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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

Add Another Scandal to the GOP “Family Values” Facade

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2023 //
25

For decades, the GOP has claimed to be the party of “family values.” From what we have read recently about Governor Noem of South Dakota, who allegedly was romantically entangled with a Trump aide, and Rep. Lauren Boebert, ousted from a musical performance in Denver because she and her date were groping and vaping, the “family values” bit doesn’t fit.

And here is another broken vow, as reported by Business Insider:

A tale as old as time is playing out yet again: A politician who promotes the importance of family has abandoned them.

This time, it appears to be US Rep. Jeff Duncan, a Republican in South Carolina. Duncan’s wife, Melody Duncan, filed for divorce last week, citing her husband’s multiple affairs.

Melody Duncan, his wife of more than 30 years and mother to his three sons, accused her husband of at least two affairs in the divorce filing, which was first obtained and published by the Index-Journal, a local newspaper in Greenwood.

Duncan has been in office for 13 years and has long advocated for conservative Christian values.

“As a life-long social conservative, I am a strong advocate for life and traditional family values,” Duncan writes on his website. Accompanying the post is a stock image of the Holy Bible, a book famous for its views on infidelity.

He then pledges himself to the anti-abortion cause: “The most basic component of our society is the family.”

The family, plus a few mistresses, it would seem.

The divorce filing described Melody Duncan as a “dutiful wife” who “wholeheartedly supported” Duncan in his career. It cites a political event last month where Duncan echoed his wife’s sentiment.

At a “Faith and Freedom BBQ” on August 28, Duncan described his wife as “supportive and loving” while portraying himself as a “dedicated, dutiful husband,” according to the divorce filing. Duncan then “left the next day and went directly” to the home of his mistress, it says.

Categories Cheating, Lies, Republicans, South Carolina

Maureen Dowd: Trump Is a Sore Loser and a Fool

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2023 //
31

Maureen Dowd is a regular columnist for the New York Times. Here she reviews Trump’s ongoing coup. Dowd refers to Trump at the end of the article as an Amadán. Carol Burris, who is of Irish origin, sent the following explanation: “She calls him amadán at the end, which in Irish is a fool. But the full terminology, “amadán dubh,” comes from Irish folklore and refers to the “dark fool” or “dark fairy.” Amadán Dubh is a trickster fairy found in Irish folklore, and is the ‘bringer of madness and oblivion.’ That he is.”

Maureen Dowd wrote:

WASHINGTON — The man who tried to overthrow the government he was running was held Thursday by the government he tried to overthrow, a few blocks from where the attempted overthrow took place and a stone’s throw from the White House he yearns to return to, to protect himself from the government he tried to overthrow.

Donald Trump is in the dock for trying to cheat America out of a fair election and body-snatch the true electors. But the arrest of Trump does not arrest the coup.

The fact is, we’re mid-coup, not post-coup. The former president is still in the midst of his diabolical “Who will rid me of this meddlesome democracy?” plot, hoping his dark knights will gallop off to get the job done.

Trump is tied with President Biden in a New York Times/Siena College poll, and if he gets back in the Oval, there will be an Oppenheimer-size narcissistic explosion, as he once more worms out of consequences and defiles democracy. His father disdained losers and Trump would rather ruin the country than admit he lost.

The Trump lawyer John Lauro made it clear they will use the trial to relitigate the 2020 election and their cockamamie claims. Trump wasn’t trying to shred the Constitution, they will posit; he was trying to save it.

“President Trump wanted to get to the truth,” Lauro told Newmax’s Greg Kelly after the arraignment, adding: “At the end he asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in, and then they could make a determination to audit or re-audit or recertify.”

In trying to debunk Jack Smith’s obstruction charges, Lauro confirmed them. Trying to halt the congressional certification is the crime.

Smith’s indictment depicts an opéra bouffe scene where “the Defendant” (Trump) and “Co-Conspirator 1” (Rudy Giuliani) spent the evening of Jan. 6 calling lawmakers attempting “to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol” by sowing “knowingly false allegations of election fraud.” Trump melodramatically tweeted about his “sacred landslide election victory” being “unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.”

Giuliani left a voice mail message for a Republican senator saying they needed “to object to numerous states and raise issues” to delay until the next day so they could pursue their nefarious plan in the state legislatures.

Two words in Smith’s indictment prove that the putz knew his push for a putsch was dishonest: “too honest.” Bullying and berating his truant sycophant, Mike Pence, in the days leading up to Jan. 6, Trump told his vice president, “You’re too honest.”

The former vice president is selling “Too honest” merchandise, which, honestly, won’t endear him to the brainwashed base. Pence’s contemporaneous notes helped Smith make his case.

It’s strange to see Pence showing some nerve and coming to Smith’s aid, after all his brown-nosing and equivocating. He and Mother, who suppressed her distaste for Trump for years, were the most loyal soldiers; in return, according to an aide, Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows saidTrump felt Pence “deserved” to be hanged by the rioters.

Pence told Fox News on Wednesday that Trump and his advisers wanted him “essentially to overturn the election.”“It wasn’t just that they asked for a pause,” Pence said, at odds with Lauro. “The president specifically asked me and his gaggle of crackpot lawyers asked me to literally reject votes.”

Ron DeSantis, another presidential wannabe who enabled Trump for too long, acknowledged on Friday that “all those theories that were put out did not prove to be true.” But Trump and his henchmen were busy ratcheting up the lunacy.

“IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” Trump threatened on Truth Social on Friday.

On the same day and platform, he accused “the corrupt Biden DOJ” of election interference. Exquisite projection. In Trump’s warped view, it’s always the other guy who’s doing what Trump is actually doing.

Kari Lake told House Republicans to stop pursuing a Biden impeachment and just decertify the 2020 election because Biden is not “the true president.” Lake said of Trump: “This is a guy who’s already won. He won in 2016. He won even bigger in 2020. All that Jan. 6 was, was a staged riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election.”

Before laughing off this absurdity, consider the finding from CNN’s new poll: Sixty-nine percent of Republicans and those leaning Republican believe Biden is an illegitimate president, with over half saying there is “solid evidence” of that.

While Trump goes for the long con, or the long coup — rap sheet be damned, it’s said that he worries this will hurt his legacy. He shouldn’t. His legacy is safe, as the most democracy-destroying, soul-crushing, self-obsessed amadán ever to occupy the Oval. Amadán, that’s Gaelic for a man who grows more foolish every day.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Lies, Pence, Republicans, Trump

ProPublica: Justice Alito accepted Luxury Fishing Trip from Billionaire with Cases Before Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2023 //
21

ProPublica broke a story today about Justice Samuel Alito’s breach of ethics. Actually, the U.S. Supreme Court has no ethics code. Ethics codes are for the little people, to paraphrase businesswoman Leona Helmsley, who once said that “taxes are for the little people.”

Writers at ProPublica emailed questions to Justice Alito on Friday. Instead of answering, Justice Alito took the unusual step of responding in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal, which took the unusual step of publishing it.

The ProPublica article begins:

In early July 2008, Samuel Alito stood on a riverbank in a remote corner of Alaska. The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justicesto disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

Justices are almost entirely left to police themselves on ethical issues, with few restrictions on what gifts they can accept. When a potential conflict arises, the sole arbiter of whether a justice should step away from a case is the justice him or herself.

ProPublica’s investigation sheds new light on how luxury travel has given prominent political donors — including one who has had cases before the Supreme Court — intimate access to the most powerful judges in the country. Another wealthy businessman provided expensive vacations to two members of the high court, ProPublica found. On his Alaska trip, Alito stayed at a commercial fishing lodge owned by this businessman, who was also a major conservative donor. Three years before, that same businessman flew Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016, on a private jet to Alaska and paid the bill for his stay.

Such trips would be unheard of for the vast majority of federal workers, who are generally barred from taking even modest gifts.

Leonard Leo, the longtime leader of the conservative Federalist Society, attended and helped organize the Alaska fishing vacation. Leo invited Singer to join, according to a person familiar with the trip, and asked Singer if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire’s jet. Leo had recently played an important role in the justice’s confirmation to the court. Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo’s political groups.

ProPublica’s examination of Alito’s and Scalia’s travel drew on trip planning emails, Alaska fishing licenses, and interviews with dozens of people including private jet pilots, fishing guides, former high-level employees of both Singer and the lodge owner, and other guests on the trips.

ProPublica sent Alito a list of detailed questions last week, and on Tuesday, the Supreme Court’s head spokeswoman told ProPublica that Alito would not be commenting. Several hours later, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Alitoresponding to ProPublica’s questions about the trip.

Alito said that when Singer’s companies came before the court, the justice was unaware of the billionaire’s connection to the cases. He said he recalled speaking to Singer on “no more than a handful of occasions,” and they never discussed Singer’s business or issues before the court.

Alito said that he was invited to fly on Singer’s plane shortly before the trip and that the seat “would have otherwise been vacant.” He defended his failure to report the trip to the public, writing that justices “commonly interpreted” the disclosure requirements to not include “accommodations and transportation for social events.”

Categories Accountability, Bias, Billionaires, Cheating, Democracy, Ethics, Justice

Philadelphia: Charter School Rigged Admissions by Zip Code

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2023 //
9

Privatizers have boasted for years that charter schools are superior to public schools because students should not be confined to schools by their zip code (I.e. their neighborhood). But a charter school in Philadelphia used student zip codes to exclude kids from their “lottery.” The lottery was rigged to keep out kids from certain neighborhoods.

Each of the 800-plus Philadelphia families who applied for seats at a nationally recognized charter school thought their children had a fair shot at a spot in this year’s upcoming freshman class. Pennsylvania law guarantees it.

But some had no chance at all.

A top executive at Franklin Towne Charter High School said this year’s lottery was fixed, with students from certain zip codes shut out, and others eliminated because they — or their older siblings — exhibited academic or behavioral problems. Some children were also excluded because Franklin Towne’s chief executive didn’t want to take anyone from a particular charter elementary school, in the event he might have to pay for their transportation.

Patrick Field, Franklin Towne’s chief academic officer and an administrator at the school for 17 years, said the lottery tampering was ordered by Joseph Venditti, the longtime former CEO. Venditti abruptly resigned Feb. 27, citing health reasons, after Field alerted the charter’s board chair about the lottery issues…

The Inquirer reviewed a summary of the January lottery results showing that 205 students of 813 who applied were offered seats. The accepted students came from 22 zip codes; in 17 other city zip codes, none of the students who applied got in.

It is astronomically unlikely — with odds of 1,296 trillion — that no students would be selected from those zip codes if Franklin Towne conducted a random lottery as is required, an Inquirer analysis found.

Field, who is still employed by Franklin Towne, said he chose to alert authorities and come forward to The Inquirer because children are being cheated, and becausetaxpayers are footing the bill. Charters are independently run but publicly funded.

“As an administrator in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I don’t have a choice,” Field said. “As an ethical person, I’m just heartbroken that we’re doing this at a school that I’ve given so much of my life to.”

A high school of 1,300 in Bridesburg, Franklin Towne boasts strong academics, with a 97% graduation rate in 2021. It previously was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.

The charter also has fielded allegations over its enrollment practices. Though it’s required to admit students from across the city, Franklin Towne’s enrollment is primarily white — a demographic mismatch in a primarily Black school district — a concern raised in 2018 at a School Reform Commission meeting. It has previously been accused of discriminating against special-education students.

Mercedes Schneider reviewed the story and found that it sounded “fishy.” A mostly-white school in a mostly-black district? And no one knew? The selection process at this charter school has been funny for a long time.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cheating, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Cathy Antunes: Dark Money in Florida Elections

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2023 //
2

Cathy Antunes is an education activist in Sarasota, Florida. When she ran for local office, she realized that the public doesn’t pay much attention to local elections. This creates a huge opportunity for extremists with money to win local elections, especially School Board elections.

She wondered who was funding the campaigns of extremists. The Supreme Court’s decision Citizens United gutted limits on campaign contributions, and extremists took advantage of the new situation.

She started digging and found large amounts of money flowing into Florida state and local elections from shell corporations created by out-of-state funders. In other words, the funders were using Dark Money, money whose origins were hard to trace.

She turned her research into an ebook that is on the internet for free.

I hope you will open the link and read the book.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Dark Money, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Florida
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