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Thinking of a Protest Vote? Think Again

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2016 //
28

Rachelle Horowitz was the transportation director of the l963 March on Washington. She was arrested protesting lunch counter discrimination on Route 40, Maryland, protesting Soviet Nuclear Testing at the Russian Embassy in New York City, protesting anti-labor and discriminatory policies at the World’s Fair in Queens, New York, protesting Apartheid at the South African Embassy in Washington, D.C. She was the Administrative Director of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and Political Director of the American Federation of Teachers. She sits on the board of the National Democratic Institute.

Thinking about a protest vote?

An open letter from an old protest voter to new ones

Dear Protest Voter,

I was once you.

In l960 when John F. Kennedy ran against Richard Nixon, I was 21. I was about to cast my first vote for President of the United States.

In my heart, I knew John F Kennedy was a far better choice to lead our country than Richard Nixon. I was a civil rights activist, a democratic socialist, a protester and JFK was not radical or even liberal enough for me. So I wrote in Norman Thomas.

After voting I helped organize a protest march and rally for civil rights in New York City. We were demanding an end to segregation and discrimination. The speaker was a southern hero, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. He had risked his life – literally – that morning by voting in Birmingham, Alabama, and had then flown to New York to speak at our rally.

We chatted a little as he waited to speak, and he casually mentioned how happy he was to have voted for JFK. I confessed my Norman Thomas write-in. He was incredulous and horrified. I felt like a silly, white, northerner who had the luxury to protest while his life and the fate of the nation was at stake.

I knew then that I would never waste another vote. I would protest; I would march; I would let my opinion be known. But when there were lives at stake, I would not demand political purity or total agreement with what I thought was right.

Sadly, I didn’t get a second chance to vote for JFK. Years later, I became active in Ted Kennedy’s 1980 campaign. My husband and I became his friends. Yet, I never had the courage to tell him about l960.

Well, its 56 years later. I don’t think Hillary is perfect.

But I do think she is plenty good enough… And I hope you don’t waste your vote.

I wrote in Norman Thomas in NYC – JFK won without me…

But in this election if you live in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and a bunch of swing states, your vote may do more than weigh on your conscience. It may plunge this country into a Trumpian nightmare.

So get out there and protest, march, rally and lead this country in the right direction. But, please, make your vote count. You can’t afford not to.

Rachelle Horowitz

Categories Clinton, Trump

Would You Vote for a Woman Who….?

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2016 //
27

This is important information.

Think about it before you vote.

Would you vote for this woman for President?

Categories Clinton, Trump

Wayne Barrett: Giuliani, the FBI, Trump, Clinton, and Dirty Tricks

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2016 //
132

This shocking story appeared this morning. It was written by Wayne Barrett, who is known to New Yorkers as a tenacious investigative reporter with a long memory.

To understand the Comey memo, Barrett dug back into Giuliani’s close ties to the FBI over the years. He hinted that he knew what Comey was about to do last week, when he came out with his announcement that he was re-opening the review of Clinton’s emails, even though he did not know what was on Anthony Weiner’s computer and did not have a warrant yet to search it. This was an explosive development that probably suppressed Hillary Clinton’s vote, as Trump strategists have said is their goal.

Barrett writes:

Two days before FBI director James Comey rocked the world last week, Rudy Giuliani was on Fox, where he volunteered, un-prodded by any question: “I think he’s [Donald Trump] got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”
Pressed for specifics, he said: “We’ve got a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”

The man who now leads “lock-her-up” chants at Trump rallies spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani’s security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it. It was agents of that office, probing Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a minor, who pressed Comey to authorize the review of possible Hillary Clinton-related emails on a Weiner device that led to the explosive letter the director wrote Congress.

Hours after Comey’s letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director’s surprise action to “the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don’t look at it politically.”
“The other rumor that I get is that there’s a kind of revolution going on inside the FBI about the original conclusion [not to charge Clinton] being completely unjustified and almost a slap in the face to the FBI’s integrity,” said Giuliani. “I know that from former agents. I know that even from a few active agents.”

Along with Giuliani’s other connections to New York FBI agents, his former law firm, then called Bracewell Giuliani, has long been general counsel to the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA), which represents 13,000 former and current agents. The group, born in the New York office in the early ’80s, was headed until Monday by Rey Tariche, an agent still working in that office. Tariche’s resignation letter from the bureau mentioned the Clinton probe, noting that “we find our work—our integrity questioned” because of it, adding “we will not be used for political gains.”

When the FBIAA threw its first G-Man Honors Gala in 2014 in Washington, Giuliani was the keynote speaker and was given a distinguished service award named after him. Giuliani left Bracewell this January and joined Greenberg Traurig, the only other law firm listed as a sponsor of the FBIAA gala. He spoke again at the 2015 gala. The Bracewell firm also acts as the association’s Washington lobbyist and the FBIAA endorsed Republican Congressman Mike Rodgers, rather than Comey, for the FBI post in 2013. Giuliani did not return a Daily Beast message left with his assistant.

Back in August, during a contentious CNN interview about Comey’s July announcement clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal charges, Giuliani advertised his illicit FBI sources, who circumvented bureau guidelines to discuss a case with a public partisan. “The decision perplexes me. It perplexes Jim Kallstrom, who worked for him. It perplexes numerous FBI agents who talk to me all the time. And it embarrasses some FBI agents.”

Kallstrom is the former head of the New York FBI office, installed in that post in the ’90s by then-FBI director Louis Freeh, one of Giuliani’s longtime friends. Kallstrom has, like Giuliani, been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he’s called the Clintons a “crime family.” He has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey’s exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values.

Last October, after President Obama told 60 Minutes that the Clinton emails weren’t a national security issue, Megyn Kelly interviewed Kallstrom on Fox. “You know a lot of the agents involved in this investigation,” she said. “How angry must they be tonight?”

“I know some of the agents,” said Kallstrom. “I know some of the supervisors and I know the senior staff. And they’re P.O.’d, I mean no question. This is like someone driving another nail in the coffin of the criminal justice system.”

Kallstrom declared that “if it’s pushed under the rug,” the agents “won’t take that sitting down.” Kelly confirmed: “That’s going to get leaked.”
When Comey cleared Clinton this July, Kallstrom was on Fox again, declaring: “I’ve talked to about 15 different agents today—both on the job and off the job—who are basically worried about the reputation of the agency they love.” The number grew dramatically by Labor Day weekend when Comey released Clinton’s FBI interview and other documents, and Kallstrom told Kelly he was talking to “50 different people in and out of the agency, retired agents,” all of whom he said were “basically disgusted” by Comey’s latest release.

By Sept. 28, Kallstrom said he’d been contacted by hundreds of people, including “a lot of retired agents and a few on the job,” declaring the agents “involved in this thing feel like they’ve been stabbed in the back.” So, he said, “I think we’re going to see a lot more of the facts come out in the course of the next few months. That’s my prediction.”

Kallstrom, whose exchanges with active agents about particular cases are as contrary to FBI policy as Giuliani’s, formally and passionately endorsed Trump this week on Stuart Varney’s Fox Business show, adding that Clinton is a “pathological liar.”

Do read it all. The fix was in. Rudy Giuliani knew about it before Comey spoke. That violates FBI rules. Who will investigate the leaks? The FBI?

Categories Clinton, Politics, Trump

Dana Milbank: Latest Sludge from the Trump Conspiracy Factory

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2016 //
30

I read this article last night and decided that it was too meretricious to post on my blog. But since readers have commented on it, here is the story.

The Hate-Clinton/Love-Trump forces held a press conference at the National Press Club (where anyone can rent a room for a few hundred dollars) to announce that Bill Clinton has an illegitimate son, now 30 years old, the result of a relationship with a black prostitute. He asks for a sample of Bill Clinton’s DNA from Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.

Milbank writes:


Filmmaker Joel Gilbert, the conspiracy theorist who believes President Obama has a secret Muslim prayer inscribed on his wedding ring, made a splash in 2012 when he said Obama had plastic surgery to conceal that his real father was labor activist Frank Marshall Davis, who raised his son to lead a communist revolution.

Four years later, and just in time for Election Day, Gilbert is back with a new film alleging that Bill Clinton has a 30-year-old son he sired with a black prostitute. And on Tuesday, Gilbert hauled the young man to Washington and gave him a speech to read to the TV cameras at the National Press Club.

“As you can see I’m the black son of former president Bill Clinton and the stepson of Hillary Clinton,” the young man, Danney Williams, read as Gilbert, off to the side, mouthed many of the words.

Actually, you could only see him as Clinton’s son if you imagined Clinton six inches shorter, with a different build and different facial features. But no matter.

“At this time I am reaching out to Miss Lewinsky, Monica Lewinsky,” Williams went on, looking to Gilbert for instruction and holding up a letter. “I’m asking that Miss Lewinsky allow me to borrow her blue dress in order to obtain a DNA sample of my father’s, former president Bill Clinton, in order to finally prove that he is my father….”

In fact, Williams’s DNA was tested, 17 years ago, when his mother sold it and her story to a tabloid, which compared the boy’s genetic material to Clinton’s DNA markers and concluded Clinton wasn’t his father.

That essentially ended the intrigue — until late last year, when longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone declared: “I will get justice for Danney Williams — stay tuned.” The Trump confidant had decided the original DNA work was wrong, and he teamed up to make that case with conspiracy-minded radio host Alex Jones, an avid Trump backer who lent his InfoWars news outlet to the cause.

I can only watch with astonishment as the Trump campaign and its surrogates fall farther and farther into the nether world in pursuit of any rumor to try to salvage the election.

Categories Clinton, Trump

President Trump? New Washington Post-ABC Poll Shows Tie, with Trump Up by 1 Point

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2016 //
97

A new poll by the Washington Post poll reports that Clinton and Trump are in a tie, with Trump ahead by 1 point.

Prepare for a president who will name at least 2 new Supreme Court justices, dedicated to rolling back Roe v Wade, gay marriage, civil rights protections, climate change regulations, and limitations on torture. Prepare for a president who will remove all restrictions on drilling for oil anywhere, on fracking, on coal, and who supports any and every pipeline.

Prepare for a president with a foul mouth and a dark heart.

For the first time in my life, I am afraid of who will be elected.

Categories Clinton, Trump

Rebecca Mead of The New Yorker: Did the Candidates Forget about K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2016 //
29

Rebecca Mead writes in The New Yorker that the presidential campaign has almost entirely overlooked K-12 education. The subject never came up in the presidential debates (nor did climate change).

She writes:

Unsurprisingly, the candidates differ as much on their approach to education as they do on virtually every other issue, as the Washington Post outlined in a helpful analysis earlier this month. In September, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Cleveland Arts and Sciences Academy, a charter school in Cleveland, Ohio, in which he offered his vision, though not before delivering an extended peroration about the perfidies of his Democratic opponent—e-mail, Iraq, the Clinton Foundation—unrelated to educational concerns. When he did get around to his own proposals, he spoke of expanding existing school-choice programs, promising that in a Trump Administration twenty billion dollars of federal education funds would be reassigned to provide a block grant enabling the eleven million students living in poverty to attend the private or public school of their parents’ choice. “Competition always does it,” he said. “The weak fall out and the strong get better. It is an amazing thing.” He advocated merit pay for teachers, stated his opposition to Common Core, and spoke in favor of charter schools and against teachers’ unions. “It’s time for our country to start thinking big and correct once again,” he declared, thereby failing to meet the second-grade Common Core standard 2.1.E. (“Use adjectives and adverbs, and choose between them depending on what is to be modified.”)

Clinton has a long-standing commitment to educational issues; as First Lady of Arkansas, in 1983, she headed a committee to improve academic achievement among the state’s public-school students. She has declared the intention of “preparing, supporting, and paying every child’s teacher as if the future of our country is in their hands,” and has given some suggestions as to how that estimable goal would be accomplished. She has said that she will provide funding to increase the teaching of computer science; she has also pledged to fund the rebuilding of school infrastructure, and to address the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, whereby African-American and minority students are disproportionately subject to overly punitive disciplinary policies, often involving law enforcement, within the schools they attend; she would fund interventions in social and emotional learning, to the tune of two billion dollars.

Clinton has left us all guessing about charter schools, but she has a balancing act: She needs money to run her campaign (think DFER), and she needs to satisfy the her strong supporters, the teachers’ unions, whose very existence is put at risk by the growth of the non-union charter industry (more than 90% of charter schools are non-union).

But of this we can be sure: Trump is 100% aligned with the far-right that hates public schools and unions. He loves charter schools and vouchers. He thinks he will “get rid” of the Common Core, but he doesn’t know that the president does not have the power to do so. His surrogate Carl Paladino of Buffalo, New York, said that Trump would not put an educator in charge of the Department of Education. The Trump campaign seems to look at public education as a cancerous growth on American society.

A vote for Trump is a vote to cripple and perhaps abandon public education.

A vote for Clinton is a vote for a candidate who has some good ideas and who knows that Obama’s education policies have been unsuccessful. Many think she will continue the status quo, but count me as one who expects that she will look for ways to improve public schools, not destroy them.

Categories Charter Schools, Clinton, Privatization, Trump, U.S. education, Unions, Vouchers

I Wish I Could Vote for Hillary Clinton Twice

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2016 //
47

[This article was posted last night at zhuffington Post.]

As we all know, James Comey, the director of the FBI, shook up the Presidential election by informing Congress that the FBI is re-opening the investigation of Hillary Clinton after finding thousands of emails on the computer used by her close aide Huma Abedin and her lecherous husband Anthony Wiener. Director Comey said in his brief message that the emails have not been reviewed and may not be significant.

This announcement was contrary to the Justice Department’s longstanding policy of not commenting on ongoing investigations and not interfering in elections within the 60 days prior to the vote. Comey’s intervention may influence the outcome of the election, and he surely knows it. Let me repeat from his own statement to Congress that the emails have not been reviewed and may not be significant.

A Trump supporter in Iowa was arrested for voting twice. She was caught breaking the law. She said she was convinced that the election was “rigged,” as her candidate has said scores of times, so she thought she should vote twice.

Well, I won’t be voting twice, because it is against the law.

But I feel more strongly than ever that Donald Trump is a menace to our nation and to the world. He will do anything and say anything to spew hatred of Hillary Clinton and distrust for our democracy and its electoral process. He said a few days ago that the election should be canceled and he should be anointed President.

Let me count the reasons why I will do whatever I can to support Hillary Clinton.

She is far better qualified for the presidency than Donald Trump, who is completely unfit for the position.

She is better educated, more experienced, more thoughtful, wiser, and more knowledgeable than Trump.

She has a demonstrated commitment to the well-being of all Americans, while he is a bigot who has manipulated his followers’ fear of anyone who is not white and Christian.

Let me count the reasons that Trump should not be president.

He has stirred bigotry against blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and women.

By his own admission, he is a sexual predator.

He will appoint Supreme Court justices committed to rolling back Roe v. Wade, civil rights, environmental protection, and any restrictions on campaign finance and on corporate greed.

He has given no evidence that he understands either foreign or domestic policy.

He has given permission to all the hate groups in the nation to crawl out from under their respective rocks and voice their venom against Jews, blacks, Muslims, Hispanics, and anyone they consider “other.” Anyone who expresses criticism of Trump on Twitter receives hundreds or thousands of responses that are anti-Semitic, anti-black, anti-everything but white nationalism.

Trump has unleashed a virulent form of white nationalism that has felt ashamed to show its face–or its hoods–for many years. If you want to know more about the Trump base, read this article that appeared in the New Yorker about a man who spends full time as a “troll for Trump.”

To understand his campaign and the white nationalists who are managing it, read this article “Inside the Bunker,” which I posted a few days ago.

Donald Trump is ignorant of the government, of democratic processes, of economics, and of any of the issues facing our nation.

Trump lacks the character or temperament to be President. He is a bully. He is vengeful. He is thin-skinned. He is a braggart. He is a con man. He is a liar. He has a documented history of defrauding the same people who are now voting for him, the working people to whom he offers lies and false promises of bringing back jobs that were lost to automation and outsourcing (which he participated in with his own products). And then there is Trump University, which ripped off working people, widows, and pensioners with false promises of riches. He should be selling snake oil, not running for the highest office in the land.

Listening to the radio this morning (CNN), I heard one of his biographers defend him (“The Truth about Trump”), saying that he was a consummate performer. He actually believes in nothing. No, there won’t be a wall, and Mexico won’t pay for it. He is running because he wants to win the biggest prize of all: the Presidency. He isn’t interesting in being President, just winning. Not to worry, Mike Pence will run the country. Pence is a homophobe who went on national television to defend discrimination against gays but was forced by corporations to back down when they threatened to leave Indiana. Mike Pence, darling of the far right, former talk-show host, is the Rush Limbaugh of Indiana.

James Comey acted inappropriately. He ignored the policies and norms of the Justice Department and the FBI. He announced a new investigation without any facts or evidence or charges; it will be weeks or months before the FBI decides whether there is anything of significance on the laptop shared by Anthony Wiener and Huma Abedin. If Comey helps elect Donald Trump, he should start a new investigation of the fraudulent voting inspired by Trump’s phony claims of vote rigging and the fraudulent business practices of President Trump. Will Trump separate himself from his hotel chain and his golf courses? Will he use his position as President to drum up money for his business empire? Will his children continue to profit from his businesses? He can’t put his business empire into a blind trust. Will he pause in affairs of state to open a new hotel, as he did a few days ago, or to launch a new line of clothing?

If this charlatan is elected, our democracy is at risk. Our economy is at risk. Our ideals, our values, and our aspirations for a more perfect union will be endangered by the takeover of the national government by the alt-right, by men like Steve Bannon of Breitbart, Roger Ailes of Fox News, and Rudy Guiliani, the skeletal ex-mayor of New York City who cheers on all of Trump’s wildest exaggerations.

Trump says he represents change, and that is true. But Trump’s change would mean chaos, incompetence at the highest levels of government, and a revival of the worst racism and bigotry of our lifetimes.

I can only vote for Hillary once, but I will vote for her with renewed enthusiasm.

Categories Clinton, Fraud, Politics, Trump

Trump’s Clever, Risky Plan to Win the Presidency and/or Destroy the Republican Party

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2016 //
66

A stunning story in Bloomberg BusinessWeek reveals Donald Trump’s end game: Suppress the Hillary vote. Target certain audiences and bombard them on the Internet with negative stories that discourage them from turning out.

Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg went “inside the Trump bunker” to learn the campaign’s strategizing. Trump has abandoned traditional fund-raising events and is replying now exclusively on the Web to find campaign contributions. He has a small team with pre-written Tweets, ready to go to synchronize with his speeches. He has a highly sophisticated data team, conducting its own polling. His campaign is led not by veteran political operatives but by people skilled at marketing. Marketing the candidate is no different from marketing any other product.

They write:

When Bannon joined the campaign in August, Project Alamo’s data began shaping even more of Trump’s political and travel strategy—and especially his fundraising. Trump himself was an avid pupil. Parscale would sit with him on the plane to share the latest data on his mushrooming audience and the $230 million they’ve funneled into his campaign coffers. Today, housed across from a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery along Interstate 410 in San Antonio, the digital nerve center of Trump’s operation encompasses more than 100 people, from European data scientists to gun-toting elderly call-center volunteers. They labor in offices lined with Trump iconography and Trump-focused inspirational quotes from Sheriff Joe Arpaio and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr. Until now, Trump has kept this operation hidden from public view. But he granted Bloomberg Businessweek exclusive access to the people, the strategy, the ads, and a large part of the data that brought him to this point and will determine how the final two weeks of the campaign unfold.

The Trump team knows very well that they are behind in the polls, and they have shaped a plan to reverse Clinton’s edge: suppress her voters.

Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.

The nation is at risk if Trump wins, and the Republican party is at risk if he loses.

Regardless of whether this works or backfires, setting back GOP efforts to attract women and minorities even further, Trump won’t come away from the presidential election empty-handed. Although his operation lags previous campaigns in many areas (its ground game, television ad buys, money raised from large donors), it’s excelled at one thing: building an audience. Powered by Project Alamo and data supplied by the RNC and Cambridge Analytica, his team is spending $70 million a month, much of it to cultivate a universe of millions of fervent Trump supporters, many of them reached through Facebook. By Election Day, the campaign expects to have captured 12 million to 14 million e-mail addresses and contact information (including credit card numbers) for 2.5 million small-dollar donors, who together will have ponied up almost $275 million. “I wouldn’t have come aboard, even for Trump, if I hadn’t known they were building this massive Facebook and data engine,” says Bannon. “Facebook is what propelled Breitbart to a massive audience. We know its power.”

Since Trump paid to build this audience with his own campaign funds, he alone will own it after Nov. 8 and can deploy it to whatever purpose he chooses. He can sell access to other campaigns or use it as the basis for a 2020 presidential run. It could become the audience for a Trump TV network. As Bannon puts it: “Trump is an entrepreneur.”

Whatever Trump decides, this group will influence Republican politics going forward. These voters, whom Cambridge Analytica has categorized as “disenfranchised new Republicans,” are younger, more populist and rural—and also angry, active, and fiercely loyal to Trump. Capturing their loyalty was the campaign’s goal all along. It’s why, even if Trump loses, his team thinks it’s smarter than political professionals. “We knew how valuable this would be from the outset,” says Parscale. “We own the future of the Republican Party.”

Win or lose, he is not going away. White nationalism is his base, and he is cultivating it with dexterity. And keeping it intact for the future.

Categories Clinton, Politics, Trump

Julian Vasquez Heilig Reviews WikiLeaks for Education Emails

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2016 //
11

Julian Vasquez Heilig combed through the Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks in search of education-related comments. He found quite a few.

Reach your own conclusions.

I don’t think he included this one, where the Clinton campaign reacts to a question from the AFT about whether Joel Klein is involved in the campaign.

Education Week reported the story here.

Klein’s company Amplify lost about $500 million, when it was owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Murdoch dumped it, and Laurene Powell Jobs picked it up for the Emerson Collective, probably for a song.

But Klein is still in the money. Despite the epic failure of Amplify, Rupert Murdoch is paying him $4.6M per year to sit on the News Corp board. (And don’t forget that he filed for a pension from New York City for the eight years he spent as Chancellor, closing schools and opening charter schools.)

Klein is now working as “chief strategy” officer for the failing Oscar health insurance company, which is also losing millions fast. Klein has not had much luck in the business world. This company was co-founded by Josh Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Clinton, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Klein, Joel, New York City, Privatization

Where Does Clinton Stand on Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2016 //
80

At a policy forum in Miami before the Council of the Great City Schools, surrogates for Trump and Clinton clarified their views, sort of.

Carl Paladino, remembered in New York for his racist and sexist emails during his campaign against Cuomo, promised that Trump would not put an educator in charge of the Education Department. That’s no surprise. In other settings, both Trump and Paladino have promised to turn all federal funding over to charters and vouchers and to abandon public education.

Clinton’s surrogate said that she is a “big backer” of charter schools, but not for-profit schools. That is not at all reassuring, since some of the most rapacious charter schools are technically non-profit but are managed by for-profit EMOs. And some rapacious charter chains are non-profit but pay their executives obscene salaries. And some non-profits are agents of privatization, even when the profit motive is absent.

The article also said:

During her 2016 campaign, Clinton’s position on charters became a bit less clear. During her time as a U.S. senator from New York, for example, Clinton was a supporter of charters. She’s even taken some grief from the teachers’ unions for that stance. But during this White House run, she also criticized charters for not necessarily accepting all the same students that traditional public schools do. And she’s said charters should supplement what public schools do and not replace them.

She was right. Charter schools do not accept the same students that real public schools do. They can admit those they want and kick out those they don’t want. And while it is admirable to say that charters should not replace public schools, the reality is that charters drain both resources and students from public schools, causing public schools to cut their programs and staff and to have even less capacity to serve the overwhelming majority of students.

The United States simply cannot afford to have a dual school system: one that chooses the students it wants, and the other required to accept all who apply. No high-performing nation in the world operates a dual school system.

If Clinton is to have an intelligent policy about public and charter schools, she must be better informed than she is now, and she can’t rely solely on charter advocates for her information about the way charters are systematically eroding public education in America. She need only look at what is happening in Pennsylvania, Ohio, California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida, and a dozen or more other states.

She might learn that more than 90% of charters are non-union. She might bear in mind that her strongest supporters have been the NEA and the AFT, whose jobs will be lost as charters expand.

Profit is not the only issue, though it is one. The central issue is privatization and the danger to America’s historic commitment to universal public education, doors open to all, not to some.

The good news is that one of the Podesta emails leaked by Wikileaks said that a group of billionaire reformers organized by Laurene Powell Jobs wanted to meet with Hillary but she couldn’t make time for them, and Podesta responded:

Probably worth the time. Not sure we can reassure them. Want to discuss by phone?

Note bene: she didn’t make time to meet with them, and the staff was not sure it could reassure them. That’s a good sign. Take that, reformers!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Clinton, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Democrats, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump
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