My website is dianeravitch.com. I write about two interconnected topics: education and democracy. I am a historian of education.
Diane Ravitch’s Blog by Diane Ravitch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
First part of Secretary DeVos speech at Bethune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSQ84uCS8vc
LikeLike
More of the speech can be found here (about 2/3s of the way through, around -35:30): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqpPcIz9864
LikeLike
I can’t bring myself to watch it, but this was good: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/betsy-devos-commencement-speech-bethune-cookman_us_5913156de4b050bdca612ad2
LikeLike
thanks, Greg, posting.
LikeLike
Was Bethune paid to give Secretary DeVos the opportunity to speak?
LikeLike
Diane, a recent piece in Smithsonian magazine about education in Finland.
“Children from wealthy families with lots of education can be taught by stupid teachers,” Louhivuori said, smiling. “We try to catch the weak students. It’s deep in our thinking.”
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/#47qPggjlxAwb8PJK.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter
LikeLike
Another quote from the Smithsonian piece.
In the United States, which has muddled along in the middle for the past decade, government officials have attempted to introduce marketplace competition into public schools. In recent years, a group of Wall Street financiers and philanthropists such as Bill Gates have put money behind private-sector ideas, such as vouchers, data-driven curriculum and charter schools, which have doubled in number in the past decade. President Obama, too, has apparently bet on competition. His Race to the Top initiative invites states to compete for federal dollars using tests and other methods to measure teachers, a philosophy that would not fly in Finland. “I think, in fact, teachers would tear off their shirts,” said Timo Heikkinen, a Helsinki principal with 24 years of teaching experience. “If you only measure the statistics, you miss the human aspect.”
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/#47qPggjlxAwb8PJK.99
LikeLike
Diane, I don’t know if you mentioned this before or not but I found the following article about corporate education reform to be very eye opening. “Who Is Behind the Assault on Public Schools?” by Howard Ryan:
https://monthlyreview.org/2017/04/01/who-is-behind-the-assault-on-public-schools/
The roles of the Powell Memo and ALEC have been reported –though maybe not enough– but I don’t think many people are aware of the involvement of such organizations as the Business Round Table, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Chicago Commercial Club and OECD in corporate education reform. Also, I think Howard Ryan does a pretty good job of explaining the purpose of using foundations to fund the corporate agenda (although the benefits of being non-profit were not detailed).
LikeLike
Last night Samantha Bee had an insightful report on how Florida denies voting rights to citizens. If anyone out there knows of links to videos of the Clemency Board hearings to restore voting rights, I’d appreciate knowing about them. Another example of how comedians are among the few journalists we have:
LikeLike
Trump announced today that he is appointing a cOmission chaired by Pence to investigate voter fraud. He still believes he won the popular vote and he wants the commission to find the evidence. He says 3-5 million votes were cast illegally and they were all cast for him
No commission on voter suppression.
LikeLike
Diane,
I believe voter suppression is included –
“The Commission will be tasked with reviewing both the alleged widespread voter fraud, and voter suppression, in the U.S.’s electoral system. A White House official told ABC News that by investigating voter suppression as well, it would encourage Democrats to join the effort. Members of the Commission will begin their investigation this summer. They will have until 2018 to “review policies and practices that enhance or undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of Federal elections,” a White House official said, “including improper registrations, improper voting, fraudulent registrations, fraudulent voting, and voter suppression.”
Trump launches commission to investigate voter fraud – ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-sources-trump-launch-panel-investigate-voter-fraud-47346245 –
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
The ACLU does not agree with you. It says that the vice-chair of the voting commission is “the King of Voter Suppression.”
https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/kris-kobach-king-voter-suppression-will-lead-trumps-sham-voter-fraud-commission-be
It is well understood that this’s Commission is supposed to find evidence to prove Trump’s repeated claim that 3-5 million people voted illegally. That was supposed to prove that he won the popular vote, instead of losing it by nearly 3 million. No one seems to agree with Trump about illegal voters, and if there were large numbers, how would anyone know who they voted for?
A recent study in Michigan concluded that 200,000 people were unable to vote because of new requirements. Trump won the state by 22,000 votes.
LikeLike
To Agent Orange Donald Trump, any vote that wasn’t for him is improper.
LikeLike
Worth a read !!! 4th largest school district’s teacher salaries $5,000 – $18,000 are lower than 2007 salary
https://kafkateach.wordpress.com/
LikeLike
Today’s Garrison Keillor column is particularly appropriate for our dianeravitch.net community: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-epic-of-donald-trump/2017/03/14/4a206218-08cf-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?utm_term=.9c947f62b0fd
LikeLike
Re: Trump’s fraudulent ‘voter fraud’ commission
See these:
Greg Palast: Trump Picks the Al Capone of Vote-Rigging to Investigate Federal Voter Fraud | Alternet http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/greg-palast-trump-picks-al-capone-vote-rigging-investigate-federal-voter-fraud
Voting Rights Activists Alarmed by Trump’s ‘Commission on Election Integrity’ (Video) – Truthdig http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/voting_rights_activists_alarmed_trump_commission_election_integrity_2017051
LikeLike
Lofty,
It seems from the excerpt below, that “Agent Orange” might be the nightmare for Obama as he dreams of his American Dream – as a Harvard student in 1991 – was to be Donald Trump. Imagine that.
The essay was written with the help of a fellow classmate named Robert Fisher. They wrote about “Race and Rights Rhetoric”, and chalk up the American mindset to “a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind.”
Obama – “The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.”
Funny!
LikeLike
John Fund -“Those who pretend that fraud doesn’t exist are a threat to the integrity of our elections.”
According to a 2012 Pew Research Center survey, one out of eight American voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date, or a duplicate. Some 2.8 million people are registered in two or more states, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead.
Even though that’s a rich vein of potential mischief for fraudsters, the Obama administration didn’t filed a single lawsuit in eight years demanding that counties clean up their voter rolls, as they are required to do by the federal “motor voter” law.
A meeting on Nov. 30, 2009, in which they claim then-deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandez said the DOJ would not be enforcing that provision of the motor voter law because it ran counter to the law’s overall goal of “increasing turnout.”
J. Christian Adams, who previously worked in the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section and attended the 2009 Fernandez meeting, now heads the Public Interest Law Foundation. He has forced several counties in states such as Mississippi and Texas to clean up their voter rolls. But in many other states, his efforts have run into outright obstructionism. He was able to get voter-registration records from eight of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, and found 1046 illegal aliens who were illegally registered to vote. In the decade between 2005 and 2015, a number of those aliens had voted some 300 times. Their presence on the voter rolls was only discovered if, in renewing their driver’s licenses, they corrected their past false claims of citizenship. Adams’s group also discovered systemic problems in Philadelphia, where 86 illegal aliens had their voter registrations canceled from 2013 to 2015, 40 of whom had voted in at least one election. Philadelphia’s voter rolls are so sloppily managed, according to the group’s report, that it’s hard for undocumented immigrants to have their names removed even when they ask, and officials make no attempt to ensure voters who are incarcerated for felonies get removed from the voter rolls.
“Voter fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent,” asserts a statement by NYU law school’s Brennan Center entitled “The Myth of Voter Fraud.” That claim, so common on the left, is based on an assumption that election officials are on the lookout for fraud and mistakes. But incidents in states from Virginia to Pennsylvania to New York show that too many election officials are ignoring or even covering up the systemic problems brought to their attention. One way not to find something is simply not to look.
If not fraud, at least cleanup the irregularities. I would worry about voter suppression, but file complaints in court and let SCOTUS verify the constitutionality of the law.
LikeLike
Just to be sure you’ve seen this article…
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-05-15/don-t-grade-teachers-with-a-bad-algorithm
It’s written by Cathy O’Niel who wrote the book “Weapons of Math Destruction” – a great look at the problems of management by algorithm (e.g. VAM)…
LikeLike
Diane,
“The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a Freedom of Information request of the White House, demanding any evidence the president may have about voter fraud. He’s shown no proof since his ridiculous claim that three millions non-citizens voted in the last election, a silly accusation born of embarrassment over losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s commission isn’t about keeping non-citizens from voting. It’s about keeping citizens from voting. It’s a classic bait and switch con job.
Lure the suckers by in promising something they want and sell them something you want.”
Isn’t it amazing that ACLU files for the info but in comparison we have 3 investigations going on regarding Putin/Russia collusion with Trump – and that the FBI’s investigation isn’t involving any crime – and yet there is no evidence after close to a year! Now the left chants for an independent investigation. On what evidence? Do they mean the FBI is incompetent? And that investigation continued even with Comey firing! But don’t tell them that because they foster the fraudulent theory that this is Trump’s way of stopping the investigation – seriously, do they understand it never stopped and that the Deputy, who s now taking Comey’s seat was in charge?
Yes, the left and its media are luring the suckers in by promising for 9 months something that is not there – not one shred of evidence – And this Russia idea started the day after the election – Hillary wouldn’t want the Russian idea created by Podesta group to be foremost in the news if she won – it wouldn’t fit the narrative….
LikeLike
“The Select Committee on Benghazi came into existence in May 2014, charged with investigating the 2012 terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city that left four Americans dead.”
That turned out to officially be the longest congressional investigation in history.
The Select Committee on Benghazi, at a cost of more than $10 million, investigated the allegations against Clinton longer than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra, and Hurricane Katrina.
In all, there were seven congressional probes into the Benghazi attack led mostly by Republicans.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/12/hillary-clinton/clinton-there-have-been-7-benghazi-probes-so-far/
The result: “House Benghazi report faults military response, not Clinton, for deaths”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/28/house-benghazi-report-clinton-attack-military
If the GOP can spend years, several investigations (that all found no Clinton guilt for the Alt-Right Media machine’s false allegations campaign to smear her), and millions of dollars repeatedly investigating Clinton over Benghazi, then the Agent Orange Trump administration can be investigated for years over its Russian connections before, during, and after the 2016 election.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse Thanks for filling in the details.
What a shame we cannot get beyond party politics where one party’s “low” faults become the motivation for the other party to repeat the fault, only in a new context. Not such a good philosophy of action: They did a bad x, so that means WE can do a bad x. The other side of that view is: We can do bad x and get away with it, but THEY cannot do bad x and get away with it–because we won’t let them.
Not a good way to run a democracy. Is there someone out there who will not only scream “profile in courage,” but who will actually do it? And in doing it, must they commit political suicide?
LikeLike
To avoid this “we can do it but you can’t” tea party mess, the U.S. Congress must appoint an independent investigator that Agent Orange can’t fire or manipulate to investigate the connections between The Trump administration and Russia to its conclusion no matter how long it takes.
Let’s not forget Bill Clinton’s Whitewater and Lewinsky scandals that resulted in an independent investigator and a GOP witch hunt. Kenneth Starr tried to bury President Clinton during the Whitewater investigation but he failed.
“Kenneth Starr, Who Tried to Bury Bill Clinton, Now Only Praises Him”
“All three inquiries into the Whitewater land deal yielded insufficient evidence to charge the Clintons with criminal conduct. However, several of their associates were convicted as a result the investigations.”
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/whitewater-scandal.asp#ixzz4hGMrVS6Y
Follow us: Investopedia on Facebook
“Whitewater” was the popular nickname for a series of investigations of President William Jefferson Clinton that lasted nearly SEVEN YEARS and concluded with his impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives and acquittal by the Senate, making him the second U.S. president to be impeached.”
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=4061
The deplorable supporters of Agent Orange, the malignant narcissist in the White Hosue are calling for an end of the investigation into the links between the Trump administration and Russia because it has gone on long enough and no evidence has come out that there is a link.
How long? The FBI has been investigating Russia’s involvement since July 2016 – about TEN MONTHS.
TEN MONTHS is not even close to SEVEN YEARS.
TEN MONTHS is not even close to the FOUR YEARS (2012 to 2015) of Benghazi investigations into the allegations made against Hillary Clinton.
In both cases, the Clintons were not found guilty.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse Yes and, again, thanks for the details. Nevertheless, none of that gives excuse or reason to do the same–out of payback or vindication.
But wait! Just because one party is happy to criticize, doesn’t mean the criticism is unwarranted. I think they refer to that point as “the weeds.” It’s also getting above politics.
In THIS case, we are looking at a breach of national security that apparently has also set the hair of our NATO supporters on fire. Trump’s horrible track record of historical ignorance and neurotic needs can only feed the fear, despair, and mistrust of everyone involved–save the Jim-Jones-like supporters who would let Trump do ANYTHING and not raise a word of critique. I wouldn’t care except that it’s a big cliff.
In the case of the Russians, who can be silly enough NOT to raise questions about his long-term involvement with them and his correlate motivation, coupled with his obvious need to “impress” them with his knowledge. He seems to love dictatorial strongmen. How many red flags do we need?
(This has to do with education, and not as remotely as we might otherwise think.)
LikeLike
Another thought on the Commission complaint,
The “King” as Kansas calls him, has championed the strictest voter identification laws in the country, a desire for picture id among other ideas, will be the vice chairman of the commission led by VP Mike Pence and is expected to include about a dozen others, including state officials from both political parties. Maybe a consideration might be if there is an issue of any irregularities that a commission at least review policies and practices that affect Americans’ confidence in the integrity of federal elections.
Isn’t there any desire to clear the fog and ensure for the public the integrity of our system, and at the same time if changes need to be made the proper avenues are taken? The commission would take a wide-ranging look at problems at the state and national levels. The registration and voting issues to be explored.
That doesn’t sound like they are suppressing any voters only reviewing – reviewing is not threatening.
Yes, Trump has provided no evidence to support his claim and he has relentlessly pushed his narrative. Just five days after his inauguration. Trump has fulfilled his promise as he has fulfilled other promises.
What happens if the narrative of Putin/Russia collusion pushed constantly by the left gets “to the bottom” and there is nothing?
LikeLike
jscheidell “What happens if the narrative of Putin/Russia collusion pushed constantly by the left gets “to the bottom” and there is nothing?” Well, seriously, then we’ll know.
But then there is “Bengazi, Bengazi, Bengazi.” Though I’m not sure if I spelled that correctly. How many hearings did we pay for on that repetitive investigation? Are you glad Putin helped the election go the way it did? And now he’s giving away State secrets. Good grief. The Russians have been “playing” Trump for years. It’s what they do to stupid Americans–useful idiots. If and when Trump realizes that, he’ll die inside.
He’s also being used as a patsy by the Republicans and the so-called “Freedom Caucus” who are doing everything they can in the backrooms of the government to destroy it while we all worry about two scoops of ice-cream. But when will his supporters realize his stupidity, incompetence, moral degeneracy, and utter tone-deaf obtuseness? I cringe every day at my embarrassment for our entire nation.
Also, that lovely air-head at the UN called Trump a CEO–that’s what CEO’s do–they fire people. He has a right to do that. Another ignorant market-brain in a high position ruining centuries of good works. So sad.
LikeLike
Catherine,
Your question “Are you glad Putin helped the election go the way it did?” presumes there is a thread of evidence that I should reply to…I can’t, because Putin and collusion at this time does not have one iota of evidence after 9 months. Can you believe that – 3 investigations 9 months plus and still nothing – but hang on you never know.
By any chance did you throw up your arms upon this direct, verifiable conclusive evidence regarding collusion of Putin anRussians and low and behold – Obama!
Obama to Russia: ‘After My Election I Have More Flexibility’ | The …
http://www.weeklystandard.com/obama-to-russia-after-my-election-i-have-more-flexibility/article/634473 – 182k –
So Saaad – a video and a live mike!
LikeLike
jscheidell I didn’t ask about collusion (between the Trump administration and the Russians), though I think the evidence for that will emerge. (I wondered about that when the Mannafort connection emerged way before the election.)
But I did ask you: “Are you glad Putin helped the election go the way it did?” That Russia meddled with the election is well-known now. That collusion occurred–not yet, but I will not be surprised if and when the evidence does emerge.
This is becoming a habit with Republicans: (1) ignore or misunderstand the question (2) vehemently deny the substance of another question that wasn’t asked and that they made up to help defer from the one that WAS asked. I doubt it’s merely sloppy thinking, but I could be wrong on that one. Or perhaps It’s just plain old willful deceit.
In observing Trump and his camp, I am constantly reminded of Kool-aid, Jim Jones, and his followers.
LikeLike
Catherine,
Return to your question – I apologize for the misread question –
the Democrats and the media are claiming that Putin interceded and was for Trump to win. He wanted Trump and he wanted Hillary to lose. So I have some questions: questions about some things from the WikiLeaks dump about Democrat meddling, Robert Creamer previously explained hiring — at $1500 per person — people to disrupt Trump rallies and cause violence.
Donna Brazile was giving the questions to Hillary in a series of debates. But I have questions about this. Did Vladimir Putin secretly persuade Hillary Clinton to take off most of August? Did Vladimir Putin tell Hillary, “You don’t need to go to Wisconsin! You got it in the bag. You don’t need to go to these Blue Wall states. You own them, Hillary! Don’t waste your time. In fact, Hillary, you don’t even need to campaign. Just sit there and recuperate. You don’t need to even leave your house, Hillary.” Did Vladimir Putin drug Hillary Clinton causing her to collapse into a van and have a seizure on 9/11? Did Putin secretly tell Trump where to go and do his campaign right in the middle of the urban core? Did Putin tell Trump to make a pitch for votes based on an economic message of jobs, jobs, jobs, and Make America Great Again? Did Putin do all that? Did Putin come up with Trump’s campaign slogan? Did Putin secretly cut a deal with that babe on Saturday Night Live to portray Hillary Clinton to Millennials as an unlikable, power-hungry, humorless, robot politician?
Did Putin tell Trump, “Go out there and spend all kinds of money and hold all these rallies! You do all these rallies and just get thousands of people showing up at these rallies. You just keep shouting ‘Make America Great Again! Make America Safe Again!’” Did Putin secretly fund Robert Creamer? Did he make Obama meet with Creamer and Black Lives Matter all those times in the White House? Did Putin run out there and tell Democrat Party to base their election on transgender bathrooms and gay marriage and Black Lives Matter and the cops deserve to be shot and all the other things the Democrat Party stood for?
Did Putin do that?
Was Putin responsible for the campaign strategy of the Democrat Party? Was Vladimir Putin responsible for Donald Trump’s campaign strategy? Did Putin secretly influence this election so Donald Trump would put a bunch of warrior generals in positions of high responsibility in the U.S. military? You’re telling me that Vladimir Putin wants a bunch of George Patton-type people in our cabinet? You’re telling me that’s what Vladimir Putin wanted and he cheated this election so that that’s what Trump would do?
Versus a woman who would continue the disarmament policies of her predecessor, Barack Hussein Obama, who thinks that the nuclear arsenal of the United States poses the greatest threat to freedom in the world and so we had to downsize? You think Putin wants a Trump and all these great military guys, or would he have preferred to have Hillary who was going to disarm the United States anyway? This Putin?
Putin is one sneaky, ingenious SOB the way he pulled all this off! He had to be a brilliant guy for the Clinton campaign to be so special kind of stupid the way they lost this election. Did Vladimir Putin tell Hillary Clinton to pile up all those votes in California and New York instead of focusing on electoral battleground states? When did Vladimir Putin tell Hillary Clinton to call half the country deplorables?
What power Putin has!
James Comey already addressed this in his Hillary press conference. He said there was no evidence that Russia hacked anything, including her server. the New York Times and the Washington Post report that the Republicans were also hacked, and Reince Priebus says they were not. They looked. They’ve had people examining their computer systems for months. Republican computers have not been hacked.
There was, as usual, the Washington Post story that started everything. It’s a thirdhand account, thirdhand source that the Washington Post even acknowledges that wasn’t the Russian government that did the hacking. What did they do? Did they hack voting machines? Did they hack paper ballots? Did they hack the DNC emails of Podesta? What was it? You don’t even know, because it doesn’t matter. The thing that matters, what the Drive-Bys have put out there is that Vladimir Putin and the Russians hacked the election because they wanted Trump to win because Putin is scared to death of Hillary Clinton.
“Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin ‘directing’ the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks, a second senior U.S. official said. Those actors, according to the official, were ‘one step’ removed from the Russian government, rather than government employees.”
By the way, not a single one of those emails has been denied. Podesta, Hillary, you name it, not a single person has said anything in those Podesta emails that were leaked was not true.
Did the Russians hack the counting process? Did they hack the casting-of-ballots process? What did they do? Well, nothing, because nothing has been alleged along those lines.
If you can supply evidence for the questions I proffered I would glaly like to to add it to my collection. If Pedesta didn’t answer a phishing email we could have avoided this altogether.
Are the Russians trying to hack the system – I will say yes, as we try on our part to do the same as other countries do the same – think about the concern of hacking in the French election….
So in reply, I apologize for the length, but the effect of Putin – only a 3rd party hacker into Pedesta emails, along with Hillary’s ineptness at running an election were the culprits…..
LikeLike
jscheidell . . . drank the poison.
LikeLike
Jscheidell, why don’t you watch this Dutch documentary about Trump and see what you think:
http://www.alternet.org/video/donald-trumps-financial-ties-russian-oligarchs-and-mobsters-detailed-new-documentary#.WRcDGKSkQrM.gmail
LikeLike
Diane,
Upon your suggestion I watched the video – I wonder with all the desire here in the states with our lame stream media to bring Trump down why this wasn’t produced and investigated and distributed in the press.
What is interesting is how the uranium deal with the Clintons and Russia was washed over and just to add to the Putin collaboration one can google all the issues with Obama…and as the tv show commands – will the real stooge stand up!
from the washington post: The circumstantial evidence is mounting that the Kremlin succeeded in infiltrating the US government at the highest levels.
How else to explain a newly elected president looking the other way after an act of Russian aggression? Agreeing to a farcically one-sided nuclear deal? Mercilessly mocking the idea that Russia represents our foremost geo-political foe?
Accommodating the illicit nuclear ambitions of a Russian ally? Welcoming a Russian foothold in the Middle East? Refusing to provide arms to a sovereign country invaded by Russia? Diminishing our defenses and pursuing a Moscow-friendly policy of hostility to fossil fuels?
All of these items, of course, refer to things said or done by President Barack Obama.
To take them in order: He re-set with Russia shortly after its clash with Georgia in 2008. He concluded the New START agreement with Moscow that reduced our nuclear forces but not theirs. When candidate Mitt Romney warned about Russia in the 2012 campaign, Obama rejected him as a Cold War relic.
The president then went on to forge an agreement with Russia’s ally Iran to allow it to preserve its nuclear program. During the red-line fiasco, he eagerly grasped a lifeline from Russia at the price of accepting its intervention in Syria. He never budged on giving Ukraine “lethal” weapons to defend itself from Russian attack.
Finally, Obama cut US defense spending and cracked down on fossil fuels — a policy that Russia welcomes, since its economy is dependent on high oil prices.
Put all of this together, and it’s impossible to conclude anything other than that Obama was a Russian stooge — and not out of any nefarious dealings, but out of his own naïveté and weakness.
Obama didn’t expect any rewards when he asked then-Russian President Dimitri Medvedev during a hot mic moment at an international meeting to relay to Vladimir Putin his ability to be more “flexible” after the 2012 election; he was, to put it in terms of the current Russian election controversy, “colluding” with the Russians in the belief it was a good strategy. His “kompromat” was his own foolishness.
The cost of Obama’s orientation toward Russia became clearer over the last two weeks. When he pulled up short from enforcing his red line, an agreement with the Russians to remove Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons became the fig leaf to cover his retreat.
This deal was obviously deficient, but Obama officials used clever language to give the impression that it had removed all chemical weapons from Syria. Never mind that Assad still used chlorine gas to attack his population — exploiting a grievous loophole — and that evidence piled up that Assad was cheating more broadly.” Turns out Obama was the real Russian stooge | New York Post
http://nypost.com/2017/04/10/turns-out-obama-was-the-real-russian-stooge/ – 289k – Cached – Similar pages
Apr 10, 2017
And add the devastating Russian connection with Sessions and the Russian diplomat –
Flashback: Numerous Dems, Obama Also Met with Russian …
https://www.infowars.com/flashback-numerous-dems-obama-also-met-with-russian-ambassador/ – 240k You’ll love Crying Chuck having a donut with him and even Warren had to choke on her infallible memory of meeting the diplomat…The guy was in the WH 22 times during Obama administration.
LikeLike
jscheidell If it’s wrong, it’s wrong, though, in this case, the details do make a difference where the equivalence is a stretch, at best.
But it’s not okay what Trump is doing, regardless of Obama and Clinton. And you don’t have to look past the Republicans to find a raft of examples of hypocrisy. But again, so what? If it’s wrong it’s wrong. Go away. You sound like a sixth grader: “But SHE did it!”
LikeLike
Yes, if its wrong, it s wrong – but if the outcome is judged to be the same then the bias has to be dropped – what is good for the goose saying is good for the gander….but if its Trump yes, hypocrisy, and that is the basic point…
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
Please answer one question since you seem to have encyclopedic knowledge of Trump.
Why did he meet with the Russian Foreign Minister and exclude the American media but welcome TASS?
Can you name one president in history who has ever done that with any foreign leader?
LikeLike
Diane,
I can only guess that he in torquing up the left’s hysteria because of the constant belief of Putin interference into the election and possible collusion as well. And some call him stupid – along with a lot of other names….?
No, I can’t name one, but then again Trump doesn’t fit into the Washington mix –
LikeLike
He will probably be impeached before his first term is over.
LikeLike
You nailed it girl.
last night, I was listening to Laurence O Donnel interviewing all the voices out there, about the REAL STORY!
“WHO SAYS THINGS LIKE THIS? WHO DOES THINGS LIKE THIS.? was the question on the floor.
Well. I can answer that one.
Trump sets up this nation to be diminished. It’s his world we live in, now!.
The answer is that this man is ignorant beyond belief about everything.
Sheltered from any consequence for his behavior he conned his way through life.
The record is there.
He ran his businesses like one big Con, and figured it would work in government.
We all know who he is.
His words define him. “When you are a celeb, you can do anything you want!”
I saw it happen for a decade in NYC, in the bureaucracy that was the schools.
The principals with not a shred of accountability just did their thing.
It is ongoing still, as we saw in a post here this week about A harlem school
We have in the White House the kind of bureaucrat that can be found in the failing schools, someone who did or said anything that popped into his mind, and never paid the price. no accountability.
Lorna Stremcha wrote the book on nailing this type of man… her principal–who set hrr up to be assaulted. https://www.amazon.com/Bravery-Bullies-Blowhards-Lessons-Classroom/dp/0991309936/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dpop_dD1Kvb1ERS2PX_im
Trump has no information abut the way businesses sea re one, or deals are made.
He has only his own lawless existence… and now the LAWS that bind this nation will test him… or not.
If the GOP cronies in Congress, or in the the justice department, are unable to do their job, WHICH IS TO ENSURE THAT THE LAWS are not usurped by the executive branch — then it will be over!
He WILL END THE LAW OF THE LAND… and it is ONLY OUR LAWS that have made us the GREAT!
LikeLike
Diane,
David Coleman is opening his mouth again now that he and the Facebook/Chan initiative (CZI) are announcing their new plans. Coleman is now stating that the SAT is now “a simple achievement test that measures math, reading, and writing skills that you can improve through practice.” No longer is the SAT an aptitude test. He’s hawking for Khan academy test prep. Can you please post further on this. Goodness….now he’s talking inequality of higher education and rich folks being able to game the college system with test prep that the poor folks can’t afford. This whole scheme smells like a rat.
LikeLike
Mitch McConnell raises possibility of impeachment!
A Statement from Senate Majority Leander Mitch McConnell, May 16, 2017
Last night’s revelation that President Hillary Clinton disclosed classified information to the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador in an Oval Office meeting is yet another clear indication that our president is unfit for the office she holds.
She has undermined our national security and international alliances by possibly exposing highly sensitive intelligence operations. Ever since her inauguration, we have been inundated by a schizophrenic back-and-forth between self-serving secrecy and a blatant disregard for our public institutions.
Last week we learned that the president may have installed a secret recording system in the White House. I call for my friends on the Democrat side of the aisle to join Republicans to demand access to those digital recordings so that we can determine what the hell is going on.
She fired the FBI director for purely vengeful reasons dating back to the campaign. I call for my Democrat friends to join me in demanding an independent prosecutor to get to the truth and determine if constitutional guidelines have been violated.
Her appointments of former President Bill Clinton in the newly created role of Secretary without Portfolio, her daughter Chelsea Clinton as Confidential Advisor, and son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky to lead the Reform American Government Commission—which has no congressional mandate or statutory authority—all call into question this administration’s respect for constitutional checks and balances and separation of powers. Our founding fathers feared the establishment of nobility, so should we.
The construction of the Clinton Foundation’s new compound in the Hamptons on Long Island also begs the question: “Who is funding it and what do they expect in response?” The seizure of an adjacent public golf course through eminent domain as a “national security measure” should also raise alarms.
This administration’s blatant disregard for transparency is a threat to the nation. In addition, the building of an attached, lavish residence to the foundation’s compound—which is said to soon become the “Summer White House” raises serious questions about who this president serves—the American people or anonymous donors with foreign ties?
I could also cite the decimation of the nation’s military budget, which is now only nine times what the the next ten nations spend on defense combined instead of the needed twelve times or more.
The president’s elevation of Noam Chomsky as Secretary of Defense, Jerry Brown as Ambassador to the U.N., and Dennis Kucinich as National Security Advisor further confirms her contempt for this nation’s security.
The cuts to military to fund unproven environmental policies, the wholesale elimination of abortion prohibitions throughout the world, resources for inefficient public transportation infrastructure—which is SO European—and to force our school children to eat responsibly by taking away their choices for more efficient processed fats and sugars.
Taken together, these actions have emboldened her, as numerous new reports have confirmed, with the arrogance to “grab any dick within reach.”
We must come together as a nation and seriously consider the initiation of impeachment procedures.
(For those who missed the point, this is satire, pretty bad satire!)
LikeLike
GregB My God! Why is she still there! What’s wrong with the democrats. Can’t we get beyond politics and think about the good of the Nation? Lock her up!
LikeLike
The cuts to the military fund…
LikeLike
OH GREG. YOU MADE ME LAUGH… AND THAT HURTS, as am recovering from cardiac surgery only days ago.
It took a second to ‘get it!’
“IT” being the enormous hypocrisy of the GOP.
BYW.. there is a chapter in “Conservatives Without Conscience’ which addresses the subject of
LikeLike
this comment was not finished when it posted farther down.
OH GREG. YOU MADE ME LAUGH… AND THAT HURTS, as I am recovering from cardiac surgery only days ago.
It took a second to ‘get it!’ the satire!
“IT” being the enormous hypocrisy of the GOP.
BYW.. there is a chapter Conservatives With our Conscience by John Dean– where he describes how these charlatans can maintain their hypocrisy, and believe the poop they promote as truth
. Quoting from psychological studies, he nails these liars. and it was written over a decade ago! Prescient.
I Listened to the audio version on a road trip… absolutely mesmerizing to hear it in his voice; after the first chapter where he deals with the Nixon debacle, this brilliant writer describes how the GOP changed. I Think Dean saw the present version of charlatans inhabiting the Congress.
Conservatives without Conscience: An insider views the GOPs ominous politics.
http://www.peoplesworld.org/conservatives-without-conscience-an-insider-views-the-gop-s-ominous-politics/
LikeLike
So sorry to cause you pain, Susan! I wish a smooth recovery for you. Be sure follow your doctor’s advice.
I think John Dean needs to update his book “Worse than Watergate.”
LikeLike
Just wondering if you saw that the ACLU filed a suit yesterday on behalf of two girls at a Malden Charter because they’ve been getting suspended for their hair style.
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/05/aclu_of_massachusetts_files_co.html
“The ACLU of Massachusetts has filed a complaint against what it calls a ‘discriminatory hair and makeup policy’ after two students at Malden’s Mystic Valley Regional Charter School could face suspension for wearing their hair in braids with extensions.”
“The students, Colleen Cook’s twin 15-year-old daughters, have received multiple detentions for wearing their hair in braids.”
“Braids with extensions is a hairstyle banned by the charter’s dress code, as well as unnatural hair colors, makeup and nail polish. Hair extensions – not braids – are banned, according to the school’s handbook.”
LikeLike
Cathrine,
I agree with your call for the following “Can’t we get beyond politics and think about the good of the Nation? ” There is always good news in the country that never does get reported.
In my view the media is the driver of the day to day deluge of issues of “devastation of the nation under Trump.” For some reason one does not hear, or read about the changes taking place. Some of them are small, some are large, and many are in the beginning stages of growth.
Try the following stories – first story is from the Wall Street Journal: “U.S. industrial production rose sharply in April, a sign of underlying strength in the economy.” This is just the latest in a long line of stories about the rebirth and the sudden reversal in direction of the United States economy.
“Job Claims in the United States Hit 28-Year Low“.
“Unemployment Rate Down to 4.4%.”
Jobless claims hit a 28-year low.
“Mexican Border Apprehensions Hit a 17-year Low“
The arrests of illegal immigrants crossing the southwest border by Border Patrol agents decreased again in April. This is the fifth straight month of decline. The total apprehensions of illegal border crossers hit a 17-year low.”
From CNN Money: “OPEC has asked a favor of other major producers: Please stop pumping so much oil and help us balance the market.” OPEC — which, during Democrat administrations, has ownedLet’s talk about being energy independent. You know, politicians for 35 years have been promising energy independence. Now it is happening under the Trump administration, us. But now we are producing oil. We may be the largest reserve market in the world now with the discovery of shale and the ability to frack and get it out of the ground.
Angela Merkel! “Germany intends to increase its defense spending in coming years to meet NATO’s target of 2% of GDP, Angela Merkel announced yesterday.”
I only mention this to point out that Trump is the only one who’s demanded that.
pledge Germany’s membership fee, which is 2% of your GDP on defense in your own country
By no means are we in panacea territory here.We have a marked shift in attitude and direction. There’s reason for some guarded optimism out there.
The six-week operation, directed in coordination with local law enforcement partners, was the largest gang surge ever conducted, It primarily targeted violent gang members involved in human trafficking, sex trafficking, murder, racketeering and weapons and human smuggling.
280 individuals were arrested solely on immigration-related offenses.
Of the 1,378 people arrested, 1,095 belonged to, or were affiliated with, gangs, including the Bloods, the Sureños, the Crips and MS-13. The surge resulted in the seizure of more than 230 firearms, nearly 800 ounces of cocaine, more than 8,000 ounces of marijuana and about $490,000.
While the majority of the people taken in were American citizens, more than 400 were foreign nationals, though there is no word yet on whether they were in the country illegally.
Of the 10 captured individuals who crossed the border as unaccompanied minors, eight of them were MS-13 members, according to the release. The Trump administration has promised to crack down on gangs, specifically MS-13, through increasing border security and building a wall along the southern border.
ICE, which had a special section of its report dedicated to MS-13, said it has made 4,300 criminal arrests and 3,000 civil arrests of MS-13 members.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the most important parts of the new U.S. trade agreement with China are the deals on beef and liquefied natural gas
We finally have gotten them to agree to a precise date to which the beef imports into China would start from America. So the American livestock industry is quite thrilled.
It is a beginning but in the right direction to move this economy beyond the 1% growth we have been under for the pst 8 years plus.
LikeLike
He will be impeached for obstruction of justice and betraying our country’s national security to the Russian Foreign Minister.
LikeLike
Diane,
Know you are well aware of the impeachment process, but others who echo the call may not realize that the process starts in the lower house and goes to the senate. In essence, the House first decides if there are grounds to impeach the president, and if it does, the Senate holds a formal impeachment trial.
So I ask – who is in control of both of those House – The Republicans! Does anime really think the party would do themselves in? Seriously.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The House Judiciary Committee decides whether or not to proceed with impeachment. If they do…
The Chairman of the Judiciary Committee will propose a resolution calling for the Judiciary Committee to begin a formal inquiry into the issue of impeachment.
Based on their inquiry, the Judiciary Committee will send another resolution composed of one or more “Articles of Impeachment” to the full House stating that impeachment is warranted and why or that impeachment is not called for.
The Full House (probably operating under special floor rules set by the House Rules Committee) will debate and vote on each Article of Impeachment.
Should any one of the Articles of Impeachment be approved by a simple majority vote, the President will be “impeached.” However, being impeached is sort of like being indicted of a crime. The president will remain in office pending the outcome of the Senate impeachment trial.
IN THE SENATE
The Articles of Impeachment are received from the House.
The Senate formulates rules and procedures for holding a trial.
The trial will be held with the president represented by his lawyers. A select group of House members serves as “prosecutors.” The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (currently John G. Roberts) presides with all 100 Senators acting as the jury.
The Senate meets in private session to debate a verdict.
The Senate, in open session, votes on a verdict. A 2/3 supermajority vote of the Senate will result in a conviction.
The Senate will vote to remove the President from office.
The Senate may also vote (by a simple majority) to prohibit the President from holding any public office in the future.
IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution says, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
According to constitutional lawyers, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” are (1) real criminality — breaking a law; (2) abuses of power; (3) “violation of public trust” as defined by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. In 1970, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford defined impeachable offenses as “whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
Historically, Congress has issued Articles of Impeachment for acts in three general categories:
Exceeding the constitutional bounds of the powers of the office.
Behavior grossly incompatible with the proper function and purpose of the office.
Employing the power of the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain.
The impeachment process is political, rather than criminal in nature. Congress has no power to impose criminal penalties on impeached officials.
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
I predict that the House will be controlled by Democrats in 2018.
Trump has mobilized Democrats like no one else.
He will be impeached for obstruction of justice, maybe for treason, having jeopardized the lives of informants inside ISIS by sharing information with the Russians. He was just bragging. Loose lips sink ships.
LikeLike
Diane And it was the Republicans who finally sank Nixon?
LikeLike
Howard Baker, Republican of Tennessee, was a hero in the Watergate affair.
LikeLike
jscheidell I wonder who will head-up Trump’s library project after he leaves office?
LikeLike
A reminder of Jeb’s philosophy (October, 2016 interview): https://www.the74million.org/article/74-interview-jeb-bush-yes-on-choice-and-standards-no-on-trump-and-clinton
On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 9:22 AM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> Catherine Blanche King commented: “jscheidell I wonder who will head-up > Trump’s library project after he leaves office?” >
LikeLike
Jonathan Unger I wonder if Trump has ever been in a library.
LikeLike
I think that’s what he calls the stack of National Enquirers in his bathroom.
LikeLike
hmmmm?
Interesting
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/will-trump-destroy-the-dollar/524520/?utm_source=nl-tk-051817
LikeLike
jscheidell Leave it to a Trump follower to turn a comment about “for the good of the nation” around to take a swipe at the media.
LikeLike
Bethune Cookman grad: https://www.thenation.com/article/why-i-turned-my-back-on-betsy-devos-during-graduation/
LikeLike
Diane,
Consider the following scenario regarding obstruction of justice that many claim to be Trump’s impeachable situation on the memo.
“April 10, 2016, President Obama publicly stated that Hillary Clinton had shown “carelessness” in using a private e-mail server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security, which is not an element of the relevant criminal statute. The president acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, its importance had been vastly overstated.
On July 5, 2016, FBI director James Comey publicly stated that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email server to handle classified information, but he insisted that she had not intended to endanger national security, which is not an element of the relevant criminal statute. The director acknowledged that classified information had been transmitted via Secretary Clinton’s server, but he suggested that, in the greater scheme of things, it was just a small percentage of the emails involved. Case dismissed. Could there be more striking parallels? ”
A cynic might say that Obama had clearly signaled to the FBI and the Justice Department that he did not want Mrs. Clinton to be charged with a crime, and that, with this not-so-subtle pressure in the air, the president’s subordinates dropped the case — exactly what Obama wanted, relying precisely on Obama’s stated rationale. Yet the media yawned.
Trump is said to have told Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” assuming the Times is right about the memo, Trump did not order Comey to drop the case. In fact, Trump’s statement is consistent with encouraging Comey to use his own judgment, with the understanding that Trump hoped Comey would come out favorably to Flynn.
Veiled orders, while inappropriate, are not criminal — i.e., they do not rise to the level of prosecutable obstruction of justice. Obstruction can be a tough crime to prove. It is necessary to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the suspect acted corruptly in impeding or influencing a criminal investigation. That means acting with knowledge that one’s conduct was unlawful, and with a specific intent to undermine the truth-seeking function. Context is critical, and we don’t have it.
Comey does not appear to have indicated to his subordinates, to his Justice Department superiors, or to Congress that he felt threatened. Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and Comey’s former deputy (now acting director) Andrew McCabe have not intimated, even vaguely, that their investigative activities have been hampered. Again, the investigation is proceeding apace.
President Trump obstructed justice is not there . . . unless you also think President Obama obstructed justice last April.
I remember that James Comey in the Senate testimony said that nobody, for political reasons, had ever interfered or asked him to stop an investigation. the Time’s own website has it. Their own website contradicts the memo story. it’s McCabe, the now acting director, Comey’s number two, he said it also in testimony late last week, that there’s been no interruption of any investigation, nobody tried to stop it.
Now, only after Comey was fired, the memo magically surfaces in an inflammatory New York Times report, which alleges that Mr. Trump asked Comey to end the Michael Flynn investigation.
Lame stream media began hurling words like ‘obstruction of justice’, ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ and ‘impeachment.’
Under the law, Comey is required to immediately inform the Department of Justice of any attempt to obstruct justice by any person, even the president of the United States. Failure to inform the Department of Jusice would result in criminal charges against Comey. Title 18 U.S. Code 4 and Title 28 U.S. Code 1361 He would also, upon sufficient proof, lose his license to practice law” if he sat on news like this.
Obstruction requires what’s called ‘specific intent’ to interfere with a criminal case. If Comey concluded, however, that Trump’s language was vague, ambiguous or elliptical, then he has no duty under the law to report it because it does not rise to the level of specific intent.
“Thus, no crime. … But by writing a memo, Comey has put himself in a box. If he now accuses the president of obstruction, he places himself in legal jeopardy for failing to promptly and properly report it. If he says it was merely an uncomfortable conversation, he clears the president of wrongdoing and sullies his own image as a guy who attempted to smear the man who fired him.
Either way, James Comey comes out a loser. No matter. The media will hail him a hero. After all, he gave them a good story that was better than the truth.
LikeLike
We will leave these issues to Robert Mueller to sort out. Unless Trump fires him first.
LikeLike
Hahaha! It hurts to laugh.
LikeLike
Diane,
Saw this XKCD cartoon and thought of VAM, and thought you might enjoy it:
https://www.xkcd.com/1831/
LikeLike
Rick Hess on the greatness of the School Choice movement: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/05/19/school-choice-just-dodged-bullet-trump-column/101469652/
LikeLike
Vouchers, testing, and choice in Indiana: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/05/how-indiana-holds-private-schools-accountable/526461/#article-comments
LikeLike
School discussed in article denied voucher waiver: http://www.dailyjournal.net/2017/05/10/in-indiana-voucher-reprieve-the-latest/
LikeLike
Ed Reformers used to love Colorado’s teacher evaluation law. Now…not so sure: https://www.the74million.org/article/even-after-colorados-teacher-evaluation-revolution-fewer-than-one-in-1000-rated-ineffective
LikeLike
Diane,
I would like to ask your help for Washington students. There is a bill which has passed the WA House and is sitting in committee with the Republican led Senate – SHB1046 – which would delink the ELA SBA, Math SBA, and Biology End of Course Exam from graduation. As of the April report from the Washington Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, 15,645 current seniors are still waiting on test results to find out if they will be allowed to walk at graduation and ultimately earn their diploma. Some of these students may also have other concerns like being short on credits or not having met a locally determined graduation requirement, but the vast majority are simply awaiting results from one or more of these standardized assessments.
The Washington Education Association has long supported this bill and our members are regularly contacting the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee members to encourage them to vote this out of committee with a do pass. Yesterday, in a big win for students, the Washington State PTA came out in support of SHB1046 as well. With parents and educators working in cooperation for what it right for our children, I know we have a chance. This bill will not only positively impact current and subsequent seniors but is retroactive to the class of 2014.
What we need is broad coverage of the WEA and WSPTA support for SHB1046. We need to ensure that as many people as possible are aware that delinking standardized assessments from graduation is what is right for kids and encourage everyone to contact their State Senator and the members of the Senate Early Learning and K-12 Education Committee –
Hans.Zeiger@leg.wa.gov;
Joe.Fain@leg.wa.gov;
Christine.Rolfes@leg.wa.gov;
Andy.Billig@leg.wa.gov;
Mark.Mullet@leg.wa.gov;
Ann.Rivers@leg.wa.gov;
Judy.Warnick@leg.wa.gov
And their Legislative Assistants
Nick.Russell@leg.wa.gov;
Frazier.Willman@leg.wa.gov;
Linda.Owens@leg.wa.gov;
Kate.Burke@leg.wa.gov;
Adam.Day@leg.wa.gov;
Elizabeth.Pebley@leg.wa.gov;
Hannah.Castro@leg.wa.gov
There is still time to ensure that this year’s seniors are allowed to walk at graduation in just 3 weeks, but we must get this bill out of committee with a do pass and onto the Senate floor quickly.
Thank you.
Shannon Ergun
LikeLike
Diane nails it at “The New Republic”: https://newrepublic.com/article/142364/dont-like-betsy-devos-blame-democrats
LikeLike
The DeVos House testimony (good opening statement by Rep. Lowey in the mid 20-minute mark): http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-watch-live-education-secretary-betsy-1495638851-htmlstory.html
LikeLike
Now that Secretary Carson (HUD) has said that poverty a “state of mind” and it is something that is taken from parents, is there any chance that he’ll talk with Secretary DeVos about the fact that it’s the PARENTS, not PUBLIC SCHOOLS, that are keeping the scores low?
(yeah, I didn’t think so………………..)
LikeLike
In its recent session, the Arizona legislature passed SB1431, allowing universal vouchers, despite widespread objection from the public. A grassroots volunteer effort sprang up, called Save Our Schools Arizona, to gather enough citizen signatures to refer the voucher bill to the ballot in 2018 so Arizonans can decide its fate. The group has 90 days to collect 75,000 signatures (but needs significantly more “to be safe” because the legislature also tightened the rules on gathering signatures on petitions). Find out more at saveourschoolsarizona.org.
LikeLike
Trouble in Secretary Devos’ Ed Department paradise: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/24/james-runcie-education-department-resigns-238762
LikeLike
Diane,
If I recollect correctly you suggested that we leave the investigation up too Mueller. I concur with that, and I apologize for a late reply. I don’t think he would fire him – but watching Trump one never knows. Needless to say Susan followed up with her laughs. I wonder if she was aware that his investigation could cover many other areas or topics in question. Such as Obama and the NSA issue of collecting and targeting Trump and many other Americans – illegally of course – and documented. A legacy that he has might be tarnished.
The NSA intentionally and routinely intercepted communications of American citizens in violation of the Constitution. During the Obama years, the National Security Agency intentionally and routinely intercepted and reviewed communications of American citizens in violation of the Constitution and of court-ordered guidelines implemented pursuant to federal law. The unlawful surveillance appears to have been a massive abuse of the government’s foreign-intelligence-collection authority, carried out for the purpose of monitoring the communications of Americans in the United States.
The unlawful surveillance was first exposed in a report at Circa by John Solomon and Sara Carter, who have also gotten access to internal, classified reports.
And add this note as you read – the names are identified not as “anonymous sources”
According to the internal reports reviewed by Solomon and Carter, the illegal surveillance may involve more than 5 percent of NSA searches of databases derived from what is called “upstream” collection of Internet communications. Upstream collection from the Internet’s “backbone,” which accounts for about 9 percent of the NSA’s collection haul is distinguished from interception of communications from more familiar Internet service providers. Upstream collection is a vital tool for gathering intelligence against foreign threats to the United States. It is, of course, on foreign intelligence targets — non-U.S. persons situated outside the U.S. — that the NSA and CIA are supposed to focus. Foreign agents operating inside the U.S. are mainly the purview of the FBI, which conducts surveillance of their communications through warrants from the FISA court — individualized warrants based on probable cause that a specific person is acting as an agent of a foreign power. The NSA conducts vacuum intelligence-collection under a different section of FISA — section 702. It is inevitable that these section 702 surveillance authorities will incidentally intercept the communications of Americans inside the United States if those Americans are communicating with the foreign target. This does not raise serious Fourth Amendment concerns. FISA surveillance is more controversial than criminal surveillance because the government does not have to show probable cause of a crime — and when the targets are foreigners outside the U.S., the government does not have to make any showing; it may target if it has a legitimate foreign-intelligence purpose, which is really not much of a hurdle at all.
So, as noted in coverage of the Obama administration’s monitoring of Trump-campaign officials, FISA section 702 provides some privacy protection for Americans: The FISA court orders “minimization” procedures, which require any incidentally intercepted American’s identity to be “masked.” That is, the NSA must sanitize the raw data by concealing the identity of the American. Only the “masked” version of the communication is provided to other U.S. intelligence agencies for purposes of generating reports and analyses. Which raises the questions on Flynn?
NSA was not supposed to use an American’s phone number, e-mail address, or other “identifier” in running searches through its upstream database. It is this prohibition that the NSA routinely and extensively violated. Evidently, there was widespread use of American identifiers throughout the years after the 2011 revision of the minimization procedures.
The violation was so broad that, at the time the Obama administration ended, its scope had still not been determined. A salient question will be whether this new scandal is mainly a case of technology outpacing the capacity to formulate rules that bring its use into constitutional compliance.
The Trump Justice Department proposed new procedures in late March, which the FISA court has approved. These include the elimination of searches about a target — henceforth, searches are limited to communications in which the target is presumptively a participant .
The rules from 2011 forward were simple: Do not use American identifiers. Yet NSA used them — not once or twice because some new technician didn’t know better. This violation of law was routine and extensive, known and concealed. Clearly, this new scandal must be considered in context.
Other reporting indicates that there was a significant uptick in unmasking incidents in the latter years of the Obama administration. More officials were given unmasking authority. At the same time, President Obama loosened restrictions to allow wider access to raw intelligence collection and wider dissemination of intelligence reports. This geometrically increased the likelihood that classified information would be leaked — as did the Obama administration’s encouragement to Congress to demand disclosure of intelligence related to the Trump campaign the purported Trump–Russia connection. And of course, there has been a stunning amount of leaking of classified information to the media. Enabling of domestic spying, contemptuous disregard of court-ordered minimization procedures – procedures the Obama administration itself proposed, then violated, and unlawful disclosure of classified intelligence to feed a media campaign against political adversaries.
I would laugh at this but it is more serious than one can believe – and yet we await after months of 4 to 6 investigation for a single point of Trump and Russia and the elections..With classified secrets to the media leaked because of the Obama admin desire to use against political adversaries – Trump- I wonder how he figured out he was “wire-Tapped”
LikeLike
My guess is that Trump was never wiretapped but that Russian officials were. Any American who had a conversation with a Russian official, like the Russian ambassador, would have been picked up by NSA surveillance. That would include Flynn, others. And of course Kushner net with the head of a Russian bank owned by the state, which had been sanctioned.
Why so many Trunp officials talking to the Russians? Never heard of this in a campaign.
LikeLike
Diane,
Many administrations talk to the Russians so that they are prepped as they enter office running, nothing out of the ordinary except it was Trump – no one complained, for example with former presidents, nor Obama’s live mike comment to Vlad.
LikeLike
jscheidell,
Do you have an explanation for the many contacts between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russians BEFORE the election? I have never heard of a presidential campaign engaging in foreign contacts with an adversary during the campaign. Have you? Did Trump know that his campaign manager Paul Manafort worked for the Ukrainian party that was anti-Western? Did he know that his National Security Advisor Flynn had been paid $45,000 to attend a dinner in Moscow in 2015 and sit at Putin’s table? Did he know that Flynn was a lobbyist for the Turkish government? Who was in charge of vetting? Mike Pence.
LikeLike
Diane,
Back channels serve a purpose – have I ever heard of so many admin officials contacting the Ruskies before – no, but then again we didn’t have Trump and half the nation and media outlets out to destroy the president and this country – I bet Putin is laughing at us.
but let me add the following when I noted JFK using back channel comms –
During a panel segment on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday morning, Kimberly Strassel of The Wall Street Journal took MSNBC’s Joy Reid to task when discussing reports that White House advisor Jared Kushner may have suggested establishing a communication back channel with Russian officials.
Strassel explained that while Barack Obama was running for president in 2008, his team set up a secret communication line with Iranian officials to sow the seeds for diplomatic negotiations that would eventually become the Iran Nuclear Deal.
“Let me set the scene for you: It’s 2008, we are having an election and candidate Obama, he’s not even president elect, sends William Miller over to Iran to establish a backchannel, and let the Iranians know should he win the election they will have friendlier terms. Okay? So this is a private citizen going to foreign soil, obviously in order to evade U.S. intelligence monitoring and establishing a backchannel with a sworn enemy of the United States who was actively disrupting our efforts in the military in the Middle East.”
Reid later quoted an excerpt of New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler’s book “Alter Egos,” explaining what a back channel is. The book explains that Obama did indeed set up a “back channel” to negotiate with Tehran privately. As The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius points out in the very same article that flashed across the screen as Reid spoke, Obama’s back channel with Iran was shrouded in secrecy.
Reid insisted the Obama administration’s back channel with the Iranians is different than the form of communication Trump’s team reportedly established with Russian officials because the former president established this line of communication in league with the State Department, whereas Trump’s team reportedly did not.
Russian officials routinely spread misinformation via communications they know are being monitored. Just because one Russian official said to another Russian official on monitored lines that Kushner wanted to set up a back channel with the Kremlin, that doesn’t mean it’s true. In other words, the Post’s reporting could be not only inaccurate, but further Soviet objectives.
LikeLike
jscheidell You have a penchant for focusing on false equivalences.
LikeLike
Catherine, the I read the stuff that JS believes then I think of these pieces “BELIEFS SET IN STONE” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/27/opinion/sunday/youre-not-going-to-change-your-mind.html?ref=opinion
or this one , why people believe obvious mistruths:
LikeLike
Susan Lee Schwartz I’ve wondered: doesn’t give or respond to an argument–just repeats the same “points” over and over again. Going, going . . . .
Thanks for the links.
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
Would you Review Jared Kushner’s credentials a foreign policy expert?
LikeLike
Besides Russian officials being wiretapped by the FBI, the FBI also wiretapped Trump tower to monitor Russian gangsters that were operating out of the tower’s 63rd floor.
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-tower-fbi-wiretap-russia-mafia-ring-572619
Trump has many gangster friends. His relationship with U.S. gangsters goes back to his 20s and no telling how long he has been close to the Russian gangsters.
LikeLike
SUSAN READS AND IS A TRUSTED WRITER at the progressive New site Oped News, where the reality about Obama’s administration, the reality of who Hillary is, the ‘deep state’ machinations, the “Russia distraction is accepted background noise…. the way it is.
As for me, I just get TIRED of all the ‘bad Obama’ when it is clear that a really dangerous personality is inhabiting the executive office, and that WHAT what is happening, i is something different.
That man is senile.
Every analyst who listens to him, knows it, and you can be that every foreign leader who meets him, knows who is the President of America.
Then there is the joyous GOP, who are using this moment to end everything that “we the people” once believed were enshrined in the preamble as ‘THE COMMON GOOD.”
That man is a dangerous unstable personality who over a lifetime, has done nothing that would not give himself the benefit, the stage and the accolades that are life -blood to him.
Moreover, his behavior says it all:
over a lifetime, his callous disregard for people (“when you are a celeb…you can do anything you want) his need to be first — and for EVERYONE ELSE TO BE LAST…
And his lifelong unethical and often criminal activity… (lets us not forget the ‘record’Trump’s casinos went on to a career that involved ultimately being sold for 4 cents on the dollar, and the students that signed on to learn how to be great at Trump U, were taken for a ride… and it was not to school or a job.)https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/25/opinion/donald-trump-budget.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fgail-collins&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0
At Oped, many commenters say, “Hey, Give him a chance, it is only 5 months… to which I say “Exactly! so much damage in so little time…. and then, I am a teacher of four decades and have met thousands of young human personalities. We teachers use all we know about human behavior from our studies and experience) because we need to know the personalities who sit in front of US, for ten months; we listen and watch.
Also, all dramaturges (which I am) know that it is the dialogue that tells us about the character on stage, and it is the BEHAVIOR revealed as he moves among the others, that is all we have. No narrator steps up and says, “By the way, this is a guy who has used his money to do anything he wants… can you imagine the ‘stuff’ the Russians have on him, as he made his say through his many businesses there.”
Manafort? LOL!
I don’t need to know about Manaforte, or Flynn, nor do I care.
I DO know how my president admires the dictators of Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines.
So, as I read my daily feeds, which DO NOT INCLUDE CNN OR MSNBC OR FOX, I go back into “my mind’s eye,’ to an ‘imperfect’ America, with many, many flaws, but one that I loved, where FDR, Truman, Ike, JFK and even flawed Johnson, and good -hearted men like Carter, were president and we had schools, and people wanted to come here..
And when I see, in the Vatican Malania and Ivanka in their black dresses and veils, and their lack of a head coverings in Saudia Arabia, an image of the magnificent, brilliant dignified Michelle Obama smiles from the background.
So, sing your song of bad Obama, but he gave health coverage to millions!
LikeLike
Diane I have not seen this issue in any of your post. thought it might interest your readers about Trump and DeVos plans.
http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/news/local/devos-asked-to-address-lighthouse-christian-academy-federal-funding-in/article_751eb162-8939-5728-9fdc-bafbb4b68cd9.html
LikeLike
Terry Daugherty: A fine example of CODING. From the article quoting DeVos: “The bottom line is we believe that parents are the best equipped to make choices for their children’s schooling and education decisions,” DeVos said, when given a chance to respond to the question uninterrupted. “Too many children today are trapped in schools that don’t work for them. We have to do something different than continuing a top down, one-size-fits all approach. States and local communities are best equipped to make these decisions and framework on behalf of their students.”
The “local control” mantra, and all of the “flags” in that whole paragraph above, like “top-down,” “trapped in schools,” blah blah blah, is DeVos CODE for:
Disregard authentic Constitutional authority, regulations, and protections; and others’ freedoms;
Reinstall or let flow all sorts of biases–whatever suits such schools as Lighthouse Christian;
Make the taxpayer pay for most or all of it anyway.
It’s no accident that this was a Christian school. And BTW you can love Christian schools and celebrate that they are a part of the educational system in a democracy and still wholly reject what DeVos is up to. DeVos reminds me of Hannah Arendt’s remark about “The banality of evil.”
LikeLike
Diane,
First question you proffered: ” Do you have an explanation for the many contacts between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russians BEFORE the election? I have never heard of a presidential campaign engaging in foreign contacts with an adversary during the campaign. Have you?”
There’s no evidence, despite a year and a half of allegations of illegal contact between Trump, his campaign, and the Russians. If Obama has known about all of this for all of this time, why wait until now?
Why wait until after Trump’s inaugurated?
Why not release what you knew about the so-called contact between Trump and his campaign people and the Russians in order to head off his election? NYT – the officials involved in the investigation still have no evidence that there were actual contacts. Why didn’t these Obama deep-state people become whistleblowers?
They’ve been there for four, eight years.
Why didn’t they go to their respective inspectors general in all these departments and blow the whistle on what they supposedly knew was going on with all of this contact between Trump and his campaign and Russia? Why didn’t they go to Obama?
“The Trump campaign is talking to the Russians; they’re trying to sabotage the Hillary campaign!” Well, they did, and Obama went out and said there’s nothing to this. President Barack Obama back in December denied all this was going on. Here it is, and it’s a Breitbart story: “Obama Crushes Conspiracy: No Evidence That Russia Tampered with Votes in Election.” December 13, 2016, just three months ago. “No Evidence That Russia Tampered with Votes in Election — President Barack Obama emphatically denounced the conspiracy theory saying Russians successfully tampered with the American voting process.
During an interview with The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah, Obama downplayed the hack of a private email account of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, defending his administration for revealing in October that the Russian government was connected. ‘None of this should be a big surprise,’ Obama said, ‘Russia trying to influence our elections dates back to the Soviet Union.’
That story came long after the narrative that the Russians hacked the election, the Russians stole the election.
With that foundation having been laid, there came a story in October: “The New York Times story claims that there were people in the Trump campaign talking to the Russians.” No evidence. The New York Times was very clear, deep down in the story: No evidence to support this. It was just sources saying so. The New York Times ran the same story about three weeks ago with “updates.”
There weren’t any updates. They just reran the story.
October 24th, Sunday night. “[T]he Wall Street Journal reported,” on October 24th, a couple of weeks before the election, “McAuliffe’s political action committee…”
Terry McAuliffe, the governor of Virginia, “gave nearly $500,000 to the election campaign of Dr. Jill McCabe in her failed effort to win a seat in the Virginia state senate in 2015. Dr. McCabe was reportedly recruited by Gov. McAuliffe and other state Democratic Party officials to run for the seat. Her husband, Andrew McCabe, was serving as an associate director of the FBI during the state senate campaign. He was later promoted to deputy director of the FBI and assumed an oversight role in the Clinton email investigation.”
Well, that happens to be the guy who told Reince Priebus that the FBI knows that these stories in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are not right. What really happened here — and the CNN story even says it. It’s the headline that’s filled with lies: “FBI Refused White House Request to Knock Down Recent Trump-Russia Stories.” What’s anybody to think reading that? Okay, here are the first ‘graphs of the CNN story: “The FBI rejected a recent White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to US intelligence during the 2016 presidential campaign, multiple U.S. officials briefed on the matter tell CNN.
The AP headline on the CNN story: “White House Adviser Asked FBI to Dispute Russian Reports,” by Julie Pace. No, no, no, no, no! That’s not what happened. And even in the AP story later on, that whole headline is debunked.
LikeLike
Not sure if it’s Secretary DeVos, this article, or both who have the nerve to tie teacher unions and the testing industry together: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/education/335153-devos-articulates-a-slimmer-more-effective-role-for-the-feds-in
The excerpt that most antagonized me:
“Second, the secretary rightly identified the need to erode the entrenchment of the “education-industrial complex.” Those include teachers’ unions, superintendents’ associations, and testing companies that block any innovation within the system. The most promising innovation—true, parental choice, regardless of income and zip code—will no doubt be a cornerstone of DeVos’ reforms.”
LikeLike
Look into Gompers Charter in San Diego. Teachers admit to being pressured to inflate grades.
LikeLike
Nothing new. A decade ago, in LAUSD Lenny Isenberg put his foot in it, when he blew the whistle on the social promotion http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/between-dishonest-social-promotion-of.html that ensured that ethnic minorities in LA would graduate with second grade skills. Then he exposed the use of fabricated charges…this before Bush gave us the tests (VAM) to prove teachers were incompetent, and rid the PUBLIC EDUCATION of the voice of the GENUINE PROFESSIONALS.
LikeLike
I taught for thirty years in a real public school district in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley and the pressure was intense and intimating to inflate grades by giving out passing grades and shrink the F and D grade list. Teachers that did not cave into the pressure were called into the office at least once a year and yelled at that the lower grades were their fault because they weren’t a good teacher. It made many teachers angry and also caused many to cave in to get rid of the pressure. One teacher went as far as to stop giving out any grades lower than a B, and he stopped correcting student work. If a student was #1 on the roll sheet, that student was given an A and #2 got a B and #3 an A and #4 a B, etc. They stopped calling him into the office and parents got on a waiting list to get their children into his class while other parents were demanding their children be removed from classes where kids EARNED D’s and failing grades.
LikeLike
Saw it in nYC, too
LikeLike
I am sure many charter schools follow this practice to help appease the parents who took their students out of public schools. Some parents just don’t get it.
LikeLike
HI Diane–I just read this appalling piece about how companies like ClassDojo plan on “monetizing education”. Shameful and sickening. https://dmlcentral.net/platform-capitalism-classroom/
LikeLike
Susan L Schwartz,
I also read the commentary in the Times. I also would conclude that it describes the problem of politics and bias on the Lefts’ side as well where you dwell – includes the media channels , WAPO and the Times and the LA Times etc.
From the commentary – “Our study suggests that political belief polarization may emerge because of peoples’ conflicting desires, not their conflicting beliefs per se. This is rather troubling, as it implies that even if we were to escape from our political echo chambers, it wouldn’t help much.”
The above statement sums in part the echo chamber problems that the lefts’ desire for the Clinton win vs Trump’s win desired by the deplorable and irredeemable gun toting, Bible clutching right wing. The left has been living with the blunt force trauma of Trump win. and the media has taken control of the Democratic party in the constant attempt to assassinate and destroy his presidency.
The solution proffered :” If this explanation is right, then there is a relatively straightforward solution to political polarization: We need to consciously expose ourselves to evidence that challenges our beliefs to compensate for our inclination to discount it.”
Interesting that we are still waiting the evidence after months of investigation by multiple people and panels – and if none is found will we be confronted with another issue leaked by unnamed sources from the swamp blown up by misleading headlines which we must read until the buried paragraphs at the end we read that no evidence supports the title – i know the answer is yes – and we will continue to deal with violence of the disappointed at rallies, commencement speakers issues of free speech and sick disturbing Kathy Griffen holding up blood dripping beheaded Trump mask- I wonder what all those analysts of Trump would chime in on their view of her and like haters of Trump?
I also read the second article – thanks, since I didn’t get to read it when it first came out –
I noted one truth “But collective delusion is not new, nor is it the sole province of the political right.”
As well as this comment “The truth is obvious if you bother to look for it, right? This line of thinking leads to explanations of the hoodwinked masses that amount to little more than name calling: “Those people are foolish” or “Those people are monsters.” Now I understand the name calling that Trump confronts on this blog – even I have been called a few names – I expected more from some here but got less.
People fail to distinguish what they know from what others know because it is often impossible to draw sharp boundaries between what knowledge resides in our heads and what resides elsewhere.
This is a good one as well “This is especially true of divisive political issues. Your mind cannot master and retain sufficiently detailed knowledge about many of them. You must rely on your community. But if you are not aware that you are piggybacking on the knowledge of others, it can lead to hubris.” At the gym I spend an hour riding the bike or stepsister and watch CNN – can’t swallow MSNBC surf some articles from WAPO and Times as well as FOX – I try to see the other side of the tracks in the community… I ll pick up the book they have coming out at BnN “The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone.”
Thanks for the commentary and link!
LikeLike
Diane,
I reviewed Kushner’s credentials and his experience in politics and international policy is lacking – again the president can remove him like he did Comey and others when he pleases – all presidents have admin changes early on…just look at the press’ headlines of who is in and who is leaving –
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
Thanks for checking Jared’s lack of any credentials.
Trump has put him in charge of relations with Mexico, Canada, as well as peace in the Middle East. Now we learnhe deals directly with Russian officials and proposed meeting in a secure room in the Russian Embassy, so the CIA and FBI could not monitor their conversations. I think of a word that begins with “tr” and ends with “n.”
LikeLike
Diane,
Although his background is void of experience in the area, there is no criminality or wrong doing that justifies your concern with “tr” and ends with “n.”
I hope you noticed that although Trump backed out of Paris agreement, it was noted that Jarred and our Sec of State Tillerson were 2 of many who wanted him to stick in….always a silver lining in those bashed here in the blog, no?
LikeLike
Have no confidence in Trump or Kushner. They have made the USA a laughing stock. Now that we have left the climate accord, we are alone with Syria and Nicaragua. You did not explain why Jared wanted to have a secret meeting with the Russian ambassador in a secure room in the Russian embassy where the CIA would not know what he was saying.
LikeLike
Diane,
I am not in his shoes nor can I explain what was in his head, but back channel communications – although the word has become familiar to many, is nothing new. I previously pointed out former presidents who have used the idea and with people who they trust to set one up. – With the leaks in the swamp from those who don’t like him I would want a private line … I don’t believe any of the lame stream press, CIA, FBI or any other intelligence agency can answer your question either – conjecture only creates a foaming of the mouth…..
LikeLike
So you are ok with the president’s son-in-law seeking a safe room in the Russian embassy where no American intelligence agency can monitor what he says. Probably he wants to float a loan from the Russian bank of a billion. Grifters.
LikeLike
“That sentence is the epitome of the Trump project. It asserts that selfishness is the sole driver of human affairs. It grows out of a worldview that life is a competitive struggle for gain. It implies that cooperative communities are hypocritical covers for the selfish jockeying underneath.”
“The essay explains why the Trump people are suspicious of any cooperative global arrangement, like NATO and the various trade agreements. It helps explain why Trump pulled out of the Paris global-warming accord. This essay explains why Trump gravitates toward leaders like Vladimir Putin, the Saudi princes and various global strongmen: They share his core worldview that life is nakedly a selfish struggle for money and dominance.
LikeLike
here is the sentence: that explains everything: This week, two of Donald Trump’s top advisers, H. R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, wrote the following passage in The Wall Street Journal: “The president embarked on his first foreign trip with a cleareyed outlook that the world is not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”
LikeLike
Susan Lee Schwsartz: Trump is right: we all CAN be that way. But he is wrong that we MUST BE.
We’re seeing how that dialectical conflict, and Trump’s low personal horizon, are working out as he rejects the US’s shared responsibility for the life of the planet. You have to care about something beyond yourself to think of the planet’s health after you die, and that’s WAY beyond Trump’s horizon, as well as the horizon of those who follow him. (To give the devil his due, those who followed Trump watched Congress destroy itself for 8 years before he “won” the election.)
Trump, and those that think like he does, are victims of their own low horizon. They suffer the same problem that many others do–in psychology, they call it projection. In this case, it’s to think that, because THEY think from a particular horizon, then EVERYONE else does too. It’s just another sign of truncated intelligence who smear their own interior waste material over the entire world. Trump may be “smart” in some respects, like so many other “smart criminals;” but such smartness works only under the umbrella of the moral horizon we have chosen for ourselves. And Trump has clearly revealed what that horizon is–in that quote’s concrete truth that we see every day now.
Moral degeneracy has no conscience because it cannot think beyond itself, or just has chosen not to. Everyone else is just hiding what the moral degenerate “knows” to be true–we are all mad dogs in a zero-sum game. Only the degenerate is being more honest by saying so and living out of that horizon without trying hide it. Ask them: “Why do you rob banks?” and they will say “Because that’s where the money is.”
It’s no wonder Trump and the Russians get along so well–they work from the same interior “playbook.”
LikeLike
you got it rightT
LikeLike
Thank you, Susan, for posting this quote. In a nutshell it explains their entire world view: free market everywhere–even education, health care, infrastructure, and prisons. It is an ideology without a foundation. It explains why they disdain foreign affairs and diplomacy. It elevates people like George H.W. Bush, who understood that burden-sharing was essential to world peace. Those who share certain ideals realize that by working together they limit the possibility of conflict, death and collective misery. The idealism of “a rising tide lifts all boats” and “ask not…” of the Kennedy era have given way to the politics of resentment, greed, and crass opportunism.
LikeLike
SLS
ooops
Not stepsister , but step master
JS
LikeLike
Diane: I was not sure where to comment on an article that appeared in Forbes yesterday, and I am too tech incompetent to leave a link on my iPad.
A lady named Kerry McDonald, writing for Whole Family Learning suggested that the day was long past for the worth of publics schools in a new “imagination age”. She suggested instead a trip to the local library.
Taking a page from the reformer handbook, she pointed out the woeful scores on international tests by American students, taking time to note that the math NAEP scores declined last year. Thus the whole system needs to be blown up I favor of a non compulsory approach that would involve students being exposed to their own interests that would lead us to the needed innovation for the 21st century. She cited Deschooling Society, by Ivan Illich, a 1970 educational polemic she considered seminal.
One notable historical suggestion was that the present system was essentially the same as was invented in1852. This was a particularly astounding statement to any historian, who would recognize the problem with the statement on the face of it. Obviously, nothing as complex as the American public school would have a single date of invention, but would be an evolutionary process. Maybe she got it confused with the Kansas and Nebraska Act or Dred Scott.
I was in agreement on one point she made. The stick of compulsory education needs to give a bit toward the carrot if possible. Keeping kids in school by requiring grades to get a drivers liesence is a ploy that has hurt school and not helped kids. Nor is it a terrible thing when a student drops out of high school. Enticements to complete a high school course of study when a child is ready at a later time is not a bad ploy.
Still, overall, this seemed a vacuous treatment of an Institution that once was charged with preparing children for the responsibility of rational debate.
LikeLike
Diane,
I don’t care about the rest of the world laughing at us over this. In his run for office it was often remarked that America and its workers/economy comes first – he again sticks with his promise to make America great again. Paris would have killed our economy and job creation for the expense of close to a trillion over the years for pointO6 of 1 degree. I searched and couldn’t find any answer to to my question of where our money goes…If he does a new bargain it will have better terms for our interests – not the china or india or wherever…As far as I can find out and will continue searching – no other country has contributed a dime yet – but I believe we have – a billion?
This is not about the economy – but the transfer of wealth. They hate us until they need us.
LikeLike
Jscheidell, you seem to be a reasonable person. How you can support this ignorant buffoon is puzzling. He and his family are grifters, with no ethics, no dignity, no sense of honor or duty. Greed is on their family crest.
LikeLike
Trump’s argument for withdrawing from Paris agreement contains multi-trillion dollar math error https://thinkprogress.org/trillions-cost-no-c617bc9ff0de
LikeLike
Ed,
Histrionics is unbelievable, we’re going to die, the world is going to burn up, the continents will be underwater. The planet apocalypse is here. Gov Jerry Brown notes the floods but also indicates we will be over ridden by bugs, Heraldo on Fox feels his children will need gas masks when the air goes bad. Mayor DeBlasio in NY city is going to employ workers to build a green wall to protect from floods.
Scientific American tweeted out a photo of the Earth made into a barren wasteland as a result of this one decision. Huffington and CNN see the pullout as Trump telling the planet to drop dead. Christoper Mims at the Wall Street Journal declares that we have flunked as a species and that “we still have to de-carbonize our civilization or risk actual extinction.” Extinction. Trita Parsi says, “Trump just declared war on the very idea of life on earth.” All of this is presumably calculated to impress us with the gravity and urgency of the situation, but to me it has the opposite effect. It makes claims of catastrophic global warming look hysterically alarmist—and totally detached from any scientific basis.
Now we are seeing building with green light highlighting them. Tom Steyer said withdrawing would be a “traitorous act of war.” Actress Patricia Arquette suggested a class-action lawsuit against the president’s decision to stop participating in a voluntary agreement.
Well, I am one who is also worried about the future of this move – I am investing in stocks on wood, because of all the clamor regarding floods there will many arks to build!
And just in case the air quality goes bad, I am investing in gas masks – billions to be made! Another investment might be bug spray and bug zappers – Even though our country with its environment issue to addressed, has been called the cleanest in air and water.
Seriously, those who consider climate warming/changing as a major issue are made to look like a crackpot doomsday cult perpetually claiming that the end is near. Overboard reaction at the least is not helping in getting the message across.
LikeLike
Dan Rather’s remarks (oh how I miss having more of Dan) on last night’s Lawrence O’Donnell show are worth watching and reading. Here’s an excerpt as posted on Crooks and Liars:
“History is going to punish Donald Trump for this decision,” Dan Rather told Lawrence O’Donnell last night about Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement.
Rather, who has observed presidents for decades now, didn’t mince words. He said Trump is “enraged, scared, the Russian narrative is closing in on him,” and said his decision wasn’t grounded in anything other than his need to cultivate his base.
He called it “a very ominous moment.”
“Depending how far President Trump can go and how effective he may be the rest of the way, this can make the United States second tier in terms of world leadership, at least on this subject,” he said.
He said the only winners in this decision are Russia, Saudi Arabia, China — and Steve Bannon.
“But I do think, Lawrence, it’s something else at work here with President Trump. And William Marshall wrote some of this on the internet today. And that is from the outside looking in, it seems clear that he is mad.
“He has some rage. He is scared. What did he do with Russia narrative is closing in on him? Still, the investigation is about his tax returns are closing in on him. He just came back from this European trip, and he was angry with the leader of Germany, Ms. Merkel, and the new leader of France.
“What you have here is a president who is lashing out in anger. We haven’t had a president this psychologically troubled — I’m trying to use my language real carefully. We haven’t had a president this psychologically troubled in this way since at least Richard Nixon,” he said.
He said history “is going to punish Donald Trump for this decision. and the question is how much will it punish our own country.”
Jabbing Trump’s need to play to his base, Rather said Trump “may well as be showing up in the Oval Office in spats and saying he is going to increase the manufacture of buggy whips.”
O’Donnell compared the current atmosphere to Watergate. “It had a rhythm to it. There was a news rhythm to it, the way the stories broke. The rhythm to this seems much faster, the New York Times and the Washington Post breaking stories by the hour, by the day. This story has changed dramatically every day.
Rather reminded him that Watergate didn’t come to a climax until Nixon’s second term, and we’re still early in the Trump presidency.
He talked about the White House stating that the president is “irritated and bewildered.”
“I think he is beginning to realize he is in over his head,” Rather said. “He became very confident as a business leader. But being president is not just being a CEO.
“When we talk about President Trump being irritated, bewildered, mad, angry, enraged, here his son-in-law who he apparently likes very much and is in very tight and knows an awful lot, again, the narrative almost daily, this addition to the narrative, a lot of questions to ask about the son-in-law,” Rather said.
Echoing Watergate, he said, “What did he know, when did he know it?”
“All of this is getting very, very serious. Not just for President Trump and the future of his presidency, but the country as a whole. And now it comes back to this decision about pulling out of the Paris accords. There is an old saying in the Marine Corps: “If you can’t pick up the cadence, you better check your own step” — which is a way of saying everybody in the world has signed on this thing except for Syria and Nicaragua.
“And if the United States of America is to remain in a leadership role on this and other issues, we can’t just stand with Nicaragua and Syria.”
LikeLike
GregB I just hope Trump doesn’t try to start a war just to sideline the Russian thing. I wouldn’t put it beyond him. Thanks for the Dan Rather thing.
LikeLike
Olbermann was also inspired to do one his best commentaries:
LikeLike
It may be time to send some Tomahawk missiles to another empty air base
LikeLike
dianeravitch That’s what keeps me up at night. And “deplorable” doesn’t really capture the problem of the Trump voter or the depth of what we are involved in.
LikeLike
Diane,
I’ll quote the WAPO:
“the revelation that Kushner may have requested the use of Russian secure communications is baffling. If true, the request was both unusual and unprecedented. The rationale could be as simple as a desire to keep communications with a rival power compartmentalized in the White House, it could have been a mistake of inexperience, it could have had a nefarious purpose, or it could be something else or a combination of reasons. We will not know until this is investigated, and it appears that the public won’t have to wait decades for declassification.”
So even they ponder the the rationale and at the same time later in the article they note history of past presidents using such – i.e. Nixon used Kissinger as a go thru.
Im not happy it was Kushner – inexperience mores than nefarious – but that is gut talking based on his lack of background as previously indicated
LikeLike
The story pointed out that back channels were established by experienced diplomats, not by the president’s son-in-law, with no relevant experience. Nor is there any example of an American diplomat (which Jared is not) asking to use a secure room in the embassy of an adversary, where US NSA or CIA Xcouodnt listen in.
Maybe he planned to ask the Russians to lend him money.
LikeLike
You are an exceptionally patient teacher, Diane.
LikeLike
Diane, I would like for you to consider endorsing me in my run for NM Lt. Governor. https://carrforltgov.nationbuilder.com/
LikeLike
Jeff,
Please contact the Network for Public Education Action Fund, which will send out a survey to you and your opponent. If NPE action is allowed to endorse in New Mexico, and if you are a true friend of public education, you are likely to have our support. If we aren’t allowed to endorse, I can do it as an individual.
Write cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org for instructions.
Send your resume to my NYU ADDRESS.
LikeLike
Here is a very interesting analysis of our Malignant-Narcissist-in-Chief. “Psychoanalyzing Donald Trump: Mental health professionals have a “duty to warn” people about the danger posed by Trump”
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/psychoanalyzing-donald-trump
LikeLike
Thank’s for sharing that article. It reveals all the poop hidden in Trump’s diapers.
LikeLike
Opera vs. Trump. A wonderful catharsis:
LikeLike
Have you seen this report in NY times?
LikeLike
Jane, you saw the article before I bought my paper. Posting at 1 pm, with commentary.
LikeLike
Diane,
you also might want to consider the following article:
Is the U.S. Education System Producing a Society of “Smart Fools”?
By Claudia Wallis on May 31, 2017
“BOSTON—At last weekend’s annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Boston, Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society. Sternberg, who has studied intelligence and intelligence testing for decades, is well known for his “triarchic theory of intelligence,” which identifies three kinds of smarts: the analytic type reflected in IQ scores; practical intelligence, which is more relevant for real-life problem solving; and creativity. Sternberg offered his views in a lecture associated with receiving a William James Fellow Award from the APS for his lifetime contributions to psychology. He explained his concerns to Scientific American.”
Some interesting comments – “Wisdom is something acquired through experience which takes time.
Second, can you test for wisdom in a standardized way? Who decides what is wise? Will this just be another way to label our kids? Also, is substituting assessments a solution? Wisdom, like perseverance, grit, and other characteristics social emotional learning focuses on is subjective. What is considered wise by some is considered folly by others.
So I’m doubtful that we can assess wisdom in a standardized way and I am not convinced that we should.”
LikeLike
To quote Frankie Valli, “Oh, what a night!” The British election may actually create a coalition to put Jeremy Corbyn in 10 Downing Street!!! Who’da thunk it? This proves, even if he falls short, that if liberals campaign as authentic liberals, people will reward it.
And after Comey’s testimony, I’ve subjected myself to watch Hannity tonight for the first time in many years. It is remarkable how he has put together the A-list of right wing wackos to “confidently” and “assertively” try to destroy Comey and spin his testimony into their victory. They’ve got their best make-up, hairstyling, and unified talking points and it doesn’t amount to a hill of rotten beans. Schadenfreude, thy name is watching Fox News tonight. Quote of the night by Hannity: “Should the special counsel have to be removed now?” The more confident they try to be, the more their fear shines through.
Oh, what a night! I may wake up with a very happy hangover.
LikeLike
GregB I have to thank you for sacrificing your time and frustration to watch FOX!!! and then reporting your findings here. I tried to turn to that channel but couldn’t make my fingers push those buttons. I KNEW what was going on there anyway, but now you have confirmed it. Can you hear the applause in the background?
LikeLike
There’s got to be some way I can monetize my sacrifice. If I were smarter, I would have organized a charity golf tournament for St. Jude’s like our Jr. Dear Leader, Eric!
LikeLike
GregB That’s why you (and I) are not an oligarch with a loss of moral consciousness. But, whew, I got in before you came up with a price tag–too late, you already posted.
LikeLike
As Comey said,
Lordy – Lordy
LikeLike
Example of vouchers in Vermont?: https://www.propublica.org/article/voucher-program-helps-well-off-vermonters-pay-prep-school-at-public-expense
LikeLike
My email is filled with your posts and I try to read as many as I am able to keep up with. Since my primary responsibility is to my association membership (I am the executive director of a local school board association in NYS), I focus mainly on their needs for information.
Given the amount of information that you gather,I want to know how you stay positive. I read some of this stuff and it just depresses the heck out of me. I am trying to do my part, with our local, state and federal legislators and keeping the membership aware, but “Geez Louise” some of this stuff is so hard to comprehend and fight back against.
Thank you for all that you do!
LikeLike
Sherry,
I wish I had more good news to share. I share it when I hear it.
Public schools are under attack. Children are under attack. The teaching profession is under attack.
First we need knowledge. Then we need to organize to fight back. We are many, they are few. They have money, we have numbers.
Democracy can defeat this attack on our democracy.
Join the Network for Public Education and help us fight together.
LikeLike
“Given the amount of information that you gather, I want to know how you stay positive. I read some of this stuff and it just depresses the heck out of me.”
What you said, me too. But for me the depression is more like rage. I have taken to meditation in the mornings to purge the anger and it helps. I’m thinking that I will add another mediation session in the evenings before sleep. One session a day to dampen the anger is clearly not enough.
LikeLike
“…the new sheriff looks a whole lot like the old sheriff.”
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/education/338469-republicans-and-the-lost-promise-of-local-control-in-education
LikeLike
Significant article at the heavily pro-Reform biased Real Clear Education for being the first that I can remember even suggesting that the Reformers have gotten things wrong: http://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2017/06/26/would_you_bet_on_this_next_big_thing_in_education_reform_110171.html
LikeLike
Mitch Chester passes. RIP. http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2017/06/education_commissioner_mitchell_chester_has_died
LikeLike
NPR desperate to find good things about vouchers: http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/06/26/533192616/school-vouchers-get-a-new-report-card
LikeLike
WASHINGTON’S PARAMOUNT DUTY STATEMENT ON PROPOSED EDUCATION FUNDING PLAN
While the legislature’s proposed education funding plan includes a significant increase in funding for our public schools, it falls well short of what is required by the courts and the constitution.
This deal runs a serious risk of failing to meet those requirements, failing to meet the pressing needs in classrooms across the state, and relies on unstable funding sources. If this deal passes, it may not mean the end of the McCleary case – this year, this decade, or this generation.
In 2016 Washington’s Paramount Duty estimated the cost of fully funding public education – specifically, the basic education promised by the legislature in 2009 in bills ESSB 2261 and 2776 – to be about $8 billion a biennium. Legal counsel for the McCleary plaintiffs estimated the sum was $10 billion a biennium, with at least $5.6 billion needed just for the next school year alone in order to meet requirements for materials and operations, teacher salaries, and smaller class sizes.
The deal legislators reached this week would provide an extra $7.3 billion over the next four years. This is less than half the money required to fulfill the constitutional and court-enforced right to a fully and amply funded education.
This deal also undermines the voter-approved initiative to reduce class sizes, providing that smaller class sizes would only become part of a basic education requirement if the legislature chooses to fund it. This is circular logic, and flies in the face of evidence and common sense that students learn better and have all their needs met when teachers can provide more attention to them in a classroom with fewer students.
We have already heard from parents and teachers across the state who are concerned that the sweeping changes to teacher pay would make it even more difficult to attract and retain good teachers in our schools. Capping teacher pay at $90,000, as well as the elimination of the “staff mix” model and limits on bargaining, combine to limit the ability of teachers to make a living and remain as residents of our own communities.
The McCleary case was never about reforms to the way teachers are paid. We see no reason for these risky changes to be made, certainly not with so much haste and so little public scrutiny.
We are also troubled by the methods used to pay for this half measure. The Supreme Court held that education funding must be regular and dependable. A property tax increase does not meet that standard, especially when the legislature maintains a 1% cap in future years on property taxes. This has the effect of eroding the property tax revenues that go to schools, meaning it’s no longer regular or dependable.
The legislature’s decision to limit local levies is another risky move. If the legislature fails to adequately fund basic education, or if districts’ costs rise above what legislators are willing to pay, those districts will be facing significant cuts, undermining the intent of the McCleary decision.
More importantly, using the property tax to fund schools is regressive and hurts the poor and the working families for whom a public education is particularly important. Many families will be unable to pay these costs, especially at a time when housing costs in many Washington cities are rising fast.
Washington State is home to some of the world’s richest individuals – and yet we have the most regressive tax system in the United States. The legislature’s decision to make poor people pay without asking the rich or big businesses to pay more is unconscionable, particularly when the same budget deal opens millions in new tax breaks for business.
We understand that legislators are worried about a government shutdown. We are too. On the other hand, it is hard to believe that avoiding a shutdown now is worth the price of continuing to underfund our schools and make poor people pay more in housing costs for years to come.
Students across Washington State are asked to attend schools that don’t have heat in the winter, that don’t have new textbooks, that don’t have a full-time nurse on duty, that don’t have librarians or new books, or counselors to help guide them to college or a career. It’s not clear that this deal will fully address these and other urgent needs, particularly since there are no provisions for capital expenditures in this budget. We urge the legislature to urgently address capital requirements for schools by passing a bill that provides the $2 billion necessary to ensure children across Washington attend schools that are safe, secure and have the capacity to accommodate the lower class sizes that voters have voted for and that we know provide a better learning environment for all students.
Legislators may be exhausted and tired after a few weeks of work. But parents are exhausted and tired after years of unpaid work to plug the gaps in funding for our underfunded public schools caused by legislators’ dereliction of their duty. We call on legislators to reject this deal and fix it to address the issues we have identified above. If they pass this education funding plan, we will have no choice but to urge the Supreme Court to reject it and order the legislature to do better.
LikeLike
Story of the day and so appropriate for July 4: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hui-chen-quits-justice_us_5959be5ce4b0da2c732455c9?77p&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009
LikeLike
Diane, thought you would enjoy this New Yorker piece about Texas:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/americas-future-is-texas
LikeLike
Funny, I happen to be reading it this minute
LikeLike
Great minds!
My fav:
Ivins once told me that, after the A.C.L.U. filed suit against a manger scene in the capitol, she called Governor Richards and asked, “Annie, is it really necessary to remove the crèche?”
“I’m afraid so,” Richards replied. “And it’s a shame, because it’s about the only time we ever had three wise men in the capitol.”
My Dad was a Texan.
LikeLike
Speaking of Texas:
Hope you’re not one of these girls, Diane. 😊
LikeLike
Horrific environment at a Green Bay middle school, as told by a teacher to the school board explaning her decision to resign:
https://boingboing.net/2017/07/03/middle-school-teacher-resigns.html
LikeLike
…beginning at 1:33.
LikeLike
Horrifying. Speechless. The immediate aftermath was also jarring.
LikeLike
Okay. Here’s something slightly off topic but also related. It’s a — at least I think — wonderful commencement speech from Chief Justice John Roberts for the middle graduation of his son (have to note that the 6-9 school is a $55,000 per year tuition with a 4:1 teacher to student ratio) given last month. Agree or disagree with his philosophies, it’s hard to argue that Chief Justice Roberts is not a good and decent person. Anyways, here’s the 18-minute speech (including a very fine introduction) that I think many of you will find worth listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzu9S5FL-Ug
LikeLike
I just read that the President is moving to eliminate heating assistance to families in need. Will DeVos interpret that to mean that energy to poor schools should be cut off as well?
LikeLike
Diane, Did you happen to see this powerful piece by Henry Giroux? “Manufactured Illiteracy and Miseducation: A Long Process of Decline Led to President Donald Trump”
http://www.alternet.org/education/manufactured-illiteracy-and-miseducation-long-process-decline-led-president-donald-trump?
LikeLike
I’d argue that the U.S. Supreme Court passing Citizens United, and the long-term continued growth of the hate-filled, conspiracy theory promoting, serial-lying Alt-Right Misleading Media Machine led to the Electoral College success of Donald Trump with help from Russia.
A piece in Smithsonian Magazine helps explain what I mean.
How Fake News Breaks Your Brain. Short attention spans and a deluge of rapid-fire articles on social media form a recipe for fake news epidemics.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-fake-news-breaks-your-brain-180963894/
In other words, this explosion of fake media from the Alt Right now provides false facts to support confirmation bias.
“Confirmation bias occurs from the direct influence of desire on beliefs. When people would like a certain idea/concept to be true, they end up believing it to be true. They are motivated by wishful thinking. This error leads the individual to stop gathering information when the evidence gathered so far confirms the views (prejudices) one would like to be true.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201504/what-is-confirmation-bias
When the Fairness Doctrine existed and was enforced, it was difficult to impossible to spread fake stories through any media based on alternative facts (lies and conspiracy theories with no evidence they existed) that were designed to support confirmation bias.
Who killed the Fairness Doctrine? President Ronald Reagan and G.H.W Bush.
LikeLike
Yes, I agree, absolutely. The demise of the Fairness Doctrine gave rise to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other fear-mongering talk-radio haters, holier than thou evangelicals who believe they are the moral majority and followers in the Tea Party.
I don’t know that I would want to see the FCC regulate the Internet to that degree, but since most people still get their news from TV and radio, instituting the Fairness Doctrine again might make all the difference in the world. This is one of the really critical matters that I think Democrats squandered their chances to remedy under Obama.
LikeLike
I think Giroux had a number of important insights, such as how the free press is so critical for holding power accountable, but his descriptions of the failings of our capitalist society and neo-libetral economic policies, including the following, really knocked my socks off, particularly the phrase in bold:
“the pedagogical machinery of capitalism uses language and other modes of representation to relegate citizenship to the singular pursuit of unbridled self-interests, to legitimate shopping as the ultimate expression of one’s identity, to portray essential public services as reinforcing and weakening any viable sense of individual responsibility, and to organize society for the production of violence as the primary method of addressing a vast array of social problems.”
LikeLike
homelesseducator To me, it’s a wonder of the human spirit that so many who are forced into desperation–whatever the situation of their own social and economic inheritance, mistakes, or lack of character, and whatever outside hindrances and careless intentions are at work, do not turn violent.
LikeLike
Ohio makes major change on graduation requirements for the Class of 2018 (the first for which test-based scores were originally supposed to be required): http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state-makes-major-changes-graduation-requirements-for-class-2018/AS1TV8TgGGBIjRy2dH9NVL/
LikeLike
The best summation of Trump ever: http://crooksandliars.com/2017/07/brutal-australian-journalist-sums-trumps
The reporter’s final sentence sums up how we should all feel about this catastrophe.
LikeLike
This journalist says ‘We (the free world) will miss America when it’s gone.’ That is Trump’s legacy to the United States.
LikeLike
Diane,
I find the call to introduce the Fairness Doctrine to minimize fake news and lies and theories funny since PMS/NBC, and recent CNN issues and newspapers/”journalists” having to apologize, no, update changes, or corrections.
With the proliferation of informational resources and technology a wide variety of opinions is available through radios, cable channels, and even computers. With America on the verge of information superhighways and 500-channel televisions, there is little prospect of speech being stifled, Controversial speech would be stifled as the threat of random investigations and warnings discouraged broadcasters from airing what FCC bureaucrats might refer to as “unbalanced” views.
SCOTUS has confirmed the negative issues surrounding the FD. Searching SCOTUS I found the following : the Court concluded that the doctrine “inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate” (Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241). In 1984, the Court concluded that the scarcity rationale underlying the doctrine was flawed and that the doctrine was limiting the breadth of public debate (FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364). This ruling set the stage for the FCC’s action in 1987. An attempt by Congress to reinstate the rule by statute was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and later attempts failed even to pass Congress.
Lofty si correct with Reagan – attempts by Congress to reinstate the rule by statute was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and later attempts failed even to pass Congress. But why did Reagan have a problem with the FD – maybe the history of the fairness doctrine used by both the Kennedy and Nixon Administrations to limit political opposition?
I ask the following:would it be possible for every station to be monitored constantly?
Would FCC regulators arbitrarily determine what “fair access” is, and who is entitled to it, through selective enforcement? Is it possible that there might be a stifling of the growth of disseminating views as stations seek to avoid requirements of FCC and, in effect, make free speech less free.
There is a simple solution seeking an alternative viewpoint or for any lawmaker irritated by a pugnacious talk-show host. Turn the dial. And with viewership number in a downward trend for some stations it seems to be a solution many have taken.
LikeLike
jscheidell,
The mainstream media has fact checkers; when they make an error, they apologize and correct it.
Has Breitbart ever corrected anything they have posted? Just wondering.
LikeLike
One additional comment Diane to the FD,
Greg’s article from Crooks and Liars might be a problem with the FD. Talk about a group of responders/comments that dwell in swill.
It is their opinion, and free speech allows it , but I argue, although I might not like what is said or how it is said, they have the right to say it as I change the channel or mouse to the next web site.
LikeLike
jscheidell Yes–freedom of speech. And that’s all good when language is used to reveal, rather than to conceal, truth and, more particularly but significant, the actual good in “the common good.”
When that basic set of assumptions is bridged, however, and when concealment is weaponized by those with money and power, it becomes up to those who recognize the corruption–not to destroy that freedom, but to use it, while it’s still available, to reveal the efforts at concealment and to expose the corruption.
From how I understand it, that’s what underpins the call for resistance. We have to continue such resistance if WE are to maintain the dynamics of a true democracy-in-process. We have to put in power those who have a deep and abiding understanding of that dynamism and who are willing to see through, in a principled way, the maze of political morons, religious zealots, self-serving bottom-line oligarchs, anarchic power-mongers, and shallow tech-brains that we are presently facing.
LikeLike
Exactly, Catherine. Aren’t we lucky to have JS and his deep, and abiding understanding o f, well, fairness, not just rights. According to Atlantic Magazine
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/whats-wrong-with-the-democrats/528696/ page 5 Liz Warren, “is focused on the concept of fairness: “Fairness is a contract’s fundamental purpose. A raw, moralistic conception of fairness—that people shouldn’t get screwed—would become the basis for her crusading.” I love Lizzie ….
“At the core of Warren’s populism is a phobia of concentrated economic power, an anger over how big banks and big businesses exploit Washington to further their own interests at the expense of ordinary people. This fear of gigantism is a storied American tradition, descended from Thomas Jefferson, even if it hasn’t recently gotten much airtime within the Democratic Party. It justifies itself in the language of individualism—rights, liberty, freedom—not communal obligation.”
LikeLike
Susan Lee Schwartz Yes, rights, freedom, liberty. But these are wonderful terms, when they mean what we think they mean and most likely what the Founders meant.
However, they are now dirtied by double-speak; by those who use such terms to conceal the truth of their intentions, as you say, to use and screw ordinary people.
LikeLike
Worth reading along these lines: Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? by Thomas Frank (2016)
LikeLike
Although I’m a subscriber to The New Yorker magazine, I missed this story when it was published in April. Titled “The Apathetic”, it details a phenomenon in Sweden among children whose families have sought asylum there. I’m amazed there has been so little coverage:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/the-trauma-of-facing-deportation
LikeLike
Diane,
But first a major thank you to Susan for her astute observation “Aren’t we lucky to have JS and his deep, and abiding understanding o f, well, fairness, not just rights.” Chuckle
And To Catherine – on your last paragraph – would be a prime example of the FD ruled by those who might not like your view and cancels your rights They might not be from the party you refer to as “We “We have to continue such resistance if WE are to maintain the dynamics of a true democracy-in-process. We have to put in power those who have a deep and abiding understanding of that dynamism and who are willing to see through, in a principled way, the maze of political morons, religious zealots, self-serving bottom-line oligarchs, anarchic power-mongers, and shallow tech-brains that we are presently facing.”
But back to Diane on Fact Checkers – INMHO one needs to have fact checkers who fact check the other fact checkers.
A study on the recent fact-checking trend to separate “fake news” from real reporting found that in the majority of cases, the fact-checkers are just as subject to bias as the news they evaluate.
The report underscored the importance of subjective judgments in the process of fact-checking, amply borne out by numerous examples where fact-checking organizations betray significant political and cultural biases in their assessments.
The results of the study, executed by Daniele Scalea found many of the errors proceed from broadening the scope of fact-checking to include statements that express opinion, analysis or prediction.
Since fact-checkers do not limit themselves to appraising objectively verifiable assertions, the study revealed, they pronounce judgments not only about facts, but also about what attacks are fair, what arguments are reasonable, what forecasts are probable, and what language is appropriate.
In the majority of cases, the report continues, fact-checkers weigh the validity of arguments, rather than checking facts. This exercise involves significant space for human error and entails a good dose of subjective opinion, despite the pretension of impartial analysis.
As Glenn Greenwald noted in a 2011 essay titled “PolitiFact and the scam of neutral expertise,” Politifact “undermines its own credibility when it purports to resolve subjective disputes of political opinion under the guise of objective expertise.”
“What matters here more than PolitiFact’s obvious, specific errors,” Greenwald noted, “is the reason they were led to such error: namely, reliance on supposedly neutral, ideology-free ‘experts’ who are anything but that.”
Fact-checkers even evaluate predictions, the new study noted, which fall completely outside the realm of verifiable or falsifiable data. For instance, in 2011 PolitiFact evaluatedthe claim by Rick Perry that “when you sanction the Iranian Central Bank, that will shut down [Iran’s] economy.” PolitiFact judged the statement to be “half true,” because in their opinion the move would have “uncertain effects” and it’s not “proven” that Iran’s economy would shut down.
The report also found that professional fact-checkers are subject to market forces similar to the rest of online journalism, and must fight against competing fact-checkers for page-views and ratings.
Joseph Uscinski noted in a 2013 essay, fact-checking “is actually just a veiled continuation of politics by means of journalism.”
The report is relevant today as Facebook continues forward with plans to evaluate material posted on its social media site and remove items it judges to be fake news. The panel of assessors used by Facebook comes from the very people responsible for egregious errors in fact-checking in the past.
Click to access Dossier-1-Accertare-i-fatti-o-processare-le-opinioni.pdf
LikeLike
jscheidell Supporting democratic (small d) principles is NOT restricted to the democratic party. Those principles underpin ALL parties and all party politics insofar as they flow from our founding documents and founders. That is what and whom I refer to as WE, not to any one particular party, neither a bunch of democrats.
Insofar as freedom of speech and the language that flows from its umbrella are mangled to hide the truth, rather than to reveal it, that mangling is a strike at those principles, regardless of what party supports such mangling. Also, you say:
“A study on the recent fact-checking trend to separate ‘fake news’ from real reporting found that in the majority of cases, the fact-checkers are just as subject to bias as the news they evaluate.”
I won’t take the time to fact-check THAT; however, such fact-checkers may be “subject” to bias, but that does not mean they deliberately intend to mislead and do so whenever they think they can get away with it, or that they are all sociopaths, like Trump. I cannot believe you really think there is no difference? If so your skepticism and pessimism has gotten the best of you.
Also, you say: “Joseph Uscinski noted in a 2013 essay, fact-checking ‘is actually just a veiled continuation of politics by means of journalism.’” Now THERE’s an over-generalization and an example of their own making of dismal conclusions about the mainline press–again, the pot calls the kettle black. BS to that.
Finally, you write: “Fact-checkers even evaluate predictions, the new study noted, which fall completely outside the realm of verifiable or falsifiable data. For instance, in 2011 PolitiFact evaluated the claim by Rick Perry that ‘when you sanction the Iranian Central Bank, that will shut down [Iran’s] economy.’ PolitiFact judged the statement to be ‘half true,’ because in their opinion the move would have ‘uncertain effects’ and it’s not ‘proven’ that Iran’s economy would shut down.”
I’ll go with PolitiFact’s analysis on that one. The reference to “half-truth” probably would go down better as “one speculative possibility among many.” Nevertheless, it rings of a dialectical critique of what they seem to also understand as a prediction given by Perry that, in my view, they were right to comment on. Trump makes those horrible speculations all of the time to mislead and to support his Utopian fairyland and nefarious positions. Is the press supposed to let Trump or anyone get away with such–what shall we call them–fear-mongering, speculative lies, feeding red meat to the “base”? Scaring the sxxt out of people?
I think Perry is not as corrupt as Trump (though their intellect is probably quite simlar–low 40’s); but rather he just speaks “off the top of his (empty) head.” In this case, Perry, who (as is common with him) often displays his dazzling lack of intellect and rhetorical training, was the one who overshot the goal by stating with so much certainty what neither he nor PolitiFact writers could possibly know with any certainty.
And as I read that passage, THAT’s what PolitiFact writers were saying in their (what I see as a) measured response. Closure (of the banks) might even be a reasonable speculation, but “uncertain effects” is closer to a reasonable account where prediction is concerned, or of what might happen, than Perry’s “. . .will shut down [Iran’s] economy.” RUN!
LikeLike
jscheidell,
There was a major study of bias in the media years ago (I read about the methods and results but I’m not going to look it up. That was years ago. If you want to find it, use Google on your own). The way this study measured bias was not based on lies and misinformation but by comparing how many conservative sources were interviewed for each story vs liberal sources. For instance, if the reporter interviewed and quoted three conservative sources vs five or more liberal sources, that story was considered to have a liberal bias. Hundreds if not thousands of stories were measured this way for most if not all of the major traditional media outlets and there was a list showing how far they leaned left, center, or right. If a credited source lied about something that can’t be fact-checked, that isn’t the fault of the reporter. The reporter is just reporting what he/she was told by the person interviewed.
Hitler, darn, Mao, darn, Stalin, darn, Putin – sorry – the Kremlin’s Agent Orange Donald Trump has been quoted from his public speaking and tweets in many media stories that he has labeled lies and false. Most of those stories are based on his words that are still out there on YouTube and/or Twitter or other sources for anyone to check but Trump calls those stories based on what he says and/or tweets fake news anyway.
LikeLike
Trump lies with audacity. He undercuts his aides and cabinet members. He can’t tell fact from fantasy.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse Don’t you know: If you don’t agree with Trump, you are doing fake news.
LikeLike
Yep!
LikeLike
Catherine,
You noted the following: fact-checkers may be “subject” to bias, but that does not mean they deliberately intend to mislead and do so whenever they think they can get away with it, or that they are all sociopaths, like Trump. I cannot believe you really think there is no difference? If so your skepticism and pessimism has gotten the best of you.
I tend to have skepticism from time to time because of CNN and NBC – and their efforts yp “deliberately intend to mislead and do so whenever they think they can get away with it, or that they are all sociopaths” So I offer 2 examples”
CNN and NBC both attempted to “fact check” claims made during the second presidential debate about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, particularly Donald Trump’s claims that she tried to “acid wash” 33,000 emails on her secret private server. And both networks did their best to cover up for Clinton — laughably so.
CNN strained to defend Clinton by fact-checking Trump’s “acid wash” statement — and by fact-checking Clinton’s response.
CNN’s Tom Foreman acknowledged the main facts Trump had presented — that Clinton’s team deleted her emails after they were under subpoena. That ought to have led to a “true” rating. But Foreman added that the FBI had not decided to charge Clinton with a crime because there was not enough evidence of “collusion.” Therefore, he said, Trump’s claim was false.
Foreman continued by examining a statement by Clinton that “there is no evidence that anyone can point to, at all … that any classified materials ended up in the wrong hands.”
Congress heard sworn testimony, several times, that people with no security clearance at all — from Clinton’s lawyers, to the technicians who managed her server, to Bill Clinton aide Justin Cooper — had access to her emails, including those with classified information.
That should have been enough to rate the statement “false.” But CNN rated it “true.”
NBC News actually fact-checked Trump’s statement as if he had actually suggested that she used chemical acid to delete the emails on her server. It rated the claim false because “Clinton’s team used an app called BleachBit; she did not use a corrosive chemical.”
Apparently the use of metaphor in political speech is unfamiliar at NBC News.
Although not a star in chem in HS, i did learn – bleach is a base, not an acid.
As to the following retort ” making of dismal conclusions about the mainline press–again, the pot calls the kettle black. BS to that.” It is lengthy so the source and the abstract.
The Epistemology of Fact Checking
Joseph E. Uscinski, Ryden W. Butler
Political Science
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
5
Citations
Article has an altmetric score of 10
Abstract
Fact checking has become a prominent facet of political news coverage, but it employs a variety of objectionable methodological practices, such as treating a statement containing multiple facts as if it were a single fact and categorizing as accurate or inaccurate predictions of events yet to occur. These practices share the tacit presupposition that there cannot be genuine political debate about facts, because facts are unambiguous and not subject to interpretation. Therefore, when the black-and-white facts-as they appear to the fact checkers-conflict with the claims produced by politicians, the fact checkers are able to see only (to one degree or another) “lies.” The examples of dubious fact-checking practices that we discuss show the untenability of the naïve political epistemology at work in the fact-checking branch of journalism. They may also call into question the same epistemology in journalism at large, and in politics. © 2013 Critical Review Foundation.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)162-180
Number of pages19
JournalCritical Review
Volume25
Issue number2
StatePublished – Jun 2013
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
Do you ever spot Trump’s lies?
His own CIA director says the Russians hacked our election.
His own Director of National Security said the same.
Trump asked Putin, Putin said no, and that’s the end of it.
Do you believe Putin, like Trump?
Do you think Ivan’s should be deputized to sit with heads of state?
Do you think climate change is a hoax?
Do you think gun control is too onerous and should be rolled back so everyone can carry a weapon?
LikeLike
Diane,
Trump, even asking Putin twice about the election interference DID NOT BELIEVE HIM, but the 2 agreed to disagree. And I definitely don’t believe him.
Ivan’s – If you mean Ivanka, you must realize – a stretch for those who hate Trump and complain about anything he does or says, even Merkle supported having her at the table in the President’s absence. Merkel, asked about Ivanka Trump’s sitting in for the President, said, “The delegations themselves decide” who takes the seat if the principal isn’t there.
“Ivanka Trump was part of the American delegation, so that is something that other delegations also do, and it is very well known that she works in the White House and that she is also engaged in certain initiatives,” Merkel told reporters at a news conference.
“Ivanka was sitting in the back and then briefly joined the main table when the President had to step out, and the president of the World Bank started talking as the topic involved areas such as African development — areas that will benefit from the facility just announced by the World Bank,” the official said, referencing a initiative Ivanka Trump has spearheaded that looks to fund women entrepreneurs.
Ivanka Trump helps roll out women's entrepreneurship initiative
Ivanka Trump helps roll out women’s entrepreneurship initiative
“When other leaders stepped out, their seats were also briefly filled by others,” the official added.
And Diane, my opinion on climate change and gun control roll back are questions requiring lengthy responses and thought – to be address later
I laugh at how the press can’t take him and his tweets – Again he accused former President Obama of not acting in response to the alleged hacking and raised questions about both the media’s reporting on the revelations of the election interference and the Democratic National Committee’s response to not allow the FBI to this date assist them withe server.
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
Maybe the next big international summit will see all the world leaders bring their children as subs.
LikeLike
“YOU wrote: “I laugh at how the press can’t take him and his tweets.
You find this amusing?That is revealing.
Seven decades into my life, I have a large correspondence with brilliant people and in the world of observable reality which I inhabit, the ‘press’, and the world of sentient who watch his behavior KNOW EXACTLY WHO HE IS., and because his mental state and incompetence is on display it frightens those who grasp that HE is the executive of the US. AND some of us remember the comments he made before assuming the presidency, remarks on the nuclear triad and the “one China policy” that reveal enormous ignorance.
It is not merely his tweets, it is his inability to control his impulses that are on display to heads of states, to psychologists, doctors, attorneys, academics and generally well-educated , cognizant people.
George Will, a brilliant journalist not mere ‘press’, spoke about him recently, and said that he was reluctant to label his mental state. He wrote instead, about the “most disabling disability for our Executive office,” the inability to “think and speak clearly.”
“It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either,” Will wrote in The Washington Post.
“This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/331882-george-will-trump-disabled-by-inability-to-think-speak-clearly
“it is up to the public to quarantine this presidency,” he wrote, “by insistently communicating to its elected representatives a steady, rational fear of this man whose combination of impulsivity and credulity render him uniquely unfit to take the nation into a military conflict.”
Will spoke truth: :”What is most alarming is not that Trump has entered his eighth decade unscathed by even elementary knowledge about the nation’s history, but the problem isn’t that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.”
You laugh JS and deride the ‘press’, but “We have as president the closest thing to a nihilist in our history — a man who believes in little or nothing, who has the impulse to burn down rather than to build up. When the president eventually faces a genuine crisis, his ignorance and inflammatory instincts will make everything worse.”
This endless pointing to the ‘antagonistic press, and to ‘fake news,’ is the PLOY being used to confuse a nation whose citizens are inundate with so many talking heads, so much information, that it is impossible to know what is true.
But to those of us who know how the framers of our Constitution felt about the ‘press’ the constant derision from certain quarters only points to this clever plan to keep an already ignorant citizenry form learning ‘wuz up.’
and JS, I have 4 grandchildren whom I adore, and I AINT’ LAUGHING.
LikeLike
jscheidell I think most of us ARE “skeptical from time to time” and should be. And as far as Trump is concerned, as LLoft says, usually we can actually see Trump spouting his lies, red herrings, and fabrications right thereon the set, and observe his constant embarrassments; that or stop believing our lying eyes.
I doubt very many who watch merely believe EVERYTHING CNN or NBC or PBS news says, or that they cover all of what we’d like to see covered. I’m certainly not always happy with them. But when I turn to FOX, as I occasionally do just to see what’s going on there, it’s not long before I have to turn it off to keep from either laughing hysterically, rolling my eyes right out of their sockets, or throwing up.
LikeLike
“or that they cover all of what we’d like to see covered.”
Don’t you mean what Trump and jscheidell, etc. want covered? For instance, conspiracy theories without a shred of valid evidence any of it is a fact.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse I am often perturbed at what seems to me is “the intimidation factor.” That is, in the press and in many democrats, it seems they SOMETIMES, NOT ALWAYS, don’t want to speak up (truth to power?) precisely because of Trump’s common method of “hitting back harder” and, for instance, Kelley Ann Conway’s superb ability to channel Animal House and Copi’s renditions of ALL the logical fallacies. It’s not a dialogue. It’s pushing that boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down again. Nevertheless . . . Let Resistance Reign.
LikeLike
Lofty,
You actually support the bias theory of fact checking to a degree.
But I would argue the following comment you made “The reporter is just reporting what he/she was told by the person interviewed.”
The reporter/camera will choose enough responses to fit their bureau’s agenda. The cameras will be pointed at spots which support the headlines which at times are misleading until you read the entire article.
Gallup Poll asked Americans to rate the honesty and ethics of people in various fields, twenty-six occupations were more trusted than “newspaper reporters.”4 Only three (car sales, insurance sales, and the advertising industry) were less trusted. Almost nine in ten Americans believe members of the media are regularly influenced by their personal views when covering politics.
October2000pollbythePewResearchCenterforthePeopleand the Press (www.people-press.org).
Dating back to the Roosevelt administration, Rosten showed that Washington reporters were more likely to vote for Democrat FDR in 1936 than was the general public.11 Indeed, Rosten found 64% support for Roosevelt among reporters, with some of those journalists opposed to Roosevelt (6%) preferring the socialist candidate. Follow-up studies have repeatedly found reporters to be more liberal than the general public.
William Rivers, “The Correspondents After 25 Years,” Columbia Journalism Review 1 (summer 1962): 5; Stephen Hess, Washington Reporters (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1981); S.Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda Lichter, The Media Elite (Bethesda, MD: Adler and Adler, 1986); G. Cleveland Wilhoit, David Weaver, and Richard Gray, The American Journalist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); John Johnstone, Edward Slawski, and William Bowman, The News People (Urbana-Champain: University of Illinois Press, 1976); Thad Beyle, Donald Ostdiek, and G.Patrick Lynch, “Is the State Press Corp Biased?” Spectrum: The Journal of State Government 69 (fall 1996): 6-16.
There are hundreds of articles published every year in U.S. newspapers on media bias, most alleging that newspapers favor liberals and Democrats over conservatives and Republicans.
David Niven, Tilt? The Search for Media Bias (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002).
This coverage, and the belief in bias that it helps foster, has untold implications for our proclivity for receiving the news, believing the news, and using the news.
LikeLike
Jscheidell,
Would you care to review this brief list of Trump’s lies?
LikeLike
Diane,
this NY TIMES article was an earlier post here, I believe….
there are far more important issue to address than the above – education, common core, medicare and kids, health care, climate change , gun roll backs, etc
A wasted effort and time to address his inaccuracies.
LikeLike
When the so-called president lies daily, it is indeed impossible to correct all of them. He keeps us all off-balance. At some point, we will realize you can’t keep track and just stop watching all news. Is that his goal?
LikeLike
Come on we know that trump cannot control himself, and that he thrives on disruption.
Matthew Yglesias of Vox published a long reflection on Frankfurt and President Trump yesterday, and it began like so: “Donald Trump says a lot of things that aren’t true, often shamelessly so, and it’s tempting to call him a liar. But that’s not quite right.”
Even if they are not meant to persuade, they are typically intended to distract people from reality. That is, his untruths about the House’s health care bill aren’t merely intended to distinguish his supporters from his opponents. They are also intended to obscure the reality that the bill would deprive millions of people of health insurance.
His untruths about his tax plan, immigrants, voter fraud, crime and many other subjects serve a similar purpose. They attempt to create enough confusion about basic facts that Trump’s preferred policies, and his kleptocratic approach to government, can start to sound sensible. In reality, those policies would benefit the affluent (starting with his own family) at the expense of most Americans.
In this way, Trump’s untruths resemble classic lies. They aren’t merely unconcerned with truth. They are opposed to it. A crucial response, insufficient though it may be, is to document the falseness of his statements with simple evidence.A lie is a conscious effort to mislead someone, usually in the service of persuasion. But Trump often isn’t trying to persuade. He is instead creating a separate language meant to distinguish his allies from his enemies. A Trump lie, Yglesias writes, is “a test to see who around him will debase themselves to repeat it blindly.”
and FYI
If trolling gets you a thumbs-up from the president, more people will become trolls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/opinion/trump-cnn-trolls-wrestling-gif.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_ty_20170706&nl=opinion-today&nl_art=11&nlid=50637717&ref=headline&te=1&_r=0 By ANNA NORTH
LikeLike
Susan,
You give Trump too much credit, or Iglesias does.
He has no idea what is in the health bill. He couldn’t explain it. Whatever it is, he wants it to pass. To win is the goal.
But I agree that he is a master of distraction and disruption.
LikeLike
Here is the link to the piece I mention above, by Matthew Yglesias of Vox, who published a long reflection on Frankfurt and President Trump yesterday, and it began like so: “Donald Trump says a lot of things that aren’t true, often shamelessly so, and it’s tempting to call him a liar. But that’s not quite right.” https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/30/15631710/trump-bullshit
LikeLike
jscheidell You say: “A wasted effort and time to address his inaccuracies.”
That’s code for: “No one in their right mind can defend the antics of someone who isn’t.”
LikeLike
Inaccuracies? Lies.
Just awful to have a prez who is a liar and a buffoon
LikeLike
Yes, it is awful to have this “thing” (not intended as an insult to things but Trump is not human so what is he) as president, but what’s worse is those who claim to be American and they run interference for the Kremlin’s Agent Orange in an attempt to deflect well-earned criticism that should be repeated daily. I’m thinking of jscheidell of course.
LikeLike
jscheidell From your note: “There are hundreds of articles published every year in U.S. newspapers on media bias, most alleging that newspapers favor liberals and Democrats over conservatives and Republicans.”
Maybe it’s because liberals are more identified with the truth? Try talk radio instead of newspapers. You’ll get better results there.
LikeLike
jscheidell,
Having a bias is not the same thing as being a serial liar, a serial groper of young women, a con-man, a fraud, a failed businessman, and a traitor. The instant, the Kremlin’s Agent Orange took the oath of office he became a traitor and added that to his long list of crimes and shortcomings.
Having a bias does not mean a person lies. Having a bias does not make them a crook or a fraud like the Kremlin’s Agent Orange.
And, based on the word’s definition, even the accusation of being biased is often wrong.
Bias is a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.
Just because a reporter quotes more liberal sources than conservative sources doesn’t make that reporter’s unfair and prejudiced. Since conservatives are famous for refusing to talk to the media, we have no way to know if most of those reporters contacted an equal number of conservatives but failed to get all of them to respond.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse It’s been my experience also, in the last couple of years at least, that so-called conservative forces easily “talk the talk.” But it oh-so-often flies in the face of not only what they continue to do, but what they’ve already done.
It’s the same game plan when they do everything they can to destroy public schools and teachers, and then turn around and say: ” “See how bad they are. They are failing. Didn’t we tell you?” Similarly, they do everything they can to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, and then say “See how bad it is. It’s failing. Didn’t we tell you?”
LikeLike
CORRECTION: I meant “Animal Farm,” not “Animal House” but curiously somehow, Animal House also works.
LikeLike
I am curious why so many of you who I admire so much because of your deep knowledge and commitment (even when we may disagree at times) spend so much time debating jscheidell. He is obviously not interested in an exchange of ideas, does not respect you (his name is Lloyd, js), and has an ideology analogous to that of a devout scientologist. It doesn’t matter what you write, he will just use it continue to poke you with his semantic stick. He randomly picks a quote from anywhere if it fits his preconceived world view and has not, from what I can gather, actually read any of Diane’s writings, which is the intellectual glue that has drawn us here in the first place. Her arguments, and those of the many bloggers she informs us about, are based on empiricism, pragmatism, and an understanding of basic American constitutional and historical principles. His “arguments” are not in any way.
LikeLike
Teachers, still trying to reach that recalcitrant student because one day, they know, he will regret it.
Related, here’s an article on Trumpie, from the Vanity Fair wayback machine, 1990. One thing’s certain, like jscheidell, Trump just gets more like himself, not less.
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner
LikeLike
Thank you. I know that. But I think he/she should not go unchallenged all the time. I have started to ignore his/her endless questions designed to change the subject, waste our time and spin us in circles.
If I read one of his/her inane comments, I will sometimes respond but my response is not for him/her, but for other readers. Since it is obvious that he/she is out to confuse people and cast doubt on those that defend community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public education, I think of him/her as a fascist shill/minion who is one of the minority of fools working for the autocrats.
I have started to skim and ignore most of the swill he/she leaves here but there are times where I want to respond but probably not as he/she wants me to. Then he/she replies with insults and more questions all designed to bully and mislead.
LikeLike
LLoyd,
You commented – “Since it is obvious that he/she is out to confuse people and cast doubt on those that defend community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public education, I think of him/her as a fascist shill/minion who is one of the minority of fools working for the autocrats.”
I am disappointed that you would erroneously make the above assumption about me. I would expect more from you.
First, I have never made comments here that specifically demonstrates I try to confuse those who defend public education.
Next, I have worked in public education for 38 years, supported many issues that were benefitting the students, complained in writing to editors etc as well as speaking to the state board of ed regarding what I feel to be wrong in supporting No Child Left Behind, Common Core, teacher evals based on students grades, VAM and data mining student info and ESSA issues, and have been in local forums and speaking to my local school board about issues as well – not just budgets – but instituting kindergarten and making sure play was a center focus to the students learning, as well as being elected to serve 4 years on the local school board. I also spend volunteering time on Our Community Salutes – an organization supporting and honoring students entering into the military direct from HS graduation. And I will also state that I am not in favor of DeVos nor her directions for education.
How can one confuse anyone in a padded bubble room supported by a number of same minded thinkers. Cast Doubt? why would anyone on the left have any doubt in the fact they are right? They should not live in fear, I never intend to change anyone’s mind but to offer what Ibelieve is a difference of opinion.
Bully? How can I bully anyone here, and I have no intention to malign or insult.
I could point out that there are many times, due to your obvious enmity towards Trump, your first paragraph is a list of insults etc towards Trump. One has to wade thru that to get to your more salient points on the issue.
LikeLike
I’ll make an exception to ignoring you this one time: How (or why) can you make a distinction between being “not in favor of DeVos nor her directions for education” and your unconditional support for our Dear Leader?
LikeLike
great question, greg.
LikeLike
What Lloyd sees in your arguments, in your opinions is not an illusion. i would not go so far as an ad hominem attack….and ironic, since it is apparent that it is you who inhabit a bubble.
You label Lloyd’s reaction to trump as ‘obvious enmity.’
After all, that is your opinion, and you are ‘entitled’ to expressing it, but to claim it is the truth.. and Lloyd lives in a bubble… COME ON, JS, you write at this site, and know how most of us, including Diane view observable reality. You choose to play this role of a ‘devil’s advocate, by your labeling Lloyds accurate descriptions of Trump’s behavior, as “insults’ — that you must wade thorough”. The things you say speak to your judgement, not to observable reality, and you insult me, and those of us who know how to read.
Here is observable reality to back up the things Lloyd says… small sample of the links I have because where I write, I have to back up what I say… and I say this, too:
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/331882-george-will-trump-disabled-by-inability-to-think-speak-clearly “It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either,” Will wrote in The Washington Post.
“This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.”What is most alarming (and mortifying to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated) is not that Trump has entered his eighth decade unscathed by even elementary knowledge about the nation’s history,” he continued.
“As this column has said before, the problem isn’t that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.”
and Mr Will is not the only one that notices what apparently eludes you:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-handle-an-unhinged-president/2017/07/06/88b2ec38-628b-11e7-8adc-fea80e32bf47_story.html?utm_term=.c26d056c15f3 “What we are witnessing is not a new age in presidential communications. It is an ongoing public breakdown. And the question naturally arises: Is this the result of mental dysfunction?it is necessary to focus on Trump’s tweets precisely because they shed light on the mind that is doing the deciding on North Korea. It is a distasteful exercise. But we cannot look away. We need to know the state of mind we’re dealing with. Trump’s tweets reveal a leader who is compulsive, abusive and easily triggered. And yet. There are judgments that must be made about the fitness of leaders. Citizens are under no ethical obligation to be silent when they see serious dysfunction. The challenge here is not merely the trashing of political norms. The main problem is the possibility that America has an unbalanced president during a period of high-stakes global testing. This is not a clinical diagnosis. It is a civic and political judgment, made necessary by the president’s own words and acts. Trump holds a job that requires, above all else, the ability to unite and steady the nation in a time of crisis. There is no reason to believe he can play that role.”
And JS “Here’s the truly worrisome thing: “The disruption is only going to increase, both because he’s facing criticism that seems to trigger him psychologically and because his theory of management involves the cultivation of chaos”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/opinion/trump-declaration-of-disruption.html?emc=edit_th_20170704&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717 “He has shown throughout his life a defiant refusal to be disciplined. His disordered personality thrives on mayhem and upheaval, on vicious personal attacks and ceaseless conflict. As we’re seeing, his malignant character is emboldening some, while it’s causing others — the Republican leadership comes to mind — to briefly speak out (at best) before returning to silence and acquiescence. The effect on the rest of us? We cannot help losing our capacity to be shocked and alarmed.We have as president the closest thing to a nihilist in our history — a man who believes in little or nothing, who has the impulse to burn down rather than to build up. When the president eventually faces a genuine crisis, his ignorance and inflammatory instincts will make everything worse.”
But this is the best one:
” What we’re experiencing is an assault on the very foundations of our society and democracy — the twin pillars of truth and trust. With shared truth debased and trust in leaders diminished, we now face a full-blown “crisis of authority itself,” argues Dov Seidman, who distinguishes between “formal authority” and “moral authority.”
We’ve had breakdowns in truth and trust before in our history, but this feels particularly dangerous because it is being exacerbated by technology and Trump….In fact, we have so few we’ve forgotten what Leaders with moral authority look like! They have several things in common:
* They trust people with the truth — however bright or dark.
* They’re animated by values — especially humility — and principles of probity, so they do the right things, especially when they’re difficult or unpopular.
*And they enlist people in noble purposes and onto journeys worthy of their dedication.”
How can the world trust us when the president has no grasp of truth: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html
and JS, good men don’t grab women by the genitals, defraud students, defraud investors and contractors and lie, nor do Presidents tweet about tv and media, or try to blackmail people, as all the EVIDENCE about the Enquirer ‘ story’ shows that Trump obviously did.
Lloyd is no the only one that KNOWS that Donald Trump Is Making America Meaner http://billmoyers.com/story/making-america-meaner/
It is hard for me to wade through the things you say.
LikeLike
If you think Lloyd is ‘insulting’ Trump, here is a professor of medicine at Stony Brook, who writes at OEN, where I write (as does Robert Reich and Chris Hedges)
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Trump-and-the-War-on-the-M-by-Steven-Jonas-Fascism_Fascism-Has-Happened-Here_Fascism-Cant-Happen-Here_Fascist-170704-497.html
“Trump’s attacks on the media are getting evermore virulent. Much is known and has been written about the “what.” Not too much about the “why.” It’s not because Trump is a nut, an ego-maniac, the knowledge-free leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. Yes, he is, but the primary reason for the media-assault is to help pave the way for the establishment of a 21st-century form of fascism in the U.S. The media is the last major institution standing in the Trumpites’ way.
David From at the Atlantic, weighs in on the road to an autocracy. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-build-an-autocracy/513872/
and JS, do not imagine I am going to ‘argue” with YOU.
There is no argument that you could make that can change the facts, and I am bored to tears with the stuff you shovel.
LikeLike
Enmity toward Trump?
That is what YOU believe ?
he is such a chronic liar that YOU sir DEFINE WHO YOU ARE… by constantly accusing us here, WHERE YOU CHOOSE TO WRITE, of being in a bubble.
You CHOOSE TO WRITE IN a ‘place’ where some of the brightest American have a conversation, and want us to ‘unknow’ what we know about how he is wrecking everything we stand for…every thing we built.
The man is a consummate liar but you condemn us!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Trump-s-Top-25-Lies-Inco-by-Rodger-Malcolm-Mit-Bigotry_Experience_Incompetence_Lies-160606-829.html
This man just spit on those Americans who came here as kids.
Fact check.org looked into this and concluded from the facts available to everyone that bothers to look that, “The report found that illegal immigrant welfare use ‘tends to be very low.’ It also estimates the total federal net cost of households headed by illegal immigrants at under $10.4 billion, a small fraction of what this message claims.”
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/cost-of-illegal-immigrants/
THIS LIAR who promised workers that he would be for them, but then pushes for “lower taxes on American business, which means higher wages for American workers”
http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/09/05/trump-just-cut-wages-4-2-million-workers-day-labor-day/
NO bubble, sir…This statement is demonstrably false\as a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies shows, the job growth rate for corporations that paid the least amount in taxes over the past eight years was negative 1%, compared to 6% for the private sector as a whole; businesses for the most part spent tax breaks not on job creation but on stock buybacks and executive pay.”
More about THE WRECKING BALL from OUR ‘bubble’:
http://billmoyers.com/story/keep-truckin-no-seriously-trump-wants/ The combination of deregulation and deunionization has deeply degraded working conditions for truck drivers…
Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, wants to gut environmental protection regulations that prevent the dumping of toxic chemicals into the Gulf.
The Trump administration disbanded a federal advisory panel on climate change.
One way to deal with climate change is to pretend it isn’t happening, and to refuse to listen to any scientists.
and there is Betsy DeVos just hired a former dean from for-profit online DeVry University to police fraud in higher education.
If your fallacious arguments do not change anything, you attack us. That sir is called ad hominem.
ENOUGH OF YOUR ACCUSATIONS about US.
JS , Don’t waste your time here… go to an echo chamber where alternative facts rule.
LikeLike
California tries to define “ineffective teacher”: http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-essential-education-updates-southern-california-officials-proposed-1499818285-htmlstory.html
LikeLike
A recent poll found that a majority of Republicans believe colleges have a negative impact on the country. Amazing. Robert Mann, who writes a regular column for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, writes an insightful piece about why this might be: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2017/07/could_louisiana_survive_withou.html#incart_river_home
LikeLike
GregB The Republican Smear machine works.
LikeLike
It’s not a GOP smear machine as much as it is an extreme, far-right, hate-filled, racist, conspiracy-theory loving Alt-Right fake-fact media machine supported by wacko, autocratic billionaires like Robert Mercer who thinks the secret to immortality is in our urine. The Republican Party has been hijacked by people like him.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse Well, . . . yes. I know there is money holding the reigns of Congress–thy name is Koch (and many now-concerted others). But it’s still crickets on the Republican sides of both House and Senate. But the smearing of higher education is a not-so-veiled attack on the publicity of reasonable discourse, freedom of thought, and need I say it? truth, as difficult as that is to define. BTW, are you serious about the Mercer-urine thing? Maybe for his thinking, it is.
LikeLike
Yes, Robert Mercer supports a guy in Oregon who is doing research for the urine fountain of youth.
“The family has given at least $1.6 million in donations to Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Some of the money was used to buy freezers in which Robinson is storing some fourteen thousand samples of human urine. Robinson has said that, by studying the urine, he will find new ways of extending the human life span.” …
Mercer supports Trump and Steve Bannon.
And “By 2011, the Mercers had joined forces with Charles and David Koch, who own Koch Industries, and who have run a powerful political machine for decades.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency
LikeLike
This is the Koch ALEC formula
Support candidates hand picked by ALEC and outspend the opposition.
“91% of the time the better-financed candidate wins. Don’t act surprised”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/think-money-doesnt-matter-in-elections-this-chart-says-youre-wrong/?utm_term=.0f70021e229c
And ALEC starts from the bottom (school board elections) and moves up (city mayors, state legislators and governors, Congress, and the White House) with its political contributions to support handpicked candidates that often have ties to ALEC.
many of these candidates, once they win, are often in positions to appoint people to important government jobs that are not elected positions.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/05/13107/koch-candidates-2016-revealed
The Koch Brothers’ most loyal servants are serving in Donald Trump’s White House
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/koch-allies-in-the-white-house_partner/
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse Preaching to the choir. But same/same: you might want to have a look at a recent Inside Higher Ed article entitled: “Stealth Attack on Liberal Scholar? Historian alleges coordinated criticism of her latest book, which is critical of radical right, from many who have received Koch funding.”
The article resonates with what Meyer says in her book on “Dark Money” where the Kochs went after her, trying to smear her but fortunately didn’t get away with it. If you have time, read the responses/comments section. It’s evidence of how twisted things are presently in the University, complements of the distrust and death of reasonable discourse and truth. As long as that is the case, Koch wins.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/12/historian-alleges-coordinated-criticism-her-latest-book-which-critical-radical-right?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=ea083d44ac-DNU20170712&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-ea083d44ac-198488425&mc_cid=ea083d44ac&mc_eid=f743ca9d07
LikeLike
Thanks for sharing. This is the 1st I’ve heard of this book that I see was released in June.
But I am not unaware of online flame wars, and from that experience, experienced more than once in fact, it’s clear to me, that this is a flame war. The evidence is the 115 5-star reviews vs the 53 1-star reviews. That leaves 15 reviews to share the 2, 3, and 4-star options.
The last time I saw this level of trollish behavior was the massive flame war over Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” back in 2011 when the hardback came out. I even joined in on that one and took Chua’s side after I read her book. Because I don’t use a fake online name, the trolls attacking Chua turned on my books and I ended up with a host of 1-star reviews for a book that had done quite well for for more than three years until then.
Chua’s book took a nose dive in its Amazon review average but all that attention also helped the book hit the New York Times bestseller list as readers that wanted to see for themselves read the book and voted it back up. The result today is 1,184 reviews and 67 percent are 4 and 5 stars vs 15 percent that are 1-star. Amy even received death threats from her trollish, Trumpish haters.
The book has a 4.0 average today. I remember it being in the low 3s back then after the flame war exploded.
LikeLike
Interesting observation, Greg B. We had a family gathering here last Sun. of 12 adults plus children. Of the those 12 adults five have doctorates, 3 have masters (2 have 2masters degrees),one 17 year old starts college this fall and the rest have a bachelors. Of the group 6 are professors. I guess we had better align ourselves with the Democrats.
LikeLike
As a former Democrat, I counsel not aligning with them because they are corporatists and imperialists who only appear preferable because the RethugliKKKans are so far off the charts (to the extreme right) as to be despicable.
See these:
Democratic National Committee Is Debt Ridden, Unpopular and Failing | Observer http://observer.com/2017/07/democratic-national-committee-failing-unpopular-debt/
Message to Democrats: Get on Board With Medicare For All or Go Home | Common Dreams https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/07/21/message-democrats-get-board-medicare-all-or-go-home
With New D.C. Policy Group, Dems Continue to Rehabilitate and Unify With Bush-Era Neocons
LikeLike
Ed Ciaccio,
Really, don’t align yourself with the Democratic Party? What other choice is there – Putin?
Are you a subversive paid for by ALEC or a similar psyops operation to cast doubts on the Democratic Party, out to destroy democracy and strip the U.S. Constitution of its powers?
My suggestion for everyone who votes is to check each candidate and look for the one that is closest to what you think and then vote for that one. That means doing your homework because there’s a reason “dark money” is called “dark”.
For instance, we have a local state senator (state legislature) from the country where I live who ran as a Democrat and the big money, the dark money, the corporate money, the billionaires’ money, backed him and he rained a Tsunami of crap lies and propaganda on his candidate smearing her. She lost, but she was the real Democrat and a former classroom teacher. This same tactic is being used across America from school board elections to the White House.
That stealth Democrat I mentioned earlier, the one that infiltrated the Democratic Party in California is named Steve Glazer. The Billionaires are supporting stealth candidates who wrap themselves in the Democratic Party and then lie to get elected. In the primaries, they run as Democrats without much of a history in the Party.
That DOES NOT mean we abandon the Democratic Party. What it means is we have to do our homework and pay attention and then get the word out as we reveal who these frauds are and stop them during the primaries.
Voters have two choices: the Democratic Party or the Republicans. Voting for a Libertarian or Green Party candidate siphons votes away from the candidates we should be voting for.
The Democratic Party isn’t perfect but on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the best choice), the Democratic Party is a better choice for most of the people even it if was ranked 3 vs a minus ten (-10) for the GOP.
LikeLike
Your accusatory response makes it seem like you did NOT read my whole comment, nor the articles I linked to.
I was a registered Democrat since LBJ was President, but Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Bush regime War Criminals and the fraudsters/banksters who knowngly caused the 2008 Great Recession; his illegal bombings of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen; his Trillion-dollar nuclear weapons “modernization” plan; his “all of the above” faux-environmental policies (including support for fracking); his deafening silence about police shootings of Blacks; his corporate health insurance plan (ACA/Obamacare was based on a Heritage Foundation plan and Romneycare in Massachusetts and written by insurance company people); Nancy Pelosi’s, Obama’s, and Hillary Clinton’s opposition to single-payer Medicare for all; and the DNC’s preference, since Bill Clinton, for neoliberal economic policy all soured me on the Democrats.
ALEC is abysmal, as are the RethugliKKKans. But the Corporate Democrats are STILL determined to shove their elitist, neoliberal policies down our throats, and their so-called “leaders” refuse to support HR 676 (Rep. John Conyers’ Medicare for All Bill), so I will no longer waste my time and energy on them.
The “lesser of two evils” position has gotten us where we are today, because it always results in an evil. If you cannot realize that, no one can help you.
It’s time for a trues Peoples Party, devoid of corporate, imperialist influence.
LikeLike
It would be great to have a “true” People’s Party. Good luck with that.
LikeLike
Join us in working to make TRUE Peoples Party possible. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, though both refuse to oppose the U.S. Empire, could be the start of a true Peoples Party. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Rep. John Conyers are also worth asking to join, because the DNC Corporate Democrats have a chokehold on the party.
Our Revolution (https://ourrevolution.com/) has an agenda that is a true Peoples Party DOMESTIC agenda, and we can influence them to add opposing the murderous, wasteful U.S. imperialist militarism budget (much more than 54% of the annual federal discretionary budget) to that agenda because of how that bloated militarism budget makes it impossible for needed social welfare and environmental policies to be funded.
When MLK started his work for Black Civil Rights in the 1950’s, it seemed impossible that he had any chance of success. But he, and millions of others, kept at it. We haven’t yet reached “the promised land” of full equality, but many things are better now than in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to change her seat.
As an anti-war activist since 1966, while I am often dismayed, I refuse to give up, much less cast my lot with corporate politicians of either party who depend on blood-stained funds from war-profiteering corporations. The alternative is to struggle for a new political/economic system that will not destroy the planet and that will, as the existing systems in Scandinavia (especially Denmark: Why Are the Danes So Happy? Because Their Economy Makes Sense http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41358-why-are-the-danes-so-happy-because-their-economy-makes-sense ), establish a society of much more equality than the U.S.’s neoliberal corporate capitalist system controlled and directed by the Deep State sociopaths since at least 1900.
We have no choice if we are to avoid the Deep State’s insanity of nuclear war threats and Climate Disaster.
LikeLike
Ed,
Then write them letters. A suggestion: Don’t write an e-mail. Write a real letter printed on paper and mail it through the USPS with real postage to their main offices. And I will not join a party that is a pipe dream. You are not the first to have this fantasy and you will not be the last.
If the names you mentioned all say no, what are you going to do then?
I have other things I want to do with my time than attempting to launch another start-up political party.
LikeLike
Phone calls are more effective than mailed letters, so that is what I and others have done.
Since 9/11 and the anthrax scare, mailed letters are kept for at least two weeks before they are allowed to their recipients. Post cards are better, but obviously limit what one can write.
You wrote: “I have other things I want to do with my time than attempting to launch another start-up political party.”
What if trying to change the Corporate Democrat Party is a dead end, while the planet continues to heat up, inequality gets worse, and tensions between the U.s. and other nuclear adversaries (Russia, China, North Korea) increase while we wait for the two Corporate Parties to get some sanity?
LikeLike
You’re wasting your time. I’m not interested in being part of starting a new political party and even if you were successful, I’d never join. I’m a registered independent voter and I plan to stay that way.
History shows us that the new group or leaders that come along promising to fix all the problems if we support them end up being the same or worse. And even if that rare individual came along and managed to shake up the system, someone else would shoot them like Gandhi or King were shot.
To really change things, become active in the Democratic Party and work hard. If you live long enough, you might even achieve some clout and manage to be part of a movement within the party to return it to its progressive roots.
LikeLike
I, too, am now a registered Independent.
The Democrats are sell-outs. They are a dead end.
LikeLike
The few you named are members of the Democratic Party and they are bringing about change from within. Proof that you are wrong. The current leaders of the party might be corrupt but not everyone that is a Democrat is. That kind of flawed logic is exactly what a troll or minion does to further the goals of their master, to spread hate and distrust.
LikeLike
Believe what you want.
I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
LikeLike
Okay, so you fell off the turnip truck on another day instead of Friday. There are seven days in a week. 52 weeks. 12 months. 365 days. Lots of days to fall off a turnip truck. What are you doing on a turnip truck?
LikeLike
fall off the turnip truck – Wiktionary https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fall_off_the_turnip_truck
LikeLike
I knew what it meant. I ignored the idiomatic meaning and went with the literal one. Instead of starting over with a new system, try fixing the old one first. The most successful changes in history are usually the 2nd option.
There is no guarantee that a new political party will not be infiltrated and corrupted during its growth stage. The communist movement was hijacked by Stalin and Mao. Lenin started out with a goal to end the power of the oligarchs but he died and that movement died with him. The same thing happened in China when Sun Yat-Sen died. He was struggling to launch a republic and he’d brought together several political parties to work together to form that republic. The Communist Party and the Nationalist Party were part of Sun’s republic. Soon after Sun died about the same age as Lenin, Chiang Kai-shek, the new leader of the Nationalist Party attacked the Communist Party and executed thousands of its leaders. The result was a bloody Civil War that raged from the 1920s to 1949 with a short intermission during World War II so China could unify and fight Japan.
Are you naive enough to think that the Bill Gates cabal of billionaires, the Koch brothers’ ALEC machine, and/or the Walton family dynasty will just sit back and leave you alone as you built your perfectly pure and angelic political machine?
Instead, find the individuals in the Democratic Party (you’ve already named some) that are rising through the ranks achieving power that you can support and join them to turn that political ship around and change its course.
LikeLike
Lloyd Lofthouse I totally agree with your assessment–all the bricks are there in BOTH parties–the tension between truly conservative and truly progressive thought is a part of the dynamism of history itself-(emphasis on TRULY–and the movement is supposed to be upward rather than towards the extremes on either side). But the bricks are rearranged and distorted at present–(so much more so in the Republican party, so it seems).
The distorting influences, however, are not in the outer structure but the inner demoralization and destruction that occurs in those who “people” either movement. And presently, the negative aspects of unleashed (and apparently comatose and/or drunken) capitalism have a grip on the hearts and minds of those in both movements.
But (as you say) the same forces that COULD keep a new movement relatively clear of such negatives are already present in both parties. They just need to be championed and actively supported by those who understand and value the political ground we all stand on. Those who understand the situation can use the power that is presently there to right what is wrong with it.
BTW, your China example goes WAYYYYY back in China’s history to thousands of years BCE. (See Francis Fukuyama. “The Origins of Political Order from Prehuman Times to the French Revolution” [2011]. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.) It’s remarkable how history really does repeat itself in these more general movements. But in my view, your take on it is right-on.
LikeLike
Lloyd’s historical examples are appropriate and Ed’s pessimism about the tensions in the Democratic Party are myopic. Economic and social tensions within parties has a long tradition in American history. Think Reagan Democrats, Dixiecrats, Rockefeller vs. Goldwater factions, and as far back as Jefferson vs. Adams or Hamilton vs. Burr. Throwing up your hands, giving up and resignation (as Diane has reminded all of us over and over again, even when I want to do so) are not options if we care…as we do.
LikeLike
Again, I am knocked out by your erudition, and by the analysis that you do so easily because you are incredibly educated, and can remember stuff the rest of us forgot, or never knew.
This is exactly the case these guys will not stand by
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
I fear it is over, Lloyd, this moment in history when people like us had a chance at a good life.
My life is like a fairy tale, in retrospect.
We went to great public schools ( Bernie Sanders was in mY high school class) and so did our kids.
My college (Brooklyn College) was almost free (45 bucks a semester) and my boys won scholarships and had grants so it did not bankrupt us, although it still was not easy on my teacher’s pay.
My husband did not go to college, but after his army service became an employee of AT&T.
One son is a cardiologist, and the other CEO of a successful internet company he created.
We bought a home in 1966, for 30 grand, and own it and our acre of land in Rockland County.
My husband and I have (for now) a pension, medical benefits ( him from Verizon — after a lifetime with the phone company; me as a NYC teacher who began in 1963.)
We have social security for now, and maybe we will see our retirement hold out against the forces of evil.
I have never taken a cruise, or been out of the country, and have no credit debt because we have been able to live well on what we both earn, staying out of debt.
Americano has been very, very good to me, but the future looks dark for my grandkids.
The liars are in charge. Propaganda pours forth in a tsunami to a citizenry that is ignorant beyond belief. There is no leader in cite, and the calumny within the government is astonishing.
and then, there is the schools,. That war I know.
This happened to me, as you know: http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
and if it could happen to a teacher like me http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
what chance do the novice teaching now, have?
LikeLike
This war to save the U.S. Constitution and the republic isn’t over yet. The billionaires are acting like it is but they are wrong. It isn’t. I think the resistance has just begun to fight and the last few years was gearing up to fight the battle and drive back the evil forces of the autocrats.
LikeLike
You are a marine. You will not rest while they do their dirtiwork. Neither will I. We write.
LikeLike
For whatever its worth, I’ve worked as a legislative staffer, have organized and implemented grassroots advocacy campaigns in education, medical research, and health regulatory issues and Lloyd is far closer to the truth than Ed will ever be.
First, phone calls are generally useless. Your call goes to young staffer–an intern or someone who has their first job–who literally take calls on every issue under the sun. They have no clue what people are calling about, take for/against tallies that few people pay attention to, and generally will answer you with something to the effect of: “I’ll be sure to pass your views on the senator/congressman.” The exception to the rule is when an issue becomes so big that it clogs up the phone lines, something like a Supreme Court nomination or a big issue that dominates the headlines and evening news. But it is aggregate numbers that matter, not individual messages. If you think your calls are being taken seriously, then you may as well agree with the argument that Hillary Clinton only won the popular vote because of widespread voter fraud.
Second, emails are generally the same as phone calls, the only difference being that the computer algorithms generate pre-approved responses (if you are for the issue, you get one response, if you are against it, you get another). Occasionally when there are more than one issue addressed or nuances that don’t fit the algorithms, the message goes to a legislative correspondent who then patches together pre-approved language into “personal response.”
Third, snail mail letters are effective if the stars line up such as: the arguments in the letter are personal with relevant examples and emotion and it reaches the eyes of a sympathetic staffer. While that is sometimes effective, more often than not, you will get an equivocal response that ends with “your views will be important to me should this issue ever be considered on the floor of the Senate/House.” In other words, nothing.
If you do not know the names of: a local staffer who deals with constituents on the issue areas you care about, a DC legislative assistant and the legislative correspondent who supports him or her, and, if you are lucky, the local staff director and DC legislative director or chief of staff, then you are not doing effective citizen lobbying. You must contact one in the local and one in the DC staff a minimum of twice a year. You must be specific about your issue and remind them of what you contacted them about previously. And to be very effective, you should coordinate with other constituents who are like minded. You should share your correspondence to the boss with them.
You should also know what committee/subcommittee memberships your senator/congressman has. If education is your issues and your senator/representative is not on the authorizing or appropriating committee on the issues you care about, then it is very unlikely that your views will ever reach the level of the boss. If it does, the best you can hope for is for that senator/representative to sign on to “Dear Colleague” letters about specific issue, i.e., they become lobbyists of a sort who try to influence the committees of jurisdiction. And if you are a real effective citizen lobbyist, you should find out about those “Dear Colleague” letters and make the staffers aware of them. If they are on the right committees, the tips below are even more important.
If you can’t get to DC, you should try to schedule visits with local staffers (so that they become your lobbyists to their DC counterparts) once or twice a year and also request visits with their bosses during congressional recess periods. Town hall meetings used to be incredibly effective when only a dozen or so people showed up. That dynamic has changed dramatically since polarization has set in.
Letters to the editor are more effective than phone calls or letters. They are more effective if you’ve done relationship building with staffers; you can make them aware of the letters. I have often received notes from my reps responding to letters I’ve written.
One last tip. Should you get paper responses from your senators/representatives with signatures, know that signature machines are used. They have separate templates with full signatures and first names, the latter to make it more “personal.” But know that the boss has never touched that letter. When you get short, hand-written notes, then you know you’ve actually reached your senator/representative.
But please don’t be deluded into thinking that your occasional call or email is actually accomplishing somethings. If you’re not willing to do your homework, build relationships, and keep it up since there is regular staff turnover (meaning you have to start the process all over again) you’re not engaging in effective advocacy.
LikeLike
My BA is in journalism and my MFA is in writing. Earning those two degrees, I took more than one class that taught us how to write (snail mail) letters that had a better chance to gain the attention of a CEO or an elected official. I tend to use a technique that was described as a sandwich.
Part of the class was to write letters to real people so we had to go out and find problems with issues or products we could write about. Every letter I wrote reached the person I sent it to and the results were often amazing. Like the time I wrote a letter to the CEO of Ford because of a problem I was having with the brakes on a new Ford I was driving at the time. The CEO sent an engineer from Ford’s headquarter on the east coast to California to have a look at my car and he found the problem that local dealer’s mechanics could find. The new car dealer asked me how I achieved that. He said he’d complained to Ford about issues a number of times and was ignored.
Reseach the individual and organization you are writing the letter to. Discover something relevant about them that you can use in your letter. Start out positive and mention what you learned about them or their organization that you liked. Then in the meat of the sandwich between the lettuce and mustard, focus on the issue/problem you want their help with, and conclude with more praise, with evidence, why you think they are the one that can fix the problem you have pointed out and then offers a suggested solution.
The only time this hasn’t worked for me was when I couldn’t find an actual address for the CEO of the company I wanted to sent the letter too. I couldn’t even locate the address for that large corporation’s headquarters, but to be fair I did discover they were in the process of moving from Texas to a northeast state and the move wasn’t done yet. I think they stopped listing their old address before the new one was ready.
LikeLike
Those are great examples, Lloyd, and are indicative of what I meant to convey about engagement in the process. One of my most memorable experiences as a congressional staffer was in the early 90s when the Violence Against Women Act was still a bill that looked like it was stalled. Two letters came across my desk from women who had been beaten by their husbands over a period of years that implored my boss to cosponsor the legislation. They poured their hearts out in excruciating detail. If I remember correctly, they were the only two letters we ever received on the issue, which should have put it at the bottom of our priority pile. As I was trying to respond with my boss’s position that he wouldn’t cosponsor because of technical jurisdiction issues (it would put an issue in the federal courts that had always been dealt with in state and local courts), I let it sit for a couple of weeks as it festered inside of me. I couldn’t in good conscience send responses that distilled their pain into a technical issue.
So one day I knocked on my boss’s door and asked if I could speak to him in private, something I had never done before. I read the letters to him and he was as moved as I was. As he thought about it, he said, “I know this bill will have problems if it becomes law [he was right on that], but we have to do the right thing. This is important.” There was no political payoff for him; he was staunchly pro-life and had never been strongly associated with women’s issues. But as a result of his views on this bill and his unexpected, subsequent strong support for this issue–which included a floor speech I helped write–created new relationships with women’s groups who had always seen him as suspect at best that lasted until he retired. They still were not inclined to vote for him, but they knew he was not their enemy and appreciated knowing that he took their views seriously.
This is a long-winded way of confirming your thoughts, Lloyd. A well-argued letter won’t always make a difference, but it has a better chance than a short call to an informed staffer or an email that never reaches human hands. I may reach a reader who understands that there is a committed, interested person who took the time to try to explain their position.
LikeLike
I am stunned by the response my writing and letters have had on some very important people. I am always a bit nervous when I speak truth to power, but that never stops me.
I am happy with the success I have in making a difference, even a small one.
LikeLike
I’m with you, Susan. A thoughtful argument matters more than an symbolic act of convenience.
And I meant “uninformed staffer,” not “informed” in my treatise above.
LikeLike
I joined Bernie a long time ago.
LikeLike
Good! Now call Bernie, as I have a few times, and tell him to stop stalling and finally introduce his single-payer Medicare for All bill in the Senate so it complements Rep. John Conyers’ HR 676 in the House.
Opposing the idiot Trump is NOT enough.
Democrats must lead and provide a positive program for ALL Americans.
Bernie & Warren must start opposing the murderous U.S. Empire and its bloated militarism budget.
If they and the DNC continue on the same path as the last 30 years, we are cooked.
LikeLike
LOL. I have called Bernie many times. I went to High School, with him and he was president of my class! I have tried to get through to him by contacting his brother and his friend, and his office. I wanted to speak with him during his campaign, and explain how he could win the votes of millions of teachers by speaking truth about the war on the plot and the ploy..The plot to end public education and the ploy, get rid of the professional TEACHER-PRACTITIONER who knows what she needs in the PRACTICE—and knows WHAT LEARNING LOOKS LIKE IN HER PRACTICE, and cannot be fooled by magic elixirs. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
Talking sense to Bernie is not easy!
LikeLike
Ah Lloyd. So smart! and So Right! The media is owned by the billionaires. Propaganda is the norm in this post truth society.
LikeLike
Ed, your rants remind me of the Three Stooges short in which they decide to form a Women Haters Club after having some bad experiences with the opposite sex. We definitely need to reform the Democratic Party, from the local to the national levels. It’s up to us.
But painting everyone with the same brush is no strategy. Your solution of a People’s Party sounds good in theory. What are you doing to make it a reality?
LikeLike
Just when you’ve cringed repeatedly from all the reports this week about how a majority of the party of stupid that’s controlling our government think college is bad for our country http://www.newsweek.com/republicans-believe-college-education-bad-america-donald-trump-media-fake-news-634474, thank God, along comes Henry Giroux with another very insightful article which underscores what is near and dear to us here:
“There’s no doubt that democracy is under siege in several countries, including the United States, Turkey, the Philippines, India and Russia. Yet what’s often overlooked in analyses of the state of global democracy is the importance of education. Education is necessary to respond to the formative and often poisonous cultures that have given rise to the right-wing populism that’s feeding authoritarian ideologies across the globe.”
in Rallying cry: Youth must stand up to defend democracy:
https://theconversation.com/rallying-cry-youth-must-stand-up-to-defend-democracy-81003
LikeLike
An issue that has fallen off the radar is the attack on the ethnic studies program in Tuscon. For about 10 years, Tuscon has supported Ethnic Studies for all students, but the Mexican studies program was singled out for attack by conservatives. Some will remember Curtis Acosta’s film, “Precious Knowledge”, and the subsequent “librotraficantes” movement to supply Tucson teachers with books that were banned from their classrooms.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/arizona-ethnic-studies-bans-unintended-result-underground-libraries
A trial is underway.
“We go to Arizona, where a hearing is underway that will decide whether a ban on ethnic studies which eliminated the Mexican-American studies program in Tucson schools is unconstitutional. In 2010, Arizona passed a controversial law banning the teaching of any class designed for a particular ethnic group that would “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.” Following the passage of the bill, then-Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction John Huppenthal ruled in 2011 that the Mexican-American studies program violated the state law, despite an independent auditor’s finding showing otherwise. The Tucson Unified School District ultimately suspended the acclaimed Mexican-American studies program in 2012 under the threat of losing up to $14 million of funding if they allowed it to continue. We are joined by Richard Martinez, one of the attorneys representing the families challenging the law.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/17/in_precedent_setting_trial_lawyers_say
LikeLike
I think every American should read today’s warning from billionaire Nick Hanauer to his fellow 1%ers, because I believe he’s right. It’s probably just a matter of time before disenfranchised citizens on the right and left, who have been struggling to make it to (and stay in) the middle class actively revolt against the inequitable distribution of wealth in this country and start coming with pitchforks after rich elites (and the politicians they’ve bought): “To My Fellow Plutocrats: You Can Cure Trumpism”
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/18/to-my-fellow-plutocrats-you-can-cure-trumpism-215347
LikeLike
Be careful what you wish for.
LikeLike
If the situation doesn’t reverse, then I’m not wishing for a civil war. I want one and I want it to be bloody. My only worry is that the people who rebel won’t know where to find the billionaires that are asking to be shot by an angry mob.
LikeLike
a return to fairness is demanded. “Fairness is a contract’s fundamental purpose. A raw, moralistic conception of fairness—that people shouldn’t get screwed—
“In the eyes of the elite establishment, businesses are now job creators and pillars of the community. Executives who bend the rules are “good people who have done one bad thing,” in the words of one S.E.C. lawyer reluctant to bring charges against individuals. Prosecutors no longer punish lawbreakers, but instead make corporations promise to behave better in the future — in the end amounting to “at most a tollbooth on the bankster turnpike.”
“There’s just one problem. While the “unelected permanent governing class” may have been willing to look the other way when highly paid bankers wrecked the economy, many of the workers who lost their jobs and families who lost their homes were not. Outside the Beltway, the fact that the Wall Street titans who blew up the financial system suffered little more than slight reductions in their bonuses only reinforced the perception that the “system” is “rigged” — with the consequences we know only too well. Many people simply want to live in a world that is fair.”
“THE CHICKENSHIT* CLUB Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives” By Jesse Eisinger. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/books/review/the-chickenshit-club-jesse-eisinger-.html?_r=0
This is paragraph that knocked me out, as I thought about accountability, and the liar’s paradise that is America today:
“Corruption can take many forms — not just bags of cash under the table, but a creeping rot that saps our collective motivation to pursue the cause of justice. As Upton Sinclair might have written were he alive today: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his résumé depends upon his not understanding it.” The book review mentioned the symbiotic relationship developed between Big Law and the Department of Justice and corporations like the big banks which got off paying symbolic penalties, while defense firms raked in huge fees, and prosecutors earned P.R. victories — as long as everyone played along:
LikeLike
Today, “just six men have as much wealth as half of the world’s population” and the majority of those men are Americans:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/02/20/morbid-inequality-now-just-six-men-have-much-wealth-half-worlds-population
I wish for the 1% and their political enablers (and blind followers) to wake up and grow a heart before raging masses come after their families and them for being greedy, callous and insensitive to the suffering of so many people who are less fortunate than they.
If people revolt against the ruling class, it won’t be pretty and it could spark global dissent since it’s really a worldwide issue. I wish to prevent that. Pretending it’s not likely to happen is just foolish, when we could and should be taking action to try to avert such disaster.
LikeLike
It can be rather challenging to try to disentangle the agenda of everyday radical right evangelicals from the agenda of plutocrats, such as DeVos, but this fascinating article can help in understanding those strange bedfellows and the origin of their “public choice economics:”
“The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan to Hijack American Democracy”
http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/radical-rights-stealth-plan-america?akid=15882.2230613.f539DN&rd=1&src=newsletter1079871&t=9
LikeLike
Thanks for this link. Posted a quick link to it at Oped news.
The deep state, led by the Kochs are undoing American Democracy.
They want a nation of serfs.
Her is a good one about them.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
LikeLike
Thank you. I appreciate the link to the Rolling Stone article.
The part I don’t get is how anyone, except the Kochs and their ilk, could support deregulation. When there is so much evidence demonstrating how business people have cut corners, defrauded consumers, exploited workers and otherwise placed profits above the well being of humankind and our planet, why would people want to roll back the legislation that was enacted to protect them and prevent such detrimental, self-serving business practices? It just makes no sense to me why anyone but crooks and scammers would welcome a return to the lawlessness of the wild west.
LikeLike
I feel like this article from NPR on a community college dropping its Algebra requirement has interesting connections to some of our topics: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/19/538092649/say-goodbye-to-x-y-should-community-colleges-abolish-algebra
LikeLike
Could a doctor do without algebra? Yes, I think so. Certainly financial math or statistics will be more valuable. In Florida students must pass an Algebra 1 end of course exam to graduate from high school. There are still students who struggle to do this all the while there are students who have passed this requirement in 7th and 8th grade. I think the more important factor that needs to be looked into is how algebra is being taught.
LikeLike
Not necessarily disagreeing with you, but it’s probably not as easy as you think. Maybe not a perfect analogy but could every kid run a 6-minute mile? Some are well suited for it. Others have different strengths. There are many paths to success.
LikeLike
A more balanced than usual article on VAM: http://prospect.org/article/teacher-tests-test-teachers
LikeLike
Ohio Algebra teacher,
Posted that yesterday
LikeLike
Ah! Apologies for the redundancy, Diane.
LikeLike
Fascinating article from 2013 on Margaret Thatcher and her education policies. Seems like she beat Ed Reformers here to the punch!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2013/apr/15/margaret-thatcher-education-legacy-gove
LikeLike
Here’s an appropriate response to Maggie Thatcher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtwavcblPzo
Perhaps we will have similar songs here someday.
LikeLike
Diane, I am curious about your comments regarding this article.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2017/07/21/teacher-certification-makes-public-school-education-worse-not-better/#5197116730fe
LikeLike
Nicknivens,
The article in Forbes was written by an economist who clearly knows nothing about the demands of teaching.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/omribenshahar/2017/07/21/teacher-certification-makes-public-school-education-worse-not-better/#4ead054f730f
He says the following:
Clearly, money makes a difference. It costs more to educate students who have high neeeds than those who come to school well-fed, healthy, and secure in their home life.
If money doesn’t matter, why do affluent suburbs and elite private schools spend so much?
His real target is certification.
Teachers who teach in private schools do not need certification because their students have been carefully selected. They will not have students with profound disabilities or ELLs.
Teaching is a profession, not a pastime. There is a body of skills and knowledge.
The writer of this article pretends to rely on evidence yet does not offer an example of a school district that gets good results by hiring unprepared teachers.
If you follow his logic, there should be no standards for new teachers, not even a college degree.
Why does he think “good” teachers will flock to a district that has low salaries and no standards for teachers?
Where is the evidence?
LikeLike
dianeravitch I think there is still this strange idea out there in USA fantasy-land (even in some parents) that teachers are really overpaid babysitters. If teachers “only” teach children, then they must need no credentials to do so. WORKING BUT FAULTY ASSUMPTION: Anyone can babysit children. Aside from that, there is the quite conscious and concerted effort to destroy and replace education as we know it, that is, as a PUBLIC INSTITUTION that is directly rooted in the Democracy and its Constitution and, therefore, free for ALL children.
LikeLike
Fordham — an organization my local newspaper turns to as middle of the road voice on education policy — chimes in about how states can meet ESSA requirements…(or how can we make standardized tests even more intrusive than they’ve already been):
https://edexcellence.net/articles/how-states-can-avoid-proficiency-rates-when-measuring-academic-achievement-under-essa?utm_source=Fordham+Updates&utm_campaign=c8dc23149f-20160918_LateLateBell9_16_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9e8246adf-c8dc23149
LikeLike
On Secretary DeVos and the Education Department: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/betsy-devos-secretary-of-education.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=s1
LikeLike
The kids’ drawings of DeVos are the best!
LikeLike
Learning and teaching are mysterious processes. TO understand them fully would mean to discover the secret of our lies. For we are, perhaps above anything else, learning and teaching animals. I hope we all agree that teaching does not consist in telling and insisting, nor learning in listening and repeating. The image of a learner’s soul is not an empty pitcher into which teaching pours the fluid of knowledge. This picture of teaching and learning, by the way, is ineradicable.
There are perhaps two ways of describing teaching and learning in an appropriate manner. The one is that of begetting and conceiving. The word of the teacher acts as the form which in-forms the material of the learner’s soul, in-forms the capability this soul has, and trans-forms it into a knowing soul. This is, on the whole, the Aristotelian view. The process of learning and teaching is a generative one, and a great deal depends not only on the activity and effectiveness of the teacher’s work but also on the receptivity and potentiality of the learner’s soul. The other way of describing teaching and learning is that of eliciting answers and gaining insight from within. Through questioning and arguing the teacher compels the learner to pull out of himself, as it were, something slumbering in him at all times. This is, on the whole, the Socratic and Platonic view. Here again a great deal depends on the quality of the teacher’s questions and on the quality of the learner’s soul. But just as questioning has its place in the Aristotelian scheme, begetting is an important element in Socrates’ practice. Learning from book, by images, through associations, and whatever other way of learning may be mentioned, falls easily into the patterns of those two fundamental views. I doubt whether modern psychologies of learning have added anything to them.
Jacob Klein, On Liberal Education
LikeLike
Chester Finn speaks on Personalized Learning from his Ivory Tower: https://edexcellence.net/articles/can-personalized-learning-prevail?utm_source=Fordham+Updates&utm_campaign=1ea3b7c6c1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9e8246adf-1ea3b7c6c1-71494877&mc_cid=1ea3b7c6c1&mc_eid=50947fba94
LikeLike
Thank you for saying, “ivory tower.” Mr. Finn does what many have done, making statements that only puff up there own egos. As I read the article I kept waiting for this clearly written account of how education would be restructured. The specifics of where and when students would do this learning. How would anyone know that their child had completed a level of education. Where would teachers fit into this and what would teaching look like. Instead we get nothing. What annoys me is that people like Mr Finn are the ones who often end up on the board of some group that is promoting some reform, pulling in money, all the while thumbing their noses at us who spend the time with the students.
LikeLike
Petrilli (and Wright) weighs in on currently submitted ESSA plans. He’s on a mission to make sure teachers/schools don’t disproportionately focus on “bubble kids.” Yep, that’s his silver bullet.
https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-first-17-essa-accountability-plans-correct-many-nclb-era-errors
LikeLike
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/07/30/do-vouchers-actually-expand-school-choice-not-necessarily-it-depends-on-how-theyre-designed/
Chalkbeat article was of interest
LikeLike
If charters were helping neighborhood schools, there wouldn’t be noisy protests from the schools being “helped”
LikeLike
Well, that was quick! I guess 15 minutes of fame was too much:
LikeLike
I predicted this at OEN. I said his days are numbered.
He is an ego-maniac — the media was, suddenly all about HIM, and not about Donald. THAT was his mistake, taking the spotlight and imagining that he, in this news job, was part of a team with the president of the US. hahahaha!
All that “I love the president,’ was not enough to save his ass, once a military man took over the White House.
Each day, I pray, because there is a madman in charge, and no one, no this children, or the military will be able to stop him if he decides to strike North Korea.
LikeLike
Marine Corps Generals Kelly and Mattis studied Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and Sun Tzu says to keep your enemies closer to you than your friends.
Well, both Kelly and Mattis are very close to their alleged enemy #FakePresident Donald Trump. I hope both of these 4-star generals take their oath of office seriously.
Basically, the oath says, “”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of ____________________, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Notice that the oath does not include loyalty to the President.
The military oath is different and also does not mention the President.
“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
Unless Kelly and Mattis are liars, that means it is their sworn duty to protect the U.S. Constitution against #FakePresident Donald Trump and a corrupt GOP.
LikeLike
Ah, Lloyd. You are a treasure.. I hope this is the case. The chaos seems unsurmountable.
LikeLike
Sounds scarily like a military coup, Lloyd. (Not that I’m rooting for the Cheeto.)
LikeLike
There’s a reason the military takes that oath to defend the U.S. Constitution – just in case someone like Trump comes along that fancies themselves a Putin or Hitler or any other tin pot dictator.
If everything else fails because Congress and the courts aren’t doing their job, then that oath means the military must honor that oath and step in or they have failed too.
The generals are Americans. Would they take over or only hold power until an election could be held and then return to their job?
The military is our last defense against a tyrant destroying the republic when all else fails.
There is also a very strong chance that this will end in a Civil War where states leave the union to defy Trump. IF that happens, the military will split just like they did during Lincoln’s Civil War, but this time the states that leave the union aren’t fighting to defent slavery. They will be fighting to make sure slavery doesn’t return.
LikeLike
Lloyd, I’m just worried that the generals may have had too much Koch to drink. Civilians are supposed to run the show in our country. The supine GOP are playing the role of enablers while our State Department and its career diplomats and other officials are stripped of their ability to keep us safe via peace.
John Kelly, in particular, is worrisome. When he was appointed to head DHS, I heard security analyst Juliette Kayyem, who worked in the agency under Obama, say that she thought he would be a moderating force in an administration with Bannon and Miller holding so much sway. That’s not how it played out – he became even more of a hard liner.
It seems some odd fetish Trump has about “his generals” – as though surrounding himself with them will make their strength and discipline rub off on him.
LikeLike
Yes, this is something to worry about, but that oath for military officers might mean something to most of these officers. The generals working for the malignant narcissist are not the only generals out there, and Hillary Clinton had more generals and admirals who supported her than #FakePresident Donald Trump did.
I think that most of the generals and admirals in the United States are American citizens first and they believe in the U.S. Constitution as it is. If they see that Trump or ALEC are threats to that Constitution they might just act and make a course correction.
Instead of a military junta taking over, I think we are heading for civil war #2 where the separatists will fight to keep the United States a Constitutional Republic with the document the Founding Fathers gave us.
The military split during the 1st Civil War. Robert E. Lee was the commandant of West Point and Lincoln asked him to lead the northern army. When Grant became president, he pardoned Lee. Grant and Lee were friends. They fought together early in their military life. Those same dynamics exist in today’s military. For instance, Mattis and John Allen are close friends, and Allen was a protege of Mattis. Mattis even tried to hire Allen to work with him in the DOE, but the Kremlin’s Agent Orange said no as he has said no to most of the people Mattis wants to appoint to a position in the defense department.
Mattis wants to hire people he can trust. Trump is listening to Bannon who wants Mattis to work with people Bannon can trust.
https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2016/07/25/marine-gen-john-allen-has-endorsed-hillary-clinton-for-president-here-s-why-that-matters/
LikeLike
It is interesting that the same qualities and standards that got him ousted do not apply to our Dear Leader. It’s good to be the faux king!
LikeLike
GregB Isn’t he right out central casting for a look-alike Jim Carrey mad-scientist character.
LikeLike
It would have to be a farce. He could never be taken seriously as a character in a Coppola- or Scorsese-type movie. Joe Pesci has more gravitas.
LikeLike
GregB HA!
LikeLike
Not totally on topic…but not totally off, either. A blog post on Lazslo Polgar’s book about raising his three daughters as (chess) geniuses.
LikeLike
Indianapolis is in real trouble. Yet, we’re supposed to be so proud of our “largest voucher program in the country” thanks to Pence. #unionstrong #strongertogether
http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2017/07/28/indianapolis-public-school-leaders-stripped-a-traditional-public-school-of-its-teachers-union-and-few-saw-it-coming/
LikeLike
John Thompson on the negative impact of Ed Reform: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-school-reform-made-the-teacher-shortage-worse_us_597d0bbde4b0c69ef70528b8
LikeLike
EdNext claims high stakes teacher evaluation is driving success in DC: http://educationnext.org/a-lasting-impact-high-stakes-teacher-evaluations-student-success-washington-dc/
LikeLike
The Columbus Dispatch report on ECOT’s buying of Ohio politicians: http://www.dispatch.com/news/20170801/ecot-leaders-give-122000-to-gop-while-school-in-financial-turmoil
LikeLike
Lloyd,
I read the article you linked – I have a different take – Trump does not need a Hillary anywhere near his admin – and, although you and others here don’t like the Commander in Chief, he is the final say that Mattis has to follow the orders. He want to clean the sewer not add to it.
“Retired Marine Gen. John Allen says presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is the right person to be the next commander in chief.
It might be his opinion, but it might call attention to judgement of politicians.
.”.. On Monday, he said that Clinton has the patience and understanding of the world to make smart decisions about using military power
“I have no doubt that she is the leader we need at this time to keep our country safe, and I trust her with that most sacred responsibility of Commander-in-Chief.”
If Mattis can trust her, his commander does not and he does not need Bannon approval on that decision – common sense dictates with her history of world politics and reset button failures…..
LikeLike
jscheidell, we can all feel reassured by Trump’s measured judgment and temperament. Who hired The Mooch? Was that Bannon? Or Miller?
LikeLike
You said, “although you and others here don’t like the Commander in Chief, he is the final say that Mattis has to follow the orders. He wants to clean the sewer not add to it.”
No, Mattis doesn’t have to follow orders. Do you remember the Nuremberg trials? “I was just following orders” is not an excuse.
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
Mattis took an oath as a military officer, and he took a similar oath to become Secretary of Defense. He did not take an oath to be totally obedient and loyal to the President of the United States.
The oaths Mattis has taken while in the service of his country means that if the U.S. #FakePresdient and traitor of a commander chief Donald Trump gives the former general orders that meant the former Marine general would have to violate those oaths, he is duty bound to refuse or he would be as guilty as Trump.
What Mattis does after he refuses is up to him? If Mattis decides that the Malignant Orange Turnip is a threat to the U.S. Constitution, it is up to Mattis and all of the active U.S. military to decide to act or do nothing. He could resign or lead a Civil War.
I don’t think everyone in the U.S. military will sit there and let that lying sack of toxic lard in the What House destroy the U.S. Republic and the Constitution that guides it.
Even Trump had to swear an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. The day he took that oath, he broke it and has repeatedly stepped on it.
Pence is a different type of monster, maybe worse or the same, but probably sane. Trump is and always has been a sewer. The U.S. Government that Trump calls a sewer evolved and grew under the guidance of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Government is not the problem. The problem is people like Trump, his minions, his family, and his supporters.
LikeLike
There was an article today in the Washington Post saying that Mattis and Kelly have an agreement. They will not leave the country at the same time. One will always be in DC to watch Trump.
LikeLike
See:
Retired Generals Serving Under Trump Made Pact to Never Leave Him Alone to Make His Own Decisions | Alternet
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/retired-generals-serving-under-trump-made-pact-never-leave-him-alone-make-his-own
LikeLike
Ed, thank you
LikeLike
You’re very welcome.
As a now-retired teacher after 32.5 years of very-fulfilling years in public secondary schools in a very progressive district (English), I appreciate all you do to keep public school education alive in the U.S.
As an anti-war, justice and peace activist/writer, I cannot separate social needs, including support for public education (among so many other such needs) from the hundreds of billions of dollars wasted on the murderous U.S. Empire, including its many illegal wars of aggression on seven Muslim nations; its more than 700 military bases in more than 70 foreign nations; its bloated military budget (much more than the military budgets of the next 8 nations COMBINED); its illegal ‘special ops’ teams deployed in more than 130 foreign countries; and its insane ‘modernization’ of its nuclear weapons arsenal of more than 6,500 nuclear weapons of omnicide costing more than one TRILLION dollars over the next 30 years.
If you would like sources for all of the above facts, I can supply them.
One more pertinent point about the U.S. military officers and their alleged ‘allegiance’ and loyalty to the U.S. Constitution as a check on Trump: since 1945, the U.S. has NEVER obeyed the Constitution’s requirement that Congress declare war, not the President.
The last time Congress followed the Constitution to declare war was on December 8, 1941, after FDR made his “Day of Infamy” speech about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Since then, the U.S. has continually violated the Constitution in its wars of empire with no Congressional declarations of war, from Korea (“police action”) through Vietnam (the Tonkin Gulf lies), through Grenada, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen.
Desperately-needed financial support for public schools, infrastructure repairs, transition from a fossil fool economy to a sustainable-energy economy, universal health care (Medicare for All), and ending poverty and homelessness in the wealthiest nation in history is impossible when much more than 54% of the federal discretionary budget is squandered on supposed ‘defense’ in the bloated military/militarism budget.
The movement for public schools CANNOT be separated from the movement for cutting the bloated military budget and ending the murderous, exploitative U.S. global Empire.
Catastrophic climate disaster and nuclear weapons are the two existential threats we all now face. It is time we ALL addressed these two threats which put ALL other issues to shame.
LikeLike
That was worth a laugh. I’m not surprised.
The motto of the Marine Corps is Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
Faithful to what?
For most Marines, it doesn’t mean they will blindly follow the president. It means I’ve got your back. In combat, most Marines fight for each other, not the president, Congress, the U.S. Constitution, or the country.
LikeLike
OG. We don’t like him?
You think that is the issue.
There is mad child in the white house, and north Korea is lobbing missiles.
Gee JS. Here is the baby who scare us, because like all children , he is ignorant and impetuous, and like some, he is malicious and selfish. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-a-la-mode.html?_r=0
LikeLike
SLS
No that isn’t the issue, but,
I wonder what your comment has to do with the issue of Mattis and his desire for Hillary to which I referenced from Lloyd.
And Lloyd is correct – he doesn’t have to follow orders – he can resign, retire whatever – but, due to the oath taken, as indicated above – Trump denying Mattis’ request for Hillary doesn’t reach the issue of protecting the constitution.
LikeLike
Please read these:
Terrifying news about the state of the Republic – Fabius Maximus website
Will America end from a pitiful, even disgraceful, cause? – Fabius Maximus website
LikeLike
Where did I say that Mattis had a “desire” for Hillary?
Mattis wanted to appoint former 4-star Marine Corps General John Allen, his protege, to a position at the DOE, and Trump said no. Allen is the general who came out in support of Hillary during the campaign, not Mattis.
In fact, Mattis has wanted to appoint others to leadership positions in the DOE and Trump has said no to most or all of them leaving those positions empty. The reason Trump keeps saying no is that most if not all of the people Mattis wanted publicly supported Hillary during the campaign or came out against Trump even if they didn’t support Hillary.
Trump has said he always gets even. He is known to hold grudges for years and even decades always looking for an opportunity to get back at someone he felt wronged him in some way.
I never said that Mattis wanted Hillary to work at the DOE.
I never said Mattis had a desire for Hillary.
I never said Mattis was loyal to Hillary.
I never said that he was one of the generals that supported Hillary during the campaign.
And if I did say something that sounded like that, it must have been a typo that you twisted out of context.
LikeLike
Lloyd,
I went back and looked at my remarks – I don’t believe I accused/said that said you of any of the above –
I did reference General Allen from the article you linked and his support for Hillary and that might have been the reason Trump didn’t care for Allen. Since Allen supported clinton I am sure Mattis was well aware of his political leanings
“The reason Trump keeps saying no is that most if not all of the people Mattis wanted publicly supported Hillary during the campaign or came out against Trump even if they didn’t support Hillary.”
Now why would anyone want to have people on the staff who favored Hillary – he has enough embedded leakers. I see no problem in declining those individuals and recommendations
LikeLike
Then someone must have hacked your e-mail and be sending comments in your name.
LikeLike
Ed Chiaccio
Your last paragraph reference ” Catastrophic climate disaster” as an existential threats we all now face. A threats which puts ALL other issues to shame.”
What I find in this issue is – Fear has become the new national anthem, and the history of this misbegotten movement has been written in failed predictions and overwrought, doomsday language. I am sure their lies some strands of truth in man causality but the humor abounds.
Al Gore is back with a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.
For the last forty years those who truly believe that man is responsible for the impending death of the world are prone to some fairly ridiculous statements.
From University of California Professor Kenneth Watt’s 1970 statement that the world will be “11 degrees colder by the year 2000” to Climate Research Unit scientist David Viner’s statement (in the year 2000) that snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” within just a few years.
61 yr old Bill Nye , “the Science Guy,” told the LA Times:
… wants all the old people to die, preferably sooner rather than later, because they stand in the way of his holy mission to save the planet from climate change.
Even in this minefield of absurdity, every prediction Gore made has proven wrong = Manhattan was to be underwater by now, because of Greenland ice melt. Mount Kilimanjaro was going to be snow free.
We would be battling rapidly rising temperatures; stronger, more frequent storms.
He blames climate change for the breakoff of an iceberg in Antarctica,
Even the climate scientists say, “No, no, no, no, this was not part of climate change. This was a natural calving.” Even climate change people are disagreeing with Gore on that, and even Gore admitted that the Paris accords would do nothing about climate change, that the Paris accords will not mean anything.Climaye change purpose now is to be a disguised argument for socialism and the global redistribution of wealth, two of the major goals of the Paris Agreement that Trump wisely yanked us out of.
Former UN climate chief Christiana Figuerres stated in 2012 at the UN’s Doha Conference: “It must be understood that what is occurring here, not just in Doha, but in the whole climate change process is a complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.”
He charts new ground making the tasteless claim that the battle for the Earth’s climate could be compared to some of the classic struggles for human rights.
“The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage and women’s rights, the civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa; the movement to stop the toxic phase of nuclear arms race and more recently the gay rights movement.” All of these, Gore said, preceded the climate change movement, putting his crusade firmly “in the tradition of all the great moral causes that have improved the circumstances of humanity throughout our history.”
Gore gets worse in my opinion – on CBS Sunday, “If we don’t act now, our children will inherit a world of stronger storms, worsening floods, deeper droughts, mega fires, tropical diseases spreading throughout vulnerable populations in all parts of the earth, melting ice caps flooding coastal cities, unsurvivable heat extremes, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees.”
How can we stop a stronger storm?
And they want us to believe that altering carbon emissions is gonna do this? Furthermore, “deeper droughts.” How do we stop them now?
If there is a drought that we’ve caused, we can end the drought by what? Making it rain!
Why can’t we make it rain wherever we want to, then? “Mega fires”? Well, mega fires happen every year and have happened every year, and they’re part of nature.
“Tropical diseases spreading through vulnerable populations, melting ice caps…”
Coastal cities are not being flooded.
“Unsurvivable heat extremes.”
More people die from cold than heat? More people freeze to death every year in the world than die from heat. So global warming would actually be good, if there were any of it.
Danish climate researcher Dr. Bjørn Lomborg points out that “if we measure the impact of every nation fulfilling every promise by 2030, the total temperature reduction will be 0.048°C (0.086°F) by 2100.” That’s less than five-hundredths of one degree! As many scientists and statisticians have observed, that amount is not even distinguishable from the various “noise” factors included in the temperature data.
Lomborg used the same MAGICC climate model software that was developed with funding from the U.S. EPA and that has been used in all five of the UN IPCC reports. He notes further: “Even if we assume that these promises would be extended for another 70 years, there is still little impact: if every nation fulfills every promise by 2030, and continues to fulfill these promises faithfully until the end of the century… the entirety of the Paris promises will reduce temperature rises by just 0.17°C (0.306°F) by 2100.”
A handful of scientists say humans have damaged the Earth’s ecosystems so horribly that we’re headed for the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago. These scientists claim two species vanish every year, over 200 in the last century. Of the 177 species of mammals, 40 percent have experienced a serious drop in population.
A co-author of the study is the disgraced Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich. He says the asteroid that hit Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, was not making a choice. But the coming mass extinction is the result of human choice: overpopulation, and overconsumption by the rich. Ehrlich complains that wildlife habitats have been plowed under and paved, replaced by buildings and strip malls. Of course, Amazon is gonna fix that.
Of course, this crisis comes with a deadline. The study gives us only two or three decades to straighten the problem out or else we’re done. Mass extinction will be so far gone we won’t be able to recover.
• Washington Post: Earth Is On Its Way To The Biggest Mass Extinction Since The Dinosaurs, Scientists Warn
Dr. Ehrlich, who rose to prominence in the 1960s after he wrote “The Population Bomb,” a book that predicted the imminent collapse of humanity because of overpopulation, said he saw a similar phenomenon in the animal world as a result of human activity.
“There is only one overall solution, and that is to reduce the scale of the human enterprise,” he said. “Population growth and increasing consumption among the rich is driving it.”
Yes, Stop having babies! Oh those nasty rich people
From an abstract on 4 ways to reduce emission: Abstract
Get Flash Player
Download video Transcript
View all Environ. Res. Lett. video abstracts
Current anthropogenic climate change is the result of greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere, which records the aggregation of billions of individual decisions. Here we consider a broad range of individual lifestyle choices and calculate their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, based on 148 scenarios from 39 sources. We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one fewer child (an average for developed countries of 58.6 tonnes CO2-equivalent (tCO2e) emission reductions per year), living car-free (2.4 tCO2e saved per year), avoiding airplane travel (1.6 tCO2e saved per roundtrip transatlantic flight) and eating a plant-based diet (0.8 tCO2e saved per year). These actions have much greater potential to reduce emissions than commonly promoted strategies like comprehensive recycling (four times less effective than a plant-based diet) or changing household lightbulbs (eight times less). Though adolescents poised to establish lifelong patterns are an important target group for promoting high-impact actions, we find that ten high school science textbooks from Canada largely fail to mention these actions (they account for 4% of their recommended actions), instead focusing on incremental changes with much smaller potential emissions reductions. Government resources on climate change from the EU, USA, Canada, and Australia also focus recommendations on lower-impact actions. We conclude that there are opportunities to improve existing educational and communication structures to promote the most effective emission-reduction strategies and close this mitigation gap.
How about Portland Oregon calling for a tax on bicycles – yes, bicycles – the one seemingly ecological approved transportation device.
The language of apocalyptic doom to earth is in itself a problem to getting a point across let alone data manipulation etc.
LikeLike
Diane,
I apologize for the use of the word – “gonna” spell check usually catches it and corrects
thus – going – better choice – I guess the request to speak English for green card immigrants is a necessity –
LikeLike
Pennsylvania’s new state plan has plenty of (though less) testing and, while collecting and publicizing lots of data, emphasizes its deemphasis on sorting and ranking schools. PA’s Ed Department is represented by (the appropriately named?) department deputy secretary, Matthew Stem, in the article: http://wskgnews.org/post/pa-unveils-school-accountability-system-deemphasises-standardized-tests#stream/0
LikeLike
Colorado on changing state standardized tests: http://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2017/07/05/from-csap-to-parcc-heres-how-colorados-standardized-tests-have-changed-and-whats-next/
LikeLike
Diane, I heard the most depressing story on public radio today about a Texas House Bill that will force failing schools to close or be managed by the state starting next year if test scores don’t rise. Many of the schools in need of improvement are in Houston, a place I know is very dear to you. I did, however, read this story a few weeks ago in the paper and wanted to share (if you hadn’t already heard):
If Only All Billionaires Were Like This One…
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-dallas-morning-news/20170716/281865823519721
Perhaps a ray of hope for your readers?
Thanks for the daily dose of information and inspiration.
LikeLike
Diane This just in from Inside Higher Ed. Sounds allot like the same takeover that’s going on in K-12
education, and the great difference between pre- and post-oligarchic strikes at the very foundations of education in the USA. The camel’s nose has made it under the tent at Harvard U.
Links and snips below with my emphases:
Warnings on a Different Kind of For-Profit: Century Foundation cautions that nature of public university deals with online program managers could undermine the institutions’ financial stability and their students’ data.
By Doug Lederman August 8, 2017
SNIPS (All quoted material and links with my emphases)
. . . Shireman and Century have paid increasing attention to other ways in which they believe the profit motive is creeping into higher education (Shireman blasted the recent purchase of Kaplan University by Purdue University on those grounds), and the new report explores the world of online program management companies, . . .
Report: Influence of online learning companies could undermine public higher ed
http://www.insidehighered.com
Century Foundation cautions that nature of public university deals with online program managers could undermine the institutions’ financial stability and their students’ data. . . .
. . . other recent reports have identified as a billion-dollar-plus industry. As typically defined, these companies — a short list of providers includes 2U, Wiley Education Services, Academic Partnerships, Bisk Education, Pearson Embanet, Everspring and Keypath Education — provide a range of services and often up-front capital to help colleges take their programs online, typically in exchange for a long-term share of tuition revenues generated by the programs.
The Century report makes plain that colleges have long turned to outside companies to perform certain functions on the administrative side that they don’t necessarily have the in-house expertise to manage. The shift to the academic side of the institutions crosses an important bridge, though, in Century’s eyes. “However, unlike managing dormitories or servicing cafeterias or organizing parking,” author Margaret Mattes writes, “the functions of OPMs are closely linked to the core educational mission of these public institutions. As a result, the quality of the services provided by OPMs has a direct bearing on the quality of the school itself and the ability of these institutions to fulfill their mission to train students and prepare them for the work force.”
First and foremost it suggests that the deals prioritize “dollars over learning,” by exposing “consumers to the financial interests of decision makers, interests that would not exist if exclusively public or nonprofit institutions were involved in providing these distance learning programs.” The revenue sharing, in particular, Century writes, “establishes clear financial incentives for OPMs to make online programs larger and more expensive for students, while simultaneously reducing expenditures.”
The report ends by noting that the online program management providers are a recent phenomenon that “so far, have not erupted into a major scandal.” But it warns that colleges must monitor these contractors to prevent “students and taxpayers who thought they were working with a relatively safe public institution [finding] that they have been taken advantage of by a for-profit company.”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/08/harvard-teams-corporate-partner-offer-online-business-analytics-program?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=2e2909c6fa-DNU20170808&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-2e2909c6fa-198488425&mc_cid=2e2909c6fa&mc_eid=f743ca9d07
Harvard teams with corporate partner to offer online business analytics program
http://www.insidehighered.com
Three schools at the oldest university in the United States team up with 2U to start an online program in an emergent field. END QUOTES AND LINKS
LikeLike
Not many details here, but North Dakota received failing marks from the Fordham Institute in all categories (so they very well may be on to something!): http://bismarcktribune.com/news/local/education/north-dakota-receives-federal-feedback-on-education-plan/article_8f294d28-64d4-5ffc-8817-01cb05f979e4.html
LikeLike
I would like Diane to consider commenting on the Hickenlooper Face the Nation appearance advocating apprenticeships. See https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2017/08/07/hickenlooper-on-national-tv-calls-for-bipartisanship-on-job-training-for-high-school-graduates/.
LikeLike
Lloyd, I have no objection to apprenticeships. I do object, however, to Gov. Hickenlooper’s support for charter schools and test-based evaluation of teachers.
LikeLike
A bit of a diversion: Here’s a cute collection of teacher cartoons done by an Irish primary school teacher: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hilarious-comics-that-sum-up-life-as-a-teacher_us_59887d48e4b08b75dcc86818
LikeLike
On India’s education system: http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/the-28-year-old-physicist-looking-to-revamp-indias-education-system/79858
LikeLike
Petrilli rarely fails to disappoint but takes a mild change in course is this article acknowledging “policy exhaustion”: https://edexcellence.net/articles/steal-this-idea-a-national-effort-to-help-schools-go-from-good-to-great?utm_source=Fordham+Updates&utm_campaign=637f0b85e4-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_09&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9e8246adf-637f0b85e4-71494877&mc_cid=6
LikeLike
Tension between Connecticut and DOE on ESSA plan. This might be one to watch.
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Feds-and-Connecticut-lock-horns-over-how-to-11268049.php
LikeLike
“I Just Sued the School System” (6 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTTojTija8
LikeLike
When I was an undergrad (more than 40 years ago! ) my ed philosophy prof handed out a parable:
Rip van Winkle awakes after a long sleep and all around has changed – the horse and cart has been replaced by a loud machine, there are tractors in the fields instead of farmhands tilling the soil, instead of talking to their neighbors in the yard, people are shouting into little boxes fastened to the wall. Rip panics and begins to run away, overcome. Running up towards the mountains, he sees an empty building. He goes inside, slides into a desk and feels comforted by the familiarity of his unchanged schoolhouse.
The lesson was supposed to be, of course, that schools need to get with it, modernize, shape up, come into the (then) 20th century. I didn’t care for the parable, and argued that Maslow would hold that the learner needs first to be comfortable in order to engage in the higher tasks of learning and applying knowledge.
Socrates taught his students under a tree and engaged their minds with his ideas because he built a relationship with each. I think all the other stuff is extra – a small class size to build relationships between the teacher and the student and among the students themselves is the strongest method of teaching and learning. I’m not a Luddite, suggesting we hand out slates and a bit of chalk, and therefore we can underfund our schools. I just believe in centering our practice on the human beings involved.
Maybe it has remained unchanged because it is the best way for people to learn.
LikeLike
This story reminds me of a great Twilight Zone episode featuring Buster Keaton.
LikeLike
We had an appalling stunt in the Australian Parliament today when Pauline Hanson, the leader of One Nation, who last year rejoiced in the election of President Trump, wore a burka to Parliament and asked for it to be banned in Australia. But what makes me proud to be Australian was the response of the Conservative Attorney General, George Brandis, who instantly condemned Senator Hanson for her disrespect to the law-abiding Muslims in Australia. He was given a standing ovation by both sides of Parliament.
The video is worth watching at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-17/pauline-hanson-wears-burka-to-question-time-in-the-senate/8816886
LikeLike
US News and World Report believes Ed Reform is NOT in retreat: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-08-17/decentralizing-federal-authority-doesnt-put-education-reform-in-retreat
LikeLike
Chester Finn at odds with Secretary DeVos. Mr. Finn and his brethren at Fordham are accountability hawks who seem to believe that testing with consequences is the single easiest way to improve students, teachers, and schools. https://edexcellence.net/articles/betsy-devos-is-wrong-about-accountability-for-schools-of-choice?utm_source=Fordham+Updates&utm_campaign=4f2bed570c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d9e8246adf-4f2bed570c-71494877&mc_cid=4f2bed570
LikeLike
I’ve become impressed by the insight and perspective of comedian Jim Jeffries. In his last Comedy Central show, he took a closer look at the “points system” that Dear Leader’s regime wants to institute in its “immigration reform” sham. I was struck how the arbitrary nature of it seems to be analogous to many commentators’ observations about standardized testing. I would appreciate knowing what the many brilliant minds here, who are far above my pay grade on this issue, think about the comparison:
LikeLike
Good thought. Leader who doesn’t know much about the issue is setting unfair, unreasonable guidelines for advancement. Now if we find out Trump and his people are able to help their friends make money through these guidelines, the analogy will be perfect
Sent from my iPhone
>
LikeLike
Just read this on HuffPo. I’m going to have to rethink what I think about big corporations, especially if more can make such strong statements against xenophobia:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/edeka-supermarket-foreign-foods_us_599e8f9de4b0821444c0d88d
LikeLike
To Reformer’s it’s so easy to explain everything: https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2017-08-24/education-progress-is-getting-bogged-down-in-pessimism
LikeLike
Hi Diane—just read this in the MIT Technology Review: Andrew Weaver, “The Myth of the Skills Gap”—he surveyed a number of different industries and found that rather than there being shortages in STEM fields, the bigger issue is employers not compensating their workers adequately. Where there’s acutally a need is in higher level reading and writing.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608707/the-myth-of-the-skills-gap/
LikeLike
Hal Salzman, labor economist at Rutgers, has repeatedly debunked the skills gap myth. Plenty of skilled workers to hire. Employers prefer low-wage workers in other countries.
LikeLike
Secretary DeVos to visit two schools in Florida (a private and a charter): http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article169867787.html
LikeLike
The Right Wing in America Has Long Tried to Destroy ‘Government Schools’ | Portside http://portside.org/2017-08-28/right-wing-america-has-long-tried-destroy-government-schools
LikeLike
In the meantime a good number of school districts in Florida are suing the state for an education bill that the republican state government passed and signed which basically gives control and authority of charter schools to the state. Districts basically have no say in which charter schools get to come into a district, and the districts don’t get to set any standards for these schools. Also the state is taking money from public education and saying it must be shared to build and or renovate charter schools. This is one state that I hope has learned it’s lesson and votes every republican out of office.
LikeLike
Diane
Here’s a cartoonist who understands teachers. It’s the “Rose is Rose” strip from August 28, 2017
http://www.gocomics.com/roseisrose/2017/08/28
LikeLike
DeVos in Fla didn’t go over so well. http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2017/08/29/betsy-devos-visit-voucher-school-second-day-tallahassee/612405001/
LikeLike
Diane Here is an example of how Koch Industries are working in higher education (Utah, in this case, but the article cites others as well) with some snips from the linked article below. The local Utah rag has already started bad-mouthing the current economics department; and Koch’s curricular influence is FOR quantitative research and not about understanding economics as having a foundation in what the human sciences are about (mega-statistics?). Also, Koch’s experience with resistance at George Mason University in Virginia (by both faculty and students who demanded to see the hidden agreement with Koch) has apparently made them better at, FIRST, getting the camel’s nose under the tent BEFORE trying to influence (completely take over?) BOTH the curriculum AND the procedures for making rules. CBK
Economics Faculty War: New Koch-backed institute at the University of Utah is raising questions about academic freedom and whether the center is designed to compete with Utah’s existing economics department. By Colleen Flaherty August 31, 2017
SNIPS from article: (my emphases)
“The Charles Koch Foundation’s annual giving to higher education has jumped in recent years — from $12.7 million in 2012 to $44 million in 2015 — and faculty concerns about the libertarian group’s campus influence have grown proportionately. . . . ”
“Some 18 professors from the economics department, along with 176 others on campus (mostly faculty members), signed a statement of concern about the institute submitted to the Academic Senate’s Executive Committee this summer. And on Monday the Senate approved a resolution charging a recently established faculty committee with the additional task of reviewing policies and procedures for approving institutes and centers. . . . ”
“The ‘funding agreement between the Charles Koch Foundation and the University of Utah raises serious concerns about the principles and practice of intellectual independence and academic freedom,’ reads the faculty letter drafted by Mark Button, chair of political science. . . . ”
“As to what the new institute will offer that economics can’t, Randall said he guessed the center would focus on research once the new major was up and running. And while economics faculty tend to focus on globalization, sustainability and inequality, he said, the institute will center its research on ‘business-oriented economics.'”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/08/31/new-koch-backed-institute-u-utah-raises-questions-about-academic-freedom-and-whether?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=61409a9a91-DNU20170831&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-61409a9a91-198488425&mc_cid=61409a9a91&mc_eid=f743ca9d07
LikeLike