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Today is the 10th Anniversary of the Sandy Hook Massacre

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2022 //
16

Ten years ago, a deranged young man blasted his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He killed 20 first-grade children and six staff members, including the principal, who tried to stop him at the school’s door.

The nation was stunned. President Obama wept. There was a widespread sense that this heinous act would lead to decisive action by Congress. It didn’t. The gun violence against children continues.

Why? The Republican Party has sworn allegiance to an extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment in which every person has the unfettered right to own and carry guns. and the Supreme Court, now securely in the hands of hard-right conservatives after Trump added three justices, is overturning long-standing limits on gun ownership. There are more guns than people in the U.S., and so far as conservatives are concerned, there is no need to restrict their availability and use (except in the halls of Congress, the Supreme Court, and other special places.)

Among the weapons used at Sandy Hook were a Bushmaster XM15-E2S and a Glock 20SF handgun. The killer first murdered his mother, who bought the guns and took him to firing ranges. When fist responders arrived, he killed himself.

Not long after the massacre of babies at Sandy Hook, the professional liars entered the scene. They said that there was no massacre. Everything we saw on television was staged, they said. The “parents” who were mourning were actually “crisis actors.” Someone sent me a link to a video purporting to show that Sandy Hook never happened; it was a hoax created to promote gun control legislation.

Alex Jones leapt on the story and repeatedly broadcast it to his many followers. Some of them harassed the families who had lost a child or a mother or a sister, even sending them death threats.

Alex Jones has this year been convicted of defamation and ordered to pay fines exceeding $1 billion. He moved his assets and declared bankruptcy.

There have been so many mass murders in the past decade that it’s impossible to remember them all. We remember the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, both because of the numbers and the heroic response of the survivors, who lobbied fiercely for gun control. Uvalde got our attention because of the number of children killed: 19, along with two teachers. And it got our attention because of the sheer incompetence of the law enforcement officers, who arrived on the scene by the hundreds and failed to enter the classrooms where the killer was for over an hour.

Of one thing we can be sure, there will be more mass killings of students. Uvalde will not be last. Schools now practice active shooter drills. Some teachers are armed. School security has been enhanced. Door locks are common.

But when the next killer pulls a gun out of his backpack or blasts through the entry with an assault weapon, children and staff will die. We will mourn them and their teachers as we have before. And then there will be another. And another.

Nothing will change until we enact strong gun control laws that limit access to guns. That won’t happen unless the voters elect people sworn to protect the lives of their children.

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Cruelty, For-Profit, Fraud, Guns, Republicans

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Is a Traitor

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2022 //
45

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene boasted that if she and Steve Bannon had been in charge of the uprising on January 6, 2021, the rioters would have been armed and they would have succeeded.

The message from MJT: If she and Steve had been in charge, there would have been mass casualties in the Capitol, the electoral vote would have been canceled, and Trump would be awarded the Presidency by force of arms.

This is a woman who took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution” and will take it again:

Yet she jokes about overthrowing the Constitution she swore to support and defend.

It’s not funny. It’s treasonous.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fascism, Trump

Boston: Mayoral Control Is the Wrong Answer

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2022 //
31

Retired teacher Christine Langhoff calls out the editorial board of The Boston Globe, which advocates for mayoral control of the schools, despite the wishes of the citizenry. Langhoff is right. Mayoral control is undemocratic, and it does not have a record of success. The mayor is not an educator. She or he may stack the leadership of the school system with cronies or—best case scenario—clueless business-school graduates. Mayoral control was tried and failed in Detroit and Chicago. New York City has had mayoral control since 2002 and that political arrangement has increased the number of charter schools, closed scores of schools, destabilized neighborhoods, and produced no notable improvements.

Langhoff writes:

Last year, 80% of Boston voters approved an elected school committee (a campaign that owes much of its organizing to a presence on Twitter, by the way). Now the process is underway, as the state would have to approve such a move.

This morning, the Boston Globe has published a disgusting editorial, calling for the abolition of any school board in the capital city. Reed Hastings would be proud. Who cares what citizens want, when the billionaires hellbent on privatization want something else?

“There are certainly problems with the city’s current school governance system, in which the mayor appoints all members of the seven-person school committee. But if the city is to overhaul school governance, the way forward shouldn’t be to switch to a popularly elected school committee — an antiquated way of managing schools in the 21st century. Instead, Boston should get rid of the body and centralize control of the schools in the mayor’s office.” (Boston Globe)

And while the Supreme Court looks to originalism to undermine our rights, The Globe (or more likely the Barr Foundation, to whom the newspaper of record outsources its education coverage) would throw out centuries of history of governing public schools in Massachusetts:

“Ending a school committee may seem radical, since local school board elections are so ingrained in American tradition. But the local school board, and its considerable power over the education of children in a geographic area, is a particularly North American phenomenon, and something of an accident of history. The colony of Massachusetts required towns to establish and pay for schools in 1647, in a law known as the Old Deluder Satan Act, and local control of schools — and local responsibility for funding them — has endured since.” (Boston Globe)

Funny, I doubt the same people would call for dissolving all school boards across the state, especially not in those wealthy towns where these writers likely live, and whose elected school boards they serve on.

Categories Accountability, Boston, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Reform, Massachusetts

Josh Cowen: What about the Kids Who Give Up Their Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2022 //
11

Josh Cowen, a professor at Michigan State University, has been a voucher researcher for two decades. The more he studied vouchers, the more he realized that they harm children. In this post, he looks at the students who use a voucher, but change their minds and return to public schools.

Cowen writes:

Author: Josh Cowen

We don’t talk enough about children who give up their school vouchers.

One of the many problems with the “Education Freedom” marketing campaign for school privatization—and it’s a problem with the market approach to education more generally—is that schools are anything but products to sample.

Betsy DeVos likes to say that schools shouldn’t be “one size fits all.” She’s conceding more than she knows with that analogy because unlike clothing, or a car you can test drive down at the Ford dealer, there’s a real cost to trying a school on and having it fail to fit.

Study after study has shown how harmful school mobility is for kids, both those who actually move between schools and those whose classrooms are full of peers coming in and out.

As Russell Rumberger, an expert in this area has succinctly summarized:

“The research literature suggests that changing schools can harm normal child and adolescent development by disrupting relationships with peers and teachers as well as altering a student’s educational program.”

And in the general population of public school children, we know who’s likely to be more mobile. They’re students of color, students from families with lower levels of income, students with special academic needs, and students with housing insecurity.

No one’s saying student mobility isn’t an issue for public schools, but public educators don’t see student churn as a feature instead of a bug. For example, a key element of the federal McKinney-Vento Act designed to help homeless kids is a set of best practices to help kids stay in one single public school even if they can’t remain in one stable home environment.

States with large-scale voucher programs are beginning to report out statistics for how many users come from public or private schools each year. And by the way these statistics put a lie to the claim from activists that vouchers are needed for families to choose, because we know from states like Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin that more than 75% of voucher kids were already in private school without taxpayer support.

But now we need more statistics reported on the mirror image: how many new students give up their vouchers each year. Recent numbers from Florida indicate roughly 60% of new voucher users give the voucher up after just a couple of years.

Think about that number as the voucher equivalent of a public school mobility or drop-out rate—both statistics used by critics to help indict public educational quality.

When I was working on an official evaluation of Milwaukee’s voucher program more than a decade ago, I led two reports on exactly these sorts of children. We found that around 15% of kids gave up their vouchers every year. Meaning that, as in Florida, more than half the kids we were studying left private schools over a short period of time!

Who were those kids? They were more likely to be Black, lower scoring on the state exam, and more likely to be enrolled in schools that had lots of other voucher-using kids (i.e. newer schools that popped up to take tax dollars once the program was created, rather than more established private institutions).

What happened when they left? Well actually that was a bit of good news. In still the only study to track kids over time after giving up their vouchers, we found that they enrolled in Milwaukee Public Schools and then improved substantially after arriving. The shame of it was they had to lose some academic growth in the voucher program before their parents realized it was a poor fit and fixed the problem.

Sometimes though, kids may even want to stay in their private school but the school itself shuts down and they have to move anyway. Voucher activists pushing an entrepreneurial approach to education don’t talk enough about the consequences of failure. For example, in Milwaukee, 41% of private schools that ever took tax dollars eventually shut down.

Imagine what critics of public schools would be saying right now if public schools had a 41 percent failure rate!

We’re not talking about a local Burger King that shuts down and a family has to drive a few extra blocks to get that Whopper they crave from the next closest franchise. Or has to go to Taco Bell or Arby’s instead. We’re talking about potentially major academic and social setbacks for kids.

Finally, there’s one more reason voucher leavers matter—and it’s a bit technical so bear with me. Social scientists prioritize randomized control designs to estimate impacts of policy interventions. And when randomization isn’t possible, we try to find approaches that come close.

The problem that student exits from voucher programs causes for researchers is they create additional hurdles to estimating accurate impacts of those programs. All of the randomized studies of voucher programs have showed similar exit rates to our study in Wisconsin.

And in at least one study of Louisiana vouchers, the authors had to acknowledge that those exits—precisely the students who as in Wisconsin were not doing well in the program—probably caused any positive estimates of the program to be overstated. There are techniques researchers can use to adjust for that error, but no one agrees on exactly the right approach, so it continues to be a problem.

So to summarize: we need to know a lot more about kids who give up their vouchers. Most importantly because the evidence we do have tells us that school mobility is on balance a setback for kids, and we know kids exiting voucher programs are already more likely to be at some form of risk than those who stay.

But we also need to know because as a practical matter, voucher exits can cause analytical hurdles to studies estimating voucher impacts on learning or on educational attainment.

And what that means is that in the future, if voucher supporters trumpet a new study—credible or otherwise—that purports to show positive impacts over time, the very first question we need to ask is: how many kids left the program because it wasn’t working for them?

Based on the data already available, the answer will be another indictment for voucher programs.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, Research, School Choice, Vouchers

Dr. John Walcott Debates DeVos’ Ideas at Her Alma Mater

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2022 //
15

Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently spoke at Calvin University in Michigan. As one of the university’s most prominent graduates, her remarks were received with respect.

Dr. John Walcott, a professor of education at Calvin University, wrote an article for the school newspaper in which he expressed respectful disagreement with her ideas. The full article is worth reading. It takes courage for a professor to take issue with a state and national leader such as DeVos, especially in a religion-focused university.

Be sure to open the link and read the comments.

He began:

On Nov. 17, Calvin University hosted an event with Betsy DeVos. DeVos served as Secretary of Education during the Trump administration and is a graduate of Calvin University. In making the announcement, President Boer described the event as part of efforts “to hear from people who bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives to important conversations.”

DeVos served as Secretary of Education during the Trump administration and is a graduate of Calvin University. In making the announcement, President Boer described the event as part of efforts “to hear from people who bring diverse backgrounds and perspectives to important conversations.”

I understand and respect the desire of our university to welcome to our campus a distinguished alum who has a long history of involvement at local, state and national levels. Furthermore, I agree that it is important to provide space for “diverse perspectives” and “important conversations.” We must strive to be a community willing to ask tough questions and engage deeply with important issues in our world.

I believe that an opportunity for additional engagement with these issues is especially necessary because of the problematic nature of much of what Secretary DeVos proposes when it comes to education. For example, her call to support “students and not systems” fails to recognize that student learning can be supported by teachers, curriculum, financial resources, school administrators and, yes, in many cases may even require a building conducive to learning. It is easy to demonize systems, but the use of this sort of false dichotomy is ultimately unproductive.

In that spirit, I suggest that we continue the conversation started at this event. The event used an interview format that did not provide opportunity for the sort of conversation and debate that are required to dig deeply into important issues related to educational policy and the state of education in our nation. Near the close of the event, Secretary DeVos stated her ongoing desire to “debate and advance” the policies for which she advocates. I agree that we need to debate these policies and, as a university community, think deeply about issues that relate to education and political engagement and how God calls us to seek justice and be agents of renewal in our world.

I believe that an opportunity for additional engagement with these issues is especially necessary because of the problematic nature of much of what Secretary DeVos proposes when it comes to education. For example, her call to support “students and not systems” fails to recognize that student learning can be supported by teachers, curriculum, financial resources, school administrators and, yes, in many cases may even require a building conducive to learning. It is easy to demonize systems, but the use of this sort of false dichotomy is ultimately unproductive.

We also need to carefully consider Secretary DeVos’ focus on parental choice and individual rights as the basis of her calls to change our educational system. This perspective ignores the function of our schools as a public good, an institution at the core of our desire to promote democratic values and the flourishing of all students. We need to think carefully about the purpose of education in a democratic society and about the role of public schools that have been part of our nation’s commitment to education since before the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Our call to seek justice and be agents of renewal in our world may push us to prioritize the needs of our community and of the most vulnerable in our society over individual rights.

As an educational scholar and researcher, I recognize the need to carefully examine the impacts of policies that use the language of choice and freedom on student learning and on public schools. For example, advocates for school vouchers, which allow parents to use public education funds for tuition in private schools, argue that these policies can be the key to improving student outcomes while ignoring research that does not support these claims. For example, Dr. Christopher Lubienski (Director of the Center for Evaluation and Policy Analysis at Indiana University), summarizing research since 2015, states that “every study of the impacts of statewide voucher programs has found large, negative effects from these programs on the achievement of students using vouchers.”

A thorough discussion will explore the impact of DeVos-supported policies on school funding. Recent reports from Florida note that this year, school vouchers will divert $1.3 billion from public schools, and reports from states like Arizona, New Hampshire and Wisconsin show that the overwhelming majority (80%, 89% and 75%) of students utilizing vouchers were already in private schools before the programs began. We need to ask if public funds should be given to schools that are in some cases not required to comply with regulations related to special education, federal civil rights laws and curriculum standards. We should engage critically in questions regarding the role of teachers’ unions before dismissing out of hand their role in public education. And we should critically examine the rhetoric that is currently a part of the so-called “culture wars,” especially as it relates to education. I am concerned that Secretary DeVos has contributed to a misrepresentation of critical race theory and may be perceived as aligning with groups and individuals that have advanced a harmful narrative directed at the LGBTQ+ community.

These are just a few of the many complex and vitally important issues that need to be a part of a deeper conversation. I am not criticizing the decision to host Secretary DeVos, a distinguished graduate with years of activism in the public sphere. However, as a faculty member in the School of Education, it is important to me that the broader educational community understands that this does not signal an endorsement of her policies and perspectives by the School of Education. And I remain hopeful that we, as a community, will embrace the opportunity to not only offer diverse perspectives, but also engage deeply in important conversations of what it means to think deeply, act justly and live wholeheartedly as Christ’s agents of renewal in the world.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reform, Courage, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Funding, Privatization, Religion, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Fred Smith: The Return of the Tisch Flunkies

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2022 //
4

Fred Smith worked as an assessment specialist at the New York City Board of Education for many years. Recently he has advised opt-out groups. In this comments, he describes the remarkable power of Merryl Tisch, whose family are billionaires and influential in New York civic life. Note: Before King was named New York State Commissioner of Education, he founded and Leda charter school in Massachusetts that had the highest suspension rate in the state (59%).

Smith writes:

Coming soon to a campus near you: The Return of the Tisch Flunky.

Fill in the blanks– Sheldon Silver, Democratic leader of the New York Assembly, which selects members of the Zboard of Regents…. Merryl Tisch appointed to Board of Regents (1996) and elevated to Regents Chancellor by Silver (2009)…. Tisch and John King are classmates at Teachers College (small-group accelerated doctoral program)…. Tisch pushes King to become NYS Education Commissioner…. Andrew Cuomo advocates implementation of Common Core with Tisch’s willing compliance…. Opt Out Movement strongly opposes CC…. King leaves SED for USDE (2014)…. Silver found guilty of corruption charges (2015), convicted and expelled from NYS Assembly…. Tisch steps down as Regents chancellor after 20 years…. Cuomo appoints Tisch to SUNY Board of Trustees (2017) and elevates her to SUNY chairman…. Cuomo uses Tisch to abandon “national search” for new SUNY chancellor in order to give his closest adviser, James Malatras the job…. Cuomo stench starts catching up to Malatras, and Kathy Hochul tells Tisch to dump him…. Tisch praises Malatras and gives him a golden parachute. King announced as the next SUNY chancellor with words of praise a huge salary and perqs from Tisch.

Yes, there was a national search to find him.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Industry, Higher Education, New York

Florida: DeSantis Administration Refused to Comply with Open Records Law, Fined $376,000

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
7

A Florida judge ordered the DeSantis administration to pay the legal fees of news outlets seeking public records about the death of an abused child.

Child welfare authorities’ refusal, for well over a year, to hand over documents detailing the state’s failed efforts to protect a Miami toddler will cost Florida taxpayers $376,665 — money that otherwise could have been spent on services for at-risk children.

It is one of several public records battles that have played out during the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Barbara Areces, who earlier this year censured the Department of Children & Families for defying the state’s open government laws, awarded attorneys for the Miami Herald and other news organizations the money in an order that closes out a nearly two-year litigation.

In her five-page order, Areces said the legal fees generated by the news outlets seeking to enforce the state’s public records law were “appropriate and reasonable.”

The dispute concerned Rashid Bryant, a 22-month-old boy who died on Nov. 6, 2020 from complications of acute and chronic blunt force injuries. Rashid’s death, the Medical Examiner’s Office wrote, was partly the result of “parental neglect.” Rashid and his nine siblings had been the subject of about 25 reports to Florida’s child abuse hotline, and the children had been in and out of foster care.

The boy’s family had been facing eviction at the time his mother called 911 to report he was in distress; in fact, Rashid had already perished.

Under Florida’s public records law — originally approved by voters in 1909, but later enshrined in the state Constitution following a voter referendum – all documents detailing Rashid’s involvement with the state’s child welfare system should have been open to public inspection upon a finding that his death resulted from abuse or neglect.

But DCF insisted for more than a year that the agency was still investigating the cause of his death, and, therefore, agency records were exempt from public disclosure.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/article269499212.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Florida

Florida: Why Did Ron DeSantis Fire an Elected Local Prosecutor?

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
9

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has a problem: he cannot tolerate dissent or what he sees as disobedience to his wishes. He seems to think that he can order or legislate complete subservience to his beliefs.

DeSantis fired Hillsborough County’s state attorney, Andrew Warren, who was twice elected to his post by the voters of the county. Warren has sued to have his position restored. The trial began this week.

The firing of Warren, like DeSantis’ firing of elected local school board members, suggests a man with an authoritarian temperament who recognizes no limits on his power.

The Miami Herald reported:

Lawyers will square off this week in a Tallahassee courtroom for a politically charged trial that’s expected to center on one question:

What was Gov. Ron DeSantis’ motive for yanking Andrew Warren from office? In a surprise move in August that made national headlines, Warren, Hillsborough County’s twice-elected state attorney, was suspended from his duties and escorted out of his office by a sheriff’s deputy. It happened as DeSantis held a rally-style news conference at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office at which he and others lamented aspects of Warren’s progressive approach to criminal justice.

Warren is asking a federal judge to reinstate him. He says the suspension was political retaliation against his right to free speech. DeSantis says he did it because Warren refused to enforce state laws.

Warren is asking a federal judge to reinstate him. He says the suspension was political retaliation against his right to free speech. DeSantis says he did it because Warren refused to enforce state laws.

WHO WILL TESTIFY?

Warren’s lawyers in recent weeks have deposed nine witnesses. They include several members of the governor’s staff, among them his former press secretary Christina Pushaw, who famously tweeted the night before the suspension to prepare for the “liberal media meltdown of the year…”

The governor’s lawyers deposed five people. They include two Hillsborough prosecutors who may offer insight into Warren’s policy against prosecuting certain minor offenses — one of the reasons the governor cited in accusing Warren of neglecting his duties.

The actual written policy indicates individual prosecutors should use their discretion in deciding whether to pursue such crimes. Warren contends the policies were not a blanket refusal to enforce laws.

The local sheriff complained that Warren refused to prosecute homeless people who slept in business parking lots for trespassing. Warren said that prosecuting them would not solve the problem of homelessness.

Among a deluge of exhibits to hit the court file: a memo that the governor’s staff prepared before Warren’s suspension, noting that Warren was described in a news story as something close to a “social justice warrior.”

It mentioned his refusal to prosecute 67 protesters who were arrested on unlawful assembly charges during protests over the murder of George Floyd.

The memo seemed to express particular concern over Warren’s stance on abortion, and his having signed a pledge with other elected prosecutors to refrain from prosecuting abortion-related cases. (Warren signed a similar pledge against prosecuting transgender healthcare cases.) The memo included a legal analysis of how the governor could justify suspending him.

What seemed to anger DeSantis most was that Warren made clear that he would not prosecute people who defied the state’s abortion ban. To DeSantis, Warren was “woke” and, as the Governor likes to say, Florida is where “woke” goes to die.

How could Governor DeSantis ignore a state prosecutor who defied him? That’s why he fired him.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article269344527.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Florida

Joel: Why Biden Was Right About The Rail Workers Contract

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2022 //
33

Our reader Joel is a retired union worker. He shared his thoughts about the deal that the Biden administration and Congress imposed on the nation’s rail workers’ unions to avert a strike. Biden feared that a rail strike would cripple the economy and lead to widespread layoffs. Critics of the deal complained that rail workers get only one paid sick day a year (members of Congress get unlimited paid sick days). The critics are right to insist that rail workers get more paid sick days, but Joel points out that a national strike now would do incalculable damage to organized labor.

Joel writes:

Union Leadership understands that one has to pick your fights carefully.

The cause of the workers’ grievances focuses on forced overtime and being on call far too often with little input in scheduling . This has been caused by efficiency measures that cut nearly 30 % of the workforce. If the gripe is the forced overtime than the answer is to bring back the workers whose dismissal caused the need for that overtime. Not that the employers would be happier with that than the paid sick time .

The contract negotiated between Biden, the Union Leadership, and the Railroads back in September did provide for sick days. It provided for scheduled doctors’ visits. It provided 1 additional paid holiday. It provided a 24 % wage increase retroactively, graduated from 2020 through 2024. It called for more flexibility in scheduling, and it froze health insurance premiums, I believe, beyond the contract period. Without those PAID sick days it was a damn good contract that the leadership of the 12 unions pushed their members to accept. 8 of the 12 did, Including the IBEW of which I am a retired member as a construction electrician.

But if grueling working conditions caused by forced overtime and standby status is your beef, why would being paid for the day off come into play. The answer is it does not. Most like the overtime or they would insist on bringing staffing levels back up to eliminate it . More workers equals less forced overtime for each and less grueling schedules . That proposal was not put on the table to my knowledge. And I understand why . The leadership would have their heads handed to them by the same members asking for paid sick time to alleviate the grueling schedules.

Been there seen that, in the 1970s in a time of high unemployment in NYC’s construction industry. Overtime was eliminated by my Union. Accomplished by forcing the worker to take a day off if he worked more than 3hrs OT in that week . That forced the contractor to either not work overtime. Creating work for more members by, if anything, forcing projects to take longer or hiring additional workers to be able to man the job during regular hours. The union’s noble object was to put the unemployed members to work. In the 1990s when unemployment returned that was dropped. The leadership decided that it was better to hear 10-15 % gripe about unemployment than the 85% bitch about taking the bread and butter out of their mouths.

So I suspect the dynamic is similar.

That said what are the down side risks for the economy, the Democrats, the workers, the employers and the Unions?

This is not a Cheerios factory closing down .This is not Air travel shutting down as in 1980 . A strike that lasts as little as a week will effect vast portions of the economy. It will cause a huge spike in prices and unemployment. A total no win for Biden and Democrats that will hang around their neck like an albatross. The workers may or may not get what they are getting now if Congress is forced to step in after Economic Armageddon sets in. The Employers: if I were the employer knowing how quickly Americans turn against other workers or any policy that calls for personnel sacrifice, I would stretch this out till Public Sentiment turned massively against the Unions and the Administration. The Republicans were so concerned about the working conditions that only 3 in the House and 6? in the Senate voted for the additional sick days . Both the Employers and the Republicans would salivate at the opportunity to drive Democrats from power, driving a stake in the heart of organized labor. And you can be sure the oligarchy who owns the media would be all over it.

Sitting in front of the Taliban 6 in the SCOTUS is a case that could bankrupt almost every Union that chose to strike. It would allow employers to sue for losses caused by the strike. For example: A supermarket chain could sue for lost produce , dairy ,meats … I don’t hold much hope out for them not supporting the employers in this case. A rail strike not only will give them cover to do so but will have a huge majority of the American Public supporting them.

A wave of strikes in 1947 allowed Republicans and Dixiecrats to gut the NLRA with Taft Hartley . That was when Unions were 31 or 32 % of the workforce.

After Reagan fired the Air Traffic Controllers, he set an example that led to an orgy of Union busting when Unions were 22% of the workforce. The American people overwhelmingly re-elected Reagan in a race against one of the most pro-labor Senators in the Country. Sending Democrats into the wilderness until they became under Clinton and Obama, Eisenhower Republicans at best. All but abandoning the New Deal and Great Society as well as relegating Labor to lip service, while passing Trade agreements that decimated American Labor worse than anything Reagan did.

A rail strike would make the media frenzy about Inflation, Crime and Afghanistan look like a practice run. Organized Labor would take the hit opening us up to the effective repeal of all union rights in the NLRA.

In a comment yesterday, Joel amplified his argument on behalf of the Biden settlement, pointing out that Biden has no authority to issue an executive order.

Joel wrote:

An executive order to do what (either way)? This is private sector commerce. The President can do little other than ensure Public Dollars are used in certain ways. So he can sign an order calling for Project Labor Agreements in the spending of Federal Dollars, or Buy American provisions with those dollars . We see he can not even mandate life saving vaccines using OSHA .

Article 1 section 8 clause 3. So now envision a strike that lasts 3 weeks into the new Congress. A strike that puts up to 7 million out of work as supply chains snarl and prices soar . Now envision the contract that could be ordered by that Fascist Right Wing House of Congress. A strike would give them a Scott Walker moment they have dreamed of for decades. As the American people spurred on by daily media stories of the pain caused by strikers called for the Guillotines.

The new Congress, under the Commerce Clause the only Branch entitled to regulate private Commerce, would deliver those Guillotines.

If I were the Railroad CEOs and the Oligarchy, I would assure the baskets were in place to catch the heads .

Categories Accountability, Biden, Elections, Republicans, Unions

NY Times: Hate Speech Soars on Twitter Since Musk Purchase

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2022 //
59

The New York Times reported an unprecedented increase in hate speech on Twitter since Elon Musk bought the social media platform. Musk fired everyone in the department responsible for moderating the content of tweets and seems now to be making personal decisions about who should be allowed to return to Twitter and who should be removed. In the past day, he suspended Kanye West (Ye) for posting Star of David with a swastika in its center. West was recently interviewed by Alex Jones, where he said that Hitler was “good” and should be remembered for the many positive things he did.

The Times wrote:

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter, slurs against Black Americans showed up on the social media service an average of 1,282 times a day. After the billionaire became Twitter’s owner, they jumped to 3,876 times a day.

Slurs against gay men appeared on Twitter 2,506 times a day on average before Mr. Musk took over. Afterward, their use rose to 3,964 times a day.

And antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61 percent in the two weeks after Mr. Musk acquired the site.

These findings — from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups that study online platforms — provide the most comprehensive picture to date of how conversations on Twitter have changed since Mr. Musk completed his $44 billion deal for the company in late October. While the numbers are relatively small, researchers said the increases were atypically high.

The shift in speech is just the tip of a set of changes on the service under Mr. Musk. Accounts that Twitter used to regularly remove — such as those that identify as part of the Islamic State, which were banned after the U.S. government classified ISIS as a terror group — have come roaring back. Accounts associated with QAnon, a vast far-right conspiracy theory, have paid for and received verified status on Twitter, giving them a sheen of legitimacy.

These changes are alarming, researchers said, adding that they had never seen such a sharp increase in hate speech, problematic content and formerly banned accounts in such a short period on a mainstream social media platform….

Last week, Mr. Musk proposed a widespread amnesty for accounts that Twitter’s previous leadership had suspended. And on Tuesday, he ended enforcement of a policy against Covid misinformation.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Bigotry, Media, Racism
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