. estimates there will be a $4 trillion market by 2050 for capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground.”

But that leads to another concern. Yes, given our failure to adequately tackle the proven threat of climate change, we must invest heavily in a range of efforts to decarbonize our atmosphere. And that will require major commitments from corporations, especially oil and gas companies, as well as government programs. But, we wouldn’t be facing such an existential threat if oil and gas companies, especially Exxon, had not hid their research which confirmed the findings of scientists who nearly convinced the H.W. Bush administration that carbon dioxide emissions needed to be quickly and massively cut. As the Guardian noted, their study:

Made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.

But they borrowed the tactics of the tobacco industry, which knowingly lied about the deadly dangers of their product. And then Exxon “continued its disinformation campaign for another half century.”

Yes, there has been reporting on Oklahomans seeking to apply technologies developed for fracking in order to cut greenhouses gases. But the bigger stories have focused on Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who pledges, “We’re going to be on oil and gas for the next hundred years,” It was Hamm who organized the “energy round table” at former President Trump’s private club where he promised “to eliminate Mr. Biden’s new climate rules intended to accelerate the nation’s transition to electric vehicles, and to push a ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda aimed at opening up more public lands to oil and gas exploration.”

The New York Times reported that sources:

Asked not to be identified in order to discuss the private event.  Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry.

One would think that the new predictions regarding global warming in Oklahoma City, and elsewhere, would convince the Chamber of Commerce and political leaders to immediately make de-carbonization a #1 priority. And it should be clear that the Hamm/Trump agenda – pushed by oil industry lobbyists – would devastate our planet. Somehow, we have to come together and hope businessmen will value stakeholders as well a shareholders, and place mankind over short-term corporate profits for a very few.  

By the way, as I was about to complete this post, United Nation’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said:

There is now an 80% chance that at least one of the next five years will mark the first calendar year with an average temperature that temporarily exceeds 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – up from a 66% chance last year.

As Reuters reports, “scientists warn of more extreme and irreversible impacts” if the 1.5C threshold is passed. So, “U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for urgent action to avert ‘climate hell.”” And I would add, Oklahomans and other Americans must double down on our abilities to fight global warming. But it is too late to make a difference in saving our planet if we don’t resist Exxon, Harold Hamm, Donald Trump, and others who are promoting the economics of destruction.

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Deregulation, Economy, Environment, Oklahoma

Texas: School District Votes to Delete Textbook Chapters on Climate Change, Cultural Diversity, Vaccines

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2024 //
37

The school board of the Cypress-Fairbanks district (Cy-Fair) in Texas voted to delete chapters they didn’t like from textbooks in science. Science teachers in the district were taken aback.

Cy-Fair is located in the Houston suburbs and is one of the largest districts in the state.

Elizabeth Sander of The Houston Chronicle wrote:

The former science coordinator at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD was “appalled” as she watched the conservative stronghold on the school board vote to remove 13 chapters from science, health and education textbooks last month, scrapping in just minutes countless hours of work done by both state and local textbook review committees.

“Chapters are not independent entities. They’re put in an order purposefully, and they build off of prior knowledge, and they reference information in prior areas,” said Debra Hill, who has 40 years of experience in science education. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to take off the chapter on adding and subtracting, and we’ll just skip ahead to multiplication.’”

The material that was deleted will be covered by state tests.

One Cy Falls High School teacher, who served on the review committee for the earth systems course materials, has filed a grievance with the board that will be discussed at Thursday’s board workshop, according to information shared on social media by Trustee Julie Hinaman, the lone opposing vote on removing the chapters. Critics question whether students will get all the information the state intends — and will test for — in a last-minute effort to replace the materials. 

The earth science textbook had three entire chapters removed, titled, “Earth Systems and Cycles,” “Mineral and Energy Resources” and “Climate and Climate Change.”

Other content removed from the textbooks included chapters on cultural diversity, vaccines, COVID-19 and climate change. Courses impacted include education, health science, biology and environmental science.

Cy-Fair ISD’s Chief Academic Officer Linda Macias assured board members when they made the vote in May that it would be possible for their curriculum staff to make these changes, even as the staff has been slashed in budget cuts for the 2024-2025 school year. 

But Hill isn’t so sure it will actually be possible for Cy-Fair teachers to teach the required Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills next year, she said. 

Creating a new curriculum is hard enough, and the district must also provide students with materials that pertain to every single science TEK, she said. Cy-Fair’s curriculum staff and other educators may be responsible for creating their own textbook pages to replace the ones that were deleted, a process that could take countless hours outside of instruction that could drive teachers from the profession altogether, she said.

Plus, Hill hasn’t seen any clarity on who would approve the new instructional materials. The board could theoretically reject new chapters created by the district if it included too much of the type of climate change material that the deleted textbook chapters covered, Hill worried.

“If you want to drive teachers out of education, this is what you should do to them,” she said. “I am just very afraid that students are not going to get access to accurate, TEKS-aligned content.”

Last month, the school board voted to eliminate discussions of vaccines and other topics, while cutting the budget and eliminating 600 positions.

More than a dozen chapters including content on vaccines, cultural diversity, climate change, depopulation and other topics deemed controversial by conservative Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustees will be removed from textbooks in the state’s third largest school system for the 2024-2025 school year.

Trustees voted 6-1 late Monday to omit the material, after an hourslong discussion about a $138 million budget deficit that is forcing the district to eliminate 600 positions, including 42 curriculum coaches, dozens of librarians and 278 teaching positions.

What were the school board members thinking? Did they think if you don’t teach about climate change, it doesn’t exist?

Who will remove the chapters? Will the publisher? Will teachers cut them out of the textbooks? Will they paste the pages together?

A big thank-you to Trustee Julie Hinaman, who believes in education, not censorship or indoctrination.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Environment, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Texas
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