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Wisconsin: Dane County Judge Overturns Notorious Act 10!

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2024 //
5

Thirteen years ago, Republican Governor Scott Walker and the legislature of Wisconsin enacted Act 10, which banned collective bargaining for public employees, except for public safety employees. Teachers, social workers, and other public employees were outraged. They encircled the State Capitol for days. Walker became a star, and his sponsors, the Koch brothers, were happy.

But today, Act 10 was declared unconstitutional. Time will tell whether the decision is upheld.

A Dane County judge on Monday sent ripples through Wisconsin’s political landscape, overturning a 13-year-old law that banned most collective bargaining among public employees, consequently decimating the size and power of employee unions and turning then-Republican Gov. Scott Walker into a nationally known political figure.

But there’s been a revival of hope in Wisconsin:

The effort to overturn Act 10 began in November 2023 when several unions representing public employees filed the lawsuit, citing a “dire situation” in workplaces with issues including low pay, staffing shortages and poor working conditions. 

In July,  Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost ruled provisions of Act 10 unconstitutional and denied a motion filed by the Republican-controlled Legislature to dismiss the case.

The lawsuit argued the 2011 law violated equal protection guarantees in the Wisconsin Constitution by dividing public employees into two classes: “general” and “public safety” employees. Public safety employees are exempt from the collective bargaining limitations imposed on “general” public employees.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Perry Bacon: Education Is Not a Partisan Issue–Or Is it?

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2024 //
10

Perry Bacon, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, paints a sunny view of the politics of education. He thinks that the public is so strongly united behind their public schools that Trump might back off his plan to turn federal funding into vouchers. Higher education, however, is a different story, he says, with a bipartisan coalition arrayed against student protests and debt relief.

I do not share his view that Republicans will relinquish their fealty to vouchers and privatization. No matter how determined the public is to defend their public schools, the billionaires who want vouchers are unrelenting. Bacon doesn’t see that the monied people don’t give a damn what the public wants. Betsy DeVos, the Koch machine, Jeff Yass, and Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks don’t care what the public wants. Perry Bacon would have written a different article if he had read Josh Cowen’s new book The Privateers: How Billionaires Started a Culture War …

Bacon writes:

The Biden years have featured some surprising bipartisan and cross-ideological coalitions on education issues, including school vouchers and protests on college campuses, that might extend into Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s the rare policy area where the divides aren’t simply along party lines.


On K-12 education, Republican and Democratic voters have unified — against the desires of powerful conservative groups and Republican politicians. The political right has long been frustrated with American education and is pushing a number of major changes, most notably voucher programs that would put more kids in private schools and either shrink or, perhaps eventually, dismantle the public school system.


But a clear majority (57 percent) in Nebraska earlier this month voted to repeal a voucher initiative, nearly matching Trump’s support there (60 percent). In Kentucky, all 120 counties (and 62 percent of voters) rejected a proposal to start a voucher program.


The results from those two states aren’t outliers. States with huge Republican majorities in their legislatures have struggled to get voucher programs passed because lawmakers are hearing from wary constituents, including Republicans. Even when they are enacted, voucher programs so far have not resulted in a huge number of students flooding to private schools.

In another rejection of conservative education policy, Moms for Liberty, the group that backs right-wing candidates running in local school board races, has struggled electorally. Only about one-third of the candidates it backed won their races last year, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. (There hasn’t yet been a detailed analysis of the group’s election results in 2024.) There has been a strong backlash against Moms for Liberty and other conservative groups seeking to ban books on racial and LGBTQ+ issues from public schools.


Meanwhile, counties throughout Florida, where Trump won easily, voted to increase local property and sales taxes to boost public school funding.


What’s behind this strong support of public schools? Only 45 percent of all Americans and 31 percent of Republicans say they are satisfied with public schools nationally, according to Gallup polling. But 70 percent of all Americans and 62 percent of Republicans are satisfied with the schools their kids are attending. Education policy tends to reflect local dynamics, so schools in very conservative areas are probably cautious in speaking about racism or LGBTQ+ issues. But what I suspect is actually driving that strong support for public schools is that for Republicans, particularly in rural areas, public schools are a central, positive part of their lives, where their friends and relatives work and their kids play sports.


But on higher-education policy, the bipartisan coalition is against the left. Like their Republican counterparts, many Democratic politicians and prominent left-of-center leaders and activists think both that the United States became overly invested in recent decades in having people attend college and that campuses are too left-wing. (I disagree with both claims.)

So in the spring, Democratic politicians, including President Joe Biden, joined Republicans in portraying on-campus protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza as antisemitic. Schools in both red and blue states, pushed by their centrist or conservative governing boards, have now created new limits on protests, particularly barring the kind of encampments that pro-Palestinian students created.


Biden himself was under fire from centrist Democrats and Republicans alike for trying to cancel student-loan debt, a policy strongly backed by many progressives. Many in either party argue that mass college attendance, unlike K-12 education, is not a necessity for the country and people who accrued debt during college knew the costs and should pay it back in full. The recent progressive pushes for both universal free college and mass debt cancellation seem stalled for now.


Prominent liberals have joined conservatives in questioning the value of humanities classes and departments and want colleges to focus more on graduating students ready to work in science, technology and other fields where jobs are growing. Nearly every day a Democratic politician says something along the lines of, “Our party is too influenced by the views and perspectives of professors and students on campuses and college graduates,” mirroring the rhetoric of conservatives such as Vice President-elect JD Vance.


How did we end up with Republican voters defending public schools and Democratic politicians criticizing colleges? Part of the explanation for why education policy hasn’t split on predictable partisan lines is that Biden hasn’t made the issue one of his major priorities. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona has been more low-profile than Betsy DeVos and Arne Duncan. Biden didn’t have a major education initiative such as No Child Left Behind (President George W. Bush) or Race to the Top (President Barack Obama).

Trump and his incoming administration could make this issue super-partisan. The activist right is unified around the idea that both K-12 schools and colleges are using taxpayer dollars to force liberal ideas on young people, particularly on issues of race, gender and sexual orientation. So, the Trump administration could push hard to get more K-12 students enrolled in private schools, stop K-12 schools and colleges from offering classes out of line with conservative ideology, and limit on-campus protests for left-wing causes.


Trump, in his post on Truth Social announcing that Linda McMahon would be education secretary, emphasized his support for vouchers.
But in that statement, Trump also said that education policy should be left largely to states. (It’s not clear that Trump can or would fully eliminate the federal Education Department, as he suggested during the campaign.) So perhaps his administration will take a more hands-off approach, aware that many Republican voters like how their schools are run locally.


Looking forward, it’s possible that Republican voters fall in love with voucher programs if the Trump administration pushes them hard. Or perhaps Democratic politicians will feel more compelled to defend colleges if they become a target of Trump.

But if I had to guess, I would predict that education policy continues to be an issue that doesn’t break down simply along party lines. After all, it’s personal for so many Americans, who vividly remember their time in grade school or college. And it’s complicated — exactly how should colleges have handled the Gaza protests? The happy middle for America might be a robust public school system, more of a Democratic goal, along with less liberal colleges that fewer people attend, more in line with Republican preferences.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Privatization, Vouchers

CNN: Elon Musk is Bullying Federal Employees

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2024 //
20

CNN reports that Elon Musk has launched a reign of terror against top-level career employees by posting their names and saying their jobs are worthless. Some have received death threats. Is there a crime called cyberbullying? Is it just coincidental that all four of his targets are women?

Elon Musk is really a vile man. He is the richest man in the world, and you can see that his wealth has made him the most arrogant, most uncaring man in the world.

CNN posted:

When President-elect Donald Trump said Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would recommend major cuts to the federal government in his administration, many public employees knew that their jobs could be on the line.

Now they have a new fear: becoming the personal targets of the world’s richest man – and his legions of followers.

Last week, in the midst of the flurry of his daily missives, Musk reposted two X posts that revealed the names and titles of people holding four relatively obscure climate-related government positions. Each post has been viewed tens of millions of times, and the individuals named have been subjected to a barrage of negative attention. At least one of the four women named has deleted her social media accounts.

Although the information he posted on those government positions is available through public online databases, these posts target otherwise unknown government employees in roles that do not deal directly with the public.

Several current federal employees told CNN they’re afraid their lives will be forever changed – including physically threatened – as Musk makes behind-the-scenes bureaucrats into personal targets. Others told CNN that the threat of being in Musk’s crosshairs might even drive them from their jobs entirely – achieving Musk’s smaller government goals without so much as a proper review.

“These tactics are aimed at sowing terror and fear at federal employees,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 800,000 of the 2.3 million civilian federal employees. “It’s intended to make them fearful that they will become afraid to speak up.”

This isn’t new behavior for Musk, who has often singled out individuals who he claims have made mistakes or stand in his way. One former federal employee, previously targeted by Musk, said she experienced something very similar.

“It’s his way of intimidating people to either quit or also send a signal to all the other agencies that ‘you’re next’,” said Mary “Missy” Cummings, an engineering and computer science professor at George Mason University, who drew Musk’s ire because of her criticisms of Tesla when she was at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration….

One of the posts reads: “I don’t think the US taxpayers should pay for the employment of a ’Director of Climate Diversification (she/her)’ at the US International Development Finance Corporation,” with a partial screengrab of an employee and her location.

Musk, who called himself “super pro climate” in an X post last year, reposted and commented: “So many fake jobs.” The post has received more than 33 million views and a storm of negative comments. Some called the role a “fraud job” and others demanded Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency cut jobs like it. One user commented: “Gravy train is over.”

It appears the woman Musk targeted has since gone dark on social media, shutting down her accounts. The agency, the US International Development Finance Corporation, says it supports investment in climate mitigation, resilience and adaptation in low-income countries experiencing the most devastating effects of climate change. A DFC official said the agency does not comment on individual personnel positions or matters.

Musk also called out the Department of Energy’s chief climate officer in its loan programs office. The office funds fledgling energy technologies in need of early investment and awarded $465 million to Tesla Motors in 2010, helping to position Musk’s electric vehicle company as an EV industry leader. The chief climate officer works across agencies to “reduce barriers and enable clean energy deployment” according to her online bio.

Another woman, who serves as senior advisor on environmental justice and climate change at the Department of Health and Human Services, was another Musk target. HHS focuses on protecting the public health from pollution and other environmental hazards, especially in low-income communities and communities of color that are experiencing a higher share of exposures and impacts. The office first launched at Health and Human Services under the Biden administration in 2022.

Categories Billionaires, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism

Snopes: Elon Musk Said That Jeff Bezos Ex-Wife was a “Reason Why Western Civilization Died”

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2024 //
23

Did Elon Musk say that? Yes, he did.

Snopes, the fact-checking service, confirmed that billionaire Elon Musk said that Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, was a “reason why Western Civilization died.”

Why? Because since her divorce, Scott has given away billions of dollars to charitable organizations that help women and racial minorities.

Snopes provided this context:

Musk wrote in response to a post on X that, “‘Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse'” should be listed among “‘Reasons that Western Civilization died.'” That post said of Scott’s philanthropic efforts that “over half of the orgs to which she’s donated so far deal with issues of race and/or gender.” Musk later deleted his post.

Questions:

Does Elon Musk make charitable gifts? If so, where does he give? There are tax breaks for giving to charity. What are Elon’s charities?

Categories Bias, Billionaires, Character, Democracy, Fake News, Gender, Race, Technology

What’s on the Musk-Ramaswamy Chopping Block?

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2024 //
13

Trump put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of a “Department of Government Efficiency” and told them to have fun cutting the federal budget. A billionaire and a millionaire who know nothing about government programs will start hacking away.

The Washington Post helpfully assembled a list of programs that are prime targets.

Jacob Bogage wrote:

Trump government efficiency advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have pledged not to bring a chisel to government spending, but rather “a chainsaw.” The particular approach Ramaswamy has in mind could threaten dozens of programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on each day.


Ramaswamy floated on social media a proposal to eliminate programs that Congress funds but where specific spending authorization has lapsed. That may sound like an easy source of savings, but it would ax veterans’ health-care programs, drug research and development, opioid addiction treatment — even the State Department.


“We can & should save hundreds of billions each year by defunding government programs that Congress no longer authorizes,” Ramaswamy wrote.


The approach from President-elect Donald Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy’s out-of-government “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress and federal spending, experts say.


Though Ramaswamy suggested that programs Congress no longer authorizes are prime targets for cuts, in reality, many programs where Congress has let authorization lapse are covered by funding bills that policy wonks call “self-authorizing.”

In other words, instead of needing two laws — one to approve funding for an agency and another to actually allocate the money — Congress only passes one: the allocation, which intrinsically gives a department authority to spend its funding. It is Congress’s way of making legislative work more efficient, and its legality has been confirmed by numerous government studies.


There is plenty of room for policymakers to uncover and eliminate excess federal spending, experts say, an issue made even more serious by the country’s deteriorating financial health. The national debt is expected to eclipse $36 trillion in the coming days; Trump’s first-term policies accounted for $8.4 trillion of that amount, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.


It just might be more difficult than DOGE’s backers suggest.


“It is obviously important for the government to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. There’s real bipartisan areas where people agree there’s stuff to be done. But what Elon and Vivek and Trump are going for is not that,” said Bobby Kogan, an analyst at the center-left think tank Center for American Progress. “They don’t even get the basics right. They get the size of the budget wrong. They named it after a meme. In no way are they actually taking this seriously.”

Musk and Ramaswamy beg to differ, and have called the DOGE commission the United States’ next Manhattan Project.


“There’s a new sheriff in town. Donald Trump’s the president. He has mandated us for radical, drastic reform of this federal bureaucracy with the learnings of that first term,” Ramaswamy said on Fox News. “And look, Elon and I — Elon is solving major problems of physics. I came from the world of biology. What we’re solving here now is not a natural problem. This is a man-made problem, and when you have a man-made problem, you better darn well have a man-made solution. That’s what we’re bringing to the table.”
Trump transition officials did not immediately return a request for comment.


The programs without separate spending authorization that Ramaswamy would do away with represent more than $516 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The 10 largest make up $380 billion. Here’s a look at what some of those programs do.

Veterans’ health care


A 1996 law set eligibility requirements for military veterans to receive hospital, medical and nursing home care and authorized spending for those services and patient enrollment. That law has not been renewed, but Congress regularly allocates additional Department of Veterans Affairs funding and allows benefits to increase automatically based on inflation. VA provides medical care to more than 9.1 million enrolled veterans, according to the agency.
Drug development and opioid addiction treatment.


Most of this spending relates to the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. That law provided money to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration to modernize pharmaceutical research and medical trials. It funded research for cancer cures and state-level grants for opioid addiction and other substance abuse treatment.


State Department


In 2003, Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which set policy priorities and created spending authority for the State Department. That law has not been renewed, but Congress every year since has passed annual funding bills for the department, which Trump has announced he’ll nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) to run.


Housing assistance


President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, which overhauled federal housing assistance policies, including voucher programs and other antipoverty assistance. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies continue using this law to implement federal housing programs.


Justice Department


In 1994, Congress passed the landmark Violence Against Women Act and has renewed it multiple times since. In 2006, lawmakers packaged a VAWA renewal with authorizing legislation for the Justice Department. As with the State Department, Congress has not approved new authorizing legislation for the Justice Department since, but it has funded the agency — and even authorized hundreds of millions of dollars more for a new FBI headquarters — every year.


Education spending


The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act delegated power to state and local education officials to set primary and secondary education achievement standards. It gives billions of dollars in federal grant money to state and local education officials to fund schools and school districts. Those standards are still used by the Education Department, even though the legislation has not been reauthorized. Trump has suggested he’d like to eliminate the entire department.


NASA


Stripping funding for NASA, which was last reauthorized in 2017, could spell doom for Musk’s commercial spaceflight firm, SpaceX. The company has contracts worth more than $4 billion — including for return trips to the moon and retiring the International Space Station — linked to programs approved in the 2017 law.
Health-care and student loan programs
What’s known as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was actually passed in two separate bills in 2010. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act represents the second bill, which included some tax revisions and technical changes to the ACA. The law has not been reauthorized since, but the Department of Health and Human Services reported in March that more than 45 million people have health insurance coverage backed by the Affordable Care Act.

The law that made those final tweaks to the ACA also overhauled the Education Department’s student loan program. Where some schools relied on private lenders to issue federally backed loans, with this law, the government itself became the lender. That change has since enabled President Joe Biden to offer student loan debt relief, though many of his most ambitious policies have been blocked by the courts. Student loans are generally funded through mandatory spending — similar to social safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security — and not subject to annual spending laws.


International security programs


The 1985 International Security and Development Cooperation Act bundled together authorizations for a number of international security programs, including funding and regulations for arms sales to allies, economic aid for developing countries, airport security, anti-narcotics-trafficking policies, the Peace Corps and more. This Reagan-era law continues to be foundational to congressional funding and federal policy.


Head Start


Head Start provides preschool education for children from low-income families. In the 2023 fiscal year, more than 800,000 children enrolled in Head Start programs, according to the National Head Start Association. The program also helped place more than 530,000 parents in jobs, school or job-training programs. It was last authorized in 2007.

The article contains a graphic of programs that are on the chopping block, along with their appropriations. I can’t copy it. If you subscribe to the Washington Post, please open the link and post the graphic in your comment.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Health, Ignorance, Trump

Who Are the Top 10 Donors in the Presidential Race?

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2024 //
4

The Washington Post identified the top individual donors to politics in this campaign.

The 50 biggest donors this cycle have collectively donated over $2.5 billion into political committees and other groups competing in the election, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

These megadonors skew Republican, though they affiliate with Democrats and third parties as well.

Donations by top 50 individuals and organizations to committees that are mostly …

Republican-leaning–$1.6B

Democrat-leaning–$752.3M

Supportive of both parties–$214M

Cryptocurrency and realtor groups were the only donors to both major parties

The vast majority of money from top donors has gone to super PACs, which can accept unlimited sums from individuals and often work closely with campaigns despite rules against coordinating their advertising.

Top individual donors

From billionaire investors to shipping magnates, here’s who they are and their top donations.

************************

Timothy Mellon REPUBLICAN

Railroad magnate and heir

Total large donations: $197M

Top donor: $197M

Top donations

$150M

Supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign 

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN INC.

AMERICAN VALUES 2024

$25M

Supports Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign 

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND

$15M

Supports Republican House candidates

The reclusive Wyoming-based businessman is the scion of former Treasury secretary and banking tycoon Andrew Mellon.

*************************

Richard & Elizabeth Uihlein –REPUBLICAN

Shipping magnates

Total large donations: $139M

Top donations

RESTORATION PAC

$76.2M

Opposes Senate campaign of Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) 

CLUB FOR GROWTH ACTION

$19M

Right-leaning super PAC

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN INC.

$10M

Supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign 

The couple founded Uline, a Wisconsin-based shipping and packaging materials company. They give to causes outside the GOP’s mainstream, helping to push the party further to the right.

*************************

Miriam Adelson –REPUBLICAN

Physician and widow of businessman and casino owner Sheldon Adelson

Total large donations: $136M

Top donations

PRESERVE AMERICA PAC

$100M

Supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign 

SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND

$15M

Supports Republican Senate candidates 

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND

$9M

Supports Republican House candidates

Adelson, a doctor who has focused on addiction, is the widow of businessman Sheldon Adelson and the majority shareholder of Las Vegas Sands.

***********************

Elon Musk–REPUBLICAN

Billionaire technology executive

Total large donations: $132.2M

Top donations

AMERICA PAC

$118.6M

Supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign 

SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND

$10M

Supports Republican Senate candidates 

THE SENTINEL ACTION FUND

$2.3M

Supports Republican Senate candidates 

Musk, one of the world’s richest men, founded electric car company Tesla. After endorsing Trump on X this summer, he has posted extensively on the platform, which he owns, in support of the former president.

***************************

Kenneth Griffin–REPUBLICAN

Hedge fund manager

Total large donations: $103.7M

Top donations

SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND

$30M

Supports Republican Senate candidates 

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND

$17M

Supports Republican House candidates

KEYSTONE RENEWAL PAC

$15M

Supports Senate campaign for Republican Dave McCormick (Pa.)

The billionaire is founder and CEO of the hedge fund Citadel.

**************************

Jeff & Janine Yass–REPUBLICAN

Financier and education advocate

Total large donations: $96.2M

Top donations

CLUB FOR GROWTH ACTION

$35M

Right-leaning super PAC

PROTECT FREEDOM POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE

$19M

Conservative PAC funded by Jeff Yass’s company

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND

$10M

Supports Republican House candidates

Jeff is co-founder of the Pennsylvania-based investment company Susquehanna International Group. His wife, Janine, founded a charter school and is an advocate for school choice. [Both Jeff and Janine are major funders of charter schools and vouchers. Jeff Yass gave Texas Governor Greg Abbott to promote voucher legislation.]

**************************

Paul Singer –REPUBLICAN

Hedge fund manager and activist investor

Total large donations: $63.4M

Top donations

SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND

$27M

Supports Republican Senate candidates 

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP FUND

$14.5M

Supports Republican House candidates

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN INC.

$5M

Supports Donald Trump’s presidential campaign 

The billionaire is founder and co-CEO of Elliott Management.

**********************

Michael Bloomberg–DEMOCRAT

Former mayor of New York City

Total large donations: $47.4M

TOP DONATIONS

FF PAC

$19M

Supports Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign 

HMP

$10M

Supports Democratic House candidates

EVERYTOWN-DEMAND A SEAT PAC

$7M

Supports pro gun-control candidates

Bloomberg is co-founder of the financial software and media company that bears his name. He served as mayor of New York for three terms and ran for president in 2020.

**********************

Stephen & Christine Schwarzman–REPUBLICAN

Investor and philanthropist

Total large donations: $40M

Top donations

SENATE LEADERSHIP FUND

$9M

Supports Republican Senate Candidates

MORE JOBS, LESS GOVERNMENT

$8M

Supports Senate campaign for Republican Tim Sheehy (Mont.)

GLCF, Inc.

$4.5M

Supports Senate campaign for Republican Mike Rogers (Mich.)

Republican Stephen Schwarzman is the CEO of private equity firm Blackstone. The couple are major philanthropists.

***********************

Dustin Moskovitz–DEMOCRAT

Facebook co-founder

Total large donations: $38.9M

Top donations

FF PAC

$38M

Supports Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign 

The technology entrepreneur became a billionaire after co-founding Facebook. He has given millions to support Democratic presidential candidates since 2016.

Categories Billionaires, Elections, Funding, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Washington Post Loses at Least 250K Subscribers After Non-Endorsement

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2024 //
13

After Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of The Washington Post, stopped publication of the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, digital subscribers revolted. According to a report in The Post, at least 250,000 canceled their subscriptions.

Past and present journalists at the newspaper urged readers not to cancel. Loss of revenue means future layoffs.

Even with the cancellation of the endorsement, the Post remains the most forthright and persistent critic of Trump and his racism, misogyny, xenophobia, as well as his all-around unfitness for office.

Those who look for a future with a stable, functioning two-party system–post-MAGA–should resubscribe.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Elections, Ethics, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

Jonathan V. Last: Oligarchy is on the Rise

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2024 //
7

Jonathan V. Last writes at The Bulwark, the always interesting gathering spot for Never Trumpers. He wrote that he has been stewing about the intervention of Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of The Washington Post, to stop the editorial board from endorsing Kamala. after Bezos locked the editorial, three of the 10-member editorial board stepped down.

He wrote:

ON FRIDAY, after the Washington Post’s publisher announced that the paper was suddenly abandoning the practice of the editorial page endorsing presidential candidates, news leaked that—on the very same day—Donald Trump met with executives from Blue Origin.

Blue Origin, of course, is the rocket company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

What we witnessed on Friday was not a case of censorship or a failure of the media. It had nothing to do with journalism or the Washington Post. It was something much, much more consequential. It was about oligarchy, the rule of law, and the failure of the democratic order.

This was neither a coincidence nor a case of Bezos and Trump being caught doing something they wished to keep hidden. The entire point of the exercise, at least for Trump, was that it be public.

When Bezos decreed that the newspaper he owned could not endorse Trump’s opponent, it was a transparent act of submission borne of an intuitive understanding of the differences between the candidates.

Bezos understood that if he antagonized Kamala Harris and Harris became president, he would face no consequences. A Harris administration would not target his businesses because the Harris administration would—like all presidential administrations not headed by Trump—adhere to the rule of law.

Bezos likewise understood that the inverse was not true. If he continued to antagonize Trump and Trump became president, his businesses very much would be targeted.

So bending the knee to Trump was the smart play. All upside, no downside.

What Trump understood was that Bezos’s submission would be of limited use if it was kept quiet. Because the point of dominating Bezos wasn’t just to dominate Bezos. It was to send a message to every other businessman, entrepreneur, and corporation in America: that these are the rules of the game. If you are nice to Trump, the government will be nice to you. If you criticize Trump, the government will be used against you.

Which is why Trump met with Blue Origin on the same day that Bezos yielded. It was a demonstration—a very public demonstration.

But as bad as that sounds, it isn’t the worst part.

The worst part is the underlying failures that made this arrangement possible.

My friend Kristofer Harrison is a Russia expert who runs the Dekleptocracy Project. This morning he emailed,

America’s oligarch moment makes us more like 1990s Russia than we want to believe. Political scientists can and will debate what comes first: oligarchs or flaccid politicians. 1990s Russia had that in spades. So do we. That combination corroded the rule of law there, and it’s doing so here.

Russian democracy died because their institutions and politicians were not strong enough to enforce the law. Sound familiar? I could identify half a dozen laws that Elon Musk has already broken without enforcement. Bezos censored the Post because he knows that nobody will enforce the law and keep Trump from seeking political retribution. And on and on. The corrosive effect on the rule of law is cumulative.

The Bezos surrender is our warning bell about entering early-stage 1990s Russia. No legal system is able to survive when it there’s a class not subject to it because politicians are too cowardly to enforce the law.

And that’s the foundational point. The Bezos surrender isn’t just a demonstration. It’s a consequence. It’s a signal that the rule of law has already eroded to such a point that even a person as powerful as Jeff Bezos no longer believes it can protect him.

So he has sought shelter in the embrace of the strongman.

Bezos made his decision because he calculated that Trump has already won—not the election, but his struggle to break the rule of law.

Yesterday, Timothy Snyder issued a call to Americans to not obey in advance. He is correct, of course. We should continue to resist fascism as best we can. The stakes have not changed.

If Trump wins? Well, I suppose we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

What should change is our understanding of where our democracy currently sits on the continuum. We are not teetering at the precipice of a slide into autocracy. We are already partway down the slope. And that’s even if Harris wins.

But Bezos and Trump have just taught America’s remaining small-d democratic leaders: The time for normal politics, where you try to win bipartisan majorities by focusing on “kitchen-table” issues is past. The task in front of us will require aggressive, systemic changes if we are to escape terminal decline.

The hour is later than we think.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Breaking News: The Washington Post Will NOT Endorse a Candidate for President!

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2024 //
33

The Washington Post announced that it will not endorse a candidate for president in the 2024 election. The Post is one of the most liberal newspapers in the nation. It was purchased in 2018 by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos hired Will Lewis from the Rupert Murdoch news empire to lead the paper.

In a choice between the Democratic candidate, who respects the rule of law, and the former President, who incited an insurrection, The Washington Post will not render an endorsement.

This is the will of the billionaire who owns the paper. I extend my deepest sympathies to the members of the editorial board for the loss of their voice and editorial independence.

CNN wrote:

New York— 

For the first time in decades, The Washington Post will not endorse a candidate in this year’s presidential election, the newspaper’s publisher announced Friday.

“The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election,” Will Lewis said in a published statement. “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”

The Post has endorsed a presidential candidate in every election since the 1980s. In his statement, Lewis referred to the Editorial Board’s past decisions to not endorse a candidate, noting that it is a right “we are going back to.”

“We recognize that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable,” Lewis continued. “We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values The Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects.”

Ahead of the announcement, The Post’s editorial page editor, David Shipley, told staffers that Lewis would be publishing a public note with the decision.

“The news is significant – and I know there will be strong reactions across the department,” Shipley wrote in a memo obtained by CNN.

The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Newspaper owners typically play a role in their publication’s endorsements and sign off on the editorials which reflect their views.

Marty Baron, a former executive editor of The Post, sharply criticized the decision Friday.

“This is cowardice, with democracy as its casualty. Donald Trump will see this as an invitation to further intimidate owner Bezos (and others),” Baron wrote in a social media post. “Disturbing spinelessness at an institution famed for courage.”

The decision comes just days after The Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the newspaper’s planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, leading to resignations from three editorial board members.

Two additional members of the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times resigned to protest the newspaper owner’s decision not to endorse either candidate.

It’s shameful that two major newspapers have been prevented from expressing the views of their editorial boards by the fist of their billionaire owners.

I sadly add the names of the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times –Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong and Jeff Bezos– to the blog’s Wall of Shame. They won’t know or care. But I do. It’s my small gesture of support for sanity and editorial independence .

In a news story about the WaPo’s decision not to endorse, this was reported:

An endorsement of Harris had been drafted by Post editorial page staffers but had yet to be published, according to two sources briefed on the sequence of events who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The decision not to publish was made by The Post’s owner — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — according to the same sources.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Harris, Kamala, Trump, Wall of Shame

Politico: Tim Walz Takes on Elon Musk, Fearlessly!

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2024 //
6

Politico intends to name the big winner of each day’s political news. Tim Walz was the big winner of political news yesterday. He set his sights on the richest man in the world, who is pumping uncounted millions into the Trump campaign. In this country, rich people aren’t supposed to buy elections but no one told South Africa-born Musk that.

Adam Wren wrote:

Tim Walz is hunting big game.

On Tuesday, the Minnesota governor rediscovered the looseness that once had him casting Republicans as “weird,” skewering Donald Trump, JD Vance — and, more than anyone, Trump campaign surrogate Elon Musk.

“I’m going to talk about his running mate — his running mate Elon Musk,” Walz said in Madison, Wisconsin, on the first day of early voting in the Blue Wall battleground. “Seriously, where is Senator Vance after he got asked the simplest question in the world at the debate: Did Donald Trump win the 2020 election, and after two weeks he finally said, ‘No, he didn’t.’”

Next, Walz uncorked on the wealthiest man in the world and the owner of X.

“Look, Elon’s on that stage, jumping around skipping like a dipshit.”

The clip quickly went viral on Musk’s own site.

On a day when his running mate, Kamala Harris, had no events and an interview with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson, Walz’s line reverberated and drowned out other news on the trail.

And won Walz the day.

In some ways, that Walz has been scarce on the trail and in interviews, of which he’s doing more now.

His performance Tuesday came at a time when Democrats are increasingly desperate to remind voters about the dangers of a second Trump term — particularly in a battleground like Wisconsin. (John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff and the onetime general, offered an assist on that front, kicking off a media tour explaining how Trump had asked “for the kind of generals that Hitler had” and talked of using the military against U.S. citizens, something Harris has been warning about on the trail).

It also comes as Harris continues amid a gender divide to struggle with male voters. She could use some of the same Midwestern bravado that originally landed Walz on her radar this summer.

Harris may have somewhat dampened Walz’s value-add to the ticket when she warned him“to be a little more careful on how you say things,” as he said in a recent interview.

Now, though, Walz is back.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Politics, Trump, Walz, Tim
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