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My Twitter Account Has Been Hacked and Suspended: Please Complain to X on My Behalf

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2024 //
43

My Twitter name is @DianeRavitch. I have about 146,000 followers. My account is instantly recognizable because it has my photo and a few symbolic emojis.

In late 2022, someone created a Twitter account called @Ravitch_Diane. It has no emojis, no photo and 81 followers.

The fake account has now taken control of my Twitter account. Anything I post goes to the fake Twitter account.

I tried to fill out the form to complain about the impersonation, sent my ID and photo, got verified, but failed to submit because the last instruction said, “Open your email account” before submitting. Each time I followed instructions but was unable to submit. The last hurdle made no sense.

Meanwhile I went to the fake account and saw that it was registered to an unfamiliar email. I couldn’t delete it or change it but I could change my birthdate and the handle. My birthdate is July 1, 1938. I changed it to another year, I forget which, but probably 2012. I was immediately locked out of Twitter because I’m too young! (Oh, to be 12 again!)

Not only was the fake account locked but so was my genuine account. This demonstrates that the two were interlocked. The hacker and I.

This is not the biggest problem in the world these days, but I would be grateful for your help.

Please contact X and ask them to ban the hacker, eliminate the fake account, and restore my real account.

When I changed the handle on the fake account, I made it now @goToMyRealAcct

I am now completely locked out and you alone can save me!

Needless to say, there is no customer service to whom one may speak. Like, a human being.

Categories Accountability, Fake, Fraud

David Frum: Violence: You Reap What You Sow

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2024 //
34

David Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. His views evolved, and he is now a Never-Trumper. He is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where this article appeared.

Frum wrote:

When a madman hammered nearly to death the husband of then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Donald Trump jeered and mocked. One of Trump’s sons and other close Trump supporters avidly promoted false claims that Paul Pelosi had somehow brought the onslaught upon himself through a sexual misadventure.

After authorities apprehended a right-wing-extremist plot to abduct Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Trump belittled the threat at a rally. He disparaged Whitmer as a political enemy. His supporters chanted “Lock her up.” Trump laughed and replied, “Lock them all up.”

Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television.

Now the bloodshed that Trump has done so much to incite against others has touched him as well. The attempted murder of Trump—and the killing of a person nearby—is a horror and an outrage. More will be learned about the man who committed this appalling act, and who was killed by the Secret Service. Whatever his mania or motive, the only important thing about him is the law-enforcement mistake that allowed him to bring a deadly weapon so close to a campaign event and gain a sight line of the presidential candidate. His name should otherwise be erased and forgotten.

It is sadly incorrect to say, as so many have, that political violence “has no place” in American society. Assassinations, lynchings, riots, and pogroms have stained every page of American political history. That has remained true to the present day. In 2016, and even more in 2020, Trump supporters brought weapons to intimidate opponents and vote-counters. Trump and his supporters envision a new place for violence as their defining political message in the 2024 election.

Fascist movements are secular religions. Like all religions, they offer martyrs as their proof of truth. The Mussolini movement in Italy built imposing monuments to its fallen comrades. The Trump movement now improves on that: The leader himself will be the martyr in chief, his own blood the basis for his bid for power and vengeance.

The 2024 election was already shaping up as a symbolic contest between an elderly and weakening liberalism too frail and uncertain to protect itself and an authoritarian, reactionary movement ready to burst every barrier and trash every institution. To date, Trump has led only a minority of U.S. voters, but that minority’s passion and audacity have offset what it lacks in numbers. After the shooting, Trump and his backers hope to use the iconography of a bloody ear and face, raised fist, and call to “Fight!” to summon waverers to their cause of installing Trump as an anti-constitutional ruler, exempted from ordinary law by his allies on the Supreme Court.

Other societies have backslid to authoritarianism because of some extraordinary crisis: economic depression, hyperinflation, military defeat, civil strife. In 2024, U.S. troops are nowhere at war. The American economy is booming, providing spectacular and widely shared prosperity. A brief spasm of mild post-pandemic inflation has been overcome. Indicators of social health have abruptlyturned positive since Trump left office after years of deterioration during his term. Crime and fatal drug overdoses are declining in 2024; marriages and births are rising. Even the country’s problems indirectly confirm the country’s success: Migrants are crossing the border in the hundreds of thousands, because they know, even if Americans don’t, that the U.S. job market is among the hottest on Earth.

Yet despite all of this success, Americans are considering a form of self-harm that in other countries has typically followed the darkest national failures: letting the author of a failed coup d’état return to office to try again.

One reason this self-harm is nearing consummation is that American society is poorly prepared to understand and respond to radical challenges, once those challenges gain a certain mass. For nearly a century, “radical” in U.S. politics has usually meant “fringe”: Communists, Ku Kluxers, Black Panthers, Branch Davidians, Islamist jihadists. Radicals could be marginalized by the weight of the great American consensus that stretches from social democrats to business conservatives. Sometimes, a Joe McCarthy or a George Wallace would throw a scare into that mighty consensus, but in the past such challengers rarely formed stable coalitions with accepted stakeholders in society. Never gaining an enduring grip on the institutions of state, they flared up and burned out.

Trump is different. His abuses have been ratified by powerful constituencies. He has conquered and colonized one of the two major parties. He has defeated—or is on the way to defeating—every impeachment and prosecution to hold him to account for his frauds and crimes. He has assembled a mass following that is larger, more permanent, and more national in reach than any previous American demagogue. He has dominated the scene for nine years already, and he and his supporters hope they can use yesterday’s appalling event to extend the Trump era to the end of his life and beyond.

The American political and social system cannot treat such a person as an alien. It inevitably accommodates and naturalizes him. His counselors, even the thugs and felons, join the point-counterpoint dialogue at the summit of the American elite. President Joe Biden nearly wrecked his campaign because he felt obliged to meet Trump in debate. How could Biden have done otherwise? Trump is the three-time nominee of the Republican Party; it’s awkward and strange to treat him as an insurrectionist against the American state—though that’s what Trump was and is.

The despicable shooting at Trump, which also caused death and injury to others, now secures his undeserved position as a partner in the protective rituals of the democracy he despises. The appropriate expressions of dismay and condemnation from every prominent voice in American life have the additional effect of habituating Americans to Trump’s legitimacy. In the face of such an outrage, the familiar and proper practice is to stress unity, to proclaim that Americans have more things in common than that divide them. Those soothing words, true in the past, are less true now.

Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life.

The Republican National Convention, which opens this week, will welcome to its stage apologists for Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its aggression against U.S. allies. Trump’s own infatuation with Russia and other dictatorships has not dimmed even slightly with age or experience. Yet all of these urgent and necessary truths must now be subordinated to the ritual invocation of “thoughts and prayers” for someone who never gave a thought or uttered a prayer for any of the victims of his own many incitements to bloodshed. The president who used his office to champion the rights of dangerous people to own military-type weapons says he was grazed by a bullet from one such assault rifle.

Conventional phrases and polite hypocrisy fill a useful function in social life. We say “Thank you for your service” both to the decorated hero and to the veteran who barely escaped dishonorable discharge. It’s easier than deciphering which was which. We wish “Happy New Year!” even when we dread the months ahead.

But conventional phrases don’t go unheard. They carry meanings, meanings no less powerful for being rote and reflexive. In rightly denouncing violence, we are extending an implicit pardon to the most violent person in contemporary U.S. politics. In asserting unity, we are absolving a man who seeks power through the humiliation and subordination of disdained others.

Those conventional phrases are inscribing Trump into a place in American life that he should have forfeited beyond redemption on January 6, 2021. All decent people welcome the sparing of his life. Trump’s reckoning should be with the orderly process of law, not with the bloodshed he rejoiced in when it befell others. He and his allies will exploit a gunman’s vicious criminality as their path to exonerate past crimes and empower new ones. Those who stand against Trump and his allies must find the will and the language to explain why these crimes, past and planned, are all wrong, all intolerable—and how the gunman and Trump, at their opposite ends of a bullet’s trajectory, are nonetheless joined together as common enemies of law and democracy.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

North Carolina: Voucher Schools Should Be Held Accountable

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2024 //
9

The editorial board of the Capitol Broadcasting Company wonders why voucher schools in North Carolina are exempt from the same accountability as public schools. The answer is simple: They don’t want the public to know. They don’t want them to know that most kids who use vouchers never attended public schools. They don’t want them to know that the few public school kids who sought vouchers are falling behind their peers in public schools.

The editorial boldly chastises the North Carolina General Assembly:

It is not an unrealistic expectation that North Carolinians hold elected officials – whether executive, legislative or judicial – accountable for how tax dollars are spent.

When legislators dole out — say more than half-a-billion dollars – to private schools it should go without mention there would be clear provisions for taxpayers to know how much money goes where, whether the money is being spent for the purpose intended and whether that purpose is being achieved.

Accountability isn’t simply to the parents of students. Achievement isn’t merely a matter of the parents’ happiness.

All North Carolinians – particularly every taxpayer who is paying the tab – have a right to know how their money is being spent and whether it is in the hands of competent and qualified people to deliver the services intended – educating school children.

When it comes to private school vouchers, the leaders of the General Assembly want to pump as much as $632 million into them so that even wealthy families can gain taxpayer subsidies for their kids’ tuition. Nearly 20% of the likely beneficiaries are families with annual household incomes exceeding $259,000 (representing the top 7% of families in the state).

Accountability is overlooked. More than overlooked, it seems legislative leaders are actually blocking the kinds of routine accountability that other recipients of taxpayer money must adhere to.

A recent examination of 200 private schools that receive the greatest share of taxpayer-funded vouchers by the Public School Forum of North Carolina revealed little oversight and few of the basic requirements that are in place for public schools, so taxpayers can see if their schools are properly staffed and kids are learning.

It is the law that students in public schools be taught by state-certified teachers. Voucher-supported private schools have no teacher-certification requirements. Only 2% of private schools require teachers have state certification.

Public schools must operate at least 185 days for classroom instruction. There’s no requirement of any minimum on instruction for voucher-supported private schools.

Public schools – including charter schools – must administer state end of grade tests. Voucher private schools can administer a nationally-normed standardized test of their choice to students.  They must pay if they choose to  use the state’s end of grade tests (see clarification below).

Current funding schemes for private school vouchers – even if funding for students from low- and modest-income families – needs to be accountable.

And there’s certainly no urgency to act on the unwise expansion of private school vouchers. The reality is that none of the families who might be awaiting word on the availability of the subsidies, is dependent upon them to send their kids to ANY school of their choice – public or private.

There are certainly some circumstances when the education needs of students cannot be met in public schools. Having a taxpayer-financed option for those students who need it – and need financial assistance – is appropriate.

But every taxpayer should be able to know – by transparency and accountability set out in state law – that their dollars are being spent as intended by competent teachers and there’s a demonstrable way to determine the effectiveness of the instruction.

Schools that discriminate in admissions or hiring, schools that don’t require basic teacher certification, classroom attendance, schools that don’t show student achievement through the same end-of-grade testing used in public schools and schools that don’t make that information available as public schools do, should not be subsidized with taxpayer dollars.

That’s just basic accountability our legislators should demand and schools willingly provide.

CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this editorial stated that North Carolina private schools receiving taxpayer-financed vouchers were prohibited from using state end of grade tests. Private schools, including those receiving vouchers, are not prohibited from participating in the state’s end of grade and/or end of course tests, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.  If the private schools pay they can participate and some do, according to the department.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Failure, North Carolina, Vouchers

John Thompson: Ryan Walters Appoints Extremists to Revise Oklahoma Social Studies Curriculum

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2024 //
5

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, brings us up to date with the latest shenanigans of Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters. Recently, he mandated that the Bible be taught in the state’s classrooms. Now Walters has appointed a list of rightwing luminaries to rewrite the state’s social studies curriculum. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Walters proves that it can.

John Thompson writes:

KOSU’s Beth Wallace reports that the Executive Review Committee assembled by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters features prominent conservatives, including Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian Nationalist organization, Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.” She then reminds readers that, “The Heritage Foundation is the think tank behind Project 2025, a movement that proposes to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.”

More information was provided to NBC’s Tyler Kingkade and Marissa Parra during their interview with Walters about his plans for transforming school curriculums. They reported that “Oklahoma educators who refuse to teach students about the Bible could lose their teaching license.” Ryan Walters said that those teachers would “face the same consequences as one who refuses to teach about the Civil War. The punishment could include revocation of their teaching license.” 

Moreover, Walters expressed confidence “that his order will survive legal challenges because of the Justices then-President Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court.” And if Trump is elected, “it will help us move the ball forward, even more so than this.”

Until recently, Dennis Prager was the best known rightwinger selected for Walters’ committee. The Hill’s Lexi Lonas explained that Prager’s so-called education group “focused on teaching conservative principles. The conservative platform has been made its way into multiple states, with videos such as ‘Was the Civil War About Slavery?’ and ‘The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party.’”

National Public Radio’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty referred to another committee member, David Barton, in a very different way, as “the most important Evangelist You’ve Never Heard Of.” Hagerty explained that Barton collected 100,000 documents and, “He says they prove that the Founding Fathers were deeply religious men who built America on Christian ideas — something you never learn in school.” Barton argued that the Constitution isn’t a secular document because it “is laced with biblical quotations.” 

However, NPR “looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out.” The Constitution had “no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office.” Then Hagerty quoted, “John Fea, chairman of the history department at evangelical Messiah College,” who said, “Barton is peddling a distorted history that appeals to conservative believers.”

Hagerty also fact-checked Barton’s claim that President Thomas Jefferson “who owned nearly 200 slaves — was a civil rights visionary,” and he had plans that “would’ve ended slavery really early on,” and “they would have gone much more toward civil rights.” Barton said that Virginia law “prohibited Jefferson from freeing his slaves during his lifetime.” When that statement was shown to be false, Barton said that, “Jefferson could not afford to free his slaves.”

So, David Barton and Dennis Prager clearly aren’t qualified to recommend history curriculums, but the most dangerous member of the committee is Kevin Roberts, who is a driving force in the Christian Nationalist Project 2025, which is a detailed game plan for a Trump administration for dismantling the federal government’s administrative institutions. It seems obvious that his goal for the Oklahoma Executive Review Committee is to dismantle public education.

The Washington Post reports that Roberts recently said of Project 2025, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts told the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro that “he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’” Garcia-Navarro said that Project 2025 was:

A transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power.

Roberts has praised Hungary’s authoritarian, Christian Nationalist Viktor Orban, adding that “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.” He’s also said that he wants to “destroy the administrative state,” and defeat “the secret Communist movement in America.” 

And since he is serving on Walters’ committee for rewriting history, it is noteworthy that Roberts said that Joe McCarthy “largely got things right.”

When asked if he believes that President Biden won the 2020 election, Roberts replied, “No.”

And that brings us to the reason why Rex Huppke writes in the Oklahoman:

Project 2025 is a governing blueprint designed by a collection of former Trump administration officials who seem to have looked at Hitler’s path to power in 1930s Germany and thought, ‘Cool!’

Huppke refers to Project 2025, as “a painstakingly detailed and hellishly authoritarian plan for a second Trump presidency.” He notes that “according to The Heritage Foundation itself,” Trump “embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations.”

I would just add that the leader of Project 2025, and his allies, clearly see Ryan Walters’ Executive Review Committee as one part of their plan.

Categories Accountability, Civics, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History, Oklahoma, Republicans, Trump

North Carolina: Five Words for Voters: “And You’re OK with That?”

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2024 //
7

Leaders of the pro-public school organization called Public Schools First in North Carolina discovered that many public school parents and advocates are unaware that the state’s General Assembly has passed a budget that gives vouchers to the rich. They are distributing the following opinion piece from the Greensboro News to inform the public:

Our Opinion: Five words for GOP candidates: ‘And you’re OK with That?’

“And you’re OK with that?”

As Republican candidates for the state legislature begin to the make the rounds this fall, they should be hearing those five words over and over from constituents of all political stripes.

At every stop, on every stump, they should be pressed to give straight answers to that simple question on three issues:

Private-school vouchers

Even as they’ve increased taxpayer funding for private school tuition, adding wealthy families to the dole, many local public districts, including our own in Guilford and Forsyth counties, complain that they are seriously underfunded.

To be more specific, your party plans to plow hundreds of additional millions in taxpayer money into private school tuition assistance. Although 40% of that money ($96 million) would go to middle-class and working-class families earning between $57,721 to $115,440 a year (for a family of four), 44% (or $107 million) would go families earning $115,441 to $259,740.

And 16% (or $39 million) would go to those who need it the very least: wealthy families earning more than $259,741 annually.

One Democratic lawmaker likened it to asking low- and moderate-income taxpayers to help pay for a wealthy kid’s Porsche.

How do you square that with your rhetoric against “the welfare state” and profligate spending of other people’s money?

How do you square it with public school funding gaps throughout the state?

And how do you tell public schools no, that’s all we have to spend and then turn around and tell rich families y’all come. Who do we make the check out to?

Keeping secrets

Your party also slipped a provision into the state budget bill last fall that allows state lawmakers to decide for themselves whether they will make any of their documents accessible to the public. 

By law, they also get to choose whether to destroy or sell documents. They’re the decider. Which means they’re creating their own deep state right here and now on Tobacco Road.

What are they trying to hide and why?

And what gives them the right to membership in this exclusive club, but not others (the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general and other North Carolina officials who are elected statewide need not apply)?

Easy money

Then there’s the provision the Republican-controlled legislature embedded within an (unnecessary) anti-masking bill that allows more “dark money” donations to political candidates in North Carolina.

As the current law stands, candidates must disclose the names of donors to their campaigns. They also are prohibited from taking donations from corporations, and contributions from individuals and political groups may not exceed $6,400.

This bill would change all that by making it legal for political parties in the state to take money from “Super PACs,” which are allowed to keep their donors secret and may receive unlimited amounts of money.

Those Super PACs would be able to collect the money and pass it on to the political parties, which could then funnel it to candidates, no questions asked.

At least your party has made no secret of the fact that it designed this new rule specifically with the GOP gubernatorial candidate in mind. Mark Robinson substantially trails his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, in fundraising.

To recap, are you OK with:

Channeling taxpayer money to rich people as public schools go wanting?

Keeping documents and correspondence a secret from the public … unless you decide to share it?

And allowing anonymous cash to flow unfettered to candidates of both parties?

If the answer is yes, please explain how any of this benefits most North Carolinians and why we should vote for you anyway.

And how this in any way resembles government for, by and of the people.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, North Carolina, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Jennifer Rubin: It’s About Time for Investigation of Justice Thomas!

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2024 //
14

Jennifer Rubin was originally hired by The Washington Post to write the conservative point of view on its opinion pages. A journalist and a lawyer, Rubin found Trump to be intolerable, and she no longer writes from the right.

In this column, she commends the effort to investigate Justice Clarence Thomas and explains why:

Fed up with the justice’s stonewalling, egregious violation of judicial ethics, inaccurate legal filings and gross money grubbing from right-wing billionaires with business before the Supreme Court, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland this week demanding a special counsel be appointed “to investigate possible violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas.” Well, it’s about time someone took Thomas’s inexcusable conduct seriously. (Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s introduction of articles of impeachment in a Republican-controlled House, meanwhile, which followed on Wednesday, is a showy gesture but a nonstarter.)


The letter details “repeated and willful omissions of gifts and income from Justice Thomas’s financial disclosure reports required by the Ethics in Government Act.” And as the senators point out, investigations have been raised against other government officials for far less serious allegations.


This is not a complaint about failure to recuse, as reprehensible as it might be for Thomas to sit on cases concerning the insurrection in which his wife played a limited role, or about bribery; thanks to this court, such prosecutions are practically impossible. Instead, the letter concerns bread-and-butter allegations of false statements signed under oath and tax violations.


The list of issues is gobsmacking. For example: forgiveness of the principal on a $267,000 loan that was never reported as income. (“Documents obtained by the Senate Finance Committee indicate that no principal was ever repaid on the loan and that Justice Thomas only made interest payments on the loan prior to all payments ceasing on the loan. Forgiven or discharged debt is taxable income, and the Ethics in Government Act requires justices to disclose any ‘income from discharge of indebtedness.’”) This was never included on Thomas’s financial disclosure reports. Thomas has refused to say whether he accounted for the loan forgiveness on his income taxes.

Then there are the gifts — lots of gifts. The senators cite “undisclosed gifts from other wealthy donors … including private jet travel from Paul Anthony Novelly; private jet travel and country club membership from the late Wayne Huizenga; and private jet travel, luxury sports tickets, and lodging at a ranch from David Sokol.” The senator include an appendix detailing these lavish gratuities. The senators write, “Justice Thomas has claimed that some omissions were ‘inadvertent,’ and he has

amended some past reports accordingly. However, Justice Thomas has not disclosed all of the gifts that have been uncovered, and there may well be more.” Therefore, they charge: “His long history of omissions indicates a pattern of willfulness meriting investigation under the Ethics in Government Act.”


Then there are the gifts specifically from Leonard Leo — the right-wing legal impresario and former vice president of the Federalist Society who has helped pick Supreme Court justices and contrived to bring cases before the court to advance his dark money groups agenda, according to Whitehouse. The senators explain:
Last year, the Washington Post reported that Leo directed payments of at least $25,000 to a consulting firm run by Justice Thomas’s spouse, with Leo specifying that the documents related to the payments should make “[n]o mention” of Mrs. Thomas. The furtive nature of the payments raises further questions about how many such payments were orchestrated, whether legitimate services were actually rendered, and whether such payments required additional reporting by Justice Thomas. We have not yet adequately been able to investigate the extent to which any or all these undisclosed gifts were part of a coordinated gifts program to reward recipient justices.


In sum, the senators raise allegations of willfully false statements on government disclosure forms and income tax and gift tax violations. At this stage, these are allegations only. But surely there is a basis for further inquiry, the senators argue. After detailing other investigations into less egregious conduct, the senators argue that only a special counsel can properly investigate. (“Since no litigant appears before the Supreme Court more frequently than the United States government, represented by the Department of Justice, the Department may understandably hesitate to offend a member of that Court.”)

The senators are not the only ones to have advanced these arguments. In April 2023, the anti-corruption group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Garland after Pro Publica broke news of lavish gifts Thomas received from another billionaire, Harlan Crow.


In that letter, CREW and several ethics experts wrote: “If true, Justice Thomas’ acceptance and failure to report these gifts and sales transactions on his annual mandatory financial disclosure statements not only undermines trust in his ability to impartially and fairly administer his duties as a member of the Court, but also threatens to corrode public confidence in the Supreme Court as an institution.” CREW’s president, Noah Bookbinder, tells me CREW never received a response.


One of the ethics experts who signed that letter, Richard Painter, tells me, “The attorney general may or may not decide to appoint a special counsel. I believe it is justified in this case.” If Garland does not appoint a special counsel or undertake any investigation, the Supreme Court justices, like the president in the new scheme of government concocted by this court, will conclude they operate in a world of criminal immunity, secure in the knowledge a partisan Senate will never remove them from the bench.
“Justice Thomas’s serious and frequent misconduct, including consistent failure to report lavish gifts from a wealthy benefactor with strong interests in the Supreme Court’s work and repeated failure to recuse from cases in which he had a clear conflict of interest, requires thorough investigation and genuine accountability,” Bookbinder tells me.

The Thomas scandal is what comes from refusing to adopt a mandatory ethics code for the Supreme Court and investing its justices with lifetime security. That leaves the rule of law dependent on the justices’ own good graces to remain ethical. That has obviously proven insufficient.


And so Whitehouse and Wyden, with no alternative, ask for the Justice Department to do its job. “The request is foundational to the rule of law,” constitutional scholar Dennis Aftergut tells me. “While many won’t expect Garland to pick it up before the election, if democracy survives November, the senators have written the bottom line for what must happen if we are to get corruption out of the court.”


Unfortunately, if felon and former president Donald Trump is elected, one can be sure no investigation will be undertaken. It therefore behooves Garland to move quickly, lest — again — justice delayed becomes justice denied.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Corruption, Democracy, Extremism, Justice

Peter Greene on a Bill to Ban Federal Funding of For-Profit Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2024 //
6

Peter Greene wrote in Forbes about a bill just introduced in the House of Representatives to ban federal funding of for-profit charters. He explains how some ostensibly non-profit charters are actually managed by for-profits. Will Congress have the gumption to stop profiteering in charter world? Expect fierce opposition from the charter lobby. Bottom line: charter schools claim to be “public schools.” Public schools do not operate for profit.

He begins:

In almost every corner of the U.S., charter schools are non-profit. And yet, there are numerous ways to run a non-profit for profit.

In two reports (Chartered for Profit and Chartered for Profit II), the Network for Public Education showed numerous examples of the most common techniques. Some charters lease their buildings back from related businesses. In one New York case, a chartering organization leased a space from the diocese, then leased that space to its own charter school for over ten times the amount it was paying.

There are “sweeps” contracts, where a non-profit charter hires a for-profit management organization to handle everything, in return for nearly every dollar the charter takes in. As one EMO contract cited in the report states, it receives “as renumeration for its services an amount equal to the total revenue received” by the school “from all revenue sources.”

In many cases, a non-profit charter school simply serves as a pass through for money headed to a for-profit business.

Why be concerned? Because every dollar spent on students is a dollar that the company doesn’t get to keep. Every dollar that makes it into the classroom doesn’t make it into the company’s pocket. When profit-making businesses provide human services, there is a conflict of interest between the company and its customers.

Don’t public school districts use for-profit contractors? They do, particularly for big ticket items such as for preparation and bus service. But those contracts are overseen and approved by elected school board members who are responsible for looking after the interests of the students, not the vendors. Nor do public schools contract with vendors to conduct the main business of the school.

To address the issue of charter schools operated for a profit, United States Representative Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and Representative Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01) this month introduced the Championing Honest and Responsible Transparency in Education Reform (CHARTER) Act. Said DeLauro,

The CHARTER Act would ensure that for-profit education management organizations can no longer jump through loopholes that have given them access to funding that has always been intended for nonprofit entities. Educating our children should be for their enrichment and future prosperity – not to maximize the profits of their owners and investors.

The bill adds to the definition of a charter school given in Section 4310 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In addition to the other qualifiers already in the federal definition of a charter school, the bill would add that a charter school

does not enter into a contract with a for-profit entity, or have a charter management organization or other nonprofit entity enter into such a contract on behalf of such school, under which the for-profit entity operates, oversees, manages, or otherwise carries out the administration of such school, which may include curriculum development, budget management, and faculty management (such as hiring, terminating, or supervising school-level staff);

The bill also specifies that a charter school may contract for food, payroll, facilities maintenance, transportation services, classroom supplies or other ancillary services.

The bill then goes on to require the amended definition be used for ESEA and IDEA, thereby blocking charters that don’t meet the amended definition from receiving any federal funds.

The issue of charters operated for profit has been addressed before, when the Biden administration tightened rules governing the Charter School Program grants handed out by the federal government. Those changes required charters to be more transparent about where the money was going, and the grantee had to offer assurances that a for-profit CMO “does not exercise full or substantial control” over the school.

If the CHARTER Act gains traction in Congress, it will continue this trend of seeking greater assurance that federal dollars sent to charter schools will find their way to the classroom, and not some for-profit company’s bank account.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Courage, Education Industry, For-Profit

Robert Hubbell: Joe Biden Is Running to Protect Democracy Against Tyranny

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2024 //
137

Robert Hubbell writes a blog about the travails of politics. I have excerpted a small portion of his post. Please open the link to read in full.

Hubbell writes:

The 2024 election is not merely a choice between Biden and Trump. It is a choice between democracy and tyranny, liberty and subjugation, dignity and debasement, safety and mayhem, global stability and chaos, climate crisis mitigation or acceleration, retirement security and insecurity, justice and vengeance, science and ignorance, decency and depravity. If we cannot convince voters that the choice comes down to those polar opposites, it does not matter who the candidate is.

I support Joe Biden because he is a great president, a good and decent man, and a skilled politician who achieved great things with bare majorities in the House and Senate. His performance in the debate does not define him. I believe Joe Biden is the best candidate to defeat Trump. If he is forced out by a media-driven frenzy and a cabal of unnamed insiders and pundits, it will be the greatest miscalculation and tragedy in American politics in a century.

I am not giving up and I won’t be pressured into apologizing for Joe Biden’s imperfections in a world where every politician is imperfect. Shadowboxing with unnamed party insiders and pundits is a waste of time. We have real work to do. Let’s get to it!

Categories Accountability, Biden, Character, Elections, Environment, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Trump

The Case of Shani Robinson, Wrongly Accused of Cheating in Atlanta, Is Finally Resolved

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2024 //
27

In 2009, Atlanta’s school superintendent, Dr. Beverly Hall, was honored by the American Association of School Administrators as National Superintendent of the Year for the city’s amazing progress in the past ten years.

The scores seemed too good to be true for skeptical journalists. So that same year,the Atlanta Journal Constitution analyzed test results in the city’s schools and found some extraordinary gains that seemed improbable. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched a probe and released a report in July 2011 claiming that there was cheating in 44 out of 56 schools. The GBI charged 178 educators with changing answers to raise scores.

Dr. Hall was charged with multiple crimes in 2013. She was accused of putting pressure on teachers to raise scores and creating an atmosphere of intimidation and fear. She never went to trial. She died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 68.

Ultimately 35 educators were indicted and punished with jail time, fines or both. Twelve educators refused a plea deal, insisting on their innocence. Using the RICO statute, intended for racketeering, District Attorney Fani Willis continued to prosecute the 12 holdouts.

One of them, Shani Robinson, wrote a book insisting on her innocence. The book is titled None of the Above. I read the book and was persuaded that she had suffered a grave injustice. Shani was a first-grade teacher. Her students’ scores did not affect the district’s ratings. There were no stakes, no rewards or punishments attached to them.

She was offered a deal: Confess or turn someone else in, and all charges would be dropped. Because Shani refused to do either, she was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison, four years of probation,a fine of $1,000, and 1,000 hours of community service. She believes someone else named her to escape punishment. She has appealed repeatedly and has spent a decade in limbo, worrying about whether she would be sent to prison. Meanwhile, she married and has two children.

I wrote the following posts on her behalf and sent an affidavit to the judge.

In April 2019, I reviewed Shani’s book and became persuaded of her innocence.

In September 2019, I posted a video in which Shani insisted that she was innocent.

In February 2022, at Shani’s request, I wrote a post about my letter to the judge, in which I said,

Shani taught first grade, where the tests have no stakes for students or teachers. She had no motive or reason to cheat. 

I believe she was unjustly prosecuted by overzealous investigators. She could have pleaded guilty or accused others to avoid prosecution but she insisted on her innocence. 

I believe her.

In February 2023, I wrote an update, quoting two Atlanta lawyers who excoriated the prosecution, calling the case “a textbook example of overcriminalization and prosecutorial discretion gone amok…”

In October 2023, Shani wrote an update on the case for my blog.

She wrote:

This RICO indictment has hung over my head for the past 10 years, leading to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The impact of PTSD and the fallout from the trial has taken a significant toll on my family. I have 2 small children, sothe thought of going to prison and being separated from them is agonizing. There are 6 defendants, including me, still appealing convictions. We’ve all been able to remain out of prison thus far due to being on appeal bonds. But the case has been handled so poorly; the entire appeals process restarted this year with no end in sight. Millions of tax players dollars have already been spent on this trial. 

 Last year brought a ray of hope: Judge Jerry Baxter granted a new sentence for a principal who was convicted, enabling her to avoid prison and do community service instead. I’m hopeful that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Judge Jerry Baxter will come to the realization that RICO was misused in our case and find a peaceful resolution. 

The long ordeal is finally over.

A few days ago, Shani and the other holdouts arrived at a plea deal. They had to make a public apology to the children of Atlanta, admitting their guilt, in exchange for no prison time. In addition, she is required to pay a fine of $1,000 and give 1,000 hours of community service.

I believe Shani. I believe she is innocent. I think it’s a travesty that she had to admit guilt in order to avoid prison. That was the deal. I wish she could sue the city of Atlanta for destroying her profession and ruining 15 years of her life.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Cheating, Cruelty, Ethics, Fraud, Georgia, Teachers

Chris Hayes: What Is Project 2025? A Frightening Plan for Trump’s Next Term: LINK ADDED

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2024 //
50

It occasionally happens that I forget to add a link. I forgot to add the link for this great segment by Chris Hayes. I was embroiled in a computer glitch all day (my computer and printer are not communicating). Please watch the segment to learn what horrors Trump has in store for us.

Chris Hayes has a regular evening news program on MSNBC.

In this short video, he explains Project 2025, which spells out plans for major changes in the government and in our freedoms.

It’s a short video. Please watch.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Privatization, Shame, Trump
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