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Lottery Scams in Mass. and Texas: How to Beat the System, Win Millions, and (Maybe) Get Away with It

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2024 //
4

Every once in a while, you read a story about a person winning the lottery twice or three times, and it seems amazing that anyone could be so lucky. But when the same person wins the lottery thousands of times, something is wrong. The two biggest lottery scams in recent years happened in Massachusetts and Texas. The trick was different in each case but very effective. The perpetrators of the winning plan were jailed in Massachusetts, but not in Texas, where almost anything is legal except abortion.

In Massachusetts, the story appeared in the Boston Globe magazine about a family—a father and two sons—who collected $20 million from the lottery in less than a decade, with more than 14,000 winning tickets.

Dan O’Neil, the director of compliance and security for the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission, doesn’t typically get alerted when someone shows up to claim a $1,000 prize from a scratch-off ticket. Such transactions are usually quiet, pleasant, unremarkable. The lucky winner produces the ticket and the agent, sitting at a counter behind a pane of glass in Dorchester, doles out the money.

The call came from a customer service agent in the lobby at lottery headquarters and the message was short. The Jaafars are here again, the agent said. Yousef Jaafar, this time….

An information technology expert at the lottery had run the math to show just how unlikely it was. An instant-win game called “$10,000,000 Big Money” had a 1 in 1,106.72 chance of producing a jackpot of $1,000 or more, he reported. Yet somehow, over a recent span of six months, the Jaafars had managed to claim nearly $2 million in winnings, the bulk of it from instant tickets like “$10,000,000 Big Money.” To win at that rate, the Jaafars would’ve had to purchase 22,859 such tickets every day, 952 tickets every hour, 16 tickets every minute. “Every minute of every day,” the official said. “Twenty-four hours a day.”

In lottery terminology, there was a name for this. The Jaafars were “high-frequency winners.” They were also breaking the law and the rules of the lottery itself by working with dozens of convenience store operators in an underground network where everyone was trying to avoid paying taxes on lottery prizes. In this network, everyone got cash under the table while the Jaafars got the winning tickets to claim as their own. A lot of them. In 2019 alone, the Jaafars claimed more than $3.2 million in winnings. Yousef was the sixth-highest ticket casher in the entire state that year, Mohamed was third, and their father topped the list…

The Jaafars’ scheme was built on a premise that’s been known to gamblers for decades: Some people prefer not to publicly claim their winnings, particularly if they want to hide money from the Internal Revenue Service.

At American racetracks since at least the 1960s, these reluctant winners have turned to “ten percenters” for help. In the shadows beneath the grandstands, ten percenters would pay cash for someone’s winning ticket, minus a 10 percent cut off the top and often even more — 15 or 25 percent. The real winner would walk away with cash in hand, off the books, tax-free, while the ten percenter would claim the full prize at the racetrack window and often avoid taxes by claiming large gambling losses at the end of the year or by submitting fake identification at the track.

It usually amounted to tax evasion and could have devastating ramifications: the government sometimes lost as much as $1 million a week in tax revenue at a single track. It was only a matter of time before a similar practice of ten percenting infected state-run lotteries. For any jackpot over $600, winners have to produce a valid ID and Social Security number, and pay taxes. Those who owe back taxes or child support have one more obstacle to clear: Massachusetts authorities will take that money before paying out any winnings.

In this world, someone holding a scratch-off ticket worth $1,000 can sell their prize to a convenience store operator for $750 or $850. The winner leaves with cash under the table. The convenience store clerk picks up the phone and calls a runner. This person shows up and buys the ticket for the discount price, minus a cut for the clerk — maybe $50. The runner then pretends to be the real winner and claims the ticket at a lottery office for its full value, scoring a profit of $100 or $200.

Quite a racket. But they didn’t get away with it. The father was sentenced to five years in prison, the older son got 50 months, and the younger son got a plea deal.

In Texas, a slick operation based in New Jersey managed to score a $95 million jackpot by buying every numerical combination.

By April 22, seven months had passed without a winner of the jackpot, and the top prize had grown to $95 million.

That night’s draw — 3, 5, 18, 29, 30, 52 — matched a single ticket purchased in a small store in Colleyville, outside of Fort Worth. 

Winners have six months to claim their prize, either in payments over 30 years or a lump-sum, typically worth about half. On June 27, the state of Texas issued a check for $57.8 million to a New Jersey-based limited partnership apparently formed to collect the jackpot, called Rook TX.

The Texas Lottery Commission, whose proceeds mainly fund public education, celebrated the big win — “generating much needed revenue for Texas Schools,” then-Executive Director Gary Grief wrote. “What the Texas lottery is all about.”

But a statistical analysis of the April 22 Lotto Texas drawing strongly suggests that night’s draw wasn’t what a lottery is about at all. Rather, the numbers indicate Rook TX beat the system.

Unbeknownst to the millions of players who’d invested their hopes and dreams into the game and its life-changing jackpot, the winner had already been decided.

Rook TX appears to have engineered a nearly risk-free — and completely legal — multimillion-dollar payday.

And the state of Texas helped.

Warning: Numbers ahead

While lottery players have occasionally exploited a hidden mathematical advantage to guarantee a lottery profit, there is one sure way to win a jackpot. Stefan Mandel did it 14 times, and it had little to do with luck. He simply bought up every numeric combination.

Yet Mandel, a Romanian economist and mathematician, had to master both probability and logistics. The jackpots needed to be both big enough to cover his costs, as well as favor his chances of being the only winner; splitting a payout could be ruinous. Because buying so many lottery tickets required going to dozens, if not hundreds of separate stores, he required a team of accomplices. 

The recent introduction in Texas of digital lottery apps has lowered the logistical obstacles. The Lotto Texas drawing of April 22, meanwhile, presented a perfect-storm of high reward and low risk that practically guaranteed that an opportunistic player with a sizable bankroll could walk away with tens of millions of dollars.

The evidence is in the numbers.

The first thing someone wanting to buy a lottery drawing would need to know: How many tickets would you need to buy to cover every numeric combination in a game like Lotto Texas? The answer, said Tim Chartier, a Davidson College math professor who studies sports and lottery analytics: 25.8 million.

Lotto Texas draws typically generate 1 million to 2 million ticket sales. Records from the Texas Lottery Commission show that in the days leading up to the Saturday night draw, just over 28 million Lotto Texas tickets were purchased.

That doesn’t prove Rook TX accumulated the nearly 26 million tickets necessary to guarantee a win. But an examination of the second prizes awarded indicates it almost certainly did.

In addition to the jackpot for matching all six numbers, Lotto Texas pays lesser prizes to players who guess five-of-six, four-of-six and three-of-six of the draw. The total possible combinations for each, according to Nicholas Kapoor, a Fairfield University statistics professor who studies lottery probability: 288 five-of-six combos, 16,920 four-of-six combos and 345,920 three-of-six winners.

Lower-value prizes can be cashed in at any retailer that sells tickets, and the state doesn’t track them. But Texas requires any prize over $599 to be redeemed at an official Texas Lottery Commission center, which records the winners. The April 22 drawing paid $2,015 to its five-of-six winners.

Records from the Texas Lottery Commission show Rook TX cashed in 289 winning tickets in the five-of-six game — the same number as all possible combinations plus one for the grand prize ticket. The odds a single entity managed to win the grand prize and every possible five-of-six prize — but somehow didn’t buy up every combination — are vanishingly small, said Chartier…

There is compelling evidence that Lotto Texas’ ballooning jackpot was being probed by sophisticated players in the weeks leading up to Rook TX’s big win.

With the jackpot climbing to $60 million, the April 1, 2023, draw saw a sudden sales spike. Three million tickets were purchased, more than double the previous game.

No one matched all six numbers, but the draw produced a large number of five-of-six winners. More unusual: 17 of the 40 winning five-of-six tickets were held by the same person — a rate that is extremely unlikely to have occurred randomly.

Records show the claimant, Thomas Ashcroft, purchased all his winners through two stores — the Colleyville outlet and Luck Zone, an app-affiliated store in Round Rock. Although Ashcroft gave a Connecticut address, the Chronicle could not locate anyone with that name in the region.

Another burst of sales preceded the April 15 drawing — 7.4 million tickets. While no one claimed the jackpot, the number of five-of-six winners was again high. This time, more than three-quarters of the 71 winners were claimed by a single entity — Rook TX. State records show it purchased all 55 winning tickets from the same two stores. 

For one entity to randomly win that many of the five-of-six prizes, Chartier calculated a person would have to play a lottery game every day for 327 years. 

The Texas Lottery Commission said there was nothing suspicious about the games, which it said were attracting more players because of the big prize and relatively good odds of winning: “This is not indicative of unusual activity in the lottery industry, but rather a strategic decision made by players or groups that are in pursuit of high jackpots.” 

A week later Rook TX won the $95 million jackpot and 289 five-of-six winners. The April 15 and 22 draws are the only times its name appears in the state’s registry of lottery winners.

The Texas Lottery Commission allows winners of $1 million and more to remain personally anonymous, so identifying Rook TX’s members is practically impossible. Delaware corporation records show it was formed two weeks before claiming the top prize. The limited partnership’s registered agent, Glenn Gelband, a lawyer in Scotch Plains, N.J., did not respond to a request for comment.

Texas lottery officials said there was nothing illegal about buying up all the numbers.

Massachusetts put the guys who played the system into prison. Texas can’t find them and apparently doesn’t care. The only way to beat the guys who beat the system is to hope that two or three other combines copy their tactics; they would all lose money by splitting the prize.

Categories Cheating, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud, Massachusetts, Texas

Arkansas Officials Disqualify Petition for Abortion Referendum

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2024 //
15

How naive some citizens of Arkansas were! They thought they could get a referendum on the state ballot to change the state’s draconian abortion ban which allows no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the woman.

They gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot but the Secretary of State, no doubt acting with Governor Sarah Huckabee Sansers’ support, found reasons to throw the referendum proposal out. No democracy for Arkansas!

Axios reported:

Arkansas Secretary of State John Thurston on Wednesday rejected petitions for a proposed amendment to make abortion legal in the state again under certain circumstances.

Why it matters: The proposed amendment would allow abortion through the first 18 weeks of pregnancy, and also in cases of rape, incest, fatal fetal anomaly or to save the pregnant person’s life.

State of play: In a letter to Arkansans for Limited Government, which is spearheading the effort, Thurston said the group failed to submit a statement identifying all paid canvassers by name.

  • He said it also didn’t provide a statement confirming it had provided each canvasser with proper documentation and training about the state’s law before they started gathering signatures.

“By contrast, other sponsors of initiative petitions complied with this requirement. Therefore I must reject your submission,” Thurston wrote.

Between the lines: “Even if your failure to comply with [the law] did not require me to reject your submission outright, it would certainly mean that signatures gathered by paid canvassers in your submission could not be counted for any reason,” the letter reads.

  • Thurston claims 14,143 of the 101,525 submitted signatures were collected by paid canvassers.
  • The remaining 87,382 signatures collected by volunteers fall short of the required 90,704 for a proposed constitutional amendment.

What they’re saying: “At multiple junctures — including on July 5 inside of the Capitol Building — we discussed signature submission requirements with the Secretary of State’s staff,” Arkansans for Limited Government (AFLG) said in a statement emailed late Wednesday.

  • The secretary of state’s office supplied the organization with all paperwork to submit the petitions, AFLG said, adding that the group had no reason to suspect it was incomplete.

AFLG says it supplied a list of paid canvassers to the state, and that’s known because it was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Secretary of State’s office and “released by our opposition in an attempt to intimidate our supporters.”

  • More than 101,000 Arkansans participated in this heroic act of direct democracy and stood up to loudly proclaim their support for access to healthcare. They deserve better than a state government that seeks to silence them.”

The other side: “Today the far left pro-abortion crowd in Arkansas showed they are both immoral and incompetent,” Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted on X.

What we’re watching: It’s unclear what legal recourse Arkansans for Limited Government can take; however its statement concluded: “We will fight this ridiculous disqualification attempt with everything we have. We will not back down.”

Categories Arkansas, Cheating, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Gender, Health

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

David Pepper: Democracy Wins in Missouri, for a Change

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2024 //
9

David Pepper describes a stunning victory for democracy in Missouri for outnumbered Democrats. Remember how the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature promoted a referendum called Issue 1 to require all future referenda to get 60% of the vote to pass? They were trying to defeat a referendum on abortion by raising the bar. Voters got wise and defeated the measure. Voters then protected abortion rights with 58% of the vote. Democracy means majority rule, not tampering with the process to defeat majority rule.

On May 18, David Pepper posted this good news on his blog Pepperspectives:

Yesterday proved once again why you never stop fighting for democracy. 

Anywhere. Ever!

For months, Missouri Republicans have been scheming to bring an Issue 1-style attack on direct democracy to their state, where voters have a tradition of using ballot initiatives to exercise their will—including recently expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana. And the GOP plan was to sneak the attack through this August, right before a November referendum on reproductive freedom.

You remember Issue 1, right? Where they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments in Ohio to 60%?

Our amazing campaign to crush that monstrosity heated up about a year ago. (Yes, time flies):

Well, as I wrote in “Laboratories of Autocracy,”GOP statehouses always learn from their failures. And adjust. 

And in Missouri, the GOP response was a more sneaky version of Issue 1—where they would’ve required that in addition to a simple up or down vote across the state, a majority of voters in 50% of House districts (you know, highly gerrymandered districts) would have been required for any referendum to gain approval. And that essentially would have locked in a severe form of minority rule even more onerous than a 60% threshold. One study found that as few as 20% of Missouri voters could block an effort under such rules. 

Still, the GOP would’ve falsely insisted that majority rule was still protected. They even tried to add “ballot candy”—such as a ban on non-citizens voting even though they already can’t vote in Missouri—to fool voters into supporting an attack on their own rights. And this could’ve been voted on in August, months before Missouri voters would be voting on an amendment on reproductive freedom in November. 

Overall, it felt like stopping this would be an uphill battle. Downright scary. 

But… 

…Democrats, although outnumbered in Missouri, resisted at every turn. Many more are running this year, bringing accountability to far more sitting incumbents. And current Democratic state senators held the Senate floor in a more than two-day filibuster (the longest in state history) earlier this week.

And yesterday? The Missouri GOP ran out of time. 

The awful, anti-democracy bill died. 

As my friend Jess Piper told me:

“The Freedom Caucus was dead set on stealing one person, one vote. They were beaten by a 50 hour filibuster by Senate Dems and by reading the room. This is the first in their defeats…we’ll also win on the abortion question in November.”

Amazing. Keep going!

Categories Cheating, Democracy, Elections, Missouri

Rick Wilson: The “Both-Sides” Argument is Dangerous

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2024 //
11

Rick Wilson, a Never-Trump Republican and a founder of The Lincoln Project, warns about the danger of normalizing Trump:

I’m seeing a lot of traditional, DC “bothsides” reporting lately, arguing that this is at some level a “normal” election between a center-left Democratic party and a center-right Republican party.


This morning, Axios published a piece by Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei titled “Behind the Curtain: America’s reality distortion machine,” which caused a stir in political media circles.


It leads out with a question: “Here’s a wild thought experiment: What if we’ve been deceived into thinking we’re more divided, more dysfunctional, and more defeated than we actually are?” and proceeds to make some pretty good arguments about why we’re not a dystopian hellscape. I think they missed the big point, and this piece will stand out as a Washington Normalcy Bias exemplar for a long time.


My friend Molly Jong-Fast lit them up on Morning Joe,
She had precisely the right response: “But you understand that the conventional framing elevates the autocrat.”


No, not every American — in fact, not even a majority — is locked in the day to day of political struggle. Yes, there are silos. Yes, the algorithmic hypnosis of social media is real.


I cede all those points. America is a nation filled with hundreds of millions of people who aren’t partisan jihadis, left or right. There really is a desire for basic decency, decoupled from political rage, induced or not.

They’re not wrong to make these points, and the America they describe is one we should crave—not being involved in politics every moment of the day is a luxury only present in stable democracies.


But they ignore the existential issue underpinning this all.


We aren’t in a nation where the sensible center will survive if Donald Trump wins.


Only one side of the political argument wants their president to govern like a dictator. Only one side believes that the President is above the law — if his name is Donald Trump. Only one side of the political equation mounted an armed attack on the United States Capitol.


Only one side has welcomed the “no enemies to our right” philosophy, which means their party winks and nods at the alt-reich, the white nationalists, and the rest of the Daily Stormer crowd. Only one side is banning books, diving deeply into the seas of culture war cruelty and persecution.


Only one side backs America’s enemies abroad and promises to hand Europe over to Vladimir Putin on a plate. I could recite the Bill of Condemnation all day, but you understand the point.


The political movement that embraces the aforementioned horrors is MAGA, and its sole leader is Donald Trump.

Once again, the world is playing chess, and Donald Trump is eating the pieces and crapping on the board, and instead of horror, the reaction is a shrug.


This isn’t a regular election with typical outcomes.


Ordinary people living ordinary lives who think politics doesn’t matter and that the world will go on as it has can’t grapple with what happens in a post-American Presidency. It seems a lot of Washington reporters can’t either.


Normalcy bias is the best friend of authoritarians. If you think the algo-driven bubble on social media is robust, nothing tops normalcy bias. This cognitive bias can play into the hands of authoritarian regimes or leaders in a few ways:


It plays to the natural tendency for people to underestimate the possibility of a disaster, dictator, or disruptive event coming to the fore. It lets people assume that things will continue as normal because they’ve always been that way. (Berlin, 1936, anyone?)


It lulls people into complacency: they assume things will continue as they always have, and like frogs boiling in a slow pot, they may fail to recognize creeping authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic norms and civil liberties until it’s too late.


It makes people—even people reporting on it professionally—miss clear signals that a movement or regime is becoming more authoritarian, even when its leaders lay out their plans in broad daylight.

Once you say, “It can’t happen here,” there’s a high likelihood it’s already happening.
The normalcy bias makes people slow to react and resist authoritarian encroachments because they don’t perceive the seriousness of the threat until it’s too late.


Normalcy bias also rears its ugly head after the damage is done. Authoritarian actions are emergencies, you see. “The Caravan! Antifa! Transing the kids!” demand temporary measures lulling citizens into acceptance of the worst…and the temporary measures seem to last forever.

People convinced that the current system is immutable are less likely to make contingency plans or organize resistance against potential authoritarianism taking root. Trust me, the Never Trump folks screaming into the void for the last decade can tell you all about this one.
It’s tempting to hope that societal inertia in the center will overcome the energy and danger on the MAGA flank.


It hasn’t, and it won’t.

Categories Bigotry, Cheating, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Frank G. Splitt Reviews Liz Cheney’s “Oath and Honor”

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2024 //
5

Frank G. Splitt is a regular reader of the blog and a retired engineer of great distinction. He sent me his Amazon review of Liz Cheney’s best-selling book about the Congressional hearings conducted by the January 6 Select Committee. I have been meaning to review the book myself but put it off and am glad to print Frank’s review, as I agree with him.

I found the book to be absorbing, revealing what Congressional leaders said to one another on the day of the insurrection, as well as the inner workings of the January 6 Committee. Cheney doesn’t pull her punches. She was appalled by Trump’s disrespect for the Constitution and his egregious lying. She is contemptuous of Congressionals leaders like Kevin McCarthy who first condemned the violent attack, then turned on a dime to bend his knee to Trump.

Liz Cheney gave up her leadership role because of strong principles. Chief among these was her oath to the Constitution. She refused to betray it, and by doing so, she gave up the likelihood that she would one day be Speaker of the House. Very few Republicans were willing to follow her lead. I have immense respect for her.

Frank G. Splitt writes:

Liz Cheney wrote the book with purpose in mind: to assure that the January 6 Select Committee’s work that revealed the culpability of former president Donald Trump in the January 6.2021, attack on the U.S. Capital would not only be thoroughly documented for posterity, but would also illuminate in detail his criminal behavior backed by solid evidence via trustworthy testimony, mostly from members of his own administration.


The book is fact-based and well organized—providing the author’s first-hand beginning-to-end account of the January 6th, 2021, insurrection from outside and inside the halls of the Capital. She tells in consummate detail how, in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump ignored the rulings of dozens of courts, plotted to overturn a lawful election, and provoked a violently egregious attack on our Capitol. Cheney goes on to tell how Trump and his congressional enablers broke their oaths of office— betraying the American people and the Constitution in their attempt to prevent the counting of electoral votes and so keep Trump in office.


Liz Cheney helped organize and lead the Congressional Select Committee investigation into how it happened. In her book she tells the story of this perilous moment in our history—exposing those who helped Trump spread his stolen-election lie while forsaking her promising political career in the process.


In the end, I am disappointed not only with the gullibility of so many American citizens who buy into Trump‘s lies, but even more so with craven politicians who keep silent for fear of losing their positions in Congress. No doubt, Cheney would have been near the top of the list of courageous U. S, Senators in John Kennedy’s 1956 book Profiles in Courage.


I am also somewhat disappointed that Trump did not respond to the Select Committee’s subpoena to testify before the committee. By not appearing, Cheney was denied the opportunity to emulate Senate lawyer Joseph Welch’s admonition of lying Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy at the 1953 Army-McCarthy hearing by saying: Mr. Former President, you’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?


This should be a must-read book for every American voter as Cheney’s warning concerning the likely consequences of Trump’s return to office is indeed chilling.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cheating, Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Lies, Republicans, Shame, Trump

California: Unions Complain That Arts Funding Is Misused

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2024 //
9

Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times writes about union complaints that arts funding approved by voters is being misused.

Blume writes:

Powerful unions have joined forces with former Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner to call for state intervention to stop what they allege is the misuse of voter-approved funding to expand arts education in California.


In a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state officials, Beutner and the unions claim that some school districts are taking funding, approved by voters in November 2022 to expand arts education, and are using it for other purposes. This year that funding totals $938 million.


The unions that signed the letter are California Teachers Assn., the largest state teachers union, and CFT, the other major statewide teachers union. Also signing the letter are the largest unions in the L.A. Unified School District: Local 99 of Service Employees International Union, which represents the greatest number of non-teaching school employees, and United Teachers Los Angeles, the second-largest teachers union local in the nation. Other unions include Teamsters Local 572, which also represents L.A. school district workers, and the teachers union for Oakland Unified.


“Some school districts in California are willfully violating the law by using the new funds provided by Prop. 28 to replace existing spending for arts education at schools,” the letter states.

Under the new law, the money must be used by schools to increase arts programs and each school can decide how best to add on to their programs. The arts windfall is drawn from the state’s general fund — at an amount equal to 1% of all money spent on schools serving students in transitional kindergarten through 12th grade. Thus the money is ongoing and will generally increase each year.

The letter lists no specific examples and does not name districts that are suspected by unions of being in violation of the law. Beutner said there is concern that whistleblowers could become targets for retaliation.


The unions and Beutner are calling on the state to require that districts certify within 30 days “that Prop. 28 funds have not been used to supplant any existing spending for arts education at any school.” In addition, the signatories want the state to require school districts to list “additional arts and music teachers” employed by each school district in the current school year and “how that compares” to the prior year.

Categories Arts Education, California, Cheating, Education Reform, Unions

Billy Townsend on Chris Rufo’s Inflated Credentials

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2024 //
60

Billy Townsend is a Florida blogger who specializes in exposing grifters, especially in education. He calls his blog “Public Enemy #1.” He served on the Polk County school board and has been relentless in pursuing the scams perpetrated by Governor DeSantis and former state Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, now president of New College, a position for which he is uniquely unqualified. Someone on Twitter noted recently that the university presidents appointed by DeSantis won’t have to worry about plagiarism charges, because few if any of them have ever published a peer-reviewed article or book.

Chris Rufo is the attack dog of the far-right, who literally manufactured and sold a public panic attack over “critical race theory,” a concept debated in law school classes. As a result of his publicity campaign, any teaching about race and racism in American schools became suspect, enabling some states to suppress honest discussion of those subjects. Most recently, Rufo hounded Harvard’s President, Claudine Gay, until she resigned over charges of plagiarism.

Townsend writes here about Rufo’s inflated academic credentials:

In the least surprising revelation ever, Christopher Rufo does not have a Masters of Arts degree from Harvard, as he once claimed in his Manhattan Institute bio. He has, instead, a Master of Liberal Arts (MLA) from Harvard Extension School.

Indeed, this anti-woke grifter is continuing to misstate his educational credentials, even after very very quietly correcting one aspect of his misstatement — as I’ll show you in a moment.

As anyone who remotely follows Rufo knows, this is the kind of credential misstatement he would summon the New York Times to pursue if the person doing the misstating was black or a woman. And the useless NYT would dutifully obey. I’m sure they will find a way to avoid this particular misstatement.

But Rufo’s fellow trustees can and should confront him with this at the next meeting.

Rufo claims undergraduate achievement he did not earn

Harvard instructs graduates of Harvard University Extension School to spell out “Harvard University Extension School” on resumes and bios because its sees a meaningful distinction between “Harvard University Extension School” and Harvard’s traditional graduate schools…

Selectivity of admission is the core difference in these Harvard graduate programs. It’s a lot easier to get into “Harvard University Extension School” than traditional Harvard.

Thus, Rufo’s conflation of degree credentials claims a level of achievement in admission that he did not earn.

It misrepresents the quality of Rufo’s undergraduate performance, suggesting that it was strong enough to earn admission to Harvard’s highly selective graduate schools. It was not.

Rufo’s misleading claim dilutes Harvard’s brand, which is why Harvard cares about how graduates claim this credential, I suspect. I’ve posted Harvard’s direction in how to refer to the extension school below.

The “never admit” grifter admits to something

Is this a big deal? Rufo, a bombastic Bad Ken 99.9 percent of the time, seems to think so. He very very quietly acknowledged that his Manhattan Institute bio misstated his education credential by very very quietly having it altered.

In doing so, Rufo violated the #1 tenet of the modern “conservative” and “anti-woke” grifts — the #1 tenet of Rufoism: always loudly refuse to admit or acknowledge anything damaging to the grift. And yet, here Rufo is admitting….

Billy Townsend goes on to portray Rufo’s bio—before and after—on the Manhattan Institute website, where he is a senior fellow. And he shows that Rufo’s misleading claim to am MA at Harvard persists on the New College website, where DeSantis named him as a trustee as part of the governor’s plan to turn the progressive liberal arts college into the Hillsdale of the South.

Townsend writes:

Ride it while it lasts, Chris

Ironically, considering the time and effort I’ve spent on these two Rufo articles, I’m thoroughly uninterested in him. He’s just another grifter, a little farther down the grift value chain than young Austin Hurst, who I introduced you to earlier today.

But they’re essentially the same person — lazy bros trolling for rich guy money by owning the libs. Rufo’s need to overstate both undergrad and grad school credentials is a pretty good example of that.

Rufos, like Zieglers, always come and go. This one will too.

Townsend then quotes a Harvard document explaining how graduates of the Harvard Extension School should refer to their degrees, advice that Rufo ignored until he was caught.

I urge you to open the link to read the material I did not reproduce here. It’s fascinating.

Billy Townsend, by the way, is a graduate of Amherst College, whose admission standards are as rigorous as those of Harvard.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cheating, Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Fraud, Hypocrisy

Shani Robinson: I Was Convicted in Atlanta on RICO Charges. I Was Innocent.

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2023 //
18

Shani Robinson was one of the Atlanta teachers who was convicted during the Great Cheating Scandal of 2015. Almost ten years later, she and five others who refused to plead guilty are still free while appealing their convictions. Shani wrote a book about her ordeal called None of the Above, which I reviewed here. Shani’s book persuaded me that she had not cheated; she had no motivation to cheat since the scores of first-graders did not count for AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) or for a bonus for her. She was outraged to be accused of cheating, and she resisted all plea deals that required her to plead guilty or to accuse others, even if the plea deal allowed her to walk free. She was determined to insist on her innocence rather than make a deal with prosecutors.

Now that Trump and others are accused using the RICO statute, I contacted Shani to ask her where her case stands today.

Shani wrote this account for the blog:

Most everyone I know is paying attention to the prosecution of former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies related to an alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act makes that possible. I view the proceedings with mixed feelings, as I was falsely accused and convicted under that same RICO Act during the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) Cheating Trial in 2015.

My name is Shani Robinson and I’m a former first grade teacher. I was falsely accused of cheating on my students’ standardized tests by a former co-worker, whose story changed every time she was interrogated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), but who was ultimately offered immunity in exchange for her testimony. Former Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard Jr. claimed that cheating was the result of a criminal conspiracy. He used RICO—a law devised to take down the American Mafia—to throw the book at educators. I was offered a plea deal that would have whittled my potential 25-year prison sentence down to community service. But I wasn’t willing to admit guilt for something I hadn’t done and/or falsely accuse someone else. I also never received bonus money (the basis for the RICO charges) because my school didn’t reach the district targets, which were APS’s testing goals that prosecutors claimed were the main culprit behind the cheating. There was no motive for me to cheat because as a first-grade teacher, my test scores didn’t count toward the district targets.

The APS cheating case was rife with corruption from the beginning. Former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue sent an unprecedented number of GBI agents into APS in 2010. Teachers were pulled out of their classrooms and told to speak with these agents, and in most cases, there were no attorneys present. Agents used intimidation to elicit confessions and accusations: Some educators complained that GBI interrogators threatened that they could lose custody of their children if they didn’t cooperate. Educators who maintained their innocence were asked to sign pre-written statements saying they didn’t cheat. Some of the teachers who signed the forms were still accused of cheating and were charged with making false statements and writings, a felony, because they had followed instructions and signed the statements the GBI provided. At the same time Perdue’s investigation was underway in APS, he turned around and used the same questionable test scores in an application for President Obama’s Race to the Top program and won a $400 million federal grant.

The trial was like a circus. The judge called out prosecutors on multiple occasions for improperly influencing the jury. But the judge himself was often out of line too: from telling the jury a story about a man he caught masturbating, to having a private conversation with former District Attorney Paul Howard Jr., to pressuring my co-defendants and me to take plea deals. While the prosecutorial and judicial misconduct that took place was bad enough, the mainstream media helped fuel the fire to justify the RICO charges. Their overall narrative was that educators cheated to get bonus money. This patently contradicted the GBI investigative report, which stated bonus money provided “little incentive” to cheat. One of the lead investigators on the case also stated this when he testified during the trial. Despite the flaws, the jury convicted all but one of us that was on trial.

The problem with RICO is that it criminalizes such a broad range of conduct, including acts by many people who have nothing to do with each other. RICO was originally written to attack organized crime; using such a statute against educators for cheating on standardized tests is unconscionable. Since the 2001 enactment of No Child Left Behind, a federal policy that mandated standardized testing and imposed sanctions on schools that failed to meet unrealistic goals, The National Center for Fair and Open testing documented cheating cases in nearly 40 states and Washington, DC. Only in Atlanta did educators face felony charges saddled with decades-long prison sentences.

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. Otherwise, the APS Cheating Trial could potentially be used as a playbook for other unjust prosecutions that clog up the legal system and waste public resources.

Categories Atlanta, Cheating, Georgia, Teachers

Gary Rubinstein: Will U.S. News Ban KIPP from Its Rankings Again, for Cheating?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2023 //
6

Gary Rubinstein writes here about KIPP’s clever tactics to win a listing as one of the “best” high schools in New York State. He caught them playing similar games several years ago, and U.S. News heard about it and removed KIPP from its rankings.

He begins:

There is exactly one KIPP high school in New York City.

KIPP NYC College Prep High School was started in 2009 to serve students graduating from KIPP middle schools. In 2013 they moved into a new facility that was part of a $100 million project….

Gary figured out that KIPP gamed the system by placing its high-performing students in one middle school and its underperforming students in another middle school. But only one gets counted by U.S. News.

The mystery gets stranger when you search for KIPP high schools in New York and two schools come up, KIPP Academy and KIPP Infinity.

So there is the other KIPP high school in NYC according to U.S. News and that school has 4 times the number of students and in that under performing sibling of the 20th ranked school they don’t have any students passing the AP test. How can this be?

The answer is that there are not two KIPP high schools but only one. These schools, KIPP Academy and KIPP Infinity are actually middle schools. Even in the New York State data, there is not an official KIPP NYC College Prep school but these middle schools have as part of their enrollment the high school students. I don’t know why New York State allows them to do this and why they can assign all the students and only the students who pass an AP exam to KIPP Academy middle school and the students who don’t pass an AP to KIPP Academy Infinity middle school.

Please open the link to understand what a clever move this is. Why do they do it? Gary says it impresses their funders.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, New York City
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