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Trump Makes False Claims in Letter to World Health Organization

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
14

Salvador Rizzo of the Washington Post writes about a letter sent by Trump to the World Health Organization, in which he made false claims.

Trump is poorly staffed. He is ignorant and he is surrounded by sycophants who are dumber than he is.

He is an international laughing stock.

Rizzo writes:

Any letter signed by the U.S. president and sent to an international organization would have gotten a thorough scrubbing in previous administrations: research, vetting, fact-checking, multiple layers of review, the works.

It’s fair to say President Trump’s letter this week to the head of the World Health Organization got a much lighter touch. We found several false or misleading statements to fact check. And we weren’t the only ones who noticed. The editor of the Lancet, the British medical journal, issued a response accusing Trump of being “factually inaccurate.”

Here’s a sample of fishy claims in Trump’s letter dated May 18 to WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus:

“The World Health Organization consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet medical journal. The World Health Organization failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government’s official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.”

Richard Horton, the Lancet’s editor in chief, issued a statement on Twitter pointing out no such study existed: “Please let me correct the record. The Lancet did not publish any report in early December, 2019, about a virus spreading in Wuhan. The first reports we published were from Chinese scientists on Jan 24, 2020.”

The Jan. 24 Lancet study says “the symptom onset date of the first patient identified was Dec. 1, 2019,” with patients in the study hospitalized between Dec. 16 and Jan. 2. The White House did not respond to a request for an explanation.

“On March 3, 2020, the World Health Organization cited official Chinese data to downplay the very serious risk of asymptomatic spread, telling the world that ‘COVID-19 does not transmit as efficiently as influenza’ and that unlike influenza this disease was not primarily driven by ‘people who are infected but not yet sick.’ China’s evidence, the World Health Organization told the world, ‘showed that only one percent of reported cases do not have symptoms, and most of those cases develop symptoms within two days.’”

Tedros did say this at a March 3 briefing, as part of a presentation on the ways covid-19 was different from the seasonal flu. But he also said “covid-19 causes more severe disease than seasonal influenza. … Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported covid-19 cases have died. By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected.” He urged governments to expand contact tracing because it would slow the spread of infections. “We can’t treat covid-19 exactly the same way we treat flu,” Tedros said, noting there would be no vaccine for some time.

For the full fact check, click here.

Categories Accountability, Health, Science, Shame, Stupid, Trump

Lamar Alexander Disagrees with Betsy DeVos About Giving CARES Funds to Private Schools

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
9

Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, publicly questioned Betsy DeVos’s guidance to states to include private schools when distributing federal funding of coronavirus relief. DeVos says the money should be divided according to enrollment. Alexander says it was supposed to follow the Title I funding and go to the neediest students, who are not in private schools.

Politico Morning Education reports:

ALEXANDER, DEVOS PART WAYS ON STIMULUS GUIDANCE: DeVos is now getting pushback from Alexander for controversial guidance calling on school districts to distribute stimulus funds to private school students more expansively than they would under regular federal education aid through Title I.

— Her policy says schools should spend money on services for private school students based on the total number of all students enrolled, rather than poverty levels.

— “My sense was that the money should have been distributed in the same way we distribute Title I money,” Alexander told reporters on Thursday. “I think that’s what most of Congress was expecting.”

— DeVos defended her interpretation of the law when asked by POLITICO during a video conference to respond to Alexander’s comments. “In our implementation of Congress’ action under the CARES Act, we have indicated it’s our interpretation that it is meant literally for all students and that includes students, no matter where they’re learning,” she said.

— DeVos later said that public schools should work with their private counterparts to understand student needs and to help provide services, such as tutoring or teacher professional development for teachers.

Indiana’s superintendent Jennifer McCormick has announced that she will ignore the DeVos guidance. Tennessee, however, will divert money from needy public schools and give it to private schools with advantaged students.

As DeVos’s response shows, she doesn’t care what Congressional leaders think, not even when they are members of the Republican party. She does what she wants, without regard to Congressional intent or authorization or rebuke. She was born a billionaire, she is privileged, and she is spoiled. She is a hardened ideologue. She doesn’t care about helping poor kids as much as she cares about funding private schools. She doesn’t care about the law. She, like Trump, thinks she is above it.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Funding, Poverty

Education Law Center Calls on Cuomo to Reject DeVos “Guidance”

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
8

Without Congressional authorization, Betsy DeVos has urged states to dispense CARES Act funding based on enrollment, to include private schools, not based on economic need. As usual, she is using her authority to promote privatization of public funds intended for public schools.

The Education Law Center wrote an appeal to Governor Cuomo, urging him to reject the DeVos formula, which will divert money from the poorest children and defy the intent of Congress.

Read the letter here.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Cuomo, Andrew, Funding, Privatization

Stan Karp: Betsy DeVos Uses the Pandemic to Pursue Her War Against Public Schools

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2020 //
5

Stan Karp has written a brilliant critique of federal policy and Betsy DeVos’s audacious and vicious assault on our nation’s public schools and their students. Don’t believe those who say that Congress has blocked her most horrendous actions. She has used her authority and exceeded the intent of Congress to advance her single-minded and narrow-minded pursuit of privatization. When Congress tries to blunt or control her actions, she simply ignores Congress. She is out of control. She treats members of Congress like her household help.

Karp reviews the failures of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

Then he shows how the pandemic has given DeVos the tools to wreak havoc on our public schools, which enroll the vast majority of children.

He writes:

The emergency CARES Act, passed without a single dissenting vote and signed in March, was the first of several massive pieces of federal legislation rushed through Congress in response to the pandemic. While the CARES Act didn’t include the same kind of signature federal initiative that RTTT represented for Obama and his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, it did give Duncan’s successor, the wildly unpopular, right-wing billionaire Betsy DeVos, extraordinary powers in a host of important policy areas.

There will be additional federal action affecting schools in the months ahead, including attempts to address the financial tsunami that is already engulfing school budgets. But even a cursory comparison between the federal response in 2009 and the initial response to the current crisis provides some clues about the extended emergency ahead for public education.

The CARES Act included $13.5 billion for K–12 schools, $14 billion for higher education, and another $3 billion that governors can split between the two as part of $31 billion in “stabilization aid” for state budgets. But while the total $2.2 trillion legislative package was several times larger than the $800 billion American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, the initial amounts provided for education in the CARES Act were much smaller.

The Recovery Act sent $54 billion in education aid to states primarily for K–12 programs and the implementation of RTTT. Moreover, as noted by Education Week, the “2009 stimulus didn’t just shore up education budgets; its unprecedented windfall of education aid also helped the Obama administration put financial muscle behind its priorities. Those priorities focused on areas like standards and accountability.” To promote those policies, the funds came with prescriptive regulations about their use, including provisions that drove an expansion of charters, standardized testing, and test-based teacher evaluation. States and school districts desperate for federal dollars had to commit to this agenda to receive RTTT’s “competitive grants.”

“The CARES Act doesn’t take the same approach,” Education Week’s analysis concluded. “It’s hard to see discrete elements of a Trump education policy agenda driving current coronavirus aid — although U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos indicated last week she wants to change that.”

DeVos Given Tools of Destruction

The CARES Act gives DeVos multiple tools to do so. It gives the secretary of education authority to waive many requirements outlined in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the omnibus federal education legislation that replaced NCLB. The first — and undoubtedly most popular — use of this authority came when all 50 states sought and received in a matter of weeks a waiver to suspend federally required annual standardized testing for the current school year. The educational irrelevance of these tests and their existence as an obstacle to serving the real needs of students was one of the first lessons of the pandemic.

But DeVos’ new authority has much more sinister potential. The CARES Act gives her the power to waive Title I funding regulations, which govern the largest federal education program supporting children from low-income families. It also allows her to suspend Title II rules defining professional development and Title IV requirements to “provide students with a well-rounded education” including the arts, mental health services, and training on trauma-informed practices — all crucially important in the current crisis. The CARES Act specifically allows schools to shift money from these areas to purchase “digital devices.” By early April, 28 states had received waivers to reallocate ESSA spending.

In the guidelines for distributing the first pot of CARES funding, the $3 billion Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund, DeVos blocked any use of funds to support DACA recipients or international students. She also said any monies awarded to teacher unions to provide services defined in the CARES Act would be “inconsistent with statutory requirements,” although last year she authorized church and religious groups to receive federal funds to provide similar services.

DeVos has a long and notorious record of using agency guidance and regulatory action to undermine equity. One of her first acts after being confirmed as secretary was to support the repeal of protections for transgender students, including their right to choose restrooms. She was sued for rolling back protections against predatory lenders at for-profit colleges and threatened with jail by a federal judge for “intentionally flouting” a court order to stop collection proceedings for such loans. DeVos rescinded sexual assault guidance issued under Title IX, a move the National Women’s Law Center said would have a “devastating” impact, and in May released new guidance that weakened protections for victims of sexual harassment and assault. She proposed allowing schools to use federal “student enrichment funds” to purchase guns and used a school safety commission formed in the wake of the Parkland school shootings to recommend repeal of regulations on school discipline practices that were rooted in civil rights concerns. Similarly, DeVos tried to rescind Obama-era rules that required districts to track racial disparities in special education classification rates, an effort a federal judge blocked as “arbitrary and capricious.” In April, DeVos relaxed oversight and accreditation rules for higher education online programs at a time when the pandemic was massively expanding the scale of such programs.

Trump and DeVos on Feb 14, 2017 in Washington D.C. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Pool
Beyond putting her very rich thumb on the wrong side of the scales of justice, DeVos is now in position to be a key gatekeeper for a new and crushing era of austerity for school budgets. To access the CARES Act’s stabilization funds, states must nominally commit to maintaining recent levels of education funding for fiscal years 2021 and 2022. But DeVos can waive that requirement and no doubt will. Already, she has issued guidelines for distributing CARES Act funds that drive more dollars to private schools and wealthier students by circumventing requirements to allocate the funds according to more progressive Title I formulas.

DeVos undermines equity. She flouts the Will of Congress. She seeks to dismantle civil rights protections.

Unlike Trump, she is not incompetent. She is not stupid. She is very clever. She is diabolical. Trump will never fire her because she sows chaos as surely as he does, but without bluster and braggadocio.

If you need a reason to vote for Joe Biden, think about Betsy DeVos.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Kudos to Dr. Les Perelman, the Slayer of the RoboGrader!

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2020 //
6

Peter Greene recognizes one of the great education heroes of our age, Dr. Lester Perelman, who retired a few years ago from MIT, where he taught writing. Les Perelman carefully and thoroughly debunked “robograding” of student essays. ETS had a robograder that allegedly graded thousands of essays in a minute or less.

Perelman showed that students could write nonsensical paragraphs containing blatant inaccuracies yet get a high score from the robograder.

Greene points out that Perelman singlehandedly shot down Australia’s plan to adopt robograding for student essays.

Perelman reviewed the Australian writing assessment and summarized how to get a high test score:

Learn a bunch of big spelling words, and throw them in. Don’t worry about meaning, but do worry about spelling them correctly. Repeat the ideas in the prompt often.

Five paragraph essay all the way. Every paragraph should be four sentences; don’t worry about repeating yourself to get there. Start the last paragraph with “In conclusion,” then repeat your thesis from graph #1. Somewhere work in a sentence with the structure “Although x (sentence), y (sentence). (Perelman’s example– Although these instructions are stupid, they will produce a high mark on the NAPLAN essay.)

Use “you” and ask questions. Use connectors like “moreover” or “however.” Start sentences with “In my opinion” or “I believe that” (not for the first or last time, Strunk and White are spinning in their graves). Repeat words and phrases often, and throw in passive voice (whirrrrr). Throw in one or two adjectives next to nouns.

For narrative essays, just steal a story from a movie or tv show– markers are explicitly instructed to ignore that they recognize a story.

And the final and most important rule– never write like this except for essay tests like the NAPLAN.

For his role in junking the Australian fascinating with robograding and helping to undermine its obsession with national testing, Perelman was honored by the New South Wales Teachers Federation as a “Champion of Public Education.”

In his acceptance speech, Perelman said:

Free public education is the cornerstone of a stable democratic and free society.

The main problem with edu-business [for profit entities in education] is that the most important products of education, such as critical thinking and analysis, are both the least tangible and the least profitable. They are expensive both in staffing and in assessment. Edu-business wants to MacDonald-ize education, make it cheap to produce and distribute, highly profitable and with little nutritive value. It wants, like Dickens’ Gradgrind, to focus on relatively unimportant facts and rules that can literally be mechanically taught and mechanically counted. Edu-business values psychometricians over practitioners, testers over teachers, reliability over validity.

Peter Greene observed:

It’s a little long for a t-shirt, but it might be worth the effort.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, International, Literacy, Testing

Bill Phillis: Ohio Supreme Court Strikes Down Local Control of Schools

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2020 //
10

Perhaps you recall that Republicans used to favor local control of public schools by elected boards. That time is now gone, since Republicans bought into the idea of privatization of public funds. Now they support state takeovers, even though there is no evidence that state takeovers have ever been successful, and a good deal of evidence (see the Michigan “Education Achievement Authority” and the Tennessee “Achievement School District”) that they have failed.

In Ohio, as Bill Phillis reports here, the state Supreme Court just approved a state takeover of school districts where test scores are low.

Ohio Supreme Court strikes a major blow to local community control of school districts and the rule of law

On May 13 the Ohio Supreme Court upheld the egregious HB 70 of the 131st General Assembly. HB 70 removes the control of certain school district from the elected board of education to an appointed entity. HB 70 was enacted in a short timeframe in violation of Article II section 15(c) which requires, “Every bill shall be considered by each house on three different days, unless two-thirds of the members elected to the house in which it is pending suspend this requirement, and every individual consideration of a bill or action suspending the requirement shall be recorded in the journal of the respective house.” Additionally, the enactment of HB 70 violated Article II section 15(d) which requires that “No bill shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title.”

HB 70, as introduced, provided for wraparound services as a means to help low-performing districts to improve student outcomes. The amendment, which was void of public input and the opportunity for public input, is totally antithetical to the purpose of the original bill.

Justice Donnelly, in a dissent, clearly shows how the legislature violated the Constitution. The dissent provided a chronology of events that led to the unlawful enactment of HB 70.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee

BREAKING NEWS: Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against College Board for Botched AP Exams

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2020 //
50

Valerie Strauss writes in the Washington Post about a class-action lawsuit filed against the College Board:


A class-action lawsuit has been filed in federal court on behalf of students who took online Advanced Placement tests last week and ran into technical trouble submitting their answers. It demands that the College Board score their answers instead of requiring them to retake the test in June, and provide hundreds of millions of dollars in monetary relief.


The lawsuit, dated Tuesday, says that students’ inability to submit answers was the fault of the exam creators, and it charges that the College Board engaged in a number of “illegal activities,” including breach of contract, gross negligence, misrepresentation and violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It also seeks more than $500 million in compensatory damages as well as punitive damages.


The College Board owns the AP program, although the AP tests are created and administered by the Educational Testing Service. Both of those organizations were named as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed in a U.S. District Court in California.


Peter Schwartz, College Board Chief risk officer and general counsel, said in a statement: “This lawsuit is a PR stunt masquerading as a legal complaint being manufactured by an opportunistic organization that prioritizes media coverage for itself. It is wrong factually and baseless legally; the College Board will vigorously and confidently defend against it, and expect to prevail.”
He also said, “When the country shut down due to coronavirus, we surveyed AP students nationwide, and an overwhelming 91 percent reported a desire to take the AP Exam at the end of the course. Within weeks, we redesigned the AP Exams so that they could be taken at home. Nearly 3 million AP Exams have been taken over the first seven days. Those students who were unable to successfully submit their exam can still take a makeup and have the opportunity to earn college credit.”


The College Board said last week that it had found the problems students faced submitting answers were largely caused by outdated browsers and students’ failure to see messages announcing the end of an exam.

This is the first time that AP tests have been given online at home, a result of the shutdown of schools because of the coronavirus pandemic. The tests were previously given at school.

But the College Board said it had surveyed students and that most wanted to take the tests online, noting that the scores can factor into college admissions decisions and that students can receive college credit for high scores. The online tests, in numerous subjects, were shortened from several hours to 45 minutes.


Critics had warned that online testing is not fair to students who have no computer, access to Internet or quiet work spaces from which to study and work, or to students with disabilities who do not have appropriate accommodations — challenges the College Board acknowledged and said it tried to ameliorate. Critics also questioned the validity of the shortened exams.


The lawsuit was filed by parents on behalf of students who could not submit answers, as well as by the National Center of Fair and Open Testing, a nonprofit organization known as FairTest that works to end the misuse of standardized tests. (The lawsuit cites a post on The Answer Sheet blog with news about the problems students were facing.)
“

The College Board was warned about many potential access, technology and security problems by FairTest and other groups that had documented crashes when other computerized tests were introduced,” said FairTest interim director Bob Schaeffer. “Nevertheless, the board rushed ‘untested’ AP computerized exams into the marketplace in order to preserve its largest revenue-generating program when they could no longer administer in-school tests.”




The College Board, a nonprofit organization that operates substantially like a business, said that students last week took 2.186 million AP exams in various subjects during the first week of the two-week May testing window, and that “less than 1 percent of students were unable to submit their responses.”


The College Board did not provide the exact number of students who had problems but did note in an email that some students took more than one test. That makes it impossible for the public to know exactly how many students were affected.


Most of the students who had problems found that they could not submit all or some of their answers. Many took photos or videos of their responses, but the College Board told them their responses could not be scored and that they would have to retake their exams in June.


Then, on Sunday, the College Board announced that students taking exams during this week of testing could email responses if they found they had trouble submitting. Students who took the tests last week, however, could not submit their answers for scoring and still had to retake them in June.

The lawsuit asks that the College Board accept any test answers from last week’s AP tests that can be shown to have been completed in time by time stamp, photo and email.

It charges that the College Board ignored warnings that giving AP tests online would discriminate against students with disabilities and those who did not have access to technology or the Internet at home to take the exams.

The plaintiffs are seeking compensatory damages of more than $500 million and “punitive damages in an amount sufficient to punish defendants” and “to deter them from engaging in wrongful conduct in the future.”

The suit was filed by Phillip A. Baker from Baker, Keener & Nahra LLP in Los Angeles and Marci Lerner Miller from Miller Advocacy Group in Newport Beach.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Testing

Indiana: State Chief Jennifer McCormick Turns Down DeVos Guidance

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2020 //
6

Hooray for State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick of Indiana!

She rejected Betsy DeVos’ guidance to share CARES relief funding between public and private schools.

No wonder Republicans are planning to get rid of her and replace her with an appointed state superintendent whom they can control, on behalf of charter schools and voucher schools.

The state education department estimates that if they followed DeVos’ plan, poor kids in public schools would lose more than $15 million to private schools.

Jennifer McCormick joins the honor roll of this blog for saying no to zdeVos and the right wing bullies who lead Indiana.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Funding, Honor Roll, Indiana

Las Vegas Sun: This is What a Budding Dictatorship Looks Like. Will You Take a Stand?

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2020 //
47

We have all read mealy-mouthed articles and editorials in which the writers tiptoe around the unquestioned fact that Donald Trump lies without shame. We know he has fired anyone in the federal government who has dared to question his often absurd judgments. We know he has fired several independent Inspectors General whose job is to monitor Cabinet agencies for waste, fraud, and abuse. Most recently he fired the Inspector General of the State Department, who was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for using State Department personnel to run personal errands, like walking his dog, picking up his dry cleaning, etc., and allowing his wife to run State Department meetings as if she had been hired to be his deputy. The Inspector General had to go.

Trump glories in insulting the media, mocking them for asking questions that he prefers not to answer. At his rallies, he enjoys ridiculing journalists, treating them like criminals. His tweets are vicious and self-aggrandizing, unbecoming of a man who sits in the White House.

Bit by bit, he is destroying the norms and institutions that have protected us in the past from incompetent presidents.

This newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, called him out for what he is: an incipient dictator, a man whose fascist tendencies grow stronger with every passing day and with his fear that he might lose the election. The editorial board also called out the Republican party, a party that once identified with Abraham Lincoln but which now allies itself with white nationalists, bigots, and every sort of rightwing extremism. To be a Republican today is to identify with the most hateful elements of our society. I am ashamed to say that I worked in a Republican administration, that of President George H.W. Bush. Today, the Bush family should be speaking out against this mad interloper who has destroyed the last shreds of decency and moderation that once typified the Republican party. Instead, they stand silent, even when Trump mocked George W. Bush for issuing a call for national unity during the pandemic.

The Las Vegas Sun editorial warns that we are moving headlong towards dictatorship.

We have been warned.

Anyone who is tempted not to vote in 2020 or to vote for a third party candidate should read this editorial.

The time has arrived to confront a grim realization in calm but forthright terms.

Since 2016, observers in the U.S. and around the world have remarked on President Donald Trump and the Republican Party exhibiting authoritarian “tendencies.”

With a sense of numb shock, we now must acknowledge the facts before us. By any objective standard, the Trump administration and GOP leadership have moved well past authoritarian reflexes.

Simply put, our nation has entered the early stages of a dictatorship. It’s an immature dictatorship and still gathering power. But it’s not theoretical and it has happened faster than any rational person might believe.

In 1788, James Madison stood before the state of Virginia’s convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution and issued a warning about the future of American democracy. An overthrow, the Founding Father said, was less likely to happen through a violent takeover than “by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power.”

Today, that prophecy is playing out in chilling vigor. Led by a president who lacks all respect for our system of government, today’s Republican Party, through a quickening succession of abuses of power, is acting as an authoritarian regime.

This is not a hypothetical. It’s not dystopian fiction. It’s an inescapable conclusion when you examine the evidence.

Ponder the basic elements of an autocracy, and weigh them against the actions of Trump and the GOP leadership.

This administration and Republican leadership have corrupted the justice system, purged and persecuted nonpartisan military personnel and government employees to install apparatchiks in their place, regularly encouraged paramilitary activity among supporters, thwarted any efforts of legitimate legislative oversight, claimed absolute immunity for Trump, promoted propagandistic media while falsely discrediting the accuracy of legitimate news, manipulated the courts, marbled the administration and judiciary with unqualified lackeys, driven contracts to supporters, used the U.S. Treasury to reward friends, attempted to coerce foreign governments into leveling false charges at political rivals, eagerly courted supportive dictators around the world, excused friends from their crimes while seeking political prosecutions of enemies on false charges, sought to bend our intelligence agencies to partisan ends, threatened a free press with retaliation, revised or suppressed historical records that were unfavorable, publicly smeared perceived opponents, sabotaged fair elections, created a cult of personality around its leader, distributed government largesse based on fealty to the leader, defined critics as subhuman, traded in race-baiting and nationalism, caged children and broken up desperate families, defined all events solely in terms of how they affect the leader, shattered revered institutions protecting Americans, reviled our allies while embracing our enemies, and attempted to call into question the validity of elections that go against the leader while intimating that they might attempt to postpone elections if the leader’s poll numbers are weak. And that catalog of horrors is the abbreviated list.

These are the core attributes the world has used for decades to identify dictators. And these actions are actively afoot in America today, and they are gaining greater velocity with each day we grow closer to the election.

Consider the following items from just the past couple of weeks.

Assault on independent oversight

• Friday: Trump fires the State Department’s inspector general, the fourth time in less than a month he has removed a nonpartisan government watchdog who has found fault with the administration. The Associated Press reports that in a letter to Congress, Trump says Steve Linick, who had held the job since 2013, no longer has his full confidence. Linick is reported to have been investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for using federal resources for personal benefit. The move comes two weeks after Trump fired inspector general Christi Grimm from the Department of Health and Human Services. She had issued a report highlighting administration failures to prepare for COVID-19. At every turn in these firings, Trump sought to disable impartial oversight.

• Thursday: In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, ousted vaccine chief Dr. Richard Bright says the country is woefully unprepared for further effects of the COVID-19 outbreak because Trump officials ignored his early warnings and then retaliated against him after he sounded an alarm in January. Bright, who worked for the federal government for 25 years before his firing by Trump appointees, tells lawmakers the U.S. will see the “darkest winter in modern history” unless there’s a ramped-up response.

• Tuesday: Asked by Time magazine about the possibility of the administration delaying the November election, Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner doesn’t rule it out. He also won’t affirm that the election will take place Nov. 3 as scheduled. “It’s not my decision to make, so I’m not sure I can commit one way or the other. But right now that’s the plan,” Kushner says. “Hopefully, by the time we get to September or October or November, we’ve done enough with the testing and with all the different things we’re trying to do to prevent an outbreak of the magnitude that would make us shut down again.” Kushner’s noncommittal response fuels fears that Trump and the GOP will postpone the vote if his poll numbers are weak. Constitutionally, Trump lacks the power to do this — although the frequency of rumors about a delay attempt are troubling. However, with the support of a few GOP governors, Trump could throw the election into chaos. At minimum he regularly attacks the validity of any election that doesn’t go his way.

• Tuesday: During oral arguments in a Supreme Court case involving three lawsuits Trump has filed to conceal his tax returns, the president’s lawyers contend the president has immunity from being prosecuted or even investigated by law enforcement or Congress for any crime including murder. In other words, the attorneys contend Trump has kingly powers, a level of authority that no president in history has been granted and precisely what the Constitution’s balance of powers was designed to prevent.

• May 8: Under pressure from Trump, the Senate rushes to set a committee hearing on the confirmation of Trump loyalist filmmaker Michael Pack to lead the independent agency that oversees the Voice of America, the largest American international broadcaster. The nomination of Pack, a close ally of former Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon, has fueled fears that the VOA and its sister organizations would become Trump propaganda arms under Pack. Recently, Trump has been harshly critical of the VOA, including falsely accusing it of spreading Chinese misinformation about the coronavirus outbreak.

• May 8: Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, reorganizes his agency in blatant defiance of congressional oversight. Grenell makes the changes, which affect the network of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies he’s overseeing on an acting basis, after rebuffing a request from House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for details. Schiff contends, justifiably, that it’s inappropriate for an acting leader to make wholesale changes. A Trump crony with scant intelligence experience, Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, is expected to be confirmed as permanent DNI by the Senate in the coming weeks.

Attacking perceived enemies

• May 7: Louis DeJoy, one of Trump’s financial backers and a longtime GOP donor, is selected as postmaster general. This opens the door for Trump to force the postal service to raise prices for companies that deliver packages, primarily Amazon, and in turn damage The Washington Post, which is owned by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. Earlier this year the Pentagon denied Amazon a bid for a multibillion-dollar contract — something now under investigation. Trump’s USPS move also raises the distinct possibility of the Republicans using the postal service to hinder vote-by-mail efforts this fall.

• May 7: A woman who had accused Dr. Anthony Fauci, the federal government’s top infectious disease expert, of sexual assault recants and says she was paid by two Trump loyalists to fabricate the claim. The woman releases an audio recording in which one of the operatives, Jack Burkman, complains that Fauci “shut the country down” and that “you have to make up whatever you have to make up to stop that train and that’s the way life works, OK? That’s the way it goes.” When the woman says that COVID-19 is a serious illness, Burkman replies: “Mother Nature has to clean the barn every so often. How real is it? Who knows? So what if 1% of the population goes? So what if you lose 400,000 people? 200,000 were elderly, the other 200,000 are the bottom of society. You got to clean out the barn.” Considering that coronavirus so far has hit the elderly, blacks, Latinos and other people of color hardest, Burkman’s talk of “cleaning the barn” suggests he considers these people to be manure.

• May 7: Politico reports that leading congressional Republicans are coalescing behind a plan to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray with someone who will be obedient to Trump. It would be another step toward dismantling the Justice Department’s independence and bringing it under Trump’s control. Since his inauguration, Trump has made a series of moves to destroy the nonpartisan independence of our country’s intelligence community. James Comey, who was fired for not ignoring former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s overtures to Russia, has now been placed under criminal investigation by Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department. So are other members of the FBI and CIA who investigated Russia’s involvement in promoting Trump. The president has long demanded the investigations and prosecutions of these people whom he perceives as enemies.

• May 7: It’s revealed that Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, used classified information for the financial benefit of himself and his wealthy friends. Burr cashed out as much as $1.5 million in stock right before the market crash based on his insider knowledge about the coronavirus threat, and his brother-in-law sold up to $280,000 in shares the same day. Whether Burr is corrupt or not is unknown, but Trump loyalists have applauded because Burr has crossed Trump in the past. Burr steps down as committee chair on Thursday, a day after FBI agents seize his cellphone as part of a burgeoning insider trade investigation.

Undermining the rule of law

• May 7: Barr subverts federal prosecutors and the justice system by dropping charges against Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to breaking the law by lying to the FBI about his involvement in Russian election interference. Barr earlier interceded on behalf of another Trump loyalist, Roger Stone, by ordering federal prosecutors to reduce their sentencing recommendation for the convicted felon.

“This is a strange occurrence — this is a man (Flynn) who pled guilty twice and was prepared to be sentenced,” says Shira Scheindlin, a former federal judge, to the National Law Journal. “He had a motion pending to withdraw his plea, which had not been decided. There’s a really bad political smell to this, particularly after the Roger Stone debacle. This is going to be seen critically by prosecutors across the country as the Justice Department being the lawyer for the president, not the lawyer for the people.”

• May 7: Asked by CBS News how history would view his actions involving Flynn, Barr says, “Well, history is written by the winners. So it largely depends on who’s writing the history. I think a fair history would say that it was a good decision because it upheld the rule of law. It … upheld the standards of the Department of Justice, and it undid what was an injustice.” It’s a preposterous statement — an attorney general saying he cares about the rule of law yet obviously is eager to conduct political prosecutions. But it’s also a flagrant acknowledgment that the administration is willing to commit malfeasance and revise history to cover its tracks. Think Soviet-era practices of removing purged individuals from history books and photos. Trump and his inner circle have already shown a predilection for this on a number of occasions: ordering that aerial photos from his inauguration be doctored so that the crowd appeared larger; posting altered images that make Trump look slimmer and make his hands appear bigger; tweeting a faked photo of Trump placing a medal on the military dog that helped U.S. special forces track ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; and coercing the National Archives into editing photos of the 2017 women’s march on Washington to white out picket signs critical of Trump. More than 2,000 former Justice Department attorneys — Republicans and Democrats — demand Barr’s resignation because of abuses of power.

• May 6: A leaked audio recording reveals that pro-Trump Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., who also heads his state’s Republican Party, pressured a local party official to submit falsified election results so that a GOP activist could make the primary election ballot. “You’ve got a sitting congressman — a sitting state party chair — who is trying to bully a volunteer — I’m a volunteer; I don’t get paid for this — into committing a crime,” said the official, Eli Bremer, to The Denver Post. “To say it’s damning is an understatement.” Previously, Buck has promoted the debunked Trump fantasy that it was Hillary Clinton who colluded with Russians.

Loyalty test

• May 6: The Trump administration assigns a White House loyalist to a behind-the-scenes role vetting Defense Department employees for loyalty to Trump, prompting concerns that Trump will purge civilian military leadership of anyone not in lockstep with his political agenda. Meanwhile, career military officers such as Brett Crozier, captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, are stripped of command if they do something inconvenient to the president.

• May 4: It’s reported that individuals connected to Trump are negotiating to take a controlling stake of One America News Network, an extremist cable-news channel whose hosts include the chief promoter of the insane Pizzagate fantasy, loosely linked to the QAnon whackos, that holds Democrats actively engage in an organized child-abuse ring in a Washington pizzeria. The reason for Trump’s OAN ardor? He believes Fox News isn’t supportive enough and wants an outlet that he can turn into a private version of a state-run propaganda platform. In his coronavirus briefings, Trump regularly turned to OAN staff to lob him friendly questions. Trump, for his part, has made no secret of his disdain on the rare occasions when Fox News personalities give him even the slightest criticism. “The people who are watching @FoxNews, in record numbers (thank you President Trump), are angry. They want an alternative now. So do I!” he tweeted April 26. The irony is monumental – without Fox News softening up the American public with crazed theories, there would be no Trump presidency.

• May 1: A day after militia members and other armed individuals gather to protest coronavirus-related closures at Michigan’s capitol, Trump praises them on Twitter by calling them “very good people.” The protests included swastikas, Confederate flags and a noose, as well as a sign referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and containing the message “tyrants get the rope.” This echoes Trump’s support of right-wing paramilitary at Charlottesville, Va., and elsewhere. By Thursday, the Michigan Legislature canceled its legislative session because of threats by armed protesters. It is a grim foreshadowing of the possibilities of Trump-loving paramilitary assaults on democratic institutions and a stupefying development in America.

• April 30: The administration suppresses new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for safely reopening businesses amid the pandemic, which call for wide-scale testing and contact tracing that Trump has been unable to put in place. The guidelines call into question the White House’s narrative that the nation can proceed safely.

Think about it: These are merely two weeks’ worth of actions by GOP leaders to rig the system, tear down checks and balances, eliminate oversight, gain permanent power and reap all the corrupt gains they can get.

This president and his party have shown they will sideline any member of the administration who isn’t a partisan loyalist fully willing to lie to the American public and bend any policy to the convenience of the president. They will: assault any independent institution; wage war on the idea of independent truths; refuse to protect the next election from tampering; engage in wholesale gerrymandering; restrict voter access; offer loving words to Kim Jong Un on his health while criticizing our allies; grovel before Vladimir Putin; engage in constant dog whistles to white supremacists. What was unimaginable in America just a few years ago is now happening before our eyes on an alarmingly regular basis. We are living in a period of kleptocratic minority rule.

Minority rule

Any realist cannot ignore the wanton destruction of the system of checks and balances and nonpartisan government and the congealing of despotic abuses.

One must conclude we are living in the early days of an authoritarian regime.

History teaches us that around the world, dictatorships often don’t announce themselves with tanks in the streets. Instead they arrive with the constant erosion of just systems, finger-pointing at imaginary enemies to mobilize their supporters and the constant concentration of power in a few hands. Meanwhile, they weaponize the justice system, the purse strings of government, law enforcement and the courts to their benefit. After they get away with the early steps, those who would rule let their actions accelerate. Suddenly the population wakes up one day to realize what’s happened. Often it’s too late by then.

During an April 3 coronavirus news conference, Trump offered a telling quote when asked why he doesn’t wear a face mask. “Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens. Somehow I don’t see it for myself.”

In a simple sentence, Trump clearly elevates dictators (dictators!) to the same dignified plane as presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens. It’s impossible to imagine another president doing the same after more than 100 years when America has stood as a beacon defying dictators. But in today’s GOP, dictators aren’t simply welcome, they are a source of inspiration.

But it’s not too late for the U.S. The systems guarding our freedom retain enough muscle memory that this dictatorship is still too weak to assert total dominance.

We can still save the country and avoid the nightmare scenario that Madison described all those years ago.

There’s a way to prevent Trump and his lickspittles from completing their job of dismantling America. It’s identifying good candidates, supporting them financially, voting for them and doing all we can to encourage others to vote for them too. It is also showing vocal support for the impartial institutions of government that, in the end, report to the American people and not to a mentally unstable leader.

But the window is closing. The pace of the GOP leadership’s abuses isn’t going to slow down, because they know the trend in American elective politics isn’t in their favor. The nation is growing more ethnically diverse and therefore more intolerant of the Trump-era GOP’s racist and anti-immigrant policies. Americans are demanding an end to the income inequality that has been brought on by Republican economic policies that grossly favor the ultrawealthy. As climate change intensifies, so does opposition to the damaging environmental policies of the right.

Plenty of rank-and-file Republicans also are disgusted by what’s happened and need a home — indeed we need a healthy dialogue with conservatives in the marketplace of American political ideas. However, Trump and the GOP leadership are not conservatives, and real conservative Americans are in the wilderness now.

All the while, the largest generation in the country — those in their teens and 20s, a group bigger than the baby boomers — is coming of age and is fervently opposed to today’s Republican Party.

The GOP knows it will fade into history soon without drastic action, so it’s holding onto power by any means necessary and scheming to permanently tilt the scales in its favor.

True Americans — the spiritual descendants of Madison and his fellow founders, who recognize Trump and those around him as the vandals they are — know they can’t let that happen.

But we all need to realize that the emergency is no longer on the horizon, coming gradually closer.

It’s here. We’re living it. And only we can put a stop to it.

The time to decide is now. Either you allow our democracy–with all its flaws and imperfections–to be corrupted and destroyed, or you stand for the rule of law and the Constitution. There is no other choice.

Which side are you on?

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Republicans, Trump

Why Are Charter Schools Taking Money Intended to Save Small Businesses?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2020 //
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The charter industry lobbied to make sure that privately-managed charter schools would be eligible to apply for and receive federal coronavirus relief funds that were intended to save small businesses. An unknown number of charter schools have indeed received large federal monies from the stimulus money, despite the fact that no charter school has suffered any loss of funding due to the pandemic.

The charter industry likes to say that charter schools are public schools, and they even call themselves “public charter schools,” which is an oxymoron. Real public schools were not allowed to tap into the coronavirus relief funds for small businesses. But charter schools were eligible, which proves the point that such schools are not public schools. They are operated by private boards under contract.

More importantly, they had no need for the money. Many thousands of private businesses do have a genuine need. At least 100,000 small businesses have closed forever.

The coronavirus pandemic is emerging as an existential threat to the nation’s small businesses — despite Congress approving a historic $700 billion to support them — with the potential to further diminish the place of small companies in the American economy.


The White House and Congress have made saving small businesses a linchpin of the financial rescue, even passing a second stimulus for them late last month. But already, economists project that more than 100,000 small businesses have shut permanently since the pandemic escalated in March, according to a study by researchers at the University of Illinois, Harvard Business School, Harvard University and the University of Chicago. Their latest data suggests at least 2 percent of small businesses are gone, according to a survey conducted May 9 to 11.


The carnage has been even higher in the restaurant industry, where 3 percent of restaurant operators have gone out of business, according to the National Restaurant Association.
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earful, heartfelt announcements about small-business closures are popping up on websites and Facebook pages around the country. Analysts warn this is only the beginning of the worst wave of small-business bankruptcies and closures since the Great Depression. It’s simply not possible for small businesses to survive with no income coming in for weeks followed by reopening at half capacity, many owners say.

The charters still receive public funding. They are not at risk. But an unknown number have sought and received some of the money that was supposed to save mom-and-pop stores that have had no revenues since mid-March.

Perry Stein of the Washington Post tried to find out how many charter schools in DC had taken the money meant for failing businesses, and the charter industry was evasive.

Maybe they are embarrassed. They should be.

Stein writes:

D.C. charter schools received federal aid intended to keep nonprofits and small businesses afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, drawing criticism from public school advocates and others who say the money should be reserved for businesses hit harder by the crisis’s economic toll.


It is unclear exactly how many applied for the money. Officials across the District’s expansive charter sector — 63 operators that educate almost half of the city’s 100,000 public school students — have largely remained quiet about which schools have received help from the federal Paycheck Protection Program.


The D.C. Public Charter School Board, the city board that regulates the schools, said it doesn’t know, and the D.C. Council’s Education Committee chair said the same.


FOCUS, a leading D.C. charter advocacy organization, has been the public contact point for schools interested in applying. But its director, Anne Herr, said she also does not know. Oversight of the relief money “belongs to the federal government,” she said.


Contacted by The Washington Post, most charter operators declined to say. But some acknowledged applying — and defended the decision.
“These kids are wearing the brunt of everything that goes bad in the city,” said Shawn Hardnett, founder and executive director of Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys in Southeast Washington, which received a $300,000 loan. “Everything we can do to protect the most vulnerable children in the city we are doing.”
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Wealthy private schools in the region have gotten pushback for taking the money. Top universities have, too. Some businesses, including Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steak House, ultimately decided to return the money after public scrutiny.


Charter schools now face similar blowback. That’s because their main revenue source — per-pupil government funding — is so far unaffected by the pandemic. Meanwhile, other companies and organizations across the district have lost nearly all of their revenue, said D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), who chairs the Education Committee and has questioned whether charter schools should apply.

“I think it’s really an abuse of funds,” said Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “They are not losing their funding stream.”

So, the charters take the money that was supposed to save America’s small businesses, which are in desperate trouble, because…because…they can.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization
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